Three Typical Bad Ways to React to an Assassination, & Some Life Advice (posted 9/19/25)

I was about to open this column by congratulating myself for writing 5 consecutive columns this week, and proclaim myself a national treasure. 

Then I remembered that within 13 years, Charlie Kirk started several of the most successful political operations in American history, flew a billion miles while producing probably 10,000 hours of public speeches and debates, had a wildly popular podcast and radio show, landed a great wife and fathered two kids, and made himself the most influential political figure with young people in the entire country, all while educating himself on the Western canon, the Bible, and the most significant philosophical and political issues of the day in his “spare” time.

But back to me: I mocked some leftists and channeled a little Sam Kinison, and misspelled “Sydney Australia” and “champagne.”  So I’ve got that going for me. 

Anyway, I thought I’d ease into the weekend by discussing a few of the leftists whose behavior these last 10 days has been repellent, but in ways that fit very common cultural patterns.  I was going to start with Ilhan Omar (#jihadenthusiast, #getyourhandsoffyourbrother) and her terrible interview with Mehdi Hassan, but I already got to that yesterday.

If you haven’t read that column, get on it.  (I mean, drop everything, and scroll down this page to see it, or find it at Martinsimpsonwriting.com)  But I pointed out she did the very common leftist move of smearing conservatives and conservatism without offering any evidence for her slanders, or else wildly distorting what the conservative actually said.

You know the pattern.  You say, “Men can’t become women.”  And Crazy-Eyes McGender Studies howls, “So you’re for transgenocide!  You want all the transgenders genocided!!”

So I’ll move on to three examples, picked from a very crowded field of contenders, each of which illustrates one of the most common bad traits of leftism.

First up is Hypocrisy, so let me introduce you to Canadian cabinet minister Nahanni Fontaine.  Right after Charlie was murdered, she posted a vile tweet that almost reads like a parody of leftist hatred, calling him all the usual names: “racist, xenophobic, transphobic, islamophobic, sexist, white nationalist mouthpiece.”  (And a partridge in a pear tree.)  She also accused him of “standing for nothing but hate.”

So far, so typical.  In any politically healthy country, such a heartless post would mean that Fontaine blew it.  (Stupid dad joke for 100, Alex!)  But this was Canada, so nobody knew what to expect.

But even amongst the enervated castrati Canucks, there was enough outrage to produce a video compilation of Fontaine’s past self-righteous statements, which included nearly a dozen repetitions of the sentence, “When someone shows you who are they, believe them.”

This was delivered in such a tone of smug self-righteousness that gag reflexes were triggered all over America’s evil top hat, I’m guessing.

But despite the fact that Fontaine’s vile post had just definitively shown everyone exactly who she was, she tried to convince them not to believe her, by posting the most transparently false statement since Slick Willy told us that he did not have sex with that woman.

She released an “apology” that said, “Violence has no place in our democracy…. In a world too often divided, we should strive to show empathy to everyone, even those we didn’t agree with.” 

Instead of saying, “Yes, we should.  And you did the opposite of that.  So hit the snowbank,” – Or whatever Canadians say instead of “hit the bricks,” – her hypocritical and false apology was accepted, and she kept her job.

Because: Canada.

The second bad leftist trait is arrogance, and that was very well personified in the person of George Abaraonye (and that’s the last time I’ll spell his last name correctly, because it’s not worth wasting time to look it up again).  He is the incoming president of the Oxford Union, the elite debating society that I wrote about in Tuesday’s column. 

Charlie Kirk put in a very strong performance there a few months ago, which I recommend that everyone watch if you’re a fan of intellectual jousting, and one of his opponents was this George Abalone.  He was the least impressive of the Oxfordians. 

The other debaters and the audience dressed informally but normally, but Mr. Abu Dhabi couldn’t manage that.  He showed up in slippers, sweat pants, a black t-shirt and dreads(!)  He was also not particularly articulate, which one would think might come in handy if you were engaging in a…DEBATE AT OXFORD FREAKIN’ UNIVERSITY! OH! OHHH!!!

Sorry, my latent Kinison reflex has been kicking in a lot lately. 

Anyway, George Abracadabra tried to make a muddled argument about patriarchal gender roles that I think he meant as a passive-aggressive suggestion that Charlie’s traditional views are sexist and icky.  Charlie responded that males are actually denigrated in elite circles today, and challenged him about the use of the phrase “toxic masculinity.”

Abercrombie responded with a little word salad to the effect that toxicity is inherent in maleness.  When Charlie asked him why no one condemns toxic femininity, Alcazar said that comes from patriarchy’s terrible effects on women.  So both forms of gender toxicity arise from the same issue, I guess, which is that males suck. 

When Charlie asked why, if males are so all-powerful, the male suicide rate in the (feminized/feminist) West is higher than ever before, and higher than the female rate, Abbadabadoo stuttered around, and then said, “Austerity.”

So Charlie pointed out that men throughout impoverished Africa – where most are married with children but dirt poor – have wildly lower suicide rates than those of the affluent, lefty, beta-male onanists in London.  (I’m paraphrasing.)   There was no cognizable answer from slipper boy.     

Overall, George Alopecia displayed the familiar unearned, undeserved and entitled arrogance of a callow youth who’s been pampered in a left-dominated bubble his whole life.  There were several other people of color among the debaters, and they were sharp, but George had “DEI hire” written all over him. 

So you won’t be surprised to learn that when the news of Charlie’s murder broke – just a few months after Charlie had politely and respectfully outclassed George in a civilized debate – he posted two messages saying, “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f**king go!” and “Loool!”  

John Fetterman’s stroke turned him into a much smarter and better man.  I hope that a stone gargoyle falls off a wall onto George Apocalypto at Oxford, and does the same for him.

Finally we have the character deformation centered around Gender Madness, and for this one, the obvious candidates are Charlie’s killer and his disturbed boyfriend.

Media reports have informed us that the boyfriend “identified as a male at birth,” but now “identifies as female” and is “transitioning into a female.” 

Annndddd… strike three! 

We don’t really need to beat this dead, gender-fluid horse again, do we?  No one “identifies” as male or female at birth; they are born either male or female.  I can say that I identify as the Obama Presidential Library, but that doesn’t make me an ugly architectural monstrosity crammed with dishonest documents. 

And when you translate “a male transitioning into a female” from delusion-speak to reality-talk, it becomes “a male undergoing damaging mutilations and/or chemical interventions to transition into a male who more closely resembles an unattractive female than he used to.”

But it wasn’t sad enough that Lance was struggling with gender dysmorphia.  (By the way, he renamed himself “Luna.”  Because of course he did.) He had to throw the weird fetish of being a “furry” – someone who gets sexual gratification from dressing up in animal costumes – into the mix, too.

Now I am generally not one to judge people harshly about sexuality.  Sexual attraction is powerful, and its influence has made fools of all of us at some time in our lives.  It’s also frustratingly irrational.  In addition to the common attractions to one of several main body parts, many people are wildly attracted to more eccentric parts, for example. 

Victorian men could apparently be wildly turned on by a woman’s exposed ankle.  Some people today are enthralled by feet, which is idiotic.  (Simpson’s First Rule of Human Behavior: Any attraction that I don’t share is by definition “idiotic.”)  Shortly after I met my smokeshow wife, she put her hair up on a hot day, and I discovered that the nape of her neck is extremely alluring.

That’s not idiotic.  (See the rule explained above.)  But it is definitely irrational.  Who watches women walk by and thinks, “Mmmmm, look at the cervical vertebrae on her!”? 

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Anyway, I was born in the late 19^th century.  (Central Illinois in the 1960s and ‘70s was exactly the same as in the 1880s, but with cars instead of horses.)  So I tend toward the traditional, and am not wild about needless change.  My wife has pointed out that one of the most common phrases she’s heard from me in recent years is, “Is X broken?”

For example, when millions of phantom votes appeared in electronic voting tallies for Joe Biden, I said, “Are paper ballots broken?”  When parents started steering their young boys into playing soccer, I said, “Is football broken?”  When eccentrics started getting iguanas and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs as pets, I said, “Are dogs broken?”

So the first time a tv news story came on about a furry convention, I turned to my wife.  But before I could say anything, she said, “Wait, let me guess,” and jumped up and started walking around the room, waving her arms and talking in a fake deep voice in a completely inaccurate impression of me.

“Is sex broken?  Does the missionary position or reverse cowgirl no longer work?  Do people have to dress up like raccoons and pandas? Are lingerie and French maid costumes no longer available?”

Or at least I think that’s what she was saying.  Honestly, I was too distracted by the slender, adorable back of her neck to follow.  

Perhaps I’ve said too much, again.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.

Take it from 19^th Century guy: Nothing good is going to come from spending your life online, developing a bunch of fetishes and making up fake genders and connecting to other confused people even more depressed and unmoored than yourself, enslaving yourself to benighted urges, and politics, and the toxic and disordered spirit of the age.  

That road leads to a life deformed by immiserating lies. Lies like, “Your country is evil, and must be destroyed to produce something better.” And “There is no God, and no moral order beyond your own desires.” And, “Why can’t a guy have a healthy, normal relationship with his boyfriend who is pretending to be a girlfriend who is pretending to be an enormous squirrel?”     

It’s not too late to reject all that.  Turn your back on racial and class hatred, and Bluesky, and the politics of envy, and politicians who feed your resentments and tell you you’re a victim. 

Get outside and touch grass, and make friends, and go to church.  Read some Thomas Sowell, and Shakespeare, and CS Lewis.  Watch some Charlie Kirk videos, and listen to some good music.  Fall in love with a good person and get married and have kids.

That’s going to take you to a very different place than those lonely rooftops in Butler, PA and Orem, UT, or those Christian schools in Tennessee and Minnesota where those lost souls gave in to their dark temptations and opened fire.    

Because the cardinal virtues aren’t broken.  But leftism and fighting reality are.

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!