![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Of Charlie Kirk & Gerard Vanderleun
Sep. 12th, 2025 01:25 pmI can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage. --Charlie Kirk, 2022
###
Went out canvassing with Adrienne yesterday.
"I'm a bit nervous about going out today," she confided.
"Why?" I asked. "Because it's September 11th?"
"Charlie Kirk," she said.
Oh.
###
I don't think I ever heard the name "Charlie Kirk" before yesterday, when the youthful conservative activist became the year's 46th victim of a school shooting just as he was answering a question about... school shootings! (Who says the Universe has no sense of irony?)
There was another school shooting in Denver a couple of hours later: one death (the shooter turned his gun on himself), two injuries. This shooting got minimal news coverage.
Having never heard of Charlie Kirk, I had no real thoughts about his death—beyond the cursory disclaimer that violence is always a bad solution, blah, blah, blah, which I totally believe but which seems like an increasingly irrelevant aside in 21st-century America.
###
The countryside Adrienne & I drove through was beautiful. Though leaves were falling, the trees were (mostly) holding on to their green. We canvassed Jansen Road, a back country road with newish asphalt and a line of modified A-frame houses probably built in the early oughts, backed by scrub forest. I wondered briefly who the original "Jansen" had been: the farmer who'd originally farmed this land?
We rang around 10 door bells. This area has been zoned for two-acred lots, and many of the houses had circular driveways with a giant flagpole in a small center island. The Stars & Stripes flapping gently in an almost imperceptible breeze and beneath it, various auxilliary flags: "Don't Tread on Me," "9/11-Never Forget."
Not a liberal NYC-minted Democrat like Adrienne's natural constituency, in other words.
###
About 9/11, I have no deep thoughts either. Beyond wondering at what point they will start doing 9/11 reenactments.
Maybe I would feel differently if I'd actually been in New York City on that day, but I was not. I watched the whole thing unfold on a television set in Monterey, California, and the most immediate effect it had on my life was that they closed the Monterey Presidio. Before 9/11, every day I walked Xena the Jack Russell terrier up Franklin Street through the Presidio to Huckleberry Hill Park, and it was a really pleasant tromp; after 9/11, I began having to take her to the beach, which she didn't enjoy as much.
###
Several people I liked, though, did a complete 180 as a result of 9/11. One of them, Gerard Vanderleun, was a guy who made his Big Buck$ writing dirty letters—Dear Penthouse Forum, I have an etiquette question: When I ask that stripper with big, pink, pendulous pussy lips to sit on my face, should I remove my glasses?
I knew Gerard from the Well.
Gerard was an excellent writer, if a bit fulsome. And an even better editor. One night, he'd driven up to my then house in East Oakland in an enormous white Cadillac to waft me away to the bar in the Claremont Hotel, where we sat drinking Manhattans and storyboarding the apocalypse. Gerard was an amazing riffer, right up there with Robin Williams; practically every stray utterance out of his mouth was brilliant, sardonic, hilarious, rife with subtext. I came away with a bit of a crush. He was never what you would call a political liberal, though. Maybe a libertarian. He worked for a while for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
After 9/11, though, Gerard metamorphosed into a right-wing extremist. Nobody got tearier than Gerard watching Old Glory flapping in the breeze! Nobody was more thankful for Jesus's love! Nobody more deeply loathed wily, two-faced leftists! He started a blog called American Digest, which attracted a deeply loyal readership as obsessive as he was. He died a couple of years ago.
###
On September 11, 2001, Gerard watched the disintegration of the Twin Towers from the vantage point of the Brooklyn Heights promenade. He wrote an excellent piece about the experience, which I wish I could find to link to, but which—alas!—seems to have disappeared into the same cyber-La Brea tarpit that American Digest itself got sucked into.
The detail I remember best from the piece was a description of the slow current of debris wafting out from the explosion, advancing across the East River silent as snow, settling on his clothes, clogging his nostrils. The debris was made up of pulverized concrete, granulated glass, metal, plastic, paper, asbestos, and, of course, human cells.
Now! It is quite possible that had I, too, stood on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade that day & watched those planes assault the towers, that I, too, would have metamorphosed into a fulminating right-wing extremist. One's own personal experiences, after all, are always infinitely more persuasive than reasoned analysis or logical exposition.
But since I wasn't, I tend to view 9/11 as just another pretext for American exceptionalism. Yes, for sure: 9/11, just horrifying! But was it any more horrifying than what's currently going on in Gaza, which our elected officials would prefer us to ignore?
It isn't.
In fact, what's going on in Gaza is a whole lot more horrifying.
The salient detail: Only it's not happening to us.
###
Anyway, nobody slammed any doors in Adrienne's face. The majority of people we talked to were polite though I have no doubt her campaign materials were swiftly dumped in the trash the moment the doors closed.
And nobody mentioned Charlie Kirk.
I went home, and set my browser to Facebook for a quick peek before I started doing Useful Work.
Fuckin' amazing! A miniaturist whose work I sorta follow ('cause you know I like 28mm-scale miniatures of D&D archetypes as well as the next person) had posted this:
Normally I try to keep this page only about miniatures and fantasy in general but something has changed and I feel compelled to make a statement.
I am Right Wing. I am STAUNCHLY Right Wing. I will make no apologies or explanations for that. Think whatever you will of that. If it is intolerable to you I will not miss you. Be gone. I do not want your money. I do not want your friendship. I do not want your encouragement. I do not want your support in any way shape or form. I do not care who you are how long we have been friends or associates. I do not care what this costs me to say. I want NOTHING to do with you. And being totally honest I want to know who you are. I will not keep company with cowards or louts or liars.
Charlie Kirk was a good man. He was a moderate who opened a stage for anyone to debate him in a public forum with no censorship. Yesterday he was murdered for that and last night and today there are people mocking him and celebrating his murder.
If you are one of those people...... FUCK YOU. I hate you.
If you are one of those people who choose to ignore the destruction of Europe and Australia and America by the importation of hordes of third world savages. FUCK YOU. I hate you.
If you are someone who despises the Right Wing or uses " White " as a pejorative or wants the destruction of European Culture and White People in general.... FUCK YOU. I hate you.
Gods Rest You Charlie Kirk. You were a warrior and did not die a straw death.
SKAL!!!
And that was just one post among many.
I mean WT-actual-F?
It really is a race war, isn't it?
The Cro-Magnons versus the Neanderthals.
This is deeply Not Good.
###
Went out canvassing with Adrienne yesterday.
"I'm a bit nervous about going out today," she confided.
"Why?" I asked. "Because it's September 11th?"
"Charlie Kirk," she said.
Oh.
###
I don't think I ever heard the name "Charlie Kirk" before yesterday, when the youthful conservative activist became the year's 46th victim of a school shooting just as he was answering a question about... school shootings! (Who says the Universe has no sense of irony?)
There was another school shooting in Denver a couple of hours later: one death (the shooter turned his gun on himself), two injuries. This shooting got minimal news coverage.
Having never heard of Charlie Kirk, I had no real thoughts about his death—beyond the cursory disclaimer that violence is always a bad solution, blah, blah, blah, which I totally believe but which seems like an increasingly irrelevant aside in 21st-century America.
###
The countryside Adrienne & I drove through was beautiful. Though leaves were falling, the trees were (mostly) holding on to their green. We canvassed Jansen Road, a back country road with newish asphalt and a line of modified A-frame houses probably built in the early oughts, backed by scrub forest. I wondered briefly who the original "Jansen" had been: the farmer who'd originally farmed this land?
We rang around 10 door bells. This area has been zoned for two-acred lots, and many of the houses had circular driveways with a giant flagpole in a small center island. The Stars & Stripes flapping gently in an almost imperceptible breeze and beneath it, various auxilliary flags: "Don't Tread on Me," "9/11-Never Forget."
Not a liberal NYC-minted Democrat like Adrienne's natural constituency, in other words.
###
About 9/11, I have no deep thoughts either. Beyond wondering at what point they will start doing 9/11 reenactments.
Maybe I would feel differently if I'd actually been in New York City on that day, but I was not. I watched the whole thing unfold on a television set in Monterey, California, and the most immediate effect it had on my life was that they closed the Monterey Presidio. Before 9/11, every day I walked Xena the Jack Russell terrier up Franklin Street through the Presidio to Huckleberry Hill Park, and it was a really pleasant tromp; after 9/11, I began having to take her to the beach, which she didn't enjoy as much.
###
Several people I liked, though, did a complete 180 as a result of 9/11. One of them, Gerard Vanderleun, was a guy who made his Big Buck$ writing dirty letters—Dear Penthouse Forum, I have an etiquette question: When I ask that stripper with big, pink, pendulous pussy lips to sit on my face, should I remove my glasses?
I knew Gerard from the Well.
Gerard was an excellent writer, if a bit fulsome. And an even better editor. One night, he'd driven up to my then house in East Oakland in an enormous white Cadillac to waft me away to the bar in the Claremont Hotel, where we sat drinking Manhattans and storyboarding the apocalypse. Gerard was an amazing riffer, right up there with Robin Williams; practically every stray utterance out of his mouth was brilliant, sardonic, hilarious, rife with subtext. I came away with a bit of a crush. He was never what you would call a political liberal, though. Maybe a libertarian. He worked for a while for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
After 9/11, though, Gerard metamorphosed into a right-wing extremist. Nobody got tearier than Gerard watching Old Glory flapping in the breeze! Nobody was more thankful for Jesus's love! Nobody more deeply loathed wily, two-faced leftists! He started a blog called American Digest, which attracted a deeply loyal readership as obsessive as he was. He died a couple of years ago.
###
On September 11, 2001, Gerard watched the disintegration of the Twin Towers from the vantage point of the Brooklyn Heights promenade. He wrote an excellent piece about the experience, which I wish I could find to link to, but which—alas!—seems to have disappeared into the same cyber-La Brea tarpit that American Digest itself got sucked into.
The detail I remember best from the piece was a description of the slow current of debris wafting out from the explosion, advancing across the East River silent as snow, settling on his clothes, clogging his nostrils. The debris was made up of pulverized concrete, granulated glass, metal, plastic, paper, asbestos, and, of course, human cells.
Now! It is quite possible that had I, too, stood on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade that day & watched those planes assault the towers, that I, too, would have metamorphosed into a fulminating right-wing extremist. One's own personal experiences, after all, are always infinitely more persuasive than reasoned analysis or logical exposition.
But since I wasn't, I tend to view 9/11 as just another pretext for American exceptionalism. Yes, for sure: 9/11, just horrifying! But was it any more horrifying than what's currently going on in Gaza, which our elected officials would prefer us to ignore?
It isn't.
In fact, what's going on in Gaza is a whole lot more horrifying.
The salient detail: Only it's not happening to us.
###
Anyway, nobody slammed any doors in Adrienne's face. The majority of people we talked to were polite though I have no doubt her campaign materials were swiftly dumped in the trash the moment the doors closed.
And nobody mentioned Charlie Kirk.
I went home, and set my browser to Facebook for a quick peek before I started doing Useful Work.
Fuckin' amazing! A miniaturist whose work I sorta follow ('cause you know I like 28mm-scale miniatures of D&D archetypes as well as the next person) had posted this:
Normally I try to keep this page only about miniatures and fantasy in general but something has changed and I feel compelled to make a statement.
I am Right Wing. I am STAUNCHLY Right Wing. I will make no apologies or explanations for that. Think whatever you will of that. If it is intolerable to you I will not miss you. Be gone. I do not want your money. I do not want your friendship. I do not want your encouragement. I do not want your support in any way shape or form. I do not care who you are how long we have been friends or associates. I do not care what this costs me to say. I want NOTHING to do with you. And being totally honest I want to know who you are. I will not keep company with cowards or louts or liars.
Charlie Kirk was a good man. He was a moderate who opened a stage for anyone to debate him in a public forum with no censorship. Yesterday he was murdered for that and last night and today there are people mocking him and celebrating his murder.
If you are one of those people...... FUCK YOU. I hate you.
If you are one of those people who choose to ignore the destruction of Europe and Australia and America by the importation of hordes of third world savages. FUCK YOU. I hate you.
If you are someone who despises the Right Wing or uses " White " as a pejorative or wants the destruction of European Culture and White People in general.... FUCK YOU. I hate you.
Gods Rest You Charlie Kirk. You were a warrior and did not die a straw death.
SKAL!!!
And that was just one post among many.
I mean WT-actual-F?
It really is a race war, isn't it?
The Cro-Magnons versus the Neanderthals.
This is deeply Not Good.
