The Moral Decay Debate: Charlie Kirk and Political Violence

While I, a radical left lunatic, according to extremist right-wingers, agree with what Ed Shoemaker of Lakeland said: That Charlie Kirk’s assassination is “a symptom of moral decay,” I don’t agree with him that it is all the fault of one side. It is not. Not at all. (Shoemaker’s letter is at the bottom of this post.)

Science indicates that the majority of killings in the USA occur from right-wingers, from conservatives, and from gun-loving folks, not the left. Since right-wingers, for the most part, reject science, it is easy for me to see why they do not include this information in their general knowledge of the world.

The fact is few average folks on the left had ever heard of Charlie Kirk before his assassination the day before the 9/11 anniversary, the last time Americans agreed on something. Unfortunately, for all our solidarity at that time, we still ended up attacking the wrong country. Let’s not do that again, like we’re doing now.

Republicans conflate, like they do with the words socialism and communism. While Democrats align with socialist ideologies, we are by far not communists. We place the blame for our crisis on the obscenely rich, the oligarchs of America, the autocrat in the White House, and MAGA.

We don’t persecute “others,” such as immigrants. We go after the right people, that is, the folks who are actually and maliciously causing us Americans harm every day; getting worse, every day.

A version of my remarks appeared in The Ledger today, 9/21/25, page 14A.