'We Remain Adrift in an Ocean of Lies: 30 Hours After the Charlie Kirk Shooting'

(TPM) "Fire poured out of my eyes when I sat down at my computer and saw a Semafor email with the subject line 'National Reckoning.' They cooled when I opened the email and saw the top item was a PPRI poll from March 2025. ('National reckoning' turns out to be from an Atlantic article about Kirk’s close relationship with the Trump family which was quoted in the email.) The poll contains the worrisome news that only 53% of Americans 'completely disagree' with the statement that 'political violence is sometimes necessary.' The story comes into clearer focus when the result is broken down by people’s view of Donald Trump. Only 39% of Trump supporters (those with a favorable view of him) believe this while 66% of his opponents do."

"In other words, people who hold a favorable view of Donald Trump are overwhelmingly more likely to believe that political violence has a legitimate role in our society. The number of Trump supporters who believe this is 27% higher than that of his opponents. This is of course the least surprising thing imaginable to anyone who has lived in the United States or on earth for the last decade. But we live in a media ecosystem of ideational bullshit. So it yet comes as a breath of fresh air, a sublime encounter with reality."

"One thing to remember is that part of the current moment is sustained by the entirely fraudulent impression that 'they' — the left, the Democrats, the lunatics, pick depending on how much spittle Trump is spewing on a given day — were behind the very real assassination attempt on the now-president’s life one year ago. That is purely the work of drowning-out-volume-level insistence by the president’s supporters going back a year. Thomas Crooks didn’t really leave much trace of his political beliefs at all. But to the extent he did, he was a registered Republican and a diehard firing range gun nut. He may not have left a clear trail of articulate (in the poli-sci sense) right-wing beliefs, but he was clearly not a liberal or a member of the left. The belief that Trump and his supporters are besieged by threats of violence from the left — to the extent it isn’t a performative claim that people don’t actually believe — is based on the assumption that any violence directed at Trump supporters must be the work of his opponents toward the left. Left wingers are certainly capable of political violence, though at dramatically lower numbers than their opposites. (Did you even know that a guy radicalized against COVID vaccines shot up the CDC a month and killed a cop? Did I mention this PPRI poll I just saw?) But the truth is that Trump and his movement incite, perpetuate and provide permission for political violence in a way that is consistent, across-the-board, at saturation level in our society and some of it laps up on them."

"This is a fact, whatever we may find out about who was behind Kirk’s murder."

Continued at link:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-remain-adrift-in-an-ocean-of-lies-30-hours-after-the-charlie-kirk-shooting