The rational outcome
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 162
CURRENT EVENTS DEP'T.
Charlie Kirk, 1993–2025
SOMEBODY KILLED CHARLIE Kirk. On the most intensely online parts of the internet the people were posting to tell each other not to post, afraid this incident could be a gateway to new savagery, that every or any reckless thought posted in public might be the excuse the right wing craves to do the things they've been openly fantasizing about doing anyway. The last thing Charlie Kirk tweeted before he died was a video denouncing—that is, celebrating as useful—the fatal knifing of a blonde woman, a Ukrainian refugee, by a Black man on public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina. The world that made Charlie Kirk and that Charlie Kirk helped make, from Charlie Kirk's president on down, has been enthralled by watching the blonde woman die on video at the hands of the Black man, an exhilarating and exploitable death, a death for which they can demand more death. Even if the man who did the stabbing said he did it because "she was reading his mind"; even if the president might have deported the victim to a war zone if she'd lived.
Charlie Kirk spent his life trying to hurt people and to make the world a worse place. The last words out of his mouth before he got shot onstage at Utah Valley University were "gang violence," in response to a question about whether trans people were responsible for mass shootings. He had laid out his position on shooting deaths in general in 2023, at a different event in Utah:
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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
This country seems inflammable right now, in large part because there is a well-funded industry dedicated to keeping it inflamed. Charlie Kirk was one of the mostly interchangeable products of that industry: taller than Ben Shapiro, less dysfunctionally flamboyant than James O'Keefe, more comfortable as a performer than Chris Rufo. Most normal healthy citizens had no idea who he was. Maybe, even so, his killing really will bring on a new and terrible crisis. Maybe nobody really cares, and it's one more thing to shout about. Maybe both of those things will turn out to be true at once.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, September 9, 2025
★★★★ Once again, the sky was pure blue. The top leaves of a few honeylocusts were going gold, and some of the leaflets already lay on the sidewalk. Around the corner from them, bigger and paler hackberry leaves had fallen. A cluster of balloons in bright candy colors swung, tightly tethered, from the fire escape on the top floor of a five-story building. People pedaled along on bikes, upright and slowly. Eventually a thin film of cloud took shape, and the late-day wind felt just a little damp.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
Here is the Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you're right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of sandwiches selected from Benson Woman's Club Cook Book, collected and compiled by Benson Woman's Club, published in 1915 and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
CHEESE FILLING FOR SANDWICHES.
Melt slowly together 1/2 pound cheese, 1 lump butter and 1 tablespoon milk. Mix together 1 egg, pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon mustard. Add to above ingredients, and season with 1 tablespoon vinegar added last.
—Mrs. G. H. Tuttle.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
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