You’re Not Crazy — They Just Want You to Feel That Way

The gaslighting of Charlie Kirk’s legacy and why truth still matters

Yes, the world is inside out, upside down, and on fire, but no, you are not losing your mind.

You haven’t cracked, snapped, short-circuited, or sizzled. You’re not batshit, bonkers, bananas, or loose in the bean. You haven’t misplaced your marbles or gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You’re fine. Your senses still work. Your moral compass still points true. What’s out of whack is the story being sold to you: grief spun into propaganda, spectacle dressed as sanctity, and history airbrushed like a glossy magazine cover. You’re not hallucinating — you’re just watching reality get retouched with all the grace of a toddler Sharpie-ing the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

And before we go any further, let me put this right where it belongs: we can hold two truths at the same time. We can have empathy and compassion for Charlie Kirk’s wife, his children, and anyone who loved him. They are grieving a violent, senseless death, and they deserve time and space to grieve, and we have given them that and will continue to. But we can also hold the truth of who Charlie Kirk was and what he said. Both are real. Both matter. And pretending otherwise is how you lose your grip on reality. Which to be quite frank, is the whole damn point.

And it is also why Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s stunt on Fox News was so dangerous. He didn’t just offer condolences; he offered canonization. He sat there for all the world to see and declared Charlie Kirk “a modern-day St. Paul,” a “missionary,” a “hero” who “knew what Jesus meant when he said the truth will set you free.” That wasn’t pastoral comfort — it was canonization. It was rewriting the man into a martyr while the record was still warm. Dolan wasn’t just stretching the truth; he was sanctifying someone who, in word after word, embodied the antithesis of Christ’s teachings. And that is exactly why we cannot go silent.

Let’s talk about what a devout Catholic Charlie Kirk supposedly was, shall we? Because we still have truth. And as George Orwell wrote: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” There is truth and there is untruth, and we have to cling to the truth like it’s oxygen — because without it, we suffocate in the smog of sanctified lies.

So, let’s put Kirk’s words next to the words of the man Dolan claims he modeled:

Charlie Kirk: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Jesus: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.”

Charlie Kirk: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.” (about Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and other Black women)

Jesus: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Charlie Kirk: “If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?”

Jesus: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

Charlie Kirk: “You’re in your early 30s. I’m sorry; you’re not as attractive in the dating pool as you were in your early 20s … you’re not at your prime …”

Jesus: “For God does not show favoritism.”

Charlie Kirk: “MLK was awful … We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

Jesus: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

Charlie Kirk: “George Floyd was a scumbag.”

Jesus: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”

One voice shrugged at funerals, scapegoated the vulnerable, cast suspicion on skin color, demeaned women of color, mocked lesbians, reduced women’s worth to youth and beauty, sneered at civil rights, and stripped away human dignity. The other voice welcomed children, embraced the marginalized, shattered prejudice, leveled the playing field of human value, preached mercy, declared equality, blessed the pursuit of justice, and insisted every life had worth. One voice trafficked in contempt; the other embodied love.

And it doesn’t stop at sainthood spin. The myth-making machine has gone from bad theology to full-blown comic-book cosplay. They are literally calling him the “man of steel,” claiming the bullet was stopped by his body so no one else could be harmed. As if physics paused for a miracle and Superman was wearing a Turning Point USA lanyard. This is fucking insane. It’s not eulogy; it’s fan fiction. It’s embalming fluid poured over a life story, sealing in the myth while erasing the mess.

So let me repeat this clearly: his life should not have been taken the way it was. His murder was tragic, violent, and wrong. Violence is never justice. I condemn it without caveat. But condemning an act of violence does not mean canonizing the person who was killed. Compassion for the family does not mean sainthood for the father. Mourning does not mean whitewashing the movement he built.

That’s why I will not be watching the memorial. I don’t believe his life should be memorialized in that way, with stadium lights and halos glued onto a record of inhumanity. I’ll be spending my Sunday watching football and praying I don’t leave 40 points rotting on my fantasy bench again like last week. My Giants play tonight, and I’ll be screaming at the TV like the rest of us. Because I know the difference between honoring human loss and laundering a public legacy, and I refuse to play along with the latter.

And listen, I know how exhausted and raw people are right now, because I’m there too. The last two weeks have been brutal. They have been relentless, and it has all felt utterly, inescapably and endlessly dark. Everyone I know is frazzled, boxed in and tapped out, just wanting it all to stop for a minute so we can feel like fucking human beings again. And I feel that. Because I want that too.

It’s a gorgeous fall day in New Jersey. The air smells like leaves and woodsmoke. I want to take my kids apple-picking, watch them climb ladders for the best red ones, and come home with bags too heavy to carry. I want to drink hot cider out of a flimsy paper cup and pumpkin lattes so sweet they make dentists cry. I want to stand in the farm store debating donuts and buy all of them anyway. I want to breathe crisp air and forget, just for a moment, that the world perpetually feels like it’s on fire.

I put up my Halloween decorations this weekend even though it’s not even October yet, because sometimes survival looks like planting silly pumpkins and cartoonish ghosts in the yard before the calendar says you can. It wasn’t really about the season — it was about clawing back a little joy, sneaking some light into the corners of a house that feels too heavy. It was about forcing a smile into the doorway when the world outside feels unforgiving, grinding, unceasing.

Tonight, I’ll throw myself into the Giants game, yelling when they blow a drive, cursing my fantasy roster, and letting football — stupid, glorious football — stitch me back together if only for a few hours.

Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We fight to make room for life even when fear and anger try to take it from us. We carve out space for sweetness even when the bitter presses in. We can carry compassion, and we can tell the truth. We can hold tenderness in one hand and steel in the other. We can condemn violence and still condemn cruelty. And we can keep refilling our cups — with family, with apples, with pumpkins, with football games, with laughter — because without those refills, we’ll have nothing left to give, nothing left to fight with, nothing left to sustain us through the next wave.

But I’m not naive. I know normalcy won’t just magically reappear while stadiums are being turned into temples of gaslighting and bishops are canonizing hate. And I know exactly who profits from it — the propagandists, the provocateurs, the right-wing machine that lives on outrage and sells lies for sport. They will keep screaming at us for standing up and speaking out. They will threaten us, suspend us, cancel us, fire us, and brand us with every insult their focus groups can cook up. They will try to wear us down until silence feels easier than truth.

But that’s why it’s on us — all of us — to keep pushing back. To shine a light into the fog they manufacture, to hold our ground when they demand obedience, to keep telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient, even when they rage at us to shut up. Because the truth is the one thing they can’t control, and the one thing they fear the most.

And if you don’t want to take my word for any of this — don’t. Don’t take Cardinal Dolan’s word either. Don’t take the stadium’s word, or the headlines, or the gaslighting circus. Take Charlie Kirk’s word.

My friends at the Seneca Project have put together a powerful video: Charlie Kirk, in his own words. No filters, no spin — just the record he created for himself. The things he actually said, the beliefs he actually pushed, the poison he actually poured into our politics.

Because at the end of the day, we don’t need hagiographies or halos. We don’t need bishops rewriting scripture to call him a saint or propagandists dressing him up as a hero. What we need — what history demands — is the truth of his own words.

And when you hear them — really hear them — the whole myth doesn’t just collapse. It disintegrates. It burns away until all that’s left is the man himself, revealed exactly as he chose to be: not a saint, not a martyr, but an architect of division, a salesman of bigotry, a megaphone for intolerance, sexism, and hate.

And that is why we keep speaking. That is why we refuse to be silenced. Because truth is not cruelty. Truth is not disrespect. Truth is love, in its fiercest form — love for justice, love for the vulnerable, love for the future we’re building together. And if holding compassion in one hand and receipts in the other makes us the last sane people in a world that’s inside out, upside down, and on fire, then let them call us crazy.

We know better. We know what’s real. And we will not ever forget.

Charlie Kirk was not a saint. He was who he showed us he was, in his own words, in his own life. No bishop, no stadium, no “man of steel” fairy tale is going to change that.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay safe, stay strong, and stay sane(ish) in a world doing its damn best to drive you crazy.

💙 Jo

Also, in case you missed it, we just launched a media network I am co-founder of, called The Siren! We have a whole slate of contributors, new shows, new faces, new voices and new ways to stay engaged and get involved! With so much more to come!

I hope you’ll check it out!!