Collection: All The News That’s Fit To Write

Format: Bluesky Thread
Read: 800 Words | 3 Min
Date: Sep 11, 2025
Author: Melissa Nadia Viviana

Tags: Grief, Charlie Kirk, Masculinity, Civil War

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I didn’t pay attention to Charlie Kirk at all, but I can understand why the right thinks that he’s their Archduke Ferdinand.

Except that their calls for Civil War with the left have nothing to do with the left at all.

It’s simply and merely about what Kirk represented about masculinity to them.

The type of men who were attracted to Kirk are those who view vulnerability as a moral failing.

It’s their job to stuff all the bits and pieces of a vulnerable human self deep into the recesses of their macho soul every chance they get.

Kirk viewed empathy as some post-modern made-up concept.

And yet, Kirk was just another human in a meat suit—capable of mortality—like everybody else.

He was young, but played by the same rules we all do.

Death is an ever-present possibility for every single one of us.

Someone who represents the apex of “tough masculinity…”

—Of rejecting empathy.

Of being cool, rational, logical—gets assassinated.

Causing his followers (men who resonated with him) to feel VULNERABLE.

Grief makes us all feel sad & fragile. It also reminds us of our own mortality. Loss is brutal.

But this is a group of men made to feel that vulnerability is a moral failing.

So the very person that represented pure rational, non-feeling masculinity is now causing massive VULNERABILITY in them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or left, if you know men at all, you know that in the split second they feel overwhelmed by their vulnerability, the very first thing they do is lash out. MASSIVELY.

They do this to distract.

And they do this because anger makes them feel powerful again.

Recall, these are men who are taught that emotions are feminine.

That masculinity is about strength & power.

So, anger temporarily makes them feel powerful when they feel most vulnerable.

They yell & lash out to overcompensate for feeling fragile & small.

Enter the left: MAGA’s punching bag.

MAGA always expected empathy from the left. They disdain empathy—but need it. They want to be recipients, but are too proud to give it to others. (As men are wont to do).

When we laughed at Kirk’s death, we deprived them of empathy at their most vulnerable.

We humiliated an icon—And gave MAGA a taste of their own medicine.

Mockery in the face of grief.

It’s the loudest & most distracting form of collective anger that will pull them away from the very emotions Kirk taught them not to have…

They think war is STRONG.

These are men who had been in a gleeful frenzy of Trump vengeance for 10 months. Feeling high on Trump’s authoritarianism. Living lawlessly. Seeing the right do whatever Trump wants.

Punishing others. The apex of pure, unadulterated power.

Kirk gets killed—crashing their high, making them feel vulnerable, & WEAK at the height of their overconfidence.

But here’s the thing: the only person responsible for Kirk’s death is the one who pulled the trigger. We don’t know who that is or even why he did it. But what we do know is WE’RE NOT IN COMMUNICATION WITH HIM.

There was no group out to get Kirk. We didn’t cause this vulnerability in MAGA.

You see, the calls of Civil War with the left because of Kirk’s death are completely misplaced feelings.

WE'RE not responsible for his death.

Nobody asked for it. Nobody even thought they wanted it.

When Trump voters voted for Trump: they ASKED for his rampage.

We didn’t vote for an assassin.

Look: MAGA is at war with their own vulnerability.

They lash out & attack women, gay men, poor immigrants, other minorities, & bleeding heart Democrats—because they’re ashamed of their own fragileness.

They’re ashamed of having emotions and being human.

Kirk’s death reminds them that they’re human. And they hate US for it.

So no, Kirk’s death is not the Archduke Ferdinand. It's not the start of a Civil War with the left.

This is simply grief, sadness, & deflection.

What they need to do is just feel SAD. To sit with the emotions. To confront the perplexing mortality of human nature.

A war with us fixes nothing.