Our vision is often clearer when we assess our ‘ideological’ opponents.
Firstly, I applaud your courage and the deep wisdom of collective knowledge you draw on to conclude ‘Charlie Kirk Probably Deserved To Die’. To be candid, I resonate deeply with your comments. Yet we live at a time of such severe ideological division that it is incumbent on each of us to establish even the appearance of objectivity by applying the same rational arguments to our ideological allies.
We find ourselves immersed in the throws of the polycrisis because neoliberals (American examples include Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden) aligned with neoconservatives (President W Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc.) to scuttle the ‘end of history’ opportunity when the Soviet Union chose to peacefully stand down in the early 1990’s by deploying American Hegemony (via the forever wars) and globalization.
It was the Clinton administration who chose to expand NATO east of Germany, who rejected the lessons of the Montreal Protocol (Ozone depletion) by leading the Global North to refuse to underwrite the cost of climate mitigation and adaptation at the Kyoto Protocol, de-industrialized America by supporting the ratification of NAFTA (along with further liberalization of international trade), and unshackled Wall Street by repealing Glass-Steagell (FDR’s signature financial regulation) and deregulating complex financial instruments which led to the global financial crash of 2008-9.
President Obama proved ‘yes we can’ means a biracial man is just as capable of betraying the voters who elected him as any white man by bailing out the Wall Street bankers who caused the financial crash, holding none of them accountable, while allowing millions of Americans to lose their homes, jobs, savings, pensions, and retirements.
President Biden did the impossible in making Donald Trump the lesser of two evils in the 2024 Presidential Election by financing, arming, militarily enabling, and diplomatically justifying an ongoing genocide in Gaza by Israel. Biden’s actions are compounded by the fact that he led the effort in the U.S. Senate to ratify the Genocide Convention, which clearly does not provide self-defense as an affirmative defense for genocide. The International Court of Justice rejected Israel’s self-defense argument in its ruling on January 26th, 2024.
How many destroyed lives and deaths around the world were caused by the pursuit of American hegemony since 1992, the failure of the Global North to underwrite climate mitigation & adaptation at the Kyoto Protocol, the global financial crash caused by unregulated and bailed out Wall Street bankers, the ongoing genocide in Gaza by Israel, and the War in Ukraine instigated by NATO’s expansion across Eastern Europe to Russia’s border?
By your professed logic, would you concur the political leaders who made the disastrous decisions outlined above ‘probably deserved to die’?
Note: Minor edits were made to the original comment
Link to Rachel Donald’s article ” Charlie Kirk Probably Deserves to Die”: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/charlie-kirk?r=2rv66h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false