Most of the people mourning Charlie Kirk do not actually care about him as a person. They care about the image, the role he played, and how his death can be used to serve a political narrative. If he had been unknown, those same voices would not be posting tributes. The sudden grief is selective and instrumental.
Kirk did not deserve to die. Violence does not resolve political conflicts. But his supporters demanding empathy need to face a contradiction. Charlie Kirk spent years saying empathy was weakness. He built his persona on toughness, ridicule, and dismissing compassion as a flaw. If that was his creed, why expect compassion from those who opposed him? Mourning him in the way they demand would not honor him, it would defy his own words.
The hypocrisy is also clear. Where was this outrage when Democrats and progressives were attacked? When Gabby Giffords was shot, the right downplayed it. When George Floyd was murdered, many mocked or justified it. When progressive protesters were killed, the far right cheered. The same circles demanding reverence for Kirk treated other deaths with cruelty. That double standard shows this is not about morality but tribal loyalty.
His legacy is not the noble image now being painted. He was not a statesman. He did not build communities, pass laws, or unify people. His career centered on amplifying outrage, spreading conspiracy theories, attacking marginalized groups, and dividing Americans. His influence came from keeping audiences angry, not from producing solutions. To present him now as a leader who left the country better off is dishonest.
Kirk’s real achievement was notoriety. He stayed in the spotlight by being provocative and divisive. He dismissed compassion, mocked opponents, and thrived on conflict. In death, his defenders are still trying to cast him as something he was not. The reality is that he left no record of service, only the memory of how effectively he kept people fighting.
This moment also cannot be separated from the larger climate. It was not only about Kirk. It was the atmosphere built by Trump’s movement, by ICE and DHS policies, and by courts too slow to check abuses. When institutions fail to hold anyone accountable, anger and fear grow until they boil over. Kirk may have been the individual targeted, but the frustration was aimed at a whole system that has left people exhausted and hopeless.
That is why the demand for universal reverence now rings hollow. You cannot preach cruelty, dismiss empathy, and mock suffering, then expect compassion when the violence comes back around. His death should not be celebrated, but it also should not be whitewashed. Honest mourning means admitting he helped create the very conditions that ended with his life being taken.
What remains is not the memory of a leader or a builder, but the legacy of a provocateur who chose division as his tool and lived long enough to be consumed by the environment he fueled.
But hey, at least he got the last word in.
