…that “violence is as American as apple pie,” prominent people are saying, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder earlier today and with a totally straight face, that “there’s no place in our society for violence.”
There’s certainly zero tolerance for political killings, obviously, but if there’s any country in which there’s a “place” for this kind of appalling hate and nihilism, it’s this one. It’s a tradition, a virus, a disease that runs in the blood.
Kirk was 31 with a wife and young kids, and now he’s out in the cosmos, staring down at our blue planet and corresponding shitshow of a country, and muttering “what the fuck?”
Sidenote: I process everything in cinematic terms so please, no offense intended. But “taking it in the neck” is a term I’ve used from time to time, meaning aggressively criticized or condemned, hard and decisively. I was asking myself as I watched yesterday’s alarming Kirk shooting footage (which has since been digitally fuzzed over by everyone) on the Emirates Milan-to-JFK flight, I was asking myself when was the last time a major character (hero or villain) was shot in the neck. I’m thinking Charlton Heston‘s Taylor in Planet of the Apes — he’s neck-shot by a gorilla with a rifle, and can’t talk for a long stretch as a result.