I will admit that I learned some useful things about Charlie Kirk this week. I learned that he commanded a unique respect and even ardor on the MAGA right. Old high school friends who are MAGA pop up regularly on my Facebook feed, and they were distraught, several to the point of tears. They had him pegged for a future president, which sure had never occurred to me, but which made sense after I gave it some thought. He was young, articulate, nice-looking; possessed of a certain kind of charisma. He had an instinct for how to connect with young men emotionally. I’ve also read some liberals who knew him saying in these last couple of days that he was, in person, unfailingly polite, and that matters. This is the Kirk the right remembers: someone who engaged in civil debate and persuasion and who infuriated liberals only because he was smart and he usually won.

Kirk’s most ardent fans can, and will, believe what they want. The truth is that he infuriated a lot of us because he spread toxic lies across this country like a blanket of Agent Orange (David Corn and Joan Walsh iterated a number of them this week). And while he often had an impressive battery of facts at his command, his manner of debating involved a lot of dishonest rhetorical legerdemain. I watched a clip Thursday in which he challenged a young white male student somewhere: “What can a white man do in this country that a Black man can’t do?”

It’s a very clever question. That framing—the use of the verb “do”—reduces racism to matters of the freedom to move about in society. And in that sense, what’s the problem? Yes, we once had white and “colored” waiting rooms down South, but these days, a Black father can take his kids to a ballgame just the same as a white father can. But a real conversation about racism means talking, for example, about the historical legacies that have resulted in white households owning on average $250,400 in wealth and Black households $24,520. That’s a direct result of Blacks not being allowed to buy houses in most neighborhoods in this country until relatively recently. In addition, there is still tons of discrimination in mortgage lending. That’s what racism is, and the fact that Black men can “do” a lot of what white men can “do” in this country does nothing to mitigate these persistent facts—facts that only liberals, by the way, have ever had the courage to try to change.

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Was Kirk’s assassination a tragedy? It was absolutely a tragedy. Whether the killer had a political motivation or not, the silencing of a voice, even a toxic voice, in that fashion is ghastly. If you spend enough time online (and here’s a good reason why you shouldn’t), you’ll be able to find people, seemingly somewhere on the left of the political spectrum, chortling over Kirk’s death. It’s an understatement to say that this is very bad form. But you’ll struggle to find any prominent liberal leaders or elected Democrats saying anything like, oh, for example, the insanely irresponsible things Mike Lee—a U.S. senator!—said when Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband were executed by a right-wing extremist.

Here’s what I have seen, though: I’ve seen a number of figures on the right saying, instantly and well in advance of an assailant being identified (Donald Trump said on Fox News Friday morning that a suspect was in custody) that “the left” was responsible for Kirk’s death. Dozens of them, from Donald Trump on down, jumped immediately to this conclusion.

They did this to a ferocious degree after both assassination attempts on Donald Trump’s life. Especially after the first one, many prominent figures on the right started pointing fingers at people and organizations on the broad left (The New Republic included) for having Trump’s blood on their hands. This was relentless for about three days; I remember it very well. Then it turned out that would-be assassin Matthew Crooks in fact had no particular political motivation—he was a bullied loner probably seeking notoriety. But during those first days, it was taken as a given on the right that Crooks was a Trump-hating leftist.

The second attempt on Trump’s life came a scant two months later. You might have thought, given how wrong they were the first time, they would have waited. But again, many figures on the right rushed to say Ryan Routh was a registered Democrat, which he once was but hadn’t been for a long time. This time, in fairness, figures on the left pointed to other evidence saying Routh had Republican sympathies. But it turns out that he is just a confused man, as he proved this week in (as fate would have it) Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom where he is on trial for the assassination attempt—and where his rambling opening statement touched on Adolf Hitler, Henry Ford, and the Wright brothers.

The right always jump to such conclusions, and to talk of revenge, not justice. The biggest jumper of all is Trump himself, who delivered an absolutely chilling address Wednesday night from the Oval Office. He said his administration would ferret out “those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

If another president had said something like that, we could take it as playing to his peanut gallery. But when Trump says it, we should assume that he and his movement mean it. “Those who contributed to this atrocity” could mean thousands of people and organizations, and “other political violence” can mean anything Trump and Stephen Miller want it to mean. They will use this tragic event to try to bully non-Trump America into submission.

Some people on the right are genuinely in mourning. They may choose not to see the sides of Charlie Kirk they don’t wish to see (and I’m still having trouble understanding how spewing such hatred and provocation is consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ), but that’s what grieving human beings often do—right, left, and in between. Let them mourn in peace.

But Trump and many leaders on the right are vowing to use this tragedy to do what they’ve always wanted to do anyway: to make this a more authoritarian society in which blunt criticism of the regime becomes redefined as incitement to violence and even terrorism. On Thursday, the State Department warned immigrants not to mock Kirk’s death. In Trump’s America, we can be sure it’s not going to stop there.

Last week’s quiz: “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.” The cultural history of cigarettes.

1. Cigarettes first became popular in France in the mid-nineteenth century. What prominent French figure promoted their adoption by smoking some 50 cigarettes a day?

A. Victor Hugo

B. Emperor Louis Napoleon

C. Hector Berlioz

D. Claude Monet

Answer: B, Louis Napoleon. My source here is the fascinating 1994 book Cigarettes Are Sublime, by Richard Klein. 

2. This artist’s Skull With a Burning Cigarette looks to us today like a piece of anti-smoking propaganda, but in fact the artist was an ardent pipe smoker.

A. Édouard Manet

B. Edvard Munch

C. René Magritte

D. Vincent van Gogh

Answer: D, Vincent. The clue was the pipe, which van Gogh painted himself smoking in several self-portraits (here’s one). I was trying to trick you into choosing Magritte (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”). Anyway, here’s the work in question. 

3. America’s most prominent nineteenth-century tobacco manufacturer endowed a major university that bears his name.

A. James Buchanan Duke

B. Hiram Wake

C. John Pinckney Clemson

D. Brooks Colton Emory

Answer: A, Sir Duke. The eponymous university, of course, is the home of Christian Laettner and a wellspring of modern evil.

4. Smoking was of course ubiquitous in old movies. But there was one especially famous scene when the male lead lit two cigarettes simultaneously, handing one to the female lead. Who were the actors, and what was the film?

A. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Key Largo

B. Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire

C. Paul Henreid and Bette Davis, Now, Voyager

D. Gene Kelly and Judy Garland, Summer Stock

Answer: C, Henreid and Davis. Here’s the scene. Don’t let’s ask for the moon—we have the stars!

5. What unlikely pair of 1960s sitcom characters made an ad for Winston cigarettes?

A. Uncle Bill and Mr. French (Family Affair)

B. The Skipper and Gilligan (Gilligan’s Island)

C. Herman and Lily Munster (The Munsters)

D. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble (The Flintstones)

Answer: D, Yabba dabba doo! Here’s the commercial. I must say, my fake answers here were great, although I was chagrined that I wasn’t able to include Shirley Partridge and Reuben Kincaid. 

6. What year did Keith Richards quit smoking?

A. 2013 (when he turned 70)

B. 2016 (73)

C. 2019 (76)

D. He hasn’t.

Answer: C, 2019. For real. He doesn’t even drink much anymore. But you know, even when he was a junkie, he was, at least in my reading of his autobiography, kind of a responsible junkie, oxymoronic as that may sound. There’s a reason he’s survived.

This week’s quiz: True colors. A quiz on the color schemes (and more) of sports uniforms. Because September brings college and pro football, the climax of the baseball season, the new soccer seasons across Europe, and anticipation of the NBA and NHL seasons.

1. What was the first team to wear standardized, matching uniforms, and in what year?

A. The New York Giants, 1888

B. The Philadelphia Independents, 1885

C. The Boston Braves, 1890

D. The Chicago White Stockings, 1876

2. In what year did the New York Yankees permanently add pinstripes?

A. 1915

B. 1924

C. 1930

D. 1938

3. The “winged helmet” design, distinguished by the sharp outward curves over the front part of the helmet that form matching wing-like shapes and the three stripes that run over the crown and meet at the helmet’s rear base, is most famously associated with the Michigan Wolverines. They adopted the design in 1938. But another college team wore it first. Who?

A. Fordham Rams

B. Navy Midshipmen

C. Princeton Tigers

D. Delaware Blue Hens

4. Three of these teams have a blue and orange color scheme. Which one does not?

A. New York Mets

B. Edmonton Oilers

C. Phoenix Suns

D. Boise State Broncos

5. What baseball team actually wore a uniform in 1976 for three games that featured a collar—and short pants!?

A. Chicago White Sox

B. Chicago Cubs

C. Pittsburgh Pirates

D. Oakland Athletics

6. One of the rare ways in which England has managed to out-garish the United States is that Premier League clubs’ jerseys are prominently emblazoned with the teams’ sponsors on the front. Match the team to the sponsor featured on its home “strip”:

Best uniforms in college football, imho: USC, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UVa, Minnesota (provided they wear gold pants). And no, there is no debate. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com. 

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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