Attenzione
Hawaii's propaganda class suddenly cares about Charlie Kirk
German singer Bernie Paul’s1 “Attenzione! Go Go Radio” started playing in my head when I made the mistake of checking my phone for the first time in hours and saw the news.
Honolulu Pravda’s article on Charlie Kirk got hundreds of comments - 653 as of this writing.
I haven’t read a single comment. Why bother?
I know what Pravda people are like. Nearly all are loyal to The One Party. (Not the one with elephants.) The One Letter.
Hawaii is the future of the USSA. LoEuro Final Diversity. One Hair Color. One Eye Color. One Shape. D. It’s so seductive. Don’t you feel its appeal?
Those who most strongly feel its appeal also feel strongly about Charlie Kirk. He’s just another Not-Z white supreeeemist racistimperialistcolonialist RepubliKKKan haole to them. They’ve never mentioned him before, but they just have to toss in their two cents now.
Scattered among their Goodthink comments will be a few MAGAs mourning the loss of their ‘thought leader’. Anyone with a ‘thought leader’ is a sheep. Saw a sheep on another platform declare Kirk to be “our MLK”. Yes, Martin Luther King, Jr., has been a CONservative icon for years now.
“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”
Indistinguishable from St. Ayn, amirite?
There might be some … fascinating CONservatives with cogdis. Today on another platform I saw a self-proclaimed CONservative state that Kirk got what he deserved: “the Death Penalty” (capitalization as in original). (No mention of Israel, so I don’t know why that CONservative thought it was “reasonable” for Kirk to die. Troll or real? Who can tell anymore? Does it matter?) Ideology is meaningless now; anybody with any flag can and will say whatever. I’ve seen conservatarians support BLM.
No, I’ve gone too far. It’s the alleged Right that’s meaningless now. They can and will adopt anything from people who hate them. The Hegelian Mambo is real:
In the Hegelian Mambo, as the left become more left, the right, in defining itself in opposition to the ever-more threatening extremism of the left, and not in terms of unchanging principles of its own, abandons its prior positions and moves ever further leftward itself.
Moving in the reverse direction is rare.2
I see all trends going one way. Not mine. The imbalance is like the cars on the freeway tonight on my island.
Almost everyone going in one direction.
I’d rather go the other way.
I don’t want to direct my attenzione - to 注目 ‘pour my eyes’ as the Japanese and Koreans say - toward the Current Thing. I reject all religions. Including the Current Thing. Especially the Current Thing. Neoliberal Feudalism explains why:
I realize I’m being a hypocrite by writing about the Current Thing in this post. But I’m only barely mentioning it. I’m not going to praise or condemn Kirk. I’m not going to try to determine whether Kirk’s assassination was real or not. I have no qualifications. More importantly, I have no interest. I ignored Kirk when he was alive. I see no reason to change.
And I’m not alone. Look at the photo of cars stuck in Hawaii traffic again. Ask yourself if the drivers care about “Chali Kak” as he’d be called in Pidgin here. Do they even know who he is? Many of those drivers - and many people in Hawaii - live in a non-English world except if they have to face the public at work. They’re not part of the propaganda class - that tiny percentage of the population that reads Pravda in English.3 Kirk might as well be from outer space to them. Is anyone in Hawaii talking about Kirk in Tagalog? Ilocano? Japanese? Korean? Samoan? Vietnamese? Cantonese? Marshallese? Mandarin? Trukese? Tongan? Or even Pidgin, the biggest language left out of the US Census’ list of 120+ languages spoken on my island? There isn’t much local media in those languages: e.g., ハワイ報知 Hawaii Hōchi, the Japanese daily paper, shut down in 2023, and 한국일보 하와이 Korea Times Hawaii’s website stopped publishing new stories after May 2025. I did find a 星島 Sing Tao article on the 猝逝 sudden passing of 特朗普親密盟友右派力量 Tèlǎngpǔ’s close ally and force on the Right 查理柯克 Chálǐ Kēkè at 歲 age 31, though.
Kirk isn’t MLK in terms of relevance. He doesn’t matter. What has Turning Point USSA done? How has the Culture War improved your life?
Enough about Kirk. Think of where your attenzione isn’t going. What the media isn’t highlighting.
The CONservative who CONdemned Kirk brought up a Colorado school shooting today. Why doesn’t that matter?
An average of 45 people are murdered in the USSA every day. Why don’t they matter?
Forget the USSA. Take a global perspective. And put Ukraine and Palestine aside. How many people were killed in other wars today?
The Burmese civil war has raged for 77 years now … and hardly anyone outside Burma cares. At least ten thousand have died this year alone.
I can’t say I read the updates about the Burmese civil war in my inbox.
I can’t control much in this world, but I can at least control my attenzione.
I leave you with the words of Jim Capaldi:
Don’t let them control you.
Born Bernhard Paul Vonficht. I still don’t grok how Germans pose as non-Germans and sing in English - better English than what I hear in Hawaii - for German-speaking audiences. According to the German Wikipedia - he has no English entry - he charted in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland - but apparently not in any Anglosphere country.
I have no idea why his song has an Italian word in its lyrics that are otherwise entirely in English and have nothing to do with Italy as far as I can tell. But “Attenzione” caught my attenzione in a way that “attention” wouldn’t have. Maybe that was the point.
On second thought, the mainstream of the alleged Left has lost interest in the proletariat and turns a blind eye to big corporations. It might be more accurate to say that both supposed wings are soaring toward the same direction - toward a destination that neither faction would like if they had remained true to their respective ideals.
Pravda’s circulation was 82,000 in 2022, the latest figure I could find. Their site currently gives the 2019 figure (148,000) to fool advertisers into thinking their circulation is at least 80% higher than it actually is. I would be shocked if their circulation had gone up since 2022. Out of that 82,000, many leave their newspapers in unopened bags in their driveways. And even opening bags and bringing newspapers inside is no guarantee of reading them. I suspect many want the coupons and sale flyers. I do. 82,000 is only about 8% of my island’s population. Maybe as little as 5% of the people here read Pravda in 2025. And only a percentage of that percentage writes comments in English. The average person here may write nothing but texts on their phone in any language.
Cool writing. Yeah. Death is death. We are all terminal.