Hoisted by Our Own Libtards

Profoundly Stupid Liberal Responses to the Charlie Kirk Shooting

Last week I wrote that America was cooked.

2028 Democratic Presidential Nominee Brick Tamland (Anchorman)

I shared how life in a crumbling state can soil the impact of previously cherished art. I did not describe just how we got here, so I want to revisit our national sundowning with the fresh context of immediate reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death.

For a system to fully fail, many smaller interlocking subsystems must also decisively falter. In our case, generative capitalism has become a farce, independent media a mockery, and robust public education a cruel joke. Within our political ecosystem, one major party (the GOP) and its movement (Conservatism) have been radical insurgent outliers for the past four presidential terms—whether they controlled the White House or not.

The Democrats—and the liberals leading the party—could have fought back, should have fought back, and would have fought back if we gave them the votes. At least that is what we were told. We held up our end of the bargain and they skipped out on theirs, neglecting to raise the minimum wage, guarantee abortion access, reduce gun violence, make health care affordable, end congressional insider trading, expand housing, curb racist policing, or stop a genocide. Democrats declined to impede the march of fascism, and their complicity with the corrupt status quo only drove more disillusioned voters into Trump’s hands.

When we talk about liberalism, this broad bipartisan ideological orientation can rightly be blamed for elites’ slow-rolling our country into the ditch in the decades since FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. But liberals, as a group of Democratic politicians, party members, and Democratic-aligned thought leaders, form a distinct power center in the public arena. While posturing as a bulwark against corruption and supremacist creep, it is the liberals themselves who—as MLK timelessly warned—are most effectively holding us back.

tl;dr: “you’re a fucking idiot” -MLK

I’m not talking about the minority of supposed liberals who are actually right-wingers masquerading as members of the opposition in a cynical ploy to sell subscriptions and launder corrosive ideas to a liberal audience. Bari Weiss, Bill Maher, and Matt Yglesias exemplify this type of faux liberal punditry. These people are simply liars.

I’m concerned with the far greater number of actual liberals who are just stupid. Just plain stupid. Their hearts may be in the right place, but these commentators and politicians don’t understand the game in which they are playing. They cannot recognize politics and culture as zones of absolute war: winner-take-all, no-holds-barred battles for power and influence. Conspiracist godfather Alex Jones literally named his show Info Wars, and we still haven’t figured it out.

The dirtbag right has a crude but apt term for these useful idiots: "libtards." It's a vicious slur designed to mock liberals as both weak and stupid—but watching journalists and politicians alike rehabilitate a fascist propagandist while parroting Trump's talking points, you start to wonder if the slur isn't accidentally diagnostic. These people embody every weak, credulous stereotype the right has spent decades crafting about our party leaders and greatest thinkers.

The right has long understood the path to power lies in dominating the narrative, and they act accordingly—from Fox News to Steve Bannon to Elon Musk on down. Charlie Kirk was not relevant because he could debate; he mattered because of his ability to craft a viral meme. Voters don’t naturally gravitate to a project that is designed to turn them into serfs or worse. The right won because of memes and manipulation, not respectful discourse and debate.

Kirk was a virulent propagandist—not a political practitioner. Imbuing him with posthumous legitimacy only encourages more white supremacist propaganda, and obscuring the mechanics of his success robs us of the analysis necessary to inform an effective response.

The laws of war call for winning at all costs: lie, cheat, steal, sabotage, demean, demonize, delegitimize, harass, and ruin. Liberals are constitutionally incapable of deploying these tactics, while the right regularly utilizes them without a second thought. In fact, too many liberals seem unaware these tools even exist for us to use as we see fit. If we don’t realize what fight we’re actually in, how can we understand our enemy, master their strategy, and develop an effective counterstrategy to seize the narrative and retake our country?

The Pelosis, Schumers, Obamas and Bidens of the world, in concert with the Ezra Kleins of the world:

• Buy into the terms of debate set by the GOP, reinforcing the right-wing world view;

• Adopt right-wing framing and narratives, pushing the Overton window further to the extreme;

• Undermine their co-partisans by simultaneously mythologizing an all-powerful radical left and minimizing the popular support for the positions they champion;

• Falsely equate fascists with their opponents, abusive employers with their workers, and ethnic supremacists with their victims;

• Uphold a nonsensical paradigm of respectful discourse, elitist norms, bipartisanship, and compromise—punching down within their own coalition and handing the right a convenient attack line to punch left.

Our leaders operate as though the stakes are an invitation to a fraternity formal at an Ivy League school, not the precarious position of hundreds of millions of Americans and the fate of our trembling republic. These people are so far removed from the real-life impact of the policies they say they oppose, they cannot grasp the sophisticated traps and tricks they fall for over, and over, and over again. They’re so lost, they don’t even realize the virus is deep inside the computer while the GOP robs them blind.

Abundance coauthors Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, probably.

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I’m picking on Ezra Klein in particular because he may be America’s leading public liberal outside of elected office. Aside from his massive audience across multiple media, Klein is also one of the rare liberal elites who sometimes actually gets it right: He was one of the first major pundits to call for President Biden to leave the race, back in February of 2024. Then in July of this year, Klein went far further than he—and most liberals—had publicly gone in denouncing Israel and dismantling many of the most prominent pro-Israel talking points. And just last week, he sounded the fascism alarm and passionately appealed to Democrats in Congress to do something about it.

Sometimes Ezra Klein gets it right. Sometimes he’s early, sometimes he’s late, but sometimes he just gets it horribly, horribly wrong. “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way” is so wrong in so many ways, in just 840 words Klein manages to demonstrate nearly every right-wing fallacy and messaging myth liberals have rushed to adopt in the wake of Kirk’s death. We’ve been subjected to thousands of similar takes, but I’ll focus on Klein’s because it was the only one printed in the New York Times.

Firstly, Kirk was a virulent propagandist—not a political practitioner. His “debate me” shtick was never a serious, open-minded exchange of ideas. It was stagecraft carefully executed to generate content that made people look ridiculous, which was then circulated in a coordinated effort to characterize every leftist and every Democrat as just as ridiculous as an unprepared, outmatched college student. Klein seems to not realize any of this:

“You can dislike much of what Kirk believed, and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.”

In fact, Kirk would not talk with just anyone. In reality, many of the people in his videos were plants. Young voters did shift right, and Kirk definitely had something to do with it, but the idea that he Lincoln-Douglased his way into the hearts and minds of millions misunderstands the entire nature of his organization and the right-wing media ecosystem. Imbuing him with posthumous legitimacy only encourages more white supremacist propaganda, and obscuring the mechanics of his success robs us of the analysis necessary to inform an effective response. Klein grasps for the correct takeaway:

“Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project.”

Wrong again. This bizarre choice says more about Newsom’s political judgment and core values than it does about Kirk’s project. Had the presidential hopeful adopted any of Kirk’s “fearlessness,” he would have fought tooth and nail against Kirk’s dehumanization of trans people rather than agree with it. If Newsom wanted to display “moxie,” he would have defended the left instead of buying into Kirk’s humiliating characterization.

Kirk cuckolded Newsom on his own show. This is the positive example Ezra Klein wants us to learn from? We’ve become the blind following the blind, following the blind. This is why America is doomed. Absent any evidence, the opposition’s leading public intellectual apes the president’s chilling message to purge the enemy from within. Here’s Trump, in the immediate wake of Kirk’s killing:

“It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Now Klein:

“The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence. To lose that is to risk losing everything. Charlie Kirk—and his family—just lost everything. As a country, we came a step closer to losing everything, too…

“In 2022, a man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House at the time, intending to kidnap her. She was absent, but the intruder assaulted her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull. In 2024, Donald Trump was nearly assassinated. That same year, Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was murdered…

“Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets.”

In a vacuum, Klein’s statement might be defensible for its effort to enlist Americans of all political persuasions in a shared commitment to stop the violence and return to sanity. But such statements do not ring out in a vacuum. They contribute to a larger narrative in which one side—the liberals—blame the left and the right, and the other side—the right—blames only the left. Ezra Klein may be able to sleep better at night decrying both sides, but the net effect of these two messages is the average person believing political violence is a uniquely left-wing problem. It is, of course, the opposite.

The other problem with this statement is that we did not yet know the shooter’s identity or motive, yet in perfect sync with the authoritarian right Klein chose to implicate Kirk’s political opponents—the left. History would suggest the shooter’s motive was most likely ideologically incoherent, extreme right, or dementedly pro-Kirk. We had no idea, but that didn’t stop Klein and legions of liberals from asserting one of Kirk’s victims had pulled the trigger.

Klein has to make this logical leap to serve the ultimate argument of the piece, which is the time-tested default liberal argument that “both sides are wrong.” Cascading political violence is indeed a scourge, but these laundry lists of bipartisan victims obscure the crucial reality that violence is an explicit goal, tactic, and foundational value of the right. Violence is what they do. It’s what they cultivate. It’s what they want and it’s what they fetishize.

The left is nonviolent. The left is anti-violent. Our crisis of violence—be it political, suicide, or mass shootings—results from guns guaranteed by the right, economic misery engineered by the right, lack of health care orchestrated by the right, and dehumanizing rhetoric peddled by right-wing operatives like Charlie Kirk. The violence is one-sided. One party is to blame, but liberals can’t help but slurp up right-wing propaganda and spit out the blame at their own party.

Blaming both sides is the liberal’s favorite pastime. It’s intellectually bankrupt, but they return to it time and again because it deflects from their own complicity with corrupt elites, makes their left flank seem worse than they are, and minimizes the damage done by their right-wing allies. You can tell a liberal is full of shit when their societal-scale argument centers on something they saw online:

“On social media, I’ve seen mostly decent reactions to Kirk’s murder. There is grief and shock from both the left and the right. But I’ve seen two forms of reaction that are misguided, however comprehensible the rage or horror that provoked them. One is a move, on the left, to wrap Kirk’s death around his views—after all, he defended the Second Amendment, even admitting it meant accepting innocent deaths. Another is on the right, to turn his murder into a justification for an all-out war, a Reichstag fire for our time.”

That’s right, folks! Actual nazis that want to burn you alive are the same as those they want to kill, because they have the audacity to draw the line between Kirk’s political aims and the real-life impact they have on the rest of us. And Klein saw it on social media, which means this attitude (that is somehow the same as hoarding Zyklon B) is endemic to the left—and if we don’t all tone it down, Ezra Klein will not feel safe to podcast. And if he can’t speak his mind freely on a podcast, how will we convince the nazis not to round us all up into camps?

Cascading political violence is indeed a scourge, but these laundry lists of bipartisan victims obscure the crucial reality that violence is an explicit goal, tactic, and foundational value of the right. The violence is one-sided. One party is to blame, but liberals can’t help but slurp up right-wing propaganda and spit out the blame at their own party.

Yeah, we’re fucking cooked. The worst part is that it didn’t even have to be this way. There is a version of Klein’s essay that gets everything right:

Charlie Kirk was a scumbag, but he didn’t deserve to die. Nobody does. As we remember him, let’s study his methods and learn from his success—as an effective propagandist.

He was not a good man; he was good at his job. But he didn’t do it alone. Kirk had grit and determination and vision, but he never could have succeeded without the unfettered support of right-wing billionaires and a tactically aligned media ecosystem. The left must fund its most passionate and promising young talent, and we must reorient our media institutions to fight fascism rather than normalize it.

This wasn’t even the only school shooting yesterday; three students died in a horrific shooting in Evergreen, Colorado—less than an hour’s drive from Columbine. Gun violence is out of hand, and there is an electoral benefit available to politicians of any party willing to do what huge majorities of Americans want. Now is the time.

Countless lives have been ruined by Charlie Kirk’s ruthless project of dehumanization, and indeed untold numbers of lives have most certainly been lost. I will not cry over one dead white supremacist. I will cry that this murder was possible at all. I believe in the sanctity of life, and so did Charlie Kirk. We must learn from him in death, and join hands across the aisle to ensure that nobody befalls the same tragic fate as him in the months and years ahead.

I would not have been surprised to see such a statement from Ezra Klein. Three weeks ago, he pointed out that Trump is building his own paramilitary force. Three weeks before that, he invited the wrongly detained pro-Palestinian resistance icon Mahmoud Khalil onto his podcast. Sometimes Klein gets it right. So how do we get to a place where he gets it right more often? What would it look like for liberals “getting it right” to become the rule instead of the exception?

1. Don’t play the Republicans’ game. Ignore their framing, their narrative, their accusations and their smears. Responding, rebutting, and reframing only reinforces their lies.

2. Craft and hold your own message. Fiercely enforce message discipline. Speak in one voice, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Ignore the other side and drown them out; force them to respond to your narrative, not the other way around.

3. Whether to advance a policy agenda or in fear of the guillotine, liberal billionaires need to pony up and keep those wallets open. Seed and fund influencers, media organizations, pollsters, think tanks, judicial farm systems, hacks, hatchet men, and primary campaigns. Be the bogeyman they’ve always accused George Soros of being. Identify real talent and shower it with unrestricted cash—not these clowns receiving highly conditional funding from Chorus.

4. Just embrace progressivism. This is both the easiest part, because it’s incredibly simple—and the hardest part for most liberals, who may not enjoy the taste of a big fat slice of humble pie. But this is the only way. Progressive policies address every one of our problems: they broaden the tent and shore up Democratic support; they materially improve people’s lives so they are less prone to isolation, conspiratorial thinking, and violence; they build trust in government and institutions; they grow the middle class and the economy along with it; they shore up American leadership on the global stage. Progressive policies were the answer all along.

If liberal politicians get in line, and DNC Chair Ken Martin’s “good billionaires” get in line, and thought leaders like Ezra Klein get in line, we might just have a fighting chance to win back control of Washington and begin the slow, painstaking process of rebuilding our democracy brick by brick. I’m not hopeful, but I’m not going to pretend there isn’t a lone pathway to resuscitating our country.

That is how you actually practice politics the right way.

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Previously, on Certain Thoughts:

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