Charlie Kirk put me on his “Professor Watchlist” -a list expressly designed to facilitate the harassment of those listed- because I connected the dots between Donald Trump’s violent and hateful rhetoric (which Kirk parroted for a living) and real life violence. Kirk rejected my hypothesis as well as the broader notion that violent rhetoric and easy availability of firearms was a serious enough problem to justify gun control. He famously and publicly opined that gun deaths were an acceptable price to pay for the freedom to bear arms.
When the most powerful actors on the world stage glorify retribution and violence and arrogantly flaunt their contempt for the rule of law, their followers are not the only ones desensitized and pushed to justify morally reprehensible conduct. The targets and victims of thuggery and authoritarianism too can lose sight of their humanity. Charlie Kirk was a professional attack dog, a political entrepreneur who won fame and fortune by antagonizing people who he and his powerful patrons did not like. This fact, however, does nothing to minimize the damage done by his murder. There will be plenty of folks who have been the targets of Kirk’s vile and destructive rhetoric and antics that will celebrate his demise. Their celebrations will be just as morally reprehensible and socially destructive as Kirk’s own frequent celebrations of violence and human suffering. Moreover, they will become powerful propaganda in the hands of MAGA extremists willing to ignore conventional boundaries of legal and moral conduct with impunity in order to weaken their perceived enemies. President Trump took little time to confirm his own intention to do just that.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, the President of the United States delivered a video address from the Oval Office about the killing of his frequent surrogate and close political ally. The content of that address reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to a presidential strategy of employing flagrant dishonesty and unprecedented hypocrisy in the shameless pursuit of personal power. He looked into the camera and pretended that left wing rhetoric and violence is to blame for every recent act of political violence. Confident enough that his supporters will cheer what objective observers know was a lazy, ham-fisted, and inarticulately delivered example of gaslighting by the most powerful person on earth, Trump vomited his bile for just over four minutes. Though he is indisputably the most prolific demonizer of perceived enemies in the world today, the president sternly condemned the practice. He recalled what he knows his supporters will accept as a comprehensive list of political violence plaguing the United States. Though numerous authoritative studies and reports over the past two decades have indisputably confirmed that political violence in America by right wing extremists is far more frequent and deadly than political violence by left wing extremists, Trump’s list ignored every single instance of right wing violence perpetrated during his presidencies, even the assassination by a MAGA extremist of a Democratic state legislator and her husband in Minnesota less than two months ago.
The president that has granted full pardons to more violent and dangerous criminals than all of his predecessors combined assured Americans that left wing extremists’ encouragement of violence and hatred was to blame for Kirk’s murder despite the fact that the murderer remains at large and his motives and identity remain unknown. President Trump made it very clear that his disapproval and condemnation of dangerous rhetoric and political violence is reserved exclusively for “left wing lunatics” and that the power of his office would continue to be used against only those who refuse to submit to his will. Meanwhile, Democratic activists and elected officials around the country were tripping over themselves to condemn Kirk’s murder without respect to the victim’s politics.
The asymmetry of political dishonesty, incivility, and employment of political violence in America today increases the existential threat such conduct poses to our republic. A president who uses his power to help all who are personally loyal to him, regardless of their conduct or character, combined with an entire major political party willing to go along for the ride is actually MORE frightening and dangerous than a universal decline of integrity and civility among political actors of all stripes would be. The president’s brief and disgusting response to Kirk’s murder gets the asymmetry right, but the identity of the bad guys very wrong. Most dangerously, his supporters will “go along” and millions of poorly informed and politically cynical Americans will greet the president’s lies as well as the truth of his treachery called out by his critics and objective observers with equal disdain and resignation, a response that unwittingly accelerates the decline of American democracy by unconsciously insulating the most prolific practitioners of political violence from meaningful accountability.
You definitely are a problem and should not be teaching with so much bias..
Mr. Rothermel,
Though I take your comment to be a good faith, if under developed, reaction to my commentary and analysis in this post, it should not escape either of us that your comment includes no mention at all of anything related to my post. Instead you merely characterize me as a definite “problem” who “should not be teaching” with what you call without explanation “so much bias.” As a professor on TurningPoint USA’s infamous “Professor Watchlist”, I am no stranger to substance-free personal attacks. Sadly, in this day and age substance-free personal attacks are an occupational hazard for many.
If you are willing to provide substantive feedback on this post or any other of my published thoughts, I welcome you to do so. It seems to me that your training in both law and accounting reflect a capacity for precision in complex matters not reflected in your comment here and regardless of how I might ultimately judge your more substantive thoughts, I assure you that I will consider them seriously.
Regardless, thank you for reading my post.
Respectfully,
Jerold D.
“Kirk’s vile and destructive rhetoric and antics” opinion, not fact
” he (Trump) is indisputably the most prolific demonizer of perceived enemies in the world today” This is easily disputable.
Bias bias bias. You should not be grading papers or influencing minds. I have much experience with professors like you.
Thanks for the quick feedback. You don’t actually believe that teachers or professors must merely transmit uninterpreted facts to students/readers, do you? Why would anybody undertake the long hard work of becoming an qualified educator if this is all they were supposed to do? It is literally my job to give my students and my readers my expert opinion, making your first criticism off the mark at best. It’s also important to note the expert judgement you think biased is shared by the vast majority of political scientists who study the relevant issues and behavior. This is a free country and you are entitled to believe the one dentist instead of the other four (so to speak), but so doing is not reasonable. Surely you don’t believe that there’s a shortage of well documented examples of Mr. Kirk’s “activism” that could fairly be characterized as vile and destructive?
Your second point is much more useful (in my expert opinion) because my use of the word “indisputably” is strictly speaking incorrect, and therefore a suboptimal choice of words at best, rather like the way many use the word literally. Though I’m confident I could muster a strong case in such a debate, the word invites distraction from my thesis and I thank you for alerting me to this issue.
Finally, your comments make it appear to me that you have an, admittedly common, misunderstanding of the professional objectivity required in my line of work, a misunderstanding I have thought quite a bit about. Essentially, you seem to assume that professional or scientific objectivity is simple neutrality, nothing more or less. Of course, when one tries to operationalize your understanding of objectivity in a scientific/ scholarly/ professional/ educational setting it’s impossibility becomes quickly apparent. I dare say that if you tried to live up to it with your own clients, it would quickly become clear that you offer them nothing they cannot get less expensively elsewhere.
I think we understand each other well enough Mr. Rothermel. If you wish to comment further, to rebut my interpretation of your additional comments perhaps, I will seriously consider these comments too and allow them to be the last word in dialogue in this space.
Thanks for your honest feedback.
Jerold D.
“Surely you don’t believe that there’s a shortage of well documented examples of Mr. Kirk’s “activism” that could fairly be characterized as vile and destructive.”
I do. I believe you are an example of those that assert YOUR OPINION and YOUR CHARACTERIZATIONS as “indisputable” which is a cardinal sin for an educator. You give no examples of his alleged vile and destructive ideas, probably because you know they would not hold up as such if honestly debated.
Craig, I find your comments a bit self-defeating. The author doesn’t present their argument as a neutral stance between two sides; it’s an essay on “asymmetry”. Commenting on their bias as if that disqualifies the content expresses that you’ve identified the tilt but lack the tools to undermine its arguments. You had three chances to correct this, politely and patiently presented to you by the author who didn’t disregard *you* for *your* bias, and you failed all three times to rise to the occasion. Do you yourself have no bias? I don’t understand where you think that line of reasoning ends, respectfully.
I certainly have biases. However, I am not a “teacher” that forces my biases on students. I do have experience with “teachers” that do. It is a real problem. Personally observed. Repeatedly. I’m all for calling out the culprits. Free speech and all.
Craig, if you were writing an essay for this professor, you would be expected to devise a thesis (which they did), defend it with evidence (which they did), and tie it to your conclusion (which they did). If your comments were being graded by this professor, you wouldn’t receive a poor grade because of their bias, you would receive a poor grade because, in the four comments you’ve written, you haven’t done any of that. You haven’t proposed a logical error in their premise, or proven any of their references to be insufficient as evidence, or critiqued the conclusions they drew from it.
As you identified yourself, you have biases–I have biases–we all do. When they replied to you, though, they didn’t say anything as dismissive and reductive as “Bias bias bias”, they actually picked your comments apart piece by piece and explained WHAT they disagreed with and WHY. They treated you with a level of patience, respect, and seriousness you haven’t shown them once.
Yes, Craig, you have free speech. You’re using yours to troll a professor’s article, and they’re using theirs to take you seriously anyway in good faith. Food for thought.
Look. He objects to being on a watchlist. I say a watchlist is a terrific idea to deal with a real problem. I’m sorry if that’s over your head. Typical.
Well written and insightful. Karma is a bitch. But I am concerned that this assassination will be used as propaganda to round up any liberal that expresses anger at the Trump Administration for their incompetence, flagrant disregard for the constitution, weaponizing SCOTUS to rubber stamp their hypocrisy and enhance the takedown of democracy.