photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

Harry Bosch, the Los Angeles homicide detective created by novelist Michael Connelly, lived and worked by this watchword: “Everybody counts or no one counts.” As Bosch explains, “It means I bust my ass to make a case whether it’s a prostitute or the mayor’s wife. That’s my rule.”

In contrast, the MAGA movement’s motto appears to be that only violence aimed at MAGA members counts. Violence directed against MAGA opponents doesn’t seem to count, while Charlie Kirk’s death does.

The murder of a police officer by an anti-vax shooter spraying hundreds of rounds outside the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was met by silence from the White House.

The murders in June of former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband were greeted by Republican Sen. Mike Lee with a post stating, “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.” Explaining why he didn’t bother calling Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz after the murders, Trump said, “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?”

At 2 a.m. on April 13 this year, the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, was firebombed. Cody Allen Balmer has been charged with terrorism, attempted murder, aggravated arson and aggravated assault. According to his brother, Balmer supported Trump in 2024. He was also on record for reviling Shapiro as a “monster.” Trump made no attempt to reach out to Shapiro until after the governor remarked on television he hadn’t heard from him.

At least seven people died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and another 150 law enforcement officers were injured. Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of around 600 insurrectionists accused or convicted of attacking, resisting or impeding the officers. He told Fox News, “They were very minor incidents, OK?”

On Oct. 28, 2022, David DePape broke into the home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi intending to “break her kneecaps” if she lied to him. The speaker was not home, and DePape instead attacked her 82-year-old husband with a hammer, fracturing his skull. Elon Musk tweeted that Pelosi had been attacked by a male prostitute. Musk was lying. At his trial, DePape testified he did not know either of the Pelosis. His motivation for the attack stemmed from his beliefs that the 9/11 attacks were “an inside job” and that the mainstream media “were all lying about Trump.”

Now, Charlie Kirk’s death was indeed heartrending. He left behind a wife and two young children. Political violence is a scourge, a stain on America’s soul. He was a podcaster and political influencer. Despite video evidence to the contrary, he denied George Floyd was murdered by the police. Days after the attack on Paul Pelosi, he suggested “some amazing patriot out there” could become “a midterm hero” by posting bail for DePape.

And yet, Trump called Kirk “a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty.” Trump announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and ordered flags flown at half-staff even though he was neither an elected official nor a law enforcement officer. He also assigned blame for Kirk’s death. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said in a video message. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

It’s ironic that Trump mentioned Nazis when his response to Kirk’s murder takes a page right out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook. Only four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as chancellor in 1933, the Reichstag building, seat of the German parliament, was set on fire. A communist was said to be the culprit, although later scholarship makes it appear he was a scapegoat. No matter: The Reichstag Fire decree was issued, which suspended civil liberties, called for a “ruthless confrontation” with Communists and set Hitler on the road to becoming the “Fuhrer,” Germany’s authoritarian leader.

“Some hate can’t be negotiated out,” Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson wrote to his transgender partner. Robinson shot Kirk moments after he’d asserted “too many” trans people had committed mass shootings in the U.S. The nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive shows only about 1 in 1,000 such shootings in the last decade have been committed by trans people. A 2024 Justice Department study found that “The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”

Nevertheless, the White House has ramped up its vow of vengeance on alleged leftists and communists. Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pledged: “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks.”

As in 1933 Germany, an act of violence by a single person is being used as an excuse by a right-wing regime to crack down on political foes. The Trump administration is using Kirk’s death as a political weapon, as a step toward authoritarianism and as a diversion from the Epstein affair and worrying economic news.

I know history doesn’t repeat itself, at least not exactly. Kirk’s death does count, but so do the deaths of MAGA political opponents, of those unvaccinated against measles, of those who died while being held by ICE, of those killed by the Navy in international waters and of Africans whose medications have been cut off by the administration.

The poet John Donne wrote over four centuries ago: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Watch out, America.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.