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It is Okay to Think That Charlie Kirk was not Literally Jesus.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to get shot in the jugular for expressing controversial political opinions. I actually agreed with many of Charlie Kirk's controversial political opinions. The thing about controversial political opinions though, is that lots of people don't like them. If you are a person who does not like Charlie Kirk's political opinions, here are some things that would be perfectly understandable for you to think or feel upon hearing the news that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed:
"Charlie Kirk once said gun rights are worth the cost of a few shooting deaths. Kinda funny now huh? I wonder if he's changed his mind."
"Sucks he died like that, but I'm kinda glad I don't have to see his tiny face spouting talking points anymore."
"Charlie Kirk was a massive hack. I think we should care about the kids shot at that school in Colorado more than him."
"Charlie Kirk wanted me kicked out of the country because of my political opinions. It's hard for me to feel bad for him."
To be clear, all of these are tasteless and (in my opinion) poorly thought-out, but they are well within the bounds of civil discourse. None of these are beyond the pale. None of these should get one fired from one's unrelated job. None of these are even close to inciting or advocating for violence.
I was shocked today when I saw a Republican Congressman announce a woke-era pressure campaign againt people who "belittled" the assasination. Apparently I have a much longer memory than many people. I still remember 2020. I still remember George Floyd. It wasn't just the riots, it wasn't just the demonization of physical policing tactics, it was the Orwellian psycholigical tyranny of not being able to express nuanced or contrary feelings about a tragic event. Never again. In a free society, people should be able to express their thoughts and feelings on major events, even if they aren't entirely thought-out or sanitized.
That's fine in theory, but that's not how people in the real world actually behave. People saying things like the above are gloating over the shooting. The statements have the grammatical form of (poorly thought out) arguments, but they aren't motivated by an attempt to reason about the things he said, and they won't be understood by their intended audience as such, except by a few weird high-decoupling quokka rationalists. They are poorly thought out in the first place because the people who say them don't care about making their arguments good; they're not doing it to search for truth, they're doing it to support the violence.
Don't parse the literal words like a computer and say "I don't see a call for violence in there, so it isn't advocating violence". Of course it is. Even if Scott never understood that.
The sort of statements you describe aren't nuanced feelings.
The equivalent for Floyd would be something like "Floyd wanted people like me to die. Well, it turned out to be people like him instead. Sucks to be him but that's what you get for being dumb enough to flee the police while on drugs". I presume that your feelings about Floyd were not expressed that way. Even if you had some similar ideas, sending messages that are not in your literal words is done through tone and phrasing.
This is where I invoke "my rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly". Right-wingers get cancelled over things far more innocuous than supporting violence. Supporting specific acts of violence is pretty much the only left-wing statement that can get you cancelled at all (except for inter-left conflicts, like left-wing antisemitism). I'd like a principled world where nothing you say in private can get you in trouble, but short of that it's preferable that cancellation not be one sided.
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