Ink Tea Stone Leaf

How horrible it must be, to love somebody who dies, and then to hear some stranger say that they are not especially moved by their death.

I would hate to be in that position. I would want people to share, even in a small way, in my loss. That’s the human tendency: to seek comfort in community. The broader the community, the more comfort we feel. It would not be reasonable to expect every person on Earth to feel the loss of one’s spouse or a parent as deeply as oneself, but we expect them to at least offer sincere condolences.

A right wing ideologue was murdered on Wednesday. In life he gleefully abetted the degradation of our democratic institutions, denigrated whole communities for no good reason, and spread conspiracy theories and harmful misinformation about public health and other critical issues. He happened to be a husband and father.

This murder should not have happened, but I am not especially moved by his death.

If you search him up, you’ll find lengthy lists of dangerous opinions and abhorrent, cruel remarks. Among them, he publicly stated not long ago that the catastrophic number of gun deaths in this country was an acceptable price to pay for living in a society where people had the freedom to own guns. I’m not bringing it up to be funny. I just think that it’s worth noting that if his life had been a play, that would be a textbook example of dramatic irony.

Murder is very bad, though. I almost never approve of murder. Even if this right wing ideologue had also been a murderer himself, or any other sort of criminal, I would almost certainly not have called for his murder. This is not because I believe he was especially deserving of protection, but because I believe that people should not be murdered. I believe people’s husbands and fathers should not be taken away from them. If there were any person alive who had the right to take this right wing ideologue’s life, I am almost certain it was not the person who actually did.

Killing this one right wing ideologue likely did not save any lives. I am not aware of any more compelling reason to take a life than the protection of another; if that one simple thing is not accomplished by a killing, then it amounts to nothing more than an empty expression of anger, and a crime.

The worst case scenario, as many have argued, is that this murder inspires the rest of the right wing to abandon any pretense of peaceful coexistence with the left, or the center, or the people not quite as far right as themselves, and commit to a fully fascist program, justified as an act of revenge for the loss of one of their own. That would be concerning indeed.

The only thing is, the right wing already attempted to obstruct the certification of a lawful election because the liar they have hitched their wagons to lied about the outcome. They’ve already instituted a full scale assault on every public institution in the country, and begun the process of deporting any person their incomprehensible algorithm determines to be a “bad guy.” When a Democratic lawmaker and her husband were murdered a few months ago, and another brutally injured, many of them responded with mockery.

All I am saying is, I think their program has been fully fascist for a while now. They could always get more violent, they could always break more things they haven’t broken yet, but they achieved the fullness of fascism years ago. In fact, they already had their dear leader to rally around after he was nearly murdered last year. They didn’t need another martyr.

They also don’t need my sympathy. They have already circled their wagons and blamed “the left” for this, which essentially means that I am included in the blame. Presumably I made the senseless death of this right wing ideologue, and perhaps others like him, more likely by opposing their effort to turn the United States into an ethnostate for white Christians, and by wishing earnestly for their political defeat.

So this message isn’t for them. Rather, it’s for the people who wring hands and wish to elevate this right wing ideologue into a martyr, not for the cause of American fascism, but for the cause of democracy, on account of his having been murdered in the act of exercising his freedom of speech about his political views, which incidentally included a desire to see an end to democracy as we have known it in the United States.

He should not have been murdered. Murder is morally wrong, and almost always counter productive when done for a political cause.

I am not going to miss him. If you were as disgusted by his racism and misogyny as I was, you don’t have to force yourself to miss him either.

People all over the world, including in Palestine, in Ukraine, and in the United States, have died horrible, unnatural, and unnecessary deaths in the last few years. Every one of those deaths was a crime. It is not necessary for us to go over every one of their lives with a fine-toothed comb and proclaim them saints before allowing ourselves to lament and condemn the endless, senseless killing that goes on in these places every day. I am perfectly content to add this right wing ideologue’s name to the list of people who ought to be alive today, except that they were cut down by the epidemic of violence which he advocated we do nothing about. But once his name is safely inscribed on that list, I will be just as inclined to forget it.