New Rules, New Reality: The Left Discovers Consequences
“SGT Shannon Tonra is happy, Charlie Kirk is dead. This clearly is not someone who should be wearing the uniform.”
As inspirational and accomplished as he was, I suspect even Kirk himself would have been surprised by the sheer magnitude of the response to his political assassination. Not since the passing of Princess Diana has the world witnessed such a global outpouring of love and compassion.
This is bigger than Charlie Kirk. His death by an assassin’s bullet transformed him into a symbol, a figure whose significance will burn ever brighter with the passage of time.
Kirk’s assassination has altered America and forced a national reckoning. In the days since the shooting, the political atmosphere has shifted with remarkable speed. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the swift consequences meted out to Leftists who cheered his death, some losing positions they’d held for years. In just one week, the country’s tolerance for such rhetoric has abruptly narrowed.
While it’s too early to declare victory and claim that the Democrats’ grip on the national narrative has come to a sudden halt, this is nothing short of amazing.
The Left’s propaganda campaign launched in 2015 and intensified as their hostility toward Donald Trump deepened, has proved remarkably effective. Through relentless repetition, the Democratic Party’s corrosive framing of events has, for many Americans, taken on the weight of truth. Efforts to challenge that narrative have largely faltered, leaving wide segments of the public convinced that Trump is a modern-day Hitler who represents the gravest threat to American democracy.
On Wednesday, ABC, Disney, and primary affiliate Nexstar each moved to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s show over his lies to viewers about Kirk’s assassin — a decision greeted with wide approval on the Right. When the shooter was revealed to be a leftist, with a live-in partner transitioning from male to female, Kimmel told his audience:
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
The chef’s kiss came with Sinclair’s decision to air a tribute to Kirk in the very same time slot that would have belonged to Kimmel.
Kimmel had spewed blatant disinformation because it supported his political opinion. Despicable as his remarks were, he likely would have gotten away with them in the past. But times have changed.
The revolting social media post below captures the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death, where celebration replaced sympathy. The tone is unmistakably jubilant — an unsettling mix of mockery and triumph that spread quickly across platforms, underscoring how toxic the online climate has become.
“SGT Shannon Tonra is happy, Charlie Kirk is dead. This clearly is not someone who should be wearing the uniform.”
But it didn’t take long for many of those who celebrated Kirk’s death to find themselves out of work. The tweet below provides a partial roll call of people who paid a steep price for their ghoulish remarks.
The list includes a Secret Service agent placed on leave for inappropriate Facebook comments, airline pilots, college professors, and, of course, the first to go, MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd.
These individuals discovered, in painful fashion, that while freedom of speech guarantees the right to voice even the most distasteful opinions, it does not shield anyone from the repercussions of what they say.
Accustomed to posting every shocking impulse, many reveled in ever more provocative remarks, chasing engagement and clicks as if that alone conferred immunity — until reality proved otherwise.
Some may claim that conservatives are weaponizing cancel culture, it’s worth noting that many of the firings were initiated by progressives within their own organizations.
And after all the damage the Left has inflicted by directing cancel culture against conservatives, as the tweet below reminds us, they’ve lost the right to lecture us.
Kirk’s death has altered the playing field. Tyler Robinson’s fatal shot did far more than end his life — it jolted ordinary Americans back to reality. It sparked a collective cry of “Enough.” Coming on the heels of two attempts to silence Trump, the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the anti-ICE riots, the murders of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., the attacks on Tesla dealerships, Tesla drivers, and the vehicles themselves, Kirk’s political assassination marked the moment it became clear that the Left was no longer satisfied with waging a propaganda war against the Right.
Aware they were losing the political debate, they had upped the ante to violence. And apparently, they’ve since learned that’s where many Americans draw the line.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/09/new-rules-new-reality-the-left-discovers-consequences/
No comments:
Post a Comment