Yesterday, the media airwaves were full of the details of the hunt for the person who assassinated Charlie Kirk, the extreme American right-wing polemicist who had been invited to give a speech at the University of Utah. Video images emerged of the assassin who had fired the lethal shot from the roof of an overlooking building at a range that was comparatively easy for a rifle with a telescopic sight. The assassin was caught within about 33 hours of the event because grainy video images were obtained which showed him leaping off the roof of a building and running across to some nearby woods. A massive number of resources were deployed to hunt for the killer as he was such an influential figure even within the White House but eventually, the killer, Tyler Robinson, was turned over to the police by his own family. We then, in the middle of the day, had the most extraordinary news conference I think I have ever seen. If this news conference had taken place in the UK, we would have had a fairly sober statement by a senior police officer along the lines of ‘A 25 year old man has been apprehended and is now in police custody’ but, of course, this was America. The first person to speak was the State Governer who opened with the words ‘We got him!’ who then went on to state that he wished the death penalty to be applied. This was followed by a rambling address by the head of the FBI which was was partisan as it was possible to be. He gave his view that he regarded Charlie Kirk as a brother with a very strange reference to seeing him in Valhalla. The term ‘Valhalla’ used by the FBI chief led to confusion online about why Patel, who was raised Hindu, would reference Valhalla for Kirk, an outspoken Christian. Patel was labelled as incompetent for the major confusion and has now come under the fire over his ‘Valhalla’ comment. Patel, whose roots trace back to Gujarat, was born and raised in a Hindu family though he does not speak about his religion publicly. ‘Indian guy saying that he’ll see a Christian in Valhalla is some confused theology,’ wrote one commenter on X. One account commented, ‘I feel a little guilty for laughing about this, but Kash Patel invoking Valhalla is funny on several levels. We do not believe in Valhalla, you dork. This is so not the time or place to be cute’ wrote another. Another pointed out that FBI actually did nothing to nab Tyler Robinson, the suspected shooter who killed Charlie Kirk. He was turned in by his father and Kash Patel came to the press conference making the cringiest comment. So the whole press conference was quite short on facts, very long on self-congratulation and how well the various police forces had worked with each other and a degree of political partisanship that would have been unthinkable in the British context. When the killer comes to trial, the question is bound to be raised whether this will in any way fit the notion of a ‘fair trial’ and the call for a death penalty immediately after the arrest and before the killer has even been charged seems extraordinarily prejudicial – but this is America after all. Charlie Kirk himself was on record as saying that in order to defend the free availability of guns, the murder of several school children across the United States each year ws a price that it was necessary to pay to avoid gun control. The question I repeatedly raised as to how such a political assassination could occur but the point evident to almost everybody outside the USA is that right wing polemicists are allowed to say the most outrageous things in the name of free speech, then it is hardly surprising if there are some in the society who do no agree. Of course, political assassination is never an answer but the USA has quite a long history of political assassinations compared with the rest of the world and as well as Abraham Lincoln we can cite Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther Luther King and so on. One is tempted to argue that political debate should be balanced by giving those who disagree with right wing polemicists the same degree of financial backing and media adulation as the right wingers themselves. I imagine that those who disagree with the right-wing polemicists think that the odds are so stacked against them that a fair debate is never possible and that is what leads them to contemplate assassination.
Turning to domestic matters, our domestic help had reported a leak from our washing machine but I had not dared to move this un aided until my son and daughter-in-law had returned from holiday. Once we got the washing machine out, we identified the problem which was that an outlet hose had been chewed through probably by a mouse that had entered via a redundant air vent on the back wall of the house. However, we discovered also that a filter unit had seized tight and could not be removed, probably as a result of neglect as I had not looked at this for months whilst caring for Meg in her final months. So the question was raised whether it was worth calling out an engineer for a machine that we think was about seven years old and with a limited life. As a Bosch engineer call out charge is in the region of £100 plus parts and then VAT on top, you ae faced with the problem that the repair might be in the region of a third of the cost of a new machine. This is not an easy decision to make but eventually the three of us (my son, daughter-in-law and myself) decided to bite the bullet and order a new machine as spending money on a machine with a limited life does not seem to be a good idea. So, we ordered a model from John Lewis which will be delivered in a few days’ time and to sweeten the bitter pill, as it were, by choosing a particular mid-range model the two-year warranty offered by John Lewis could be extended free upon application to five years so this seemed to be the most sensible long term decision to make. Of course, people are having to make these kinds of calculations with all kinds of cars and domestic appliances and the answer is never a straightforward one as after a repair one can either be lucky or unlucky – peace of mind is often the deciding factor whatever the initial cost.