The Kirk Hatred: “It’s Deeper Than Mental Illness”
While clearly a painful reality for some, “mental illness” has long been an abused concept. Cold War-era Marxist nations would sometimes declare dissenters mentally ill and then lock them away in asylums. (You’d have to be crazy to disagree with the state’s official ideology, right?) Media have also applied the mentally ill label tendentiously. When they don’t want a given act of terrorism called just that, for instance, they’ll deem the perp “mentally ill.” Of course, this is all self-serving. Such fudging is made easier, though, because it gets complicated.
That is, how much of what we call mental illness is really philosophical/moral dysfunction?
Where is the line between the two?
And how often does philosophical/moral dysfunction actually cause psychological dysfunction?
(Note here that while psychology is now its own distinct “soft science,” it was long part of natural philosophy. The division between the psychological and philosophical is relatively recent — and perhaps misguided.)
This issue arises again with the vicious left-wing attacks on Charlie Kirk in his assassination’s wake. As one commentator, struck by the bizarre and malevolent behavior, puts it, “It’s Deeper Than Mental Illness.”
Bringing Evil Out of the Closet
Unless you’ve just awoken from a Rip Van Winkle-like slumber, it’s hard to have missed the vile venom spewed at Kirk the last two weeks. As the aforementioned commentator, J. Robert Smith, points out, assassin Tyler Robinson has actually been praised. “Some even call for more violence,” he writes. In fact, just perusing Libs of TikTok’s and Vigilant Fox’s relevant X threads can make your hair stand on end. “‘Somebody had to do it’ wasn’t an uncommon refrain,” Smith informs.
The commentator is struck by something else, too. Many of the vile comments and most of the aligned videos were posted by the “gentler sex” (aka women). Oh, an “XY” pulled the trigger, Smith concedes. But now females have picked up the Beelzebub ball and run with it. This can’t be chalked up to sampling bias, either, states the writer.
Remember here, too, that those who knew Kirk revealed him as a man of sterling character. Yet his detractors embrace an alternate reality. To them, Smith laments, Kirk was every kind of “phobe,” an “ogre”; they “fictionalize” him to demonize him.
Anatomy of a Spiritual Illness
Smith then points out that this is all part of a societal “sickness,” one that, he writes,
starts with an obsession — the obsession with self. “If it feels good, do it” was a 1960s mantra that has sparked a decades-long deep dive into hedonism, regardless of the blarney about “self-actualization.” The Me Generation ethos metastasized, spreading throughout the society.
What does preoccupation with self do to a person’s mind and emotions? How does it affect relating to others? How does it warp perceptions? What happens when academics have, for decades, peddled the notion that there’s no external or objective truth? Should we be stunned that people — mostly females — popped up on TikTok and Blue Sky giggling, praising, toasting, and jigging in reaction to a cold-blooded murder? Shades of the Manson girls, huh? Perhaps females have been more greatly damaged by over half a century of being battered with me, me, me?