Mendocino County Today: Monday 9/15/2025

Warming | Free Food | Stop Lights | County Vehicles | Eleanore Schiro | Albion Bridge | New Rules | Jaxon Keys | Roadless Rule | Dog Teeth | Ed Note | Rock | Deer Plan | Yesterday's Catch | Golden Gate | Niners Win | Ref Revenge | Giants Lose | Neal Cassady | Boomers | Still Screaming | Outrageous Fortune | Saint Snoop | Swearing | Haircut 1942 | Mediocre Man | Lead Stories | Human Louse | War Dept | Canceled Events | Groypers | Desecration | Moral Responsibility | Empty Noises | Poppies | Engineered Division | Dangerously Polarized | Honest Accounting | Valencia Women

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A RIDGING PATTERN will bring scattered to clear skies and dry conditions with RH values in the teens early to mid week. A warming trend returns to the interior starting Monday through mid week and possibly a return to wet weather late in the work week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): Another clear start with a cooler 50F this Monday morning on the coast. I'll go with more sun than clouds for a few days then another chance of rain this Friday into the weekend, go figure? The forecast will likely change by then so stay tuned weather fans.

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POP UP FOOD CLOSET, UKIAH (via Martin Bradley)

Acts of Mercy
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat”

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RENEE WYANT LEE:

Dear Lambert Lane pedestrians: I know ya’ll aren’t used to stop lights in Boonville and all but when the light is red, that means you too. Believe me, I walk it every evening with my dog. It’s dark and the other cars can’t see around to the other side of the temporary bridge so I wait for the light. It really doesn’t take that long. I am really glad the car that had the green light saw the family with small children in time so I didn’t have to witness your family mowed over on the bridge. That would’ve been a tragic end to fair weekend. This also goes for the cars that get impatient and run the light .I’ve almost been hit in my car from red light runners.

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MAZIE MALONE:

Re, Going nowhere slowly….

Regarding the budget, one area that could be evaluated to make more revenue is the use of County Vehicles. Not law enforcement, or street crews, but why on earth does Public Health need 16 vehicles? The registration, the gas, the maintenance, all very expensive.

I was able to listen to part of the meeting on Wednesday morning, it is disturbing to say the least. The part I found fascinating is that Dr. Miller [Mental/Public Health Director] stated Mendocino County spends approximately $4 million a year on Conservatorships and $3 million a year on hospitalizations and that we have about 64 people conserved on a yearly basis for whom the county is paying $62,500 per person! Since most people end up in jail multiple times before being hospitalized or conserved for these issues, as I have mentioned before the county is quadruple paying for shit that is not working and that includes the PHF. As I have often said it is a band aid, a PHF is not going to fix the root of these conditions. For example the bill for my son having a psych stay back in 2020 for five days was $13,000!

Everything has doubled in price since then, let me reiterate: that is a PHF! Sheriff, what is the reimbursement rate per inmate?

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G. ELEANORE (BARTE) SCHIRO (1936-2025)

Eleanore (Barte) Schiro, beloved daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, friend, and lifelong educator, passed away peacefully on May 25, 2025.

She was born on February 9, 1936, in Glendale, California, the second daughter of Charles and Anna Barte. Although Eleanore never lived on the Mendocino Coast, her relationship to it was life-long. In 1933, the year before Eleanore’s birth, her parents purchased 40 acres of virgin forest off Boice Lane (between Fort Bragg and Caspar) as a place to go and homestead in case The Depression worsened to the point of her father losing his job in the Los Angeles area. Although her father never did lose his job, Eleanore enjoyed the annual trips with her family to the property (eventually named The Barte Woods) each summer throughout her childhood.

With a passion for education, Eleanore earned a B.A. in Elementary Education from Occidental College, Class of 1957, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors. She began her teaching career in Glendale, California. On March 29th, 1958, Eleanore married Joseph Ronald Schiro. As she and her husband were both school teachers, they were able to continue the annual visits with Eleanore’s parents to the Mendocino Coast property during their summer breaks. By the time their children came along, Janet Louise (1964), Sharon Eleanor (1966), and Edward Charles (1967), Eleanore and Joe were living in Oxnard and Eleanore’s parents, Charles & Anna, had retired to The Barte Woods to live full-time. Now established with an ample clearing, a little cabin, a garage, a workshop, an outhouse, and grandparents, annual summer trips to it became a tradition for Eleanore’s children as well.

After her parents had passed away, Anna (1968) and Charles (1980), Eleanore and Joe took over the stewardship of The Barte Woods. For the next 18 years, they would continue to make the 550 mile trip each summer from Oxnard to enjoy a few weeks as coastal homesteaders often hosting family and friends who came up for a few days at a time to join them. Besides all the chores of maintaining the clearing, structures and systems, Eleanore and Joe not only enjoyed simply being together in such a beautiful natural environment, they also enjoyed the coastal venues and social activities such as the Music Festival, Salmon BBQ, and the Botanical Gardens.

Having retired from teaching (1996), and with their children all having settled in Northern California, Eleanore and Joe moved to Santa Rosa in 2000. There Eleanore continued an active social life with family, friends, church and community service. At this point, being only 2 1/2 hours from Fort Bragg, Eleanore and Joe were able to come to the Coast many times a year. Especially memorable times at The Barte Woods at this point were centered around the 4th of July annual family reunion, where she and Joe were joined by their children and their partners, nieces (Jeanne and her daughter An Mei), and their growing number of grandchildren: David (1996), Casera (2001), Dominick (2001), Emilie (2002), Benjamin (2007), and Eleanore (2009).

Eventual decline came to Eleanore in her late 80s, with Christmas 2021 being her last visit to the Coast. The Barte Woods, however, continues to be stewarded locally by Ed & Jo Schiro and their children Ben and Eleanore. Graceful to the end, at 89 Eleanore passed away at home in Santa Rosa on May 25th, 2025. Later this month, her ashes will be placed with her beloved husband in the family memorial site deeper in the heart of The Barte Woods.

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THE BATTLE FOR THE LAST-OF-ITS-KIND BRIDGE ON A FAMED CALIFORNIA ROAD

Mendocino Coast residents are fighting to save the Albion River Bridge, the last wooden bridge on Highway 1

by Matt LaFever

California’s Mendocino Coast is a precipitous reminder that there’s no farther west to go. Here, the land plunges into the Pacific, met by dramatic bluffs as Highway 1 clings to the edge. Albion — 17 miles south of Fort Bragg, the county’s coastal hub — is easy to miss: a headland jutting west into the sea, an inland road leading to a town center of just over 150 residents.

The clearest marker for the community is the Albion River Bridge. One hundred fifty feet above the water, it carries Highway 1 across the river mouth, with Albion’s homes visible on the bluffs to the east, campgrounds tucked below, and the river itself stretching west to the sea.

This bridge is no ordinary crossing. Built in 1944, it is the last timber truss superstructure owned by the state of California still carrying highway traffic — a historic landmark that locals consider part of their identity. Picture a bridge high above the Albion River that looks like something out of a black-and-white Western: less like modern highway infrastructure, more like the skeletal framework of an old railroad trestle. Weathered wooden beams crisscross in triangles, forming a lattice that holds the roadway high above the water. That’s what the Albion River Bridge looks like.

But the state says its days are numbered. Caltrans asserts the bridge is in disrepair and potentially dangerous, and after 10 years of public process, it has officially unveiled designs for a modern replacement: seismically sound, easier to maintain, built to standard specifications but utterly lacking in any design poetry or marvel.

Albion residents aren’t ready to see the bridge replaced. Jim Heid, an outspoken member of the Albion Bridge Stewards, told SFGATE, “It’s hard to look at a photo of Albion that doesn’t also show the bridge.” To him and many others, the structure is inseparable from the town’s identity. As Heid put it, the bridge “is more than just a way of getting across the river. It is an emblem of the community.”

The Albion River Bridge’s unusual form reflects its wartime origins. Built while the United States was still embroiled in World War II, the bridge was designed with timber because concrete and steel were needed for the war effort. As Caltrans documentation explains: “In an effort to conserve concrete and steel materials for the war effort, the original proposed concrete arch structure design was abandoned, and the bridge was redesigned to predominantly use timber.” The single-span riveted steel deck truss at its core was recycled from an old bridge on the South Fork of the Feather River, about 200 miles east. Heid told SFGATE that one of the engineers who worked on the Albion River Bridge had also assisted in the construction of the original Bay Bridge.

Today, it remains the only wooden trestle bridge left on Highway 1, and its significance has grown beyond its basic function. “The Albion River Bridge appears on the side of our fire trucks,” Heid said. “… The timber bridge alongside the little cluster of houses that make up Albion Village are just such a kind of a perfect visual complement to one another.”

But inspection reports paint a grim picture. Caltrans describes the bridge as being in “poor and deteriorating condition,” never designed for the “harsh marine environment in which it is located.” Inspectors have documented “rotting and decay in the timber decks,” cracks in the wood, and deterioration of the preservatives meant to strengthen its structural elements. The salty air “causes significant corrosion on the connection bolts that hold the timber members in place.”

The agency also notes the bridge does not meet seismic standards, creating “a higher probability of bridge damage and bridge closure” in the event of an earthquake. Its dimensions fail to provide “continuous, safe, and separate access for bicyclists and pedestrians,” despite Highway 1’s designation as part of the Pacific Coast Bike Route and California Coastal Trail. And in the event of a car crash on the bridge, the wooden railing, inspectors say, “is not capable of resisting current vehicle impact loading requirements.”

Manny Machado, Caltrans District 1 spokesperson, told SFGATE in an email that the Federal Highway Administration’s review backed up Caltrans’ findings: “The need to quickly replace this high-risk structure on this important coastal route is prudent.”

The Albion Bridge Stewards organized in 2017 to preserve the state and federally listed historic landmark and have been pushing back on the state’s efforts to replace the bridge since. Heid told SFGATE the group’s priority is to communicate that “there’s nothing wrong with the bridge, it just needs ongoing maintenance” and that it has long served as an “icon of our community.”

Heid stressed that the bridge is tied to the region’s economic future. “With the demise of the timber industry and the fishing industry on the coast, tourism and preservation are the economic engines of this area,” he said. For the Stewards, the Albion River Bridge is part of that draw — a living piece of historic architecture that attracts visitors to Mendocino County’s coast.

If Caltrans were to replace the bridge with a modern design, it has committed to “address adverse effects” of removing the historic structure by installing an interpretive exhibit near or on the new bridge. The plan calls for panels about the historic bridge, a scale model of the Albion River Bridge, and a short documentary film “available for viewing on a Caltrans supported website” for “educational and interpretive purposes.”

“Everybody knows that a sign doesn’t drive tourists,” Heid said. “Nobody takes a picture of, you know, a sign.” Instead, he argued, “People will stop and take a picture of a beautiful historic bridge.”

On Aug. 8, Caltrans announced that after more than a decade of community meetings, environmental impact reports, and rounds of stakeholder input through the maze of state bureaucracy, a replacement design had finally been selected. The new structure — an open-spandrel arch to be built just east of the existing bridge — will feature a 47-foot operating width with two 12-foot travel lanes, 6-foot shoulders, external steel barrier rails that meet modern safety standards, and a dedicated pedestrian walkway.

Caltrans documentation indicates that if this plan goes forward, construction would require the Albion River Campground and Beach to be closed to public access for more than three years. The project would cost an estimated $136 million.

Construction is slated to begin in 2028, and the new bridge is expected to open to the public in 2031.

For the Albion Bridge Stewards, the state’s timeline doesn’t signal the end of their fight. Heid said the group will “be ready to step in and weigh in and advocate for the preservation of the bridge.”

As Heid put it simply: “We love this bridge. We believe that it should be there. It should be preserved, and we’re here to make sure that happens.”

(sfgate.com)

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ASSIGNMENT: UKIAH - ANY PROBLEM CAN BE MADE WORSE

by Tommy Wayne Kramer

There are small but growing problems besetting the county’s Planning and Building Services (PBS) department, an agency that enforces rules and regulations around the county.

What’s wrong? An (anonymous) troublemaker has been wallpapering the PBS with formal complaints having to do with things like a tatty roof over an old shed in Laytonville not meeting current code guidelines, or chairs in the farmhouse kitchen not being ADA approved. You get the idea.

The sticking point is that the county is obliged to enforce rules it makes, but the rules can be stupid, and in the crafty paws of a malicious miscreant, the rules can be a springboard to lawsuits or payoffs. Thus, north county farmers and small ranchers are forced to undertake expensive retrofit projects or pay ruinous fines.

Enter County Supervisors, promising to fix everything and make it all better. Whew! Supes to the Rescue!

But are we sure we want the Board of Supervisors in charge of revamping the rules and fine-tuning the regulations that cover so vast an enterprise? Raise your hand if you remember when the supervisors took on the job of regulating legal marijuana.

They fumbled and bumbled the entire program, which could not have been easy when you realize they started with some of the best, most valuable marijuana in the nation. They devised a complicated process for pot growers that guaranteed it would be too difficult and costly to adhere to the guidelines. The program was a tangled mess, the board changed it repeatedly, and within a year or two everyone gave up.

Now let’s imagine the supervisors taking on the PBS rules and clearing up the situation.

DEAR FARMER-TYPE AGRI-PERSON:

Thank you for your input and support! We hope the following guidelines help you in continuing to grow and thrive in Mendocino County. Please be aware of the following regulations, many of which have changed since we passed them:

SECTION 1043.5 ACCOMMODATION REQUIREMENTS: Outbuildings, including trailers, shanties, sheds or shacks intended for the manufacture of Methamphetamine and/or Fentanyl shall have a minimum of one (1) fire extinguisher on said premises.

SPECIAL ADVISORY IV: All owners, operators, trespassers or neighbors of agricultural lands within the county must wear approved safety helmets when operating equipment, traversing lands, dining or brushing teeth.

SECTION SUBSECTION 659 (B) POULTRY MANAGEMENT: Henceforth requires chicken accommodations to provide individual nesting units of no less than 84 square feet per bird and windows allowing a minimum of 12 hours sunshine per day, with a nice view. Structure(s) must withstand earthquakes of up to 90 degrees centigrade, and four gallons per minute on the Richter Scale. Beginning January 1, 2026, Poultry accommodations shall be designed by certified local architects and built by union construction workers.

NOTICE OF MANDATORY LAND TRANSFER(S): All agriculture parcels of 3 or more acres shall provide 1/2 acre minimal curbside easements to Dollar Stores and/ or McDonald’s franchise restaurants, vape shops, et al. to provide increased funding for County Planning and Building Services.

SECTION (Part IVII) CROP MANAGEMENT: Shall require all harvested hay, wheat, straw, banana, oat, marijuana, star thistle, opium poppy, cotton, ketchup and bamboo to be produced under humane, shade grown conditions, and upon harvesting shall be maintained in temperature controlled storage structures covered by water resistant corrugated metal. All doors must have locking mechanisms; said doors shall be attached to frames using bronze hinges obtained from Haschak Family Bronze Fabrication and Poultry Accommodation Facilities, Willits, CA.

SPECIAL ADVISORY: Agricultural lands with existing or planned roads, sidewalks, driveways, paths, trails or parking areas as of January 1, 2026 must conform to CalTrans paving standards, including minimum two lanes with double yellow lines, fog lines, rest areas and posted speed limit signs.

SECTION 107 (D) CONFORMING STANDARDS: Interior furnishings (chairs, tables, counters, stairways) in agricultural land domiciles shall conform to existing ADA standards.

NOTE: Anonymous reporting of violations of Planning and Building Services regulations shall be simplified, and all who notify the agency of violations and/or substandard conditions on agricultural lands shall be provided financial compensation for each violation reported.

(Tom Hine wonders who works harder, politicians making rules for farmers, or farmers trying to follow the rules. TWK is glad he doesn’t know how to read. Halloween stuff is everywhere; Costco had Christmas decorations up in August.)

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AMERICA’S WILDERNESS IS STILL PRICELESS

One of the traits that makes America great is its wilderness.

The Trump administration is moving to open to extraction and development tens of millions of acres of forests now protected by a federal regulation known as the Roadless Rule.

In officially designated roadless areas, no new human infrastructure is permitted, except for conservation and public safety matters, such as wildfire prevention.

In those cases where roads already exist in newly designated wilderness, maintenance is permitted.

This effectively holds these regions off-limits to logging, mining and other extractive industries.

The rule applies to 58.5 million acres of American wilderness. Most of the nearly 200 million acres supervised by the Forest Service is available to industry in some way.

The Roadless Rule is a case study in participatory democracy.

When the Clinton administration codified the rule, which went into effect in early 2001, an astounding 1.6 million Americans submitted comments to regulators. The vast majority of roadless areas are in the West.

America has protected this wilderness not just to preserve special and irreplaceable forests.

It also ensures that animal habitats, especially those of wide-ranging creatures, are as free as possible from human influence.

Perhaps most of all, it’s about preserving these places for the enjoyment and benefit of humanity for generations to come.

Few people, if any, walk through an ancient landscape, like the “forest cathedral” of Pennsylvania’s Cook Forest State Park, and complain that it wasn’t clear-cut a century ago.

They give thanks for the foresight of the people who held back industry, who insisted that some lands must remain intact.

Because of them, in this very commonwealth you can touch a hemlock that first broke through the earth while Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.

The Roadless Rule has always been controversial, with both the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations attempting to weaken it.

The rule is a potent political issue in the West, where it protects tens of millions of acres many states would like to control and to use to generate tax revenue.

Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced plans to rescind the rule at a meeting of the Western Governor’s Association.

Western politicians have long complained that because the Roadless Rule lets the U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary create roadless areas, the department creates de facto wilderness areas by fiat, while the official “wilderness” designation requires Congress to act.

This argument has been rejected by federal courts, but the expansion of roadless areas remains a sore point.

It may be possible to adjust the rule in a manner that would place some limits on this expansion.

But, characteristically, thoughtful reform is not what President Donald Trump’s administration wants:

It would like to rescind the Roadless Rule in its entirety. And that would be a disaster for American wilderness, and thus for Americans as a whole.

Roadless wilderness represents a moral principle: that some things are good in themselves and more important than short-term economic gains, and that among them is our country’s responsibility to steward its lands for generations to come.

Entirely rescinding the Roadless Rule would deny that principle, and in so doing wound America’s distinctiveness, and its greatness.

(Ukiah Daily Journal Editorial)

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ASK THE VET: WORN & BROKEN TEETH IN DOGS

It is not uncommon to see some wearing down, chipping and fracturing of a dog’s teeth through normal use as they age. Dental wear can also be attributed to something as simple as the wrong choice in toys (such as tennis balls). However, in many causes, excessive wear and tear is actually an indication of underlying physical or mental health issues. Moreover, worn down or fractured teeth can be very painful and lead to other oral health problems, so addressing the issue is important regardless of the cause.

Dogs who excessively lick or chew themselves may be experiencing physical pain or discomfort from health problems. Itching and irritation from skin issues is one of the most common medical causes of tooth damage. Parasites (such as fleas) and allergies, for example, often cause excessive wear to the incisors (the smallest teeth at the front of the mouth) due to frequent gnawing at itchy skin.

Damaged teeth can sometimes indicate internal discomfort. Gastrointestinal pain, for example, can lead dogs to lick excessively or eat non-food objects such as rocks or sticks, which can result in tooth damage (and other serious internal issues). Orthopedic issues such as arthritis may also lead to excessive licking and chewing at painful areas of the body, often resulting in both skin and tooth damage.

Mental distress is another common cause of worn or broken teeth. Dogs experiencing anxiety or boredom from prolonged confinement or isolation often chew on any object available. Excessive chewing on anything abrasive (such as a crate, fence, chain or furniture) can cause severe damage to teeth over time. This is often a problem in animal shelters, but any dog may be at risk if they have anxiety issues or if their needs for physical and mental enrichment are not being met.

If you notice your dog is chewing excessively or has worn or damaged teeth, the best first step is to consult with a veterinarian. Not only can your veterinarian assess and treat the teeth themselves, they can also help you to pinpoint and address the root of the issue.

If you are unable to get to a vet right away, not all hope is lost. Ensuring that your itchy dog (as well as any other pet in your household) is on adequate flea control, providing plenty of appropriate tooth-safe chew toys, and making sure your dog is getting plenty of exercise and mental stimulation are a good start. Consulting with an experienced dog trainer can also be a good step in navigating more complex behavioral issues such as separation anxiety. The earlier the intervention, the less damage and discomfort to your dog, and the simpler the fix.

(“Ask the Vet” is a monthly column written by local veterinarians including Clare Bartholomew of Mendocino Coast Humane Society, Colin Chaves of Covington Creek Veterinary, Karen Novak of Mendocino Village Veterinary and Kendall Willson of Mendocino Equine and Livestock.)

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ED NOTE:

I hadn’t heard of Charlie Kirk before he was murdered, but prior to looking up his opinions I was sad for him being so young and married with two little kids. After reading up on his opinions I’m much less sad for him but still sad for his wife. Any reasonably articulate radlib could unravel Kirk in a one-on-one. He’s lucky he stuck to debating college kids. Predictably, the orange demagogue has rolled out to blame Kirk’s assassination on “Marxist lunatics” and kindred maga punching bags like George Soros. One would expect the president, even the oaf like this one, to come out with a lot of insincere blather about how we’re all one civic student body etc. and should leave off with the violent rhetoric. Instead, our leader brings US even more gasoline to throw on the ever increasing civic violence. The pathetic Democratic resistance will continue to capitulate to the maga fascists and here we are. (We’d like to thank Reverend Anderson for this Sunday’s sermon.)

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SAVE THE DEER

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is hosting a virtual workshop Tuesday inviting the public to help develop a deer conservation and management plan.

The plan follows in the footsteps of the recently released plans for black bears and bighorn sheep.

During the two-hour workshop, participants will learn about the development process and how to be involved. CDFW staff will collect attendee input, which will guide the plan. Attendees can also participate in a Q&A with CDFW staff.

According to CDFW, the first draft of the plan is expected to be available in early 2026.

The workshop is 6-8 p.m. via this Zoom link: https://wildlife-ca-gov.zoom.us/j/88628762826.

For more information contact CDFW statewide deer coordinator Brian Leo at [email protected].

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Sunday, September 14, 2025

GABRIEL CAPRI, 52, Santa Rosa/Ukiah. Contempt of court.

SANTIAGO DOMINGO-MARTIN, (age not listed), Ukiah. Trespassing-entering property without consent, false ID, resisting, unspecified offense.

DOMINIC FABER, 63, Ukiah. Parole violation.

DOMINIQUE GULICK, 23, Vallejo/Ukiah. Stolen property, assault weapon, evidence destruction, conspiracy.

NIKOLAS IRVINE-MCKEOWN, 33, Eureka/Ukiah. Suspended license for DUI.

ELIE JEANBAPTISTE, 28, Vallejo/Ukiah. Stolen property, assault weapon, felon/addict with firearm, ammo possession by prohibited person, reckless evasion-against traffic, county parole violation, conspiracy.

ZACHARY LINDENBUSHCH, 36, Petaluma/Ukiah. DUI.

ANTHONY LOPES SR., 55, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, probation revocation.

MICHAEL MARTIN, 56, Ukiah. Paraphernalia, parole violation.

IRA REYES, 39, Covelo. Suspended license, county parole violation, probation revocation.

JUAREZ SALGUERO, 44, Ukiah. DUI.

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BILL KIMBERLIN: Golden Gate Bridge from a painter’s point of view.

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49ERS ARE BANGED UP, INEXPERIENCED AND NOW 2-0 ON THE ROAD. CRAZY TO DREAM BIGGER?

by Ann Killion

On paper, the San Francisco 49ers were supposed to win Sunday. Even without their starting quarterback. Even without their star tight end. Even with untested rookies all over the defense. The Saints are not a threatening opponent, certainly not on paper.

But the game wasn’t played on paper. It was played on a hard plastic surface in the loud, unforgiving Superdome where weird things happen.

Weird things did happen. One of them was that Jauan Jennings, who apparently couldn’t lift his arm a week ago, was not only active, he caught the winning touchdown pass with a little more than 12 minutes to play in the game. And then the 49ers had to sweat it out the rest of the way. As in Week 1, the defense came up big at crunch time.

The 49ers escaped with a 26-21 win and a 2-0 start to their season. Under head coach Kyle Shanahan, they have started the season 2-0 four times, the beneficiaries of a last-place schedule in three of those instances, including this season. Each time the fast start has come with consecutive road wins. And each time in the past that Shanahan’s 49ers have started 2-0, they made it to the NFC Championship Game.

That kind of expectation would be crazy this year, not with so many early injuries, so many untested players and so many veterans with the NFL mileage piling up on their bodies.

But the 49ers have given themselves a nice September cushion, with two of their next three opponents NFC West teams, including their home opener against Arizona next Sunday and a Thursday night road game against the Rams on Oct. 1.

Quarterback Mac Jones, forced into action by Brock Purdy’s toe injury, did some good things and he did some bad things. He directed a snappy two-minute drive at the end of the first half to give the 49ers a 16-7 lead. He found a nice connection with Ricky Pearsall.

But he occasionally held onto the ball too long, as he did at the start of the third quarter. He was sacked and fumbled the ball, which was recovered by the Saints. New Orleans went down the field to score a touchdown and pull within two points, 16-14.

Jones got the 49ers a win. He will not, however, give the 49ers a quarterback controversy, no matter how long Purdy is out (and there were some reports pregame that it might be less than the dire prognostications of possibly five weeks).

The 49ers’ fans turned the Superdome into a less threatening venue than it had been in past years. A red sea washed over the Crescent City all weekend. The last time the 49ers played here, in a game that fans were allowed to attend (they played in the 2020 pandemic in front of just 5,000 fans) was a wildly entertaining 48-46 shootout in 2019.

Since then, the 49ers have made two Super Bowl appearances, have reestablished themselves in the NFL’s elite and have gained a reputation as bringing a powerful traveling fan base. New Orleans has long been a favorite destination and the crowd in the dome was pretty evenly split.

That 2019 instant classic established George Kittle as a superstar, may have been Jimmy Garoppolo’s finest game — he outdueled Drew Brees — and helped set the 49ers up to be the top seed in the NFC.

Since then, the Saints have fallen on hard times, with running back Alvin Kamara the only real star still remaining from the glory days — he gashed the 49ers for 99 yards. The Saints’ quarterback is a guy with the indoor football league-worthy name of Spencer Rattler. His receivers did him no favors, dropping passes and tripping through the first half.

But their new coach Kellen Moore directed the Eagles to a Super Bowl victory last February as offensive coordinator. And even without a ton of talent, the Saints managed to keep pace with the 49ers. Part of the reason they kept it close in the first half was because, in his first scoring opportunity as the 49ers new kicker, Eddy Piñeiro sailed the extra point wide right.

Late in the game, Rattler directed a touchdown drive to make it 26-21, exposing holes in the 49ers defense. But when he had chances to orchestrate a game-winning drive the red sea turned the Superdome into hostile territory for the home team.

A revamped defense and iffy special teams remain ongoing themes for the 49ers. So do injuries. The 49ers lost key players on Sunday: starting left guard Ben Bartch to an ankle injury and fullback Kyle Juszczyk to a concussion. Left tackle Trent Williams was a game-time decision after working out on the field pregame with training staff and appeared to be hobbling. Rookie cornerback Upton Stout briefly left the game in the fourth quarter.

“It hasn’t been a good year so far,” Shanahan said on Friday, in regard to injuries. “We’ll see how it ends up.”

The 49ers are already banged up. They haven’t looked particularly dominating. They have a lot of questions.

But they’re 2-0. And they know from experience that puts them on the road to good things.

(SF Chronicle)

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49ERS GAME GRADES:

Defense steps up to seal win, Mac Jones thrives in Shanahan offense

The San Francisco 49ers pulled off a 26-21 victory over the Saints in New Orleans despite a stack of new injuries to add to the already expected absences of Brock Purdy, George Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. What were the keys to the victory?

Offense: A-

Backup QB Mac Jones did quite nicely in his first 49ers start, spreading the ball around and throwing close-in touchdown passes to Christian McCaffrey and tight end Luke Farrell (the first in his career), and seeing Jauan Jennings break out for a third score with 19 yards after the catch on a 42-yard TD reception. McCaffrey tallied 107 total yards from scrimmage for the second time this season, and backup tight ends Farrell and Jake Tonges combined for six catches.

Defense: C+

Despite giving up three touchdown passes to the Saints’ Spencer Rattler, there were flashes of promise from Robert Saleh’s unit. The Niners’ veterans came through with big plays late in the game, with Fred Warner‘s fumble recovery late in the third quarter and a key pass breakout in the fourth, Nick Bosa‘s sack in the fourth stymieing New Orleans’ penultimate possession and new addition Bryce Huff’s sack on 4th-and-1 killing the Saints’ final drive.

Special Teams: C

Eddy Piñeiro made his two field-goal attempts (from 44 and 46 yards), but a missed extra point on his first-ever Niners kick is sure to provide additional cause for concern and could have proved costly. And the kick coverage teams proved to be a bit leaky, surrendering a 34-yard kickoff return as well as a 19-yard punt return.

Coaching: B+

Working with less than his usual collection of offensive talent, Kyle Shanahan‘s offense nevertheless managed to generate yardage and opportunities, although the absence of a game-saving, clock-killing fourth-quarter drive his teams have generated so many times in years past put the defense on the spot to save the win, which Saleh’s squad did.

Overall: B

It wasn’t the prettiest victory over an opponent far removed from the NFL elite, but the 49ers managed to keep the Saints’ Rattler winless on his career (he’s now 0-8 in his starts) while seeing Mac Jones connect with his new teammates takes some of the pressure off on any decision on Purdy’s return to action next Sunday in the home opener against league rivals, the Arizona Cardinals.

(Chronicle Sports Staff)

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GIANTS DROP SERIES TO DODGERS, LOSING 10-2 AS L.A. PILES UP 35 HITS OVER 2 DAYS

by Susan Slusser

After downing the Dodgers in dramatic fashion on Friday night, the San Francisco Giants were feeling good about taking the series, especially with Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, their All-Stars, going Saturday and Sunday.

Neither was at his best after long seasons and big workloads. Webb gave up six runs Saturday, Ray five on Sunday and, after a 10-2 victory in the finale, it was Los Angeles with the series win. The Dodgers compiled 35 hits the past two days against a Giants staff that at times has appeared either tired, out of sorts or just out of ways to retire L.A. hitters.

“We win the first game, we score four runs in the first inning yesterday, it feels pretty good,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Then to be where we are today is disappointing. It got away from us in a hurry. Obviously, we gave up a lot of hits and a lot of runs to a team that makes you work. You don’t throw it over the plate, they end up wearing you out some.”

Worse still for the Giants, the Mets won earlier in the day, so San Francisco fell back a game and a half behind New York in the wild-card hunt. The Mets hold the tiebreaker with the Giants, and the Diamondbacks are just a half game behind San Francisco.

“I’m not paying attention to that,” shortstop Willy Adames said. “We have to focus on what we have here and win here, and then whatever happens, it happens.”

San Francisco heads to Arizona for the next three games, then to Los Angeles for four — and then there are only six games remaining in the season after that. The Giants cannot afford for their flighty offense to disappear again — they recorded five hits Sunday and just 16 in the series, and their apparent final hit, a double from Drew Gilbert in the ninth, was extinguished when he failed to touch first, a call held up on review. L.A.’s Tyler Glasnow went 6⅔ innings, allowed three hits and four walks and struck out four. The Giants scored just once off him and will see him again at Dodger Stadium at the end of the week.

“He was having a great day today. He was attacking the hitters, executing the pitches,” Adames said. “We couldn’t take the opportunity there and get a big hit. But we made some adjustments throughout the game.”

Because of the starters’ workloads, especially Webb’s, the Giants usually don’t stay on regular rest when there’s a day off, preferring everyone get the extra breather. But they stayed on turn after Thursday’s day off in order to stack Justin Verlander, Webb and Ray up for this series.

Like Webb a night earlier, Ray had to work hard almost the entire outing. He had an 11-pitch, 1-2-3 first and after that, it got rougher and rougher and Ray said he was having some mechanical issues when in the stretch and missing spots. He gave up a run on Kiké Hernández’s sacrifice fly in the second, and in the third, Ray might have escaped without allowing a run, but with two on and one out, Tommy Edman’s grounder to third took a sideways hop and Matt Chapman had to knock it down and only get one rather than an inning-ending double play.

Before the game, Chapman had spoken to the Chronicle about how hard the infield dirt is at Oracle Park, causing him repeat hand injuries, and the grounds crew spent a lot of extra time wetting down the area around third before the game.

Ray walked Mookie Betts to open the fifth — exactly how Webb’s rough inning the night before started — and the Dodgers wound up sending nine men to the plate and scoring four in the inning.

“They came out swinging the bats really good,” Adames said. “It’s tough to beat a team when they score (double digit runs). … It’s tough to come back, especially with the arms that they have.”

The final run came on a balk by reliever Joel Peguero, who’d experienced trouble with his PitchCom headset throughout; Melvin came out to plead his case with crew chief Bill Miller, but Peguero hadn’t called for a time out, as is required with tech problems. (The balk itself was less than obvious on video.)

Webb leads the majors with 188⅔ innings pitched; Ray is 10th, at 177⅔ innings. There is only one more day off the rest of the way, on Sept. 25. Webb said Saturday he feels great physically, and Ray echoed that Sunday. “Arm feels great, body feels great,” he said.

There is little denying he’s in a rough patch, though, with an 8.05 ERA and .306 opponents average over his past four starts. Ray’s slider is getting hit especially hard, .382 over his past seven appearances. He said small things keep derailing his starts and, he concluded, “I’ve just got to focus a little more.”

Catcher Patrick Bailey, meantime, has started 13 games in a row, including working all 10 innings Friday, and he still started Sunday’s day game after a night game, but the team did have Thursday off. Bailey entered the finale hitting .333 in September and blasting a walkoff grand slam Friday — the only homer the Giants hit in the three games.

“We talked about it a little bit yesterday,” Melvin said of a potential day off for Bailey, “but he wants no part of it right now. … He wants to play. And where we are right now, we’re trying to win every possible game. We’ve got to run our best lineup out there. And Patrick is part of that.”

The knock on Bailey has been that he wears down in the second half, but this year, he’s finishing strong. He had three homers and nine RBIs in the first five games of the homestand, and his catching hasn’t dipped at all, at plus-22 defensive runs saved.

“You can just look at the numbers and see how much he impacts a game,” Melvin said. “On top of that workload now, he’s swinging the bat as well. So, he’s learned a lot over the first couple of seasons and he wants to be that guy that the team relies on every day.”

With Sunday’s game getting a little out of hand in the later stages, Melvin got Bailey a bit of a rest, putting Andrew Knizner in in the seventh.

After going with their three veterans against the Dodgers, the Giants will start Kai-Wei Teng on Monday at Arizona. The team has yet to settle on a starter for Tuesday and Verlander will go Wednesday. That lines Webb and Ray up for the first two at Los Angeles.

“It’s frustrating, obviously,” Ray said of the past two days. “But we’re still in it and we’re a resilient team. We’ve showed that we’ve been able to bounce back from stuff like this, so we’ve just got to put this behind us.”

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CHERYL KNAPP:

Baby boomers got paper routes and got out of bed at 3:00 am to deliver the papers on their bikes when they were around 12 years old. They baby-sat and mowed lawns and shoveled snow for money to buy their shoes with. They worked from 5pm-9pm throughout high school and through college. They didn’t have closets full of clothes boots shoes coats and hats. Then when they went out on their own, they worked a full time job and a part-time job. They lived with 17% mortgage interest rates and inflation that would make your head spin. Read history about the past 60-70 years.

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76 BUDDHIST TROMBONES ALL OM-ING AT ONCE

As birthday #76 approaches on September 28th (born at 10:45a.m. at the Catholic hospital in East Cleveland on Euclid Avenue); my father exclaimed in the late 1960’s: “I was present at your birth. You came out screaming, and you haven’t stopped yet!” Anyway, am here and now at the public library in Washington, D.C. on a computer, with $423.04 in the Chase checking account and $25.01 in the wallet and general health just excellent at 75.

I would like to leave the homeless shelter. I would like to team up with others to intervene in history on this politically insane, environmentally shot planet earth. I’d like to get more money just for having some more money. Makes sense, right? Let’s go! What would you like to do now?

Craig Louis Stehr, [email protected]

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

I reject the notion that I climbed up a ladder to own it all then selfishly pulled the ladder up behind me to prevent subsequent generations from climbing up and getting their share. I didn’t construct the ladder of life and I don’t own the ladder of life. I live my life the best way I know how and am subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune just as the generations before me and after me. I no more influence my country’s government and economy than an ant crawling on the sidewalk but, if I did, nothing my government is now doing would continue to be done.

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WHY DOES EVERYBODY SWEAR ALL THE TIME NOW?

by Mark Edmundson

Is there anyone out there now who doesn’t swear? Is there anyone who doesn’t revel in vulgar language?

You hear it everywhere and from almost everyone. When I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, swearing was the undisputed territory of guys. Guys who worked with their hands — construction men, plumbers and carpenters — cursed copiously on the job. Sailors cursed all the time, or so we were told. Sometimes a neighborhood dad would let loose a stream of bad words from the backyard when he was three beers in, but not often.

Among cursing guys, there were rules. Swearing was an outdoor activity. Keep it out of the house. Never swear in front of women. Never curse out a teacher or a cop. I heard my father swear all of once in my life: He said that he and his buddies at the restaurant would be “working like hell.” That was it: one “hell” in the 15 sentient years I lived beside him.

Now we live in a cacophony of curses. People curse on the job, no matter how white their collars. Kids now swear as well as the mythical swearing sailors of my youth. Have I heard a person of the cloth swear? Who hasn’t?

To some, this, no doubt, feels like liberation. The right to cuss things out, call things as you see them and dress people down is now democratized. The patriarchal right to vulgarity has been opened up to everyone! Viva la liberation!

I don’t mean to be prudish about this. There are times and places for some A-1 vulgarity. One of my more satisfying moments was telling the tyrannical boss of a road gang I worked on one summer to go void himself in his hat, though in slightly different words.

But obscenity loses its power and meaning in ubiquity. These days, curse words fill the air like angry drones — an ambient buzzing of bitter, nasty words.

Does vulgarity even matter anymore? Should I just get on with my __ (fill in the blank with your go-to) life?

Maybe. But I fear the situation is slightly more serious. Compulsive vulgarity — talking dreck all the time — gives evidence of a troubled view of life and spreads it. Nasty language is a black-magic wand. When you touch it to a person, place or thing, you perform an act of mild (and sometimes not so mild) denigration. When you use everyone’s favorite vulgar word to denote the sexual act, you reduce the act. You gut the spirit life out of it. With profanity, you denigrate what you feel is overvalued. You try to cut it down to size. Granted, some things do need to be cut down. Some people could use a dose of vulgar chastening.

But not everyone and not everything and (most important) not all the time. A sprinkle of salt gives your dinner savor; a handful kills it. When you curse compulsively you produce a view of the world that’s smaller and meaner. It’s the view that Wallace Stevens satirizes in his fictional Mrs. Alfred Uruguay, who claims she “wiped away moonlight like mud.” Stevens goes at it again in “Gubbinal”:

That strange flower, the sun,

Is just what you say.

Have it your way.

The world is ugly,

And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,

That animal eye,

Is just what you say.

The poet sees the sun as a miraculous phenomenon, provoking metaphors to describe it — the strange flower, that tuft of jungle feathers, that animal eye. But his interlocutor clearly insists on dead, dull renderings, affirming, directly or not, that “the world is ugly, and the people are sad.” Maybe he uses some reductive profanity to make his point. He’s a “gubbin,” an unimaginative being, and his dull song that the poet is listening to is a “gubbinal.”

Compulsive vulgarity can be an exercise in the reductive fallacy. That’s the view that the worst you can say about anyone, or anything, is the most significantly true. Have we all become proponents of cruel reduction? When the reductionist wants to get to know someone quickly, he asks, What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?

Not long ago I saw what passed for a comedy skit by Jon Stewart, a protest aimed at businesses and law firms that capitulated too quickly to the demands of the most publicly profane of presidents. Mr. Stewart writhed and leaped like a demon, frantically repeating his wish that those who acquiesced to President Trump initiate carnal relations with themselves. Behind him was a gospel choir singing and swaying in time to his song and dance.

The target was ultimately Mr. Trump’s toadies, sure. But a piece of collateral damage was the choir members and their spiritual artistry, enlisted into the vulgar diatribe. They were co-opted to make a point and got dipped briefly in the mud.

That mud is everywhere now.

Omnipresent cursing, the programmatic reduction of nearly everything, pollutes our worldview. It makes it harder to see what is true and good and beautiful. We become blind to instances of courage and compassion. Our world shrinks. And we shrink along with it.

On the other hand, the willingness to use decent words suggests a decent heart and mind. And decency can breed decency. My nonswearing father had his faults (though no more than I do), but he was hard-working, considerate and kind. He was the guy who hustled over to shovel the steps for the elderly lady next door after a Boston blizzard; the guy who’d hop out of bed after midnight to help a friend whose car had broken down; who was always ready to fill in for another guy at the restaurant where he worked. Is it a coincidence — maybe it is — that my non cursing father was also one of the very few white men I knew well growing up whom I never heard say anything racist? He was a decent guy, in deed, but also in his words. Maybe we all should be.

(Mark Edmundson is a professor at the University of Virginia.)

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A MEDIOCRE MAN

by Robert Service

I'm just a mediocre man
Of no high-brow pretence;
A comfortable life I plan
With care and commonsense.
I do the things most people do,
I echo what they say;
And through my morning paper view
The problems of the day.

No doubt you think I'm colourless,
Profoundly commonplace;
And yet I fancy, more or less,
I represent the race.
My name may stand for everyone,
At least for nine in ten,
For all in all the world is run
By mediocre men.

Of course you'll maybe not agree
That you are average,
And unlike ordinary me
You strut your little stage,
Well, you may even own a Bank,
And mighty mergers plan,
But Brother, doff your tile and thank
The Mediocre Man.

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LEAD STORIES, MONDAY'S NYT

Kirk Shooting Suspect Held ‘Leftist Ideology,’ Utah Governor Says

Right-Wing Activists Urge Followers to Expose Those Celebrating Kirk Killing

U.K. Plans Biggest Security Operation Since Coronation for Trump’s State Visit

Far-Right Rally in London Draws Huge Crowd and a Counterprotest

Starving Children Eat Animal Feed in Besieged Sudanese City

They Had Money Problems. They Turned to ChatGPT for Solutions

Company That Bought Publishers Clearing House Won’t Pay Past Prize Winners

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“THE HUMAN LOUSE somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of their own at horrible speed. I think pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war indeed! In war all solderies are lousy, at the least when it is warm enough. The men who fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae — every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles.”

― George Orwell, ‘Homage to Catalonia’

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PUBLIC FIGURE SECURITY POST-KIRK SHOOTING

by James Queally, Richard Winton & Sandra McDonald

Less than 24 hours after a bullet whizzed across a Utah college campus and claimed the life of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, polarizing figures from across the political spectrum swiftly canceled public events.

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, decided to postpone a North Carolina stop on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour this weekend, while Trump allies Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani reportedly nixed plans for a New York gathering due to “increased security concerns.”

Popular leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who was set to debate Kirk at Dartmouth College later this month, told Politico he would “wait for the temperature to lower” before holding in-person events again.

Kirk’s assassination comes amid a spate of attacks on high-profile political figures — including two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump — that security experts say will change the way large-scale political events are held, with open-air venues increasingly seen as risky.

“In the current threat environment, outdoor venues for political events should be avoided at all costs,” said Art Acevedo, the former head of the Houston and Miami Police Departments.

Even with a security apparatus as powerful as the U.S. Secret Service, experts say it is incredibly difficult to establish a firm perimeter at outdoor rallies with a large number of attendees. The gunman who opened fire on Trump in Butler, Pa., during the 2024 presidential campaign did so from more than 400 feet away. Kirk was shot from a distance of nearly 200 yards with a powerful bolt-action rifle.

Kirk’s suspected killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested Friday morning, authorities said. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said ammunition recovered and linked to the shooting had anti-fascist engravings on it.

A PBS/Marist Poll conducted last year found 1 in 5 Americans believes violent acts would be justified to “get the country back on track.”

Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman was killed alongside her husband at their Minnesota home in June by a gunman allegedly motivated by conservative politics. In April, police arrested a man who allegedly tried to set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence while the Democrat slept inside with his family.

Politicians aren’t the only ones being targeted. The killing last December in Manhattan of a healthcare industry executive turned suspected gunman Luigi Mangione into an object of public fascination, with some applauding the act of vigilantism.

With Americans increasingly viewing their political enemies as enemy combatants, researchers who study extremist violence and event security professionals say Kirk’s killing on Wednesday could mark a turning point in how well-known individuals protect themselves.

“The bottom line is, for public political and other figures, it is increasingly difficult to protect them anywhere, but even more so in an outdoor environment because it’s getting harder to screen people and devices in those open spaces,” said Brian Levin, a former New York City police officer and professor emeritus at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

Kirk was being protected by roughly a half-dozen Utah Valley University police officers and a handful of private security guards Wednesday, according to campus security officials. While that kind of presence might deter a close-quarters threat, snipers and other assailants with long-range capabilities would not be affected.

Typically, security professionals seek to create three “rings of protection” around the focus of a public event, according to Kent Moyer, founder of World Protection Group, an international security firm.

The inner ring often consists of barriers and security personnel meant to separate Kirk from the crowd immediately in front of him, not someone hundreds of yards away. In the middle ring, security guards positioned farther from the focus of the event monitor the temperature of the crowd and try to clock individuals acting strangely or becoming aggressive. An outer ring would serve to search bags and screen individuals before they enter the event.

It did not appear there was any screening of attendees at the event where Kirk was killed, and it is legal to openly carry firearms on a college campus in Utah.

Levin said he expects to see drones deployed at similar events in the future, an assessment seconded by Acevedo.

“If you’re going to do an outdoor event you better make sure you have some kind of surveillance of rooftops,” Levin said.

When doing risk assessments, Levin said, police and security professionals need to be cognizant that politicians themselves are no longer the sole targets for political violence.

What Levin called “idiosyncratic actors” are increasingly likely to lash out at those connected to political and policy positions they find unjust. While Kirk was not a politician himself, he was a beloved figure in Trump’s orbit and his activist group, Turning Point USA, has often been credited with driving younger voters to support the president.

“It’s not just elected officials. It’s pundits, it includes corporate people, people involved in policy and education,” said Levin.

But a heavy security detail doesn’t come cheap.

While elected officials are guarded by a range of federal and state law enforcement agencies, political influencers like Kirk must rely on their own vendors as well as security personnel hired by the venues they speak at.

Levin warned that law enforcement assigned to political events should be on high alert for retaliatory attacks in the near future, given the “dehumanizing” rhetoric some have taken up in the wake of Kirk’s killing.

Specifically, he pointed to Trump’s oval office remarks late Wednesday blaming Kirk’s death on “the radical left,” despite the fact that Kirk’s killer had not been identified at that time and federal law enforcement officials had not disclosed a motive in the shooting.

Trump also rattled off a number of attacks on Republicans during his remarks, while making no mention of Hortman’s murder, the 2022 attack on the husband of U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, or the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — all violent incidents carried out by people who espoused right-wing political values.

“More and more people across the ideological spectrum, though more concentrated on the far hard right, think violence is justified to achieve political outcomes,” Levin said.

(LA Times)

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MARIENE BARBERA:

To seize on a man’s death as an occasion for mockery is not political speech, it is desecration. Whatever you think of Charlie Kirk’s stance, he was a human being murdered in cold blood. To celebrate it is to join hands with the murderer.

Kirk’s point about the Second Amendment was not a wish for bloodshed but an acknowledgment of the tragic cost that comes with any freedom. We say the same about free speech — it protects vile words as well as noble ones. His argument was about liberty, not murder.

“As you sow, so shall you reap” does not mean “you deserve to be killed.”

It means the moral order holds us accountable for our actions.

To wield Scripture as a sneer against the murdered is to corrupt its meaning and put yourself in peril of the very judgment you invoke.

Charlie Kirk did not ‘reap’ death by being outspoken. He reaped admiration, loyalty, and, yes, hatred. But the bullet that killed him was not sown by his words — it was sown by the killer’s malice.

Do not confuse the victim with the crime.

Mocking Charlie Kirk’s murder is not argument, it is desecration. His words about liberty acknowledged tragic costs — they did not invite his own execution. The only one who ‘reaps’ here is the killer, and the harvest is bloodguilt.

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I’VE BEEN SEEING a lot of people talking about how hypocritical it is of Trumpers to be going around trying to get people ostracized or fired for speaking ill of Charlie Kirk after his assassination.

One of the most boring political observations you can make about Republicans or Democrats is that they are “hypocrites” who say one thing and do another. That stops being interesting when you realize their words are never actually saying anything about their real principles and values; they’re always just making empty noises to advance whatever agendas they’re trying to push in a given instance.

Of course Republicans pretend to care about free speech and then support the suppression of the speech of their political enemies; their lip service to “free speech” was just something they said to attack the Democrats. Of course Democrats pretended to care about racism and injustice and then threw their support behind a live-streamed genocide; their lip service to justice and equality was only ever empty noise they were making to attack Republicans.

The interesting thing about these contradictions isn’t that they show “hypocrisy”, it’s that these people don’t actually stand for anything. It’s that they’re just a bunch of babbling human livestock mindlessly regurgitating whatever noises they’re conditioned to regurgitate in order for their team to win.

This unthinking lateral feuding benefits nobody but the powerful. The empire managers are always happy to see a white hot culture war sucking all the oxygen away from the kind of dissident thinking that could give rise to a revolutionary class war. The more Americans are fixated on empty partisan feuding with no real content, the less inclined they will be to do anything real. The more their gaze is fixed horizontally, the less likely they are to look up at those who are pulling their strings.

— Caitlin Johnstone

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BEYOND CONDEMNATION

by James Greenberg

The murder of Charlie Kirk is a rupture in the civic order. It demands unqualified condemnation—not because of who he was or what he represented, but because assassination is a threshold democratic societies cannot allow to dissolve. In a functioning civic order, disagreement is not a death sentence. The moment political killing becomes imaginable, let alone real, the promise of democracy itself falters.

Condemnation, however, is only the beginning. To understand how such an act becomes possible, we must examine the conditions that make violence legible—how grievance is amplified, division rewarded, and opponents cast not as adversaries but as existential threats. Kirk’s death cannot be dismissed as the act of a lone individual. It is the culmination of a political ecosystem that cultivates hostility long before blood is spilled.

What makes political violence thinkable is not just ideology—it’s infrastructure. Violence is rarely spontaneous. It emerges from patterned tactics, institutional supports, and cultural cues that signal which kinds of aggression are permissible, and which targets are fair game.

Consider the American right, where intimidation has been systematized. Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist,” donor-funded harassment networks, and coordinated pile-ons across media platforms are not outbursts—they are strategies. Their purpose is to discredit expertise, silence dissent, and redraw the boundaries of legitimate speech. These efforts operate with infrastructure: funding pipelines, legal shields, and a clear ideological mission. They transform individuals into cautionary examples, warning others what happens when they challenge the sanctioned narrative.

On the left, exposure takes a different shape. Call-outs, disinvitations, and social media campaigns are typically decentralized, reactive, and framed as moral accountability. They lack the centralized scaffolding of the right’s surveillance operations. That difference matters. Both can cause harm, but they diverge in design and intent. The right builds intimidation into its architecture; the left’s tactics often emerge as improvised counters to exclusion or injustice.

Still, these tactics interact. Each contributes to a climate of escalation. When the public sphere becomes a battleground, every disagreement is framed as existential, and every adversary becomes a threat. That shift lowers the threshold for violence. Kirk’s murder is not just extremism—it is the endpoint of a system that normalizes symbolic violence and rehearses targeting as a daily ritual.

Division in American life is not simply a mood—it is engineered. Like architecture, it has blueprints, funders, and scaffolding. It shapes the spaces we inhabit, often invisibly. The infrastructure of division is visible in donor networks that bankroll harassment, think tanks that manufacture outrage, and media platforms that monetize grievance. It extends into algorithms that reward provocation and strip away nuance. These are not spontaneous eruptions of anger; they are cultivated fields of resentment, irrigated daily with new provocations and harvested for political gain.

I spent years working in rural Oaxaca, in a region where the murder rate once reached 500 per 100,000. There, violence wasn’t random. It was structured. That experience shapes how I read political violence here—as the predictable outcome of systems already bent toward harm.

Even the language we inherit tilts the field. In English and many Western languages, “right” connotes lawfulness, correctness, virtue. To be “in the right” is to be justified. “Left” is deviation, remainder, disruption. These asymmetries shape how legitimacy is assigned—often unconsciously. Violence from the right is narrated as reaction or defense; violence from the left as chaos or destruction.

This framing matters. It influences who is granted the presumption of order and who is cast as disorderly. It colors media narratives, courtroom arguments, and public opinion. Symbolic structures do not determine outcomes, but they set the stage. When an act like Kirk’s murder occurs, the cultural scripts we carry guide how we interpret it—whether as breakdown, justice, or inevitability.

Violence also unfolds in time. Authoritarian projects move quickly—firings, decrees, purges. Democratic checks move slowly—lawsuits, investigations, hearings. In that gap, facts on the ground harden before accountability can catch up. The same dynamic applies to political violence. Symbolic aggression spreads at the speed of an algorithm. Watchlists, smear campaigns, viral provocations reach thousands in minutes. The injuries they cause are reputational, but the effect is cumulative: the stripping away of protection, the gradual redefinition of a target as disposable.

Once that cultural work is done, physical violence becomes easier to justify. By the time outrage builds enough to resist, the damage is already lodged in the public imagination. Kirk’s murder was not the first time digital provocation crossed into real-world harm, and it will not be the last. The timeline is predictable: exposure, dehumanization, escalation. Each step collapses the distance between words and weapons.

To condemn Kirk’s murder is necessary, but insufficient. The harder task is to dismantle the architecture that made it possible. That means confronting not just the act, but the scaffolding of division—the donor networks, media platforms, and symbolic structures that profit from hostility. It means insisting that politics is not war by other means, but the fragile practice of managing difference without destruction.

Political violence thrives where civic protections are weak. To resist it requires more than outrage; it requires rebuilding the cultural and institutional norms that keep disagreement from collapsing into enmity. We cannot afford to let assassination become part of the repertoire of American politics. To allow that is to concede that we have abandoned the possibility of civic life itself.

The murder of Charlie Kirk must not be remembered only as a singular rupture. It must be recognized as a warning—of what happens when symbolic violence is normalized, when division is monetized, and when time itself is weaponized. To defend democracy today is not only to condemn violence, but to dismantle the conditions that cultivate it.

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CHARLIE KIRK’S KILLING WAS A TRAGEDY. BUT WE MUST NOT REWRITE HIS LIFE

In the wake of horror, honest accountings of his life have not only become rare – they have also become dangerous

by Moira Donegan

Maybe it is the gruesome suddenness of his death that has made so many people forget the realities of Charlie Kirk’s life. After the 31-year-old rightwing influencer was shot dead at a college campus appearance in Utah on Wednesday, many commentators rushed to condemn political violence, on the one hand, and to issue warm tributes to Kirk’s life, on the other. The former of these is legitimate: that political policy should not be determined by force, or political disagreements settled through homicidal violence, is a baseline precondition of not just a democratic form of government, but of any functional society. The latter, perhaps, can be explained by the admirable human impulse towards gentleness and reconciliation. The horror and shock of Kirk’s assassination prompted some to offer their generosity, and their sympathy, to the dead man.

Perhaps it was these noble gestures toward generosity and sympathy that led some commentators to be more laudatory to Kirk’s memory than an honest recounting of his life would allow. In the days following Kirk’s death, several bewilderingly inaccurate postmortem hagiographies have appeared, including from prominent voices on the left and center, that seem to wish that the tragedy of Kirk’s death could retroactively have given him a more honorable life.

The most egregious of these came from Ezra Klein, a center-left columnist at the New York Times known for his ability to channel and influence elite opinion. In a piece published the morning after Kirk’s death, titled Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way, Klein made a series of strained, bizarre and outright untrue assertions about Kirk’s career and character. Kirk, Klein argued, was, if anything, an example of civic virtue. “Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way,” Klein said. “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.” Klein’s point was that political persuasion – the rational debate of ideas between equals in which violence is unthinkable and good faith is presumed – is a cornerstone of liberal democracy, the kind of thing we should all be striving for, the kind of thing we need more of. “American politics has sides,” Klein continued. “There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project – we are all, or most of us, anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment.”

Fair enough, I suppose, on its merits, but such a description of reasoned, honest, good-faith debate is so inaccurate a description of what Charlie Kirk engaged in on college campuses – in his series of large, staged events where he “debated” untrained liberal undergraduates with cameras rolling – that it reads as willfully naive, if not outright dishonest. Charlie Kirk’s “debates” were aggressive, unequal, trolling affairs, in which he sought to provoke his interlocutors to distress, shouted them down and belittled them, spewed hateful rhetoric about queer and trans people, women, Black people, immigrants and Muslims, and selectively edited the ensuing footage to create maximally viral content in which his fans could witness him humiliating the liberals and leftists they perceived to be their enemies. This was not “debate”; it was not reasoned, good-faith discourse; it was not the kind of fair deliberation that democracy relies on. It was a mockery of those things.

If reasoned debate is a precondition of a liberal democracy, there are other preconditions as well. A state cannot be called democratic if it does not offer equal protection of the law – if not all of its citizens are awarded the same dignity by their government and the same vote, same rights of expression and same prerogatives before courts and elected officials in their attempts to influence its policies and navigate its laws. Civic equality – not just civil engagement – is central to the American experiment, too. It is not to excuse his murder to be honest that Kirk opposed that equality. Some historians and political scientists have argued that the United States did not become a democracy until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the laws that intended to end de jure segregation and racist voter suppression. But Kirk opposed the Civil Rights Act, calling it a “huge mistake”. He endorsed the racist so-called “great replacement theory”, in which nefarious actors (usually cast as Jewish people) are seeking to “replace” America’s white population with immigrants, saying it was “well under way every day at our southern border”. On his podcast, he hosted a “slavery apologist” and a man who said that after women “got, you know, the right to vote – after that, it all went downhill”. Kirk himself once said that Black women – he named Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson – “do not have the brain power to be taken seriously”. He condemned Democrats for supposedly wanting to make the US “less white”, and claimed: “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution.” (It is.) And yet Ezra Klein praised Kirk’s “moxie”. One wonders what such a euphemism is meant to obscure.

In the rush to canonize Kirk and revise his history, honest accountings of his life have not only become rare – they have also become dangerous. In the days since his death, journalists, media personalities and others who have not been sufficiently laudatory to Kirk in public have lost their jobs for telling the truth about his life. Matthew Dowd, a Republican political consultant, was fired from MSNBC after saying that Kirk had spoken “hateful words”. In Phoenix, a sports writer was fired for criticizing euphemistic accounts of Kirk’s beliefs. “‘Political differences’ are not the same thing as spewing hateful rhetoric on a daily basis,” he wrote in a social media post. Many of those eulogizing Kirk want to paint him as a champion of free speech, as a man who peddled in honest inquiry, uninhibited expression and the open exchange of ideas. This is a laughably inaccurate picture of the man’s work; it is in these punishments of those who oppose him that we can see a truer reflection of Kirk’s values.

I do not find it hard to condemn political violence. To me, to say that Kirk should not have been murdered is the easiest thing in the world. No one should be shot, be they rightwing influencers, or schoolchildren, or grocery shoppers, or churchgoers. It is easy for me, even, to show sympathy for the humanity of Charlie Kirk, who, for everything else he was, was a human being who has now been robbed of the opportunity to learn, grow, and repent. But such commitments – to human life, to nonviolence, to a faith in the possibility of redemption and reconciliation – need not lead us to lie to ourselves about Charlie Kirk. The same values that make us horrified at his violent death are the ones that should embolden our commitment to defeating the politics he worked for in life.

(theguardian.com)

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