Just to briefly clarify, I’m not blaming you for my mental health snafu. It was going to happen regardless, and my break was intentional because whether I was being insulted or not, I wasn’t in a position to handle much of anything, much less discussions on death and violence. I apologize if it came off as if the two were causally linked.
Where I’d still push back a bit though is the concept of personal responsibility for the actions and policies of elected officials across the nation. I think the binary nature of our political system makes it such that it’s practically impossible for that to be the direct responsibility of individual voters. Short of me spending money and time I simply don’t and will never have, I cannot meaningfully influence public policy, directly or indirectly. If I think Dems are more correct about a larger amount of issues that matter to me than Republicans, I don’t have the luxury of ordering solutions a la carte. Unless you’d like for me to begin a new political movement where candidates are *slightly* less crazy to you, I’m not sure what you expect me to do about this, because shockingly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t calling me up for advice.
But these are differences in opinion on political matters and voting habits, and I wouldn’t dream of comparing that behavior to that of those celebrating Kirk’s death. What I find to have a common thread is not what you expect of me as a voter, but what you declare that says about me as a person. There’s a difference between not sugar coating something and aggressively attacking one’s character, and when you get angry about a topic such as criminality or trans people, I think you find yourself on the wrong side of that line more often than you care to admit.
But what I think triggers me personally is that when I express care for the criminally insane, Palestinian children or undocumented migrants, I’m accused of suicidal empathy. But when Charlie Kirk and others like him are essentially advocating for the elimination of trans people, is it not then suicidal empathy on their part to advocate for their well-being? My ire with the response from the left is not from misunderstanding why some of them may feel that way, it’s the abandonment of a virtue I hold dear and see others carelessly throw around as a badge of honor when it suits them, only to lose it when it doesn’t. When you sneer at the concept as a weakness, it does honestly come across as a bit empty when you suddenly demand it from others. I understand you have your own religious views and other principles that inform your sanctity for human life and opposition to criminality. For me, that’s empathy. So it frustrates me to no end that those who would belittle it in other cases now seek it, and very much frustrates me more when those who espouse it regularly just discard it when Charlie Kirk gets shot.
