It’s a regular science fiction trope. Whether it’s The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ alien pod people replicating humanity, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s parasites taking over people’s brains, Supernatural’s demons possessing human form, or just the standard vampire movie, the situation is familiar: The person you knew and loved looks the same, or at least looks familiar, but his essence is gone. He is simply a meat suit wrapped about an alien being.

I kept thinking of that trope as I considered the amazingly difficult decision that Tyler Robinson’s parents made: They turned him over to law enforcement, even though they knew that the punishment for first-degree murder in Utah can include the death penalty. Those who have praised the parents for the morality driving their decision are right. Their son allegedly committed an utterly heinous act, and they could not be complicit in it.

Image created using AI.

What I’ve wondered, though, is whether the person they turned over to law enforcement, aside from a superficial familiarity, bore any relationship to the child they bore and the man they raised. My bias in this regard comes from my experience at the end of my mother’s life.

For most of my life, my mother was this energetic dynamo. She had a lot of demons (a childhood of divorce, dislocation, a Japanese concentration camp, and war), but the woman who raised me was also fun, social, upbeat, and incredibly charming, with innumerable wonderful people who badly wanted to be her friend. As I grew from child to woman, she was my best friend.

In her last decade, though, everything that made my mom a delight vanished. All that was left was a querulous, paranoid, antisocial, prescription-drug-addicted, deeply depressed person. For the last ten years of her life, although she lived (as she had wished) in a managed care facility, I was the frontline of her care, taking her shopping and to appointments, handling her finances, and talking to her daily—and, of course, visiting her regularly and (when she was able) taking her to my home.

But here’s the thing: I was taking care (loving care, I hope) of a stranger out of respect and love for the mother who had raised me, a woman who, in my mind, had died a long time before. Mom’s spirit and soul were gone, but the remnant continued to be my responsibility.

From all indications, up until his last year of high school, Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer was a bright, happy young man. And then something changed. Was he mentally ill, which drew him to extreme leftism? Or did the leftism inculcated in him in high school, his one year at college, and the social and sexual circles in which he eventually moved, turn him into someone capable of tremendous evil?

If it’s the latter, the alleged killer wouldn’t be the first person to be “fundamentally transformed” thanks to leftism, a change made manifest when you look at how young women redesign their exteriors to match their changed interiors.

Irish ???????? singer Bambie Thug before and after going woke ????

How it started: How it's going: pic.twitter.com/IZnFC9S7ob

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) May 14, 2024

A parent posted this photo of her daughter before and after two years away at college

Why the hell would anybody send their kid to these indoctrination camps anymore? pic.twitter.com/WaWGOHQNRz

— TYLER™ (@AmericanVet0311) September 23, 2024

Before college indoctrination.
After college indoctrination. pic.twitter.com/kGrzr9vEzf

— AMERICAN WOMAN ???????? (@LuvMyManInBlue) September 17, 2025

Perhaps he was a good kid before he went to college.

It seems to be the same effect that happens to many kids across America and we must end the indoctrination of our children because it's destroying our nation... pic.twitter.com/k62nOxRbLF

— Thick Shelled Egg ???? (@ThickShelledEgg) September 12, 2025

This liberal gave up contact with her family because they disagree about politics.
She contemplates the fact that her grandparents, who raised her, will pass away without her ever speaking to them again, and seems to justify it.
Imagine being this evil. pic.twitter.com/XmlQ2h2Buk

— One Bad Dude (@OneBadDude_) November 26, 2024

The biggest change, though, is when men and women insist that they are no longer their biological sex, but have become, instead, one of the left’s dozens of other so-called “gender identities.”

Many of the people who become part of the leftist Borg abandon all human decency in the process:

Man pretending to be a woman says he doesn't feel bad for the parents of the children kiIIed by the Minnesota transgender church shooter because they are Christians.pic.twitter.com/oMIenz0sZq

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 28, 2025

This liberal says they did Charlie Kirk’s daughter a favor by murdering him. This isn’t an uncommon opinion. Many of them believe this. The other half just think she should’ve been killed alongside her father. pic.twitter.com/CMZDCq7Dr3

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 15, 2025

A memorial honoring Charlie Kirk at @UNCWilmington has been repeatedly defaced by unhinged leftist students.

One female student simulated farting on it while another vandalized the memorial by tossing paint on it.

DISGUSTING pic.twitter.com/Imk5moXi1K

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 16, 2025

So it is that you raise a dear little boy, expecting him to become a man, get a job, meet a nice young woman, get married, and start a family, or a little girl, expecting her to do the same (except meeting a nice young man)—and instead, you get a raging, perpetually angry person, who hates his or her own body, who hates you, who hates America, and who especially hates morality. This is not your child. This is a simulacrum of your child. Your child “died” a long time ago.

There are, of course, people who raise their children this way, but those people aren’t the alleged killer’s parents:

There are people who raise their kids like this, so don’t be surprised when you see so many celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death pic.twitter.com/Jf8kcKkXHv

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) September 14, 2025

So, again, I wonder whether the alleged killer’s parents were turning in their son or a stranger.

But before I end on a note that is too depressing, I want to assure you that all is not lost. The Overton window isn’t gently shifting back to the center; it’s zooming back. And that’s how you end up with these three boys—or really, given their moral decency and courage, I should call them young men:

Holy Smokes. These brave young students from Barrington High School in Rhode Island are going viral demanding the firing of a teacher, Benjamin Fillo.

Fillo was put on administrative leave following calling Charlie Kirk “a piece of garbage” on TikTok. pic.twitter.com/tM9sbmZ5kP

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) September 16, 2025

Keep the faith and, for God’s sake, vote whenever the opportunity arises. It’s no use being outraged now and passive when it counts.