Last Week

And what a week it was. I had this post written out in my head about an event that took place in my city early this week until another event, the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk happened on Wednesday.  Now you get two posts for the price of one.

I learned a couple of things this week. Much as I hate to admit this, I had never heard of Charlie Kirk until his tragic murder at a college campus in Utah. Now the whole world knows who he was. Even before he was pronounced dead, I was getting notifications on my cellphone from the German publications Der Spiegel and the Frankfurter Allgemeine about the shooting.

The other thing I learned this week was the expression "cold take." In case you're old and illiterate on all things regarding contemporary culture as I am, a cold take is the opposite of a "hot take", which came into being allegedly on sports talk radio in the nineties. A hot take is a statement, opinion or prediction  that is edgy, outrageous or simply uninformed. A good example of a hot take would be a sports commentator confidently predicting that this year's Chicago Bears are headed for the Super Bowl.

Go Bears.

From that, the expression cold take naturally followed. A cold take by contrast is a statement so obvious that it needn't even be mentioned. A good example of a cold take is the phrase "all lives matter" in response a few years ago to the call to action, "Black lives matter."

I learned the term cold take this week from my son, who was referring to the repeated comments on the media, social and otherwise, that political assassination is wrong under any circumstance. I guess a good, albeit cruder synonym for a cold take would be "Duh".

Charlie Kirk was a father, a husband, a son, and a friend to many. Above all he was a human being whose life, like all of them, matters. His murder was a travesty, a tragedy, a moral outrage, and a clarion call to all of us that the division in this country and the rhetoric that has torn and continues to tear this country apart is a matter of the gravest concern to all of us. In other words, duh.

There is no other side to this story, so don't expect me to follow that last paragraph with a but.

The Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, as conservative as they come, during a press conference to announce the capture of Kirk's alleged killer, made an impassioned statement, imploring people on both sides of the fence, blue and red, Republican, Democrat and everything in between, to tone down the rhetoric and start to come back together as a nation. In his comments, Cox asked rhetorically: 

Is this the end of a dark chapter of our history, or the beginning?

It was a statement that drew praise across the aisle, from both Republicans and Democrats. 

Not surprising however, Cox's remarks had their detractors. 

Steve Bannon for one, said this:

We don’t need a governor to step up and give us basically a political pep talk and a rally and ‘let’s just all come together,’

It seems despite his solid right wing credentials, Governor Cox is not popular with the MAGA crowd. 

I suspect much of the MAGAnimosity toward him comes from the fact that Cox has not always rubber stamped the MAGAgenda. In 2022, Cox vetoed a bill representing an issue near and dear to the hearts of MAGA, that would ban transgender athletes from participating in high school sports. For that outrage, Charlie Kirk declared that Cox "should be expelled from the Republican Party." 

There is absolutely no relation to my remarks above stating unequivocally that Kirk's murder is an abomination with the fact that I find many of his actions and much of what he stood for to be reprehensible. In addition to his stance on gender issues which went far beyond trans athletes:

Kirk was a staunch opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, singling out Martin Luther King Junior as an "awful person" whose "fixation" on race has had a devastating impact on American society. He called George Floyd whose unjustified homicide at the hands of a Minneapolis cop led to a period of serious civil unrest during the COVID pandemic, a "scumbag" totally unworthy of the attention. He was bitterly opposed to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's appointment to the Supreme Court, calling her unqualified and a "diversity hire". And speaking of DEI, last year he made this comment:  “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Kirk was a defender of "Replacement Theory" which claims that Jews are responsible for replacing white Americans with foreign, non-white" immigrants. Using the same ol' same ol' I've heard all my life, the kind of bullshit that folks like the virulent anti-semite  Charles Lindburgh spewed back in the thirties and forties, Kirk accused the Jews of: controlling “not just the colleges — it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.”

Kirk was a religious fanatic who whole heartedly supported freedom of religion as long as that religion was Christian Fundamentalism. In comments about Zohran Mandami, a Muslim who won the Democratic Primary in the upcoming race for mayor of New York City, Kirk recently said this: “America’s largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall,” 

He was a ferocious gun advocate who went on record saying that the tens of thousands of gun deaths this country experiences every year is a price worth paying in exchange for the right to own guns. I wonder if wherever he is now, he still believes that. 

Just sayin'.

One thing that people on both the right and at least some people on the left agree upon was that Charlie Kirk was a staunch supporter of freedom of speech. He was wearing a tee shirt printed with the word "Freedom" when he died. Much of his work was visiting college campuses and encouraging students no matter their political views, to go up on stage with him and engage in discourse, encouraging a so called free exchange of ideas. 

But that is dubious. 

Kirk's "debates" with students of diverse opinions were to legitimate debate, what the spectacle of Professional Wrestling is to the real sport of wrestling.

More often than not, Kirk's debate opponents were 18 and 19 year old college freshman with a strong sense of conviction but little or no debate experience. Kirk on the other hand was a fairly accomplished debater who used intimidation followed by humiliation as his weapons of choice to score points against his victims, er... opponents. It was no contest, sort of like a high school basketball player challenging me and my 66 year old body, bad hips and all, to a game of one on one. It helped him out considerably that these "debates" were held in public with a very friendly (to Kirk) crowd who hooted and hollered every time their guy scored a point.

Then Kirk would post the best of these "gotcha moments" complete with the crowd reaction, to his Tic Toc account which went viral among his legions of followers, mostly "let's stick it to the Libs" young men. whose reaction that "boy these liberal people sure are stupid", was a fete accompli. 

You can find these confrontations on YouTube. It was a different story when Kirk encountered a higher level of competition such as when he took on graduate and doctoral students at Cambridge University. Then Kirk, our high school ballplayer to continue the metaphor, was faced with playing one on one against an NBA all star.

The result was predictable. 

As was Kirk's response to Spencer Cox's veto of the trans-sports bill. 

Governor Cox explained his high treason to the faithful by saying he was trying “to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.” three values that seem to hold little water for the MAGA crowd. Not surprisingly, the veto was overturned. 

But Cox it seemed got the last laugh Friday when he evoked the memory of the man who would have him ousted by saying this:

I desperately call on every American – Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative, MAGA, all of us – to please, please, please follow what Charlie taught me:“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much."

As I mentioned at the top of this post, this wasn't the only big story of last week. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the Iceman Cometh to Chicago. You can read the announcement on their website here.

Dubbed with the cutesey militaryspeak tagline "Operation Midway Blitz", the deployment of Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) agents to Chicago, is an effort to: 

target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets.

The post's headline declares that the operation is "in Honor of Katie Abraham to Target Criminal Illegal Aliens Terrorizing Americans in Sanctuary Illinois."

Then you learn that Katie Abraham was a 20 year old college student who was killed in a traffic accident while visiting the University of Illinois Champagne/Urbana. She was riding in a car with four other young women, when their car while stopped at a red light, was rear-ended by a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed. In addition to Katie, another woman died in the crash and the other three occupants of their vehicle were injured. 

The driver who caused the accident fled the scene and was apprehended three days later while on a bus en-route  to Mexico. The man, a Guatemalan national, was in this country without legal status, using an alias and forged Mexican documents. He is currently in custody in Urbana awaiting multiple charges. 

Within the tragic story of Katie Abraham is a link to a video, presumably produced by DHS, featuring her grieving parents who make an impassioned plea for going after criminal aliens and defending the current administration's efforts to so. In the video, Katie's parents respond to questions that are superimposed over their image. One of these questions is " “When you hear people say illegal aliens aren’t given due process, what’s your reaction?” 

The father responds that his daughter didn't receive due process when she died, implying that perhaps her killer shouldn't either. Although Joe Abraham never says it, the very nature of that question implies that denying due process should be extended to all persons without legal status, not just criminals. 

I completely understand Katie Abraham's parents' anger and outrage over what happened to their daughter. If that had happened to one of my children, I'd want to rip the heart out of the perpetrator and stick it in his face until it stops beating. I'm serious. I think any parent, or for that matter, anyone who loves somebody can relate. 

That's precisely why we don't allow people to serve on juries in judgement of people who have wronged their loved ones. 

In that vein, we should take heart in Katie's parents' words, but not take them seriously.

The idea that the man who killed Katie and her friend (I'm guessing the friend's parents wouldn't allow the DHS to use their daughter's tragedy to promote their agenda), doesn't deserve due process, is a non-starter. Our constitution guarantees due process for all, including killers and yes, even presidents who wage an insurrection to overthrow the government.

As is the case of all civilized societies.  

"Equal Justice Under Law" aren't just words inscribed in the pediment of the U.S. Supreme Building. they are the guiding principles of our legal system. Which is why the allegorical representation of Justice found in courtrooms all over the country, is a blindfolded woman holding a scale and a sword. The blindfold represents impartiality and the lack of bias and prejudice, while the scale represents that judgement is based upon the weight of evidence from both sides of the legal argument. In other words, within the legal framework, there are two sides to every story.

Unfortunately in our country at the moment, not everyone sees it this way. Unlike Governor Spencer Cox's pleas for unity, the current president used his friend Charlie Kirk's murder as yet another opportunity to portray all who oppose him as enemies of the people. Of all the acts of violence directed at politicians and political influencers that have taken place in the past decade or so, on members of both the Left and the Right, the president cherry picked only the attacks on the Right, just as the DHS under the auspices of the president, cherrypicked the tragedy of Katie Abraham to promote their agenda. 

After nearly one week of Operation Midway Blitz and the deployment of ICE agents in Chicago, allegedly in honor of Katie Abraham, so far one man has died. I guess his life didn't matter. Nor apparently did the lives of the Capitol Police officers who died as a result of the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, whose perpetrators were pardoned by the president in one of his first official acts after being sworn into office this January.

In other news, it seems as if the president has gotten over the death of his "good friend" Charlie Kirk. On the White House Lawn yesterday, he was asked how he's holding up after the tragedy. He said "Oh just fine.." then continued by mentioning how excited he was that the construction of his new ballroom extension to the White House was under way. As a natural born builder I'm hearing of another big building project he's promising. Replacing all the allegorical representations of Justice around the country with statues of himself. 

Big, hideous gold plated statues of himself, tiny hands and all, without the blindfold and the scale but still holding the sword. And on the pedestal of each statue are inscribed these words in all caps: 

"I AM THE LAW".

Charlie Kirk would be proud.