(Warning: long rant)
My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans. Zero clue.
Iâm not talking about people who are âonlineâ; I mean regular, everyday Americans. âNormies.â People who scroll through Facebook posts and Instagram reels from the Dutch Bros drive thru line. Political moderates who have water cooler chats about Mahomes touchdowns and Bon Jovi concerts, not Twitter threads or Rachel Maddow monologues.
Millions of them. Tens of millions. Theyâre logging on, theyâre engaging, and theyâre furious.
And Iâll be candid: They blame you guys. They blame the left.
Regardless of whether you believe it to be justified, they think youâre the bad guys here. And they are reacting accordingly.
I can already hear some of you racing toward the comments to start screeching in moral indignation, so Iâm going to be blunt: Shut up and listen to what Iâm telling you. Your movement will lose any semblance of relevance if you donât develop some small measure of self-awareness, andâabsent someone force-feeding you bitter medicineâyou guys collectively lack the humility to do this on your own.
Here are the facts:
Fact 1. Tens of millions of Americans started the week seeing a 23-year-old blonde womanâa young woman in whom virtually every parent watching pictured their own daughterâstabbed in the neck by a career criminal. These people then found out the murderer had been released from jail 14 times over.
Fact 2. Two days later, tens of millions of Americans watched a video of Charlie Kirk get murdered speaking to college students. Millions of these people knew who Charlie was; millions of them didnât. Upon seeing the video, however, these normal Americans from across the land and across the political spectrum agreed that he was the victim of a terrible, fundamentally unjustifiable crime, and their hearts broke in sympathy for his family. Good people who had never even heard the name Charlie Kirk before wept.
Fact 3. Immediately after seeing the footage of a peaceful young man get shot in the neck, these same people logged onto Facebook and Instagram (remember, we are talking about regular Americans, not perpetually online Twitter or Bluesky users) and saw some of their local nurses, school teachers, college administrators, and retail workers celebrating this horrific crime. Not just defending it, but cheering it.
These are all facts. You may not like the implications of these facts, and we can certainly debate the underlying causes thereof, but, indisputably, they are nevertheless factual statements.
Hereâs what it means for you, the Democrats reading this:
These normal, middle-of-the-road, non-political citizens just become politically active. They realized that politics cares about them, even if they donât particularly care about politics. After watching Iryna Zarutska and Charlie Kirk both bleed out from the neck, they think their lives and the physical safety of their familiesâthe bedrock of human society, the foundation of Maslowâs hierarchy of needsâdepend on political activation, whether they desire it or not.
These people are now sprintingânot jogging, not walking, but racingâto the right. Because they blame you guys for everything that just happened.
When they see footage of Decarlos Brown stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death, they donât see just one demon-possessed man. They picture every university administrator, HR bureaucrat, and DEI apparatchik that ever lectured them about systemic racism, the âcarceral state,â or the need to release violent crime suspects without bail in the name of social justice.
They then think back to conversations theyâve had with their cop friendsâtheir buddy from high school who quit the force after getting tired of being called a racist, their friend at the local YMCA who vents about having to release career criminals because Soros-funded prosecutors arenât willing to file chargesâand they realize everything the left has told them over the last five years has been utter bullshit.
And they blame you. Because, even if you count yourself as a moderate Democrat, your party supported the district attorneys, city council members, and mayors that let fictitious concerns about mental health and racial justice supersede very real concerns for their familyâs safety.
When these Americans see blood erupt from the side of Charlie Kirkâs neck, they donât see just a martyred political activist. They think of every extreme leftist theyâve ever met who (1) calls anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton a fascist and (2) constantly jokesââjokesââabout punching Nazis and âbashing the fash.â
They realize that there really do exist people who wish to see them dead for their moderately conservative political beliefs, their Christian faith, and even the color of their skin. They ask themselves if the violence visited upon Charlie might one day show up on their own doorstep.
And they blame you. Because, even if youâre just a center-of-the-road liberal, you lacked the courage to police your own ranks. You let modern-day Maoist red guards run loose across every facet of society, and what started with social-media struggle sessions has now turned to 30-06 bullet holes.
When these Americans log onto social media and see their neighbors justifying, celebrating, glorifying murder, they realize that some who walk among them are soulless ghouls at best, literally demon-possessed at worst. These peopleâwhether they faithfully attend church every Sunday or only attend with relatives once a year, on Christmas Eveâstart talking about things like spiritual warfare. They implicitly understand that no normal human casually celebrates the mortal demise of a peaceful person.
And they blame you. Because, even if you condemned Charlie Kirkâs murder, they probably havenât seen you condemn those in your own movement who cheered it on. They view you as complicit in allowing heartless fellow travelers to celebrate death, and it repulses them.
For all of these situations, what has your response been? Nothing but bullshit.
In response to Iryna Zarutska bleeding out on the floor of a train, you post bullshit statistics about reductions in reported crime, when everyone whoâs ever been to a major urban center in the last decade knows that actual crime has skyrocketed, only for victims not to waste their time reporting it to cops that donât have the manpower to respond and prosecutors that seek to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanor citations.
In response to a 31-year-old man taking a bullet to the neck in front of his family, you post nothing but bullshit whataboutism.
> âWhat about January 6th?â (Honest answer: After you let Liz Cheney spend two years operating a star chamber in the House, combined with countless other failed attempts at âlawfareâ against Trump, no one cares anymore.)
> âWhat about Mike Lee making a dumb joke on Twitter about some guy in a mask in Minnesota?â (No one outside of Utah, DC, or Twitter knows who Mike Lee even is.)
> âWhat about Paul Pelosi?â (Thatâs not comparable to Charlie Kirk getting shot, and we all know it. And, again, Paul who?)
> âWhat about regulations on assault rifles?â (Thatâs not going to get you very far when one of these killers used a knife and the other one used a common hunting rifle.)
In response to teachers, healthcare workers, and thousands of other liberals cheering on Charlieâs murder, itâs nothing but more bullshit and misdirection.
> âItâs not THAT many people celebrating!â (Yes, it is. Everyone has seen it on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.)
> âI thought you guys didnât support cancel culture.â (We donât cancel people over their opinions; weâre more than happy to see people lose their jobsâespecially their taxpayer-funded jobsâfor actively cheering on murder, though. If you canât see the difference, thatâs your own shortcoming.)
All bullshit. Not even smart bullshit, but stale, mid-grade, low-IQ bullshit. Ordinary Americans see right through it, and they donât like how it smells.
You probably donât like hearing this. But you need to hear it.
Because Iâm right, and, as you reflect on this, you know Iâm right. The ranks of my political movement gained millions of righteously angry new members this week. We have a mandate to ensure these crimes never happen again, and thatâs exactly what we are now going to do.
If you want to keep a seat at the table as we do so, youâd better clean house and start policing your own.