A “no” on unity
Did you ever have a friend or lover or spouse or relative who did something for which that person needed to do some soul-searching, make some changes, and apologize, and that person didn’t do any of that but merely asserted that he or she had “moved on” and “put it behind” him or her, and why couldn’t you do the same? It’s funny how perps are often so eager to say forget it, and to berate you for not being similarly magnanimous.
Easy to want to move on when it’s your own crimes you want to forget. It’s a bit harder for the victim.
And so it is with “unity.” After decades of the left falsely calling the right Nazis and fascists and a threat to the Constitution and democracy (accusations that have increased in the last decade), after countless riots, after a leftist almost blowing Trump’s head off at a rally and countless other leftists regretting only that the would-be assassin wasn’t successful, after another attempt on Trump’s life from another leftist, after the near-murder of Scalise, after the attack on Rand, and now after the successful assassination of rising conservative star Charlie Kirk and the left celebrating it and lying about the leftist leanings of the suspect (and Kirk’s message itself) and trying to pin the crime on MAGA – now, after all that, some Democrats want unity and for the right to forgive and forget.
J. D. Vance has a few words for them:
“There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents’ politics,” he added. “There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder. There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend.”
“There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination,” the VP continued. “And there is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers. Who argue that Charlie Kirk….deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagree.”
Saw this quote and it’s true:
“They don’t kill you because you are a Nazi, they call you a Nazi so they can kill you.”
Tim Walz, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton have all called Trump a Fascist. There is plenty of video evidence for it.
That labeling allows the Trans, The Antifa Communists, Muslims and the rest of the Hard Core Leftist Constituency Groups in the Democrat Party to shoot anyone who disagrees with them and give them cover for their consciences.
The Democrats have their new KKK. It’s not one group – it is a whole assortment of them. That’s where we stand.
One side is talking – the other side is shooting.
If someone wrongs me, my first impulse is to avoid another occasion on which he could let me down in a similar way. If it’s someone I care about, that’s not much of an option, so it becomes important for him to acknowledge that it was wrong, that he regrets it, and that he plans not to repeat it. This isn’t because I need him to debase himself or consider himself a horrible person, it’s because otherwise I have no reason to think he doesn’t believe it was A-OK and a perfectly legitimate thing to keep on doing.
It’s a healthy “no”, for meekly acquiescing would go nowhere toward attaining the individual self-examinations and behavioral corrections necessary to make ours once again a decent polity. The members of the political left must hold themselves accountable. We injured Americans can’t release our insistence they begin: it is simply not our job to acquit their hatreds for them. It’s up to them. And so far, I see no clear signs they have even noticed they have the problem.
There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder. –J.D. Vance
Perhaps Vance is referring to Stephen King who within hours of Kirk’s death posted on X:
___________________________
He advocated stoning gays to death. Just sayin’.
___________________________
It wasn’t true, firestorm raged, and King had to apologize, repeatedly:
___________________________
I have apologized. Charlie Kirk never advocated stoning gays to death.
___________________________
Of course that bloodless apology pleased nobody. He later went off on a typical anti-Trump rant, that he had apologized and if that wasn’t good enough for people, they were typical MAGA haters who were the real problem to begin with.
Pro-tip: King has a movie out and his remarks may be hurting the box office:
https://thatparkplace.com/stephen-king-movie-the-long-walk-flops-at-the-box-office-after-author-caught-spreading-charlie-kirk-misinformation/
On FNCs show today, “The Five” (which coincides with 5 O’clock Eastern Time), Greg Gutfield goes on and EPIC ANGRY rant against Democrat Jessica Tarlov’s blind “whatboutism” in the face of objective evil like Charlie’s Assasination for merely speaking out! Only 3m.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTg_bzeXAWg&t=180s
We’re not going accept excuse-making over this by the Left!
Re huxley’s post.
To clarify a hot button issue of homosexuality and Christian Beliefs…
A CLIP of Charlie Kirk asking a Trump supporting Republican about Trump having a gay man speak at the Party convention (eg, Peter Thiel, 2016)…The student says there’s no place for them in our movement….
Charlie rebukes him for his prejudice at 8-10m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfw-T8CZfWw
He stays on the young man telling him we are called to be accepting like Jesus example teaches us to.
I agree with the truth of everything J. D. Vance said.
It’s indisputable that far leftists for decades–and, over the past decade, mainstream Democrats as well–have been slandering Republicans and others as Nazis and fascists for holding opinions that don’t conform, in the first case, to Marxist dogma and, in the second, to DNC talking points and Woke ideology.
I’m even glad that J. D. Vance said what he said on the late Charlie Kirk’s show.
Nevertheless, I think his appearance there was inappropriate. That’s my cognitive dissonance, I guess.
But I probably would have felt the same way if a podcaster who was a rising leader of the left had been assassinated during the “Biden” regency and Kamala Harris had used the dead activist’s platform to convey a similar message.
I thought it was wrong last year for Harris to stand outside the official residence of the Vice President of the United States and warn that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. And I wonder if Vance’s appearance on Charlie Kirk’s show was a self-own.
@TJ: We’re not going accept excuse-making over this by the Left!
No, we are not.
Conservatives have hit threshold and come out on the other side.
huxley, I believe VP Vance’s referent is an article published in The Nation. Which article I’m uncertain as there have been a few, none of which I’ve read. He specifically called them out.
See also this step by step guide on How to Report Bad Guys
The Kirk assassination has turned a corner. They will not longer get any forgiveness,nor should they. So many of us are done with them.
I had one friend who immediately repeated the lie about Kirk being OK with kids dying from guns. I told him stop repeating lies, straighten up or never hear from me again. He did apologize, but I’m waiting for him to fall off the wagon. No more tolerance from me.
Someone pointed out this:
Nomen est omen is a Latin phrase meaning “the name is a sign” or “a name is a prophecy”
Turning Point USA. We can hope.
TJ on September 15, 2025 at 7:26 pm said:
On FNCs show today, “The Five” (which coincides with 5 O’clock Eastern Time), Greg Gutfield goes on and EPIC ANGRY rant against Democrat Jessica Tarlov’s blind “whatboutism” in the face of objective evil like Charlie’s Assasination for merely speaking out!
Excellent!
I watch the five because of Greg and Jessica. In the case of Jessica, just to see how awful she is. Greg is outstanding. The others are mostly boring but generally right.
My big hearted, politically ding batish daughter who spends way too much time on Left Wing sites, and apparently believes what she sees, emailed that ‘no democrat ever called Trump Hitler or Fascist–only JD Vance did’.
It took less than 10 minutes to find quotes from K. Harris, Congress Person ‘Crazy as a Loon’ Crockett, and Carville (does he matter any longer?).
Of course, none of the Democrats ever condemned the rhetoric either –until Fetterman just now. That’s the Fetterman who is now described in some media as the ‘Black Sheep’ of the Dems.
I swallowed the draft of my return email. Beating my head against that wall is painful; and some you just have to love, regardless–and hope that their epiphany comes sooner rather than later.
It is gratifying to see that many who are broadcasting their hate in the wake of Charlie’s murder are paying a price. It seems there are some principled people left in various positions of authority.
I hope that Trump’s team, and his supporters, hold the line; because I agree with those who believe that the nation is perilously near a tipping point.
May be time to break out my Gadsden (Don’t Tread on Me) Flag
And one side keeps winning and taking pieces off the others’ board, while the legal system and media domination ensures the winning only goes one way
The thing is, let’s say Trump had come out with THE most unifying message possible.
How would his opponents – let’s face it, his enemies – have responded?
A time for Choosing… a wicked solution. Sequester the thought. A time for choosing. #HateLovesAbortion
“bof” asks one of the most interesting questions I’ve seen posited on this (I mean no offense) milquetoast conservative website. Essentially, do the gay men dating other gay men who “identify” as women square the circle in their minds that they are straight and hence “normal”? I can see the attraction to this thinking by the Kirk assassin who was raised Mormon. Then you have Iran, whose leader said in a speech at Columbia that they had “no gays in Iran” since they were all transgender women
How would his opponents – let’s face it, his enemies – have responded?
We know that: They’d call him a hypocrite, phony, two-faced, his actions count, not his words (though they wouldn’t cite any specific actions), and so on.
I think the attacks and lies by the left about Charlie Kirk come from the common human failing of being unable to acknowledge a wrongdoing by oneself or one’s allies. Sometimes it’s just the non-apology apology (“I’m sorry you feel that way”), but the more extreme version is to lash out at the victim. We saw this in spades (can I say that?) after October 7th. By October 8th, while the bodies were still warm, the anti-Israel protests began. It was too much for the anti-Israel crowd to admit that Hamas’s atrocity was wrong. So they went to the other extreme and said all those women and children deserved. Now they’ve done the same with Charlie Kirk.
Did you ever have a friend or lover or spouse or relative who did something for which that person needed to do some soul-searching, make some changes, and apologize, and that person didn’t do any of that but merely asserted that he or she had “moved on” and “put it behind” him or her, and why couldn’t you do the same? It’s funny how perps are often so eager to say forget it, and to berate you for not being similarly magnanimous.
Sounds like my lefty brother Fredo who says things like “I’m not saying I’m blameless, BUT…” and sends long emails telling me what a bad person I am and ends by saying we should bury the hatchet now.
we should bury the hatchet now….
Perfectly stated, Mr. Vice President.
And also, to be clear, the Democrats who are talking ‘unity’ are acting in bad faith. They’re starting to understand just how bad the optics are for them right now.
You can always tell the left is on the defensive when it cannot agree on a coherent message. Given the left dominates, to greater or lesser degrees, virtually all of our social, civic and commercial institutions, it is very easy for a nearly universal message to be generated and regurgitated ad nauseum. Happens a lot.
But, not with Charlie’s assassination. The responses are disjointed, confused and constantly changing:
– Actually, the shooter was right wing.
– Actually, political violence is a problem on both sides.
– Actually, it was the overheated rhetoric of the right (including Kirk himself) that caused this.
– What difference does it make what the shooter’s motives were?!?
– It’s guns guns guns! That’s the problem!
– Okay, so some progs are celebrating online. But all us Democrat politicians have (sort of) condemned it.
And now that all of the above hasn’t changed the optics… ‘Let’s have unity!’ Which means ‘We won’t call you Nazis (much) until Kirk’s death is largely forgotten. Then, back to baseline; maybe more’
No, Democrats. We’re not falling for it. What’s encouraging is that most people on the right really do some to get it this time. We will see if that holds…
Reposting a comment I left elsewhere:
I was about 15 when I concluded that the Left and I were not going to get along. I remember the moment, and the reasons were:
1) I was a divergent thinker, the Left does not tolerate divergent thinkers. The Left punishes or kills divergent thinkers.
2) I was interested in what was true. My Kindergarten teacher has already noted that, but not as a compliment 🙂 The Left lied all the time.
3) The Left ignored human nature, indeed, denied there was such a thing. Blank slate and all that, ideas I had already discarded.
I think those observations still hold. I did most of my thinking about such things between the ages of eleven and my early twenties. My understanding has improved a great deal with experience, but I have not changed my basic outlook since then.
Where/when have I experienced a situation somewhat similar to this present one, in the pretty recent past? Hmmm . . .
GOT IT! When elements of the authoritarian corner of the Covid Karen Society decided we-all ought to eagerly agree to a both-sides amnesty, sing kumbaya, let bygones be bygones, do a group hug, and begin afresh.
That’s after the all insults, the threats, the firings of the covid heretics, the nursing home (and other) deaths, dot dot dot . . .
Yes, the Charlie Kirk situation I think is more egregious, more encompassing, more jarring, but what was that old saying? GOT IT! Sometimes history does rhyme.
Excellent thoughts Ackler. I think you’re exactly right. And the timeline you laid out Chuck matches mine to a freaky degree. I remember distinctly, in my late teens reading an article that exposed what Arafat was saying to a western audience (two states and all that), and what he said in Arabic days later (River to the sea type stuff.) I thought, “Wait, we’re all just supposed to pretend that the PLO wants to live side by side in peace with the Jews?” That’s stupid. I suppose it’s a bit narcissistic to think I HATE mendacity more than the next guy, but sometimes I think I do.
“Did you ever have a friend or lover or spouse or relative who did something for which that person needed to do some soul-searching, make some changes, and apologize, and that person didn’t do any of that but merely asserted that he or she had “moved on” and “put it behind” him or her, and why couldn’t you do the same? It’s funny how perps are often so eager to say forget it, and to berate you for not being similarly magnanimous.”
By and large the left don’t think there’s anything they need to apologize for. Their words, their actions didn’t cause anyone to do anything. They didn’t actually pull the trigger. But now conservatives need to tone it down several notches.
Without an awareness that they have pushed this madness, that they are somewhat responsible, they will never honestly apologize.
Without repentance there can be no forgiveness of sin. If you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, there’s no reason to apologize for anything.
The Left as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said lives in lies
John. WRT “awareness” and “repentance.
There are some on the left so stupid they are not aware of what they/the left has done. But, even if it is carefully explained to them, they won’t see the problem. Most of them, however, know exactly what they’ve done. They did it on purpose and/or watched it being done and cheered.
They cannot repent. That would mean reversing their opinions of the wonderfulness of themselves and everything they’ve done. Cannot happen.
They can only fake it and then demand we go along with them.
Associations with a common purpose and goal have to be composed of people who work toward the goal, not devote themselves to complaining about goals and methods until such time as empirical checks reveal issues, and to leave the association if the goals and / or methods are disagreeable to them.
==
A whole society seldom has common goals. It does, however, have rules and institutions which contain, mediate, and adjudicate conflict. Those rules and the authority of those institutions have to be consensual. And only one party is at fault in that realm in this country.
One cannot engage in discourse with those seeking to kill you
Its analogous to the Hamas / Israel conflict.
The “American” demonkrats / the left / socialists / communists are Hamas.
Those that actually believe in the US Constitution are Israel.
And we all know there is only one way to “negotiate with Hamas.
A hard no.
Good and hard!
Based on personal experience, I submit there is a difference between being offended by a family member or friend and being anonymously and viciously disparaged by some random stranger. In the first instance, one has the bond formed by blood or friendship that requires some amount of forbearance (moreso in the family than friendship situation, of course) but there does come a point when cutting ties is appropriate. Take it from me, I know. The problem that now exists stems from the fact that, in days gone by, it was easier to disassociate from hostile strangers because, after all, how far could they stretch out their animosity? Whereas today, the internet provides a nearly unlimited audience for bile, vitriol, hatred and other assorted exhibitions of unseemly commentary, compounded by its general anonymity. Once it was courting a punch in the face to insult another man, but now it can be done with impunity. At least, it could until now, when the consequences of shooting off one’s mouth can finally have some substance, like losing one’s job. We conservatives seem to have finally taken Obama’s advice to bring a gun to a gunfight instead of merely tut-tutting about it. How ironic.
Regarding Gutfeld and Tarlov, it might be time for a “Behind the Scenes” look at “The Five.” The hosts sitting around, talking to each other. I guarantee you, these people are probably very friendly off-camera.
Tarlov knows she’s supposed to play the heel. She knows the lingo and pleads her case, just like a good defense attorney. But it doesn’t mean she thinks her client is innocent, just that she thinks the Democrat Party still deserves defending.
I just think that they could drop the kayfabe for a five minute segment, like Triple HHH giving a kid a hug during a wrestling event. It might help, seeing a little unity among rivals.
Tarlov knows she’s supposed to play the heel. She knows the lingo and pleads her case, just like a good defense attorney. But it doesn’t mean she thinks her client is innocent, just that she thinks the Democrat Party still deserves defending.
No, I think that’s just her. Others, like Harold, are different.
I have experienced this in my personal life. Forgiveness requires sincere repentance by the person who has committed the offense. At one point, I thought the offending people had decided to “let it go” and behave decently going forward. Sadly, I was wrong.
Robert Sterling:
https://x.com/RobertMSterling/status/1967805583139991881
@ Kate > “I thought the offending people had decided to “let it go” and behave decently going forward. Sadly, I was wrong.”
As Neo and other commenters make clear, they only want YOU to let it go.
Not them.
@ Snell > “And one side keeps winning and taking pieces off the others’ board, while the legal system and media domination ensures the winning only goes one way”
You may be familiar with an analogy from a Second Amendment supporter, called “The Gun Rights Cake Analogy.”
To do it justice, you should read it exactly as written some years ago by LawDog. https://thelawdogfiles.substack.com/p/the-gun-rights-cake
I have always thought it applicable to other subjects, as a general purpose “The conservative-issue-of-your-choice Cake Analogy” and discovered several other people who think the same way, more or less.
https://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Abortion-01.jpg
Cakes seem to be popular in analogies, and here is another one especially relevant to the “can’t we all just have unity” cry from the left. Now that they are getting backlash on their vicious actions, they want us to move on, with an implicit promise that they will do better in the future: will give us a cake, as it were.
But in this case, as in the past, a reward is never even promised, much less delivered.
Wikipedia:
“The cake is a lie” is a catchphrase from the video game Portal, indicating that a promised reward is actually a deception. It has since become a popular internet meme used to describe unattainable goals or false promises.
Forgiveness requires sincere repentance by the person who has committed the offense.
==
No it doesn’t or you’d never forgive your mother. (Or, perhaps people do never forgive their mothers).
I’ll dissent a bit about Stephen King. Besides the post quoted above, he also posted that he’d looked into the “stone the gays” comment he’d picked up uncritically from the internet, and had two things to say.
First, he now sees that Kirk was making a point about how people cherry-pick quotations from the Bible, an example being liberals who ask conservatives to turn the other cheek but ignore harsh Old Testament penalties for homosexuality.
Second, he also acknowledges that it’s a bad idea to get your information about someone’s public opinions by trusting some random quotation on the internet.
King’s public political statements have made me crazy for years, but in his early books he showed an unusual ability, for a popular writer, to think critically about moral issues. The Dead Zone is a fine story, in my view, and it’s a long analysis of whether someone is justified in assassinating a dangerous political leader, or even obligated to do so, despite his deep conviction that murder is wrong. In order to make the internal conflict credible even to himself, he had to give the protagonist the partial power to divine the future, because there was scant evidence that the evil politician had done anything wrong yet, no matter how offputting his style.
@ MollyG > “I’m even glad that J. D. Vance said what he said on the late Charlie Kirk’s show.
Nevertheless, I think his appearance there was inappropriate. That’s my cognitive dissonance, I guess….I wonder if Vance’s appearance on Charlie Kirk’s show was a self-own.”
According to the Red State post that Neo linked, Vance was speaking from his office in the White House on Monday, although apparently the event was carried by the Turning Point podcast, rather than by any of the usual media networks.
Your example about Kamala Harris standing outside the official residence of the Vice President of the United States to warn that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy (which IIRC was shown on national broadcasts) looks similar. That the Democrats then lost to Trump makes it look like a self-own for Vance.
However, there are a few differences IMO.
(1) She was criticizing a specific person: the past president, and then-candidate, who had not actually done anything in office or out to threaten the democratic process in America; instead, he threatened the Democrats entrenched interests and their fraudulent use of holes in the election laws and procedures. That was clearly a self-interested, partisan speech.
(2) She lost for a lot of reasons, and I don’t think that address added much to the decisions of the people who voted for Trump, although it supported those who voted against him.
(3) She was “preaching to the choir” of leftists and moderate Democrats, but didn’t offer much in the way of “solutions” to the alleged problem she was addressing.
Compare and Contrast (that former stand-by of effective essay writing):
(1) Vance was criticizing a general and extensive pattern of action by “a much larger number of self-proclaimed leftists who are fine with the use of political violence compared to self-proclaimed very conservative ones.” And the people he accused HAVE done exactly what he claimed. *
(2) We won’t know if it was a mistake or not, electorally speaking, until 2026, or even 2028. Even so, by that time, this one speech will have faded into the past; I doubt if any moderate Democrat, or Republican, will point to it and say, “This is what confirmed or turned me against J.D. Vance” or even the GOP in general.
(3) He is also “preaching to the choir” in the sense that the leftists and most Democrats aren’t watching Kirk’s show or reading Red State and other conservative media which will probably comment on it. What he is doing is affirming solution to the tragedies precipitated by the violent Left, which is to use the full force of the law (not invented infractions) to find and prosecute anyone responsible for Kirk’s murder. There will be no “unity” in the sense of giving them a pass for their actions, which is what they want (and have managed to get, in the past).
This is not the Republican government they are used to.
Kirk added later: “It is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left,” Vance said. “We can thank God that most Democrats don’t share these attitudes, and I do. While acknowledging that something has gone very wrong with the lunatic fringe, a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far left.”
It seems to me that Vance (and presumably Trump and other Republicans on their team) is leaving the door open for those Democrats who “don’t share those attitudes” to unite with US for a change.
———–
* Red State reporting:
Art Deco, I was fortunate to have a loving mother. Forgiveness doesn’t come into it. Your mileage may vary.
“Art Deco, I was fortunate to have a loving mother. Forgiveness doesn’t come into it. Your mileage may vary.”
Same here, Kate.
@ AesopFan
“This is not the Republican government they are used to.”
So is Vance telling the Leftists that we are not going to play their game any more and will be generating our own form of “resistance” and the Left should expect to see results more favorable for the Republicans or the Conservative Right ….
Or is he telling the Republicans and Conservative Right that we need to firm up our resolve and rise to a much higher level of resistance than we have in the recent past?
Are we expected to win over the other side, … or more likely just win out over the other side?
On the one hand I become optimistic, … and then I consider just how entrenched TDS and related foibles and psychoses are, … and despair of things moving in our favor with a 50-50 country.
If scientific paradigms don’t really change until the old guard group of scientists die off, how many of the current 50-50 old guard have to die off before the paradigm shifts, and which side is going to die off faster?
On the one hand I become optimistic, … and then I consider just how entrenched TDS and related foibles and psychoses are, … and despair of things moving in our favor with a 50-50 country.
R2L:
We are moving things in our favor. That’s how Trump won last year. He made inroads with hispanics, blacks, males and even the young (with a little help from Charlie Kirk).
It’s not so obvious because the 20% who are hard-core leftist/woke/Democrat are the most visible and wacked-out. They may never change.
However, we don’t have to wait for those people to die. The preference cascade is already in motion.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is, of course, a horror, but my sense is that there are now even more from the normie middle who are just saying, no, no more.
The 20% wackos are coming out publicly to dance on Charlie’s grave and blame him for his own death. They have no self-awareness of how repellent they are to normal people.
We are not debating these Democrats any more. We are ignoring their charges of racism, misogyny, phobe this or that. We are not going to get crazy. We are resolute. We are going to beat them at the ballot box and keep beating them.
Meanwhile the Trump administration is searching and destroying their money sources, their media when deserved. and going after their violent activist groups.
There is a new sheriff in town and we are deputies.
@ R2L > “So is Vance telling the Leftists that we are not going to play their game any more and will be generating our own form of “resistance” and the Left should expect to see results more favorable for the Republicans or the Conservative Right”
Yes.
“Or is he telling the Republicans and Conservative Right that we need to firm up our resolve and rise to a much higher level of resistance than we have in the recent past?”
Also yes.
“Are we expected to win over the other side, … or more likely just win out over the other side?”
Either one is acceptable, preferably the latter because we win over some of the former, as huxley noted
@huxley: Meanwhile the Trump administration is searching and destroying their money sources, their media when deserved. and going after their violent activist groups. I think you’re right about the preference cascade, and this is key. Their funding sources are being removed. This may be why they are increasingly angry and desperate.
@ Kate – Conservatives are getting increasingly angry as well, now that we’ve discovered a large part of their funding sources was us (via taxes going to grants and grift).