It has been a tumultuous stretch of days in our national life since the assassination of Charlie Kirk on the afternoon of September 10. Let’s get an obligatory acknowledgement out of the way. It is never acceptable to celebrate such a death no matter how contentious and objectionable the views of the victim. That is a matter of simple human decency, based upon the fundamental moral instruction of treating others as we would be treated. As I write, Kirk’s memorial service is occurring in Arizona. This is not the time to examine and rebut his public stances point by point. We can return to that task at an appropriate point some distance from now. If Kirk’s supporters are correct that his major strength was his willingness to engage in honest debate, then a critical examination of his politics should be understood as a gesture of respect.
What is most disturbing at this point is the determined effort of the Trump administration and the MAGA movement to reap benefits from Kirk’s murder by using it as a pretext to quash opposition. When would the president find his Reichstag fire? An augury of such came with the beating of junior DOGE operative, Edward Coristine (aka “Big Balls”), on August 5 by a group of teenagers in D.C. This gave Trump an excuse to declare a law-and-order emergency in the capital and send in National Guard units from a number of red states. That incident was trivial compared to the impact of what happened on the campus of Utah Valley University. Every day brings fresh news of Trump attacking the 1st Amendment and attempting to shore up his authoritarian power. Earlier this weekend, he urged his lickspittle Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to ramp up investigations of political foes like Letitia James and James Comey, saying “we have to act fast.” This is no surprise, given Trump’s incessant mutterings in last year’s campaign that retribution would be a major aim of a second tour in the White House.
The repressive drumbeat actually predated Charlie Kirk’s demise. The incident at Texas A&M that brought about the firing of a professor, the busting back to the ranks of a dean and a department chair, and the resignation of a much-esteemed president started with a classroom recording this summer. In the X clip which went viral, a young student challenges the legality of what her professor is teaching, saying it is out of line with Trump’s executive order on there being two and only two genders. The dustup was clearly premeditated as the student reveals that she already has a meeting scheduled with the president in which she will present her “documentation.” This is exactly the kind of thing an organization named Professor Watchlist (under the aegis of Kirk’s Turning Point USA) for years has promoted, busting teachers for voicing (like John Thomas Scopes in 1925) religiously or politically objectionable content. I wonder what might have happened had that A&M student been in my Texas history class in which I have more than once this semester referred to the body of water off our coast as the “Gulf of Mexico”? This after all is also not aligned with “the law” as proclaimed by the wannabe despot in Washington. My president’s office is right down the hallway from my classroom and would have been quickly accessible to such a complainant. I’m confident the same shameless caving-in would not have occurred in Kingwood that took place in College Station.
San Marcos was the scene of another capitulation when Texas State University history professor, Thomas Alter, was sacked on September 10, shortly after he made an online presentation at a left-wing conference. His offense? The university president accused Alter of “inciting violence.” Anyone who watches the video will see he did nothing of the sort. Alter is a self-described “revolutionary socialist” who is a member of a fringe group of Marxist-Leninist cranks called Socialist Horizon. In his brief talk, he engages in the characteristic rhetoric of that element by speaking of the ripening crisis of capitalism and the need to organize the working class for societal transformation. I’ve heard that kind of stuff a million times and have never understood it to be any kind of call for overt action against constituted authority. If I could sit with Alter over a cup of coffee, I would counsel him to heed the advice of the apostle Paul in regard to his revolutionary posturings and “put away childish things.” Actually, the most objectionable part of his talk comes in the Q and A in which he jocularly advocates removing Lyndon Johnson’s statue from the Texas State campus. Well now, that’s right in line with MAGA thinking. After all, LBJ (who received his teacher training in San Marcos a century ago) stood for things they hate—public education, government-provided health care, immigration reform, and Black and Hispanic civil rights. I agree with Jesse Jackson that Lyndon Baines Johnson was a great president of the United States despiteVietnam. That’s one statue that needs to stay! Alter’s remarks were politically marginal but no grounds for firing. He is suing Texas State and I hope he wins. I would gladly contribute a check to his legal defense if it’s needed.
ABC joined the ranks of “profiles in cowardice” with its cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel this past week. To be sure, Kimmel made maladroit remarks in his monologue in which he proclaimed Kirk’s assassin, Tyler Robinson, as one of MAGA’s own. Not true, and Kimmel should have been much more careful. Still, going after comedians is a hallmark of the worst sort of authoritarian regimes. No dictator likes to be the butt of jokes and Trump’s buffoonish persona supplies an excess of opportunity. A formidable battery of humorists such as Jon Stewart, David Letterman, and Rob Reiner have unhesitatingly come to Kimmel’s defense. The most chilling aspect of this episode is the threat of FCC head, Brendan Carr, to pull the licenses of networks whose programs excessively criticize the administration. This is right in line with his chapter in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint to fundamentally reconfigure American policy at home and abroad. During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly pled ignorance when queried about Project 2025: “I have not seen it,” etc. He was as honest in that response as he normally is.
All over the country, teachers and others in the public eye have been targeted for social media postings and other statements about Charlie Kirk considered by MAGA trolls to be disrespectful. Dozens have lost their jobs and Mike Morath, the head of the Texas Education Agency, has even advocated that some public school instructors lose their certifications. A political science colleague of mine who is currently on leave in South Korea says that this crackdown reminds him of the atmosphere under the military dictatorships of Park Chung Hee and Chun Do Hwan when he was growing up there in the 1970s and 80s but with those regimes seeming comparatively benign compared to the prevailing mindset here in Texas. Indeed, Governor Abbott—a living exhibit for the case for term limits if there ever were one—is crowing the past few days over students being expelled from Texas Tech and Texas State for mocking behavior during Charlie Kirk memorials. When our ultra-righteous governor in an apparent effort at manliness uses a vulgar acronym like FAFO to sign off on his releases then things are truly FUBAR in Austin. A friend who lives in London and who works for democracy every day by supporting free trade unions around the world, says this is what it must have felt like to live in 1940. Tens of thousands of fascists marched in his city last weekend and the odious right-wing populist and Brexit architect, Nigel Farage, currently leads in the polls to become the next prime minister. Today’s New York Times reports that Trump officials like J.D. Vance and Kristi Noem (in travels to Germany and Poland respectively) have promoted far-right parties and spoken with contempt for the European Union. In this country, we always comforted ourselves with the notion that our commitment to the Constitution and to liberal values was so embedded in the political culture that “it can’t happen here.” Well, it has. We are truly living in what a notable writer called “Scoundrel Time,” one in which to quote William Butler Yeats, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” The beast of which that poet spoke is no longer slouching toward Bethlehem but is ensconced in the highest seat of power. We are in a mess of our own creation given the choices voters (and non-voters) made in a free election. Trump’s hellish alliance of Bible-thumpers and broligarchs rode to victory with the aid of our countrymen apparently flabbergasted by the price of eggs and/or incapable of imagining a Black woman in the White House. In this combustible context, a college dropout from southwestern Utah committed an unconscionable deed that not only took a life but also immeasurably worsened the situation. God help us.