Gumdrop's Buttons

-Shot while saying that gun violence wasn't a problem

-While standing under a banner reading "Prove Me Wrong"

-After posting "Play certain games, win certain prizes"

-By a shooter from a rival right wing terror group

-Who engraved his bullets with memes

-And would have gotten away scott free because the investigators were being led by two former podcast hosts

-Except he decided to brag to his family about it

-Causing everyone fawning over Kirk as some kind of martyr to immediately shut the fuck up

-To the point where the President went in less than 24 hours from "he was like a son to me" to "Charlie who?"

When this news broke my dad told me and my siblings, all of us who are US Citizens, born and raised in the US, that we have to carry some form of official documentation on us, especially because we live in a city that has been heavily targeted by the Trump administration for being a sanctuary city. My grandmother was staying with us and even though she is my non-latine grandmother, and she's a US citizen, my dad and aunt made the decision to have my dad drive her back home to New Jersey because she has an accent and her documents are back home.

As someone who is latine and south asian, I need you to know that this will not just affect latine people! My non-latine cousin was pulled over by ice about two weeks ago just for being brown! However this will disproportionately affect latine people. Just today ICE was seen on the street by my home and my work! One of my duties at work is to make sure that ICE does not come into our elementary school because we're a predominantly latine school. I HAVE TO MAKE SURE ICE DOES NOT KIDNAP 5 YEAR OLDS. That is the reality of the situation.

I want it to be known that I have been scared before because I'm living as a person of color in the United States. I have been scared before because of being a south asian born post 9/11. I have been scared before being a latina growing up during the Dreamer movement, despite being a citizen. However, before this week I have never been scared enough to feel the need to carry documentation proving I am a citizen of the damn country I was born in! Now I feel that scared though. Especially because a few months ago, for the first time in my life, someone assumed I didn't speak English. Another person of color assumed I didn't speak English and shit talked me in the CVS aisle because they assumed I didn't speak English. And then a week ago I also got mistaken for not speaking English when I went to the doctor's office and chatted with the receptionist in Spanish and then was handed Spanish paperwork to fill out.

Anyways, the point is the fact that I have seen maybe two? three? posts about this on here is upsetting and immensely telling. Speak up. Talk about the fact that this is happening because it will not stop with targeting latines. It will become worse. It already is because the government is going to punish immigrants for "making light of" charlie kirk's death. Not for celebrating, or joking, for making light of.

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

Yesterday, while giving a campus speech, far-right activist and anti-LGBTQ+ influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a gunman—another grim marker of how political violence has become a recurring feature of American life. Quickly, political figures and pundits rushed to denounce the killing, as they should. But some went further, valorizing and lionizing a man who built his career on contempt of people he viewed as lesser. Political violence is corrosive and we must not excuse it—killing Charlie Kirk was horrific. But we also must not sanitize the memory of a man who wished harm on those he disagreed with, and who spread a message of hate to anyone willing to listen or pay him to so. We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy. Yesterday, Gavin Newsom tweeted that we should “continue the work” of Charlie Kirk and honor his memory. This morning, centrist columnist Ezra Klein published a column titled “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics The Right Way.” Both paint a portrait of an open-minded Kirk, a man of dialogue and principle. But this is not his legacy. To call for “continuing his work” or to praise how he “practiced politics” is to erase what that work actually was: a relentless campaign of hate directed at LGBTQ+ people, racial and ethnic minorities, and anyone who refused to fall in line.

I first reported on Charlie Kirk years ago, at the beginning of the modern anti-LGBTQ+ panic—back when Riley Gaines was rising to far-right fame and her fifth-place swim finish was weaponized against transgender people. In one interview with Gaines on Real America’s Voice, Kirk railed against “the decline of American men” and blamed it for transgender equality. Then he added that people should have “just took care of” transgender people “the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.” Let’s be clear about what that meant: the 1950s and 60s were not kind to transgender people. The “standard treatments” were lobotomy, shock therapy, and involuntary institutionalization. Police commissioners openly described queer people as “a cancer in the community” and promoted “vigilant detecting.” Violence was the norm. So when someone calls for “continuing his work” or praises him for “practicing politics the right way,” this is the work they are honoring. [...]

Charlie Kirk’s hatred was hardly confined to transgender or queer people. In one interview, he said the first thing he thinks when he sees a Black pilot is, “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.” In another, he called for the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband to be bailed out of jail. He denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the very legislation that made possible the civic life so many now falsely lionize him for defending. He infamously said a few gun deaths were worth his second amendment rights in the aftermath of a school shooting. He even derided empathy itself as worthless, a sentiment that has since metastasized into a broader far-right project to strip empathy education from schools. This is not a man to be admired. This is his legacy.

Charlie Kirk was not “practicing politics the right way.” His work should never “be continued.” He embodied everything corrosive about American politics today. He turned the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ panic of the 2024 election into the centerpiece of his message, fueling many of the political ads that blanketed the country—ads rooted in narratives he and his network of far-right allies manufactured. He called for Nuremburg trials of gender-affirming care providers. He started a “professor watchlist” which called on his followers to report “leftist propaganda” in the classroom, which reportedly led to the families of those on the list being terrorized with death threats. His model of politics was not dialogue, but trolling: hopping from campus to campus to bait students, churn out sound bites, and spread hate. And his rhetoric was not debate—it was violent, dehumanizing, and designed to put targets on people’s backs.

During Charlie Kirk’s lifetime, he had a lengthy track record of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans bigotry, among his other records of right-wing extremism.

See Also:

Daily Kos: The whitewashing of Charlie Kirk’s toxic legacy is underway

CTRL Alt Right Delete (Melissa Ryan): Half-Mast

We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

We can denounce the violent killing of Charlie Kirk without praising his abhorrent legacy.

Here's a list of real things that have happened in the past 2 days:

He's being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

JD Vance personally escorted his body back to Arizona in Air Force Two

All American flags both in the US and abroad are to be flown at half-mast for the rest of the week

Republican senators are calling for a statue of him to be built in the Capitol (quote: "we have one of MLK don't we?")

News anchors are sobbing live on television

The governor of Utah has pledged to give the shooter the death penalty

Vigils are being held nationwide

Evangelicals have been equating him with Jesus

In the House of Representatives a request for a prayer devolved into screaming that the Democrats killed him

The New York Yankees held a moment of silence before the game and proceeded to lose 12-2

People across the country are losing their jobs en masse for criticising him online

MSNBC's political analyst was asked what created the environment for the shooting, said it could be his divisive rhetoric, and was fired on the spot

A UK student wrote "he got shot lol" in a private group chat and it made the news

The State Department announced that they will revoke the visas of foreign nationals who "praise, rationalise, or make light" of his death on social media

uh.

Macbeth is absolutely willing to fucking throw down for Lady Macbeth. Has already threatened a wall, a desk, a few students, a textbook that was neither his nor Lady Macbeth’s, and me

Lady Macbeth is enjoying the attention and has begun to use this new connection to his advantage. I’m starting to suspect he’s read ahead in the play.

Macbeth is going to end up living in detention at this rate.

Macbeth has no idea that he is the tragedy of the story. Claims to be the hero of the play, fails to see the irony in this

Macbeth slowly scooted his desk across the classroom to hold hands with Lady Macbeth. He was not subtle.

Macbeth has proposed on several occasions. Lady Macbeth just laughs and says they’re already married.

Macbeth’s girlfriend is in the class with them and is “totally not jealous or anything just thinks this whole fucking play is a waste of time”

Lady Macbeth should probably be a theatre major at some point, he fucking rocked Act V scene I

Anyway, that's three separate studies on this that find you're full of shit.