The Kirk Assassination May Tell Us Less About the Progressive Left Than What Came After--And Before--It

Just thinking out loud here, but: the worst acts by any faction don't (I guess?) tend to tell us much about that faction. As I keep saying: I generally don't hold a faction's lunatic fringe against it. Thing is, though, in this case, the progressive left spent a decade screaming that we (non-progressives/non-leftists) are Nazis, fascists, racist, white supremacists, homophobes, and on and on. And that violent action against such people is warranted. And that politically incorrect speech is violence. All that stuff seems consistent with the murder. That's the theory; the murder was the practice. Oh, sorry...praxis...

   Now...

   If after Kirk's brutal murder, they said something like: Holy crap. We didn't really realize what we were doing. We were wrong...

Then we might still judge the less-radical sectors of the faction not to be all that bad, not to bear much responsibility for the murder.

   But that's not what happened.

   What we got was jubilation.

   Which tells us: this isn't an aberration.

   This is what they really do want; this is who they are.

   But hold on a second. There do seem to be lots of crazy losers rejoicing at the murder--you can find any number of them online. Glee or indifference seems to be way, way, way too common. Those people have made it abundantly clear: yes, this is what they want.

   But--aside from MSNBC--the general reaction by most (or at least much) of the blue team seems to be more reasonable. Is it sincere? I don't know. See the TMZ video in which 20 or 30 people cheer the news of Kirk's assassination in the background almost at the same time that two somber editors solemnly assure us that nobody there is celebrating.. And didn't some Congressional Democrats grouse on the floor about a moment of silence for Kirk?

   And, anyway: every faction goes into defense mode to some extent when one of its number does something like this. There's an initial attempt to separate from the perpetrator--and this is, in a sense, good. It's perhaps the sincerest sign of disavowal: That wasn't us! Even if it was you, it in a sense speaks well of you that you don't want that to be true.

   See e.g.: the red team after the Capitol riot: It was the Feds! It was Antifa! Pelosi set us up!

   The right has its own crazies, and conservatives basically do the same kind of thing when one of them snaps. So in that sense, you/we are no better.

   But the point remains: the difference is that conservatism seems always to be repudiating, disavowing and running away from its crazy fringe; progressivism...not quite so much... 

   I dunno. Maybe that's wrong.