- The DOJ deletes a study showing that most domestic violence is from the right;
- Trump et al know this, but still pursue vengeance against the left;
- The attorney general thinks hate speech is not covered by free speech;
- The vice president endorses Charlie Kirk’s views;
- How the idea of transgender people (and gays) shatters conservatives’ simplex thinking;
- How conservatives use the word “evil”;
- And a few JMG items.
Once again, as in most of my posts, these items aren’t about politics, per se. They’re about the limits and limitations of human nature, from which we may never escape. And the future of humanity is what science fiction is about.
\\
First, this afternoon:
404 Media, 16 Sept 2025: DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing
Subtitled “Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Trump administration’s promise to go after the ‘radical left’ a study showing most domestic terrorism is far-right was disappeared.”
Re-reported here:
AlterNet, Adam Lynch, 16 Sept 2025: Trump DOJ erases report showing far-right violence outpaces ‘all other types of terrorism’
But we know this already; again, see the chart in Paul Krugman’s post a few days ago, though of course this trend has been apparent for decades.
\\
They know “the left” isn’t to blame for Charlie Kirk’s murder.
NY Times, 15 Sept 2025 (on today’s front page): White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups, subtitled “Some of the highest-ranking officials in the federal government used Charlie Kirk’s podcast, guest-hosted by Vice President JD Vance, to lay out their plans.”
On what grounds? Perhaps this isn’t lying or delusion so much as pure retributive tribalism.
President Trump and his top advisers threatened on Monday to unleash the power of the federal government to punish what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.
Investigators were still working to identify a motive in the death of Mr. Kirk, a prominent conservative activist who was shot last week in Utah. The Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has said that the suspect had a “leftist ideology” and that he acted alone.
But the governor still hasn’t explained what he means by “leftist ideology.” Not murdering a transgender person when he had the chance? Or stoning a gay?
\\
These people supposedly took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution.
The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf, 16 Sept 2025: The Attorney General’s Attack on Free Speech, subtitled “Pam Bondi stated that the federal government will ‘go after’ Americans ‘if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.'”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, America’s highest-ranking law-enforcement official, declared in an interview posted to YouTube yesterday that federal law enforcement will “go after” Americans for hate speech. “There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech,” she said. In fact, there is no hate-speech exception to the First Amendment.
In a post on X this morning, Bondi tried to qualify her comments. But the fact that the attorney general of the United States publicly misrepresented long-standing American speech law is ominous, especially in the context of threats made by other Trump-administration officials, their allies, and President Donald Trump himself to target “left-wing” organizations that the administration says promote violence. When ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked the president this morning what he made of Bondi’s hate-speech comments, Trump responded, “She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart.” Let’s be clear about what’s happening: At a moment of polarization and political violence, the president and his attorney general are attacking a constitutional right that protects all Americans from abusive majorities.
“You have a lot of hate in your heart?” Once again, he’s projecting.
\\
Again, these people supposedly took oaths of office to uphold the Constitution. Not to preach anti-Constitutional values on partisan podcasts.
Slate, Molly Olmstead, 15 Sept 2025: J.D. Vance Said Some Pretty Serious Things on Charlie Kirk’s Podcast Today, subtitled “Surrounded by prominent Trump officials, plus Tucker Carlson, the vice president did not hold back.”
…for most of the two hours that followed … Vance and his powerful guests spoke of Kirk’s political acumen on the campaign trail and praised his commitment to unifying the MAGA movement. These officials (plus Carlson) described Kirk as an idealist, as a friend, as a kind and tolerant human.
But the tone shifted starkly at the show’s end, when Vance gave his closing monologue. In his final words, speaking with the weight of the vice presidential office, Vance insisted that the country must deal with what he described as a serious problem of organized, widespread, terrorist violence from the left.
“This is not a both-sides problem,” he said. “One side has a much bigger and [more] malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told. That problem has terrible consequences.”
Again, he’s lying, or delusional. And by valorizing the likes of Charlie Kirk, the right is showing exactly what its values are. And they’re nothing do with being “kind and tolerant.”
Sample:
He began his concluding monologue by describing an article from the progressive magazine the Nation. The article, which had critiqued Kirk’s political legacy, “lied about a dead man,” Vance said. (The “lie” was in describing Kirk as saying “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously.” In reality, he had listed four prominent Black women, including Michelle Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who he said had benefited from affirmative action, because they “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.”) “Well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so as to justify his murder,” he said. “This is soulless and evil.”
Oh, OK, so Kirk meant that only *those four black women* lacked brain processing power!? He should be a lawyer! Later, noting this:
His organization had, for example, launched an entire “watch list” targeting professors, that used as its justification the idea that conservative students needed protection. Vance did something similar in urging viewers to report anyone celebrating Kirk’s death to their employers. Where Vance went further, though, was in speaking from a place of great institutional power—one heartbeat away from the presidency—and in slotting critical political speech into the same category as actual domestic terrorism.
Once again, so much for free speech. It’s closer to totalitarian regimes in which any criticism of dear leader leads to being disappeared.
\\
This weird obsession with trans people reveals the fractures in conservative thinking: to them, everything is black or white, up or down, this or that, so the existence of anything in between cracks their minds into two pieces. Or more. They can’t handle it.
Advocate, 15 Sept 2025: Charlie Kirk DID say stoning gay people was the ‘perfect law’ — and these other heinous quotes
I’m not going to bother listing any of the quotes. Yes, he did support stoning gays, based on biblical law. And quite a number of his quotes are about trans people being to blame for everything, as if they violate the moral order of the universe.
\\
The simplex thinking of the right is evidenced by their use of the word “evil.” From a Facebook post:
This is not sourced, and it’s barely readable, but it’s certainly plausible.
\\
Finally, just a few headlines from the aggregate site JMG.
- Pentagon Has Punished Dozens Over Kirk Comments (Free speech!)
- Rubio: I’ve Begun Deporting Critics Of Charlie Kirk (Because Charlie Kirk was a god and America is a MAGA theocracy!)
- NPS To Remove Slavery Exhibits At Multiple Locations (Because America is perfect and always has been! You are perfect! We are perfect! The Others are evil!)
