Off My Chest
RULES:
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1. The "good" part of our community means we are pro-empathy and anti-harassment. However, we don't intend to make this a "safe space" where everyone has to be a saint. Sh*t happens, and life is messy. That's why we get things off our chests.
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5. If anyone offers mental, medical, or professional advice here, please remember to take it with a grain of salt. Seek out real professionals if needed.
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I've seen this sentiment around a bit, and while I'm not going to tell people their feelings are wrong (I did not like the guy and while I would have preferred something else happen to him over murder, he did help support the set of circumstances that made his assassination possible), I find it confusing enough that it makes me question if either my brain works differently around this or if I'm misunderstanding what feeling empathy actually refers to, because to me, it doesn't seem "voluntary" like that.
Like, for me, if something unpleasant happens to someone, I can't really help but to start imagining it and going over what it might be like to be in or around that position and getting emotionally worked up, pretty much automatically. It doesn't really even matter if I'm glad the guy is gone at some level or hated them, my brain gets the immediate gut twist of "damn, that seems like a horrible experience" all the same. Like, it could be someone as heinous as literal Hitler, and even then if some documentary gets into the details of his end my first gut reaction is likely to be a sense of discomfort and something like "it would really suck to wake up one day as someone that's done all that and brought themselves to such a position, imagine what would be going through your head in that situation".
I haven't watched the video as I don't handle blood and gore and such well, and I don't mean this as some kind of judgement or assertion of virtue, it's just a bit confusing to me when people say things like "I have no empathy for guys like that" or "you shouldn't feel empathy for fascists because they don't deserve it" and I'm like, okay, but how? Does your brain just let you decide not do that? Mine seems to just do it automatically regardless of if it feels appropriate or not.
So, I don't think it's entirely voluntary either way, it's just a matter of where your perspective defaults to. I consider myself a fairly empathetic person and I happen to sit on the opposite side of this. As much as I try, I cannot feel empathy for him.
When I try, the empathy I feel is for everyone he advocated to subjugate and kill. I cannot fathom being in the shoes of someone so pointlessly, shamelessly hateful. When I put myself in his shoes, there is no connection that makes it in any way feel like a real person's understandable perspective. If he had changed at some point? That would be understandable. Imagining that makes me feel empathy for the person he could have been, but that person doesn't exist, never existed and may never have. I feel more empathy for that hypothetical person than I do the actual Charlie Kirk, someone who himself felt that feeling empathy was a sickness and wanted to eradicate me from society.
I struggle to find anything to empathize with there.
With that said, I watched the video. It made me feel sick to my stomach. But that didn't change the immense relief I felt knowing there was one less person in the world that thought I should be stoned in the street. I don't think you're wrong for feeling unsettled by someone taking glee in it though. It's hard to imagine the kind of pain someone has to go through to get to the point where someone's death is something to celebrate as a relief.