I keep seeing the same advice after something like the UTSA poem. Move on. Accept the apology. Turn the other cheek. Side effects may include: more people getting shot in the neck. Forgive so you don’t carry the poison inside you. On a private level, that can make sense. Christian Collins can pray for her if that keeps the memory from sitting in his chest. Erika Kirk can say she forgives the shooter if that lets her stay present with her kids instead of replaying the moment. Eckhart Tolle stuff: not letting yesterday’s event influence the beautiful moment that you are experiencing NOW. Fine. That is personal hygiene.

What it is not is a rule for everyone else. Low-cost apologies after someone has already gone that far, and automatic forgiveness as though you were a robot, do not look like strength once you watch the pattern. They look like a form of natural selection pressure that favors the people willing to celebrate the shot to the neck and then issue a scripted apology, only after the video is everywhere. An apology that shows up only after the video hits two million views isn’t remorse. It’s crisis PR with a sad face. They test the line. They get a temporary cost. Then the cost is lifted because someone wants to be seen as above the fray. Maybe it’s a form of Christian virtue signaling. I truly don’t know; “Turn the other cheek” is scripture. The challenge is that next time, the line moves a little further. The Overton window does not move leftward toward the violent tards by accident. It doesn’t drift. Somebody keeps shoving it, and the rest of us keep apologizing for standing in the way. It moves when the cost of pushing it stays near zero.

Civilization is not held together by universal goodwill. It is held together by the shared expectation that certain acts will be expensive. When that expectation collapses, the people who treat political murder as comedy and something to rejoice in keep expanding the territory they are willing to occupy. The results are noticeable. The bonds and unwritten rules that make ordinary life possible (basic restraint around violence, basic honesty, the othering of those who disagree with you) grow thinner.

At some point, the person still insisting on quick restoration of the sinner (those who have missed the mark, in the literal definition) after a cheap, scripted apology is just the one standing on the wrong side of that process. That’s the sheep holding the gate open and asking the wolves if they’d prefer the gluten-free option. We wouldn’t want to be mean to the salivating monsters that have announced they want to dismember us. There is personal forgiveness, and there is suicidal empathy.

Tyler Robinson should have been executed. Not after years of process theater. The next day, or as close as the system allows. That is not personal vengeance. That is the signal to other monsters. The same logic applies to the student who wrote the poem, recited it with visible glee, and then told Collins he was brave for standing there without a neck guard. She is past the point where a late video apology resets the board. Permanent social and professional costs are the minimum. Expulsion, if the university still has a functioning conduct process. Continued public memory, so the next person who thinks “Kirkiversary” is clever sees what actually happens. That is not the same as hunting her in a parking lot. It is also not the same as pretending the original act never occurred.

Does wanting that make someone a bad person? I dream of her coming into my office seeking employment, and me deadpanning: “Sorry, we’re a neck-guard-optional workplace. Turns out that requires a certain kind of colleague.” The same people who now demand forgiveness spent years getting others fired for saying George Floyd had a criminal record, for questioning the BLM framing, or for declining the COVID shot. The same people who scream “my body, my choice.” They treated those as unforgivable. Question a slogan in 2020: fired by lunch. Celebrate an assassination in 2025: “Let’s not rush to judgment.” The asymmetry is obvious. If public cancellation is acceptable when the offense is disagreement about a protest slogan or a vaccine, it is not suddenly unforgivable when the offense is celebrating an assassination and taunting the next person about the same method. One of those is a difference of opinion. The other is a statement about who is fair game, and an advocacy of violence.

I am not giving the scripted apology a pass. She can live with the consequences of what she chose to say on camera. Not because I need her to suffer. Okay, I’d enjoy it a little. I’m not a saint, I’m just consistent. But mostly because other people are watching. If the cost stays low, more of them will decide the line is worth testing. You either push back on that, or you accept that the boundary keeps moving until the people who still expect basic restraint are the ones treated as the problem. I know which side of that I prefer.