Losing My Perspicacity, September 12, 2025

Good morning and Happy Friday! Thanks for reading this morning.

The country is still reeling from the murder of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, but I’m beginning to get the very real sense that many of the people eulogizing Kirk have absolutely no idea who he was or what he stood for. They simply see “conservative activist,” which is how Kirk is being described by most media outlets, and think, “Oh, that guy was on my side,” and start posting away. I have been off Facebook for the last few months (waiting to delete my profile until I get all my old posts saved), but I ventured over there today and couldn’t believe the amount of Bible verses being posted in Kirk’s honor.

America has a habit of turning every person who has died into a saint. People often say, “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” but we have really taken that phrase to heart — and then some. There were people who, honest to God, refused to say anything negative about Henry Kissinger after his death. Kissinger! If anyone ever deserved an obituary that just listed out his misdeeds and war crimes, it was that guy.

As I said in the last LMP, we don’t have to dance on someone’s grave, but let’s be honest about who they were as a person. Charlie Kirk was a racist, bigoted, misogynist who spent his life demonizing anyone who was “other.” Don’t believe me? Here’s a list of some of his greatest hits:

Charlie Kirk rose to prominence by telling young, white men that they were losing their rights to women, immigrants, Jews, people of color, the trans community, and basically anyone else he could “other” and blame. He shrugged off school shootings. He trafficked in January 6 and COVID conspiracy theories. He pushed the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The guy even went after Ms. Rachel, for crying out loud.

If you’ve ever wondered, “How did we get here?” The rise of “activists” like Charlie Kirk is how.

None of that negates the awfulness of Kirk’s murder or the scourge of gun deaths plaguing our country. (By the way, there was another school shooting in Colorado yesterday that went practically unmentioned.) I’m not claiming we should celebrate anyone’s murder, no matter what side they were on, but I thought we could at least be honest about who the deceased person actually was.

The legacy media is, arguably, doing worse than my Facebook timeline. I woke up this morning to see this from Ezra Klein, the NYT columnist who has been getting all the kudos lately for “telling the truth” about Trump. The headline? “Charlie Kirk Practiced Politics The Right Way.” Oof.

Uh, as opposed to practicing politics in what other way? Kirk wasn’t an elected official. He was a right-wing Twitter troll who gained a following by saying horrible things about other people. How else was he supposed to do politics?

This entire paragraph ignores what it was that Kirk was saying. Hell, we had “Pastor Dan” at IU. He used to scream into a microphone at passing coeds that we were whores who needed to drop out of college and submit to men. Was he also practicing politics the right way? He was on a college campus, arguably debating people about his political views. Words matter.

Charlie Kirk was not a warrior for free speech. The organization he founded at 18, Talking Points USA, created a “Professors List” where parents and students could submit names of college professors they believed were teaching “gender ideology.” Just this week, a professor at Texas A&M was fired after a student confronted her during class about teaching “gender identity.”

Currently, Kirk’s fans have created a list called “Charlie’s Murderers,” where they are doxxing people who they believe are speaking ill of Kirk.

Speaking of free speech, something Kirk definitely loved for himself but not for others, MSNBC fired analyst Matthew Dowd after he accurately pointed out that Kirk’s cavalier attitude about mass shootings and guns may have been a contributing factor to his death. DC Comics also cut ties with best-selling novelist Gretchen Felker-Martin over a post about Kirk, and she was subsequently suspended by Bluesky. The State Department is warning immigrants not to “mock” Kirk’s death. This is madness, and it’s an actual violation of the 1st Amendment by the US State Department.

Meanwhile, the right has been going crazy about the left (and specifically Bluesky) “celebrating” Kirk’s murder. And with the exception of a post or two here or there from small accounts, I can’t say I’ve seen it. Actually, no one has really seen it.

What I have seen is people on the left bending over so far backwards not to seem as if they’re celebrating Kirk’s death that they are entirely sanitizing Kirk’s politics. He was not someone the left simply disagreed with. He was Trump’s main surrogate to a younger crowd and a person who believed that we are not all equal. He believed a person’s gender, immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, and skin color determined their value as human beings.

Accusing the left of cheering on Kirk’s murder is an especially infuriating bit of gaslighting, considering what comes out of Republicans’ mouths on a daily basis, starting with the President of the United States. Following the murder of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman in June, Kirk blamed the left for political violence, even though Hortman’s killer was a right-wing zealot who opposed LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive freedom.

If we want to talk about political rhetoric in this country, perhaps we should start with the people who called D.C. residents “cockroaches” (Kirk), immigrants “animals” (Trump), and Democrats “a domestic extremist organization” (Stephen Miller).

Be serious.

The independently verifiable fact is that the right talks about the left like this all the time. Kirk was among those who gleefully joined in when Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer, saying a “patriot” should bail Pelosi’s attacker out of jail.

The same party that wants to blame others for political violence blindly follows the guy who pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists and “considered” pardoning the men who conspired to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. We are not playing by the same rules. One side is far more violent in its rhetoric and its actions than the other.

As expected, Dear Leader is doing his part to tamp down on the violent rhetoric.

Calling out cold-blooded murder is good. Ignoring every bit of context for said murder and lying about objective facts and moments in history is not. Everyone, the media included, has to stop eulogizing a Charlie Kirk they made up in their mind. Let’s have an honest conversation about a real person and what’s actually happening in this country. Until we acknowledge that, we’re going nowhere.

A Plea

If there was ever a moment that proved how much we need an independent media, it was yesterday. Watching legacy media members allow outright lies to go unchallenged and reading pieces like Klein’s was a master class in how far our journalistic standards have fallen.

So this is me asking you to consider upgrading to a paid subscription to LMP. You can subscribe for as little as $1.01 per month, and your support gives me the freedom to say what I believe is true and right, without having to worry about how it will go over with the venture capitalist in the corner office.

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Can we talk about the FBI for a minute?

If you’ll recall, when Kash Patel (who apparently began his career as a public defender — WTF?) took over the FBI, there was a purge/mass exodus of top leadership at the agency. According to recently filed court documents, the purge came from the very top.

The problem with firing everyone for political retribution is that you wind up with a bunch of idiots in charge who have no idea what they’re doing. Yesterday, on Wednesday, the FBI and local law enforcement in Utah could not get on the same page about whether or not there was a person of interest in custody.

Thursday afternoon, the FBI released what they said could be photos of the shooter, then delayed a press conference due to “rapid developments.” Then they pulled back on that statement. Given the amount of uncertainty coming out of Quantico, I’m not going to share the images of the suspect because, for all we know, it’s some random college kid and the FBI is wrong again.

There were also (unverified) reports on social media that it took until Thursday morning for officers to tape off the crime scene, and videos of people taking items from the tent where Kirk was speaking, potentially contaminating both scenes.

Media outlets are also walking back an initial report that bullets collected at the crime scene bore the marks of “transgender ideology.”

Uh, I’m not sure a series of arrows = “transgender ideology” is a thing.

Don’t worry, though! Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are in Utah to take command of the situation, God help us.

As of 10 pm ET on Thursday, there are no reports that law enforcement has a suspect in custody. Law enforcement has just held a press conference to share video and new still photos of the suspect. “We can not do our jobs without the public’s help,” said Utah Governor Spencer Cox. Both Patel and Bongino said nothing during the briefing.

Seems like this would be a great time to have a functioning and experienced FBI, but what do I know?

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

The end of this week was unexpected, and I’m quickly running out of space, so I’ll leave you with this. A reminder that we can create beautiful things together. Two days ago in the streets of Paris.

Survive and advance out there, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Call out the lies.

Have a great weekend.