At a certain level the shooter of Charlie Kirk deserves some sort of respect, or at least consideration. After all, taking a rifle, getting up on a roof at a public event, with security cameras being ubiquitous, and putting a bullet through the neck of a "key friend" of the sitting President, takes a certain amount of suicidal courage. Tyler Robinson, the apparent shooter, is in fact probably facing the death penalty, and his chances of escaping were always slim.
But is there any lesson to this shooting—any wider significance—apart from the various "meanings" appended to it by America's different political tribes as they attempt to use it as a political football?
I think that there is, and this meaning arises naturally from the significant facts of the shooter. So, what are these facts? I would list the following:
(1) Utah. The shooter and the shooting occurred in Utah. People forget how consequential states actually are in the USA (tip: it's in the name!). America in reality is not a single country like, say, the UK, Denmark, or Cuba, but is around 40 to 50 separate countries, most of which are expressed as individual states, and most of them with their own unique sub-culture and moral climate. Utah, by any account, is one of the most conservative and religious. In some respects, living there is not dissimilar to living in a Muslim country, especially for young males. Indeed, in many parts of Red State America, incelism is a feature not a bug, with the best chance of getting a girlfriend being through church socials and similar heavily "chaperoned" events. This creates a stifling social climate to which the only alternative is to drop out and go online. Like the stifling social atmosphere of Muslim countries, these Conservative Red States are actually unwitting promoters of homosexual behaviour.
(2) Submasculinity. We live in an era of submasculinity, in which female values are promoted at the expense of traditional male values, and in which males are not required to "step up" physically as they were in the past. But submasculinity does not equal homosexuality. It just creates the conditions in which homosexuality may flourish. But even submasculine men can and do find their way towards some form of "workable" masculinity. However, this tentative process can be counterintuitively derailed by effects to promote crude or unnuanced forms of masculinity.
(3) The cultural polarisation of America. The Trump presidency is an expression of the backlash tendency in American socio-politics. In the period preceding Trump, the PC and woke Left was on something of a roll, and was basically rubbing the noses of Conservative and unthinking normie Americans in the shit of things like "White Guilt" and radical transgenderism. There are so many examples of this that it is superfluous to list them here. But Trumpism became the weapon to hit back at this potent Leftist minority with its near monopoly of the "Cathedral" of the media and academia. But one of the effects of this is that Red States, which in the past, were only tepidly Red State in culture, morals, and social atmosphere, became more virulently and simplistically Red State.
(4) The hypocrisy and essential fakery of Christian morality and belief. At the best of times, Christianity has a deep inauthenticity that explains many of its salient characteristics, and can only succeed as a moral code through the social dynamic of everyone else around the pretend Christian also pretending to be a "Christian," and therefore a certain socially agreed simulation being reached. This is naturally reinforced through the unique State cultures that we find in a disconnected continental entity like America. This dynamic is especially true of anyone with an IQ over 100.
Now taking these four factors as our context, we get the following clear and meaningful narrative from the sad little saga of Tyler Robinson. It goes something like this:
A young man is brought up in a conventional Red State family. He is taught to shoot and drive and be "American" and "Christian" in the typically fake and meaningless ways that these concepts apply. But there is a problem. Tyler is sub-masculine and feels ill at ease in a deeply unsophisticated society and culture that factors in vary little consideration or leeway for such people.
In a Blue State or a European society, he would feel less alienated and have greater opportunities to feel less like a freak and "get with a girl" in a way that would boost his own sense of masculinity and enable him to grow out of it.
Tyler trying to work out the weird contradictions of his Red State/ Blue State energy with yet another odd Halloween costume
Stunted by the prevailing and increasingly virulent Red State Christian Conservative morality in his State and indeed within his own family, Tyler's only option appears to drop out and thus drop into the gay-friendly and heavily ironic gamer/Groyper/transexual culture that exists online. This also offers him an alternative—although totally fake—form of sexual expression and release.
This vile and potent cocktail of sexual alienation, driven by what he can only view as an "oppressive" culture, then leads him down a path of deep psychological radicalisation. Charlie Kirk, as a potent expression and accelerant of what Robinson can only see as a hollow, inflexible, and simplistic Christian paradigm of masculinity, thus becomes an overwhelmingly compelling target.
What is noticeable in this narrative is the poisonous synergy of the two dominant strands of American culture—Red State conservative hypocrisy and Blue State moral liberalism—in the lone figure of a twisted gunman. A healthier mix of these two aspects of America existed in the past before they curdled into the polarised mess we see today.
This narrative and its reference points also provides clues to the mysterious appeal of someone like a Nick Fuentes, whose content resonates with young males "adjacent" to Tyler Robinson in terms of submasculinity and Conservative Christian socio-moral backgrounds.
Fuentes uses wit, irony, bravado, and a blatant acceptance of falsity and contradiction to create a psychological stew that holds a lot of these "Tyler types" in a position of passive acceptance of Red State Conservativism and Trumpist radicalism, ameliorating the stultifying drabness and political impotence, with an entertaining but self-defeating shadow-play of importance.
Bro-chadding with your MAGA Utah dad doesn't get you any more pussy than going with a trap
