Political Memes

I am not a stranger to grief and know all too well the various stages and unexpected ways it can manifest. I am still dealing with it.

Now that said, I had a very hard time seeing anything on display at Kirk's hasty "memorial" that looked like normal, real grief, even in it's more unusual forms. I saw a lot of performance, a lot of "this is how grief should look" displays that seem derived from television and media, and the whole thing had a narrative flow that seemed quite unnatural.

I think a lot of it was forced. I'm sure Kirk's family was devastated in their own way, and I doubt his wife was involved in his death, despite a lot of really weird circumstances piling up that feel exactly like the setup to a 48 Hours murder documentary, but largely it was a commercial and political event. Whatever her and Vance share it's far more likely to be political ambition than anything else.

Kirk's wife has had her own political motivations from early on, I fully expect to see her capitalizing on his death even if she actually is mourning, but that mourning will be carefully curated and practiced for cameras, and even she knows better than to make it look like she's making moves on Vance.