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If martyrdom doesn't make one a hero, nothing can.
Kirk was a man. Not a symbol. Now the opposite is true.
Calling that state of affairs a lie is just raw unfettered denial of the human experience.
You can say neither side cares about the truth, you might even be right. But the one guy who did so enough to talk publicly to the other side in places that are meant for a debate that never happens isn't here anymore.
Who's really so afraid of what he had to say?
None of it matters now. The debate is over. We all lose.
I think martyrdom generally requires you to willingly be killed for your beliefs. Staring in the face of death for your beliefs and choosing to accept it, is an honorable and noble decision. That creates a powerful symbol. A political agitator being killed by someone who disagrees with them is frankly human politics as usual (in the grand sense). We are a nasty species with a penchant for killing other humans for being outside our tribe.
I think the calling into question whether Kirk was a Cynical Propagandist/Political Agitator vs a Noble Truth-seeker is fair game. Doing so is not denying any human experience. And if the truth laid bare is still enough to rouse a tribe to hero-ify than that is fair game too and better for it.
You see talk, I see preach and mock. I see a young priest going among the disbelievers not to understand and find common ground but to convert, mock, and vilify and derive popularity and monetary compensation for his efforts. I don't think such base motivations are worthy of calling it martyrdom and it makes a mockery of that very human experience.
Yes we do.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
This question is indeed fair, but the second Kirk died of his wounds it became an academic issue for historians that is completely politically irrelevant.
I see what looks the most like dialectic that has happened on an American campus since the 1970s. It sure was preaching. But at least heretics were involved somehow.
It doesn't matter now. Discourse is dead.
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