Francis closes his characteristically brilliant piece below with this penultimate ‘graph:

There’s no predicting the outcome. The Right has been too determinedly civil. We’ve never accepted the absoluteness of the contest. We’ve proceeded as if the contest could and would be settled by argument alone. But our adversaries will not accept defeat by that standard. They won’t stop short of anything but total power over all of us: the power of life and death and everything in between. Why should they not go to guns when the national discourse and the electoral contests turn against them?

Why indeed—especially when all we’ve ever done about it each and very time they’ve either heckled, threatened, Doxxed, savagely beaten, jailed, killed or tried to kill another of us is to bluster and yawp about how they’d better knock this shit off because “we have all the guns.” To hear the Blowhard Right tell it, Leftards are all just sissy-mary “transgender” fluffernutters who, unlike their manly selves, would faint dead away at the mere rumor of violence headed in their general direction. When it finally comes down to clobberin’ time for reals, Our Side will surely go through Their Side like shit through the proverbial goose, and they’ll be mighty damned sorry they ever thought it was a good idea to fuck with us. Right? RIIIIIGHT?!?

And then, of course…crickets. Even after the first (of three, so far) attempt on Trump’s life, the consensus among the MAGA sector was that this time the Left had REALLY gone too far, that their long-overdue day of reckoning was at hand for sure. Hell, we all thought it, had ourselves a grand old time snickering to each other about how seriously damned lucky the Leftards were that Trump WASN’T killed that day in PA, that if he HAD been, those shitheels would’ve been well and truly fucked. A veritable tsunami of Normal rage would’ve inundated the hapless shitlibs and sucked those rat-bastards down, down, down inrto the briny depths forever, and good riddance to them.

Nope, the world-famous photo of Our Prezmodent shaking his fist in angry defiance, Old Glory seconding his defiance behind him, the side of his face and neck covered with the blood the bullet had left in its path, why, of COURSE they’d gone too far! No true American would ever dream of taking something this over the top, this extreme, passively, an entire nation of sofa-surfers muttering the same vows to finally do something, to make the sumbitches pay this time, to teach them what happens to those who go to far and cross that bright red line.

And then, sing it with me one more time, y’all…crickets. Second verse, same as the first.

So now it’s Charlie Kirk’s turn to assume the entirely ceremonial role of Final Fucking Straw which will unclip the leash which holds us back from scrambling off to dish up some man-size portions of richly-deserved retribution that always seems like it’s right around the next bend but somehow never actually hoves into sight, tootling him melodiously all the way.

Yes, many of us are angry—incandescently angry, in fact, absolutely fucking FURIOUS over this baroque, needless pissing-away of a human life, and rightly so too. Not just any old human life either; Kirk’s was especially productive—a more-productive-than-most life spent trying his best to be a good Daddy, a loving and faithful spouse, and a decent Christian. The value of this singular life was raised continually from the open-hearted generosity with which Charlie lavished his affection, his charity, his energy, and his attention on everyone around him. His students speak of his kindness, the selfless, laid-back way he’d spend hour after hour nudging them just this much closer to truly understanding some stubborn little something which had seemed just too big a leap for his balky mind to make only minutes ago.

Too generous for his own good; a Christian man who, rather than putting on a mask to present others with a misleading portrait of his sincerity and devotion, instead didn’t seem to care one way or another what anyone else might think of him, labored mightily, honestly, and above all humbly to live up to the tenets of his Christianity. According to those who knew him well, Charlie was modest, courtesy, responsible, judicious. He was never boastful or vain, never arrogant or selfish or coarse.  Charlie Kirk just simply…WAS, that’s all.

Those noble qualities and others are why Nornals admire Kirk. Ironically, those same qualities are exactlty what made Leftards hate him so vehemently, so viciously. I also imagine those qualities had a great deal to do with why the miserable oxygen thief who killed him decided it needed doing, and he was the perfect choice for the job.

This week’s one-two knockout combination leads with a flurry of set-ups, beginning with A) the D卐M☭CRAT-crafted butchery of poor Iryna Zarutska (yes, this one is 110% on them; don’t even TRY to tell me it ain’t) which went down just up the road a piece in the shithole of Charlotte, NC—a story which spent the last 2+ weeks being rigidly locked down by the D卐M☭CRAT-friendly local media establishment at the unscrupulous behest of idiot Mayor Vi Lyle but which managed to dig its way out of Information Prison nevertheless;the set-up jabs will be followed closely by a sleep-inducing right cross like B) yesterday’s wanton gunning down of a good, decent, and altogether admirable man for purely political purposes together have gotten a lot of folks positively seething, just waiting with bated breath for someone to point them at a worthwhile target and turn ‘em loose to wreak havoc on the shitlib malefactors behind this perfect storm of horror, calamity, and bilious evil we, our former country, and indeed the entire world has been struggling to navigate for all these years.

It’d be nice to think these fiends might for once be at real risk of a long-postponed settling of accounts, definitely. Sorry and all, but try as I might I just can’t see it happening. It’d be fair to say that the cumulative effect of the enormities which, figuratively speaking, were stuffed into a paper bag, put on the porch by the front door, and set afire by those match-wielding D卐M☭CRAT firebugs was to spark within fed-up Normal hearts a feeble light of hope that at last, the karmic flame might be about to catch, spread, and burn some dick-with-ears who badly needed burning.

But alas, that would require Real Americans to do something beyond bitching and moaning about the not-fairness of a life beset by a plague of Leftists, which they just will not do. So count on it: in another cpl-three weeks, this too shall pass and be forgotten. The speculation about the seemingly improving chances that the citizenry most harmed by Leftard bullshit might finally step up to the plate and have a few mighty swings at bringing shitlib brigandry to a halt once and for all will carry on as before, bringing with it the same result it always has, namely none whatsoever. Eventually, the spark gutters out, the bleak darkness settles back in again, the hope comes to naught. And as per usual, nothing changes.

Much as I do dread such grim awfulness coming to pass in my own time, let alone in my daughter’s, the least of what OUGHT to come of all this horror and grief is the welcome arrival of a few new, improved rules. To wit:

• They kill one (1) of ours, we kill three (3) of theirs IMMEDIATELY, without reference to Theirs being of roughly equivalent social/cultural/financial stature, political relevance, or importance with Ours, just…one of Ours, three of Theirs, every time without fail, without exception, period fucking DOT
• They can no longer so much as leave their own homes without being hounded, harassed, and terrorized by a phalanx of armed-to-the-eyeteeth Real Americans continuously shouting specific, detailed statements threatening grievous bodily injury soon to be visited upon said Leftists, their families, and all their like-minded cohorts every step of the way to wherever it is they’re trying to go
• The reprisals will continue until Leftists are so cowed they blanch and literally quake with fear any time they are in the vicinity of non-Leftists; When that stage is attained, then and only then can the mission-accomplished standard be hoisted on flagpoles across the land
• All unofficial leaders must prioritize their efforts to inspire, motivate, and set an example for uncertain Normals who are dubious at best about manning up and involving themselves in this sudden surge of anti-Leftist activism; personal attention, lavish praise, and enthusiastic encouragement must be showered liberally upon every gun-shy Normal who decides he wants to get past his anxiety, cast his inhibitions to the wind, shove his inner wuss aside, leave his worries behind, and take the plunge
• No more big talk, no more handwringing, no more shilly-shallying around; just shut up and DO IT already

Same-same with after-action gossip and/or swapping of sea-stories amongst fellow pipehitters—none of that stupid shit, please, you’ll have the Fibbies kicking in your door toot fucking sweet; in sum, a little less talk and a lot more action, as a great old tune by some good friends of mine from out Denver way put it.

As for this “no place for political violence in America” bushwa, sorry pal, but the Founding Fathers of this country would like a word. Yes, the mere prospect of what I’ve for years referred to as Civil War v2.0 is indeed terrible; the reality of such a thing would be so nightmarish as to be beyond human imagining. But is it really the worst of all possible things? John Stuart Mill put paid to that one a good-ish while back.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

And there you have it. Much as I do dread the idea of a CW2, and believe me I do, the pathetic mewling of those who misrepresent themselves as staunch, stalwart American devoted to liberty, the Constitution, and the Republic bequeathed to them by far better men than they’ll ever be is so dreadful it sickens me to my core. It’s embarrassing to hear such sunshine patriots as they prattle on and on these days about the urgently vitally critical urgency that we “fight” this “war” using non-violent means exclusively—a war, mind, against an Enemy who, meanwhile, is not just talking about his intention to subjugate whatever few of us he doesn’t just kill outright but is actually doing precisely that, has been for years now.

WE’RE IN A WAR! WE’RE IN A WAR! LET’S HAVE NO FIGHTING, GENTLEMEN!!!

The more I hear these feebs natter on almost rhapsodically about how oh MAN, we’re really gonna “fighty-fight-fight-fight-FIGHT” those bastiges now, you betcher!! the more I marvel at their historical illiteracy, their apparent belief in the risible notion that a successful defense of the principles, institutions, and charters of our Founding against the rapacious Left can be achieved with mere words alone, perhaps a nice civilized chat over tea and crumpets when it’s all done.

The mulish refusal of these oh-so-delicate types to accept just how deadly serious the Leftist Enemy truly is about his aspirations, his Divine Right to rule, the power, perks, and position to which he is so clearly entitled. The Sunshine Patriot’s prissy abhorrence for mussing his hair and ruining his spotless, impeccably-pressed Brooks Brothers duds by stepping daintily down from the High Road to partake in *shudder* a vulgar brawl with Leftist swine is positively Marquess of Queensberry-esque.

The murder of Charlie Kirk, whatever else it may or may not be, contains a harsh, bitter lesson for us all. Here was a man entirely devoted to the proposition that Americans might somehow resolve differences which are in truth irreconcilable, do so peaceably, then live more or less amicably together afterwards. Against all odds, Kirk was having notable success in winning young people over to his point of view—so successful had he been, in fact, that he had to be assassinated before his last-ditch Hail Mary project to rescue America That Was without bloodshed had gone too far.

The word-warrior Sunshine Patriots spectacularly beclown themselves with everything they say. They would do well to study the lesson thrust upon us by Charlie Kirk’s unjust martyrdom until a bit of cold, hard reality has seeped into those cinderblock skulls of theirs at last. Meanwhile, they really ought to keep well out of the way of any Real Americans who might now be fed up enough to actually start fighting back for a change, and who don’t shy like a wild mustang beside a backfiring automobile from the idea of defending themselves, their beliefs, and their country using the same methods by which it originally became a country in the first place.

NOTE: All of the preceding assumes that Kirk was assassinated by Leftist(s), either a lone random nutjob or the work of some malevolent Leftard cabal nobody ever heard of. There are other possibilities, of course, some believable, others not so much. There’s the one which posits that Kirk’s murder harks back to some kind of Deep State skullduggery, another more specific, better-developed possibility which suggests that it could have been an offshoot of a larger FBI black-bag job whose original purpose was to smoke out some American ReichWing Extremists and/or insurrectionists so’s the Fibbies could have more toys to play with. Or, perhaps, the atrocity was/is something entirely Else.

One of the more moronic of these hypotheses which flatly insists, with no discernible evidence either good or bad, upon some sort of Mossad involvement with the Kirk hit is not to be taken seriously, I don’t think, or not by any serious person, at any rate. Essentially, that one’s just weirdness purely for weirdness’s sake, put forth by the usual obsessive dolts who descry a hidden Hebrew hand behind absolutely everydamnedthing. Such jejune suspicions are usually child’s play to dispense with, and this one is no different.

To begin with, why in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world would Mossad even want to kill Kirk in the first place, much less chance bringing down the everlasting fury of a substantial chunk of the Earth’s population on their heads should some clandestine Mossad/IDF/Israel connection to the Kirk job ever be exhumed? Realistically, what exactly could Mossad hope to gain by such a dastardly atrocity—for its service, its nation, its fellow Jews? I imagine that Mossad, Israel’s government, the Israeli military, Shin Bet, Yamam, the Knesset, and the Israeli people have quite enough on their plate at the moment to be bothering themselves overmuch about the more granular details about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

On the other hand though, let’s not elide, overlook, or try to minimize what’s REALLY going on here either, aiiight? Below the surface of this shady business are wheels within wheels within wheels, turning around and around unseen by anyone. Why do they turn? Nobody really knows. Remember, if you will, the One Big Secret none but the bravest, most perceptive, most well-informed handful of us will ever be privy to, which of course could only be…

****((((JOOOJOOOJOOOJOOOOOOOOOOO!!!))))****

Update! My old friend over at StreamFortySeven explains what it looks like from where he sits.

In the summer of 2020, in my home town, there was the threat that Antifa would go into residential neighborhoods to cause havoc and destruction, as they had done in the suburbs of a major city 60 miles to the east. Word was got out, by various means, to them that this would not be tolerated, they might walk in, but they would not walk out. They did rip up some stores in the downtown area – part of the mob there was led by two ex-convicts on parole from the state prison, and they smashed and robbed a local jewelry store – but they did not enter any neighborhoods, because they did not dare to, police or not. A strong citizen-led defense prevented havoc and destruction, when the police were told to stand down. This did not happen in Minneapolis or Kenosha, Wisconsin or Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington; it did occur in a town in Idaho, where Antifa were brought in by bus, but were met with armed citizens, and ended up leaving town.

It is the duty of citizens to acquire arms and become well-practiced in their use, and band together for their own mutual protection. Lawless people are not stupid, they pick their targets, and prefer weak victims to those who are strong and prepared, the same as any other sort of criminals do. And in the wake of the assassination today, there have been many calls to go out and “hunt down Democrats” – but this temptation must be resisted, lawlessness is not defeated or prevented by more lawlessness. And it may be to the benefit of certain foreign countries, especially those under Communist or despotic rule, to have the social fabric of the United States torn apart, and the people divided and set upon each other. Self-defense and defense of community and family is one thing, generalized lawlessness and revenge is quite another, and we should keep this firmly in mind, in the 250th year of our independence.

All fine and well, but how does this self-restraint in the face off extraordinary provocation square with Jefferson’s exhortation that “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion“? What, too, are we to make of his well-known argument from a little further along in the Smith letter:

And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.

Do we think so highly of our sophistication, our prodigious intellects, that we now think ourselves superior to Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Henry, the others? If we sit idly by while our best and brightest are slaughtered like livestock by D卐M☭CRATs whose intentions—towards us and this nation alike—are in no sense honorable, decent, wholesome, or benificent, but more closely approximate those of the spider in the fat corner of his web for the unwary fly? That being so, can we be proud of the brutal tyranny which will be the inevitable consequence of our lassitude? When said tyranny has been established while we remained idle, will we retain a right to complain about our lot? One last Jeffersonian incitement to violence before I shut the heck up.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

With the D卐M☭CRATs now so emboldened, so certain of the inevitability of victory, that they feel perfectly free to murder the leaders of their opposition in broad daylight before the very eyes of a large audience (which included the victim’s horror-stricken wife), without fear of repercussion, recrimination, or reprimand, are we to think this a good thing? To be happy about it? To quietly accede to an intolerable state of affairs without demur? To comply, to capitulate, to yield ourselves up with an indifferent shrug and a soft sigh of resignation?

Is the duty spoken of in that last quoted passage no longer applicable to Americans? Has it expired? Been repealed? Revoked? Are such arcane concepts as “rights,” “freedom,” and “duties” no more than outmoded philosophical artifacts which at some point we all grow out of, like the shirts, jeans, jackets, sneakers, &c which fit perfectly back when you were a kid but are way too small for you to squeeze into now that you’re a man grown?

Whichever way the whole mishegas shakes out, it makes me very sad that my country should have been brought to such a sorry pass.