Utah Valley University
10:24 a.m. September 12, 2025: The news conference is over and the apparent killer is in custody. I just read a pretty compelling commentary by Thom Hartmann about the “Both Sides” argument which has already begun to rage. I think it is important was a primer on the issue of rhetoric. Here is the link. I will add my own observations at the end of his post a little later.
12:14 p.m. Sep 12: A History of Violence from the Bulwark
RELATED: 9 minute video from Ukraine by Tim Snyder. Worth your time. I hope you can access it,
Thursday, September 11, 2025, 10:07 a.m.: Google map link of the site of the killing yesterday is at the end of this post, after comments. You can scroll in or out or move image around.
I do not jump to conclusions, except that the ramifications of this incident are incredibly serious.
As soon as I think there is something reportable, I’ll make an addition at this space. Because google maps seem to be destination documents, any revisions to this document will include the map link at the end of the post.
Signed personal opinions are welcome. I’ll time-stamp them, as I am here.
Today of course is the 24th anniversary of 9-11-01. Here’s what I wrote on Sep 17 and 24, 2001: Post 9-11-01001.
COMMENTS (more at end of post):
from Amy 9:42 a.m.: The silence on the assassination of [Melissa] Hortman is deafening.
from SAK 1:15 p.m.: As you wrote this incident has serious ramifications.
The first and important thing to say is may Charlie Kirk rest in eternal peace. It is also a given, to me at least, that violence ought to be condemned.
Of course we must all wait until more information is available but already politicians & journalists have been giving their views. I have looked at various sources and clearly the killing will increase the polarisation and some politicians, instead of calling for unity and urging restraint, have already tried to rally their own side. Sad.
Since Amy has already commented on the assassination of Melissa Hortman, here’s another article that focuses on that event:
I am reasonably sure one can open the link in the US but just in case here it is:
Charlie Kirk shooting
Utah Republican senator faces backlash over post condemning Kirk’s killing
Only months ago, Mike Lee had posted disparaging tweets after Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot
The official X account of Mike Lee, a Republican US senator, drew backlash after quickly condemning Wednesday’s killing of the influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah – less than three months from when the politician initially responded to the shootings of two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers by boosting misinformation about that case.
A post from Lee, who joined the Senate in 2011, denounced Kirk’s murder as “a cowardly act of violence” while hailing the Turning Point USA executive director as an “American patriot” and “inspiration to countless young people”. His post also solicited prayers for the 31-year-old Kirk’s widow, Erika, and their children.
“The terrorists will not win,” Lee said shortly after Kirk’s death while speaking at an outdoors gathering on the campus of Utah Valley University had been confirmed. “Charlie will.”
While some of the platform’s users replied positively to the post, many others immediately alluded to how Lee focused on advancing conspiracy theories in the aftermath of the 14 June shootings that killed Minnesota’s former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, while wounding state senator John Hoffman – her fellow Democrat – as well as his wife, Yvette.
“This is what happens,” Lee wrote in an X post, “When Marxists don’t get their way.” Attached to the post was a picture of the suspect charged in the shooting, Vance Boelter, evidently wearing a latex face mask.
There was no evidence Boelter is a Marxist. Friends have told local media he was right-leaning. And while Minnesota voters don’t list party affiliation, Boelter was registered as a Republican in Oklahoma in 2004.
Separately, under another picture of Boelter, Lee wrote, “Nightmare on Waltz Street”, which appeared to be a reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election won by Donald Trump.
Lee’s allusion to Walz came as conservative influencers misleadingly suggested an alliance between the governor and Boelter. Walz’s Democratic predecessor, Mark Dayton, appointed Boelter in 2016 to a 60-member voluntary advisory board. Boelter’s appointment was renewed in 2019 by Walz, who did not know him.
Tina Smith, a US Democratic senator from Minnesota, confronted Lee two days after the shootings in her state to tell him his posts were “brutal and cruel”, as CNN reported. “He should think about the implications of what he’s saying and doing.”
Lee didn’t say much to Smith and seemed surprised she had confronted him, as she put it. However, he subsequently deleted the posts in question.
After Wednesday’s killing, Lee told reporters that Kirk had recently texted him about being excited to visit Utah. Lee also exalted Kirk’s “boundless energy and great love for his country”.
Lee’s lament prompted one X user to rhetorically ask the senator “what has changed” because he had “expressed no sympathy” after the Minnesota lawmaker shootings.
“It seems you do know how to respond appropriately to tragedy,” another user replied to Lee. “I wish you would have … shown that same respect to Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.”
Yet another reply added: “I pray for Charlie Kirk’s family. They should not have to go through this. Nor did Melissa or Mark Hortman right??”
Smith posted about Kirk on Wednesday nearly an hour before Lee published his tribute to the staunch Trump ally.
“Horrific,” Smith wrote. “We all need to condemn these acts of political violence that are becoming far too commonplace in this country. We can’t continue like this.”
GOOGLE MAP OF OREM UTAH AND Utah Valley University: For reference, here is the google map of the site of the killing yesterday. You can scroll in or out or move image around.
Interesting but not at all surprising, of course, to hear Trump aka the man five time draft dodging convicted felon who would be king blame the killing of Kirk on the violent left forgetting, of course (intentionally, no doubt) to mention the fact that Speaker Hortman and her husband were murdered by a far right wing MAGA supporting Christian Nationalist nut just a few months ago.
call it what it was, a murder an assassination. The person Charlie Kirk was a good promoter of the Right and was not a good person. He would call for many bad things and got many young voters to participate in his cult like following of Trump and fascism. Trumps enemies were Kirts enemies.
Disturbing were our President called for violence toward the Demacatic left without knowing who or why and not showing any remorse for the Democratic folks that have been killed or harmed.
I’m expressing sadness for our angers and a long breathe in and out for peace to all and again –
While condemning violence is something most can get behind, the sanitization of Charlie Kirk’s hate has gone too far, argues Erin Reed.
Trump is lowering flags, giving medals, and stoking hateful vitriol all for someone who supported him. This is a free speech opinion:
https://www.advocate.com/voices/charlie-kirk-sanitize-opinion
It saddens me so to see people around the country opining on who/what Charlie Kirk was. Good man; Not-good man. People, people, people… NONE of this MATTERS. He was a man. Someone shot him through the neck with a single bullet, and he died. He’s dead. His wife is a widow. His children are fatherless. To focus “even a little” on who he was or what he did in politics is to at least IMPLY that either his murder can somehow be justified, or that his murder calls for vengeance. A moral case cannot be made for either… so just stop.
I was listening to NPR this morning and they interviewed a prof who has studied “political violence” for thirty years. He began by studying other countries. Now he studies the U.S. He has been asking folks in polls for four years now whether acts of political violence can be justified, and by what. He defines political violence for the respondent. I don’t remember the whole list of “acts”, but murder was on it. He said this morning that in all the ways he presents his queries, “yes” responses to the justifiability of violence are rapidly going “up”. He cited one each by party affiliation. I don’t remember the specifics of the GOP one – >20% thought it was OK to engage in violence in thus-and-such a circumstance. I remember the Democrat one in a bit more detail. Over 30% said it was OK to engage in the list of violent acts “if it was in the service of opposing Trump” or something similar to that. The exact wording, of course, matters greatly to him in his research, but frankly, it doesn’t matter to me when I say I am appalled by this. (The NPR interviewer audibly gasped. Twice.) Over 30% of “my people” now believe – sufficiently to SAY SO to a pollster! – that there can be a justification for domestic political violence up to and including murder. What have we become?
I also recently read a book about how civil wars start. It’s a sad fact that we Americans are woefully ignorant on this, ironically, largely because we HAVE had a Civil War and are taught about it in school. It turns out ours was one of the great outliers of all time. Very few involve a region that wants one thing, and another that wants a different thing, and they fight over whether to break into two next-door countries, or whether to impose one region’s desire upon the other. Almost all other civil wars involve killing your neighbor. Your. Literal. Neighbor. If we devolve into another civil war, that’s how it will be. Yes, we have Red States and Blue States. But not only are the Blue States not contiguous, but there are Blue Cities IN Red States, and there are Red Towns and rural areas in every Blue State. There will NOT be two armies, raised regionally, amassed and set to fighting a relatively conventional “war of conquest / war of defense” across a border or frontier. We will be killing our neighbors. You and that odd guy right down the street with the Trump signs on his lawn and the MAGA flag on his porch will have to keep an eye on EACH OTHER, until one of you finally kills the other – or watches an “ally” do it for you. Is THAT what we want?!? It IS where we’re headed. We have GOT to stop hating people just because we disagree with their politics. “Disagreeing with” and “hating” are two DIFFERENT THINGS. Period. It seems we need to re-learn that. Or eventually, we get to live out that neighbor scenario.