OK, I don't even want to write today, not because I can't think of anything, which is my normal point of departure as far as procrastination goes. In the guise of "looking for inspiration" I'll be eight tabs deep into an internet rabbit hole about the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world or the post-Laverne & Shirley career of the guy who played The Big Ragoo. Turns out that guy died just a few years ago and he wasn't even 70! Well, at least we know Lenny is still kicking around.
No, the problem is that there's too much inspiration. We've entered into one of those deranged periods where the content and the hot takes are so thick in the air it's impossible to tell which way to move, ever since right-wing political somebody Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday.
As a person who writes a thing that is public, when the atmosphere becomes this saturated with a single subject, you become obligated, to a degree. This even counts when your "public" is a modest, retiring number of low-volume but of high-discernment and class (and well dressed and handsome, don't think I can't tell). That's enough to constitute and audience though, if we're quoting Jesus. To paraphrase Matthew 18:20, if two people show up, you gotta get the puppets out and do the whole show. But Jesus had it easy, he was a prop guy. Loaves, fishes, a whole-ass human-size cross and his big closer, the cave escape. It's a little hack in retrospect, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it still really plays in Branson, Missouri.
Me, in these heady days before I give up and start feeding prompts to an AI version of writer's autotune, I can't whip out a walk-on-water trick, I have to grind words. It feels too weird to ignore it, even though I couldn't really tell you who Charlie Kirk was beyond "right wing" and "not an elected politician" as recently as Wednesday morning. I couldn't tell you where he lived or what his voice sounded like or what platform he was on... I could probably draw him if you asked me to, but that's kind of cheating as they all have that same JD Vance-Ben Shapiro aesthetic of pasty brunette white dudes in poorly fitting clothes.
So do I have a take? I'm on paragraph five to tell you: not really. It was just a week ago I reiterated to you guys I didn't wish physical harm on anyone. That's a long-standing personal conviction I take pretty seriously, but ever since I heard about this yesterday while I was at work, since I'm not entirely off social media, I had to hear about how I, a Dirty Leftist, revel in this stuff and DEFINITELY a) knew who Charlie Kirk was, b) really super hated him! because of all the truths he did!; and c) celebrated his violent death in front of hundreds of unsuspecting people.
Since then I've done really the minimal amount of research, admittedly from probably the least sympathetic sources like The Guardian to orient myself, but it immediately became too depressing to continue. I haven't developed anything. It's a liberating thing when you realize you're definitively the wrong guy to ask about a thing.
Really, what it came down to was this: as soon as I heard about it, I freaked out a little. He didn't seem like a pleasant or admirable person, but I wish he hadn't been shot, for his sake, for the sake of the witnesses, for the sake of his family and for my own. I had to reawaken the group chat with my three GenZ adult sons as the anxiety compulsion ordered me to tell them to keep their heads on a swivel, partially because this is a reminder that no open space is ultimately safe in this country from random gun violence, and because the charged atmosphere felt like a green light to people who have been waiting, engines revving to red-lining, for the word GO to get out and do some really heinous shit to "evil leftists" who will finally--finally! we're certain it was them!--did the thing they've been fantasizing about for ages.
This is even though we currently don't know the shooter. And we don't know the motivation. This would not be clear if you were watching Fox News. They killed him because they couldn't shut him up. None of them will say who they is, but I'm less worried that it's specifically me and my tragic, stubborn leftism and more that one of us will be at whatever public event at which they choose to exact their ritual of blood-extraction payback. Just because they won't be shooting at me or my kids doesn't mean was can't be shot.
A faceless they is effectively all faces. The only reprieve any of us got from this incidence of murder is that the assailant only fired once and no one else was maimed or killed. I have no confidence that will be the case next time.
Jesus. See, I told you I didn't want to write about this. Nothing good can come out of peer-pressuring yourself.
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