Charlie.

Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. Here's mine.

Hell, I'm not even anywhere near as fast a writer as I'd sometimes like to be, so my sharing my thoughts here usually ends up taking a back seat.

That said, I'm going to get a few things off my chest, and what I've got to say might be a little bit divisive. You're more than welcome to stop reading now, or as soon as you realise who and what it is I'm talking about. I won't be offended, really, even if some people out there might paint me as the sort of lefty lunatic who gets offended by everything (to them I gladly say a robust fuck off, you pre-judging cunts. Was that lefty lunatic enough for you?).

I'm going to say my piece about Charlie Kirk.

At the time of my writing this, social media, along with pretty much the whole of the Internet, is on the verge of meltdown. Facebook in particular is even more of a hell-bound train drowning in the cesspit of Zuckerberg's making than usual. There's a general impression that friendships and relationships have been severed over differences of opinion. On one side, there's the group that insists he had it coming to him, on the other are the people - who count the perma-tanned Narcissist-in-Chief (that's my next ESTA application fucked) amongst their ranks - who are determined to make the former Conservative commentator into a martyr for their cause.

Both are equally rabid in their determination to be seen as holding the correct point of view.

Let's be clear about this: I didn't know Charlie Kirk, although I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the majority of people with an opinion didn't, either. On the basis of what I've come to learn about him, I'm pretty fucking thankful for that. The man, based upon what I know of his beliefs, was the antithesis of everything that I stand for. Vitriol hiding behind the veneer of faith. Right-wing rhetoric disguised as debate. He was a man who - and whether you choose to believe it or not, it's true - argued in favour of the Americans' enshrined right to carry a gun to such an extent that he saw a few shootings as little more than collateral. Describing tragedy as unfortunate whilst accepting it as some necessary fallout for maintaining your rights doesn't sound very Christian to me - not that I would know. He derided those outside of his own faith, showed disdain for those outside of his own culture, and scorn for those whose sexual identity he refused to acknowledge. His belief system was something that I found to be bordering on abhorrent.

He didn't deserve to die though, for one reason only, which I'll come to soon, I promise.

Kirk once said that he disliked the word empathy. He described it as a new-age term, preferring the word sympathy above it. To me, the word sympathy has a hollow ring to it more often than not. It carries with it a sort of, "I have no idea what you've been through but I'm going to say I feel sorry for you anyway" vibe. I've always tried to be non-judgmental. How can you seriously expect to judge someone if you haven't lived their experience? How can you understand what a person has been through or is going through, if you haven't lived their own truth? To say that you feel sympathy for a person with no experience of their own life, or no effort to at least understand their situation, that smacks of arrogance to me.

He still didn't deserve to die though. As promised, here comes the one reason - the only reason in my mind - that I said I'd get to: He didn't deserve it for the simple reason that no one deserves to die, not in such circumstances at least.

Because let's be clear; neither did the many hundreds who have died in the multiple school shootings over the years, so-called collateral, the price paid for the privilege (sorry, right) of any American to carry a gun and use it. At first, my initial thought was, he lived by the sword and he died by it, a victim of his own convictions. That might seem harsh, but that harshness doesn't dilute the reality of the situation. My empathy and sympathy don't lie with Kirk, and they never will, no matter how many self-appointed moral guardians insist I should think otherwise. They rest with all of those other families and victims who died, not as collateral, but as pawns in the never-ending gun debate that will seemingly never be resolved. They rest with those hundreds and hundreds of people whose names are never mentioned, whose names are forgotten by all but their own grieving families, while the name of Charlie Kirk will linger on for a great many years, a sorry fact that itself strikes me as a final insult to all of those people affected by his normalisation of hatred and intolerance towards anything outside of their own little bubble. There's still the slimmest of chances that, if his death triggers some meaningful debate, to finally put into place some means of stopping the senseless waste of life perpetrated by people exercising their rights, then some good may yet come of the current mess. At this time though, I'm pessimistic about such a thing happening. My opinion is wavering to the side of his impending martyrdom, to those of like-minded political beliefs using his death as a springboard, a final excuse to demonise all of those things that he railed against.

​I'm not a hypocrite, I found the views of Charlie Kirk to be reprehensible in life, and I'm not about to change that opinion now he's dead. I gain no pleasure from his death, no schadenfreude from the cries of those who shared in his beliefs, but I'm not about to mourn him, either.

​

Those are my beliefs. That's what I believe.

Change my mind.