Prove Me Wrong

A Final Rebuttal to a Life of Rhetorical Violence

Charlie Kirk is dead, assassinated under a cheap, pop-up tent that ironically said "prove me wrong" with a retort spray-painted in arterial blood beneath it: "absolutely I will." The air was thick with that signature blend of manufactured outrage and lukewarm hot dogs, the typical circus he thrived on, right before it all came to a sudden, violent end. He was in his element, fielding planted softballs from adoring fans and batting away genuine challenges with the smug, unearned confidence of a man who has never been truly held accountable for his words. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” an audience member asked, their voice a clean, sharp blade cutting through the sycophantic applause. Kirk, with a predator's grin that never quite reached his eyes, responded: “Too many.” There have been three.

The questioner, undeterred by the boos from the crowd, followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

Then his last words on earth were him bringing up that old recycled racist trope, a pathetic attempt to deflect and divide, his go-to move when logic failed him. “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked, scanning his followers for an approving nod. And that’s when the sharp crack of a high-velocity round echoed, a sound that cut through all the bullshit. He jerked, a marionette with its strings suddenly severed, and fell to the ground in a heap. A single, perfect shot. No one could have survived it. The chaos that followed was more profound and honest than any word he had ever spoken.

I do not celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, but I can tell you, dear reader, I have zero empathy or fucks to give. I reserve my empathy for the victims of the world he helped build. I do very much feel for his children that absolutely should not have had to see their father's life extinguished. They are innocent in this. He was not. His entire life’s work was the antithesis of innocence.

Let’s be clear about who this man was. Charlie Kirk was a grifter who parlayed his failure to get into West Point into a multi-million-dollar empire of hate. He founded Turning Point USA, a dark-money-drenched machine designed to harass college professors and churn out cheap, dishonest memes for the most intellectually lazy corners of the internet. His project was never about ideas; it was about identifying enemies and selling outrage. He built a brand on the idea that education is indoctrination, that expertise is elitism, and that cruelty is a sign of strength.

His platform was a toxic stew of recycled bigotry. The racism wasn't a bug; it was the central feature. His final words about "gang violence" were the perfect, ugly capstone to a career spent peddling fear of Black and brown people. This is the man who praised Kyle Rittenhouse, who used George Floyd’s death to fearmonger about riots, who pushed the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, and who consistently painted Black leaders as threats to the nation. He wasn't just some pundit; he was a merchant of hate, laundering old-school white supremacy for a new generation and making a fortune doing it.

And the misogyny was just as foundational. Kirk championed a vision of the world where women exist to serve men, where their bodily autonomy is subject to state control, and where their presence in leadership is a sign of civilizational decay. He mocked successful women, promoted a cartoonish "trad-wife" ideology, and spoke with dripping condescension to any woman who dared to challenge his fragile authority. He advocated for the erasure of so many people I love, building a movement that saw their existence as a problem to be solved. His entire career was one long, sustained act of rhetorical violence. So it’s hard to feel a thing now that a real, physical violence has provided the final punctuation mark.

In the aftermath, the predictable and hollow theater began, a nauseating display of manufactured grief from people who trade in performative outrage for a living. We've heard the same tired script from conservative and liberal voices, Democrats and Republicans denouncing this "political violence." Nancy Pelosi is tweeting ridiculous, toothless things as always. When Pelosi tweets "violence is never the answer," I want to scream back, "except for when it is the answer, ya old bitch." She speaks from a position of immense power and comfort, utterly detached from the realities of the violence her own government perpetuates daily. This country wouldn't even exist, only to be falling apart now, without revolutionary violence. The comfortable always condemn the tools of the desperate, tools they themselves would use if their gated communities were ever truly threatened.

The state is waging violence against us constantly, but its perpetrators wear suits and carry gavels, not guns. It's not just a declaration of war from a failed president on social media; it's baked into the system. It's state violence when they tear-gas peaceful protestors fighting for their lives. It's state violence when a militarized police force acts as an occupying army in Black and brown communities. It's state violence when you are evicted from your home to make way for a luxury high-rise. It's the slow violence of the for-profit prison system, the criminalization of homelessness, and the gutting of social safety nets. It's the grinding, daily violence of poverty wages, of a collapsing healthcare system, of poisoned water in Flint and polluted air in Cancer Alley.

The whole fucking reason this fascist tech oligarchy took root. We were lulled into a false sense of security by those who promised civility while doing nothing to stop the bleeding. Being complacent, being silent, being complicit—these are the currencies of the elite. Corporate Democrats and neoliberals will never risk their careers or their donor money to speak the truth. No, they'd rather "go high" while the rest of us are dragged low. They tell us to "reach across the aisle" as if the other side isn't holding a blowtorch. They tell us to vote harder while the machinery of our oppression grinds on, unopposed by anything more than a strongly worded fundraising email.

Violence has a place in change. Riots work. Beheadings work. This isn't an edgy opinion; it's a historical fact. Oppressive systems do not politely dismantle themselves upon request. They must be broken. For those facing existential threats from people like Kirk and the systems he championed, non-violence is not a strategy; it's a death sentence. We just need to, as a society, collectively decide that the rules they made up to protect their power no longer apply to us. We must change the system to something more diverse, ethical, and inclusive—one that prioritizes bodily autonomy and human dignity over profit and control.

So, am I celebrating Charlie Kirk's death? No, but I'm not unhappy about it. I feel nothing but a cold, quiet sense of resolution. He was a vile human being who built a fortune on advocating for the destruction of everything decent. And I'm not entirely convinced the "right" didn't plan this to get the martyr they so desperately needed. It’s all too convenient. Now we're seeing the crocodile tears from right-wing pundits talking about revenge and civil war, using his death to fuel the very fire he spent his life stoking. They will deify him, conveniently erasing the racism, the misogyny, and the sheer pathetic grift of it all. They finally have a body to point to, a justification for the fascist crackdown they've always wanted.

Do I think it's going to take a lot more "political violence" to fix this country? To cleanse it of the rot that people like him represent? Abso-fuckin-lutely I do. This wasn't the start of something. It was an answer to a question he had been asking his entire career.