Emerging into Matthews Quad from the narrow walkways along the edge of the construction zone, you hit the crowd like a brick wall: MAGA hats everywhere, Punisher skull t-shirts, red-white-and-blue everything, Jesus merch, and Sharpie signs. Blond heads were all over the place — so many, in fact, that you could be forgiven for wondering if you’d been catapulted into an alternate dimension where the Nazis won the war. A blonde woman in the event organizer uniform — MAGA hat and blue Turning Point USA t-shirt —mentioned that she’s from San Diego State University. Being invaded by the Aztecs, UC San Diego was following in the footsteps of many unfortunate Meso-American city-states. A quick physiognomic scan of the crowd indicated that many — possibly most — of the people filling Matthews Quad don’t go to this school.
Everyone had their eyes turned toward the center of the quad, toward the little white tent surrounded by barricades and emblazoned with the words “American Comeback Tour” — though the dense mass of humanity meant that hardly anyone can actually see anything. Somewhere in there was Charlie Kirk: founder of TPUSA — a right-wing student organization — friend of the president, liberal-annihaltor, and, thanks to the White House’s generous patronage, a member of the oversight board of the United States Air Force Academy. Kirk, who never served in the Air Force, does not know how to fly a plane; this does not stop him from saying that Black airline pilots scare him. Kirk is a community college dropout, but his abiding fixation on universities — for which the reader can infer whatever psychoanalytical explanation they choose — is bringing him on a tour of campuses across the West Coast in which he challenges limp-wristed university leftists to prove him wrong.
Kirk could not be seen, and given the poor sound quality, rowdy crowd, and construction noise, he could barely be heard either. To have any hope of seeing the heart of the action, people had to elbow their way through the packed crowds, climb a lamppost, stand on a picnic table, or scale the exterior staircase of the adjacent Student Services Center, which the cops were busy trying to seal off. The table seemed like the best choice…