The Assassination of Charlie Kirk
Added 2025-09-19 16:53:56 +0000 UTCThe assassination of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, seemed to change the landscape of American politics in an instant, inspiring a startlingly unanimous battlecry of vengeance from the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Trump White House. In this episode, Matt and Sam respond to this ominous moment, analyzing Kirk’s legacy, the politics of martyrdom, and the dangers that lurk ahead.
Two notes: (1) This episode was recorded on Tuesday 9/16, before some of the administration's specific repressive efforts — e.g. the FCC intimidating ABC into suspending late night host Jimmy Kimmel — had taken place. (2) Matt's sound quality is diminished toward the end of episode because of a technical problem with his mic.
Comments
Great ep
Peter Lyngso
2025-09-28 03:36:54 +0000 UTCYeah, great episode, but I agree with an earlier comment. You should make it available to the public. It’s too important.
Mark Garralda
2025-09-27 17:40:02 +0000 UTC100% agree. When they finish their immigrant deportations, the camps they’ve built will not be empty and shut down. Very obvious where this is heading and people with platforms should be much louder about it
Addison
2025-09-25 19:00:26 +0000 UTCNice episode. I noticed that following the assassination and the trans partner news, two Republican members of Congress (Nancy mace and Ronny Jackson), as well as Laura Loomer, Matt Walsh, and Elon Musk, all called for all transgender people to be locked up indefinitely in asylums. Maybe I’m just too sensitive, but shouldn’t that type of extreme rhetoric matter more, to like, someone other than trans people? I don’t hear mainstream dem liberals talking about it, I rarely hear smarty lefty internet boys talking about it. I see trans people like Masha Gessen sounding the alarm, but it’s mostly silent from everyone else. A huge portion of the right has centralized trans people as the prime scapegoat and talks about transgender people nonstop in very extreme and alarming terms (mass indefinite incarceration being publicly endorsed by legislators and the right’s biggest figures— Is that not wild?) and the center, libs, leftists are basically silent. I hold out hope that this is because people on the left don’t know how to talk about trans people and not that it’s because no one really cares.
J English
2025-09-24 18:28:48 +0000 UTCI attended a counter demonstration to a Kirk vigil in Canada and the vigil was very very evangelical christian focused and american focused, a lot of american flags in Canada. A lot of simpering "you need Jesus" barked and "Christ is King" screamed at us. Felt that christian love that only the worst evangelicals give off
Brian Jenkins
2025-09-24 12:47:29 +0000 UTCtwo thoughts 1) Warning this is babble, but in a pod that references Freud and VD Volkan‘s Chosen Trauma 💌 let me evoke a different but complimentary tradition (I am laughing at myself with my excess). Robert Plutchik in 1980 had a wheel of emotion of 8 base / basal emotions all mammals have to have, and then from those 8 motivational emotions more complicated emotions occur (blending two or more things), and eventually the signifier the letter “I” appears as an ego to move along the world. Well when you mix “fear” and “disgust and other negative feedback” this yields “shame” but also “prudishness” a form of pride which is also not quite a perfect synonym to pride yet prude shares a language origin with pride, a cousin word / a doublet. Note fear and disgust are 3 petals away in the 8 petal emotion model which means they are emotions that have opposite directional valence, with moving towards and away from the object *simultaneously* and thus it is a more cognitive emotion this shame and can not be an instinctual emotion, it is learned and a habit of thought with transference not just a spontaneously felt right now. Thus it is a social emotion this shame. This theory / model of emotions suggest the most common form of cope as a defense mechanism is to do “Anger” and “Trust” since Anger is 4 petals away from Fear and Trust is 4 petals away from Disgust. Anger+Trust is “Dominance” … pretty much what we see here exactly with Volkan’s Chosen Trauma. This is Fin for thought 1 💭 ===== Thought 2 is a silly request but I am a big fan of Tad Delay the writer (I was recommended him years ago by Richard Seymour). He is at the intersection of several of the special interests of both you Matt and Sam. Critical Theory, Religion Scholar (his PhD), Lacan, Philosophy, etc. He has several books two of which are (2019) Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want? and (2024) Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change. 2) The second thought is Tad may make a great guest if you ever want to do an episode about these subject matters in the future. ===== Thank You and please take care Jesse, Sam, Matt 🙂
Matthew Theisen
2025-09-23 14:04:45 +0000 UTCCharlie Kirk was a modern-day St. Paul. Discuss
Matt Gately
2025-09-20 02:34:17 +0000 UTCI know you guys didn’t end on the most hopeful note here but just listening to you both discuss it in such an articulate, thoughtful way was really grounding…I was also overcome with an immediate trepidation when I heard about this (I was actually listening to the Majority Report, where Emma and Sam broke the news after an IM alerted them to it…I watched Emma react to the video and decided I didn’t need to see it) fearing what this meant, what it might be used to justify. I’m still afraid of these things, tbh, but this episode helped me metabolize it a bit beyond my own spiraling, disorganized thoughts. The response to the Kimmel thing gives me a shred of hope that the right wing may be overplaying their hand in their reckless rush to take advantage of this situation.
Sara
2025-09-20 01:32:32 +0000 UTC
