The question you never thought to ask about Charlie Kirk's Turning Point, USA

Do you have any idea how *BLEEP* Turning Point is?

If you had told me ten days ago that an off-brand socially conservative commentator would be assassinated, I would have expected:

• a day or two of general media coverage,

• one round of polite speeches by public figures,

• embarrassingly deranged but brief flare-ups from some on the Left, and

• my own passing feelings of yet another tragic news story.

Instead, I have experienced:

• my own immediate feelings of visceral disgust and dissociation,

• discovering that Charlie Kirk was anything but “off-brand,”

• Leftist reaction beyond any dark parody, in spirit and scope,

• denials or equivocations from the moderate Left, who were our last hope for their movement to police itself, and

• feeling another long wave of social alienation and “can’t unsee” like mid 2020.

I wanted to help people understand what is different (unprecedented) about this event and how asymmetrical these cultural forces are, that “both sides” are not arrayed in the same way, though our big world offers examples of almost anything on almost any side.

And so, I have been watching many hours of coverage and commentary from various sources and angles, looking for voices articulating what I have experienced, in a clear, civilized, good-faith manner, including some who disagree and some who only recently saw the light. After assembling half a dozen videos that were quite good, I stumbled across a final entry that covered it all and TOOK the CAKE.

“painting of ‘BIG YUMMY CAKE!’” by Substack AI

The other top videos will be included in another post.

Before watching this video, write down the most courageous moral choice you’ve ever made. After watching, decide how it compares to this man’s courage. He credits Charlie Kirk for the inspiration to stop “crying in the street” for Black Lives Matter, open up to someone he was told to fear, and spread the truth to people who would rather shun him than listen.

Debunking The Biggest Lies Told About Charlie Kirk

Amir Odom, 55:21 video

Throughout my own life as a sincere, high-performing American intellectual, my peers have always paid lip service to the kind of moral courage and intellectual independence it took to publish this video.

Sadly, the same peers have steadily acted with moral cowardice and social conformity, immediately discarding truths we all agreed upon “five minutes ago” (as the saying goes) and throwing under the bus those of us who didn’t conform fast enough, because we mistakenly expected something like rational, evidence-based discourse first.

Scavenger hunt

“Do you have any idea how GAY Turning Point is?”

Find the time code where the video’s creator poses this fun question. What is his answer? How does it compare to yours?

Why we can’t have nice things

Why do people like Amir Odom feel the need to make videos like this one? Because the “grown-ups in the room” at the likes of the New York Times are too busy defending their cultural supremacy with gaslighting like this:

Kirk, to my way of thinking, was not a real conservative, at least in the American sense. The point of our conservatism is to conserve a liberal political order — open, tolerant, limited and law-abiding. It’s not about creating a God-drenched regime centered on a cult of personality leader waging zero-sum political battles against other Americans viewed as immoral enemies.

As for Kirk’s style of argument, owning inarticulate liberal kids in mass audience settings for the sake of producing viral videos isn’t real engagement, much less education. Did Kirk ever lose an argument, at least in his own mind?

…

It’s too bad that Kirk, raised in a Chicago suburb, didn’t attend the University of Chicago. It wouldn’t have hurt getting thrashed in a political debate by smarter peers. Or learning to appreciate the power and moral weight of views he didn’t share. Or recognizing that the true Western tradition lies more in its skepticism than in its certitude.

Do you find this description accurately reflects Charlie Kirk’s material in the video? Which of Kirk’s questions could this writer have slam-dunked with his elite university knowledge? Go ahead, tell me. Right now. It shouldn’t take you five seconds to poke holes in a “God-drenched regime centered on a cult of personality leader waging zero-sum political battles…” as if he were a mere Mark Levin or Joy Reid. One, two, three, four, five. Time’s up!

Perhaps the writer had some other material of Kirk’s in mind? We’ll never know, because he cites NOTHING. Those are not the standards I remember from my elite university (which ranks higher than Chicago, LMAO). Not even my prep school accepted such dreck, sheesh.

In parting, let’s pat this NYT writer on the back for acknowledging the abysmal state of modern university education (including Chicago?). He almost provides the appearance of balance:

Still, Kirk was out there, making arguments, inviting discussion and taking brave risks. Like few others in his generation, he offered a sharp and defiant voice against the tut-tutting illiberalism of today’s campus progressives. Young men thrilled to his message, in part because they were tired of being told that their masculinity was toxic or that their race was guilty or that their civilization was evil. Without the excesses of the left, Kirk would never have become the phenomenon he was.

…

But the larger tragedy by far is that it’s America itself that’s losing sight of all that. In the vacuum that follows, the gunshots ring out.

That’s how it’s done, you see, by elites who went to the amazing University of Chicago, where they teach everything but moral courage: say a shitty, false thing, then a nice red herring (the red ones are prettiest, and the tepidly anti-woke herrings have come into fashion) to mollify opposing arguments without mitigating the falsehood in any way.

Then dust off your hands as if to say, “My job here is done. See how balanced I was.” The grown-ups sigh and go back to sipping afternoon wine, while their loudmouth rugrats continue to tear the place down. In the vacuum that follows.

With gunshots. That ring out. [Elite applause]

Thanks to Matt Taibbi for the reference to this NYT article.

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