Two powerful and relevant quotes from wordsmith Charlie Kirk, whatever the outcome of this incident: "You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single...
Two powerful and relevant quotes from wordsmith Charlie Kirk, whatever the outcome of this incident:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am—I think it's worth it.
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe."
It's incredible how easily his own words are encouraging people to make light of his death. "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of...
It's incredible how easily his own words are encouraging people to make light of his death.
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage."
and
"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?"
seem like such perfect setups, that I almost didn't believe them at first.
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe."
Or in Japan (completly prohibited), the UK (strict permits),... How many other countries even allow citizenry to carry firearms? Looking at a wikipedia map, they generally are allowed, but almost...
Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
Or in Japan (completly prohibited), the UK (strict permits),... How many other countries even allow citizenry to carry firearms? Looking at a wikipedia map, they generally are allowed, but almost always with permits.
I'm not too opposed to total prohibition, but I really don't understand why people resist the notion of "having proper training to use dangerous weapon". We do it with vehicles (perhaps not strict enough for cars in some cases), and we do it for certified fields like most engineering, doctors, and lawyers. Why not the tool made primarily to kill?
Because "might makes right" is a fundamental principle of American society, whether it's explicitly acknowledged or not. It underpins practically everything. Essentially, you are free to do...
Because "might makes right" is a fundamental principle of American society, whether it's explicitly acknowledged or not. It underpins practically everything. Essentially, you are free to do whatever you want if you're able to back it up. Money might be replacing force nowadays, but it's the same thing.
The "with permits" has to be restricted even further. In my country, it is theoretically possible to apply for a permit to carry a gun in public, but you need to have a very good reason for being...
The "with permits" has to be restricted even further. In my country, it is theoretically possible to apply for a permit to carry a gun in public, but you need to have a very good reason for being granted such a license, and generally the only valid one is "I need it for my job", which is why the only people granted the license are generally cops and specialized security guards, if even. So basically, it's illegal.
This is separate from the license to own a firearm, mind you. That one is easier to get.
I really don't understand that second amendment argument. The argument that the second amendment protects our God given rights held a lot more weight before we were in the midst of a fascist...
I really don't understand that second amendment argument.
The argument that the second amendment protects our God given rights held a lot more weight before we were in the midst of a fascist takeover of every aspect of our country. The guns don't seem to be helping.
Well. This is not a good venue for that debate. But, fundamentally, democracy with a state monopoly on violence is precipitous. It relies on the government to act in good faith, despite the work...
Well. This is not a good venue for that debate. But, fundamentally, democracy with a state monopoly on violence is precipitous. It relies on the government to act in good faith, despite the work of governance being simplified immensely if they oppress.
But then we had about a hundred years of the people most likely to own guns being courted by white supremacist groups, and a progressive normalization of police militarization, and a lot of people who might should be armed looked at the gun owners and said "I don't want to be like that, at all". And now all the guns are on the side of the state.
At its core, politics is about power. Even the idea that personal gun ownership may never amount to meaningful rebellion against unjust government doesn't mean that by default we shouldn't have access to power unbidden by power structures. That's a matter of opinion.
I think it's even simpler. we saw governments creaatd 2 dozen other forms of warfare much deadlier than the peashooters we claim our right to have. These days, a remote drone can take you out...
a lot of people who might should be armed looked at the gun owners and said "I don't want to be like that, at all".
I think it's even simpler. we saw governments creaatd 2 dozen other forms of warfare much deadlier than the peashooters we claim our right to have. These days, a remote drone can take you out while the government sits in their chair hundreds, thousands of miles away. How do you really practice your "well maintained militia" against weapons like that (weapons which are indeed illegal to own yourself. Curious...)
I think the 2nd amendment aged poorly, and we either need to take a look at what a "arm" is in the modern world, or re-think the entire idea of what's a right vs. priveledge.
I think even this is missing the reasons many people don't own guns. The government doesn't even come into the picture with that math for me. I don't avoid them due to not wanting to come off like...
I think even this is missing the reasons many people don't own guns. The government doesn't even come into the picture with that math for me. I don't avoid them due to not wanting to come off like the stereotype either.
Guns make suicide more likely. Six out of ten firearm caused deaths are suicides and suicides have been the majority of those deaths for 30 years. Easy access to a quick way to die with much lower survival rates than other means is flat out unsafe for a large number of households. Probably far more than people think.
Guns also make domestic violence situations far more dangerous and deadly. An argument where you get the urge to slap someone turns into an argument where you get the urge to shoot someone, and you can. And people who would hit their partner in anger will shoot them too.
Finally some of us also aren't willing to kill people and because of that having a gun would only be a liability, not an asset at all. If I'm not willing to pull the trigger, I shouldn't point it at anyone. So I don't, and won't, have one.
It's the main reason I don't have any. When I lived in Montana, I used to enjoy going skeet shooting, or plinking with friends at the range. In that context, firearms are a lot of fun, and no one...
Guns make suicide more likely.
It's the main reason I don't have any. When I lived in Montana, I used to enjoy going skeet shooting, or plinking with friends at the range. In that context, firearms are a lot of fun, and no one gets hurt, other than some recalcitrant hard drives from our days in the IT shop that had it coming.
But I know myself, and I've struggled with serious depression on and off over the years, and even though things are well-controlled now, I know all too well that things can go to shit quickly, too. And since I never want to be in a position to shoot anyone, and I only ever used firearms for recreation, the cost::benefit equation is clear to me; no guns in the house.
I do think people should at least take a familiarization class, so they know how to disarm a pistol or rifle, how to activate a safety, the basic rules (never point a gun at anyone, treat all firearms as loaded, etc) but that's neither here nor there.
I shot a rifle at camp in like 6th grade and that's the only time that I've ever handled an actual firearm. I'm pretty sure it was about the safest possible options for children to learn how to...
I shot a rifle at camp in like 6th grade and that's the only time that I've ever handled an actual firearm. I'm pretty sure it was about the safest possible options for children to learn how to Target shoot!. I don't know if I learned the rules of guns there or just absorbed it culturally over time. But I wouldn't be able to guarantee that I know how to turn a safety on or off or unload a weapon. But I also find the likelihood of me meeting to do so to be so unlikely that I'm not particularly worried about it.
I did find an airsoft pistol in a drawer in an office I took over that had been confiscated from a student at some point, but it didn't have an orange tip. So I had to call our Police department. And they kept asking me if it was a real gun. I said that I didn't think so but also that I would have no way to really know for sure. Mostly I wanted them to come take it and not have me throw it in a dumpster where if somebody found it they could get themselves shot. My lack of knowledge was an asset that day, at least to me.
ETA, also, thanks for the vulnerability you shared here.
I would like to clarify my earlier comment. It was not meant to meaningfully describe the full thought process of those who do not own guns, but instead to describe the dynamics that lead to...
I would like to clarify my earlier comment. It was not meant to meaningfully describe the full thought process of those who do not own guns, but instead to describe the dynamics that lead to "where are the guns fighting this oppressive government?" being an almost risible gotcha, when looking at the reality of things. I certainly didn't mean to imply that "avoiding the stereotype" was the bulk of the impetus.
However, your statistical citations are what I was pointing toward. Those are the numeric reflections of the reality of who has owned guns in the US in the past ~50+ years, and they're probably accurate. But on a population scale, when those statistics have influenced the decisions made by those people particularly concerned about those phenomena for at least a significant portion of that timespan, it becomes self-reinforcing. People who are reckless and violent, bar none, are more likely to want to own guns. Misogyny and toxic individualism are deeply connected in our culture. Of course these things compound, and gun ownership being such an escalation in violent power, it will naturally lead a distribution into a more bimodal one, as measured by the firm line of death.
So that's, to a real extent, looking at gun owners and choosing not to be like them. Reasonably, and justifiably, and I'm not trying to shame anyone who comes to your conclusions. Hell, I haven't bought ammo in a long time because of some of those risks. Weaponry is a weight and comes with duties moreso than safety or comforts.
But I commented above because: A. Any time a news story is used to casually dismiss a wide swathe of political debate, that is a threat to honest governmental progress, B. There is a casual ignorance about the logic of the debate beyond very simplified terms here (Tildes), and that leads to some deep miscommunications.
I do hope that my comment didn't come across as blankly critical of people who don't own guns, though. That would be a very stupid sentiment. And, of course, people who think that personal gun ownership is primarily a plague are entitled to that and to push to shape legislation however they believe is right. Clichés, however, don't feel useful.
I understand the point your trying to make but I'm not looking at other gun owners, I'm looking at myself and my family, at how I don't need the risk of having a weapon when I'm angry, nor when...
I understand the point your trying to make but I'm not looking at other gun owners, I'm looking at myself and my family, at how I don't need the risk of having a weapon when I'm angry, nor when I'm despairing and that I have no desire to shoot someone, even in self defense.
Those are internally oriented processes not external ones. Having a gun in my home would statistically and practically make me less safe. I understand the point you're making about the stats are defined by the people who own guns and that being self-fulfilling and all. But you don't have to be reckless, violent, misogynistic or individualistic to die by suicide. And even without the statistical part of it, if I am unwilling to shoot someone with a gun then I shouldn't use one, and this shouldn't own one. If my anger or depression overwhelmed my reason, leading me to be willing to use it, I really shouldn't own one.
I'd rather no one had any, personally, but I'm only discussing my personal calculations on the topic. I didn't think you were being dismissive I just wanted to elaborate after two comments that felt like "here's why people don't own guns" when neither reasoning fits in with my experience
I think we are on the same page, to be honest. My point with the stats was just that by citing them, you are conflating your own desire to be free from that kind of risk with the outcomes of...
I think we are on the same page, to be honest. My point with the stats was just that by citing them, you are conflating your own desire to be free from that kind of risk with the outcomes of others. This:
Having a gun in my home would statistically and practically make me less safe.
is different from this:
I don't need the risk of having a weapon when I'm angry, nor when I'm despairing and that I have no desire to shoot someone, even in self defense.
The former implies that if someone kills themself with a gun, they should have known better. That the issue is with the object, not with our laws, or culture, or the decisions made. That if a person is not killed, only spiritually diminished, by abuse, that is tolerable. And knowing you, that's not your logic. You'd be in favour of the kinds of social safety nets to prevent those outcomes before the death even comes into it.
I just really hate the way our culture falls into thinking via actuarial tables. It's toxic, and diminishes our own roles in the creation and maintenance of ethical norms. Of course guns are dangerous, we don't need to alienate ourselves from ourselves by modeling our own actions based on demography before we decide how we feel. Apologies if I'm splitting hairs.
I don't agree that's what the former statement implies, as I wasn't implying that. I do many things that make me "statistically less safe." I mentioned this one because people tend to believe...
The former implies that if someone kills themself with a gun, they should have known better. That the issue is with the object, not with our laws, or culture, or the decisions made. That if a person is not killed, only spiritually diminished, by abuse, that is tolerable. And knowing you, that's not your logic. You'd be in favour of the kinds of social safety nets to prevent those outcomes before the death even comes into it.
I don't agree that's what the former statement implies, as I wasn't implying that. I do many things that make me "statistically less safe." I mentioned this one because people tend to believe owning a gun makes them statistically safer and because few people believe they'd be at risk of using it on themselves, especially if they haven't been suicidal before. Similarly if I said that abortions are statistically safer than giving I wouldn't be blaming anyone for dying in childbirth. I have thought about gun ownership for myself in both personal, emotional terms and in those statistical terms. Both combine to lead me to my conclusion.
I just really hate the way our culture falls into thinking via actuarial tables. It's toxic, and diminishes our own roles in the creation and maintenance of ethical norms. Of course guns are dangerous, we don't need to alienate ourselves from ourselves by modeling our own actions based on demography before we decide how we feel. Apologies if I'm splitting hairs.
I promise I'm not thinking like that, I'm just using those stats to inform my decision making. Thinking I'm special and will beat the odds is casino logic, but I'm betting a life. And I'm choosing not to play because that pot is too rich for me
I tend to balance my responses in time with how much I'm looking to self disclose about my personal life, how much emotion I want to put into it, and how much of myself I'm holding back. Some folks react negatively to what they perceive as "irrationality" and some people react better to personal anecdotes. So I tend to try to hit the right note for me in the moment and the right tone for the topic.
That said, I agree we agree, and appreciate the conversation.
I definitely wasn't thinking that you meant to imply anything of the sort, by the way. Nor that you were really thinking the latter. It's just hard to communicate "language is demonic, and math is...
I definitely wasn't thinking that you meant to imply anything of the sort, by the way. Nor that you were really thinking the latter. It's just hard to communicate "language is demonic, and math is not exempt" without coming off as utterly deranged. Most people seem happy to live in a world of language without grounding, and those tangents were meant as demonstrative of that logic, not to assume yours.
I tire of repeating myself so i'll just say this once and leave it be if you agree or not: For or against the 2nd amendment, there's a lot of evidence that a moderately armed force in terrain they...
I tire of repeating myself so i'll just say this once and leave it be if you agree or not:
For or against the 2nd amendment, there's a lot of evidence that a moderately armed force in terrain they know well can absolutely make war unwinnable no matter the level of technology. There is no such thing as a fair war, and yes anyone who is a known target is likely dead within hours. Helicopters, missiles, boats, drones, and all the rest make quick work of positively identified targets.
They do not however do much vs large cities full of people unless you want to turn that city into rubble, and even then if you want to hold it you need boots on the ground.
Vietnam is probably the most famous US loss due to this, the middle east claims victories over both the US and Russia on similar grounds, and history is full of such examples. Hell Russia especially has been on the receiving and giving end of this equation multiple times. This is staying in the "top military forces" areas as well. Looking at africa and south america also shows examples.
The entire point of an armed militia in the modern day and age is to make it impossible to win. No you will not meet them gloriously on the field of battle in a regiment or some such nonsense. You will however likely outnumber armed forces some 300 to 1. So if even a quarter of that 300 is armed, you have numbers superiority and essentially an unwinnable situation when it comes to holding ground and modern logistics/supply chains.
It is a massive lose lose for everyone involved, and that's the whole point. Much like MAD at a state actor level seems to be the only real way to prevent someone bigger from trying to take your territory, a heavily armed populace points towards an utterly miserable "revolution" should it be by any means not accepted by said population.
I've yet to meet someone who has any level of expertise in the military who thinks that a couple hundred million people armed and in their well known home terrain would be anything other than a fucking hellhole to deal with.
I can see many reasons to be for or against an armed populace. "well they'll never win, we can use missiles/drones/helicopters/etc" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the point of an armed populace is and how many many many examples throughout history have shown otherwise.
Vietnam is the best example of optics losing a war. America didn't lose because it lacked firepower. It lost becsuse it realized that going WW2 on such a small country would devastate their...
Vietnam is probably the most famous US loss due to this,
Vietnam is the best example of optics losing a war. America didn't lose because it lacked firepower. It lost becsuse it realized that going WW2 on such a small country would devastate their polling for years to come. If America truly "won" Vietnam there wouldnt be a President Regean. That was all "fixed" for the Iraqi war later on, though (and even then STILL devastated the GOP. Making their own Vice president unelecteable is quite the feat).
That's honestly what scares me the most about a potential Civil War. We've spend 50+ years being desensitized to the aspect of killing. Once optics can't stop a war, all bets are off. And as we speak we are being desensitized to the idea of military invading cities. The fact that no one is imoeeaching Trump over even the threat of that speaks volumes.
. "well they'll never win, we can use missiles/drones/helicopters/etc" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the point of an armed populace is and how many many many examples throughout history have shown otherwise.
I don't think a modern civil war within a super power will be anything we can refer to history on. Unlike a normal war, a civil war isn't fought for resources and then "won/lost" after the fact. Its intent would either be to ursurp the government if started by rebels, or to weave fear in its own people and potentially annihilate them of stated by the ruler.
The latter makes no logical sense; even dictatorships don't aim to do this, because what is a king with nothing to rule over, and no one to command? But we're not in logical times, sadly.
This is a lot of morbid talk, but do I truly believe we're going to have a civil war? As things are now, no. But we are maybe, 4-5 big events away from one and we have maube8-10 increasingly plausible events. 4 of of those potential events lie in the courts. It's going to be a bumpy ride even if we manage to avoid all those events.
Oppression is not usually dispensed via drones. That's just war or terrorism. Oppression usually requires policing and/or societal buy-in. Those cannot be done with faceless nameless weapons of...
Oppression is not usually dispensed via drones. That's just war or terrorism. Oppression usually requires policing and/or societal buy-in. Those cannot be done with faceless nameless weapons of mass destruction quite yet.
But you're right, I would like individuals to be able to own and operate predator drones. Sounds like a nice step toward personal thermonuclear arms and universal equality.
You do indeed need a bit of terrorism to properly enforce oppression in a dictatorship. Knowing that you can be next keeps the populace fearful and fall in line. It will definitely go the wrong...
Oppression is not usually dispensed via drones. That's just war or terrorism.
You do indeed need a bit of terrorism to properly enforce oppression in a dictatorship. Knowing that you can be next keeps the populace fearful and fall in line.
It will definitely go the wrong way, but yes. If we claim we need a "well armed militia" then the logical steps is giving the people proper leverage against the government. Similar to how we evolved "arms' from an 18th century rifle to a semi-auto pistol. I much prefer the "restrict guns and use strict licensing" angle, but that seems less likely, especially in these times.
Like I said, I don't think this is a reasonable context to debate these issues. Maybe someone will post an article on terror management or somesuch segment of political theory that'd be better....
Like I said, I don't think this is a reasonable context to debate these issues. Maybe someone will post an article on terror management or somesuch segment of political theory that'd be better.
But personally, I don't claim we need a well-armed militia, I just think murder should be legal.
Given some of the rhetoric out there and reactions in real world venues over this, I don't think we'll have the luxury of "reasonable context". In many contexts, it is.
Given some of the rhetoric out there and reactions in real world venues over this, I don't think we'll have the luxury of "reasonable context".
don't claim we need a well-armed militia, I just think murder should be legal.
Yup. So why are you wasting your energy arguing about it online? If we're approaching wartime, none of this is relevant. If we aren't, there'll be an opportunity to have conversations about it...
Yup. So why are you wasting your energy arguing about it online? If we're approaching wartime, none of this is relevant. If we aren't, there'll be an opportunity to have conversations about it where it's warranted. I'm more concerned about the state's weapons at the moment, and their real and concrete harms, than convincing you to agree with me.
Terrorism is used to force people into a state of self-preservation, to undermine their appreciation of values beyond survival. Conceding to it is doing the oppressor's job. Make them kill us all, if they really are willing to. I wasn't joking about my responses to your points, and I'm not weaseling out of defending my principles, I'm just not going to do it for the sake of sport in the comments about a dead man, because you asked me to.
A variety of reasons. I can't really pinpoint one reason I comment on anything online. Coping mechanism for powers I cannot control ( I do tend to comment more when I am stressed, even if I try to...
So why are you wasting your energy arguing about it online?
A variety of reasons. I can't really pinpoint one reason I comment on anything online.
Coping mechanism for powers I cannot control ( I do tend to comment more when I am stressed, even if I try to avoid outright trolling?) .
Hoping to seek out encouraging or percipient perspectives of what's to come.
Feeling a need to discuss matters that I can't discuss with anyone in my day to day life.
Begrudgingly accepting that social media is "the real world" and getting a pulse on perspectives and reactions is just as important as being well informed of the news.
All of that is also why I comment here on Tildes; I appreciate that most comments here are in good faith. I'd definitely react differently when hearing this on Reddit and not take the time to seriously introspect on the action.
I'm more concerned about the state's weapons at the moment, and their real and concrete harms, than convincing you to agree with me.
I don't think we're disagreeing here in particular. Things will sadly only get worse.
I wasn't joking about my responses to your points, and I'm not weaseling out of defending my principles, I'm just not going to do it for the sake of sport in the comments about a dead man, because you asked me to.
I don't want to force you to engage with any particular point. I simply, genuinely don't know if they'll be a better context to talk about it. The next context will likely be even worse. I was being genuine as well with my response.
I hope for things to get better, but I don't think we've hit the nadir yet.
I think this is in bad taste, honestly. There needs to be room for gun control, but there's a rational, humanitarian case that gun ownership should be understood primarily as right than a...
I think this is in bad taste, honestly. There needs to be room for gun control, but there's a rational, humanitarian case that gun ownership should be understood primarily as right than a privilege. There's a reason why the harshest crackdown against guns in the USSR happened under Collectivization, which directly led to the deaths of millions of people. In the context of American politics, we need to be able to talk about gun control while still recognizing a general right to bear arms. Whether Charlie Kirk productively contributed to the conversation may be another question, but I don't think taking schadenfreude is appropriate or justified.
If I thought the man ever had any principles, quoting that would be akin to saying he set an example of those principles even in death - the opposite of bad taste, as I see it. Given that I think...
If I thought the man ever had any principles, quoting that would be akin to saying he set an example of those principles even in death - the opposite of bad taste, as I see it.
Given that I think he was an amoral ghoul who would say anything to anybody if he thought it would serve his own interests, it's instead a reminder that he has, perhaps for the one time ever, been forced to stand by his words. Given that they were indeed his words, freely spoken and amplified with the full intent of swaying public opinion, I don't see highlighting that as bad taste either.
The takeaway is that he either truly believed his own death was an acceptable price to pay, or that he was a liar who would callously throw away the lives of others for something he didn't...
Exemplary
The takeaway is that he either truly believed his own death was an acceptable price to pay, or that he was a liar who would callously throw away the lives of others for something he didn't actually believe in and has paid the ultimate price for that. Either of those two possibilities provides powerful context for what's just happened here.
As you said, poor taste, maybe but I found it to be an absurd level of poetic justice that: A guy who loudly proclaimed that the second amendment is needed to protect individuals from a government...
As you said, poor taste, maybe but I found it to be an absurd level of poetic justice that:
A guy who loudly proclaimed that the second amendment is needed to protect individuals from a government trying to take away constitutional rights was shot and killed while pushing propaganda for the government taking away second amendment rights for a specific minority.
But trans folks by way of declaring being trans a mental illness, and trying to take guns away from everyone with a mental illness, which is why the NRA and various 2A groups took the side of...
But trans folks by way of declaring being trans a mental illness, and trying to take guns away from everyone with a mental illness, which is why the NRA and various 2A groups took the side of trans people for once. The precedents were very broad.
I don't think pulling these quotes out is necessarily an endorsement of a complete ban on guns. It's just amusing to point out that, by Kirk's own words, his death is an acceptable necessity so we...
I don't think pulling these quotes out is necessarily an endorsement of a complete ban on guns. It's just amusing to point out that, by Kirk's own words, his death is an acceptable necessity so we probably shouldn't feel to bad about it.
He also believed empathy is a made up New Age term that "does a lot of damage" so I think it's only fair to respond in kind.
I just don't see it. maybe 200 years ago, but even then it was hard for a "well regulated militia" to have any real shot at usurping a government. Driving a car is a near necessity in some...
but there's a rational, humanitarian case that gun ownership should be understood primarily as right than a privilege.
I just don't see it. maybe 200 years ago, but even then it was hard for a "well regulated militia" to have any real shot at usurping a government.
Driving a car is a near necessity in some countries but it is still a privileged, because misuse of it can get you or others killed. why not apply the same to guns?
Freedom is a right and can be revoked. The idea that gun ownership could be a right does not preclude the idea that it should be revokable as well.
Driving a car is a near necessity in some countries but it is still a privileged, because misuse of it can get you or others killed. why not apply the same to guns?
Freedom is a right and can be revoked. The idea that gun ownership could be a right does not preclude the idea that it should be revokable as well.
I can't help but see the parallels to the October 7 attacks. On that day, Hamas carried out a monstrous act of violence against civilians. It was terrorism in its most brutal, unforgivable form....
Exemplary
I can't help but see the parallels to the October 7 attacks. On that day, Hamas carried out a monstrous act of violence against civilians. It was terrorism in its most brutal, unforgivable form. Yet it was also the inevitable consequence of Israel's inability to address the Palestinian people in any meaningful way.
Kirk's murder is a smaller scale version of the same underlying dynamics. Murder is wrong. It is unjustifiable except in the most extreme circumstances, and being a right-wing provocateur certainly does not meet that threshold, as much as I thought Kirk a net drain on society. Certainly his children, reportedly also in attendance, do not deserve the lifetime of trauma.
Yet we cannot understand this moment without understanding how we arrived here, an era in which the legitimacy of our political opponents is routinely questioned (in both directions). With each election, our polarization has only become worst. Now at the helm we have our commander-in-chief who regularly dumps jet fuel on the flames. To temper his worse impulses, we have the Supreme Court, which has succumbed to the temptation of an unassailable conservative offensive, allowing for an unprecedented expansion of executive power that would have been unimaginable under any Democratic administration. Meanwhile, Congress shrugs. It's difficult to understand these moves as anything other than a pure political power grab. So if the opposition has no legitimate way to express their grievances, how else can they respond but violently? It is not right. It is not justifiable. Yet it is the inevitable consequence of refusing to acknowledge your political opposition.
In principle we know what we need to do, or at least we know in which direction we need the rhetorical landscape to shift. We need to defuse and de-escalate. We need to be willing to compromise, or at the very least we need to make an earnest attempt to listen to our political rivals. This is, admittedly, much easier said than done.
Unfortunately, this administration's response so far has been to double-down, promising to investigate all liberal "organizations that fund [...] and support [violence]." In blaming democrats for Kirk's murder, Trump cited the attempt on his life as well as the attempted assassination of Republican Representative Steve Scalise in 2017. Yet he didn't mention Melissa Hortman, the former Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives murdered in June, nor Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was hospitalized by an act of political violence in 2022. That is, this administration does not see political violence as a bipartisan issue. They see it as a cudgel to further disempower the left.
In the universe of all possible responses to this tragedy, Trump's response is among the worst, as it will do nothing but exacerbate tensions. And until our government is willing to face the reality that political violence is a bipartisan issue, tragedies like this will only become more common.
I feel like we have this same conversation every time a terrible person dies. Can't we accept that people can simultaneously be against violence in principle, while also accepting that in this...
I feel like we have this same conversation every time a terrible person dies.
Can't we accept that people can simultaneously be against violence in principle, while also accepting that in this specific case people like that a terrible person is no longer doing his usual terrible things?
I largely agree about understanding events in a larger historical context and appreciate that you made it clear that you don’t condone these attacks, but I’m going to disagree with some of your...
I largely agree about understanding events in a larger historical context and appreciate that you made it clear that you don’t condone these attacks, but I’m going to disagree with some of your rhetoric because I think it misrepresents the situation:
I don’t think the word “inevitable” makes sense in any similar situation, when we’re talking about intentional attacks by murderers. Saying it’s “inevitable” denies agency, as if the people who planned in secret to do these terrible things were agents of impersonal forces rather than people with free will. (Though, in some cases, there can be both leaders and foot soldiers responsible and sometimes the result is not what they planned. Attacks can fail.)
So if the opposition has no legitimate way to express their grievances, how else can they respond but violently?
Lots of ways? Maybe they won’t be effective, but murdering someone often doesn’t accomplish anything good, either. When people say “no choice” it usually means there are choices they are ignoring. The murderers chose this. Putting it into context means understanding how they came to make that choice.
It also seems wrong to imply that other people who did not choose this are responsible for it. There are plenty of other things to blame them for, though.
I think its less inevitable as like this certain person was always going to do this act and more like, with 300 million monkeys on typewriters, eventually one of them will do this act. In my mind,...
I think its less inevitable as like this certain person was always going to do this act and more like, with 300 million monkeys on typewriters, eventually one of them will do this act.
In my mind, it's an important difference and immensely useful in looking back on our history. The first definition implies more of a "Great Man" theory, like George Washington was destined to be the leader of the armed forces of the American Revolution, and the second says well someone was going to have to fill that role eventually in that war. It helps us draw out lines of "this person believed so strongly in this thing they made it happen" and "societal forces were demanding some kind of change was made to the existing systems of power"
I do agree with you that we can't separate the actions from the person, like they didn't choose to do something. Our current system of justice requires people to be held responsible for their actions, and a lot of the media wording often separates a gunman from the act of shooting someone.
It depends on what you mean by this act. What would count? Someone is going to be the leader of an army because that's how armies work - they will choose someone. But it's hardly inevitable that...
It depends on what you mean by this act. What would count?
Someone is going to be the leader of an army because that's how armies work - they will choose someone. But it's hardly inevitable that someone would try to shoot this particular person, let alone that they would succeed.
It's reasonable to say that yes, any large American city is going to have a non-zero murder rate, but it can go up and down quite a bit for reasons that can't be predicted, and we can't predict the victims in advance. Or we could say that school shootings are part of a pattern, but it doesn't explain a whole lot or help much in preventing them.
There were lots of political bombings in the US in the 1970's and then they stopped, and nobody knows why.
Maybe this isn't really about great man theory, it's more about believing in random chance versus fate? That things happen for a reason, perhaps a hidden one? I assume it's random chance (a lone nut who could have done something else) until there's evidence otherwise.
Political violence begets more political violence. This isn't a match in a powder keg, its a torch, and more violence will probably follow. It is a difficult genie to stick back in the lamp.
Political violence begets more political violence. This isn't a match in a powder keg, its a torch, and more violence will probably follow. It is a difficult genie to stick back in the lamp.
I personally think you're underestimating the impact that a major right-wing infosphere operative being gunned down will have in accelerating other acts of right wing violence, but I suppose it is...
I personally think you're underestimating the impact that a major right-wing infosphere operative being gunned down will have in accelerating other acts of right wing violence, but I suppose it is impossible to know.
There was an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate last year that was in the media for maybe two weeks before everyone moved on. Wasn’t even a factor four months later during the...
There was an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate last year that was in the media for maybe two weeks before everyone moved on. Wasn’t even a factor four months later during the election, and there were was no noticeable increase in right wing violence. The only thing that popped up afterwards was the Health Care CEO being assassinated.
Also a Minnesota legislator was assassinated, what, three months ago? But she was a Democrat so I guess right-wing political violence doesn't count when it comes to hand-wringing...
Also a Minnesota legislator was assassinated, what, three months ago? But she was a Democrat so I guess right-wing political violence doesn't count when it comes to hand-wringing...
You see, that was an old white guy dressed up as a cop. What are they going to do, take guns away from old white guys or cops? That'd be ridiculous! What might that solve? The...
You see, that was an old white guy dressed up as a cop. What are they going to do, take guns away from old white guys or cops?
That'd be ridiculous!
What might that solve? The hundreds-if-not-thousands of officer involved cold blooded zero consequence murders?
Given that there are myriad armed right wing reactionary militias active in the US, yeah, I’m more concerned about retaliatory violence in response to this killing. It’s not handwringing. Cycles...
Given that there are myriad armed right wing reactionary militias active in the US, yeah, I’m more concerned about retaliatory violence in response to this killing. It’s not handwringing. Cycles of violence are easy to start and hard to stop, and each step along the way reinforces this. I don’t think this shooting was the start of the cycle, but I do think it has accelerated it, and I think we all lose when that happens.
It’s not handwringing to be apprehensive about how fascists, currently in power, will wield this.
We won't know what the tipping point (turning point?) is until after violence occurs, but if nothing else, there will be significant political ramifications. Trump sent the national guard to DC...
We won't know what the tipping point (turning point?) is until after violence occurs, but if nothing else, there will be significant political ramifications. Trump sent the national guard to DC after a DOGE staffer got beat up and he's already in the middle of a pressure campaign against universities. Who knows what he'll do in response, but Kirk was a pretty important figure in the maga movement.
It was definitely a factor in his camp's rallying. The number of fundie pundits who took it as evidence for the man's status as Chosen One was far from zero.
It was definitely a factor in his camp's rallying. The number of fundie pundits who took it as evidence for the man's status as Chosen One was far from zero.
I saw a comment elsewhere along the lines of "well the pot has to boil over at some point" and it's like you do realize we're all inside this metaphorical pot, right?
I saw a comment elsewhere along the lines of "well the pot has to boil over at some point" and it's like you do realize we're all inside this metaphorical pot, right?
Jan 6th endangered both left and right wing policy makers. I'm not disagreeing, but we've had quite a few situations this decade that should have been a wakeup call for the GOP. I'm not certain if...
the impact that a major right-wing infosphere operative being gunned down will have in accelerating other acts of right wing violence
Jan 6th endangered both left and right wing policy makers. I'm not disagreeing, but we've had quite a few situations this decade that should have been a wakeup call for the GOP. I'm not certain if this is the match that will ignite the cannons, but history can be fickle.
The match in the powder keg was January 6, and with Republicans granting the perpetrators clemency and holding them up as heroes, they've effectively declared that political violence is totally fine.
The match in the powder keg was January 6, and with Republicans granting the perpetrators clemency and holding them up as heroes, they've effectively declared that political violence is totally fine.
I won't condone political violence. I hope the perpetrator spends a long time in prison, and I don't know what good they expected to come of this. I will, however, leave some Charlie Kirk quotes...
I won't condone political violence. I hope the perpetrator spends a long time in prison, and I don't know what good they expected to come of this.
I will, however, leave some Charlie Kirk quotes that have aged like fine wine:
"I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage"
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights"
As others have noted there is a lot of very graphic footage out there right now that hasn't been caught by social media filters yet. Please be careful with your own wellbeing and consider avoiding...
As others have noted there is a lot of very graphic footage out there right now that hasn't been caught by social media filters yet. Please be careful with your own wellbeing and consider avoiding social media tonight and disabling your autoplay settings for videos.
A moment of silence on the House floor for conservative commentator Charlie Kirk devolved into a moment of chaos as a pair of Republicans called out Democrats.
With every lawmaker standing up in quiet observance, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) demanded a spoken prayer.
“Silent prayers get silent results,” she said, leading to jeers from Democrats, with some shouting about a school shooting that also happened Wednesday.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) stood up and started shouting expletives at the Democrats before Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled lawmakers down. “This is disgusting,” said a House Republican granted anonymity to react candidly to the clash.
I appreciate how it was the republicans who were the ones to defy a moment of silence for their own "ally" while seemingly, the democrats were just going to go with it. They can't even respect...
I appreciate how it was the republicans who were the ones to defy a moment of silence for their own "ally" while seemingly, the democrats were just going to go with it.
They can't even respect their own without spouting out hate out of nowhere. I don't even think the assassin has been identified yet and they are already trying to lay blame (just that they charged someone and it turned out to not be them).
Good grief, Kirk is getting the medal of freedom. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna230581 I don’t think he should have been killed, but he was a reprehensible bigot.
For all the complaints that were made about responses in this thread I just want to say I appreciate the genuine discussion had here. Mostly moving away from the instigating event and talking more...
For all the complaints that were made about responses in this thread I just want to say I appreciate the genuine discussion had here. Mostly moving away from the instigating event and talking more about the bigger societal whys and smaller individual feelings.
It looks to be widely spreading and being confirmed all around. Charlie seems to have died. I'm not an American so I will be largely unaffected, but I do want to express my genuine worry over the...
It looks to be widely spreading and being confirmed all around. Charlie seems to have died.
I'm not an American so I will be largely unaffected, but I do want to express my genuine worry over the possible coming crackdown. I doubt it but I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail.
Absolutely crazy to see Article 4 get invoked and the (likely politically motivated) assassination of a US social media influencer on my birthday. I don't like Charlie Kirk but nobody deserves to...
Absolutely crazy to see Article 4 get invoked and the (likely politically motivated) assassination of a US social media influencer on my birthday.
I don't like Charlie Kirk but nobody deserves to be shot dead over their political beliefs.
What I worry about more is how the Trump administration could turn this into an attack against leftists and the LGBTQ community (there was a trans active shooter a few weeks ago.)
Trump announced Kirk's death on social media, and called for all US flags to be flown at half-mast, which means it's a much bigger deal than the hundreds of kids murdered by school shooters yearly.
I'm not for violence. But pretty much anything can be a "political belief", including things that might leave assassination as your opposition's only option.
nobody deserves to be shot dead over their political beliefs
I'm not for violence. But pretty much anything can be a "political belief", including things that might leave assassination as your opposition's only option.
Well, here's Laura Loomer's response Apparently, Trump is ordering all flags to be at half staff.
What I worry about more is how the Trump administration could turn this into an attack against leftists and the LGBTQ community (there was a trans active shooter a few weeks ago.)
Yup. Charlie Kirk is being mourned by the government more than the hundreds of school kids being gunned down by active shooters every year. This is gonna get ugly and I don't like that.
Yup. Charlie Kirk is being mourned by the government more than the hundreds of school kids being gunned down by active shooters every year.
Not to be pedantic, but unless you're talking about the random lives lost each day in this country, the school shooting in Evergreen hasn't had any casualties. Not that it makes it any less tragic...
Not to be pedantic, but unless you're talking about the random lives lost each day in this country, the school shooting in Evergreen hasn't had any casualties.
Not that it makes it any less tragic and this government any less shit, just pointing out facts as of this time.
Even though the specifics of your original point were wrong, its main thrust still holds. The fact that we have to clarify that, actually, people didn’t die in today’s school shooting is, once...
Exemplary
Even though the specifics of your original point were wrong, its main thrust still holds. The fact that we have to clarify that, actually, people didn’t die in today’s school shooting is, once again, a damning indictment of how normalized it has become in this country to have bullets rip through kids.
Additional Soapboxing
While I’m here, I want to add that the (unfortunately necessary) focus on deaths relative to school shootings ends up creating a distorted view of their impact. Even though no one died (besides the shooter) in yesterday’s school shooting, there were still people injured in possibly life-altering ways.
Also, that entire school and everyone connected to it is now deeply traumatized. The kids who won’t be able to feel safe again for months or years; the staff who had to face their own potential deaths as well as the potential deaths of the kids they care for; the parents and guardians and families who got the call or saw the news and won’t be able to shake the feeling of that horrible, heart-stopping, stomach-dropping fear from their minds for years.
With so many school shootings and a seemingly unilateral focus on deaths, we miss these events for what they actually are: mass trauma for whole communities — especially the children in those communities. Yes, there were no deaths, and that is a twisted sort of blessing, but something like this is still damnably dark, and we’re so jaded by now that we hardly even notice.
Not to be even more pedantic, but there were 3 casualties, one of which was the shooter, who died, while the other 2 were injured. Casualties include injuries, which is likely the cause of...
Not to be even more pedantic, but there were 3 casualties, one of which was the shooter, who died, while the other 2 were injured. Casualties include injuries, which is likely the cause of @TheRtRevKaiser's original point.
All this premature screeching, and watch the assassin be yet another MAGA diehard who felt scorned by Trump. I can't say that this couldn't have been from the Left, but following so many of these...
All this premature screeching, and watch the assassin be yet another MAGA diehard who felt scorned by Trump. I can't say that this couldn't have been from the Left, but following so many of these events (and the fact that it's in Utah) showed me how common it is for the Right to eat itself.
This is completely baseless speculation - but this is mighty convenient timing for this administration. Something big to distract the news from the Epstein files - that they can conveniently blame...
This is completely baseless speculation - but this is mighty convenient timing for this administration. Something big to distract the news from the Epstein files - that they can conveniently blame on the other political party and use as further "justification" to send the military to Democrat controlled cities.
I haven't seen any specific evidence to suggest this, but we know that these people are capable and willing to toss their own to wolves (or worse) if it means furthering their agenda
Fwiw while it seems more likely the shooter a few weeks ago was not or was no longer someone who considered themselves transgender, I mention it only because that is the most recent information I...
Fwiw while it seems more likely the shooter a few weeks ago was not or was no longer someone who considered themselves transgender, I mention it only because that is the most recent information I have. Trans folks are absolutely still being targeted, explicitly, over it.
It seemed like you wanted to step away from this and I don't blame you, but I do want to add on that multiple articles are already running a completely unsupported "the gun used had trans slogans...
It seemed like you wanted to step away from this and I don't blame you, but I do want to add on that multiple articles are already running a completely unsupported "the gun used had trans slogans on it and the ammo". I really do fear for my trans friends because even if this is officially retracted, someone could be hurt or killed by these articles.
I saw someone doing the math on trans involved mass shootings over the last few decades. I think it was a combined 6,000 shootings? I hate to downplay the victims by using "events" or other such media word. It showed that the incident rates of trans people shooting others are way lower than cisgender, especially white males.
Stay safe out there y'all. Arm yourselves if it makes you feel safer, and stay away from them if that makes you safer. I worry more violence is doomed by how broken our nation is.
Yeah I've seen that report. I'm hoping they remain unsubstantiated. Even "they" know trans people aren't the problem, they* are just the scapegoat. I've spent the bulk of the day working with an...
Yeah I've seen that report. I'm hoping they remain unsubstantiated. Even "they" know trans people aren't the problem, they* are just the scapegoat.
I've spent the bulk of the day working with an apartment of non-binary/trans folks for a variety of mental health reasons fully unrelated to all of this. In some ways life goes on. I'll be doing everything I can to protect them all. Idk how to save the world, so all I can do is protect my little corner of things.
*I'm under the umbrella but due to how my gender shakes out (demigender non-binary woman) I feel less comfortable owning the label. I'm gender non-conforming. But I'm otherwise sort of gender apathetic. I just know I'm not a dude. I'm probably more likely to be read as a lesbian than trans. /Rambling
To my understanding, Turan (TRN) doesn't make .30-06 ammo (the caliber of the rifle that was found), so I'm not sure if that'd be the case. The governor of Utah just stated in a press conference...
To my understanding, Turan (TRN) doesn't make .30-06 ammo (the caliber of the rifle that was found), so I'm not sure if that'd be the case.
The governor of Utah just stated in a press conference that the four engravings were: (my transcriptions follow)
Yeah thanks for adding the update, I was waiting to see them written down vs spoken. Looks like video game references, anti-facist references, and online trolling comments.
Yeah thanks for adding the update, I was waiting to see them written down vs spoken. Looks like video game references, anti-facist references, and online trolling comments.
History proves time and again that this is wrong. Hitler had some pretty strong political beliefs after all. Does Putin deserve a bullet in the head? Bet there's an awful lot of people around the...
nobody deserves to be shot dead over their political beliefs.
History proves time and again that this is wrong. Hitler had some pretty strong political beliefs after all. Does Putin deserve a bullet in the head? Bet there's an awful lot of people around the globe who would nod emphatically and the only regret they'd have when it's done is that it didn't happen sooner.
This is not a man getting shot 'over some political beliefs.' This is a man who got shot because he thought dead kids in playgrounds is a reasonable price to pay to avoid any gun legislation. Whom took this belief and used it to bribe politicians and steer policy.
This shooter will get a nice spot next to Luigi in the 'Heros of Civil War 2' book.
I don't think they were equating the actions of those figures, rather using those figures to establish that there is a line which is in contrast to the original comment that stated nobody deserves...
I don't think they were equating the actions of those figures, rather using those figures to establish that there is a line which is in contrast to the original comment that stated nobody deserves it. Whether that line begins/ends somewhere around Putin/Hitler level or extends towards people like Charlie Kirk is part of other arguments being made.
I think Hitler and Putin should both have been imprisoned for their crimes, but I’ll agree that in the absence of a means to do so that killing them to stop their ongoing mass murder would be...
I think Hitler and Putin should both have been imprisoned for their crimes, but I’ll agree that in the absence of a means to do so that killing them to stop their ongoing mass murder would be morally acceptable.
I am having a very hard time seeing a justification for killing Charlie Kirk to prevent him from doing more podcasts.
This Mastodon thread consolidates a lot of justifications in one spot. Agree or disagree about whether he deserved it or not, he was not 'just a podcaster.' He was a white nationalist that created...
This Mastodon thread consolidates a lot of justifications in one spot. Agree or disagree about whether he deserved it or not, he was not 'just a podcaster.' He was a white nationalist that created a well-funded far-right organization which was one of the key players in getting Trump elected in 2016. A choice quote from Zeteo
"The far-right youth organization Kirk co-founded, Turning Point USA, played a huge role in rallying support for Trump on college campuses, gaining its initial prominence during Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Kirk was known for his many controversial statements. In 2021, he called for militias to go to the border and prevent the 'diminishing and decreasing [of] white demographics in America.'”
He was funded by Foster Friess, Bradley Foundation, Donors Trust, Koch Network, Heritage Foundation, Salem Media, Stuart Epperson and Edward G. Atsinger III, Julie Fancelli, Council for National Policy, Gianforte...... You know, the same ones that funded Jan 6.
For others like me who never heard of him, he was basically a maga influencer. article:
For others like me who never heard of him, he was basically a maga influencer. article:
Charlie Kirk was one of the most high-profile conservative activists and media personalities in the US and a trusted ally of President Donald Trump.
In 2012, at the age of 18, he co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organisation that aims to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges.
His social media and eponymous daily podcast often shared clips of him debating with students about issues such as transgender identity, climate change, faith and family values.
This line from the article in particular throws me pretty hard, just at the absurdity Both that a lot of elected officials made it a point to get something out there within minutes despite it...
This line from the article in particular throws me pretty hard, just at the absurdity
President Donald Trump and a host of Republican elected officials offered prayers for Kirk on social media.
Both that a lot of elected officials made it a point to get something out there within minutes despite it being a non-statement, and that doing so was important enough to be part of the associated press coverage of the event.
I assume they haven't made any mention of who is suspected. Last update about it on AP is a suspect is in custody (NYT blocked me because I blocked their ad blocker blocker).
I assume they haven't made any mention of who is suspected. Last update about it on AP is a suspect is in custody (NYT blocked me because I blocked their ad blocker blocker).
The police have determined that a person who was taken into custody after the shooting was not actually the shooter, according to Scott Trotter, a university spokesman. The university had earlier said a suspect was in custody.
I am just picturing a version of this pre-social media in a small town. It would be like a newspaper article commenting "Mayor's aid seen pinning a paper to the bulletin board at the post office."...
I am just picturing a version of this pre-social media in a small town. It would be like a newspaper article commenting "Mayor's aid seen pinning a paper to the bulletin board at the post office."
From this event, and from the maga reaction to it calling for all the things they are calling for, treating Kirk as a Martyr, I think I've had a realization about the state and trajectory of...
From this event, and from the maga reaction to it calling for all the things they are calling for, treating Kirk as a Martyr, I think I've had a realization about the state and trajectory of political violence, unrest, and worse in the US.
Hollywood has lent itself towards giving us certain... preconceptions about the meaning of things like 'apocalypse' and 'war'. There tends to be more dramatic and profitable storytelling about sudden, sharp changes of states - sudden all-out nuclear war, or a world-ending asteroid strike, or aliens invading and dealing a massively crippling blow, etc...
This makes for good entertainment, but this quality of 'sudden, dramatic change' is seldom reflective of reality. It also, I think, pervades our collective, cultural consciousness with preconceptions of what terms like 'war' or 'civil war' or 'climate disaster' mean, and introduces a tendency to dismiss things as being not as bad as they are because they aren't hollywood-level sudden disasters.
My father, a retired history and humanities professor, quite seriously believes we are approaching the extinction of the human race and the end of the world as we know it. I find myself somewhat agreeing, and somewhat disagreeing - mostly in terms of nuance and scope.
My view is that there is not likely to be any actual "end of the human race" - but at the same time I also feel that this is such an extreme endpoint, or extreme floor level to sink to, as to be completely irrelevant. If a single greenhouse farming enclave with a few thousand humans survived in the future warm and habitable arctic, with all other humans gone, this would still not be 'the end of the human race' - but at that point, to look at that situation and say 'see, the human race didn't go extinct!' seems like an irrelevant point of view. To further extend the viewpoint into something a tad less extreme, if the world population was reduced from the current ~8 billion to, say, ~800 million, our race would certainly be in no danger of going extinct... but that would still be the utter collapse of human civilization, society, and technological / developmental progress that we currently enjoy.
That line of thought is what has led me to understand and believe that, due to multiple factors (Climate Change being a primary factor, but also the continuing creep towards world war involving multiple nuclear-armed states and the increase in unrest and political violence among many others) we are heading towards the end of human civilization as we currently enjoy it. Not the end of the human race, but a significant degradation of the quality of our civilization as measured by factors such as life expectancy, wealth equality, probability of injury or death from violence, food and housing insecurity, etc...
I see the end of our current level of human civilization as something that isn't likely to have some hollywood-themed sudden, recognizable 'there, right there, that was the end of us' but rather as a slope, a gradual (though accelerating) degradation of our civilization, quality of life, life-expectancy, etc... We are seeing all those things right now. We are watching these metrics get worse on average year-on-year. I do not see this trend reversing, or slowing. I can, and do, hope - but I do not expect.
Now, with that perspective laid out - I've come to have the same realization about the phrase 'civil war' specifically in the US. I do not anticipate any one moment in upcoming history as being a clear and obvious 'there, it happened right then and there'. Rather I see that we are trending upwards (or downwards, however you wish to describe the slope) on a scale of the combination of many different factors and pressures, in this case looking primarily at politically motivated violence, state-actor level violence executed domestically, and civil unrest of all types. Powerful forces (primarily trump/maga, but also wealthy financial interests profiting from the current political climate) are either intent on, or incentivised to, push as hard as possible in this direction of increasing tension, political violence, unrest etc... as a means of increasing their own wealth and power.
So far, it is working for them.
Whether or not this particular incident is held up by the right as a martyrdom with success or not, the trend seems pretty clear to me. We have already shifted far, it feels like almost unthinkably far, over the recent years.
...
I'm getting ready to house-sit for my father while he takes a much needed vacation, hopefully getting to enjoy some nature. I'm taking not only my carry pistol with me, but also my combat rifle, specifically chosen for something chambered in a round that can defeat soft (under level IV) body armor... just to house sit and take care of his cats for the weekend - just in case someone chooses that weekend to target his home out of politically motivated violence - and it doesn't even feel strange to me anymore. It feels like nothing more than a "normal" safety precaution, like buckling my seat belt. I don't like that.
Now, I will admit there are factors with my family history that make this concern... less unlikely of a concern than for the random Joe or Jane. My father spent decades working against the Klan, Neo-Nazis, against David Duke and others like him, etc. We have had death threats in the past, swastikas spray-painted outside our home. We have had bodyguards live with us back during some of my time in high school. I once answered the phone as a child and was told to tell my father about how one day soon, perhaps I would be taken and parts of me mailed to him. So perhaps my experiences have not exactly been representative of the average.
My unusual family history aside, I see the motivations that are present, I see the pressures that are building. It feels like the probability of things getting much worse than they are now, likely before the mid-term elections (for fairly obvious reasons - holding onto political power), is high.
It feels like this. Like the edge we are pushed up against is getting more and more narrow.
I saw the close-up footage. It’s a direct hit on his neck (jugular vein if I had to guess). A fountain of blood spurted out of it and he immediately went limp. I’m not a medical expert but would...
I saw the close-up footage. It’s a direct hit on his neck (jugular vein if I had to guess). A fountain of blood spurted out of it and he immediately went limp. I’m not a medical expert but would be surprised if he was still alive.
Well, this appears to be some bad news. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-shot-suspect-utah-manhunt-b2824720.html Edit: they are walking that back...
Authorities earlier said they recovered a high-powered, bolt-action rifle in a wooded area near the campus. Ammunition inside the rifle was engraved with messages of transgender and antifascist ideology, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a law enforcement bulletin and a source familiar with the investigation. The FBI declined to comment to The Independent.
Two law enforcement sources told CNN that agents quickly ran an initial search on one of the markings, including a series of arrows, which analysts initially interpreted to be a connection to the transgender community. That information remains unverified and is still being investigated.
This is unverified and disputed by other sources associated with the investigation. https://bsky.app/profile/thelincoln.bsky.social/post/3lyl5ljm2h22m...
This is unverified and disputed by other sources associated with the investigation.
It also doesn’t change anything. There are two things that are true: This was most likely a lone wolf Trump and certain conservatives will weaponize this in anyway that they can Whether or not the...
It also doesn’t change anything.
There are two things that are true:
This was most likely a lone wolf
Trump and certain conservatives will weaponize this in anyway that they can
Whether or not the engravings exist, it will be reported by conservative media and used as a pretext for more violence and oppression
Whether or not the engravings exist, it does not prove a broad conspiracy by the left to assassinate right wing personalities.
Trump is constantly trying to manufacture Reichtag Fires and Horst Wessels. Whatever convenient event occcurs, real or fake, will be used.
I agree that truth matters generally. But what does it change if slogans were engraved on some bullets? If they said transgender slogans it wouldn’t implicate anyone else, just like if it said...
I agree that truth matters generally. But what does it change if slogans were engraved on some bullets? If they said transgender slogans it wouldn’t implicate anyone else, just like if it said “Nancy Pelosi says hi” it would not implicate her.
Probably the fact that like 99% of people who do this sort of thing are lone wolves. Actual organized militia attacks are virtually non-existent in comparison.
Probably the fact that like 99% of people who do this sort of thing are lone wolves. Actual organized militia attacks are virtually non-existent in comparison.
Nope. But it usually is. Or maybe it’s two people. Or 5. It doesn’t mean that “the left” murdered Charlie Kirk. It just means some nut with a gun murdered someone for reasons we don’t know yet....
Nope. But it usually is.
Or maybe it’s two people. Or 5. It doesn’t mean that “the left” murdered Charlie Kirk. It just means some nut with a gun murdered someone for reasons we don’t know yet. But regardless trump will use it as a retroactive excuse to invade Chicago or something he wanted to do anyway.
Even then, the fact it got reported at all is really bad. A lot of people are going to see this and assume it's fact even if it's categorically and clearly proven to be false.
Even then, the fact it got reported at all is really bad. A lot of people are going to see this and assume it's fact even if it's categorically and clearly proven to be false.
It bothers me that these media outlets have done shit like this time and time again, but everyone gets gellman amnesia when its confirming something THEY believe should be correct, but still sure...
It bothers me that these media outlets have done shit like this time and time again, but everyone gets gellman amnesia when its confirming something THEY believe should be correct, but still sure as shit looks like jumping the gun.
I wish we had some reasonable way of controlling this kind of nonsense because it's so destructive for society as a whole.
btw here's a gift link for that article https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-news?unlocked_article_code=1.lE8.qmIt.9ua22CjLYcKs&smid=url-share
Ironically for 2A supporters, a gun was used explicitly as a tool of political sovereignty to push back on an increasingly tyrannical government (and its groupies like Mr. Kirk) that oppresses...
Ironically for 2A supporters, a gun was used explicitly as a tool of political sovereignty to push back on an increasingly tyrannical government (and its groupies like Mr. Kirk) that oppresses marginalized demographics that can arm themselves. If the irony weren't lost on them, they'd be delighted.
You can support 2A and not be like a lot of the fucking idiots who do. You can support 2A and still not be delighted at this behavior and outcome. If we're going to just dive into sweeping...
If the irony weren't lost on them, they'd be delighted.
You can support 2A and not be like a lot of the fucking idiots who do.
You can support 2A and still not be delighted at this behavior and outcome.
If we're going to just dive into sweeping generalizations then fine, but it's no better than the "radical left" bullshit trump pedals.
Yes - even if true this is Kirk's own ideology in practice. When his supporters realize that they actually don't like guns being used for political violence the rational response is to restrict...
Yes - even if true this is Kirk's own ideology in practice. When his supporters realize that they actually don't like guns being used for political violence the rational response is to restrict gun use and stop promoting violence.
Every person that believes in the second amendment will have their own opinion of what a tyrannical government is. Any segment of the population can be targeted by those in power and be driven to the point of violence. The interpretation of the second amendment that states it's a safeguard against misuse of power doesn't belong solely to conservative people who might want to fight a totalitarian communist dictator. When that idea is promoted you will inspire people outside of your group.
But this really feels too on-the-nose - it's the exact thing MAGA desperately wants to see. Someone worried about trans people would hopefully be smart enough not to tie an assassination back to trans people. But generally people that perform assassinations aren't mentally well, so we can't assume the perpetrator would act rationally in this way.
That... That feels TOO blatant. This actually makes me lean towards the conspiracy theories about this being a hit by the government to push the Trump admin's agenda. Either way this is really,...
That... That feels TOO blatant. This actually makes me lean towards the conspiracy theories about this being a hit by the government to push the Trump admin's agenda.
Anyone can engrave whatever words they want on a bullet, fascists are not above lying, and newspapers of record are not above backing lies. But if this is true, whoever did this is as brave as...
Anyone can engrave whatever words they want on a bullet, fascists are not above lying, and newspapers of record are not above backing lies.
But if this is true, whoever did this is as brave as they were shortsighted. The UHC CEO wasn't really a public figure, so inscribing the intent distinguished it from a random mugging or whatever. Unless the plan was to try and start a trend, the vector of the bullet spoke more than any engraving might.
This is pretty fucking awful. I didn't give a fuck about the substance of Kirk's death (not going to mourn someone who's entire life was about making the world a shittier place) but the potential...
This is pretty fucking awful. I didn't give a fuck about the substance of Kirk's death (not going to mourn someone who's entire life was about making the world a shittier place) but the potential fallout was so clear when you had right wing idiots and politicians declaring that this was an assault by the left before anything was known about the shooter.
These fuckers are already far more prone to violence and were just champing at the bit to continue their assault on anything they see as 'left' while ignoring anything they can't use to blame their enemies e.g. MN killer, CDC shooter, Colorado shooting the same day, etc etc. We're absolutely fucked.
edit: even if it turns out not to be the case, this factoid is out there and the right are ready to go. They didn't let go of the MN killer being on some nonpolitical board under Walz, they couldn't let go of the Trump shooter donating to ActBlue, etc etc. They just assume everyone is as mad and violent as they are, don't care about facts, and are ready to step on the necks of those they don't agree with.
Just an update on the “trans” messages https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna230762 Presumably the arrows were the thing they were confusing with trans symbols. Apparently this might be a...
Almost all of it is terminally online shitpost-level stuff. The bella ciao thing is apparently a reference to a song associated with Italian antifascist partisans during WW2.
Almost all of it is terminally online shitpost-level stuff. The bella ciao thing is apparently a reference to a song associated with Italian antifascist partisans during WW2.
I saw a video that someone filmed from about 15 feet away. I would be surprised is he makes it. Either way, this is just more gasoline on the dumpster fire. Edit: apparently he made it to the...
I saw a video that someone filmed from about 15 feet away. I would be surprised is he makes it. Either way, this is just more gasoline on the dumpster fire.
Edit: apparently he made it to the hospital and is in critical condition. Also, somewhat related, another school shooting took place in Colorado right around the same time. We need a bigger dumpster.
Edit 2: now multiple sources are reporting he is dead
Shooter is supposedly in custody according to bbc, nyt. It did not look good, my personal opinion is that Kirk did not survive. He was probably shot for his political views but that is just an...
Shooter is supposedly in custody according to bbc, nyt. It did not look good, my personal opinion is that Kirk did not survive. He was probably shot for his political views but that is just an assumption I'm making.
This news today seems to be related, in my estimates. Historically Black colleges issue lockdown orders, cancel classes after receiving threats Officials: ‘No ongoing threat’ after shooting...
This news today seems to be related, in my estimates.
There's another article but there have been a bunch of swatting attempts at multiple institutions recently. It certainly could be related. It could also be a continuation or escalation of the...
There's another article but there have been a bunch of swatting attempts at multiple institutions recently. It certainly could be related. It could also be a continuation or escalation of the previous threats made. One I saw was very racially provocative and I'd have taken it seriously especially at an HBCU.
Isn't it great that everything sucks so you don't even know why it sucks
The person accused of fatally shooting conservative activist Charlie Kirk is 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, according to five law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
Donald Trump says authorities have found Charlie Kirk's killer, telling Fox News: "With a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody"
He says "somebody very close to him turned him in" - we're expecting more details from a news conference in Utah soon - watch live at the top of the page
Trump says the suspect's father was involved in taking him to police: "The father convinced the son," he says
Trump also says the suspect is "28 or 29" - authorities previously said the suspect "appears to be college age"
"don't be trans don't be brown don't be queer don't be Muslim" Yeah it'll still be spun in some shitty way - college turned him into a violent leftist because DEI or something - but it could be worse
"don't be trans don't be brown don't be queer don't be Muslim"
Yeah it'll still be spun in some shitty way - college turned him into a violent leftist because DEI or something - but it could be worse
Can anyone confirm if they actually have the shooter in custody or not? From what I can tell it seemed they were reporting that they had one, and now they're reporting that they do not. If they do...
Can anyone confirm if they actually have the shooter in custody or not? From what I can tell it seemed they were reporting that they had one, and now they're reporting that they do not.
If they do not, that's another level of concern on this whole situation for a variety of reasons.
To my knowledge, no he isn’t. UVU is a commuter school with a pretty open campus right next to the Interstate. Based on his vantage point, and assuming he was quick enough, the shooter could’ve...
To my knowledge, no he isn’t. UVU is a commuter school with a pretty open campus right next to the Interstate. Based on his vantage point, and assuming he was quick enough, the shooter could’ve been on the road in less than five minutes. At this point he could be in the wilderness somewhere.
They have so far had two people in custody, one described as a suspect, the other as a person of interest. Both have been released at this point. There's a decent amount of confusion as a lot of...
They have so far had two people in custody, one described as a suspect, the other as a person of interest. Both have been released at this point.
There's a decent amount of confusion as a lot of people are speaking rather than centralizing information but it seems as of right now there is not someone in custody per the BBC about a half hour ago. Confirmed by CNN "less than a minute ago"
The first person arrested was booked for obstruction.
I didn't know much of this guy to care but I forced myself to learn about him given the constant coverage. His quotes and his talks are to me an eye roll! Political violence don't end well however...
I didn't know much of this guy to care but I forced myself to learn about him given the constant coverage. His quotes and his talks are to me an eye roll! Political violence don't end well however it seems that the easy route has been taken by many people of stocking the fire of violence. Shouldn't be a surprise.
BBC news is currently reporting that he's dead- Trump posted "The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead" on Truth Social (https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c206zm81z4gt).
BBC news is currently reporting that he's dead- Trump posted "The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead" on Truth Social (https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c206zm81z4gt).
Similar to Brian Thompson last year... I find it hard to feel literally any sympathy whatsoever in moments like this. At the same time, I'm worried about how Trump and co. may/will react to this.
Similar to Brian Thompson last year... I find it hard to feel literally any sympathy whatsoever in moments like this. At the same time, I'm worried about how Trump and co. may/will react to this.
Interestingly, Kirk had just gotten done glibly answering a question about statistics of trans mass shooters when he was shot. That might have been part of the setup.
Interestingly, Kirk had just gotten done glibly answering a question about statistics of trans mass shooters when he was shot. That might have been part of the setup.
The news has been mixed on if he managed to answer that question or if it was just asked (or maybe it was a follow up asked), and I refuse to watch videos because I need to protect my mental...
The news has been mixed on if he managed to answer that question or if it was just asked (or maybe it was a follow up asked), and I refuse to watch videos because I need to protect my mental health more than know the answer.
I've watched footage; he answered with a quip saying "too many" or something along those lines, and then the same person was in the middle of a follow up trying to get him to answer seriously...
I've watched footage; he answered with a quip saying "too many" or something along those lines, and then the same person was in the middle of a follow up trying to get him to answer seriously about who the perceived threats really are.
That is the current status as I'm familiar with it. My mantra remains the same regardless though. Anyone whose identity will be used to attack them - including a history of mental illness tbh -...
That is the current status as I'm familiar with it.
My mantra remains the same regardless though. Anyone whose identity will be used to attack them - including a history of mental illness tbh - will end up with that identity being attacked on a larger scale. It's shifted over the years but has been fairly consistent since 2001.
That South Park episode they did a month ago where they lampooned "masterdebating" influencers like him has suddenly aged like milk. I also detest the many calls I've seen for South Park to be...
That South Park episode they did a month ago where they lampooned "masterdebating" influencers like him has suddenly aged like milk.
I also detest the many calls I've seen for South Park to be cancelled over that. How would they have known?
I wouldn't expect them to take it as such. I guarantee if the article had a specific writer on the byline or had named a specific store, they'd be the target of (not entirely undeserved) vitriol.
I wouldn't expect them to take it as such. I guarantee if the article had a specific writer on the byline or had named a specific store, they'd be the target of (not entirely undeserved) vitriol.
I fail to see how this makes the South Park episode any less funny. Political violence like this is always wrong. But the episode was written and aired weeks before this happened. And Charlie Kirk...
I fail to see how this makes the South Park episode any less funny.
Political violence like this is always wrong. But the episode was written and aired weeks before this happened. And Charlie Kirk was such a horrible person that I'm really struggling to actually feel bad for him. In 20 years, the majority of what neurons I still have dedicated to his memory will probably be tied to this South Park episode.
I never heard of this guy before, but I'll just say that the death penalty is hardly ever justice, except possibly if he were a serial killer or something like that.
I never heard of this guy before, but I'll just say that the death penalty is hardly ever justice, except possibly if he were a serial killer or something like that.
Haven't heard of Brian Thompson? That might be because the focus was/is primarily on the individual accused of committing acts against him: Luigi Mangione
Haven't heard of Brian Thompson? That might be because the focus was/is primarily on the individual accused of committing acts against him: Luigi Mangione
That's genuinely interesting to me. Based on your posts, I'd say you're clearly very plugged in to news and politics. I know Kirk came from social media, but it's odd that his name never broke...
That's genuinely interesting to me. Based on your posts, I'd say you're clearly very plugged in to news and politics. I know Kirk came from social media, but it's odd that his name never broke into your sources. He was popular, but he also had some pretty serious sway with the MAGA movement.
I had to become truly aware of him when he came to our campus. It was stressful for everyone. Until then I was mostly able to avoid him, though I'd heard his name. If you don't engage with the...
I had to become truly aware of him when he came to our campus. It was stressful for everyone. Until then I was mostly able to avoid him, though I'd heard his name.
If you don't engage with the "debate me, random college student, so I can prove how much smarter I am than you through selective editing" sort of media then it's easy to never see him in any more depth than a random "guy said ____" sort of quote in a larger article.
That makes sense. It's interesting and a bit disconcerting that there's still a huge gap between traditional news outlets and popular online figures with massive influence, so much so that someone...
If you don't engage with the "debate me, random college student, so I can prove how much smarter I am than you through selective editing" sort of media then it's easy to never see him in any more depth than a random "guy said ____" sort of quote in a larger article.
That makes sense. It's interesting and a bit disconcerting that there's still a huge gap between traditional news outlets and popular online figures with massive influence, so much so that someone like skybrian wouldn't recognize the name. Unfortunately, I don't think guys like Kirk are confined to that dark corner of the internet anymore, as evidenced by the fact that Trump was one of the first people to publicly announce his death and has since ordered all flags to fly at half staff. Though Kirk is different in that he is also an organizer outside of social media.
Before 2020, the only way I'd come across a figure like Kirk is if one of my former coworkers or highschool friends shared something on Facebook, and in those instances I'd roll my eyes and ignore it. But after a lockdown-induced rabbit hole (that can be traced back to a tildes post), I came across a few decent online/social media news sources that also cover the online right and it completely recontextualized American politics in a way that made everything make so much more sense. It's like when I watched Skibidi toilet and Huggy Wuggy on YouTube for the first time and realized what my students were actually doing on the playground. 90% of the people I know don't read the NYT, listen to NPR, or even watch CNN. Instead, they get what little news they consume from social media where guys like Kirk dominate. If you don't know who those guys are, it can be hard to understand what people are thinking. It's a blind spot that traditional news can't cover.
I agree he wasn't confined there anymore, he was part of the corner that had only gained in popularity throughout this administration. It's also very easy for your algorithm to start showing you...
I agree he wasn't confined there anymore, he was part of the corner that had only gained in popularity throughout this administration.
It's also very easy for your algorithm to start showing you the videos. My partner recognized the name. He didn't like Kirk but the videos would get served to him on YouTube (he watches a lot of outdoorsy/car/similar trade sort of things)
It also doesn't help that traditional news won't say "hey he's lying" about these sorts of people anymore.
It's quite possible that I've read his name before in news stories, but not often enough to remember who he is. There are probably other MAGA influencers whom I wouldn't remember either.
It's quite possible that I've read his name before in news stories, but not often enough to remember who he is. There are probably other MAGA influencers whom I wouldn't remember either.
I get it to an extent, but... Honestly, I think we're at a point where Americans are just too emotionally fatigued. I think that if this happened in another country, even one with a similarly...
Exemplary
I get it to an extent, but... Honestly, I think we're at a point where Americans are just too emotionally fatigued.
I think that if this happened in another country, even one with a similarly polarized political landscape, there would be a lot more sympathy and horror from the opposing side. But the United States has an epidemic of gun violence. We're honestly desensitized to it. People dying to gun violence (or any violence really) isn't a tragedy anymore, it's normal for us. It is, quite literally, a basic fact of life in the United States. The sky is blue, grass is green, people get murdered every day.
Hearing about a political figure getting shot isn't some horrible, tragic event here anymore. Not when we're used to regular reports of mass shootings of children and other innocents. Not when there are far too many news stories about children messing around with unsecured guns and shooting each other. Not when it's just... normal.
For me, one of the most sobering moments of my life was hearing a news report about a school shooting with a single victim and thinking, "At least only one person died this time." The weight of that super casual thought, at how much I just automatically minimized a tragedy, slammed into me full-force a moment later. Because that singular death was a tragedy, it absolutely devastated all the people close to that poor, poor individual. Chances are the family never recovered from that loss, that it set off a domino effect leading to others dying or having their lives otherwise ruined.
But in the face of every other mass shooting at schools with double-digit casualty numbers? And all the other shootings outside of schools? That one death just doesn't register as particularly tragic to me anymore. And that's horrifying.
I am NOT saying this to rag on Charlie Kirk's stances on gun violence or just empathy in general (though that absolutely diminishes any shreds of sympathy I might have felt for him). I'm saying that to explain that in America, we're just too emotionally fatigued to see this sort of event as a major tragedy anymore. We can acknowledge it's tragic from an intellectual standpoint, but we're too used to it to feel the degree of horror we should be feeling. We HAVE to be numb to it because humans just aren't capable of handling 24/7 grief and trauma. We don't have the emotional bandwidth to feel too much grief for a stranger.
And from that emotional fatigue and numbness, arise more callous emotions and responses. US politics in general are highly fatiguing and emotionally taxing at this point. All the systems meant to keep our government running fairly are just... nonexistent. Trump and his cronies largely ignore the rules to do what they want. Courts challenge them when they make extreme oversteps, but that's a process that takes months and in the meantime, all sorts of damages will incur. And even when courts do rule against some action, who, exactly, is going to enforce it?
There's no way for the average American to do anything about the broken "checks and balances" system because the corruption and issues are just too deep rooted. I honestly don't know if any of the "proper" channels will be able to undo all the damage that's been done just since Trump took office this year. I feel like I now understand how Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, because I'm watching the same thing happen within the US, and there's very little I and others can do to stop it. I have to step away from certain news stories because it will just get me feeling unbridled rage, and there are no outlets for me to act on that rage in a positive, non-harmful way.
So, combine the fact Americans are desensitized to gun violence and even assassinations, and the frustrations over how screwed up our country is... Yeah, a lot of people aren't going to mourn this particular man's death. Not when we barely have the energy to mourn for famous strangers we actually like. And especially not when the victim is a person who certainly wouldn't have expressed any sort of grief or sympathy if anyone from "the other side" was assassinated.
We're emotionally burnt out on multiple levels, and we need to save our energy for the other fights that will arise from the inevitable fallout from this death. My personal objections to this assassination come not from a moral standpoint about how murder and political violence are bad, but a purely pragmatic one about to the damages it will incur politically. Charlie Kirk's death will not bring any good change even in the immediate short-term, it will fuel fires for more violence and political unrest. This will absolutely be used by the Trump administration to further their twisted agendas.
Also, a revelation I had when writing this that I can't really fit anywhere else: gallows humor is a common coping mechanism among people in high-stress and traumatic fields like medicine, military and law enforcement, as a way to maintain some emotional control over circumstances beyond our control, vent stress/fear/anxiety, and just not emotionally shut down. Ghoulish and callous as it may feel, I think that's exactly what's playing out in most of the replies here.
And... uh, this realization is actually mildly horrifying to me, that it's becoming a coping mechanism for normal, every day people. I already knew we were desensitized, but this just adds another layer to how messed up we Americans really are.
Gun violence really is a fact of life here. I mentioned to a friend I might move to a new neighborhood. He said his friend had his leg broken outside a bar there. I said I’m a tall guy and don’t...
Gun violence really is a fact of life here. I mentioned to a friend I might move to a new neighborhood. He said his friend had his leg broken outside a bar there. I said I’m a tall guy and don’t think as many people will try to fuck with me (even though I’m a pacifist). But had to admit I could always just get shot. He just said “Yeah, lol”.
I don't blame people for feeling unable to express sympathy. I simply think the appropriate reaction to that realization is horror - as you very articulately put it - and not schadenfreude.
I don't blame people for feeling unable to express sympathy. I simply think the appropriate reaction to that realization is horror - as you very articulately put it - and not schadenfreude.
It makes sense you feel that, but it's unrealistic to expect the "correct" emotional response out of people who are emotionally burnt out. I mean arguably it's unrealistic to expect any emotional...
Exemplary
It makes sense you feel that, but it's unrealistic to expect the "correct" emotional response out of people who are emotionally burnt out. I mean arguably it's unrealistic to expect any emotional response to be the "correct" one. It may not be a healthy response but that mix of emotions is still valid.
I think we're more compassionate to those irregular responses when we feel we have enough information to understand why someone is feeling that way. For example if someone's childhood abuser dies, I think society is more (though certainly not universally) accepting of non-grief/horror/etc. emotions, and it wouldn't shock me to hear that someone say they were happy about the abuser's death. The abuser hurt them in concrete ways and individually we can account for that when we understand it.
But we don't account for the harm caused by hateful rhetoric, political actions, or even C suite business decisions in the same way. That's so much more abstract than "this person directly hurt me." And in a forum like this, we don't know everyone's individual history and experience, how much they have been hurt by the person or the systems actively perpetuated by that person. So we make assumptions that they're simply cruel or callous, even if they're reacting to the same "this person hurt me" because it's usually an indirect hurt, even if it's just as grievous a wound.
How many kids were beaten with belts because of James Dobson's rhetoric for example? How would any of us know that someone making a comment after his death had been abused by parents that listened to his religious authority?
In the effort to insist on propriety and etiquette I think there is ironically a loss of empathy for people that don't perform their feelings the way we think they should, as if they've violated a sacred ritual for the dead.
Very fair points. For what it's worth, I'm not taking this stance because of propriety or etiquette, and certainly not out of some sort of respect for Charlie Kirk. For me, it's a spiritual...
Very fair points. For what it's worth, I'm not taking this stance because of propriety or etiquette, and certainly not out of some sort of respect for Charlie Kirk. For me, it's a spiritual question. Not religious, but spiritual -- both for our individual psyches as well as the national soul of America.
Politics is corrosive. It makes us think in terms of teams, and in many ways we humans are at our absolute worst when we think in terms of teams, of us versus them.
My overarching goal here- and clearly I have desperately failed in this- is to remind people that when we are indifferent to the assassination of someone because of the opinions that they held, we all have lost something -- but no one has lost more than the person who is indifferent.
It's in the same spirit of forgiving someone for you, not for them.
You keep saying this, but it is a disingenuous reduction. No one will claim he was killed for wrongthink. He did not merely have a privately-held (or even publicly-announced) opinion that others...
Exemplary
when we are indifferent to the assassination of someone because of the opinions that they held
You keep saying this, but it is a disingenuous reduction. No one will claim he was killed for wrongthink. He did not merely have a privately-held (or even publicly-announced) opinion that others disagreed with. His entire career was built on promoting and propagating that opinion, and influencing the levers of power to take action based on that opinion, which would result in negative consequences for significant numbers of people. There is a world of difference between the two descriptions that you cannot ignore.
I feel the exact same way about the assassination attempt against President Trump, who, by any measure, has done vastly more than Charlie Kirk to produce harmful outcomes for far more people. I...
I feel the exact same way about the assassination attempt against President Trump, who, by any measure, has done vastly more than Charlie Kirk to produce harmful outcomes for far more people.
I don't fully understand what is behind your argument. Obviously you're not claiming that he's more accurately described as a republican fundraiser and therefore it's okay that he was killed, right? If you take what I said and replace it with "assassinated because he built his entire career around promoting and propagating a bad opinion", does anything fundamentally change? Like, yeah, I would still very much oppose that.
So... Are you calling me disingenuous because you feel like I haven't fairly represented your points? As some sort of gotcha for not directly quoting people? Other?
You know what, let's remove disingenuous, as I wasn't trying to ascribe a motive to you. I should say it's a misleading reduction, or misguided at best. My point wasn't that it's okay that he was...
You know what, let's remove disingenuous, as I wasn't trying to ascribe a motive to you. I should say it's a misleading reduction, or misguided at best.
My point wasn't that it's okay that he was killed, but that you need more nuance in your framing, otherwise you will not understand why many people are reacting as they are here and elsewhere. I don't necessarily agree with the reactions that trouble you, but I understand them.
I don't celebrate Kirk's killing, and I don't think anyone here does either. I don't celebrate the apathy towards the loss of human life either - I actually agree with your spiritual perspective. However, I understand cause and effect. I understand the reaction that I'm seeing because I understand the action that came before... and that initial action was not merely having a bad opinion, it was advancing and enacting a harmful agenda based on a bad opinion, with little to no reasonable component of good faith.
It's similar to when 9/11 happened and many Americans didn't understand why some people in various parts of the world (and even within the US) were NOT falling over themselves to offer sympathy. It's not because these people "hated the USA for its freedoms." They simply understood the context, that there were actions that came before the reaction, just as some of us here do now.
I personally find this explanation entirely unsatisfactory for one simple reason. I do not image anyone who is commenting in this manner to say something along the lines of "I don't celebrate the...
I don't celebrate Kirk's killing, and I don't think anyone here does either. I don't celebrate the apathy towards the loss of human life either - I actually agree with your spiritual perspective. However, I understand cause and effect. I understand the reaction that I'm seeing because I understand the action that came before... and that initial action was not merely having a bad opinion, it was advancing and enacting a harmful agenda based on a bad opinion, with little to no reasonable component of good faith.
I personally find this explanation entirely unsatisfactory for one simple reason. I do not image anyone who is commenting in this manner to say something along the lines of "I don't celebrate the loss of life but I understand cause and effect, George Floyd should have stayed away from drugs and shouldn't have stolen from a store." Well no, because you're not supposed to get killed for that, that's why we condemn the people who killed him. Well, you're not supposed to get killed for saying things either, so what cause and effect are you talking about? As far as I see it, you're either engaging in blaming the victims or you don't, otherwise it just feels like you're just siding with whatever circumstances fit your preferred narrative, which in my opinion is exactly what is happening in this online discussions every single time, no matter which side the author of that opinion chooses.
In no way am I suggesting that Kirk being shot is just, same as I would not suggest that Floyd being killed was just. I am speaking about the emotional reaction various people have (effect) in the...
In no way am I suggesting that Kirk being shot is just, same as I would not suggest that Floyd being killed was just.
so what cause and effect are you talking about?
I am speaking about the emotional reaction various people have (effect) in the face of those actions (cause). I understand why many seemingly reasonable people were up in arms over George Floyd's death, and why many seemingly reasonable people are not over Kirk. I may not agree with casual apathy towards Kirk's death, but I can understand it, because I have a sense of his practices before tragedy struck. I don't know how informed you already were, but that's just an intro.
Of course others might cite a different cause and effect as the basis of their opinion - oftentimes commenters will only see the here and now because they are underinformed or misinformed on the broader context, or worse yet deliberately ignoring the broader context. When we try to frame things in a broader perspective and observe their willingness to consider possibly new info, we can determine their level of good faith. CK unfortunately had a consistent history of not engaging in good faith, and encouraging others to follow his example, so I'm not surprised at what I see now.
Honestly, I genuinely don't see why this thread is still ongoing. It doesn't seem to me like it's even getting anywhere on either "side". Differing worldviews and all that.
Honestly, I genuinely don't see why this thread is still ongoing. It doesn't seem to me like it's even getting anywhere on either "side". Differing worldviews and all that.
What would it look like for it to be 'getting somewhere'? I ask because to say that seems like you have some expectation for how it should be or what it should look like in order to justify the...
What would it look like for it to be 'getting somewhere'? I ask because to say that seems like you have some expectation for how it should be or what it should look like in order to justify the thread continuing to still be going, but I don't know what that actually looks like. Is it supposed to look like one very convincing comment rises to the top and everyone says they change their mind and agree with that?
Discussion around topics like this, or perhaps any topics even, I find to rarely ever show any signs of anyone changing their minds or such right away, but I don't have the expectation that solid discussion looks like that. I think those things happen over time. My comment here would not be the same if I hadn't read or participated in many other discussions over the years that weren't going anywhere, I think they very much shaped how I perceive things even in ways that I didn't recognize at the time when I was reading or participating in those discussions. There were times I was certain the other person was wrong and I was in the right, but later came around to ideas that I was resistant to at the time. Maybe not solely because of that one person but perhaps repetition of seeing those arguments made from various people.
If people are engaging for the 'right' reasons, which I say that in such a way that I don't know if there are some set of strict 'right' reasons or what it even looks like as it probably varies for each person, but if the people who are still engaging are doing so as they think it is beneficial to them and there aren't a lot of other markers indicating it's a negative for them, then that seems to me that the thread is 'getting somewhere' for those people.
I understand your goal, but think expecting everyone to reach that goal is unrealistic and not necessarily healthy for everyone. Sometimes you don't forgive what can't be forgiven. Everyone...
I understand your goal, but think expecting everyone to reach that goal is unrealistic and not necessarily healthy for everyone. Sometimes you don't forgive what can't be forgiven. Everyone processes that trauma in their own way. I'm someone that holds grudges, but only when things get to a certain level. However I don't ruminate and obsess over them. They just don't get forgiveness when they've done nothing to deserve it, and my spirit doesn't feel heavy from that.
But right now my experience is about the equivalent of when your high school bully dies in a horrible drunk driving accident and suddenly everyone only talks about what a great guy he was and how wonderful of a future he would have had and how kind he was to everyone. It's watching someone who made your life hell be canonized posthumously. And if you speak up, you're told to forgive him for your sake. That understanding and forgiveness may come eventually, but probably not in the first 24 hours.
I may just be tired of feeling like I'm told that I'm a threat to society, and then told to be nicer to the people saying it, even after death. Tired of being told that if I would only be nicer to the people who voted for my rights to be revoked, to those who now advocate to "repeal the 19th" they wouldn't want to revoke my rights so much. Sure hate isn't healthy, but I feel like we're not actually addressing the root causes, and instead focusing on the "easier" conversations with people we mostly agree with but aren't performing in the way we want them do.
I say etiquette and propriety here because it's about what people choose to "perform" not about how they necessarily actually feel or will feel after they process. Some folks may regret a harsh statement, some may still feel it was appropriate. I'm choosing to engage where I am because I don't agree with some folks, I do with others, and I'm being intentional in my interactions.
Well, that wasn't my intent, so if that's what I did, I am sorry.
I may just be tired of feeling like I'm told that I'm a threat to society, and then told to be nicer to the people saying it, even after death. Tired of being told that if I would only be nicer to the people who voted for my rights to be revoked, to those who now advocate to "repeal the 19th" they wouldn't want to revoke my rights so much.
Well, that wasn't my intent, so if that's what I did, I am sorry.
No, I know it wasn't, that was me ruminating on how similar the feeling of "express only these feelings at someone's death" was to "be nicer to people who dislike you" and to "forgive your bully"...
No, I know it wasn't, that was me ruminating on how similar the feeling of "express only these feelings at someone's death" was to "be nicer to people who dislike you" and to "forgive your bully"
Those things all feel very intertwined in politeness and propriety and who gets told to "behave" better vs who gets a shrug because we know they'll be inappropriate anyway. It feels like I'm dancing at the edge of being able to articulate how all of this is connected and why it's so frustrating.
But I am aware it wasn't your intent nor even your actions - you certainly didn't tell me I'm a threat to society - it's just how I'm feeling in this moment. I was, I think, just using the opportunity to be vulnerable.
My guess would be because it's so deeply unfair. That's the best way to put it - it's incredibly unfair that shitheads get to act like shitheads and decent people get constantly exhorted to be the...
Those things all feel very intertwined in politeness and propriety and who gets told to "behave" better vs who gets a shrug because we know they'll be inappropriate anyway. It feels like I'm dancing at the edge of being able to articulate how all of this is connected and why it's so frustrating.
My guess would be because it's so deeply unfair. That's the best way to put it - it's incredibly unfair that shitheads get to act like shitheads and decent people get constantly exhorted to be the better person, turn the other cheek.
Oh it is absolutely deeply unfair, I just think there's a unifying theory of this particular unfairness just out of my grasp right now. Like "boys will be boys" and "don't disrespect the dead" are...
Oh it is absolutely deeply unfair, I just think there's a unifying theory of this particular unfairness just out of my grasp right now. Like "boys will be boys" and "don't disrespect the dead" are part of the same continuum.
I'm also operating on about 4 hours of sleep a night (or less) all week and working on a campus of emotionally disregulated, stressed out teens. So I could be pulling pieces of red string against push pins. I leave the possibility open.
Politics doesn’t make us think in terms of teams. Some, possibly most, politicians promote that. Traditional media in the US post-Fairness Doctrine certainly encouraged it and social media has...
Politics doesn’t make us think in terms of teams. Some, possibly most, politicians promote that. Traditional media in the US post-Fairness Doctrine certainly encouraged it and social media has accelerated it.
But at the end of the day it’s individuals making the decision to view the world as binary - good vs bad, them vs us, etc - when the world isn’t that way at all.
Alright, I've been trying really hard to self-censor myself and restrain myself from replying to anything in this thread, out of good faith & respect to other users in the forum, but that is...
Political violence is still bad, even if it happens to the other side.
Alright, I've been trying really hard to self-censor myself and restrain myself from replying to anything in this thread, out of good faith & respect to other users in the forum, but that is simply untrue. Political violence is not always bad, and there are potentially thousands of examples in human history indicating this is the case.
Ok, specifically this political violence is bad. Charlie Kirk, for all his faults, was not a genocidal dictator. Killing him will not save thousands of lives. In fact, I strongly suspect that...
Ok, specifically this political violence is bad. Charlie Kirk, for all his faults, was not a genocidal dictator. Killing him will not save thousands of lives. In fact, I strongly suspect that killing him will save zero lives. It’s more likely that, if anything, the outcome of this sort of political assassination of talking heads will have a net result of more lives being lost.
Nah, he just rallied supoort for them, and advocated for violence against gay people. What's the dividing line between genocidal dictator and people who advocate and recruit for one? Who celebrate...
Nah, he just rallied supoort for them, and advocated for violence against gay people.
What's the dividing line between genocidal dictator and people who advocate and recruit for one? Who celebrate when said leader pardons the coup participants?
Yes. Yes I am. To be more accurate: The entire Republican party is like a multi-headed hydra of hate, top to bottom. Trump is merely the current result of 50+ years of a machine bent on...
Exemplary
Yes. Yes I am.
To be more accurate: The entire Republican party is like a multi-headed hydra of hate, top to bottom. Trump is merely the current result of 50+ years of a machine bent on dismantling democracy in favor of a theocratic single-party state. Contrary to what many claim, this is only the beginning. Nothing Trump has done is against the Republican party platform, merely being done in hamfisted and blatantly obbious ways.
The 2016 Republican primary debate was eye-opening. All the candidates were declaring just how much they wanted to bomb Iran. After 8 years of stonewalling against even a modicum of progress under Obama. And another 8 years beating the drum for foreverwar. The one that kills more civilians than combatants.
My estranged father, thoroughly brainwashed by the Republican propaganda networks, uttered this gem a few months ago:
Palastinians are cockroaches whom deserve to be wiped off the earth.
This is vile, repugnant, and a solid representation of the average politics of Repiblicans. Demonize an other, then call for their extermination.
They're building concentration camps and deploying the military against the population at large. And selling T-shirts to celebrate.
At what comments exactly? I don't see anyone praising it. There's a lack of sympathy for someone facing consequences of his own actions, sure and quotes from Kirk himself, but what are you aghast at?
At what comments exactly?
I don't see anyone praising it. There's a lack of sympathy for someone facing consequences of his own actions, sure and quotes from Kirk himself, but what are you aghast at?
A man gets shot and the reaction is "well, he had it coming." It's not okay if the man was a teenager with a criminal history and it's not okay if the man was a pro-gun republican podcaster. I...
There's a lack of sympathy for someone facing consequences of his own actions, sure
A man gets shot and the reaction is "well, he had it coming." It's not okay if the man was a teenager with a criminal history and it's not okay if the man was a pro-gun republican podcaster.
I understand that with how polarized America is right now it's very difficult to have empathy for the other side. But that fact should be recognized with sorrow, not worn like a badge of honor.
The closest thing anyone (before your comment) said to "he had it coming" were Charlie's own quotes on gun violence. I don't think that direct quotes from the victim on how he would feel about the...
The closest thing anyone (before your comment) said to "he had it coming" were Charlie's own quotes on gun violence.
I don't think that direct quotes from the victim on how he would feel about the subject can be considered malice.
I don't even see the conversation in this thread being about (or particularly impacted by) polarisation, really. It's about his own actions and positions, more than anything. Person who has harmed...
I don't even see the conversation in this thread being about (or particularly impacted by) polarisation, really. It's about his own actions and positions, more than anything.
Person who has harmed many others finally succumbs to that same harm himself. That's a small sliver of justice done, even by dangerous and probably counterproductive means. And we're giving him as much or more sympathy as he gave others in the same situation - others who actually were innocent victims, rather than victims guilty of causing the very situation they came to harm by.
Do you really draw a distinction between "facing the consequences of his own actions" (your words) and "had it coming" (my words)? Is your position seriously that the former is a reasonable...
Do you really draw a distinction between "facing the consequences of his own actions" (your words) and "had it coming" (my words)? Is your position seriously that the former is a reasonable paraphrase and the latter an indefensible falsehood? Obviously we've completely lost the plot here but that's such a surprising stance that I can't help but get pulled into this.
Yes, I do. Lack of sympathy for the result of the actions or statements one has made is nowhere close to wishing those results upon someone. “I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a...
Yes, I do.
Lack of sympathy for the result of the actions or statements one has made is nowhere close to wishing those results upon someone.
“I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage”
I think this might be a semantic misunderstanding. To me, the phrase "to face the consequences of one's own actions" is an observation that someone has previously done something that is now...
I think this might be a semantic misunderstanding.
To me, the phrase "to face the consequences of one's own actions" is an observation that someone has previously done something that is now causing them harm, while the phrase "to have it coming" specifically means that they deserve that harm.
For example, if you lend money to a friend and they don't repay you, I might say that you're facing the consequences of lending them money, but I wouldn't say that you had it coming (unless, for some reason, I'm glad they didn't repay you).
I think the implication that getting shot in the neck is an acceptable “consequence” for being an asshole is not a great thing. Also, there’s at least one comment in this very thread wishing that...
I think the implication that getting shot in the neck is an acceptable “consequence” for being an asshole is not a great thing.
Also, there’s at least one comment in this very thread wishing that the shooter had better aim.
For being an asshole? No. Was Charlie Kirk merely an asshole? No. Did he make multiple statements that reiterated that certain laws in the US are worth the violence they beget? Yes. Which was made...
For being an asshole? No.
Was Charlie Kirk merely an asshole? No.
Did he make multiple statements that reiterated that certain laws in the US are worth the violence they beget? Yes.
Also, there’s at least one comment in this very thread wishing that the shooter had better aim.
I don't think it's an acceptable consequence. But we are allowed to not feel any empathy over the death of a man who repeatedly argued that empathy is a weakness. It's what he would have wanted...
I don't think it's an acceptable consequence. But we are allowed to not feel any empathy over the death of a man who repeatedly argued that empathy is a weakness. It's what he would have wanted after all. And I think every Republican throwing a fit over this is a truly massive hypocrite after they pardoned all the J6 insurrectionists.
I see literally nobody saying otherwise? Top comment is basically “you reap what you sow”, the next two are explicitly concerned about escalating political violence, and the other couple are about...
I see literally nobody saying otherwise? Top comment is basically “you reap what you sow”, the next two are explicitly concerned about escalating political violence, and the other couple are about the facts and reaction. What’s concerning you in particular?
It's bad, but seemingly ineviatable at this point. When you spend 5 years at the bare minimum fostering and evevn inciting violence upon people, then violence is the result. I don't condone it ,...
It's bad, but seemingly ineviatable at this point. When you spend 5 years at the bare minimum fostering and evevn inciting violence upon people, then violence is the result.
I don't condone it , but when the leadership renames their army to the "department of War" and then threatens to invade a domestic city, I don't see any other result happening, esepcially in such a connected world where information travels the world in minutes.
Some political violence is good. Never ideal, but it can be just. This?...Kirk has always been a ridiculous rabblerouser. Cruel, and hateful, and callous, and hypocritical, but probably not...
Some political violence is good. Never ideal, but it can be just.
This?...Kirk has always been a ridiculous rabblerouser. Cruel, and hateful, and callous, and hypocritical, but probably not "worthy" of assassination. However any of us feel though, it's a sign of things to come.
In this era, I don't think any rabble rouser qualifies as ridiculous, regardless of how ignorant or anti intellectual/ anti science they might be. Repeated public hate speech is one of the...
In this era, I don't think any rabble rouser qualifies as ridiculous, regardless of how ignorant or anti intellectual/ anti science they might be.
Repeated public hate speech is one of the stepping stones to genocide. Social media allowing hate speech has been a direct cause of pogroms and riots around the world.
I'm afraid of what comes next and I don't support violence. I just reacted to your comment about ridiculousness because the anti intellectuals are deadly serious about their beliefs.
No, that's fair. But they are ridiculous regardless. Losing sight of this is how people begin to tolerate their hatred. Beside that, the logic of fascism is built on a self-image of power. He...
No, that's fair. But they are ridiculous regardless. Losing sight of this is how people begin to tolerate their hatred. Beside that, the logic of fascism is built on a self-image of power. He deserved to be mocked mercilessly and ignored beside that, and I'm pulling the μολὼν λαβέ card should anyone defend his ideas one way or another.
Considering I've seen legitimate "Luigi is a hero" stuff being upvoted on Tildes, I'm completely not surprised. It really is not different from Reddit at this point, which I guess makes sense...
Considering I've seen legitimate "Luigi is a hero" stuff being upvoted on Tildes, I'm completely not surprised. It really is not different from Reddit at this point, which I guess makes sense considering where the users came from.
Just FYI I'm rate limited for whatever reason (another phenomenal aspect of this website...) and cannot respond.
Surely if you're going to say "ugh, reddit" with a metaphorical eye roll, it's better to engage in the kind of conversation you want to see rather than criticise? There are a lot of very nuanced...
Exemplary
Surely if you're going to say "ugh, reddit" with a metaphorical eye roll, it's better to engage in the kind of conversation you want to see rather than criticise? There are a lot of very nuanced things to discuss here around violence, ethics, and morality and this is one of the very few places I trust that conversation can actually happen without going too far off the rails.
For what it's worth, while I wouldn't call Luigi a hero, I would say that killing someone who has caused the unnecessary deaths of many others is morally justified - albeit very, very likely to backfire from a practical perspective.
Not sure if you've seen, but on Tildes alone there are at least two people I know of whom are no longer in perpetual suffering because Luigi killed the guy responsible. And it had a ripple effect...
Not sure if you've seen, but on Tildes alone there are at least two people I know of whom are no longer in perpetual suffering because Luigi killed the guy responsible.
And it had a ripple effect throughout the health insurance industry. Claims denials are a lot lower.
If someone kills a guy with a boot on your neck, you'd probably say thank you too.
Yeah I'm not really convinced by the logic of "forcing someone into doing something that is good for you by method of political assassination is a good thing". Since the comments here love...
Yeah I'm not really convinced by the logic of "forcing someone into doing something that is good for you by method of political assassination is a good thing". Since the comments here love incredibly thoughtful discussions of Putin and Hitler as examples of "well wouldn't you murder them???", both Putin and Hitler helped a lot of people in major ways, including life saving, just at the cost of someone else's lives and livelihoods. And both Putin and Hitler were absolutely convinced that were/are they doing was right through what I would consider some twisted logic, kind of like every single extremist thinks that way. I personally cannot stand this kind of extremism and it makes me feel quite upset that this community, supposedly gated with intent for thoughtful and measured discussions, is seemingly so into that type of extremism.
It's actually quite a common opinion that Adolf Hitler was a bad person who should've been shot. You'll find this view in real life too for many reasons. I would say that a widely held view is...
It's actually quite a common opinion that Adolf Hitler was a bad person who should've been shot. You'll find this view in real life too for many reasons. I would say that a widely held view is definitionally not an extremist position. I don't know why you'd expect Tildes users to have a neutral stance on Hitler.
I would also rather you not try defending Adolf Hitler to make a point. Nobody hated Hitler for his life-saving assistance (I don't know where you got this from). People hated Hitler for being a genocidal tyrant.
I'm not sure where in my post did you find a defense of Adolf Hitler. I condemn all extremists that use political violence as means of achieving the goals that they of course view as righteous....
I'm not sure where in my post did you find a defense of Adolf Hitler. I condemn all extremists that use political violence as means of achieving the goals that they of course view as righteous. That includes Hitler, Putin, Luigi and the person who killed Charlie Kirk. I also condemn everyone that views their actions as good, though obviously not in the same way.
Violence against innocent and sometimes defenceless people, motivated by retaining or grabbing more power. Violence against the above described perpetrator, motivated by helping someone other than...
Violence against innocent and sometimes defenceless people, motivated by retaining or grabbing more power.
Violence against the above described perpetrator, motivated by helping someone other than yourself.
You don't seem to distinguish between these in your comment. Is that intentional or just my interpretation?
Last I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people (saying that an insurance company denying claims is akin to that is laughable). In that their...
Last I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people (saying that an insurance company denying claims is akin to that is laughable). In that their killers are apparently closer to Putin and Hitler than the victims ever were.
This is true in the immediate context (direct physical violence) but not in the broader one where a CEO has multitudes more power than the individuals who get health insurance from his company....
Last I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people
This is true in the immediate context (direct physical violence) but not in the broader one where a CEO has multitudes more power than the individuals who get health insurance from his company. More power within society in general and additionally, power over these individuals in particular. Abusing that power for personal gain is structurally similar to what warlords do, even when it happens ostensibly within legal limits, because in a capitalist system the lawmaker is usually a collaborator that enables this type of punching down.
Hitler, Putin and the aforementioned "gentlemen" are/were all working towards the exploitative goal of concentrating power into ever fewer hands - either their own or their collaborators'. Mangione made a personal sacrifice (the direct opposite of a power grab) in order to help diffuse or slow down this development.
While I don't condone this type of violence against oppressive powers, I also don't think it fair to evaluate it out of context - as if the CEO's actions didn't count just because they weren't personally shooting their victims with a gun. Slavery used to be legal but it was oppressive, violent and morally unjustifiable nevertheless.
Yea. Monsters do tend to reward their supporters while being happy to imprison or murder anybody who is not. If they had 0 supporters, they'd be removed from power pretty quickly.
Yea. Monsters do tend to reward their supporters while being happy to imprison or murder anybody who is not.
If they had 0 supporters, they'd be removed from power pretty quickly.
One thing from reddit I don't like is when someone states a false narrative about the comment section and then someone else jumps in saying "Yeah, I agree!", as if there is a collective effort to...
One thing from reddit I don't like is when someone states a false narrative about the comment section and then someone else jumps in saying "Yeah, I agree!", as if there is a collective effort to manifest the idea that comments went in a way they demonstrably didn't.
TINFOIL HAT ZONE Coincidence? How possible is it that this might be some sort of play to deflect from further attention on the Epstein list? And if not that, then what? I mean, as stupid and...
TINFOIL HAT ZONE
Coincidence?
How possible is it that this might be some sort of play to deflect from further attention on the Epstein list? And if not that, then what? I mean, as stupid and annoying as his stuff was, Charlie Kirk? Of all people? Who'd hate him enough to pick him off? Someone with the skills to make that one single shot among a number of bystanders? Really?
I'm not even into conspiracy theories, but I can't figure this is coincidence. Kirk's death is going to be useful to somebody. It's no secret that there are both internal and external agents who have been fomenting unrest for a potential civil war. I've fully expected since the election results were announced that Trump will get the country into a war somewhere. He's been doing his best to distract people from the files ever since they came up and it seems like he's progressively gotten more unhinged with the antics to do so - ICE troops, renaming the Washington Commanders, mobilizing national guard in DC, renaming the DoD to the Dept. of War(!).
I dunno. I'm rambling. I'm not paying enough attention to keep track of all the bullshit, but skeptical hippo is skeptical.
Extremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens, and it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having...
How possible is it that this might be some sort of play to deflect from further attention on the Epstein list?
Extremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens, and it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having taken any useful photos or videos of them, but all it would take is one person with a smartphone at the right time and place to completely screw the whole plan over. Also, the conspiracy would have to extend at least from the head of the FBI all the way down to campus police. Not remotely plausible.
Hm. I'm not really rabid about this but I'm not seeing why you dismiss it out of hand. We may be hypothesizing within different frameworks. You mean secretly planned assassinations by high-ranking...
Hm. I'm not really rabid about this but I'm not seeing why you dismiss it out of hand. We may be hypothesizing within different frameworks.
Extremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens,
You mean secretly planned assassinations by high-ranking members of gov't or approved by agency heads? Maybe it hardly happens on US soil, or to Americans, but it's happened often enough. Even the notion that it hasn't been done to Americans probably isn't exactly true... there just haven't been many obviously suspicious cases with national attention since maybe the 70s. You can argue that CIA or even FBI influence has become more sophisticated nowadays than sheer violence, but the shooting could be purposeful to manipulate public opinion.
Or do you mean false flag ops in general?
Plus, if we operate under the assumption that Trump is trying to deflect from some damning info that would cost him power (yes, big assumption, but that's the crux that would make this scenario plausible)... what is there in his track record that would make you believe that he'd be beholden to precedent?
it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having taken any useful photos or videos of them, but all it would take is one person with a smartphone at the right time and place to completely screw the whole plan over.
Smartphones are not deterring professional assassinations today. I'm talking about a CIA/military-employed hitman. Smartphones would be within their standard threat model, nothing that wouldn't be accounted for. And even so, are we not seeing stupid things being done everyday by this administration?
Also, the conspiracy would have to extend at least from the head of the FBI all the way down to campus police.
Why do you think so? Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants; if he needed this done and the right CIA head or army general were that loyal to him, why couldn't it be organized within a chain of 5 or 6 people tops? With false information somewhere along the way as to the nature of the operation to boot? Classified and need-to-know basis? The shooter doesn't have to be in on it with the people looking for him, he just needs to evade them, and that's quite possible.
I’m not saying I believe the OP tinfoil hat “direction” – Occam’s razor and all that – buuuuut that said, I also don’t think cooperation all the way from, say, the head of the FBI to campus police...
I’m not saying I believe the OP tinfoil hat “direction” – Occam’s razor and all that – buuuuut that said, I also don’t think cooperation all the way from, say, the head of the FBI to campus police would have been strictly necessary for this scenario. If they really did send some kind of super duper well-trained mercenary type person to a rather poorly safeguarded event, who’s to say they couldn’t have gotten away “naturally” after a single, well-aimed longer distance shot? Maybe even with one or two helpers from the same entity made to look like college-aged students?
Well, it’s not coincidence, but the cause is the extremely high tensions between the left and right at the moment. There is a lot of political violence happening right now.. I’m quite sure this...
Well, it’s not coincidence, but the cause is the extremely high tensions between the left and right at the moment. There is a lot of political violence happening right now.. I’m quite sure this won’t be the end of it by a long shot.
Also, dear domestic intelligence apparatus, we're not celebrating Charlie Kirk's tragic death, we're just musing how Charlie Kirk would celebrate it himself. We're just here to discuss and respect...
Also, dear domestic intelligence apparatus, we're not celebrating Charlie Kirk's tragic death, we're just musing how Charlie Kirk would celebrate it himself. We're just here to discuss and respect his beliefs.
The top comment as of right now states that he considered this kind of death an acceptable tradeoff. Most of us on this site do not agree. If we had our way Charlie Kirk would likely be alive....
The top comment as of right now states that he considered this kind of death an acceptable tradeoff. Most of us on this site do not agree. If we had our way Charlie Kirk would likely be alive. We're not exactly jumping up and down with glee. I don't really give a shit about this guy and him dying doesn't kill the terrible ideas he spread.
Lou I generally appreciate your contributions but you don't live here and you are missing important context if you want to understand. Maybe you want to listen to some of his content or read some...
Lou I generally appreciate your contributions but you don't live here and you are missing important context if you want to understand.
Maybe you want to listen to some of his content or read some quotes.
What would you prefer the reaction to be? I think the general tenor here has been fairly appropriate given the context, but you and a few others clearly disagree, so I’m interested in that...
What would you prefer the reaction to be? I think the general tenor here has been fairly appropriate given the context, but you and a few others clearly disagree, so I’m interested in that perspective even though it’s unlikely to change my own.
Two powerful and relevant quotes from wordsmith Charlie Kirk, whatever the outcome of this incident:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am—I think it's worth it.
"I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe."
It's incredible how easily his own words are encouraging people to make light of his death.
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage."
and
"Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?"
seem like such perfect setups, that I almost didn't believe them at first.
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-worth-have-cost-unfortunately-some-gun-deaths-every-single-year-so-we
Or in Japan (completly prohibited), the UK (strict permits),... How many other countries even allow citizenry to carry firearms? Looking at a wikipedia map, they generally are allowed, but almost always with permits.
I'm not too opposed to total prohibition, but I really don't understand why people resist the notion of "having proper training to use dangerous weapon". We do it with vehicles (perhaps not strict enough for cars in some cases), and we do it for certified fields like most engineering, doctors, and lawyers. Why not the tool made primarily to kill?
Because "might makes right" is a fundamental principle of American society, whether it's explicitly acknowledged or not. It underpins practically everything. Essentially, you are free to do whatever you want if you're able to back it up. Money might be replacing force nowadays, but it's the same thing.
The "with permits" has to be restricted even further. In my country, it is theoretically possible to apply for a permit to carry a gun in public, but you need to have a very good reason for being granted such a license, and generally the only valid one is "I need it for my job", which is why the only people granted the license are generally cops and specialized security guards, if even. So basically, it's illegal.
This is separate from the license to own a firearm, mind you. That one is easier to get.
I really don't understand that second amendment argument.
The argument that the second amendment protects our God given rights held a lot more weight before we were in the midst of a fascist takeover of every aspect of our country. The guns don't seem to be helping.
Well. This is not a good venue for that debate. But, fundamentally, democracy with a state monopoly on violence is precipitous. It relies on the government to act in good faith, despite the work of governance being simplified immensely if they oppress.
But then we had about a hundred years of the people most likely to own guns being courted by white supremacist groups, and a progressive normalization of police militarization, and a lot of people who might should be armed looked at the gun owners and said "I don't want to be like that, at all". And now all the guns are on the side of the state.
At its core, politics is about power. Even the idea that personal gun ownership may never amount to meaningful rebellion against unjust government doesn't mean that by default we shouldn't have access to power unbidden by power structures. That's a matter of opinion.
I think it's even simpler. we saw governments creaatd 2 dozen other forms of warfare much deadlier than the peashooters we claim our right to have. These days, a remote drone can take you out while the government sits in their chair hundreds, thousands of miles away. How do you really practice your "well maintained militia" against weapons like that (weapons which are indeed illegal to own yourself. Curious...)
I think the 2nd amendment aged poorly, and we either need to take a look at what a "arm" is in the modern world, or re-think the entire idea of what's a right vs. priveledge.
I think even this is missing the reasons many people don't own guns. The government doesn't even come into the picture with that math for me. I don't avoid them due to not wanting to come off like the stereotype either.
Guns make suicide more likely. Six out of ten firearm caused deaths are suicides and suicides have been the majority of those deaths for 30 years. Easy access to a quick way to die with much lower survival rates than other means is flat out unsafe for a large number of households. Probably far more than people think.
Guns also make domestic violence situations far more dangerous and deadly. An argument where you get the urge to slap someone turns into an argument where you get the urge to shoot someone, and you can. And people who would hit their partner in anger will shoot them too.
Finally some of us also aren't willing to kill people and because of that having a gun would only be a liability, not an asset at all. If I'm not willing to pull the trigger, I shouldn't point it at anyone. So I don't, and won't, have one.
It's the main reason I don't have any. When I lived in Montana, I used to enjoy going skeet shooting, or plinking with friends at the range. In that context, firearms are a lot of fun, and no one gets hurt, other than some recalcitrant hard drives from our days in the IT shop that had it coming.
But I know myself, and I've struggled with serious depression on and off over the years, and even though things are well-controlled now, I know all too well that things can go to shit quickly, too. And since I never want to be in a position to shoot anyone, and I only ever used firearms for recreation, the cost::benefit equation is clear to me; no guns in the house.
I do think people should at least take a familiarization class, so they know how to disarm a pistol or rifle, how to activate a safety, the basic rules (never point a gun at anyone, treat all firearms as loaded, etc) but that's neither here nor there.
I shot a rifle at camp in like 6th grade and that's the only time that I've ever handled an actual firearm. I'm pretty sure it was about the safest possible options for children to learn how to Target shoot!. I don't know if I learned the rules of guns there or just absorbed it culturally over time. But I wouldn't be able to guarantee that I know how to turn a safety on or off or unload a weapon. But I also find the likelihood of me meeting to do so to be so unlikely that I'm not particularly worried about it.
I did find an airsoft pistol in a drawer in an office I took over that had been confiscated from a student at some point, but it didn't have an orange tip. So I had to call our Police department. And they kept asking me if it was a real gun. I said that I didn't think so but also that I would have no way to really know for sure. Mostly I wanted them to come take it and not have me throw it in a dumpster where if somebody found it they could get themselves shot. My lack of knowledge was an asset that day, at least to me.
ETA, also, thanks for the vulnerability you shared here.
I would like to clarify my earlier comment. It was not meant to meaningfully describe the full thought process of those who do not own guns, but instead to describe the dynamics that lead to "where are the guns fighting this oppressive government?" being an almost risible gotcha, when looking at the reality of things. I certainly didn't mean to imply that "avoiding the stereotype" was the bulk of the impetus.
However, your statistical citations are what I was pointing toward. Those are the numeric reflections of the reality of who has owned guns in the US in the past ~50+ years, and they're probably accurate. But on a population scale, when those statistics have influenced the decisions made by those people particularly concerned about those phenomena for at least a significant portion of that timespan, it becomes self-reinforcing. People who are reckless and violent, bar none, are more likely to want to own guns. Misogyny and toxic individualism are deeply connected in our culture. Of course these things compound, and gun ownership being such an escalation in violent power, it will naturally lead a distribution into a more bimodal one, as measured by the firm line of death.
So that's, to a real extent, looking at gun owners and choosing not to be like them. Reasonably, and justifiably, and I'm not trying to shame anyone who comes to your conclusions. Hell, I haven't bought ammo in a long time because of some of those risks. Weaponry is a weight and comes with duties moreso than safety or comforts.
But I commented above because: A. Any time a news story is used to casually dismiss a wide swathe of political debate, that is a threat to honest governmental progress, B. There is a casual ignorance about the logic of the debate beyond very simplified terms here (Tildes), and that leads to some deep miscommunications.
I do hope that my comment didn't come across as blankly critical of people who don't own guns, though. That would be a very stupid sentiment. And, of course, people who think that personal gun ownership is primarily a plague are entitled to that and to push to shape legislation however they believe is right. Clichés, however, don't feel useful.
I understand the point your trying to make but I'm not looking at other gun owners, I'm looking at myself and my family, at how I don't need the risk of having a weapon when I'm angry, nor when I'm despairing and that I have no desire to shoot someone, even in self defense.
Those are internally oriented processes not external ones. Having a gun in my home would statistically and practically make me less safe. I understand the point you're making about the stats are defined by the people who own guns and that being self-fulfilling and all. But you don't have to be reckless, violent, misogynistic or individualistic to die by suicide. And even without the statistical part of it, if I am unwilling to shoot someone with a gun then I shouldn't use one, and this shouldn't own one. If my anger or depression overwhelmed my reason, leading me to be willing to use it, I really shouldn't own one.
I'd rather no one had any, personally, but I'm only discussing my personal calculations on the topic. I didn't think you were being dismissive I just wanted to elaborate after two comments that felt like "here's why people don't own guns" when neither reasoning fits in with my experience
I think we are on the same page, to be honest. My point with the stats was just that by citing them, you are conflating your own desire to be free from that kind of risk with the outcomes of others. This:
is different from this:
The former implies that if someone kills themself with a gun, they should have known better. That the issue is with the object, not with our laws, or culture, or the decisions made. That if a person is not killed, only spiritually diminished, by abuse, that is tolerable. And knowing you, that's not your logic. You'd be in favour of the kinds of social safety nets to prevent those outcomes before the death even comes into it.
I just really hate the way our culture falls into thinking via actuarial tables. It's toxic, and diminishes our own roles in the creation and maintenance of ethical norms. Of course guns are dangerous, we don't need to alienate ourselves from ourselves by modeling our own actions based on demography before we decide how we feel. Apologies if I'm splitting hairs.
I don't agree that's what the former statement implies, as I wasn't implying that. I do many things that make me "statistically less safe." I mentioned this one because people tend to believe owning a gun makes them statistically safer and because few people believe they'd be at risk of using it on themselves, especially if they haven't been suicidal before. Similarly if I said that abortions are statistically safer than giving I wouldn't be blaming anyone for dying in childbirth. I have thought about gun ownership for myself in both personal, emotional terms and in those statistical terms. Both combine to lead me to my conclusion.
I promise I'm not thinking like that, I'm just using those stats to inform my decision making. Thinking I'm special and will beat the odds is casino logic, but I'm betting a life. And I'm choosing not to play because that pot is too rich for me
I tend to balance my responses in time with how much I'm looking to self disclose about my personal life, how much emotion I want to put into it, and how much of myself I'm holding back. Some folks react negatively to what they perceive as "irrationality" and some people react better to personal anecdotes. So I tend to try to hit the right note for me in the moment and the right tone for the topic.
That said, I agree we agree, and appreciate the conversation.
I definitely wasn't thinking that you meant to imply anything of the sort, by the way. Nor that you were really thinking the latter. It's just hard to communicate "language is demonic, and math is not exempt" without coming off as utterly deranged. Most people seem happy to live in a world of language without grounding, and those tangents were meant as demonstrative of that logic, not to assume yours.
I get it, genuinely
Peace 𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊
I tire of repeating myself so i'll just say this once and leave it be if you agree or not:
For or against the 2nd amendment, there's a lot of evidence that a moderately armed force in terrain they know well can absolutely make war unwinnable no matter the level of technology. There is no such thing as a fair war, and yes anyone who is a known target is likely dead within hours. Helicopters, missiles, boats, drones, and all the rest make quick work of positively identified targets.
They do not however do much vs large cities full of people unless you want to turn that city into rubble, and even then if you want to hold it you need boots on the ground.
Vietnam is probably the most famous US loss due to this, the middle east claims victories over both the US and Russia on similar grounds, and history is full of such examples. Hell Russia especially has been on the receiving and giving end of this equation multiple times. This is staying in the "top military forces" areas as well. Looking at africa and south america also shows examples.
The entire point of an armed militia in the modern day and age is to make it impossible to win. No you will not meet them gloriously on the field of battle in a regiment or some such nonsense. You will however likely outnumber armed forces some 300 to 1. So if even a quarter of that 300 is armed, you have numbers superiority and essentially an unwinnable situation when it comes to holding ground and modern logistics/supply chains.
It is a massive lose lose for everyone involved, and that's the whole point. Much like MAD at a state actor level seems to be the only real way to prevent someone bigger from trying to take your territory, a heavily armed populace points towards an utterly miserable "revolution" should it be by any means not accepted by said population.
I've yet to meet someone who has any level of expertise in the military who thinks that a couple hundred million people armed and in their well known home terrain would be anything other than a fucking hellhole to deal with.
I can see many reasons to be for or against an armed populace. "well they'll never win, we can use missiles/drones/helicopters/etc" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the point of an armed populace is and how many many many examples throughout history have shown otherwise.
Vietnam is the best example of optics losing a war. America didn't lose because it lacked firepower. It lost becsuse it realized that going WW2 on such a small country would devastate their polling for years to come. If America truly "won" Vietnam there wouldnt be a President Regean. That was all "fixed" for the Iraqi war later on, though (and even then STILL devastated the GOP. Making their own Vice president unelecteable is quite the feat).
That's honestly what scares me the most about a potential Civil War. We've spend 50+ years being desensitized to the aspect of killing. Once optics can't stop a war, all bets are off. And as we speak we are being desensitized to the idea of military invading cities. The fact that no one is imoeeaching Trump over even the threat of that speaks volumes.
I don't think a modern civil war within a super power will be anything we can refer to history on. Unlike a normal war, a civil war isn't fought for resources and then "won/lost" after the fact. Its intent would either be to ursurp the government if started by rebels, or to weave fear in its own people and potentially annihilate them of stated by the ruler.
The latter makes no logical sense; even dictatorships don't aim to do this, because what is a king with nothing to rule over, and no one to command? But we're not in logical times, sadly.
This is a lot of morbid talk, but do I truly believe we're going to have a civil war? As things are now, no. But we are maybe, 4-5 big events away from one and we have maube8-10 increasingly plausible events. 4 of of those potential events lie in the courts. It's going to be a bumpy ride even if we manage to avoid all those events.
Oppression is not usually dispensed via drones. That's just war or terrorism. Oppression usually requires policing and/or societal buy-in. Those cannot be done with faceless nameless weapons of mass destruction quite yet.
But you're right, I would like individuals to be able to own and operate predator drones. Sounds like a nice step toward personal thermonuclear arms and universal equality.
Yet. I have yet to see a single bit of military kit smaller than a tank that didn't trickle down into normal police gear.
Well, these'd be the DARPA dog bots. Probably not flying bombs. But yeah. We've got problems.
Isn't there a cruise missile smaller than a tank? I want to see that policing.
Given the MOVE bombing, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.
You do indeed need a bit of terrorism to properly enforce oppression in a dictatorship. Knowing that you can be next keeps the populace fearful and fall in line.
It will definitely go the wrong way, but yes. If we claim we need a "well armed militia" then the logical steps is giving the people proper leverage against the government. Similar to how we evolved "arms' from an 18th century rifle to a semi-auto pistol. I much prefer the "restrict guns and use strict licensing" angle, but that seems less likely, especially in these times.
Like I said, I don't think this is a reasonable context to debate these issues. Maybe someone will post an article on terror management or somesuch segment of political theory that'd be better.
But personally, I don't claim we need a well-armed militia, I just think murder should be legal.
Can't say I agree. I'd also like the definition of murder to be expanded to cover military casualties, capital punishment, etc.
no shit lmao
I'm tired of pretending that law constrains power. That's really all.
Given some of the rhetoric out there and reactions in real world venues over this, I don't think we'll have the luxury of "reasonable context".
In many contexts, it is.
Yup. So why are you wasting your energy arguing about it online? If we're approaching wartime, none of this is relevant. If we aren't, there'll be an opportunity to have conversations about it where it's warranted. I'm more concerned about the state's weapons at the moment, and their real and concrete harms, than convincing you to agree with me.
Terrorism is used to force people into a state of self-preservation, to undermine their appreciation of values beyond survival. Conceding to it is doing the oppressor's job. Make them kill us all, if they really are willing to. I wasn't joking about my responses to your points, and I'm not weaseling out of defending my principles, I'm just not going to do it for the sake of sport in the comments about a dead man, because you asked me to.
A variety of reasons. I can't really pinpoint one reason I comment on anything online.
All of that is also why I comment here on Tildes; I appreciate that most comments here are in good faith. I'd definitely react differently when hearing this on Reddit and not take the time to seriously introspect on the action.
I don't think we're disagreeing here in particular. Things will sadly only get worse.
I don't want to force you to engage with any particular point. I simply, genuinely don't know if they'll be a better context to talk about it. The next context will likely be even worse. I was being genuine as well with my response.
I hope for things to get better, but I don't think we've hit the nadir yet.
I think this is in bad taste, honestly. There needs to be room for gun control, but there's a rational, humanitarian case that gun ownership should be understood primarily as right than a privilege. There's a reason why the harshest crackdown against guns in the USSR happened under Collectivization, which directly led to the deaths of millions of people. In the context of American politics, we need to be able to talk about gun control while still recognizing a general right to bear arms. Whether Charlie Kirk productively contributed to the conversation may be another question, but I don't think taking schadenfreude is appropriate or justified.
If I thought the man ever had any principles, quoting that would be akin to saying he set an example of those principles even in death - the opposite of bad taste, as I see it.
Given that I think he was an amoral ghoul who would say anything to anybody if he thought it would serve his own interests, it's instead a reminder that he has, perhaps for the one time ever, been forced to stand by his words. Given that they were indeed his words, freely spoken and amplified with the full intent of swaying public opinion, I don't see highlighting that as bad taste either.
What's the takeaway, though? That gun ownership should not be understood to be a right, and anyone who thinks it should is a fool?
The takeaway is that he either truly believed his own death was an acceptable price to pay, or that he was a liar who would callously throw away the lives of others for something he didn't actually believe in and has paid the ultimate price for that. Either of those two possibilities provides powerful context for what's just happened here.
As you said, poor taste, maybe but I found it to be an absurd level of poetic justice that:
A guy who loudly proclaimed that the second amendment is needed to protect individuals from a government trying to take away constitutional rights was shot and killed while pushing propaganda for the government taking away second amendment rights for a specific minority.
Who was he trying to take guns away from? I haven't been following news about him.
Trans folks.
But trans folks by way of declaring being trans a mental illness, and trying to take guns away from everyone with a mental illness, which is why the NRA and various 2A groups took the side of trans people for once. The precedents were very broad.
I don't think pulling these quotes out is necessarily an endorsement of a complete ban on guns. It's just amusing to point out that, by Kirk's own words, his death is an acceptable necessity so we probably shouldn't feel to bad about it.
He also believed empathy is a made up New Age term that "does a lot of damage" so I think it's only fair to respond in kind.
I just don't see it. maybe 200 years ago, but even then it was hard for a "well regulated militia" to have any real shot at usurping a government.
Driving a car is a near necessity in some countries but it is still a privileged, because misuse of it can get you or others killed. why not apply the same to guns?
Freedom is a right and can be revoked. The idea that gun ownership could be a right does not preclude the idea that it should be revokable as well.
I suppose it's easy to mix up rights with "unalienable" rights. It's not Life, Liberty, and a Pair of Bear Arms.
I can't help but see the parallels to the October 7 attacks. On that day, Hamas carried out a monstrous act of violence against civilians. It was terrorism in its most brutal, unforgivable form. Yet it was also the inevitable consequence of Israel's inability to address the Palestinian people in any meaningful way.
Kirk's murder is a smaller scale version of the same underlying dynamics. Murder is wrong. It is unjustifiable except in the most extreme circumstances, and being a right-wing provocateur certainly does not meet that threshold, as much as I thought Kirk a net drain on society. Certainly his children, reportedly also in attendance, do not deserve the lifetime of trauma.
Yet we cannot understand this moment without understanding how we arrived here, an era in which the legitimacy of our political opponents is routinely questioned (in both directions). With each election, our polarization has only become worst. Now at the helm we have our commander-in-chief who regularly dumps jet fuel on the flames. To temper his worse impulses, we have the Supreme Court, which has succumbed to the temptation of an unassailable conservative offensive, allowing for an unprecedented expansion of executive power that would have been unimaginable under any Democratic administration. Meanwhile, Congress shrugs. It's difficult to understand these moves as anything other than a pure political power grab. So if the opposition has no legitimate way to express their grievances, how else can they respond but violently? It is not right. It is not justifiable. Yet it is the inevitable consequence of refusing to acknowledge your political opposition.
In principle we know what we need to do, or at least we know in which direction we need the rhetorical landscape to shift. We need to defuse and de-escalate. We need to be willing to compromise, or at the very least we need to make an earnest attempt to listen to our political rivals. This is, admittedly, much easier said than done.
Unfortunately, this administration's response so far has been to double-down, promising to investigate all liberal "organizations that fund [...] and support [violence]." In blaming democrats for Kirk's murder, Trump cited the attempt on his life as well as the attempted assassination of Republican Representative Steve Scalise in 2017. Yet he didn't mention Melissa Hortman, the former Democratic speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives murdered in June, nor Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was hospitalized by an act of political violence in 2022. That is, this administration does not see political violence as a bipartisan issue. They see it as a cudgel to further disempower the left.
In the universe of all possible responses to this tragedy, Trump's response is among the worst, as it will do nothing but exacerbate tensions. And until our government is willing to face the reality that political violence is a bipartisan issue, tragedies like this will only become more common.
I feel like we have this same conversation every time a terrible person dies.
Can't we accept that people can simultaneously be against violence in principle, while also accepting that in this specific case people like that a terrible person is no longer doing his usual terrible things?
I largely agree about understanding events in a larger historical context and appreciate that you made it clear that you don’t condone these attacks, but I’m going to disagree with some of your rhetoric because I think it misrepresents the situation:
I don’t think the word “inevitable” makes sense in any similar situation, when we’re talking about intentional attacks by murderers. Saying it’s “inevitable” denies agency, as if the people who planned in secret to do these terrible things were agents of impersonal forces rather than people with free will. (Though, in some cases, there can be both leaders and foot soldiers responsible and sometimes the result is not what they planned. Attacks can fail.)
Lots of ways? Maybe they won’t be effective, but murdering someone often doesn’t accomplish anything good, either. When people say “no choice” it usually means there are choices they are ignoring. The murderers chose this. Putting it into context means understanding how they came to make that choice.
It also seems wrong to imply that other people who did not choose this are responsible for it. There are plenty of other things to blame them for, though.
I think its less inevitable as like this certain person was always going to do this act and more like, with 300 million monkeys on typewriters, eventually one of them will do this act.
In my mind, it's an important difference and immensely useful in looking back on our history. The first definition implies more of a "Great Man" theory, like George Washington was destined to be the leader of the armed forces of the American Revolution, and the second says well someone was going to have to fill that role eventually in that war. It helps us draw out lines of "this person believed so strongly in this thing they made it happen" and "societal forces were demanding some kind of change was made to the existing systems of power"
I do agree with you that we can't separate the actions from the person, like they didn't choose to do something. Our current system of justice requires people to be held responsible for their actions, and a lot of the media wording often separates a gunman from the act of shooting someone.
It depends on what you mean by this act. What would count?
Someone is going to be the leader of an army because that's how armies work - they will choose someone. But it's hardly inevitable that someone would try to shoot this particular person, let alone that they would succeed.
It's reasonable to say that yes, any large American city is going to have a non-zero murder rate, but it can go up and down quite a bit for reasons that can't be predicted, and we can't predict the victims in advance. Or we could say that school shootings are part of a pattern, but it doesn't explain a whole lot or help much in preventing them.
There were lots of political bombings in the US in the 1970's and then they stopped, and nobody knows why.
Maybe this isn't really about great man theory, it's more about believing in random chance versus fate? That things happen for a reason, perhaps a hidden one? I assume it's random chance (a lone nut who could have done something else) until there's evidence otherwise.
Political violence begets more political violence. This isn't a match in a powder keg, its a torch, and more violence will probably follow. It is a difficult genie to stick back in the lamp.
The torch was thrown in there a long time ago, this is only like the 15th most notable politically charged violent event this year.
I personally think you're underestimating the impact that a major right-wing infosphere operative being gunned down will have in accelerating other acts of right wing violence, but I suppose it is impossible to know.
There was an assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate last year that was in the media for maybe two weeks before everyone moved on. Wasn’t even a factor four months later during the election, and there were was no noticeable increase in right wing violence. The only thing that popped up afterwards was the Health Care CEO being assassinated.
Also a Minnesota legislator was assassinated, what, three months ago? But she was a Democrat so I guess right-wing political violence doesn't count when it comes to hand-wringing...
You see, that was an old white guy dressed up as a cop. What are they going to do, take guns away from old white guys or cops?
That'd be ridiculous!
What might that solve? The hundreds-if-not-thousands of officer involved cold blooded zero consequence murders?
How do you stop a "good guy" with a gun? /s
Ask Nepal.
Given that there are myriad armed right wing reactionary militias active in the US, yeah, I’m more concerned about retaliatory violence in response to this killing. It’s not handwringing. Cycles of violence are easy to start and hard to stop, and each step along the way reinforces this. I don’t think this shooting was the start of the cycle, but I do think it has accelerated it, and I think we all lose when that happens.
It’s not handwringing to be apprehensive about how fascists, currently in power, will wield this.
That's debatable.
We won't know what the tipping point (turning point?) is until after violence occurs, but if nothing else, there will be significant political ramifications. Trump sent the national guard to DC after a DOGE staffer got beat up and he's already in the middle of a pressure campaign against universities. Who knows what he'll do in response, but Kirk was a pretty important figure in the maga movement.
It was definitely a factor in his camp's rallying. The number of fundie pundits who took it as evidence for the man's status as Chosen One was far from zero.
I hope you're right!
I saw a comment elsewhere along the lines of "well the pot has to boil over at some point" and it's like you do realize we're all inside this metaphorical pot, right?
Jan 6th endangered both left and right wing policy makers. I'm not disagreeing, but we've had quite a few situations this decade that should have been a wakeup call for the GOP. I'm not certain if this is the match that will ignite the cannons, but history can be fickle.
The match in the powder keg was January 6, and with Republicans granting the perpetrators clemency and holding them up as heroes, they've effectively declared that political violence is totally fine.
I won't condone political violence. I hope the perpetrator spends a long time in prison, and I don't know what good they expected to come of this.
I will, however, leave some Charlie Kirk quotes that have aged like fine wine:
I mean, literally the last thing he did was try to downplay the gun issue in the US.
As others have noted there is a lot of very graphic footage out there right now that hasn't been caught by social media filters yet. Please be careful with your own wellbeing and consider avoiding social media tonight and disabling your autoplay settings for videos.
Yeesh.
source
Edit: Double yeesh and Triple yeesh
Lauren Boebert is functionally a professional troll. I am surprised that anyone at that level took her bait.
Only the best and brightest in this administration.
I appreciate how it was the republicans who were the ones to defy a moment of silence for their own "ally" while seemingly, the democrats were just going to go with it.
They can't even respect their own without spouting out hate out of nowhere. I don't even think the assassin has been identified yet and they are already trying to lay blame (just that they charged someone and it turned out to not be them).
...ignoring the victims, have any recent acts of political violence not been perpetrated by conservative (or reactionary) dissidents?..
Classiest politicians in the biz.
Good grief, Kirk is getting the medal of freedom.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna230581
I don’t think he should have been killed, but he was a reprehensible bigot.
For all the complaints that were made about responses in this thread I just want to say I appreciate the genuine discussion had here. Mostly moving away from the instigating event and talking more about the bigger societal whys and smaller individual feelings.
Thanks folks
Headline update: Conservative activist Charlie Kirk dies after being shot at Utah college event
It looks to be widely spreading and being confirmed all around. Charlie seems to have died.
I'm not an American so I will be largely unaffected, but I do want to express my genuine worry over the possible coming crackdown. I doubt it but I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail.
Absolutely crazy to see Article 4 get invoked and the (likely politically motivated) assassination of a US social media influencer on my birthday.
I don't like Charlie Kirk but nobody deserves to be shot dead over their political beliefs.
What I worry about more is how the Trump administration could turn this into an attack against leftists and the LGBTQ community (there was a trans active shooter a few weeks ago.)
Trump announced Kirk's death on social media, and called for all US flags to be flown at half-mast, which means it's a much bigger deal than the hundreds of kids murdered by school shooters yearly.
I'm not for violence. But pretty much anything can be a "political belief", including things that might leave assassination as your opposition's only option.
Well, here's Laura Loomer's response
Apparently, Trump is ordering all flags to be at half staff.
Yup. Charlie Kirk is being mourned by the government more than the hundreds of school kids being gunned down by active shooters every year.
This is gonna get ugly and I don't like that.
There were school kids killed todayEdit: I'm an idiot, please disregard.
Not to be pedantic, but unless you're talking about the random lives lost each day in this country, the school shooting in Evergreen hasn't had any casualties.
Not that it makes it any less tragic and this government any less shit, just pointing out facts as of this time.
Nope, you're right and I should have checked, I think I saw "2 casualties" or something similar and my brain ran away with me.
Even though the specifics of your original point were wrong, its main thrust still holds. The fact that we have to clarify that, actually, people didn’t die in today’s school shooting is, once again, a damning indictment of how normalized it has become in this country to have bullets rip through kids.
Additional Soapboxing
While I’m here, I want to add that the (unfortunately necessary) focus on deaths relative to school shootings ends up creating a distorted view of their impact. Even though no one died (besides the shooter) in yesterday’s school shooting, there were still people injured in possibly life-altering ways.
Also, that entire school and everyone connected to it is now deeply traumatized. The kids who won’t be able to feel safe again for months or years; the staff who had to face their own potential deaths as well as the potential deaths of the kids they care for; the parents and guardians and families who got the call or saw the news and won’t be able to shake the feeling of that horrible, heart-stopping, stomach-dropping fear from their minds for years.
With so many school shootings and a seemingly unilateral focus on deaths, we miss these events for what they actually are: mass trauma for whole communities — especially the children in those communities. Yes, there were no deaths, and that is a twisted sort of blessing, but something like this is still damnably dark, and we’re so jaded by now that we hardly even notice.
Not to be even more pedantic, but there were 3 casualties, one of which was the shooter, who died, while the other 2 were injured. Casualties include injuries, which is likely the cause of @TheRtRevKaiser's original point.
An update, the shooter is now dead in the CO shooting.
All this premature screeching, and watch the assassin be yet another MAGA diehard who felt scorned by Trump. I can't say that this couldn't have been from the Left, but following so many of these events (and the fact that it's in Utah) showed me how common it is for the Right to eat itself.
This is completely baseless speculation - but this is mighty convenient timing for this administration. Something big to distract the news from the Epstein files - that they can conveniently blame on the other political party and use as further "justification" to send the military to Democrat controlled cities.
I haven't seen any specific evidence to suggest this, but we know that these people are capable and willing to toss their own to wolves (or worse) if it means furthering their agenda
Yeah, call me cynical, but I'd place money on this being Stephen Miller's handiwork.
Remind me! 75 years
Fwiw while it seems more likely the shooter a few weeks ago was not or was no longer someone who considered themselves transgender, I mention it only because that is the most recent information I have. Trans folks are absolutely still being targeted, explicitly, over it.
It seemed like you wanted to step away from this and I don't blame you, but I do want to add on that multiple articles are already running a completely unsupported "the gun used had trans slogans on it and the ammo". I really do fear for my trans friends because even if this is officially retracted, someone could be hurt or killed by these articles.
I saw someone doing the math on trans involved mass shootings over the last few decades. I think it was a combined 6,000 shootings? I hate to downplay the victims by using "events" or other such media word. It showed that the incident rates of trans people shooting others are way lower than cisgender, especially white males.
Stay safe out there y'all. Arm yourselves if it makes you feel safer, and stay away from them if that makes you safer. I worry more violence is doomed by how broken our nation is.
Yeah I've seen that report. I'm hoping they remain unsubstantiated. Even "they" know trans people aren't the problem, they* are just the scapegoat.
I've spent the bulk of the day working with an apartment of non-binary/trans folks for a variety of mental health reasons fully unrelated to all of this. In some ways life goes on. I'll be doing everything I can to protect them all. Idk how to save the world, so all I can do is protect my little corner of things.
*I'm under the umbrella but due to how my gender shakes out (demigender non-binary woman) I feel less comfortable owning the label. I'm gender non-conforming. But I'm otherwise sort of gender apathetic. I just know I'm not a dude. I'm probably more likely to be read as a lesbian than trans. /Rambling
I'm seeing reports now that the bullets/casings said TRN, which is an ammunition manufacturer's imprint
So you know, that's great.
To my understanding, Turan (TRN) doesn't make .30-06 ammo (the caliber of the rifle that was found), so I'm not sure if that'd be the case.
The governor of Utah just stated in a press conference that the four engravings were: (my transcriptions follow)
Yeah thanks for adding the update, I was waiting to see them written down vs spoken. Looks like video game references, anti-facist references, and online trolling comments.
History proves time and again that this is wrong. Hitler had some pretty strong political beliefs after all. Does Putin deserve a bullet in the head? Bet there's an awful lot of people around the globe who would nod emphatically and the only regret they'd have when it's done is that it didn't happen sooner.
This is not a man getting shot 'over some political beliefs.' This is a man who got shot because he thought dead kids in playgrounds is a reasonable price to pay to avoid any gun legislation. Whom took this belief and used it to bribe politicians and steer policy.
This shooter will get a nice spot next to Luigi in the 'Heros of Civil War 2' book.
Both Hitler and Putin had/have strong politico-military actions. Kirk did not.
I don't think they were equating the actions of those figures, rather using those figures to establish that there is a line which is in contrast to the original comment that stated nobody deserves it. Whether that line begins/ends somewhere around Putin/Hitler level or extends towards people like Charlie Kirk is part of other arguments being made.
I think Hitler and Putin should both have been imprisoned for their crimes, but I’ll agree that in the absence of a means to do so that killing them to stop their ongoing mass murder would be morally acceptable.
I am having a very hard time seeing a justification for killing Charlie Kirk to prevent him from doing more podcasts.
This Mastodon thread consolidates a lot of justifications in one spot. Agree or disagree about whether he deserved it or not, he was not 'just a podcaster.' He was a white nationalist that created a well-funded far-right organization which was one of the key players in getting Trump elected in 2016. A choice quote from Zeteo
He was funded by Foster Friess, Bradley Foundation, Donors Trust, Koch Network, Heritage Foundation, Salem Media, Stuart Epperson and Edward G. Atsinger III, Julie Fancelli, Council for National Policy, Gianforte...... You know, the same ones that funded Jan 6.
No great loss.
For others like me who never heard of him, he was basically a maga influencer. article:
This line from the article in particular throws me pretty hard, just at the absurdity
Both that a lot of elected officials made it a point to get something out there within minutes despite it being a non-statement, and that doing so was important enough to be part of the associated press coverage of the event.
Video of the alleged shooter is an old white man. What are they going to say "Take all the guns away from... [checks notes] ...old white men?"
Newest info (per NYT) is that that man is not the shooter.
I assume they haven't made any mention of who is suspected. Last update about it on AP is a suspect is in custody (NYT blocked me because I blocked their ad blocker blocker).
Here is what NYT has to say:
I am just picturing a version of this pre-social media in a small town. It would be like a newspaper article commenting "Mayor's aid seen pinning a paper to the bulletin board at the post office."
I don't know, maybe I am the absurd one.
From this event, and from the maga reaction to it calling for all the things they are calling for, treating Kirk as a Martyr, I think I've had a realization about the state and trajectory of political violence, unrest, and worse in the US.
Hollywood has lent itself towards giving us certain... preconceptions about the meaning of things like 'apocalypse' and 'war'. There tends to be more dramatic and profitable storytelling about sudden, sharp changes of states - sudden all-out nuclear war, or a world-ending asteroid strike, or aliens invading and dealing a massively crippling blow, etc...
This makes for good entertainment, but this quality of 'sudden, dramatic change' is seldom reflective of reality. It also, I think, pervades our collective, cultural consciousness with preconceptions of what terms like 'war' or 'civil war' or 'climate disaster' mean, and introduces a tendency to dismiss things as being not as bad as they are because they aren't hollywood-level sudden disasters.
My father, a retired history and humanities professor, quite seriously believes we are approaching the extinction of the human race and the end of the world as we know it. I find myself somewhat agreeing, and somewhat disagreeing - mostly in terms of nuance and scope.
My view is that there is not likely to be any actual "end of the human race" - but at the same time I also feel that this is such an extreme endpoint, or extreme floor level to sink to, as to be completely irrelevant. If a single greenhouse farming enclave with a few thousand humans survived in the future warm and habitable arctic, with all other humans gone, this would still not be 'the end of the human race' - but at that point, to look at that situation and say 'see, the human race didn't go extinct!' seems like an irrelevant point of view. To further extend the viewpoint into something a tad less extreme, if the world population was reduced from the current ~8 billion to, say, ~800 million, our race would certainly be in no danger of going extinct... but that would still be the utter collapse of human civilization, society, and technological / developmental progress that we currently enjoy.
That line of thought is what has led me to understand and believe that, due to multiple factors (Climate Change being a primary factor, but also the continuing creep towards world war involving multiple nuclear-armed states and the increase in unrest and political violence among many others) we are heading towards the end of human civilization as we currently enjoy it. Not the end of the human race, but a significant degradation of the quality of our civilization as measured by factors such as life expectancy, wealth equality, probability of injury or death from violence, food and housing insecurity, etc...
I see the end of our current level of human civilization as something that isn't likely to have some hollywood-themed sudden, recognizable 'there, right there, that was the end of us' but rather as a slope, a gradual (though accelerating) degradation of our civilization, quality of life, life-expectancy, etc... We are seeing all those things right now. We are watching these metrics get worse on average year-on-year. I do not see this trend reversing, or slowing. I can, and do, hope - but I do not expect.
Now, with that perspective laid out - I've come to have the same realization about the phrase 'civil war' specifically in the US. I do not anticipate any one moment in upcoming history as being a clear and obvious 'there, it happened right then and there'. Rather I see that we are trending upwards (or downwards, however you wish to describe the slope) on a scale of the combination of many different factors and pressures, in this case looking primarily at politically motivated violence, state-actor level violence executed domestically, and civil unrest of all types. Powerful forces (primarily trump/maga, but also wealthy financial interests profiting from the current political climate) are either intent on, or incentivised to, push as hard as possible in this direction of increasing tension, political violence, unrest etc... as a means of increasing their own wealth and power.
So far, it is working for them.
Whether or not this particular incident is held up by the right as a martyrdom with success or not, the trend seems pretty clear to me. We have already shifted far, it feels like almost unthinkably far, over the recent years.
...
I'm getting ready to house-sit for my father while he takes a much needed vacation, hopefully getting to enjoy some nature. I'm taking not only my carry pistol with me, but also my combat rifle, specifically chosen for something chambered in a round that can defeat soft (under level IV) body armor... just to house sit and take care of his cats for the weekend - just in case someone chooses that weekend to target his home out of politically motivated violence - and it doesn't even feel strange to me anymore. It feels like nothing more than a "normal" safety precaution, like buckling my seat belt. I don't like that.
Now, I will admit there are factors with my family history that make this concern... less unlikely of a concern than for the random Joe or Jane. My father spent decades working against the Klan, Neo-Nazis, against David Duke and others like him, etc. We have had death threats in the past, swastikas spray-painted outside our home. We have had bodyguards live with us back during some of my time in high school. I once answered the phone as a child and was told to tell my father about how one day soon, perhaps I would be taken and parts of me mailed to him. So perhaps my experiences have not exactly been representative of the average.
My unusual family history aside, I see the motivations that are present, I see the pressures that are building. It feels like the probability of things getting much worse than they are now, likely before the mid-term elections (for fairly obvious reasons - holding onto political power), is high.
It feels like this. Like the edge we are pushed up against is getting more and more narrow.
I guess the repuplicans found their martyr.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel
I saw the close-up footage. It’s a direct hit on his neck (jugular vein if I had to guess). A fountain of blood spurted out of it and he immediately went limp. I’m not a medical expert but would be surprised if he was still alive.
Updates say he's in critical condition. Whether or not he survives is the question at this point.
Well, this appears to be some bad news.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/charlie-kirk-shot-suspect-utah-manhunt-b2824720.html
Edit: they are walking that back
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-death-09-11-25
This is unverified and disputed by other sources associated with the investigation.
https://bsky.app/profile/thelincoln.bsky.social/post/3lyl5ljm2h22m
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-news/investigators-eye-a-hunting-rifle-for-clues-to-the-gunmans-identity-and-motive?smid=url-share
It also doesn’t change anything.
There are two things that are true:
Whether or not the engravings exist, it will be reported by conservative media and used as a pretext for more violence and oppression
Whether or not the engravings exist, it does not prove a broad conspiracy by the left to assassinate right wing personalities.
Trump is constantly trying to manufacture Reichtag Fires and Horst Wessels. Whatever convenient event occcurs, real or fake, will be used.
Trump and co. were going to make shit up no matter what, they live in a reality of their own creation. The truth does still matter to others, though.
I agree that truth matters generally. But what does it change if slogans were engraved on some bullets? If they said transgender slogans it wouldn’t implicate anyone else, just like if it said “Nancy Pelosi says hi” it would not implicate her.
Is there something specific that is leading to that conclusion?
Probably the fact that like 99% of people who do this sort of thing are lone wolves. Actual organized militia attacks are virtually non-existent in comparison.
Nope. But it usually is.
Or maybe it’s two people. Or 5. It doesn’t mean that “the left” murdered Charlie Kirk. It just means some nut with a gun murdered someone for reasons we don’t know yet. But regardless trump will use it as a retroactive excuse to invade Chicago or something he wanted to do anyway.
Even then, the fact it got reported at all is really bad. A lot of people are going to see this and assume it's fact even if it's categorically and clearly proven to be false.
It bothers me that these media outlets have done shit like this time and time again, but everyone gets gellman amnesia when its confirming something THEY believe should be correct, but still sure as shit looks like jumping the gun.
I wish we had some reasonable way of controlling this kind of nonsense because it's so destructive for society as a whole.
btw here's a gift link for that article
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-news?unlocked_article_code=1.lE8.qmIt.9ua22CjLYcKs&smid=url-share
Ironically for 2A supporters, a gun was used explicitly as a tool of political sovereignty to push back on an increasingly tyrannical government (and its groupies like Mr. Kirk) that oppresses marginalized demographics that can arm themselves. If the irony weren't lost on them, they'd be delighted.
If we're going to just dive into sweeping generalizations then fine, but it's no better than the "radical left" bullshit trump pedals.
Yes - even if true this is Kirk's own ideology in practice. When his supporters realize that they actually don't like guns being used for political violence the rational response is to restrict gun use and stop promoting violence.
Every person that believes in the second amendment will have their own opinion of what a tyrannical government is. Any segment of the population can be targeted by those in power and be driven to the point of violence. The interpretation of the second amendment that states it's a safeguard against misuse of power doesn't belong solely to conservative people who might want to fight a totalitarian communist dictator. When that idea is promoted you will inspire people outside of your group.
But this really feels too on-the-nose - it's the exact thing MAGA desperately wants to see. Someone worried about trans people would hopefully be smart enough not to tie an assassination back to trans people. But generally people that perform assassinations aren't mentally well, so we can't assume the perpetrator would act rationally in this way.
That... That feels TOO blatant. This actually makes me lean towards the conspiracy theories about this being a hit by the government to push the Trump admin's agenda.
Either way this is really, REALLY bad.
Anyone can engrave whatever words they want on a bullet, fascists are not above lying, and newspapers of record are not above backing lies.
But if this is true, whoever did this is as brave as they were shortsighted. The UHC CEO wasn't really a public figure, so inscribing the intent distinguished it from a random mugging or whatever. Unless the plan was to try and start a trend, the vector of the bullet spoke more than any engraving might.
This is pretty fucking awful. I didn't give a fuck about the substance of Kirk's death (not going to mourn someone who's entire life was about making the world a shittier place) but the potential fallout was so clear when you had right wing idiots and politicians declaring that this was an assault by the left before anything was known about the shooter.
These fuckers are already far more prone to violence and were just champing at the bit to continue their assault on anything they see as 'left' while ignoring anything they can't use to blame their enemies e.g. MN killer, CDC shooter, Colorado shooting the same day, etc etc. We're absolutely fucked.
edit: even if it turns out not to be the case, this factoid is out there and the right are ready to go. They didn't let go of the MN killer being on some nonpolitical board under Walz, they couldn't let go of the Trump shooter donating to ActBlue, etc etc. They just assume everyone is as mad and violent as they are, don't care about facts, and are ready to step on the necks of those they don't agree with.
Just an update on the “trans” messages
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/live-blog/rcna230762
Presumably the arrows were the thing they were confusing with trans symbols. Apparently this might be a Helldivers 2 reference?
It's the input for the 500KG Eagle airstrike stratagem. No idea if that's a coincidence though.
I mean it sure sounds like a joke. Hey fascists! Catch! (this 500kg bomb).
Almost all of it is terminally online shitpost-level stuff. The bella ciao thing is apparently a reference to a song associated with Italian antifascist partisans during WW2.
It was going around Tiktok a while ago, after being sung in response to one of the shitty things in the world or another iirc.
I think it got kind of re-popularized in the mainstream because it was in a Netflix show.
Bella Ciao - La Casa de Papel
Maybe but Italian protestors sung it in the streets of Milan in opposition to a fascist event in April I think, so he may have gotten it either way.
I hope we have more information soon. Is Kirk alive? Why was he shot? What happened to the shooter?
I saw a video that someone filmed from about 15 feet away. I would be surprised is he makes it. Either way, this is just more gasoline on the dumpster fire.
Edit: apparently he made it to the hospital and is in critical condition. Also, somewhat related, another school shooting took place in Colorado right around the same time. We need a bigger dumpster.
Edit 2: now multiple sources are reporting he is dead
more info (gory)
I’ve seen footage of the event that I won’t share here, he got shot through the neck and blood started pouring out
Trump says he's dead.
Shooter is supposedly in custody according to bbc, nyt. It did not look good, my personal opinion is that Kirk did not survive. He was probably shot for his political views but that is just an assumption I'm making.
The guy they've taken into custody has been
released.EDIT: charged with obstruction of justice.Unless they've arrested someone else. It's unclear.
They briefly detained another person but released him. It's being described as a manhunt now.
They arrested another guy and released him too.
Musk's groomed LLM is saying that Kirk is alive and the videos showing his death are "meme edits". What a great technology.
This news today seems to be related, in my estimates.
Historically Black colleges issue lockdown orders, cancel classes after receiving threats
Officials: ‘No ongoing threat’ after shooting reported at University of Massachusetts Boston
There's another article but there have been a bunch of swatting attempts at multiple institutions recently. It certainly could be related. It could also be a continuation or escalation of the previous threats made. One I saw was very racially provocative and I'd have taken it seriously especially at an HBCU.
Isn't it great that everything sucks so you don't even know why it sucks
Agreed! Bluh. This week has been exhausting!
Sounds like they are confident they have the shooter now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna230504
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/9/12/live-charlie-kirk-shot-dead-fbi-releases-images-of-person-of-interest
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c206zm81z4gt
I am in a very odd way relieved that it is a young white male.
"don't be trans don't be brown don't be queer don't be Muslim"
Yeah it'll still be spun in some shitty way - college turned him into a violent leftist because DEI or something - but it could be worse
Can anyone confirm if they actually have the shooter in custody or not? From what I can tell it seemed they were reporting that they had one, and now they're reporting that they do not.
If they do not, that's another level of concern on this whole situation for a variety of reasons.
To my knowledge, no he isn’t. UVU is a commuter school with a pretty open campus right next to the Interstate. Based on his vantage point, and assuming he was quick enough, the shooter could’ve been on the road in less than five minutes. At this point he could be in the wilderness somewhere.
They have so far had two people in custody, one described as a suspect, the other as a person of interest. Both have been released at this point.
There's a decent amount of confusion as a lot of people are speaking rather than centralizing information but it seems as of right now there is not someone in custody per the BBC about a half hour ago. Confirmed by CNN "less than a minute ago"
The first person arrested was booked for obstruction.
I didn't know much of this guy to care but I forced myself to learn about him given the constant coverage. His quotes and his talks are to me an eye roll! Political violence don't end well however it seems that the easy route has been taken by many people of stocking the fire of violence. Shouldn't be a surprise.
Man inciting violence became a victim of violence.. violence lobbyists didn't like it.
It's an eye roll alright....
Deseret news is reporting that Charlie Kirk is dead, according to Utah Speaker Mike Schultz
You got a link? I can't find this news.
BBC news is currently reporting that he's dead- Trump posted "The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead" on Truth Social (https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c206zm81z4gt).
Similar to Brian Thompson last year... I find it hard to feel literally any sympathy whatsoever in moments like this. At the same time, I'm worried about how Trump and co. may/will react to this.
My mantra in situations like this is approximately
"Don't be trans, don't be brown, don't be queer, don't be Muslim"
Interestingly, Kirk had just gotten done glibly answering a question about statistics of trans mass shooters when he was shot. That might have been part of the setup.
The news has been mixed on if he managed to answer that question or if it was just asked (or maybe it was a follow up asked), and I refuse to watch videos because I need to protect my mental health more than know the answer.
I hope it was a coincidence.
I've watched footage; he answered with a quip saying "too many" or something along those lines, and then the same person was in the middle of a follow up trying to get him to answer seriously about who the perceived threats really are.
Got it, like I said, the reporting hadn't nailed it down yet. I don't look forward to the analysis of it all.
Old white guy.edit: after refreshing a news feed, it seems like the suspect is not actually in custody as of 5:24pm estThat is the current status as I'm familiar with it.
My mantra remains the same regardless though. Anyone whose identity will be used to attack them - including a history of mental illness tbh - will end up with that identity being attacked on a larger scale. It's shifted over the years but has been fairly consistent since 2001.
That South Park episode they did a month ago where they lampooned "masterdebating" influencers like him has suddenly aged like milk.
I also detest the many calls I've seen for South Park to be cancelled over that. How would they have known?
if you think that is bad...
Dang... This is just giving right wingers more ammunition.
Article was published 2 days ago. It's a coincidence and nothing more.
Said the person who's never been cursed by an etsy witch.
We had proponents claim that Biden was dead and replaced by a robot. Apparently we're in full fantasy land in 2025 if you go to the right circles.
I wouldn't expect them to take it as such. I guarantee if the article had a specific writer on the byline or had named a specific store, they'd be the target of (not entirely undeserved) vitriol.
I fail to see how this makes the South Park episode any less funny.
Political violence like this is always wrong. But the episode was written and aired weeks before this happened. And Charlie Kirk was such a horrible person that I'm really struggling to actually feel bad for him. In 20 years, the majority of what neurons I still have dedicated to his memory will probably be tied to this South Park episode.
I never heard of this guy before, but I'll just say that the death penalty is hardly ever justice, except possibly if he were a serial killer or something like that.
Haven't heard of Brian Thompson? That might be because the focus was/is primarily on the individual accused of committing acts against him: Luigi Mangione
Sorry, that was unclear. I meant I never heard of Charlie Kirk before.
That's genuinely interesting to me. Based on your posts, I'd say you're clearly very plugged in to news and politics. I know Kirk came from social media, but it's odd that his name never broke into your sources. He was popular, but he also had some pretty serious sway with the MAGA movement.
I had to become truly aware of him when he came to our campus. It was stressful for everyone. Until then I was mostly able to avoid him, though I'd heard his name.
If you don't engage with the "debate me, random college student, so I can prove how much smarter I am than you through selective editing" sort of media then it's easy to never see him in any more depth than a random "guy said ____" sort of quote in a larger article.
That makes sense. It's interesting and a bit disconcerting that there's still a huge gap between traditional news outlets and popular online figures with massive influence, so much so that someone like skybrian wouldn't recognize the name. Unfortunately, I don't think guys like Kirk are confined to that dark corner of the internet anymore, as evidenced by the fact that Trump was one of the first people to publicly announce his death and has since ordered all flags to fly at half staff. Though Kirk is different in that he is also an organizer outside of social media.
Before 2020, the only way I'd come across a figure like Kirk is if one of my former coworkers or highschool friends shared something on Facebook, and in those instances I'd roll my eyes and ignore it. But after a lockdown-induced rabbit hole (that can be traced back to a tildes post), I came across a few decent online/social media news sources that also cover the online right and it completely recontextualized American politics in a way that made everything make so much more sense. It's like when I watched Skibidi toilet and Huggy Wuggy on YouTube for the first time and realized what my students were actually doing on the playground. 90% of the people I know don't read the NYT, listen to NPR, or even watch CNN. Instead, they get what little news they consume from social media where guys like Kirk dominate. If you don't know who those guys are, it can be hard to understand what people are thinking. It's a blind spot that traditional news can't cover.
I agree he wasn't confined there anymore, he was part of the corner that had only gained in popularity throughout this administration.
It's also very easy for your algorithm to start showing you the videos. My partner recognized the name. He didn't like Kirk but the videos would get served to him on YouTube (he watches a lot of outdoorsy/car/similar trade sort of things)
It also doesn't help that traditional news won't say "hey he's lying" about these sorts of people anymore.
It's quite possible that I've read his name before in news stories, but not often enough to remember who he is. There are probably other MAGA influencers whom I wouldn't remember either.
I am aghast at some of these comments. Political violence is still bad, even if it happens to the other side.
I get it to an extent, but... Honestly, I think we're at a point where Americans are just too emotionally fatigued.
I think that if this happened in another country, even one with a similarly polarized political landscape, there would be a lot more sympathy and horror from the opposing side. But the United States has an epidemic of gun violence. We're honestly desensitized to it. People dying to gun violence (or any violence really) isn't a tragedy anymore, it's normal for us. It is, quite literally, a basic fact of life in the United States. The sky is blue, grass is green, people get murdered every day.
Hearing about a political figure getting shot isn't some horrible, tragic event here anymore. Not when we're used to regular reports of mass shootings of children and other innocents. Not when there are far too many news stories about children messing around with unsecured guns and shooting each other. Not when it's just... normal.
For me, one of the most sobering moments of my life was hearing a news report about a school shooting with a single victim and thinking, "At least only one person died this time." The weight of that super casual thought, at how much I just automatically minimized a tragedy, slammed into me full-force a moment later. Because that singular death was a tragedy, it absolutely devastated all the people close to that poor, poor individual. Chances are the family never recovered from that loss, that it set off a domino effect leading to others dying or having their lives otherwise ruined.
But in the face of every other mass shooting at schools with double-digit casualty numbers? And all the other shootings outside of schools? That one death just doesn't register as particularly tragic to me anymore. And that's horrifying.
I am NOT saying this to rag on Charlie Kirk's stances on gun violence or just empathy in general (though that absolutely diminishes any shreds of sympathy I might have felt for him). I'm saying that to explain that in America, we're just too emotionally fatigued to see this sort of event as a major tragedy anymore. We can acknowledge it's tragic from an intellectual standpoint, but we're too used to it to feel the degree of horror we should be feeling. We HAVE to be numb to it because humans just aren't capable of handling 24/7 grief and trauma. We don't have the emotional bandwidth to feel too much grief for a stranger.
And from that emotional fatigue and numbness, arise more callous emotions and responses. US politics in general are highly fatiguing and emotionally taxing at this point. All the systems meant to keep our government running fairly are just... nonexistent. Trump and his cronies largely ignore the rules to do what they want. Courts challenge them when they make extreme oversteps, but that's a process that takes months and in the meantime, all sorts of damages will incur. And even when courts do rule against some action, who, exactly, is going to enforce it?
There's no way for the average American to do anything about the broken "checks and balances" system because the corruption and issues are just too deep rooted. I honestly don't know if any of the "proper" channels will be able to undo all the damage that's been done just since Trump took office this year. I feel like I now understand how Hitler and the Nazis rose to power, because I'm watching the same thing happen within the US, and there's very little I and others can do to stop it. I have to step away from certain news stories because it will just get me feeling unbridled rage, and there are no outlets for me to act on that rage in a positive, non-harmful way.
So, combine the fact Americans are desensitized to gun violence and even assassinations, and the frustrations over how screwed up our country is... Yeah, a lot of people aren't going to mourn this particular man's death. Not when we barely have the energy to mourn for famous strangers we actually like. And especially not when the victim is a person who certainly wouldn't have expressed any sort of grief or sympathy if anyone from "the other side" was assassinated.
We're emotionally burnt out on multiple levels, and we need to save our energy for the other fights that will arise from the inevitable fallout from this death. My personal objections to this assassination come not from a moral standpoint about how murder and political violence are bad, but a purely pragmatic one about to the damages it will incur politically. Charlie Kirk's death will not bring any good change even in the immediate short-term, it will fuel fires for more violence and political unrest. This will absolutely be used by the Trump administration to further their twisted agendas.
Also, a revelation I had when writing this that I can't really fit anywhere else: gallows humor is a common coping mechanism among people in high-stress and traumatic fields like medicine, military and law enforcement, as a way to maintain some emotional control over circumstances beyond our control, vent stress/fear/anxiety, and just not emotionally shut down. Ghoulish and callous as it may feel, I think that's exactly what's playing out in most of the replies here.
And... uh, this realization is actually mildly horrifying to me, that it's becoming a coping mechanism for normal, every day people. I already knew we were desensitized, but this just adds another layer to how messed up we Americans really are.
If you can't laugh, you cry.
We're the family cracking jokes in the cancer ward.
Gun violence really is a fact of life here. I mentioned to a friend I might move to a new neighborhood. He said his friend had his leg broken outside a bar there. I said I’m a tall guy and don’t think as many people will try to fuck with me (even though I’m a pacifist). But had to admit I could always just get shot. He just said “Yeah, lol”.
I don't blame people for feeling unable to express sympathy. I simply think the appropriate reaction to that realization is horror - as you very articulately put it - and not schadenfreude.
It makes sense you feel that, but it's unrealistic to expect the "correct" emotional response out of people who are emotionally burnt out. I mean arguably it's unrealistic to expect any emotional response to be the "correct" one. It may not be a healthy response but that mix of emotions is still valid.
I think we're more compassionate to those irregular responses when we feel we have enough information to understand why someone is feeling that way. For example if someone's childhood abuser dies, I think society is more (though certainly not universally) accepting of non-grief/horror/etc. emotions, and it wouldn't shock me to hear that someone say they were happy about the abuser's death. The abuser hurt them in concrete ways and individually we can account for that when we understand it.
But we don't account for the harm caused by hateful rhetoric, political actions, or even C suite business decisions in the same way. That's so much more abstract than "this person directly hurt me." And in a forum like this, we don't know everyone's individual history and experience, how much they have been hurt by the person or the systems actively perpetuated by that person. So we make assumptions that they're simply cruel or callous, even if they're reacting to the same "this person hurt me" because it's usually an indirect hurt, even if it's just as grievous a wound.
How many kids were beaten with belts because of James Dobson's rhetoric for example? How would any of us know that someone making a comment after his death had been abused by parents that listened to his religious authority?
In the effort to insist on propriety and etiquette I think there is ironically a loss of empathy for people that don't perform their feelings the way we think they should, as if they've violated a sacred ritual for the dead.
Very fair points. For what it's worth, I'm not taking this stance because of propriety or etiquette, and certainly not out of some sort of respect for Charlie Kirk. For me, it's a spiritual question. Not religious, but spiritual -- both for our individual psyches as well as the national soul of America.
Politics is corrosive. It makes us think in terms of teams, and in many ways we humans are at our absolute worst when we think in terms of teams, of us versus them.
My overarching goal here- and clearly I have desperately failed in this- is to remind people that when we are indifferent to the assassination of someone because of the opinions that they held, we all have lost something -- but no one has lost more than the person who is indifferent.
It's in the same spirit of forgiving someone for you, not for them.
You keep saying this, but it is a disingenuous reduction. No one will claim he was killed for wrongthink. He did not merely have a privately-held (or even publicly-announced) opinion that others disagreed with. His entire career was built on promoting and propagating that opinion, and influencing the levers of power to take action based on that opinion, which would result in negative consequences for significant numbers of people. There is a world of difference between the two descriptions that you cannot ignore.
I feel the exact same way about the assassination attempt against President Trump, who, by any measure, has done vastly more than Charlie Kirk to produce harmful outcomes for far more people.
I don't fully understand what is behind your argument. Obviously you're not claiming that he's more accurately described as a republican fundraiser and therefore it's okay that he was killed, right? If you take what I said and replace it with "assassinated because he built his entire career around promoting and propagating a bad opinion", does anything fundamentally change? Like, yeah, I would still very much oppose that.
So... Are you calling me disingenuous because you feel like I haven't fairly represented your points? As some sort of gotcha for not directly quoting people? Other?
You know what, let's remove disingenuous, as I wasn't trying to ascribe a motive to you. I should say it's a misleading reduction, or misguided at best.
My point wasn't that it's okay that he was killed, but that you need more nuance in your framing, otherwise you will not understand why many people are reacting as they are here and elsewhere. I don't necessarily agree with the reactions that trouble you, but I understand them.
I don't celebrate Kirk's killing, and I don't think anyone here does either. I don't celebrate the apathy towards the loss of human life either - I actually agree with your spiritual perspective. However, I understand cause and effect. I understand the reaction that I'm seeing because I understand the action that came before... and that initial action was not merely having a bad opinion, it was advancing and enacting a harmful agenda based on a bad opinion, with little to no reasonable component of good faith.
It's similar to when 9/11 happened and many Americans didn't understand why some people in various parts of the world (and even within the US) were NOT falling over themselves to offer sympathy. It's not because these people "hated the USA for its freedoms." They simply understood the context, that there were actions that came before the reaction, just as some of us here do now.
I personally find this explanation entirely unsatisfactory for one simple reason. I do not image anyone who is commenting in this manner to say something along the lines of "I don't celebrate the loss of life but I understand cause and effect, George Floyd should have stayed away from drugs and shouldn't have stolen from a store." Well no, because you're not supposed to get killed for that, that's why we condemn the people who killed him. Well, you're not supposed to get killed for saying things either, so what cause and effect are you talking about? As far as I see it, you're either engaging in blaming the victims or you don't, otherwise it just feels like you're just siding with whatever circumstances fit your preferred narrative, which in my opinion is exactly what is happening in this online discussions every single time, no matter which side the author of that opinion chooses.
In no way am I suggesting that Kirk being shot is just, same as I would not suggest that Floyd being killed was just.
I am speaking about the emotional reaction various people have (effect) in the face of those actions (cause). I understand why many seemingly reasonable people were up in arms over George Floyd's death, and why many seemingly reasonable people are not over Kirk. I may not agree with casual apathy towards Kirk's death, but I can understand it, because I have a sense of his practices before tragedy struck. I don't know how informed you already were, but that's just an intro.
Of course others might cite a different cause and effect as the basis of their opinion - oftentimes commenters will only see the here and now because they are underinformed or misinformed on the broader context, or worse yet deliberately ignoring the broader context. When we try to frame things in a broader perspective and observe their willingness to consider possibly new info, we can determine their level of good faith. CK unfortunately had a consistent history of not engaging in good faith, and encouraging others to follow his example, so I'm not surprised at what I see now.
Honestly, I genuinely don't see why this thread is still ongoing. It doesn't seem to me like it's even getting anywhere on either "side". Differing worldviews and all that.
What would it look like for it to be 'getting somewhere'? I ask because to say that seems like you have some expectation for how it should be or what it should look like in order to justify the thread continuing to still be going, but I don't know what that actually looks like. Is it supposed to look like one very convincing comment rises to the top and everyone says they change their mind and agree with that?
Discussion around topics like this, or perhaps any topics even, I find to rarely ever show any signs of anyone changing their minds or such right away, but I don't have the expectation that solid discussion looks like that. I think those things happen over time. My comment here would not be the same if I hadn't read or participated in many other discussions over the years that weren't going anywhere, I think they very much shaped how I perceive things even in ways that I didn't recognize at the time when I was reading or participating in those discussions. There were times I was certain the other person was wrong and I was in the right, but later came around to ideas that I was resistant to at the time. Maybe not solely because of that one person but perhaps repetition of seeing those arguments made from various people.
If people are engaging for the 'right' reasons, which I say that in such a way that I don't know if there are some set of strict 'right' reasons or what it even looks like as it probably varies for each person, but if the people who are still engaging are doing so as they think it is beneficial to them and there aren't a lot of other markers indicating it's a negative for them, then that seems to me that the thread is 'getting somewhere' for those people.
I understand your goal, but think expecting everyone to reach that goal is unrealistic and not necessarily healthy for everyone. Sometimes you don't forgive what can't be forgiven. Everyone processes that trauma in their own way. I'm someone that holds grudges, but only when things get to a certain level. However I don't ruminate and obsess over them. They just don't get forgiveness when they've done nothing to deserve it, and my spirit doesn't feel heavy from that.
But right now my experience is about the equivalent of when your high school bully dies in a horrible drunk driving accident and suddenly everyone only talks about what a great guy he was and how wonderful of a future he would have had and how kind he was to everyone. It's watching someone who made your life hell be canonized posthumously. And if you speak up, you're told to forgive him for your sake. That understanding and forgiveness may come eventually, but probably not in the first 24 hours.
I may just be tired of feeling like I'm told that I'm a threat to society, and then told to be nicer to the people saying it, even after death. Tired of being told that if I would only be nicer to the people who voted for my rights to be revoked, to those who now advocate to "repeal the 19th" they wouldn't want to revoke my rights so much. Sure hate isn't healthy, but I feel like we're not actually addressing the root causes, and instead focusing on the "easier" conversations with people we mostly agree with but aren't performing in the way we want them do.
I say etiquette and propriety here because it's about what people choose to "perform" not about how they necessarily actually feel or will feel after they process. Some folks may regret a harsh statement, some may still feel it was appropriate. I'm choosing to engage where I am because I don't agree with some folks, I do with others, and I'm being intentional in my interactions.
Well, that wasn't my intent, so if that's what I did, I am sorry.
No, I know it wasn't, that was me ruminating on how similar the feeling of "express only these feelings at someone's death" was to "be nicer to people who dislike you" and to "forgive your bully"
Those things all feel very intertwined in politeness and propriety and who gets told to "behave" better vs who gets a shrug because we know they'll be inappropriate anyway. It feels like I'm dancing at the edge of being able to articulate how all of this is connected and why it's so frustrating.
But I am aware it wasn't your intent nor even your actions - you certainly didn't tell me I'm a threat to society - it's just how I'm feeling in this moment. I was, I think, just using the opportunity to be vulnerable.
My guess would be because it's so deeply unfair. That's the best way to put it - it's incredibly unfair that shitheads get to act like shitheads and decent people get constantly exhorted to be the better person, turn the other cheek.
Oh it is absolutely deeply unfair, I just think there's a unifying theory of this particular unfairness just out of my grasp right now. Like "boys will be boys" and "don't disrespect the dead" are part of the same continuum.
I'm also operating on about 4 hours of sleep a night (or less) all week and working on a campus of emotionally disregulated, stressed out teens. So I could be pulling pieces of red string against push pins. I leave the possibility open.
Politics doesn’t make us think in terms of teams. Some, possibly most, politicians promote that. Traditional media in the US post-Fairness Doctrine certainly encouraged it and social media has accelerated it.
But at the end of the day it’s individuals making the decision to view the world as binary - good vs bad, them vs us, etc - when the world isn’t that way at all.
Alright, I've been trying really hard to self-censor myself and restrain myself from replying to anything in this thread, out of good faith & respect to other users in the forum, but that is simply untrue. Political violence is not always bad, and there are potentially thousands of examples in human history indicating this is the case.
Ok, specifically this political violence is bad. Charlie Kirk, for all his faults, was not a genocidal dictator. Killing him will not save thousands of lives. In fact, I strongly suspect that killing him will save zero lives. It’s more likely that, if anything, the outcome of this sort of political assassination of talking heads will have a net result of more lives being lost.
Nah, he just rallied supoort for them, and advocated for violence against gay people.
What's the dividing line between genocidal dictator and people who advocate and recruit for one? Who celebrate when said leader pardons the coup participants?
To clarify, who is the genocidal dictator that Kirk was rallying support for? Are you saying that Donald Trump is a genocidal dictator?
Yes. Yes I am.
To be more accurate: The entire Republican party is like a multi-headed hydra of hate, top to bottom. Trump is merely the current result of 50+ years of a machine bent on dismantling democracy in favor of a theocratic single-party state. Contrary to what many claim, this is only the beginning. Nothing Trump has done is against the Republican party platform, merely being done in hamfisted and blatantly obbious ways.
The 2016 Republican primary debate was eye-opening. All the candidates were declaring just how much they wanted to bomb Iran. After 8 years of stonewalling against even a modicum of progress under Obama. And another 8 years beating the drum for foreverwar. The one that kills more civilians than combatants.
My estranged father, thoroughly brainwashed by the Republican propaganda networks, uttered this gem a few months ago:
This is vile, repugnant, and a solid representation of the average politics of Repiblicans. Demonize an other, then call for their extermination.
They're building concentration camps and deploying the military against the population at large. And selling T-shirts to celebrate.
The Nazis used the same word to describe Jews.
He was pretty supportive of the genocide in Palestine.
At what comments exactly?
I don't see anyone praising it. There's a lack of sympathy for someone facing consequences of his own actions, sure and quotes from Kirk himself, but what are you aghast at?
A man gets shot and the reaction is "well, he had it coming." It's not okay if the man was a teenager with a criminal history and it's not okay if the man was a pro-gun republican podcaster.
I understand that with how polarized America is right now it's very difficult to have empathy for the other side. But that fact should be recognized with sorrow, not worn like a badge of honor.
The closest thing anyone (before your comment) said to "he had it coming" were Charlie's own quotes on gun violence.
I don't think that direct quotes from the victim on how he would feel about the subject can be considered malice.
I don't even see the conversation in this thread being about (or particularly impacted by) polarisation, really. It's about his own actions and positions, more than anything.
Person who has harmed many others finally succumbs to that same harm himself. That's a small sliver of justice done, even by dangerous and probably counterproductive means. And we're giving him as much or more sympathy as he gave others in the same situation - others who actually were innocent victims, rather than victims guilty of causing the very situation they came to harm by.
No one said he had it coming, don't go changing the words of others to fit your narrative.
We're clearly not going to have a productive conversation, so never mind.
Well, when you start it from an indefensible falsehood, what do you expect to accomplish?
Do you really draw a distinction between "facing the consequences of his own actions" (your words) and "had it coming" (my words)? Is your position seriously that the former is a reasonable paraphrase and the latter an indefensible falsehood? Obviously we've completely lost the plot here but that's such a surprising stance that I can't help but get pulled into this.
Yes, I do.
Lack of sympathy for the result of the actions or statements one has made is nowhere close to wishing those results upon someone.
“I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage”
I think this might be a semantic misunderstanding.
To me, the phrase "to face the consequences of one's own actions" is an observation that someone has previously done something that is now causing them harm, while the phrase "to have it coming" specifically means that they deserve that harm.
For example, if you lend money to a friend and they don't repay you, I might say that you're facing the consequences of lending them money, but I wouldn't say that you had it coming (unless, for some reason, I'm glad they didn't repay you).
I think the implication that getting shot in the neck is an acceptable “consequence” for being an asshole is not a great thing.
Also, there’s at least one comment in this very thread wishing that the shooter had better aim.
For being an asshole? No.
Was Charlie Kirk merely an asshole? No.
Did he make multiple statements that reiterated that certain laws in the US are worth the violence they beget? Yes.
Which was made well after my comment above.
And has been deleted now
As I predicted it would be.
I don't think it's an acceptable consequence. But we are allowed to not feel any empathy over the death of a man who repeatedly argued that empathy is a weakness. It's what he would have wanted after all. And I think every Republican throwing a fit over this is a truly massive hypocrite after they pardoned all the J6 insurrectionists.
Person advocating for political violence victim of political violence. My neck of the world we call that karma.
I see literally nobody saying otherwise? Top comment is basically “you reap what you sow”, the next two are explicitly concerned about escalating political violence, and the other couple are about the facts and reaction. What’s concerning you in particular?
It's bad, but seemingly ineviatable at this point. When you spend 5 years at the bare minimum fostering and evevn inciting violence upon people, then violence is the result.
I don't condone it , but when the leadership renames their army to the "department of War" and then threatens to invade a domestic city, I don't see any other result happening, esepcially in such a connected world where information travels the world in minutes.
Some political violence is good. Never ideal, but it can be just.
This?...Kirk has always been a ridiculous rabblerouser. Cruel, and hateful, and callous, and hypocritical, but probably not "worthy" of assassination. However any of us feel though, it's a sign of things to come.
In this era, I don't think any rabble rouser qualifies as ridiculous, regardless of how ignorant or anti intellectual/ anti science they might be.
Repeated public hate speech is one of the stepping stones to genocide. Social media allowing hate speech has been a direct cause of pogroms and riots around the world.
I'm afraid of what comes next and I don't support violence. I just reacted to your comment about ridiculousness because the anti intellectuals are deadly serious about their beliefs.
No, that's fair. But they are ridiculous regardless. Losing sight of this is how people begin to tolerate their hatred. Beside that, the logic of fascism is built on a self-image of power. He deserved to be mocked mercilessly and ignored beside that, and I'm pulling the μολὼν λαβέ card should anyone defend his ideas one way or another.
I learned of Leonidas in my youth, but not by studying greek. Hopefully it won't come to that but it plausibly might.
Considering I've seen legitimate "Luigi is a hero" stuff being upvoted on Tildes, I'm completely not surprised. It really is not different from Reddit at this point, which I guess makes sense considering where the users came from.
Just FYI I'm rate limited for whatever reason (another phenomenal aspect of this website...) and cannot respond.
Surely if you're going to say "ugh, reddit" with a metaphorical eye roll, it's better to engage in the kind of conversation you want to see rather than criticise? There are a lot of very nuanced things to discuss here around violence, ethics, and morality and this is one of the very few places I trust that conversation can actually happen without going too far off the rails.
For what it's worth, while I wouldn't call Luigi a hero, I would say that killing someone who has caused the unnecessary deaths of many others is morally justified - albeit very, very likely to backfire from a practical perspective.
Not sure if you've seen, but on Tildes alone there are at least two people I know of whom are no longer in perpetual suffering because Luigi killed the guy responsible.
And it had a ripple effect throughout the health insurance industry. Claims denials are a lot lower.
If someone kills a guy with a boot on your neck, you'd probably say thank you too.
Yeah I'm not really convinced by the logic of "forcing someone into doing something that is good for you by method of political assassination is a good thing". Since the comments here love incredibly thoughtful discussions of Putin and Hitler as examples of "well wouldn't you murder them???", both Putin and Hitler helped a lot of people in major ways, including life saving, just at the cost of someone else's lives and livelihoods. And both Putin and Hitler were absolutely convinced that were/are they doing was right through what I would consider some twisted logic, kind of like every single extremist thinks that way. I personally cannot stand this kind of extremism and it makes me feel quite upset that this community, supposedly gated with intent for thoughtful and measured discussions, is seemingly so into that type of extremism.
It's actually quite a common opinion that Adolf Hitler was a bad person who should've been shot. You'll find this view in real life too for many reasons. I would say that a widely held view is definitionally not an extremist position. I don't know why you'd expect Tildes users to have a neutral stance on Hitler.
I would also rather you not try defending Adolf Hitler to make a point. Nobody hated Hitler for his life-saving assistance (I don't know where you got this from). People hated Hitler for being a genocidal tyrant.
I'm not sure where in my post did you find a defense of Adolf Hitler. I condemn all extremists that use political violence as means of achieving the goals that they of course view as righteous. That includes Hitler, Putin, Luigi and the person who killed Charlie Kirk. I also condemn everyone that views their actions as good, though obviously not in the same way.
Violence against innocent and sometimes defenceless people, motivated by retaining or grabbing more power.
Violence against the above described perpetrator, motivated by helping someone other than yourself.
You don't seem to distinguish between these in your comment. Is that intentional or just my interpretation?
Last I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people (saying that an insurance company denying claims is akin to that is laughable). In that their killers are apparently closer to Putin and Hitler than the victims ever were.
This is true in the immediate context (direct physical violence) but not in the broader one where a CEO has multitudes more power than the individuals who get health insurance from his company. More power within society in general and additionally, power over these individuals in particular. Abusing that power for personal gain is structurally similar to what warlords do, even when it happens ostensibly within legal limits, because in a capitalist system the lawmaker is usually a collaborator that enables this type of punching down.
Hitler, Putin and the aforementioned "gentlemen" are/were all working towards the exploitative goal of concentrating power into ever fewer hands - either their own or their collaborators'. Mangione made a personal sacrifice (the direct opposite of a power grab) in order to help diffuse or slow down this development.
While I don't condone this type of violence against oppressive powers, I also don't think it fair to evaluate it out of context - as if the CEO's actions didn't count just because they weren't personally shooting their victims with a gun. Slavery used to be legal but it was oppressive, violent and morally unjustifiable nevertheless.
Yea. Monsters do tend to reward their supporters while being happy to imprison or murder anybody who is not.
If they had 0 supporters, they'd be removed from power pretty quickly.
One thing from reddit I don't like is when someone states a false narrative about the comment section and then someone else jumps in saying "Yeah, I agree!", as if there is a collective effort to manifest the idea that comments went in a way they demonstrably didn't.
Would the assassination of say Putin be a bad thing?
TINFOIL HAT ZONE
Coincidence?
How possible is it that this might be some sort of play to deflect from further attention on the Epstein list? And if not that, then what? I mean, as stupid and annoying as his stuff was, Charlie Kirk? Of all people? Who'd hate him enough to pick him off? Someone with the skills to make that one single shot among a number of bystanders? Really?
I'm not even into conspiracy theories, but I can't figure this is coincidence. Kirk's death is going to be useful to somebody. It's no secret that there are both internal and external agents who have been fomenting unrest for a potential civil war. I've fully expected since the election results were announced that Trump will get the country into a war somewhere. He's been doing his best to distract people from the files ever since they came up and it seems like he's progressively gotten more unhinged with the antics to do so - ICE troops, renaming the Washington Commanders, mobilizing national guard in DC, renaming the DoD to the Dept. of War(!).
I dunno. I'm rambling. I'm not paying enough attention to keep track of all the bullshit, but skeptical hippo is skeptical.
Contribute if you like.
Extremely unlikely. This sort of thing almost never happens, and it would be a colossally stupid thing to do in the age of smartphones. The shooter seems to have gotten away without anyone having taken any useful photos or videos of them, but all it would take is one person with a smartphone at the right time and place to completely screw the whole plan over. Also, the conspiracy would have to extend at least from the head of the FBI all the way down to campus police. Not remotely plausible.
Hm. I'm not really rabid about this but I'm not seeing why you dismiss it out of hand. We may be hypothesizing within different frameworks.
You mean secretly planned assassinations by high-ranking members of gov't or approved by agency heads? Maybe it hardly happens on US soil, or to Americans, but it's happened often enough. Even the notion that it hasn't been done to Americans probably isn't exactly true... there just haven't been many obviously suspicious cases with national attention since maybe the 70s. You can argue that CIA or even FBI influence has become more sophisticated nowadays than sheer violence, but the shooting could be purposeful to manipulate public opinion.
Or do you mean false flag ops in general?
Plus, if we operate under the assumption that Trump is trying to deflect from some damning info that would cost him power (yes, big assumption, but that's the crux that would make this scenario plausible)... what is there in his track record that would make you believe that he'd be beholden to precedent?
Smartphones are not deterring professional assassinations today. I'm talking about a CIA/military-employed hitman. Smartphones would be within their standard threat model, nothing that wouldn't be accounted for. And even so, are we not seeing stupid things being done everyday by this administration?
Why do you think so? Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants; if he needed this done and the right CIA head or army general were that loyal to him, why couldn't it be organized within a chain of 5 or 6 people tops? With false information somewhere along the way as to the nature of the operation to boot? Classified and need-to-know basis? The shooter doesn't have to be in on it with the people looking for him, he just needs to evade them, and that's quite possible.
I’m not saying I believe the OP tinfoil hat “direction” – Occam’s razor and all that – buuuuut that said, I also don’t think cooperation all the way from, say, the head of the FBI to campus police would have been strictly necessary for this scenario. If they really did send some kind of super duper well-trained mercenary type person to a rather poorly safeguarded event, who’s to say they couldn’t have gotten away “naturally” after a single, well-aimed longer distance shot? Maybe even with one or two helpers from the same entity made to look like college-aged students?
Well, it’s not coincidence, but the cause is the extremely high tensions between the left and right at the moment. There is a lot of political violence happening right now.. I’m quite sure this won’t be the end of it by a long shot.
when the givers of certain principles get to be the receivers thereof
Also, dear domestic intelligence apparatus, we're not celebrating Charlie Kirk's tragic death, we're just musing how Charlie Kirk would celebrate it himself. We're just here to discuss and respect his beliefs.
I'm glad you found a way to take this news and announce how you're morally superior to everyone else on this site.
The top comment as of right now states that he considered this kind of death an acceptable tradeoff. Most of us on this site do not agree. If we had our way Charlie Kirk would likely be alive. We're not exactly jumping up and down with glee. I don't really give a shit about this guy and him dying doesn't kill the terrible ideas he spread.
Lou I generally appreciate your contributions but you don't live here and you are missing important context if you want to understand.
Maybe you want to listen to some of his content or read some quotes.
What would you prefer the reaction to be? I think the general tenor here has been fairly appropriate given the context, but you and a few others clearly disagree, so I’m interested in that perspective even though it’s unlikely to change my own.