One of the most remarkable developments in the wake of the shooting of Charlie Kirk involves the response of the institutions to the mass eruption of social-media attacks -- amounting to the hundreds of thousands -- on Kirk and his family.
Who would have ever guessed that there could be that many soulless, noxious mutts infesting our national community? (Well, I might have, but I’m a lot more cynical than most.) But as shocking as this paroxysm has been, even more surprising is the response from corporations, universities, and other institutions. To put it bluntly, they’re being canned. From nameless loudmouthed college freshmen to prominent MSNBC talking head Matthew Dowd, they’re being given their walking papers and sent on down the road.
(Dowd’s name piqued something in my memory, so I made a point of looking him up. It turns out that Dowd, a longtime political tech, was employed for many years by George W. Bush, and in fact acted as Bush’s election strategist in 2004. Kinda sets you to thinkin’, don’t it? A few years ago, he wrestled with his conscience or something and joined -- some sources say “returned to” -- the Democrats. Since then, he’s been spouting DNC talking points. Sidney Blumenthal, who is kind of an authority on the topic, calls Dowd “an opportunist.” I guess he can always go back to the Republicans.)
Before the shooting, this wouldn’t have happened. Consider all the loathsome remarks following the Alexandria baseball diamond shooting or, for that matter, Butler and Mar-a-Lago. No effort (apart from Jack Black, who was under duress) was made to discipline any of the “it’s a hoax” or “too bad he missed” comments at the time. But today it’s different. Of course, some of this "discipline” takes the form of suspensions and investigations, and may prove toothless in the long run. But certainly not all of it. Steve Turley (AKA “the other Turley”) says that firings number in the tens of thousands, an impressive total in anybody's book, and something that would have been unimaginable even a few weeks ago.
My favorite among these involves the assistant manager of an Office Depot -- unkempt, obese, with dandelion hair -- who refused to print a poster for a candlelight vigil for Charlie Kirk and did it in the sneakiest way possible: cancelling the job without telling the customers until they returned to pick up the order so as to prevent them from taking their business elsewhere. She was given the boot as soon as corporate found out.
All this is new. Lefties have been immune to criticism for so long that it’s been taken as a fact of life. What we’re seeing now is a sea change in public attitudes. Something has given way, something that has previously held up against all opposition for generations. The times, as a noted Nobel-winning poet once put it, they are a-changin’.
It’s a great shame that a good man had to die for this to come to pass. It’s one of those ironies that we need to have but that we wish we could do without.
Image: AT via Magic Studio