Mediocre white men
So, another mediocre white man has died. The world should shrug its shoulders and move on. After all, Charlie Kirk shrugged his shoulders every time a Black man was suffocated by a policeman’s knee on his neck, every time children were gunned down in classrooms by another white man with a “mental illness,” and every time Palestinians in Gaza were ripped to shreds by Israel using American-made bombs.
For Charlie Kirk was not just a mediocre white man. He was a misogynistic, genocide-supporting, race-baiting, gun rights-loving, LGBTQIA+-phobic, smug white supremacist asshole, with, unfortunately, an influential platform among young white conservatives.
In short, he was the darling of the conservative Right, the symbol of the future of the Republican Party, the white Christian nationalist’s wet dream.
The irony of it all
And now, the world is being ordered to mourn him, extol his specious greatness, and celebrate his uncompromising American values. The president of dog whistles, Donald Trump, ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in the US capital to honor the fall of a man who was, in a supremely ironic plot twist (or perhaps not), a casualty of the very violence he instigated, promoted, and cheered on when directed toward those he and his ilk constantly othered. That very man who was so fiercely protective of his second amendment rights that he justified gun deaths as necessary collateral damage, was taken out by a bullet to his neck in a public space, surrounded by young students.
This was not some school shooting by some disgruntled teenage incel who couldn’t get a date. This was a precise, coldly executed, military-level assassination by sniper fire. By a fellow white person. You know the executioner was white; if they had been any other color, it would have been all over the news, identity immediately revealed, the assassin tarred and feathered (metaphorically, of course), with pundits having a field day bloviating about the death of civility in America, the loss of humanity, and the chasm of racialized hate in society, saying ‘can’t we all just get along?’
These talking points will still be raised, trust me, now that the “evidence” points to an antifa transgender sharpshooter. Allegedly. Yeah, yeah, and the United States waged the global war on terror to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Why was he assassinated and by whom—or perhaps more accurately—why was he sacrificed at the altar of political expedience, are questions that will be speculated upon for days, weeks, and months to come, despite “official” pronouncements. The alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, MAGA to the core, has been turned in by his own father. But did he really do it?
No one mourns the wicked
The real question is, however, why some deaths are worthy of mourning, while others are ignored? Who decides who has the right to be mourned, singled out, flags lowered in respect, and who is thrown into the graveyard of anonymity? Why is one white man’s murder of greater value, generating a copious amount of condolences in the form of tweets, news coverage, and social media posts, while the prime minister of Yemen’s assassination by Israel (yet again) is shamefully underreported, much less lamented?
Mediocre white men, I’d hazard a guess. From the same lineage that celebrated the deaths of Black and brown people throughout the centuries. The same people who made a spectacle of the lynching of Black men. Their Sunday entertainment, so to speak, followed by church, like the “exemplary” Christians they were.
In her novel “Half of a Yellow Sun,” Chimamande Ngozi Adiche writes of an exchange between Olanna and her Black American friend, Edna. ‘“You know what always amazed me?” she asks Olanna, as if she had not told her a day previously. “That civilized white folk wore nice dresses and hats and gathered to watch a white man hang a black man from a tree.”’
Kirk’s is not a death to celebrate, I agree. Neither is it one to eulogize with exaggerated praise. I take no pleasure in his murder, though I must admit I would cackle with glee every time he parked himself in front of young leftists in his signature “debate me” format—only to see his racist, self-righteous, and often cruel arguments upholding white supremacy and the myth of American greatness be demolished by kids with deeper intellects and sharper critical thinking skills who understand the intersectionality of all the issues we face in the world today.
But I’m not going to do a Terrance Hayes, the American poet, who wrote a sonnet about another mediocre white man that begins:
“Glad someone shot deserved to be shot finally,
George Wallace. After you send your basket of balms
And berries for the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham,”
Sadly, mediocre white men may well be the Western world’s largest, most insidious, and most toxic export. One merely has to observe the utter lack of quality in many of our elected officials to realize that mediocrity serves the status quo (and enriches them in the process).
I know all about mediocre white men. I dated quite a few of them. I even married one.
