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Excerpts from a very important opinion piece in SLATE [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-09-11

I can’t repeat the entire article here verbatim, so I’m including excerpts and hoping that the paywall at SLATE is not active for this important piece, by Jill Filipovic.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/charlie-kirk-dead-trump-is-ready-for-authoritarianism.html Trump Is Ready for Authoritarianism. Charlie Kirk’s Killing Could Tip Us Over

There are two parts I want DK readers to focus on. This means that it is time to contact your Republican friends and get them to take a stand against gun violence. Also contact your Republican representatives in Congress and your state Assembly/Senate.

Democrats cannot stop this alone. We need every decent American—and especially every decent conservative in power—to put principle and country before fear and tyranny. Political violence must end. And so must the demands to respond to that violence through totalitarianism and oppression. ... If I’m not, though, we have to hope that there are still some Republicans left who are brave or at least minimally patriotic, and who hold freedom in higher esteem than power.

Here are a few other excerpts.

In a ghastly act of political violence, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Wednesday while speaking at a college in Utah. Kirk was 31, and leaves behind his wife, Erika, and two young children. The murder of Kirk is a horror. It has left two young children fatherless. It has sowed fear in the public. It is a continuation of the political violence in America that has left so much destruction and distrust in its wake, and that tears away at our democracy and our sense of mutual kinship.

Some right-wing influencers straight-up said that this is their Reichstag Fire: “Charlie Kirk being assassinated is the American Reichstag fire,” wrote one. “It is time for a complete crackdown on the left. Every Democratic politician must be arrested and the party banned under RICO. Every libtard commentator must be shut down. Stochastic terrorism. They caused this.”

And this administration is set up for it. Trump has already used ICE to amass what amounts to a personal paramilitary. He has already dispatched the National Guard to American cities. He has already declared that the broader left, including progressive organizations, are responsible for Kirk’s death. He has made no secret of the fact that he harbors authoritarian ambitions, that if it were up to him he would never have to chafe against the fetters of Congress or an opposition party or the courts. He has many, many people in his ear telling him that Democrats, progressive organizations, and the news media are responsible for this killing and must pay a price for it.

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