"Divisive"
As euphemistic a term as "social issues".
This isn’t about Charlie Kirk specifically, but is obviously inspired by his murder, and I want to be absolutely clear. As much as a piece of total shit as he was, and he was a poisonous little rat, absolutely no one should be shot due to their reprehensible views. Charlie Kirk went out of his way to cash in on being a cruel bully, and demonstrably made people’s lives worse for incredibly stupid reasons, but he should not have been murdered. This is the number one country in the world for freedom of expression, and whether that expression is total trash or not (and his legacy is one of being total trash), we all get to play by the same set of rules. The people rejoicing on social media at his death get the same expression protection Kirk did, and if the right wing wants to get all moralistic about that, it’s quite the change in tune for what they shit out on their own social media regularly.
I am not trying to find middle ground here. No matter what came out of Kirk’s mouth or keyboard, or what went into his bank account for whatever reason, he should not have been murdered. The dude was murdered. For what he said. The US is not the place you can do that (except for the fact the nation fights to preserve the second amendment above all others). People should not die for their views, even if their views suck. If anything, now is the time to note that even the second best country for safe expression is way behind the US. Words do have consequences, but none of them should be murder.
Since Charlie Kirk was murdered - and I know no details because I avoid the news, because when the right wing has power they use it to bully people except the wealthy, and little else - every creeping detail I have not managed to censor across the insane amounts of internet I am on, has referred to him as “divisive”. This term undersells what a horrible human being he was, because divisive shouldn’t mean whatever he was: declaring war on one side for no reason other than bilking the right wing with facile red meat - a national past time over the last decade if we are being honest. If I stood up and told you your mother is a cunt, that isn’t me being divisive because a few people may agree with me. That’s me being a total prick.
“Divisive” is more that dumbshit we refer(red) to as DOGE, which is, at face-value, the idea of cutting government spending versus the idea of not. Although DOGE was run by completely incompetent blowhards, it is divisive in terms of policy and ideology. Although the Trump administration decided to cut government spending with a few rounds of pin-the-fail-on-the-donkey and some blindfolded, cuck-handed axe throwing, there are legitimate and mainstream arguments for both sides when it comes to cutting spending. There are even intra-disagreements in both camps about how to go about it. When one person with power takes a stand on it, that is divisive. Not some snot-nosed, tiny-faced jack russell whose favorite sport is bullying transgender people for the entire reason of “lol you morons give me money”.
Charlie Kirk was not divisive. Glenn Beck is not divisive. Those morning prats on Fox News are not divisive. If anyone on MSNBC was famous enough to be called “divisive”, that would still be a silly use of the word. They are ideological foghorns whose job is to awaken your worst impulses. And the left is really quite shit at it because we don’t all drink out the same dirty toilet to the extent the right wing does - just watch the cohesion between the smallest radio show up to the president to see how well the entire half of the political economy is coordinated in an incredibly precise PR campaign of getting them all to say the same thing. The left from Joe Manchin all the way to one-person protesters at average-size nuclear plants are so diffuse, yet covered up by the fact that they all fit within one particular political party.
If you decide to make yourself famous by going after people who have absolutely nothing to do with you, then it is quite a stretch for you to be called divisive because what you are actually being is mean. You are trying to become a famous bully. That makes you less divisive, and more of a dickhead. Just because you throw candy (eg. hatred of transgender people) at kids (people who hate transgender people) to get them to do what you say (give me your money so I can build on this false and cruel enterprise) doesn’t earn you any sort of respect, because your goal is total crap. It is horrible, and cruel, and spiteful.
If you are anti-war, like Eugene Debbs, you are divisive. If you are a Republican like Lisa Murkowski, and you have your own views on things that actually guide your votes, you are divisive in a way that a bog-standard shepherd-fluffing sycophant like her colleague Dan Sullivan isn’t.
This works in the exact same manner as “social issues” which generally comprises the right’s ability to utterly fuck with the lives of people who do absolutely nothing to them. Same-sex marriage was a “social issue” because (and this is the dumbest fucking argument that so many people repeated as if it wasn’t so insufferably vapid), it would somehow affect straight marriages; a point of view that has all the logic of eating a bag of scrabble letters and seeing what you shit out. One side of the argument wants to legally get all the stuff straight people do, including basic shit like being able to stay together through the immigration process, and be included as family when it comes to hospital visitation, and the other side’s entire set of debate points are essentially “eeeww yuck”. “Social issues” implies there are two sides to that argument, and the only reason there are two sides is because the bigot-half is extremely well populated, and thanks to the vacuous lotto winners like Charlie Kirk et al, also well financed.
Conversely, abortion is a “social issue” because there are two actual sides to the debate. One side is clearly wrong, but for those true believers - and percentagewise there are fewer than one might think - there is a human that has died in the womb when god herself clearly only wants people to die outside the womb, which is why a rise in infant mortality due to abortion policies seems to sit so well with them. There is no other side to the existence of queer people except bigotry and assholery; not one single “fact” they have on their side is an actual fact. We want to live and feel safe. They want to return the rainbow crosswalk outside Pulse nightclub, where 50 queer people were murdered, into the beloved straggot design of black and white (it is literally their flag). My absolute (and well-fucked) ass that is a sOcIaL iSsUe.
Racism is not a social issue. Hating gay, trans, fat, or disabled people is not a social issue. Being a completely spiteful motherfucker with a loudpeaker is not a social issue.
Social issues and divisiveness exist. But they are not Charlie Kirk, nor the mouth-farting performers across cable news, nor rank bigotry in a country that should really be sophisticated enough to know better. Just because a side of the debate has group numbers shouldn’t justify that there is another side of the argument, when clearly they don’t even try all that hard to hide their personal distaste under words that make sense, and the people under the permanent cosh of the bigots’ boots would appreciate it if the talking heads would start treating us with the sort of respect that would indicate that.
“Social issues” should principally exclude the “argument” of “I don’t have a reason but I don’t like looking at it”.
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