Friends,

We need to talk about who gets mourned in America — and who gets mocked.

We’ve watched the Right canonize conservative activist Charlie Kirk after his assassination in September, then watched President Trump weaponize filmmaker Rob Reiner’s murder this past Sunday.

Reverence enforced for allies, contempt unleashed on critics. And in between, a machinery of retribution — doxxing, firings, crackdowns — that looks less like grief and more like empire-building.

This isn’t political disagreement. This is the making of idols. When critique becomes heresy, and leaders become untouchable, we’re no longer in a democracy. We’re in a cult with an enemies list.

We’re naming what’s happening. We’re remembering George Floyd. We’re honoring Rob and Michele Reiner. And we’re asking: who actually has Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Let’s go.

• Charlie Kirk Crackdown Expands: More than 600 Americans were fired, suspended, or disciplined by employers for comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk after his assassination in September, Reuters reported.

Educators made up more than half the cases. Reuters calls the crackdown unprecedented because of direct encouragement from Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other administration officials. (Source: Reuters, November 2025)

• Rob and Michele Reiner Murdered: Acclaimed Hollywood director Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home on Sunday.

Their son Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested and charged with murder. Trump responded by claiming, in a Truth Social post, the deaths were “reportedly due to the anger [Rob Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

Those remarks drew wide condemnation, including from some Republicans. (Sources: Los Angeles Police Department, NPR, Variety)

• Republican Pushback on Trump’s Reiner Comments: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Mike Lawler, and Stephanie Bice — all Republicans — publicly criticized President Trump’s response to the Reiner murders as inappropriate and disrespectful.

Greene called it “a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump “a total jackass.” (Sources: PBS, The Hill, Axios)

• First Amendment Concerns Mount: Civil liberties organizations, including the ACLU, have filed lawsuits on behalf of individuals punished for comments about Kirk’s death, arguing that protected speech is being criminalized. At least 19 lawsuits are currently active. (Source: Wikipedia, Truthout)

Here’s the thesis: The American Right has built a civil religion, and it punishes heresy.

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, the grief was real. The loss was real. What’s followed isn’t just mourning. It’s enforcement.

Not all those who lost jobs, faced investigations, or were publicly targeted for how they talked about Kirk’s death celebrated violence — and that’s indefensible. But Many people simply quoted Kirk’s own words on gun violence, invoked “karma,” or criticized how Republicans were capitalizing on his murder.

A South Carolina kindergarten teaching assistant was fired for posting Kirk’s 2023 quote about gun deaths being “worth it” to protect the Second Amendment, followed by “thoughts and prayers.”

Libs of TikTok, far-right influencers, and Trump administration officials amplified names, tagged employers, and celebrated terminations. This isn’t cancel culture. This is state-adjacent persecution.

Contrast that with Rob Reiner. Hours after he and his wife were brutally murdered — allegedly by their own son, who struggled with addiction — Trump posted that Reiner died because of “the anger he caused others” through his “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Not a word of compassion. Not a moment of silence. Just a political hit on a man whose blood was still wet.

The double standard is the point. When Kirk dies, criticism becomes blasphemy. When Reiner dies, his murder becomes a punchline.

And underneath it all is George Floyd. Derek Chauvin murdered Floyd on video in May 2020. Chauvin was convicted in Minnesota state court and sentenced in federal court for violating Floyd’s civil rights.

Yet for five years, right-wing media has worked overtime to relitigate Floyd’s worthiness to live — blaming drugs, criminalizing his past, mocking “I can’t breathe.”

So here’s the moral hierarchy they’re building:

That’s not grief. That’s a caste system.

The prophet Jeremiah warned Israel: “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’” (Jeremiah 7:4). In other words: Don’t mistake your buildings, your rituals, your leaders for God.

What we’re watching is political idolatry.

In Exodus, the Israelites built a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain. They needed something tangible, something controllable, something that wouldn’t challenge them.

The Right has done the same with Trump — and now with Kirk. They’ve built saints who can’t be questioned, martyrs whose deaths justify any retaliation, leaders whose failures must be sanctified.

But Jesus didn’t operate like that. Jesus was scrutinized, doubted, and ultimately executed by people who saw him as a threat to their religious and political order.

He refused to be made into a king by force (John 6:15). He wept over Jerusalem but didn’t weaponize grief (Luke 19:41). And he centered the least of these — the ones the empire called disposable.

James Cone, father of Black liberation theology, taught us that the cross is a lynching tree. Jesus died the death of the condemned, the criminalized, the unworthy. If we claim to follow him, we must resist every system that decides whose life has value and whose death deserves mockery.

George Floyd cried out for his mother as he died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. Rob Reiner bled out in his home, a victim of family tragedy and mental illness. Michele Reiner died beside him.

These are human beings made in the image of God. And no political agenda — left or right — should desecrate their deaths.

The God of liberation doesn’t build golden calves. God breaks them.

→ LEARN: Read The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone to understand the theological stakes of whose suffering we honor and whose we ignore. Explore ACLU’s ongoing lawsuits defending free speech in the post-Kirk crackdown at aclu.org.

→ ENGAGE: Support BIPOC-led and LGBTQIA+-led organizations doing the work of defending civil liberties and resisting authoritarianism. Consider donating to Movement for Black Lives (m4bl.org) or the Transgender Law Center (transgenderlawcenter.org). If your workplace is punishing employees for protected speech, organize a solidarity statement.

→ ADVOCATE: Contact your representatives and demand they oppose government-backed retaliation against free speech. Call out public officials — regardless of party — who weaponize grief for political gain. Use 5calls.org to find scripts and contact info. If you’re in a position of institutional power (educator, manager, faith leader), refuse to participate in workplace McCarthyism.

Beloved,

May you refuse to bow to golden calves.

May you grieve honestly — for Charlie Kirk, for George Floyd, for Rob and Michele Reiner, for every person whose death has been turned into propaganda.

May you rest in the knowledge that your worth is not negotiable, not up for debate, not conditional on your politics or your past.

And may you resist — fiercely, creatively, relentlessly — every system that treats some lives as sacred and others as expendable.

We do this together. We do this in love. We do this because the God of the oppressed demands it.

Go forth. Rest well. Rise up.

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