Moral Panic

Now we know.

After a couple of days of wildass speculation in the MAGAverse, a suspect in the murder of the Great Martyr Charlie Kirk has been taken into custody.  He is…wait for it…wait for it…you will be shocked…a twentysomething white male.

After two “persons of interest” were arrested and released, theories surrounding the killer ran amok.  Some concerned the latest MAGA moral panic, the transgender mass shooter.  If you weren’t paying attention, a few weeks ago a transgender person in Minnesota who posted regrets over their transition on their socials shot and killed two children and wounded 18 attending mass on the first day of their parochial school term.  In 2023, a transgender person killed seven and injured two at a Nashville Christian school.

And that’s about it.  Since both perpetrators died in the attacks, we cannot know for certain their motives though their social media presence offers clues.  In both cases, it appears they immersed themselves in websites castigating trans people and others promoting mass shooters. A simpler explanation is the Oswald motive: They did it to be famous.

No matter.  Transphobic rhetoric colored the commentary from the right.  My personal favorite quote came from Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who proclaimed to reporters that a “tranny” was responsible for Kirk’s demise.  She went on to say that she and her staff were afraid to come to work because of the looming threat of radical left violence.

Apparently, this is a common fear in MAGA world.  Because it’s all about them.  Random clicking dredged up videos of bearded white men shouting into the camera about how patriots like them are being targeted for death by the violent radical left.  Some of them—okay, most of them—bemoaned the rising death toll among men like them at the hands of these deranged leftists.  They also promised that this fictitious carnage would be met at gunpoint.  Disturbingly, one of these videos was posted by a police officer in uniform.  I feel reassured that this guy is out there protecting the public.

The ludicrous overreaction continued at the top, at least for a hot second.  The president announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk, further cheapening one of our most prestigious honors.  The vice president flew Kirk’s remains home aboard Air Force Two, at taxpayer’s expense of course. But when asked for comment about Kirk on the White House lawn, Trump devoted a few seconds to express his regret before launching into a monologue touting the new construction of the White House ballroom.

The president has perhaps moved on, but the MAGAsphere are like dogs with a bone.  The most disturbing revelation of the past few days is the creation of a website which purportedly gathers the names of anyone who might have cheered Kirk’s death on social media.  The idea is to get people to dime them out so their employers will terminate them.  (Trump and MAGA are unpopular among my colleagues, so I think they are safe from the “mass firings” promised by the website’s creators.) 

I don’t think this doxxing website poses much of a threat.  It’s just more posturing.  But the past eight months under Trump 2.0 have been exhausting.  I was raised by a narcissist, and I recognize this feeling as a constant from when I was a kid.  Add to that all the demented shit emanating from the right and the constant state of hypervigilance provoked by it, and one’s sense of wellbeing becomes hard to maintain.

The discourse from the left—the actual left, not the boogeyman living in MAGA’s imagination—is not encouraging.  For all the grandiose talk about themselves as “the resistance,” their writ doesn’t extend much beyond Tik-Tok and YouTube.  They are too few to pose a threat.  Meanwhile, more moderate critics of the administration unself-consciously muse over whether Charlie Kirk is the Trump movement’s Horst Wessel or whether his killing is the administration’s Reichstag Fire.

It doesn’t matter.  Trump and his allies control or have coopted all three branches of the federal government.  We may not yet beyond the point of no return, but that point is edging closer by the day.   Charlie Kirk’s murder, while unfortunate and unwarranted, will be bounced from the headlines in short order in service of flooding the zone.  And the base will move on to fixate upon some other outrage.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Descent

A few months ago, I wrote about a bizarre incident in Colorado where a man stalked a TV news crew, following the news vehicle back to the station.  When they arrived, the man confronted and assaulted the crew’s on-air reporter who was described as being of Pacific Islander ancestry.  During the assault, the man yelled, “This is Donald Trump’s America!”

At the time, I mused that political violence under a second Trump administration would vary in intensity while the legal consequences would depend on local sentiments.  In the case of the Colorado incident, the reporter’s assailant has pled not guilty and is to stand trial in January.

This afternoon, another violent act may put my speculation to the test.  Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead while giving a speech at a Utah college.  Details are unclear, but Kirk was apparently shot from a rooftop of a campus building about 150 yards away.  A “person of interest” has been detained.

The reaction to Kirk’s death among prominent Democrats so far is in contrast to Republican reactions when Democrats are physically attacked.  The June murders of a Minnesota legislator and her husband and the wounding of another legislator predictably generated vituperative victim blaming, for instance.  On the other hand, Kirk’s murder elicited condolences and condemnations of gun violence from Democrats.

Personally, I despise everything Charlie Kirk stood for.  But there shouldn’t be a death penalty for expressing despicable opinions. 

Naturally, MAGA has overreacted in ways which border on the absurd.  President Trump has ordered the flag flown at half-staff for the next several days, as ifi Kirk had been a great statesman rather than a self-serving, hate-mongering opportunist.  The next few days will likely bring more hyperbole.

Considering the fate of the shooter, I cannot predict.  Republican-majority Utah has been somewhat cool toward the MAGA phenomenon.  I am sure any trial jury would approach the case independent of political considerations.  But Utah’s governor has said this will be a death penalty case.

Would red state juries impose the death penalty on the murderer of a liberal activist or Democratic politician?  Would they convict in the first place?  Incitement is much more common on the right.  It’s not much of a leap that if a liberal activist or Democratic politician were murdered in a red state, the social media response would find a way to dismiss the crime and find a way to subtly (or not so subtly) put the onus on the deceased.

Returning to the right’s knee-jerk reactions to any threat, real or imaginary (mostly imaginary), let’s look at the ongoing, unnecessary occupation of Washington, D.C. by National Guard troops.  Although it had to have been in the works for weeks, the immediate precipitating event appears to have been an attempted carjacking involving DOGE twerp Edward “Big Balls” Coristine.  (Okay, I don’t condone violence, but the revelation that Mr. Balls was beaten up by a 15 year old girl made me smile.  Besides, his pride was hurt worse than his face) 

Any crime committed against a white person in a city with a plurality or majority population of color is going to set off right-wing alarm bells.  Since most of our cities, whether in red or blue states, have significant minority populations and tend to have Democratic administrations, they draw right-wing ire by their very being.  The planned replication of performative military intervention is certain, all in the interest of preventing violent crime of course.

I wonder if the president will be sending troops to Orem, Utah anytime soon.

Not very likely.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar