I’ve been working on Gerard’s poetry book …
… and although I’m very close to finished, I recently hit an extremely frustrating formatting snag.
Formatting the essay book wasn’t easy, but it was a piece of cake compared to formatting poetry. The settings that purport to be appropriate only work for short quotes from poems, and that just won’t do for a book. I figured out a work-around, but then the formatting is messed up for prose chapters such as an introduction and afterward.
You can have poetry or you can have prose, but the latter requires indented paragraphs in a print book (not online, of course) and the former doesn’t. I’ve had a correspondence about this with the help desk of the software program I use, and they said what I’m trying to do can’t be done. It took me ages to learn how to use this program and I’m not going to start all over again with another that might not even solve the problem.
I’ve decided to simply cut way back on any pose sections. After all, the poetry is the thing.
I’m just venting here.
Roundup
Once again, so much news:
(1) Trump comes to the UN and he tells them what he really thinks.
BREAKING – At the United Nations, President Trump:
– Called for protections for Christians
– Eviscerated the UN for funding mass migration into the US and western countries
– Said Europe must stop adopting Sharia Law
– Harshly criticized globalism
– Slammed the UN for its climate alarmism
– Scorched countries for funding Russia’s war
– Promoted fossil fuels
– Urged countries stop falling for the “Green Scam”
– Said the UN doesn’t back up its words with any meaningful action on issues that matter
– Preached American exceptionalism and said none of their countries come close
– Demanded an end to biological weapons
– Concluded by urging UN members to protect their national identities by clamping down on mass migration and serving their peopleAnd of course, clowned the UN for its escalator breaking in the lobby and the teleprompter not working.
Hard to argue with any of that.
(2) I wrote about this briefly in today’s previous post, but I thought I’d mention it again: Kimmel’s been reinstated, but Nexstar says “no thanks,” so many local stations won’t be carrying him.
(3) Pacific Island nations seem to be pro-Israel. When I read that, I wondered why. Here’s the answer I got:
Explanations of this anomaly have rightly placed emphasis upon the intensely Christian character of Pacific societies.
Adherence rates in most Pacific countries sit above 90%. Across the region, Israel and Judaism are exalted as the sacred foundations of their faith. Governments drawn from these societies duplicate these views, which are then borne out in international forums such as the UN.
… [In] Melanesia … local people now advance the claim they have descended from these dispersed [Israelite] tribes, a strategy designed to ensure their salvation
In a variety of ways, people have woven Jewish people, their sacred geography, and the state of Israel, into their own kinship networks.
This may occur directly, as communities assert membership of the ten lost tribes of Israel. …
The kinship connection may also occur indirectly, through expressions of spiritual affinities with Jewish people. In any case, it is in a truly Pacific manner that kinship networks have opened and then closed around those things they wish to extract value from.
They also get US aid. But so do plenty of countries that vote pro-Palestinian.
(4) Trump also had a seemingly cordial meeting with Zelensky, and made a statement that he (Trump) thinks NATO nations should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter their space.
(5) A jury in Florida found would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh guilty on all charges.
Routh served as his own lawyer, which isn’t usually a good career move. This seems to have been the case for Routh as well:
Jurors on Tuesday delivered a guilty verdict for Ryan Routh on all charges after he attempted to assassinate then-presidential candidate Donald Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club last September.
After the verdict was read, Routh reportedly appeared to try to stab himself in the neck with a pen before four U.S. Marshals restrained him.
His daughter, Sara Routh, reportedly stood up and said:
“Don’t do anything. I will get you out. What the f—, f—, he didn’t hurt anybody. This is not fair. This is all rigged – you guys are a–holes.” The jury was still in the room at the time.
Routh, 59, was charged on five federal criminal counts, including attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer, and multiple firearms offenses.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Stab himself in the neck with a pen? Is this some sick Charlie Kirk reference? As for the daughter, has she never heard of the idea of an attempt? As best I can recall, Routh was lying in wait with a weapon and was only stopped by an alert Secret Service agent. According to Google’s AI, here’s the definition of “attempt” in the legal sense:
The legal definition of “attempt” in criminal law is the specific intent to commit a crime and taking a “substantial step” toward its completion, even though the crime is not actually carried out. This substantial step is defined as conduct that is strongly corroborative of the actor’s intent to complete the crime, and it must go beyond mere planning or preparation.
I think Routh’s behavior fits that definition quite well.
And, in a strange foreshadowing of the Tyler Robinson texting “confession” to his roommate-lover, here’s what Routh had done:
The government delivered its closing argument first, with prosecutor Christopher Browne telling the court that the suspect had planned to kill Trump “for a long, long time.”
“It is not every case where the defendant writes his intent down on a piece of paper,” Browne said during his closing statement.
Browne was referring to note Routh wrote before he was arrested and left in a box at a friend’s home in North Carolina. It was addressed “To the World” and stated plainly, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.”
“Chickens coming home” – again
Sometimes I think things have changed dramatically for the worse since I was a child. And I do believe that’s true – of some things.
But sometimes I think there are aspects of human nature – and of left and right – that have hardly changed at all, and that perhaps we’re just more aware of them because of social media, the internet, and cable news.
For example, as an instance of something that’s really changed, we have Jimmy Kimmel, a talk show host on a major network expressing something other than empathy/sympathy/sorrow/shock at the assassination of a prominent American political/religious figure. In the 1960s, or when Reagan almost lost his life, talk show hosts kept their politics to themselves. Kimmel has become highly political in recent years – and unfunny as well as unentertaining. But until now he hasn’t been at all reluctant to offend at least half the country.
He got into trouble a few days ago, but now he’s being reinstated – sort of:
Nexstar Media Group, Inc., announced on Tuesday that it will continue preempting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” despite Disney allowing the show to return to ABC.
“We made a decision last week to preempt ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel’s ‘ill-timed and insensitive’ comments at a critical time in our national discourse. We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve,” the company said in a statement.
“In the meantime, we note that ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ will be available nationwide on multiple Disney-owned streaming products, while our stations will focus on continuing to produce local news and other programming relevant to their respective markets,” Nexstar added.
It may even help his sagging ratings. More people might tune in to hear whether he’ll continue to diss the right or whether he’ll pull back a bit.
But although talk show hosts didn’t do this back then, I remember that when JFK was assassinated the left lost no time whatsoever blaming the right even though the killer was a Communist. The left – and many regular Democrats – blamed the right for creating a “climate of violence.” Sound familiar?
And what of the chickens of the title of this post? It comes from a speech and answer given by Malcolm X – who later was himself cut down by an assassin’s bullet that most agree came from his old allies now turned enemies, the Nation of Islam. At the time of the speech, not long after JFK was assassinated, he was still allied with that group, but by the time he was killed in 1965 he had pulled away. If you read the speech you can see themes that are very popular with today’s left; here are some excerpts, for example:
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that as it was the evil sin of slavery that caused the downfall and destruction of ancient Egypt and Babylon, and of ancient Greece, as well as ancient Rome, so it was the evil sin of colonialism (slavery, nineteenth-century European style) that caused the collapse of the white nations in present-day Europe as world powers. Unbiased scholars and unbiased observers agree that the wealth and power of white Europe has rapidly declined during the nineteen-year period between World War II and today.
So we of this present generation are also witnessing how the enslavement of millions of black people in this country is now bringing White America to her hour of judgment, to her downfall as a respected nation. And even those Americans who are blinded by childlike patriotism can see that it is only a matter of time before White America too will be utterly destroyed by her own sins, and all traces of her former glory will be removed from this planet forever.
But before God can set up his new world, the Muslim world, or world of Islam, which will be established on the principles to truth, peace, and brotherhood, God himself must first destroy this evil Western world, the white world…a wicked world, ruled by a race of devils, that preaches falsehood, practices slavery, and thrives on indecency and immorality. You and I are living in that great Doomsday, the final hour, when the ancient prophets predicted that God himself would appear in person, in the flesh, and with divine power He would bring about the judgement and destruction of this present evil world. …
The white liberals control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. As long as they control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro’s struggle, and they can control the Negro’s so-called revolt. The Negro “revolution” is controlled by these foxy white liberals, by the government itself. But the black revolution is controlled only by God.
The black revolution is the struggle of the nonwhites of this earth against their white oppressors.
It goes on for quite some time in that vein. But the “chickens” part came as part of a question and answer period afterwards. I don’t think there’s any recording of it, but here’s Malcolm X a few months later, attempting to explain his remarks. Again, it’s very familiar stuff:
If you go to YouTube and look at the comments there, they almost all say some version of “Yes, that’s what happened to Charlie Kirk, too.” I’ll give you just a few typical examples, all put up after Kirk was killed:
Charlie Kirk
I thought about this after Charlie Kirk got popped
The chickens appeared in Utah yesterday to greet Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk is all I shall say.
When I heard about Charlie Kirk this was the first thing that came to mind.
“They won’t even admit the knife is there” is basically half of Charlie Kirk’s content
We Know Why we’re all here.
And of course we have so many social media postings, and pundits and politicians, openly saying the same thing about Charlie Kirk’s killing. One popular observation is the idea that it’s fitting that Kirk was killed with a gun, since he supported gun rights and said that defending liberty by supporting the Second Amendment meant – sadly – that some people would be killed by guns. The assassination is generally justified and even applauded by many people on those grounds plus the idea that Kirk was a “hater” – although nothing could be further from the truth.
But plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Open thread 9/23/2025
Erika Kirk’s forgiveness
[NOTE: I haven’t watched most of the speeches at the Charlie Kirk memorial yesterday, but I’ve seen short clips and read excerpts plus Erika Kirk’s entire speech.]
Erika Kirk is clearly a remarkable woman, but one would expect that because she was married to a remarkable man.
To even be able to give a public address so soon after her husband’s murder shows tremendous fortitude, especially for a young widow with two small children. But it’s not just that; the content of her speech was also impressive.
You can read the full transcript here. You can find a video here. The speech focuses on many things – religion and one’s purpose in the world, for example – but a goodly portion is devoted to her marriage with Charlie and his message, which is now her message, of what such a marital relationship can and should be. A relevant excerpt on that subject:
The greatest cause in Charlie’s life was trying to revive the American family. When he spoke to young people, he was always eager to tell them about God’s vision for marriage — and how, if they could just dare to live it out, it would enrich every part of their life in the same way it enriched ours.
Someone once asked me how Charlie and I kept our marriage so strong when he was busy traveling.
And our little secret? It was love notes.
Every Saturday, Charlie wrote one for me. He never missed a Saturday.
In every single one of them, he’d tell me what his highlight was for the week, how grateful he was for me and our babies.
And always, at the end, he would ask the most beautiful question:
“Please let me know how I can better serve you as a husband.”Charlie perfectly understood God’s role for a Christian husband: a man who leads so that he can serve.
To all the men watching around the world — accept Charlie’s challenge and embrace true manhood.
Be strong and courageous for your families.
Love your wives and lead them.
Love your children and protect them.
Be the spiritual head of your home.But please — be a leader worth following.
Your wife is not your servant.
Your wife is not your employee.
Your wife is not your slave.She is your helper.
You are not rivals. You are one flesh—working together for the glory of God.
That’s an ideal worth striving for, and isn’t limited to Christian believers. Erika Kirk clearly wants that message to reach young people.
But probably the part of her speech that got the most coverage was this:
Charlie passionately wanted to reach and save the lost boys of the West—the young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live.
The men wasting their lives on distractions.
The men consumed with resentment, anger, and hate.Charlie wanted to help them. He wanted them to have a home with Turning Point USA.
When he went onto campus, he was looking to show them a better path—a better life that was right there for the taking.
My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life.
That young man.
That young man.
On the cross, our Savior said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
That man—that young man—I forgive him.
I forgive him because it’s what Christ did.
And it’s what Charlie would do.The answer to hate is not hate.
The answer—we know from the gospel—is love.
Always love.Love for our enemies.
Love for those who persecute us.
The idea of forgiveness that she is demonstrating in extremely impressive and not the least bit easy. But it is not about law. It is her personal choice, informed by her religion and probably also her desire to set an example of love and not be consumed by hatred. But earthly justice follows different rules – and must.
For many years I have thought deeply about forgiveness. Long before my political change, I balked (and still balk) at the idea that forgiveness is required towards a person who has not apologized or shown any understanding of his or her offenses or desire to change. But yes, forgiveness can nevertheless be given, as a religious or personal choice.
NOTE: I wrote a previous post on the subject of forgiveness that’s very relevant; you can read it here.
And the nations of the Anglosphere continue their virtue-signaling embrace of a terrorist state
It may seem like Bizarro World, but it’s reality – a reality that we knew was coming because it was previously announced, but that doesn’t make it any less repellent:
The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia on Sunday all recognized a putative Palestinian state, acting amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
The synchronized announcements, coming within minutes of each other, defied opposition from the American and Israeli governments, which said such a move would be a reward for terrorism.
“Since 1947, it has been the policy of every Canadian government to support a two-state solution for lasting peace in the Middle East,” read a written statement by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “This envisioned the creation of a sovereign, democratic and viable State of Palestine, building its future in peace and security alongside the State of Israel.
“Hamas has terrorized the people of Israel and oppressed the people of Gaza, wreaking horrific suffering,” the statement continued. “It is imperative that Hamas release all hostages, fully disarm and play no role in the future governance of Palestine. Hamas has stolen from the Palestinian people, cheated them of their life and liberty, and can in no way dictate their future.
“The current Israeli government is working methodically to prevent the prospect of a Palestinian state from ever being established. … It is in this context that Canada recognizes the State of Palestine and offers our partnership in building the promise of a peaceful future for both the State of Palestine and the State of Israel,” Carney said.
Delusional in so many ways. The two-state solution was a dream that was worth pursuing, but it has become abundantly clear that the Palestinians don’t support it and that it is now a mere fantasy. You can’t have a two-state solution when one state wants to obliterate the other.
And a country such as Canada can say all it wants that it is imperative that Hamas release all hostages, fully disarm, and play no future role in “Palestine.” Empty blather. What are you going to do to make that happen, Carney? Reward them with a recognized state – at present, when they have steadfastly refused to do any such things (au contraire) and have toyed with useful idiots such as you?
But perhaps the worst part of Carney’s message was this slander:
The current Israeli government is working methodically to prevent the prospect of a Palestinian state from ever being established.
Oh, if only there was no Netanyahu and his administration, working so hard to prevent a glorious and peacefully co-existing Palestinian state that the Palestinians have tried so hard to establish, the dream of peace would be realized. Either Carney knows zero about the history of the area or is lying in order to placate his constituents (among them quite a few local Muslims; Canada was about 5% Muslim in 2021 and that percentage has probably only increased since then, whereas its Jewish population is about 1%) – or he’s both ignorant and pandering.
I vote for both. There may be a dose of anti-Semitism thrown in there as well. A toxic brew.
The outlandish conspiracy theorists
Commenter “Niketas Choniates” writes:
Instapundit today links to a debunking of a conspiracy theory that Charlie Kirk was shot at close range with a gun disguised as a cell phone.
I have to say I have no idea what to do about people who would find such a thing plausible. I don’t know where they get their priors from: maybe the RAND corporation, under the supervision of the reverse vampires, are putting something in the water.
That last bit about the vampires putting something in the water is a joke, but it’s one that posits a conspiracy theory to which somebody somewhere probably ascribes, so numerous and strange are these theories.
I’ve written many times before about the propensity of so many humans to come up with such things, but if you read just one of those posts I suggest it be this one. I suggest you read the whole thing. But I want to add what I think is at the root of these belief systems.
One part of it is – as I already mentioned in the linked post – that some generalized distrust of government and official reports (or at least skepticism) is justified by certain lies that officials have told in the past. A good example of this is Russiagate, or their lies about the origins of the COVID virus.
But I want to emphasize something else here, which is that people like to feel that they are smarter than average, and much less gullible than average, and some people do this by rejecting the obvious explanations that are supported by the actual evidence and prefer to latch onto something more obscure and even contradicted by the evidence. Why would that make them feel superior? Because they see themselves as marching to a different drummer, as not being taken in by duplicitous authorities mouthing lies, as being better and more intelligent than the rest of you who are stupid enough and trusting enough to believe in the lying official narrative.
So yes, to believe someone with a gun resembling a cell phone killed Charlie Kirk by firing at close range is preposterous and flies in the face of everything we know about the assassination. But there are always going to be those who reject everything we know and say it’s all (or mostly) lies put out by officials who have some sort of evil agenda to cover up, and that the conspiracy theorists and those of like mind have sussed all of this out and have the inside info – unlike the rest of you naive dupes.
The problem, of course – at least, one problem – is that sometimes there really is a conspiracy and the official word is sometimes a lie. Russiagate was a conspiracy and a lie, for example, and the first COVID origin story – wet markets rather than a lab – was a coverup. It can be challenging to sort these things out. But Oswald killed Kennedy on his own; it’s really not in question any more (see my previous posts on the subject).
And Charlie Kirk was not killed with a gun disguised as a cell phone.
Open thread 9/22/2025
On coming across the obituary of a college acquaintance
The other day I came across the obituary of someone I knew as a college freshman. I wasn’t looking for information about her, but I saw it nevertheless.
I almost wrote “I came across the obituary of a girl I knew as a college freshman.” But because the obituary was dated only a few years ago, of course by that time she was no girl. She was someone most people would describe as old.
But that’s not the way she exists in my mind’s eye, despite the article’s description of a long – and what sounds like a productive and happy – life. To me, she remains that seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl, the one I met in the first days of my stay at the far-off university I attended freshman year.
I didn’t fit in. Perhaps I wouldn’t have fit in anywhere; at the time, I was shy with strangers although not when you got to know me. I looked different from most of the students there, though. They dressed differently, they wore their hair differently, they understand the ropes of the place and I didn’t, and I was constantly being asked a question I had never heard before: “What are you?” Meaning “what’s your ethnic background?”
The person whose obituary I just found – I’ll call her Nancy, although that’s not her name – lived right across the hall from me and my roommate. She was the essence of cool at the time – the right clothes, the right hair, and tremendously attractive. But it wasn’t just her looks. She had a lively personality, was a bit quirky but not too much, and seemed especially sure of herself and comfortable in her skin without being obnoxious or even off-putting.
I lost touch with her after freshman year, and we hadn’t been close even then. But I wasn’t surprised to read about her accomplishments, both public and private, or the heartfelt tributes from friends. Such things fit with what I remembered.
I felt a sorrowful loss. She died not young, but younger than average. She apparently had some physical suffering in her final years; some of the friends alluded to her courage in the face of it. I wish I had known her better; she sounds like she would have been a good person to know. But it was not to be.
And she represents so many people I’ve lost, many of them people I lost touch with over the years but some of them those to whom I was close. There’s nothing to be done about it.
As one ages one has to be strong, that’s for sure.
Background to the hatred: the right as the new Jews
In the wake of the Kirk assassination, I’ve been thinking about how the background has been to stir up hatred against the right and especially white people as a group. White people themselves are supposed to hear the message and to feel guilty about their supposed “privilege” and even their very existence, whereas people of other races are encouraged to blame all their woes on white people – not just historically, but now.
So much has happened since the year 2020 that it’s easy to forget the whole “anti-racist” movements which – as with so many projects on the left – had an Orwellian looking-glass sort of title, because it represented the furtherance of racist thought. It looked at people as almost nothing but their races, and all white people were judged harshly because of being white. At the time, I wrote a post titled “White privilege, white guilt: whites as the new Jews.” You might want to go back and read it, but here’s an excerpt:
I know the analogy of anti-white feeling to historical anti-Semitism is far from perfect. But it’s still relevant. Both have as a prominent feature the sweeping idea of inherent and collective guilt of an entire people and/or race. How can this guilt ever be erased? Perhaps never, although public self-humiliation is felt to be a small start. …
No need to prove that Trump is a white supremacist, despite all he’s done to help black people. The Harvard Gazette‘s readership knows it’s true, everyone says it, so the argument doesn’t even need to be made properly, just stated. The incomparable Thomas Sowell, who retired from writing in 2016 at the age of 86 (and who originally had not liked Trump and yet urged people to vote for him in 2016), had this to say in March of 2019 which I think is spot on:
“In March 2019, Sowell commented on the public’s response to mainstream media’s allegations that Trump was a “racist”: “What’s tragic is that there’s so many people out there who simply respond to words rather than ask themselves “Is what this person says true? How can I check it?” And so on.” One month later, Sowell again defended Trump against media charges of “racism”, stating: “I’ve seen no hard evidence. And, unfortunately, we’re living in a time where no one expects hard evidence. You just repeat some familiar words and people will react pretty much the way Pavlov’s dog was conditioned to react to certain sounds.”
As usual, Sowell describes it well. That was six years ago, and we’ve seen cries of “racist,” “transphobe,” “hater,” “Nazi,” and “Fascist” increasingly weaponized against the right in general and Kirk in particular, both before and after his killing. This is the way that groups are dehumanized in order to prepare a population for their destruction, and to cheer it on. That’s what we’ve been seeing now from the left towards the right. The problem for the left is that the right isn’t a minority, as the Jews were in Europe (most people aren’t aware, for example, that prior to the Nazi takeover the Jews of Germany numbered less than one percent of the German population). The right is half the population – and perhaps growing as a reaction to leftist extremism.
In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, a few more trolls have come to assert the killer was MAGA
One example, which is now in the trash:
Is your name Neo as in Neo Nazi.
I wouldn’t be shocked anymore.Anyhow, Tyler was a far right maga.
I await the next Nuremberg Trials. Trump and His admin will judged.
The word “be” is left out in that last line, but I think it’s just from haste rather than any unfamiliarity with the English language.
This message is very typical of trolls. First, the quick insult to me. Then, the simple statement of a popular leftist falsehood, with no need for supporting data. Next, the threat of a reckoning when the left gets into power.
This comment was actually rather mild, as trolls go. And as is also typical, it’s from someone who seems not to have been here before.
There’s a common perception that trolls are paid. I have little doubt that may be true for many. But I think at least as many just do it for the love of trolling.
The idea that Tyler Robinson was MAGA is a piece of leftist propaganda that could be characterized as a classic Big Lie – that is, there’s not a single shred of evidence for it. It’s preposterous, knowing what we know. Why is this the left’s approach? Let me count the ways:
(1) If it’s done in order to troll someone on the right – as with the above comment – it rubs salt into the wound of Kirk’s assassination and isn’t meant to convince. When the audience is the left, however, it is meant to convince, and that is its aim for the most part.
(2) It relies on the cognitive dissonance of many people on the left on learning that Robinson was the epitome of someone who’s been radicalized by the left. On the one hand, the person on the left hearing the news might be happily applauding Kirk’s murder. On the other hand, the fact that the murderer was a leftist goes against the leftist listener’s notion that it is the right that is violent, the right that uses hunting rifles to blow people away. So the perfect solution is to applaud Kirk’s murder while simultaneously believing it was done by a MAGA supporter – which is preposterous and also false, but it resolves the cognitive dissonance. People often eagerly embrace ideas that resolve the unpleasant emotions roused by cognitive dissonance, no matter how wrong or how preposterous those ideas are.
(3) It relies on some people not following the facts at all closely, and plenty of people don’t. Slogans and lies flourish with ignorance.
(4) It relies on some people’s distrust of authorities such as the FBI and local police, and plenty of people feel that way.
I’ve said the idea that Tyler Robinson was MAGA is preposterous. We have way too much evidence to the contrary: the writing on the bullets, the reports of friends and family, the text messages to the roommate/lover, and of course the victim himself – who was a person on the right. But in the absence of the first three of those things it wouldn’t be so utterly preposterous to believe the assassination might be a right-on-right crime. Stranger things have happened – although they happen more often on the left with left-on-left crimes, with the victims seen as insufficiently extremist and/or as rivals for leftist power. As one example, there is the murder of Trotsky on Stalin’s orders. To take another, there’s Malcolm X (whose murder at the hands of the Nation of Islam has – of course – spawned a number of alternate conspiracy theories).
So in general the left doesn’t find it all that odd to think that the murder of Kirk represented a power struggle on the right – at least, they could entertain that notion for a short while. But after the first day, it would be impossible to support the idea unless one was either woefully ignorant of the facts that had emerged or willfully lying (perhaps including lying to oneself), or both.