From what I can tell he was a nice enough guy behind closed doors. He was playing a character for money out in public.
This situation is extremely disheartening on so many levels. First we have the reality that people are just being shot out in public. Granted that has been a thing for awhile now but damn, you know, you wonder how long public appearances by even C list celebrities are not going to be insane with security.
I was only vaguely aware of Charlie Kirk before this. Every once in a while his name would come up because of some particularly terrible way he dodged a good faith point in a debate or some gross thing he said on one of his...shows or whatever he did. But it wasn't like he stood much to me in the vast sea of right wing provocateurs or just general debate bros of any variety. Anybody who is celebrating this or laughing or thinking this somehow does anything positive is delusional. He probably did not even believe half the stuff the said, he was just doing the job that got him paid and there will be plenty more willing to step into his shoes...and even if nobody does there already exist dozens more like him currently out there. I have only condolences to his wife and child and his family. What a terrible thing. From what I have seen Kirk was perfectly kind of leftists behind the scenes but then would be a jerk when doing his schtick.
But Kirk himself is far from the upsetting thing here. First the narrative seems to be that he is some kind of martyr for free speech and a principled person, we don't even know why he was killed and by whom. It seems obvious to me he was performing and doing a job. You don't attack leftists publicly like he did and then be kind to them behind the scenes if you mean it. If Vaush or Hasan or some leftist equivalent got gunned down that would be upsetting but I wouldn't expect some great outpouring about what an inspirational hero he was. So that is worrisome. And the narrative seems to be that we leftists like this, that we are laughing at it, that somehow we see this as a win. I don't think that is true for anybody with half a brain, though plenty of morons online don't have half a brain. But it also is just the assumption. We have plenty of people coming in here accusing us, without even quoting anybody or challenging anything in particular, of just that. The fact that no influencer or Democratic politician of any significance is doing that is not even important, that is the narrative. That is dangerous. And on the other hand we have the President outright blaming us for it and delighted that he can use this tragedy to enact his political agenda.
It is just bad all the way around. A true shit sandwich in a garbage year.
I guess we could go around tone policing every post on the CR to show that we are not, in fact, laughing at this and think it is great but I don't know what different it would make. This is the narrative and it probably doesn't matter what we actually do. If we didn't laugh and celebrate it then some bot on twitter would and it would be quoted to get everybody riled up. It is hard not to feel hopeless.
Anyway sorry you got negged @Macklemore, I had nothing to do with it.