The Psychopath Ratio
my big-picture take on the assassination of Charlie Kirk
Yesterday, I published The Geometry of Blindsides, my small-picture take on the death of Charlie Kirk.
Today, I want to do what I didn’t do then.
This is my big-picture take on Charlie Kirk’s death. I have two points to make.
The first point is for those on the right declaring, in their grief, that this means war. Whether or not war is the correct answer to “What is the current state of things?” is above my pay grade.
But I do need to point out something almost nobody is taking seriously enough.
A lot of right-side commentators have been correct when they’ve said that leftism is cluster B at scale. It’s a culture that valorizes narcissism, borderline instability, histrionics, and manipulative cruelty. They’re right about that.
But I often get the impression they don’t really believe it. And the cries demanding war validate my fear there — because if they did, they would be taking this moment much more seriously.
Instead, the fantasy goes like this: we have the guns, they’re just a bunch of wimps who don’t work and can’t even figure out which bathroom to use, so it’ll be easy.
That. Is. Fucking. Delusional.
First, they have guns too.
Second — and this is the part that nobody wants to say out loud — they have most of the psychopaths.
Take it from a deaf woman who has had to file multiple police reports over graphic rape and death threats: there is no shortage of people on the left fully willing to inflict sadistic suffering — to do it, to livestream it, to put it on their resume as evidence for what a great person they are.
A psychopath with inferior weaponry is, far more often than not, a safer bet in a fight than a sane man with an arsenal.
War is not won by firepower alone.
It is shaped by willingness — by who is prepared to cross which lines. And anyone who has watched leftist mobs in action knows they cross all decent lines with glee.
This is where anger clouds the thinking.
Anger is an emotion. We tend to treat only feminine-coded emotions — sadness, fear, anxiety — as “real” emotions, while masculine-coded ones like rage or righteous indignation get smuggled in as if they were reason.
They’re. Not. Reason.
Anger is just as much an emotion as tears, and it needs to be paired with rationality.
Rationality would mean asking hard questions about what a war would really look like.
Rationality would mean factoring in the psychopath ratio — and recognizing that the left unequivocally has almost all of them.
Pretending otherwise — or failing to account for it — isn’t strategy; it’s self-soothing.
If you’re thinking about the cultural moment in terms of war and you’re not actively, consciously, deliberately, and soberly factoring in the fact that it is a mob of actual psychopaths against normal people, then you are being stupidly naive, and you need to grow the fuck up before you say another word.
And certainly before you do a goddamn thing.
The second point I want to make is an answer to the question: why does this feel so different?
So many people — including me, to friends — have commented that this feels far more significant than the Butler, PA attempt on Trump’s life, and wondered why. It’s a very hard thing to put into words, but I think I have a decent attempt at finding language for it.
Trump Derangement Syndrome, as I wrote in Gain-of-Function TDS, was always ridiculous. Easy to mock. Easy to box off as just another form of political hysteria. People have always hated politicians, often irrationally. Turning Trump into the Bad Orange Man — a cartoon villain — was stupid and childish, but it had precedent. It fit into an existing cultural script.
And above all, TDS was tribal. It was performative. It was a collective circle jerk. We! Hate! Trump! Oooh, yeah, feel it, see how hard we can hate that orange bastard.
The hate itself was the point, a bonding ritual, a way to signal in-group loyalty. That’s why, even when it metastasized into assassination attempts, it was still possible to shrug and think: presidents get shot at sometimes. It fit a paradigm.
But this? This was different.
This was the moment when the mask slipped. The left showed that they’re well past virtue signaling. They actually believe the slogans.
They actually believe that disagreeing with their gender dogma — refusing to affirm that “transwomen are women” — constitutes literal violence, and that striking back with real violence is self-defense.
That’s what hit so many people in the gut. It wasn’t just rhetoric. It wasn’t just kabuki theater for tribal cohesion.
It was literal belief, acted on in a very predictable manner.
The closest comparison I can make is when someone you know tips into psychosis. At first, you think it’s a bit — maybe dark humor, maybe exaggeration.
And then comes the moment when you realize: no, he really does believe the government is spying on him through his cavity fillings.
That’s the shock. That’s the stomach drop.
And while not every single leftist is celebrating Kirk’s death, the loudest faction is — and the loudest faction is the one that defines the culture.
Within hours, the internet was buzzing with gleeful defamation: claims that Kirk was a white nationalist, that he wanted gays dead. Claims that he said all kinds of horrific things that he never said. Selectively quoting a time when he extolled the virtue of sympathy over empathy — something he was right about — to make it sound like he despised both.
They weren’t mourning. They weren’t even neutral. They were exulting.
That chorus is the tell. Because when the dominant wing of a movement openly cheers an assassination — and frames it as justice — you can’t write it off anymore as over-the-top symbolism or collective tantrum.
You have to hear them clearly: They. Meant. It.
And that brings me back to the first point.
If they meant it — and they did — then anyone eager to pivot into “war mode” had better be brutally realistic about what that means.
To win, you don’t just need weapons. You need the willingness to out-evil a brigade of full-on Cluster B actual, literal psychopaths.
And most people on the right — thank God — are fundamentally decent. They want to defend their families, not revel in cruelty.
That’s their strength as human beings, but it’s also a massive strategic weakness if this ever does tip into real war.
I’m not saying the war-cries are wrong.
I’m saying they’re reckless AF unless they’re paired with brutal, realistic honesty about the terrain.
Emotion is driving this far more than reason. And in any conflict where the left’s defining edge is a higher concentration of people who enjoy inflicting suffering, the right is walking in at a massive disadvantage.
This is dangerous ground, people.
Step lightly, or don’t step at all.
Because once the line is crossed, you don’t get to choose which part of yourself makes it back.
And if you think the part of you that loves your family and wants a future worth handing down can outlast people who revel in cruelty, you’re deluding yourself.
That part will be the very first casualty.
I don’t pretend to know the answer. I doubt the right is capable of the level of evil it would take to defeat the psychopaths, which leads to a very bleak prediction.
But the opposite possibility? That’s no better.
Because out-evil’ing psychopaths is no victory. It is only surrender.
And it will not preserve the country Charlie Kirk loved.
It will bury that once-proud nation beside him.