1. United States
2. N.C.
3. Letter

The GOP has become the party of shameless hypocrisy. Shameless beyond comprehension, and it’s not clear whether they even realize it. More likely, the GOP doesn’t care. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is just another example. Almost immediately the President and his allies began weaponizing his death with baseless conspiracies along with more lies about the “radical and violent left”. This level of propaganda far surpasses what we’ve been through during the Joseph McCarthy era. MAGA has gone on an authoritarian binge, resulting in a governmental justification for a massive crackdown on free speech. Restricting speech about a private citizen is unprecedented. The purging of anyone saying anything that isn’t a paean to Mr. Kirk is as un-American as it gets. Is the party of MAGA so fragile that pointing out the reality of Charlie Kirk’s platform and what he has said in the past is now a reason to be crushed? A reason to enact the same thing that happened to Mr. Kirk, a big free-speech proponent, on others using that same right? It is a shame these pearl-clutchers didn’t call for Sen. Mike Lee to step down after his despicable comments that made light of the killing of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, or demand Donald Trump retire from public life forever for mocking the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi. Now commentary that does not feed the MAGA propaganda machine is a firing offense—according to people who watch Fox News all day. The same Fox News whose anchors casually propose that mentally-ill homeless people should just be randomly killed. When a movement from the President on down directs government power at individuals, universities, law firms, unions, and media outlets to punish First Amendment protected activity, they are engaging in something far worse than cancel culture. They are censoring and trying to suppress people and ideas they do not like. The word for that is authoritarianism. The GOP has cheapened and destroyed everything they once said they stood for. It’s all gone. Christian values - a lie. Law and order - a lie. The only thing the GOP does is a continual fueling of anger to distract the masses to enact an authoritarian regime.