Over the past eight or nine days, I’ve repeatedly heard those on the Right use the phrase, “They just can’t help themselves.”
Most often, its use follows the telling of yet another story about those on the Left, those who seem able, with extraordinary precision and clarity, to identify and cull from the sea of as-yet mostly-unavailable evidence, a scintilla of “extreme right-wing rhetoric” or “alt-right violence” in any horrific and/or tragic situation which escapes the “local news” angle and careens onto the national stage.
(Just to clarify, this post isn’t about those on the Left who take such situations and plead for compassion and understanding for the perpetrators, à la the Mayor of Charlotte, NC in the Iryna Zarutska case, or those who find themselves “moved” by the tragic love story of Tyler Robinson and his boyfriend Lance Twiggs, as it’s expressed the the text messages between the two in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, à la ABC news reporter Matt Gutman. Although I suppose they can’t help themselves either.)
It’s more about the politicians, pundits, talking heads (but I repeat myself) who, at a time when tens of millions of Americans–many of them quite young–are mourning the taking of the life of one of the most influential Conservative voices in the country, simply can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the horror of the moment and of the ideology which perpetrated it.
The current poster child for this movement is Jimmy Kimmel, a late-night TV talk-show host I don’t think I’ve ever watched a moment of. Glad, at this point in my life, I didn’t waste the time.
On Monday night, this was Kimmel’s contribution–as a public figure–to healing the nation:
The MAGA gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid [!] who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
By this time, the shooter’s political proclivities were becoming known, as was the fact that he was living with a trans furry. Or is it a “furry trans?” Sorry, I don’t know the correct order of precedence in the current Leftist hierarchy. Nor do I know how many points Robinson may have accrued for living with one, rather than being one (because we didn’t know then, and may not know ever, where he was on either or both “spectrums.” No need to weigh in, TMI).
On Tuesday night, by which time the Utah County DA had read out the charges and the lengthy explanation of the circumstances, and Robinson’s parents had spoken out some more about their son’s political awokening, rather than stepping back, retrenching, and trying again, Kimmel had this to say:
Many in MAGAland are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk…The President and his henchmen are doing everything they can to fan the flames so that they can, I guess attack people on the “dangerous Left.” [Author’s note: I added the scare quotes around the words “dangerous Left.” You can hear them in the audio, and in what follows in the longer quote, which you’re free to look up.]
By Wednesday, Nextstar, Sinclair, and Disney had had enough of the blowback, and Kimmel’s show was pulled for the immediate future. To the best of my knowledge, it may not be gone forever, and it may be back. That knowledge hasn’t stopped the “We are all Jimmy Kimmel” protests, and the agonized meltdowns among the Left, who appear far more sympathetic to the idea that a has-been “star” who’s paid $16 million a year to shill for the Democrat party while he loses money for the network he appears on is temporarily out of work than it does to an actual assassination in which a person lost his life, a wife lost her husband, two children lost their father, and tens of millions of their grieving fellow citizens lost a mentor and a leader.
Apparently, they just can’t help themselves.
I wish they were the only ones.
I find myself obliged to mention many on the Right–those suffering from extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome–who don’t seem to be able to help themselves either.
(Just to clarify, I distinguish between those with what I consider to be extreme cases of Trump derangement, most of whom I think are on the Right, and those extremists on the Left, most of whom I consider to be just generally deranged. The predicate for such an argument can be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which describes both Situational Anxiety Disorder (TDS) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Leftism). Prove me wrong, as Charlie Kirk himself might have said.)
So on the Right we have those folks who are seemingly incapable of criticizing either Trump or anything his administration might do or try to do, without slandering, demeaning, or taunting anyone who has–either reluctantly or full-throatedly–ever supported Trump about anything. I can point to posts on this site where people have thought it not enough to try to start a conversation by criticizing (just for example) that nitwit Pam Bondi’s recent comments on the non-existent “hate speech” phenomenon simply on the merits, but have found it necessary to to do so by suggesting that–because of Bondi’s idiocy–anyone who has ever supported Donald Trump must be on a one-way path to becoming a member of the Democrat party and presumably–for I am repeating myself–a Leftist. The thought that there are those who generally support Trump, but who think Bondi is a daft brush (millions of us, if social media is anything to go by) doesn’t seem to have occurred, and probably hasn’t registered.
Then there are those posts mocking Trump and his administration from great heights of moral, political, and pretended intellectual superiority and announcing that their author[s] can’t wait to see how Trump’s moronic flunkeys [my words, but clearly implied] on the site “defend” him in this-or-that instance.
It seems they just can’t help themselves.
I’ve been on this site for almost fifteen years. I’ve survived the SSM wars, the Romney Wars, the SoCon Wars, the Trump Wars, and all the rest of the RicoWars before, after, and in-between.
My mother used to say about a particularly awful, and exceptionally long-lived, acquaintance, “I guess she’s just too mean to die.” Well, I’m just too mean to leave. Which is why I’m still here as a witness.
What I do know, for sure, is that when people on this site start attacking categories of people, some of which include dozens or more of their fellow members, rather than simply having spats with an individual over a specific point of view, people do start leaving. We’ve lost hundreds, on both sides, over the years.
“Oh, well,” you say. “Such turnover is normal on social media sites. People come and go.”
But this is a small community, and these were people who were very active on the site, people who are still missed, and people who are still frequently, and often fondly, mentioned here. Had it not been for the few who “couldn’t help themselves,” perhaps many would not have quietly self-deported, and would still be around. And the site would be better for it.
(Just to clarify–again–I support the forced deportation of the few who “couldn’t help themselves” in ways that made it impossible for them to continue to belong. But many times that number have left because the book here was, in their eyes, no longer worth the candle. And that is sad.)
Finally there are the few (so far) on the Right who seem to be unable to help themselves elbowing their way into the matter of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and making it all about themselves, in order to push their own agenda, or perhaps their pretensions to inherit his mantle. I hope Tucker Carlson knows he is too old for that. Candace Owens (who left TPUSA under a cloud) is not. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a class by herself.
The fact that they seem to be doing their best, in some sort of distorted mirror image of what’s going on on the Left, and in light of the known facts, to make the Jews responsible for Kirk’s assassination while, at least in Owens’s case, threatening to reveal more if she doesn’t get her way is–on the one hand–so predictable, and on the other–so appalling that worlds (almost) fail me. Best I can come up with is “They cannot help themselves.”
And the fact that Charlie Kirk’s pastor, 48 hours before Charlie’s funeral, felt obliged to put out a message that rebuked Owens for her conspiracy theorizing (including that Kirk was in the throes of converting to Catholicism, something no-one who knew him seems to have believed for a moment), is perhaps saddest of all.
Let us say a prayer for Charlie Kirk. And also one that all those who speak at his funeral/memorial on Sunday should find it in themselves to help themselves.
Cross-posted from Ricochet.
