Don’t Let Them Gaslight You: Remember Who Charlie Kirk Really Was

I really try to stay away from the big news stories unless their is a clear psychological angle that I can develop. Nowadays with social media, everybody has a hot take, which usually serves to just waste time and distract from the real issue — my apologies to everyone on my social media feeds who post their insightful opinions on the news of the day. Anywho, I figure I can’t really add much to that.

You know the ubiquitous inevitable but is coming, and here it is. But, the Charlie Kirk story is different. Much has been made of how much he promoted debate and listening to the other side because he would go onto college campuses and let people ask him questions cosplaying that “Change My Mind” Meme.

Apparently, that has many people thinking that he had some desire to achieve some semblance of a fair and honest exchange of ideas and points of view. This crowd includes the illustrious Jill Wine-Banks of #SistersInLaw and Watergate fame and our very own Heather Longtreader of our comments section. However, his very last exchange betrays the error of this belief.

QUESTIONER: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”

KIRK: “Too many.”

Come on, he either knows and he doesn’t want to say because it is ridiculously small or he doesn’t know because he just wants to using the lie to keep MAGA riled up about transgender people. Either way, he’s being dishonest.

The answer of too many sounds like “even one is two many and we need to do everything we can to rid ourself of this scourge” reasonable response. It rarely is reasonable in matters of public policy, but that is a post of a different sort. It is an illusory explanation. It doesn’t really explain anything, but it sounds reasonable enough to get the audience to quit thinking about it. Who could disagree with “too many” mass shootings?

QUESTIONER: The CNN transcript doesn’t quote the speaker, but notes that they reported the number as five. They then asked if Kirk knew the total number of mass shooters over the last 10 years.

KIRK: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

How are the hot takes running in your mentions? Is Biden in or out as the Democratic candidate?
Comment on This: Charlie Kirk’s Death Destroying People’s Lives and Perhaps the Entire Country From Beyond the Grave

If that isn’t a cynical answer, I don’t know what one is. That is as dishonest of a response as you could get. First off, it is a blatant racist dog whistle: Black people are in gangs, and gangs commit mass shootings all the time, so we can’t confound the mass shooting committed by otherwise good white people (straight men) and those with the nearly criminally insane Black gang members, can we? I’m just being reasonable here, Kirk says.

Second, he’s hoping to bait the questioner into an argument over counting gang violence or not. It is a favorite trick of trolls all over social media. He’s hiding behind the illusion of reasonableness by making such a statement. Luckily, his questioner is ready.

To their credit, CNN included a note indicating that the answer is 5700 mass shootings since 2013, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Let’s see if we can calculate the percentage of mass shootings committed by transgender people since 2013… Hold on… There were five transgender shooters… And 5700 shootings… Hold on while I take off my shoe… Okay, take away a one, making that a nine… Um… Er… Let’s ask AI and hope they get the maths right… That’s 0.09%, so less than one percent. No wonder Kirk and other conservatives spouting the talking point that transgender people are driven to commit mass shootings don’t want to actually talk about the numbers and just rely on illusory explanation.

It’s all an illusion or is that delusion or just outright cynical manipulative lie?

That brief exchange lays bare any claims that anyone can make that Kirk was anything other than a provocateur who is a dishonest interlocutor. How anyone could put their trust in him is beyond me, but people do.

Charlie Kirk and people like, which is just about everyone on the right today, especially in the media, is what is wrong with our political discourse. Unfortunately, instead of correcting it, the MSM is taking the corporate bottom line approach and going along with it because shareholders expect profits.

Image Attribution

The header image was found using a Creative Commons license search on the Meme Studio website.