Martyrs to Degradation

I was unfamiliar with the work of Kaleb Horton until this morning, when I saw several people mourning his recent passing. Maybe the best tribute I can give to a writer, or really any artist, is that their work helped me make sense of my own thoughts. Horton’s post from February 2025, about turning off the noise of the internet and getting back in touch with what really matters, did exactly that.

Along with, of all things, a re-watch of KPop Demon Hunters this morning1, since I’m a strong believer that any piece of art can help us connect with universal truths. The best idea there is that you can’t fight back against hate and division by using hate and division; love, unity, and confidence are so much stronger.

The phrase that really stands out to me in Horton’s essay about the sorry state of the world in 2025 is “A singularly American onslaught of death and degradation, moving at the speed of light.”

The speed of all that death and degradation deadens the brain, which those responsible are well aware of: they did it that way on purpose and it basically works.

I really wish it were singularly American, but I personally think it’s just that Americans are exceptionally good at it. And it’s been in full force over the past couple of weeks.

One of the main events was the violent murder of a podcaster during a public speech. I’m saying “a podcaster” here partly because of the Thumper Philosophy of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” But just as much because I don’t want to get pulled into a controversy I want no part of, because it would be nothing more than a distraction from the idea I’m trying to get across.

And that feels like a possibility, because it’s been disturbing how quickly an otherwise unremarkable podcaster on the fringes of American right-wing politics was turned into a martyr for Everything We Know To Be True And Just And American. Not just by the usual suspects, but seemingly by the entirety of American government and media.2

Flags were flown at half-mast. Things were said and written that went far beyond the normal level of “show some respect for the dead” to making outright counter-factual denials of all of the awful things the victim had said, as if nominating him for sainthood. Pointing out any of the many, many things he’d said and done to instigate political violence, and to stir up racist and white supremacist and transphobic division, were treated as heretical disrespect for the dead, as if simply stating the truth were relishing in his murder. The corrupt head of the FCC made mafioso-like threats against a late night talk show host, and his show was put on “indefinite hiatus” before a massive public reaction forced its return.3

Right after news of the murder hit, when it would’ve been far wiser for me to keep my mouth shut, I couldn’t help pointing out how depressing it was that the podcaster was so quickly and cynically being turned into a martyr. The only people in the world who he might’ve considered his friends or at least allies, who might have genuinely mourned his death, were instead wasting no time trying to spin it for their own political gain. I have no sympathy for for the man himself, but I can’t help but think that it’s sad that even to the people that might’ve been his friends, he was worth so much more to them dead than alive.

When Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota state representative, and her husband were murdered in a politically-motivated shooting, the overwhelming response from her colleagues and friends was grief over her death, and a condemnation of political violence. So it made me sad to see that repeatedly brought up on social media to try and illustrate right-wing hypocrisy, people asking why wasn’t there the same outpouring of grief from the right? It may have been well-intentioned, but it just came across as more of the same: cheapening the senselessly tragic murder of someone in an attempt to win points for Our Side by showing how crass and cynical Their Side is.

Similar is the increasingly common trend on social media to scold — or at best, lament — people for caring about one thing instead of another. Complaints that the attention and outrage over the censorship of a talk show host wasn’t being directed at the censorship of journalists who were doing more important work. (Ignoring the fact that with the talk show host, we were given a clear target to direct our outrage towards, and an easy, painless, and effective method of showing it via a boycott). Or larger-scale comments to the effect of “imagine if Americans cared as much about Palestine as they do about a rich talk show host.” (Ignoring the fact that it wasn’t about the talk show host so much as the shameless assault on the first amendment, and again, the feeling of powerlessness against evil on a grander scale).

But at least with those, I get it. It’s depressing to see examples of where our humanity and our sympathy seem to be directed towards the people least deserving of it. I have no interest in mourning or rehabilitating a murder victim who’d spent years debasing and degrading himself, stoking the exact same divisions that lead to political violence, going out of his way to belittle and even mock other victims of violence. He was literally shot in the middle of an attempt to demonize transgender people, immediately after a comment that’s always used to trivialize and belittle the deaths of people of color.

I can’t mourn the loss of that man. I mourn the loss of the parts of ourselves that can still condemn violence but be unable to find any sympathy for the victims of it. It’s depressing to realize that I can’t work up any sympathy for someone who’d so thoroughly debased and degraded himself.

The people in America who worry me the most aren’t the ones who are hard-line, passionate supporters of all of the racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and religious intolerance of the far right. Or at least, I don’t have any ideas of how to bring those people back into the light. The people I most worry about are the ones in far greater numbers, who can still recognize the evil and intolerance but are convinced that it ultimately won’t affect them. That it’s all just for show, or that it can’t really get that bad.

I’m still too much of an optimist to believe that the decline into fascism or authoritarianism is irreversible. But it does feel like so much damage has already been done, seeing how quickly they can degrade the core of what we believe and what we value. Even though we can and should dismiss the non-stop barrage of meaningless bullshit, and we can call it out as meaningless bullshit, it does gradually chip away at the base of what we consider acceptable, in ways that are difficult to recognize until it’s too late. By making us argue against shamelessly offensive nonsense, it lowers the bar for all of us, setting new standards of what’s worth arguing against vs what every decent human would reject immediately as not worth our time and attention.

Over the past year, I’ve tried as best I could to just shut it all out. To ignore accusations of “must be nice to be so privileged” and instead acknowledge the simple truth that I don’t have the answers, that I need to set up boundaries for my own sake, and engagement-driven “activism” hasn’t accomplished much of anything. Choose your battles, choose where your money and attention is most valuable, and recognize that not all of us have the fortitude to make our lives a constant series of battles. It’s impossible for all of us to meaningfully care about everything. If you don’t have a way to meaningfully contribute to a solution, just “caring about it” doesn’t accomplish anything, and ends up being performative at best.

The obvious danger is becoming numb to everything. To put up so many walls against the non-stop onslaught of death and degradation that you get cut off from what’s important.

So yes, take a minute to consider it tragic that a human being was murdered, and it’s tragic that their murder was so crassly and cynically turned into an attempt to win political points, from the only people who might’ve genuinely mourned them. Consider it tragic that we live in an environment that callously ignores the deaths of people who led lives we should mourn. Consider it tragic that we live in an environment where murder is so common that we sometimes don’t know immediately how we should feel about it.

And find a sliver of hope in the fact that we can at least recognize that something is wrong, and we’re not so cut off from our humanity that we can’t at least recognize that it’s sad when anybody’s lost for good.

1
Which is even better once you stop telling yourself “this isn’t for me, I’m not supposed to like this”

2
The fact that the most formerly-trustworthy institutions of American media have so quickly become tools of the far right is a huge part of the problem, of course.

3
And it’s worth pointing out that I think the Kimmel show handled his return surprisingly perfectly, saying exactly what needed to be said with more nuance and grace than I would’ve expected.

1 Which is even better once you stop telling yourself “this isn’t for me, I’m not supposed to like this”

2 The fact that the most formerly-trustworthy institutions of American media have so quickly become tools of the far right is a huge part of the problem, of course.

3 And it’s worth pointing out that I think the Kimmel show handled his return surprisingly perfectly, saying exactly what needed to be said with more nuance and grace than I would’ve expected.