bc - AOC’s response starts out strong but then devolves and illustrates two things: 1) My point above, that it wasn’t really what was in the proclamation but what wasn’t; and 2) her penchant for taking things out of context. I do see her point, but similar things could have been said about Hortman’s legislative agenda.
AOC's statement (https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-cortez-statement-charlie-kirk-resolution-and-trump-administrations) deserves a bit of close reading and analysis because I don't think that she said anything out of context. Her argument is pretty straightforward and does not stray into anything that is not relevant to the resolution. AOC says:
House Republicans today brought to the floor a resolution ‘honoring the life and legacy’ of Charlie Kirk. I voted NO.
Condemning the depravity of Kirk’s brutal murder is a straightforward matter – one that is especially important to help stabilize an increasingly unsafe and volatile political environment where everyday people feel at risk. We can disagree with Charlie and come together as a country to denounce the horror of killing. That is a bedrock American value.
These are the grounds for her argument. In divisive political moments where the civil peace is breaking down, it falls to our representatives to come together and denounce the act in a way that is not divisive.
It then only underscores the majority’s recklessness and intent to divide by choosing to introduce this resolution on a purely partisan basis, instead of uniting Congress in this tragedy with one of the many bipartisan options to condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder, as we did with the late Melissa Hortman. Instead, the majority proceeded with a resolution that brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry today.
Here she is pointing out the "nettlesome" nature of the praise that the resolution authors included in the text and says that this creates division where the situation calls for some unifying theme - a reaffirmation of common cause.
“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a ‘mistake,’ who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that ‘some amazing patriot out there’ should bail out his assailant, and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges – it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.’ His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans – far from ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority in this resolution.
These examples are not a shift into an ad hominem attack on Kirk. She is providing support for her argument that the majority's statement is divisive. Her examples are chosen to support her earlier claim that "millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry" are being nettled because Kirk's statements that she highlights here do not promote unity. But it's not Kirk's statements that she is objecting to, it's the mischaracterization of him "‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority." And her use of "We" at the beginning is an important qualifier that limits her context. We means "we representatives issuing this resolution" not "we as a society."
Which is why her final paragraph is about the surrounding rhetorical context that has been created by Trump and his FCC.
I don't see anything that is out of context or lacking in relevance to the resolution.
2025-09-25 07:02:46
Imagine if Klobuchar, in her resolution, had said that Hortman was a devoted protector of women's reproductive freedom...
2025-09-25 06:19:25
BC - I disagree with many ideas on the left, and despise some. That doesn’t keep me from condemning, say, the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband. FULL STOP. The senate resolution honored her life and passed unanimously. The resolution honoring the life of Charlie Kirk, however, was opposed by 58 Democrats and 60 more either voted present or did not vote. Most said due to his ideas. Melissa Hortman had ideas too, ones that many on the right disagreed with or found repugnant, but the Republicans chose to honor her life and not temper their desire to send a unified message condemning her murder. I wish the Democrats would have done the same for Kirk.
Here is the text of the Senate resolution: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-resolution/301/text
Here is the text of the House resolution: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/719/text
The former is a fair sight more neutrally worded and measured in tone than the latter. The author of the House resolution had to know that their characterization was going to be more nettlesome and create partisan friction where none need exist.
2025-09-24 05:32:21
One more response to Ezra Klein's response to the response that was given to his Charlie Kirk eulogy.
But I am stuck on one bit in particular, which Klein offered during his Shapiro interview in response to an outpouring of criticism for the whitewashing portrayal of Kirk in his op-ed. He contends that living with one another on the basis of “social shame and cultural pressure” cannot work and would not be worthwhile if it did: a nation where such things flourished would not be “a free country.”
What could Klein possibly mean by this? We are indeed going to have to live with each other, barring apocalyptic violence—but we already have been for quite some time, and doing so has not required revisionist history of the sort we are now witnessing about one Charles James Kirk in particular. The political ascendancy of right-wing fractions of the U.S. adult population is new. But their existence, of course, is not: they were not born in the summer of 2020, recent efforts to blame their intransigence and bigotry on whatever missteps may or may not have occurred during the George Floyd protests notwithstanding.
Worth a read and a bit of rumination.
2025-09-22 17:20:39
I didn't read your comment about bringing in Shapiro as being about the timing, but rather the positioning. I think both reflect Klein's commitment to staying together and keeping up appearances for the sake of the kids.
2025-09-21 23:58:20
That Shapiro conversation really captures the reasons why I think Klein is an unproductive voice. Shapiro claims over and over throughout the conversation that "the right" saw Obama in a particular way, and Klein spends all of his time trying to empathize with how they might have felt, rather than stating that Shapiro spent his entire career crafting the very narratives by which the right learned to see Obama in that way.
It's the asymmetry of empathy that is just allowed to sit there and not be spoken of that makes me dismiss Klein. Shapiro can just passive voice away his own role as an ideological insurrectionist and sower of division and Klein cedes that ground in order to imagine himself a good and sensitive listener and participant in dialogue.
2025-09-18 18:51:30
On the Horst Wessel side of it, though, much of the religious right is referring to Kirk as "a warrior for God" and "a soldier of Christ." The Christian side of the culture wars is heavily influenced by the "spiritual warfare" types. They literally believe that they are engaged in spiritual combat against demons who have jurisdiction over geographical areas. It's very animist - I'm wondering if it isn't to Christianity what Shinto is to Buddhism. As such, I expect more hagiography, and more militant hagiography, as they seek to meld temporal military service with spiritual military service in their political theology. It's a very small narrative step from the valorization of the fallen soldier as political martyr and extending it to all of the Left Behind mythology and fantasies of one big, final End Times battle for the soul of humanity. Kirk is ideally situated for this project.
bc - AOC’s response starts out strong but then devolves and illustrates two things: 1) My point above, that it wasn’t really what was in the proclamation but what wasn’t; and 2) her penchant for taking things out of context. I do see her point, but similar things could have been said about Hortman’s legislative agenda.
AOC's statement (https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/press-releases/ocasio-cortez-statement-charlie-kirk-resolution-and-trump-administrations) deserves a bit of close reading and analysis because I don't think that she said anything out of context. Her argument is pretty straightforward and does not stray into anything that is not relevant to the resolution. AOC says:
House Republicans today brought to the floor a resolution ‘honoring the life and legacy’ of Charlie Kirk. I voted NO.
Condemning the depravity of Kirk’s brutal murder is a straightforward matter – one that is especially important to help stabilize an increasingly unsafe and volatile political environment where everyday people feel at risk. We can disagree with Charlie and come together as a country to denounce the horror of killing. That is a bedrock American value.
These are the grounds for her argument. In divisive political moments where the civil peace is breaking down, it falls to our representatives to come together and denounce the act in a way that is not divisive.
It then only underscores the majority’s recklessness and intent to divide by choosing to introduce this resolution on a purely partisan basis, instead of uniting Congress in this tragedy with one of the many bipartisan options to condemn political violence and Kirk’s murder, as we did with the late Melissa Hortman. Instead, the majority proceeded with a resolution that brings great pain to the millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry today.
Here she is pointing out the "nettlesome" nature of the praise that the resolution authors included in the text and says that this creates division where the situation calls for some unifying theme - a reaffirmation of common cause.
“We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was: a man who believed that the Civil Rights Act that granted Black Americans the right to vote was a ‘mistake,’ who after the violent attack on Paul Pelosi claimed that ‘some amazing patriot out there’ should bail out his assailant, and accused Jews of controlling ‘not just the colleges – it’s the nonprofits, it’s the movies, it’s Hollywood, it’s all of it.’ His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans – far from ‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority in this resolution.
These examples are not a shift into an ad hominem attack on Kirk. She is providing support for her argument that the majority's statement is divisive. Her examples are chosen to support her earlier claim that "millions of Americans who endured segregation, Jim Crow, and the legacy of that bigotry" are being nettled because Kirk's statements that she highlights here do not promote unity. But it's not Kirk's statements that she is objecting to, it's the mischaracterization of him "‘working tirelessly to promote unity’ as asserted by the majority." And her use of "We" at the beginning is an important qualifier that limits her context. We means "we representatives issuing this resolution" not "we as a society."
Which is why her final paragraph is about the surrounding rhetorical context that has been created by Trump and his FCC.
I don't see anything that is out of context or lacking in relevance to the resolution.
Imagine if Klobuchar, in her resolution, had said that Hortman was a devoted protector of women's reproductive freedom...
BC - I disagree with many ideas on the left, and despise some. That doesn’t keep me from condemning, say, the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband. FULL STOP. The senate resolution honored her life and passed unanimously. The resolution honoring the life of Charlie Kirk, however, was opposed by 58 Democrats and 60 more either voted present or did not vote. Most said due to his ideas. Melissa Hortman had ideas too, ones that many on the right disagreed with or found repugnant, but the Republicans chose to honor her life and not temper their desire to send a unified message condemning her murder. I wish the Democrats would have done the same for Kirk.
Here is the text of the Senate resolution: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-resolution/301/text
Here is the text of the House resolution: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/719/text
The former is a fair sight more neutrally worded and measured in tone than the latter. The author of the House resolution had to know that their characterization was going to be more nettlesome and create partisan friction where none need exist.
One more response to Ezra Klein's response to the response that was given to his Charlie Kirk eulogy.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-can-we-live-together/
But I am stuck on one bit in particular, which Klein offered during his Shapiro interview in response to an outpouring of criticism for the whitewashing portrayal of Kirk in his op-ed. He contends that living with one another on the basis of “social shame and cultural pressure” cannot work and would not be worthwhile if it did: a nation where such things flourished would not be “a free country.”
What could Klein possibly mean by this? We are indeed going to have to live with each other, barring apocalyptic violence—but we already have been for quite some time, and doing so has not required revisionist history of the sort we are now witnessing about one Charles James Kirk in particular. The political ascendancy of right-wing fractions of the U.S. adult population is new. But their existence, of course, is not: they were not born in the summer of 2020, recent efforts to blame their intransigence and bigotry on whatever missteps may or may not have occurred during the George Floyd protests notwithstanding.
Worth a read and a bit of rumination.
I didn't read your comment about bringing in Shapiro as being about the timing, but rather the positioning. I think both reflect Klein's commitment to staying together and keeping up appearances for the sake of the kids.
That Shapiro conversation really captures the reasons why I think Klein is an unproductive voice. Shapiro claims over and over throughout the conversation that "the right" saw Obama in a particular way, and Klein spends all of his time trying to empathize with how they might have felt, rather than stating that Shapiro spent his entire career crafting the very narratives by which the right learned to see Obama in that way.
It's the asymmetry of empathy that is just allowed to sit there and not be spoken of that makes me dismiss Klein. Shapiro can just passive voice away his own role as an ideological insurrectionist and sower of division and Klein cedes that ground in order to imagine himself a good and sensitive listener and participant in dialogue.
On the Horst Wessel side of it, though, much of the religious right is referring to Kirk as "a warrior for God" and "a soldier of Christ." The Christian side of the culture wars is heavily influenced by the "spiritual warfare" types. They literally believe that they are engaged in spiritual combat against demons who have jurisdiction over geographical areas. It's very animist - I'm wondering if it isn't to Christianity what Shinto is to Buddhism. As such, I expect more hagiography, and more militant hagiography, as they seek to meld temporal military service with spiritual military service in their political theology. It's a very small narrative step from the valorization of the fallen soldier as political martyr and extending it to all of the Left Behind mythology and fantasies of one big, final End Times battle for the soul of humanity. Kirk is ideally situated for this project.