If you haven’t read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, you might. There is more than one passage relevant to such people, but here is one you might think about, and then read the book with your friend in mind.

“What troubles ye, son?” asked my Teacher. “I am troubled, Sir,” said I, “because that unhappy creature doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn’t wicked: she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling, and one feels that a little kindness, and rest, and change would put her all right.”

“That is what she once was. That is maybe what she still is. If so, she certainly will be cured. But the whole question is whether she is now a grumbler.”

“I should have thought there was no doubt about that!”

“Aye, but ye misunderstand me. The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman-even the least trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever. They must be swept up.”

“But how can there be a grumble without a grumbler?”

“The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing. But ye’ll have had experiences … it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticising it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine….”

I’ll try. As our hostess has suggested, going back to her Change, for many leftists, their political/cultural views are part of, support their self-image. Thus, any objective contradiction to the factual basis of one or another viewpoint is an attack on the person’s personhood (permission to use without attribution).
Thus, your old friend cannot accept that something which has supported his self-image to himself and his social image to others as he wished to be seen was not only incorrect but morally suspect.
I speak of a general view, a particular view, which predated Kirk but into which Kirk was placed immediately and with malicious enjoyment. Can’t kick that prop out from under the house.
In fact, it demands extra defensive efforts.

Sucks to be him, Parkinsons notwithstanding.

But I suspect it required much domestic outrage to cross the oceans. And I have a feeling that it started earlier.

The murder of a Ukranian refugee on a train had all the factors requiring it to be hushed up; racial lineup, no excuse, deliberate result of progressive law enforcement (see the judiciay’s racial lineup) , no help from fellow passengers.

Yet it had the ingredients for being explosive; racial lineup, former model curled up on horror as she died, judicial system’s deliberate efforts. Available in full-color with stop-action. And that caused it to “smash though the gatekeepers” whose efforts were themselves inflammatory.

And then….we had an equally horrible execution of an innocent and early attempts to smooth over the obvious…..JUST LIKE WITH IRYNA! imho, domestically, the Kirk reaction got a boost from the simmering rage about Iryna and the treatment by the gatekeepers.

It will be a long time before people quit looking for further examples.

There has been much hope but there has been much vileness expressed not only against charlie but against his wife and children

Then there is the bland equivocation by possum governor cox and senator lankford thats not surprising considering their record

It sometimes rings hollow. The speaker is maybe guessing, or is expressing what they themselves wanted the person seeking to improve to do.

But young men and women are turning from violence, churches are filling up, and I saw several people on X saying they were going back to church after years or even decades.

Having only watched Charlie Kirk’s videos, his interviews, and listened to a few of his podcasts, it doesn’t seem hollow to say:

“That’s just what he would have wanted.”

As the say, “turn about is fair play.”