ArcaMax

Charlie Kirk is dead, and so is one of the two bosses I wanted to see dead.

Maybe a little backstory.

I'm 68. I've been working since I was 14. I've worked part time. I've worked full time. I've had two jobs at the same time. I've been well-paid, underpaid, union and non-union. I've worn a tie to work, and I've worn a uniform to work. I've worked every shift there is in a day, and on one job, I worked every Christmas Day for 10 straight years. I've been hired, fired, laid off, sped up, slowed down, written up and promoted. I've been paid in cash, I've been paid by check and I've been paid with a check that bounced.

As they say, you're not playin' with kids here.

And in all that time, I've had only two bosses I hated so much I would have killed both of them if I hadn't been scared of prison and Hell.

"I could eat a ham sandwich while I watched that guy die of cancer," I said to another employee on a job where I hated the boss.

That's an awful thing to say, but it was in a newsroom back when our writing was good and our manners were bad.

And somebody parked one in Charlie Kirk, and I made a ham sandwich.

Not really. What I did was say a prayer for his soul, and one for his widow and children. I figured all of them needed the prayers, maybe him most of all.

I did this because I went to Catholic school in the early 1960s. If the Catholic Church taught you anything in those days, it was that you were a horrible person, a beast slavering after sin, revenge and lust, and that you needed to confess and pray if you hoped to avoid the eternal damnation you deserved so much.

I understand the people who are speaking up, and sometimes getting fired, because they are joyfully eating the ham sandwich of hate over the dead body of Charlie Kirk, a racist, misogynist, junior college dropout who sold trash talk to people who were stupid or angry enough to buy it.

Unresearched hatred is a growing field for the otherwise unemployable, and there's a good chance your town has at least one podcaster with an audience of dozens who is saying the same things in the same way, or who is saying worse things less grammatically. That podcaster may see this as an opportunity to pitch garbage in the big leagues. There's a gap in the roster now.

Hate is as natural as coughing, but if you cough too much, you have to see a doctor because something may be really wrong with you, something that could kill you.

Kirk had a bad case of hate, and he infected the man who killed him, and the virus is being passed to others, in part through these two men, one of whom is being celebrated or damned for a career of hatred, and the other of whom is being celebrated or damned for killing a man who had more power than the two bosses who tormented me at work.

There's a circle of life, there's a circle of love, there's a circle of hate, and there's the flat, straight line of the bullet that cuts the air.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.