Social media not 'cancer;' the hate it spreads is

On Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' Utah governor Spencer Cox likened social media to a 'cancer' on society, putting a lot of blame on social networking for gun deaths in the U.S. Listen, I know the inherent ills social media can deliver with swiftness, but he's focusing on the "circulatory system" delivering the tumors (bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, racism) and not the hatred itself. That troubles me.

The right's reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk embodies an attempt to pin blame on everyone and every movement other than their own, when the alleged assassin lived in a conservative household in a conservative state, was raised a Mormon and well-versed in and surrounded by a variety of guns. Somehow one failed semester away at college and one roommate / potential romantic partner radicalized him, we're to believe.

Now there's this movement to deify Kirk and liken him to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy as victims of free speech who gave voice to truth.

However, also on Sunday, Reve. Howard John Wesley at D.C.'s Alfred Street Baptist Church gave a sermon that offered a sobering assessment of the assassinated right wing lynchpin Charlie Kirk: "how you die does not redeem how you live," said Rev. Wesley.