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…I think this is normal? Not great, but normal. Human nature has an irreducible element of spite and Schadenfreude; the fact that most people have people in the world whose guts they hate, news of whose sudden death would bring only elation - this is not some new pathology. It is not exclusive to the Left, it isn't exclusive to the United States, it's not even exclusive to the West. The mark of a civilized society is that we painstakingly sever the instinctive connection, in all those unruly ape minds, between "boy, will I be happy when Gurg finally bites it" and "I should make Gurg snuff it by throwing a big rock at him"; not the excision of the former attitude from the human heart, which no society has ever achieved.
Indeed, you mention "their own parents" as if it were some extreme of depravity, but I think children being relieved when unloved parents who disagreed with them about everything finally shuffle off their mortal coil is a much more universal phenomenon still than people being happy to hear that some minor outgroup celebrity has died. It isn't pretty, and I hasten to add that it's the furthest thing from how I think about my own family, whom I love very much. But it's only human, and the mere presence of this mindstate does not make a murderer.
Schadenfreude? Yes. Both sides experience it. The type of open, widespread celebration we saw from the left for a person like Charlie Kirk? I think not.
Rob Reiner had full blown TDS. When he died, people left, right, and center offered condolences. Stephen King is insufferable right now. When he dies, so will a piece of my childhood. I will mourn the loss of Stephen King. I can see the redeemable qualities in all of these people. I can even see the redeemable qualities of someone like Stephen Colbert on a personal level. Charlie Kirk too had redeemable qualities.
To whatever extent this is true, and it is somewhat, that doesn't offset the fact that the left are the ones who are more likely to define ingroup/outgroup boundaries based on ideological alignment and moral consensus. It's ideology over kinship. The Soviets even mythologized the story of a boy who ratted out his own family and died because of it because they wanted enforce the same kind of ideological boundaries.
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