I spent far too much time doomscrolling the past few days over the reactions to the assassination of the American, racist hatemonger, Charlie Kirk. It was impossible to escape, since the news and the comments flooded social media. Given the political climate in the USA, coupled with their love of guns and gun violence, as well as the inflammatory, pro-violence rhetoric spewing continually from the far right, his shooting didn’t surprise me. The far-right have always turned on their own for not being extreme enough. And Kirk was certainly among the extremist fringe.*
I also got a new book this week, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, by Stephen Marche. I’ve wanted to read this book for some time, but felt it was suddenly even more relevant given the MAGA response to the shooting of Kirk.
Italian writer, politician and political theorist, Antonio Gramsci (1897-1937), wrote, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Although written in the 1930s during the first rise of fascism, that still seems to fit in today’s world, at least the USA where the MAGA fascists have taken over the administration and are pushing towards a one-party state. And they are strong in Canada’s CPC, where the party leader, Pierre PoiLIEvre, is a rage-farming Trump mimic spewing MAGA anti-Canadian rhetoric. And, of course, in Alberta, where the MAGA-loving, conspiracy-addled traitor Danielle Smith is trying to break up Canada.
Doomscrolling is, unfortunately, a side effect of having too much downtime: times when I have to rest, ice the knee, put my feet up. And during the exercises where I need to use a bed or couch, I often watch YouTube videos, frequently political commentary and news (and some gaming videos). I prefer to read, but am not always near to my ongoing books, but an iPad or laptop is conveniently close… But I digress.
Saturday: I walked 800m in the morning and 600m in the afternoon, along with the usual round of exercises. Last night I managed to sleep on my side, with a pillow between my legs, for longer than previously. Eventually, the leg starts to ache, and I have to shift, usually retreating onto my back so I can straighten my leg, but last night I was bothered by a painful bunion as well. I am sleeping better than when I first came home, but still not as fully as I need. Lack of good sleep is a problem for many of the other physio patients I have spoken to during my own recovery.
Yesterday I finished reading my kitchen island book, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention, by Ben Wilson. Excellent book about a topic that has long interested me. I replaced it with a bio of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda, a book I began reading a couple of years ago, but stopped halfway through. Now I will have the opportunity to finish it.
I did the vacuuming today, although Susan had to gather the hose and attachments for me. Normally, it’s been my weekly chore to vacuum the house, but for the first few weeks after surgery I couldn’t. Today I managed to do it, albeit a bit slower and awkwardly, but it feels good to be able to share in the household duties again.
I am closer to being able to tie my shoes. I can do the right foot, but the bend is still not quite enough to do the left. I can usually finagle my slip-ons onto my feet, including slippers. Every day, I try to push the stretches a little further. It hurts and doesn’t feel like a major milestone, but I hope each day is a small step towards recovery.
Sunday: Do I write too much about personal experiences? I often think about what Michel de Montaigne did in his essays, writing about anything and everything that came to mind. WWMdMD? I take great pleasure in reading Montaigne and sometimes feel, as a blogger and writer, a kinship with him. I’ll have to open one of my translations again soon…
This afternoon, I prepared our dinner: butternut squash soup, to which I add a sweet potato, some corn, an onion, a red pepper, and a carrot. Spiced with nutmeg, black pepper, garlic, maybe some marjoram or tarragon (or even sage and smoked paprika), and 10% cream. I fry the squash, carrot, onion, and sweet potato first to pre-cook them and lightly caramelize the pieces. I have baked the ingredients in the past, too, before pureeing them and cooking them in a slow cooker. Baking is easy and less involved (fewer things to clean later) than frying. Both are followed by pureeing numerous containers of cooked vegetables. I didn’t think about baking anything until after I had started the peeling and cutting.
Did another 800m walk this morning, and went grocery shopping with Susan.
Been looking at reviews of some god sim games, including Worldbox and Reus 2. I have not done any serious gaming since I got out of the hospital, but now I am feeling keen to get back into it and I feel a new game would help pique my interest. I have more than 250 games in my Steam library already, and more than 100 in my Epic library, but despite the number, none really call to me right now. I recall enjoying Populous, a god sim from the ’90s. But will any of the newer titles scratch that same itch?
Last night I managed to sleep on my side longer than previously. Still wake and shift, feel twinges of pain and stiffness, and I end up on my back with my leg out straight, but I’m getting back to normal sleep.
Monday: Another 800m walk, but my leg was sore and I was tired after. Susan had to take one of our cats to a vet appointment herself because I was too uncomfortable to go with her. I had to take an ibruprofen and ice my knee while she went.
Again, last night I got a good portion of my sleep on my side, and didn’t take anything before lights out, so a few hours in, I was fidgeting with discomfort. I don’t want to take a painkiller every night.
We’ll have my butternut squash soup again tonight for dinner. One night I’d like to go out to dinner together — maybe for fish and chips — but we’d have to drive and that means no alcohol, since we never drink-and-drive, even small amounts. I do like to sip a pint of beer (stout preferred) while eating fish and chips. And if we go out for pasta, I like a glass or two of red wine. But regardless, all restaurants are a bit too far for me to walk to at present.
Tuesday: Today I returned the rented walker I got just prior to my surgery. I have not used it for walking since Sept. 5, but used it for my step-up/down exercise, where I need both hands for support. I’ll have to work out another way to do that exercise when the walker is gone. But otherwise, it remains folded and tucked away. I still, however, need my cane. I can hobble around inside without it, as long as there is a surface or something to grip if necessary, but for stairs and trips outside, I still need the cane.
Did a 600m walk before my physio appointment. Could have done 800 but I was worried about the time.
A small advance in my progress: the therapist measured my knee bend at 92° when I pulled it, and 96° when she gave it a push. That’s a long way from the 58° in my first week of physio. She also raised the height of the benches used for lunge/stretch and step up/down exercises, and extended the bicycling to four minutes. At home I don’t really have a similarly high platform, so I will continue to use what I have.
And I was finally able to roll the bike pedals full circle, albeit backwards. Can’t do that at home, yet, but it’s something to look forward to achieving. I feel my home bike needs a tiny more seat height to do it, but the bike can’t extend the seat further.
Last night with my butternut squash soup; tomorrow Susan will make something different, then I might go back to a pasta dish.
More in the following days.
Notes:
* I don’t do this on my phone, because phone screens are far too small for reading any significant amount of text; phones strike me as best for people with short attention spans, low reading comprehension, disinterest in the whole story and the facts, knee-jerk reactions to headlines, and adverse to deep dives into issues. I use a laptop and often print out longer pieces to read later. I use my phone to make calls and sometimes to get verification texts. Period.
And I do not check the toxic rightwing cesspool that SpaceNazi Elon Musk runs (he calls it X, I call it Xitter). It’s no better than the rage-bait conspiracy platforms, Fox Newz and QAnon.
Kirk, it seems, is the MAGA Horst Wessel: now being raised up as a martyr who, they claim with no sense of irony or hypocrisy, embodied all that was good and admirable among them. Instead of being remembered as a divisive, rage-farming, racist and hatemonger, they appear to have canonized him. I can hardly wait for them to write a song for him, sung by talentless Lara Trump, no doubt. Tomorrow belongs to me… if you don’t get the reference, you seriously need some remedial classes in history.
The assassination of one of his most vocal supporters upset the Dictator Trump so much that a few hours after blaming the “radical left” for the killing (when it turned out that a radical right member did it), he answered media questions about it by instead pointing out the trucks coming to build his self-aggrandizing, pointless, 90,000 sq. ft ballroom at the White House, He boasting about it. Then, mere hours later, he went to a baseball game and was filmed cheering. The next day, when a prayer vigil was held for Kirk at the Kennedy Center, with dozens of members of Congress and Trump administration officials in attendance, Donald Trump was busy golfing and “couldn’t even bother to pretend to be aggrieved about Kirk’s death the day after he was murdered.”
Trump is never one to let media attention slide away from him to focus on anyone else. Caring for others is not in his playbook. Nor is empathy.
Not that Kirk had any, either. During an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” aired on October 12, 2022, Kirk said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Trying to see the world through another’s eyes is anathema to MAGA.
Nonetheless, the corpse was flown home on Airforce 2 by the always-on-vacation-at-taxpayers’-expense VP, JD Vance, and the military given it full honours, although Kirk never served in the military. His body was flown on Air Force 2 to lie in state as if he was a fallen soldier who died defending his country. Or the Pope. MAGA Repugnicans want to put a statue of him in the Capitol and make Kirk into a saint and a martyr as the icon for their racist beliefs. He may get a Presidential Medal of Freedom. All are entirely inappropriate for a civilian activist. Trump demanded flags be flown half-staff for Kirk, although they were never lowered for the many other victims of mass shootings this year. The hypocrisy in the White House is very loud.
Regardless that the killer was one of their own, other extremist rightwing influencers, including Kirk’s widow and the subhuman Nosferatu-cosplayer Stephen Miller, have called for “vengeance: against the left. They wanted the killing to be their Reichstag fire moment when they could unleash violence against their political opponents. They wanted a bloodbath. Their Kristallnacht 2.0 was dampened somewhat when it turned out the killer was one of their own. I’m sure they will find another excuse for violence. The rightwing always does: they are desperate to start their civil war.
As Rick Wilson wrote on his Substack:
…the MAGA response isn’t about mourning Kirk; it was about weaponizing grief into a purge. It’s about never letting a political opportunity go to waste.
Within hours, the right-wing outrage machine was hunting down anyone who had the temerity to post something snarky, rude, or unkind about Kirk’s death. College kids, comedians, academics, even a couple of mid-level marketing managers were dragged out in front of the digital firing squad. A cottage industry of crowdsourced websites and snitch lists sprang up overnight, eagerly looking for Wrongspeak and Wrongthink in order to unleash the MAGA mobScreenshots were blasted across X. Hashtags swelled with calls for people to be fired. Local employers got spammed with “Do you condone this???” emails until HR cracked.
Erika Kirk, Kirk’s widow, said “You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country, and this world.” But who did the unleashing? Another rightwing cultist… She intends, it seems, to carry on his legacy (of racist hatred, I assume), but in Kirk’s world, women have no place of power or authority. They are simply baby factories and housewives. I’m not sure how well Kirk’s deeply misogynist base will take to being led by a woman, but I suspect not well. But she launched a GoFundMe page that has already garnered more than $5 million, showing MAGA Repugnicans are still gullible to being grifted.
Kirk himself said, in a recorded video on April 5, 2023, “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” So weep no crocodile tears over the man. Surely he’d have to agree his death was “worth it” for the shooter to have his Second Amendment rights. I don’t wish that sort of death on anyone, but the hagiography coming out from the right around Kirk is a false narrative. He was a nasty, toxic, racist, misogynist and Talibangelist. An ethical, humanist world should not mourn him. Certainly I, a woke socialist according to their definitions, do not.
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