Mainstream

~ Clarissa

Charlie Kirk was one gigantic gift to the Left. A friendly hand extended over the abyss. I wasn’t a supporter because my goodwill had been tried well beyond my capacity to think anything could be solved by friendly dialogue, like Charlie fervently believed.

The Left should be standing at the head of the line to mourn Charlie. But it became so rigid – while exhorting everybody to be endlessly fluid and hopey-changey, of course – that it sees the slightest departure from its dogma as the absolute deep-end horror. That’s why people on the Left are sincerely confused when I explain that Kirk was a moderate, that he had a gigantic opposition on the Right because he was too moderate.

Charlie Kirk believed what the completely apolitical man smoking by the corner store before his morning shift believes. Or this guy’s very apolitical wife. Or his siblings. Or colleagues. Kirk’s beliefs are mainstream. BLM, pronouns, transing children, and no human is illegal are not. They are boutique ideas that seem much more mainstream than they are because people have been bullied into keeping silent about their rejection of it.

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Published by Clarissa

33 thoughts on “Mainstream”

  2. I must admit, I have not heard of Charlie Kirk before he was killed.

    Now the left side of my Facebook is filling it with various alleged quotes from Kirk that, in my opinion, are not hate speech the Left claims them to be, but they are most definitely not some attempt at friendly dialogue or expression of goodwill either… and I do not have time to go to the sources and verify all these quotes and their context.

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    1. Seriously, just go watch a video of him talking to college students, instead of counting on a collection of context less quotes.

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      1. And then compare his reasonable moderation with these actually pretty politically moderate people, post-Kirk’s-death:

        https://x.com/monsterhunter45/status/1813230033902969284

        https://x.com/Timcast/status/1966459171865260338

        https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1966340325250838684

        And those are literally just the first three I ran across in my Twitter feed. They are EVERYWHERE, and these are not dummy bot accounts. Kirk knew about all that, they tried to do it to him too, and the STILL thought it was worth trying to have a conversation.

        But sure, believe the leftie account of the man in your sidebar reflexively, and don’t check for yourself.

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        1. Look at what the very liberal JK Rowling has been subjected to. She routinely posts large collectionsvof the most vicious insults from the Left, and for what? What did she do that merits people burning her books and telling her she should be raped and murdered? She’s a liberal feminist! And even she is not acceptable to the left.

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          1. Like Rowling, Tim Pool isn’t even a conservative. He’s a run-of-the-mill liberal from like ten years ago. He has to have full-time security now.

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      2. Like, it’s not reasonable to say you’ve never heard of the guy, and then immediately say, “But I’m just gonna believe what his enemies say about him and not check for myself, because reasons.”

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              1. Hi Valter, it’s me, MethylEthyl, but stuck on a crappy device I can’t sign in on (waves).

                Did I pick a video? I did not. I wouldn’t know where to start, because I’m not a Kirk fan, myself. I mean, everything I’ve heard about him, even before his death, from people who’d actually met him, was that he was a great guy. Kind, generous, really genuinely liked people (I have an uncle like this: no guile, the world holds no strangers: only friends he hasn’t met yet. I envy him). But his style, the extreme gregariousness, the not getting ruffled when people are obviously spoiling for a fight… it’s not my style. I’m a confrontation-avoider. I don’t engage with people who want to fight and it makes me anxious to watch him doing it. I don’t enjoy arguing the way he does. I also hate video– it glitches my brain out. But even I have stumbled across more than a few of his appearances and watched for a few minutes. He is unfailingly calm, reasonable, and kind, even with people who are just shy of frothing at the mouth with him. You’re not going to get that from a quote.

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              2. Hi MethylEthyl,

                sorry, my bad, other posters have been throwing various links around, this somehow coalesced in my mind with your post and I decided you (or rather an Anonymous) is baiting me to watch their choice of Kirk’s video.

                I have watched a relatively long one. OK, he definitely stays calm, I give him that. He is a good debater. He definitely did not deserve to be killed for that or for his views. On the other hand, it looks to me that “debater” is a key word here. His goal appears to dominate in the debate and convince the other side (however politely he might be doing it) that they are wrong or to make them look stupid to outside observers. Or, in the best case scenario, to just profess his views. He does not appear to be interested in any common ground, or open to changing his mind about anything. If I somehow ended up in a conversation with a person like that, I’d just disengage politely. Not because of the nature of his views, but because of how he organizes the interaction. Thus, I strongly doubt he was changing hearts and minds for a significant numbers of people who disagreed with him initially… My five cents… If I have time later, I’ll watch more of him.

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            2. I’m actually heartened by the replies in some of the “they caught him” threads. Some of the expected “hang him” vitriol obviously, but by my count, about 50% “His poor parents, I feel so awful for his dad that must be so hard”.

              That…. is AFAICT the difference between left and right, these days. The left reaction to a brutal public assassination of a law-abiding guy is the nastiest jubilation. I will not repeat some of the things I have read commenting about his widow and kids. The right reaction to the apprehension of a criminal murderer is… heavily tempered by sympathy for the kid’s family, sadness about his youth and the waste of potential. yeah, there are right-identified ghouls as well. They don’t seem to be the majority they way they are on the left, and people on their own side do tell them to STFU and show some humanity. Not sure when the left lost that capacity, but here we are.

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              1. I’ve already seen comments, “horrible white people! His own dad handed him over to police.”

                The dad probably saved his life because if he attempted to flee, he could have been shot. A peaceful surrender is the best option at this time. I’m sure it was devastating for the dad but it was his only choice.

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              2. I can’t imagine that they have any parental feeling at this point. I think 80% of how they got so barking crazy is they’ve spent decades divorcing themselves from any kind of family loyalty and connection. They don’t have any idea what it is, to have people who care about you, love you, and want to help, even if they disagree with you about absolutely everything, *just because they’re related to you*. Just total non-comprehension there.

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  4. Clarissa, I’m surprised by your panegyric to Kirk, considering his anti-Ukraine statements when all Trump’s associates were expected to make them. He might’ve started as a moderate conservative with good intentions, but turned into MAGA after Trump’s coming on the scene. Seems like just another opportunist to me. And I am a conservative, so this is not about his politics but rather his character.

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    1. As I keep saying, I don’t have to agree with anybody on everything (or anything) to respect them and mourn their death.

      I was not Kirk’s supporter. As I said in my video for the Ukrainian audience yesterday, even if his opinions on Ukraine were identical to mine, I still wouldn’t support him because he’s way too moderate for me. I’m much more to the right.

      But disagreeing doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. Other than express his opinions, he didn’t do anything wrong or immoral. To the contrary, he advanced his beliefs in a productive, peaceful way.

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    2. I was not a fan. Because IRL, thanks to a weird upbringing, I’m *extremely* conflict-avoidant, and people having even the most civil arguments makes me super anxious. Kirk was not my style. This is so bad with me, that I am having a run-of-the-mill legal dispute with an ex-landlord right now, that is making me physically ill. Nobody’s even yelling or calling names– it’s all very safe, distant, and conducted by registered letter. So while I’ve seen lots of bits of his videos, I really can’t take much at a time. Makes me too anxious.

      Also didn’t agree with all of his beliefs.

      What dysfunctional age do we live in now, where if somebody sees *one thing* differently from you, you’re supposed to… what? Cut them off? Declare them an enemy? Disavow them, everything they’ve ever said, and everyone who likes them?

      No thanks. I disagreed with the man and he wasn’t my cup of tea, but I can, simultaneously, see that he was a basically decent human being. He helped a lot of people. He was habitually kind and generous, and even when debate opponents were spitting with fury, he was clearly looking for the divine spark in them, and trying to speak directly to them as fellow humans made in the image of God. We should all aspire to be remembered that way. Do those things not matter anymore?

      It’s what you do, more than what you say.

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  5. “They are boutique ideas that seem much more mainstream than they are because people have been bullied into keeping silent about their rejection of it.”

    Social media is one big insanity amplifier.

    Husband and I have very different feeds on social media because algorithms feed us what we react to. One has to frequently step back from social media and perform a sanity check lest one’s view of reality should get horribly distorted.

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  6. Being a devout Christian is not mainstream anymore. The percentage of Christians in the US has been falling for many decades

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/245478/self-described-religious-identification-of-americans/

    and this fall is taking place in every demographic group, but especially young people

    https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-religious-identity/pr_2025-02-26_religious-landscape-study_01-04/

    Moreover, the remaining Christians are less devout. Every year people go to church less: see this article by the Heritage Foundation:

    https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/report/the-great-falling-away-the-decline-religious-services-attendance-the-united

    Charlie Kirk was trying to turn this around, specifically addressing young people where the trends are the most severe. And the way he pushed against the mainstream was impressive, even if one doesn’t agree with what he was pushing for. But he was pushing against the mainstream. And his awareness of what he was up against shows up in many videos of him, like this one:

    https://x.com/jonnywsbell/status/1965878774932844720

    -P

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