All: if you can't respond in a non-violent way, please don't post until you can.
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer have a need to express it aggressively.
The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
While I like that quote, i just went to lookup the speach and was sadden to learn you “sanitized” it. Taking out the phrase “vast majority of white people and vast majority of black people”
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.
>> Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! [April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee]
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
So perhaps a better excerpt in light of recent events would be
>> And another reason that I'm happy to live in [the second half of the 20th century] is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
His point was that once the physical power individuals/governments hold exceeds a threshold, a pluralistic society cannot coexist with violence being an acceptable option.
In the context of the 1960s, governments and nuclear weapons. But more broadly the same holds true for individuals.
Either we learn to live together despite our differences, or we use our newfound great power to annihilate each other.
Society can be shockingly resilient to personal violence especially if it’s primarily people at the top in terms of status, wealth, or political power are regularly getting assassinated. Recently gangs have been shockingly stable despite relentless violence but historically duals between gentlemen etc where quite common.
By historical standards we’re living is a near paradise of non violence and that’s worth persevering at significant cost.
I think when it becomes normal for 10% or more of the citizens of a country to say they wouldn’t be upset if some member of the opposing political party were to die or when it becomes normal for that portion of the people to make fun or celebrate the death of someone from an opposing party or their murderer, everyone needs to take a step back regardless of which side you’re on and say “Why?” Because these people are not murderers or accomplices, and they are generally good people. These aren’t people that would lynch anyone or burn a cross in someone’s yard.
It’s awful that anyone dies.
Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.
> everyone needs to take a step back regardless of which side you’re on and say “Why?”
It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:
"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, [...] But 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."
America means guns. It's written in our constitution, reinforced through our history, reflected in our multimedia franchises and sold to American citizens as a product. The only way out of this situation is through it - we can't declare a firearms ban in-media-res without inciting even more violence and dividing people further. At the same time, America cannot continue to sustain this loss of our politicians, schoolchildren and minority populations. The threat to democracy is real, exacerbated by the potential for further "emergency powers" abuse we're familiar with from both parties.
When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.
It's worth looking at what kinds of things parties are proposing.
How do you feel about wealth seizures? Retrospective changes to tax deals and pensions? Laws retrospectively changing?
These are quite bad, even seditious. At some point when actors appear to working on behalf of enemies what are you supposed to feel?
On the other hand, there are people confounding powers with rights. Changing rules and laws going forward might be against ones wishes, but supposing you have freedom you can choose to opt out.
There is something terrible going on in the meta where words are being confused to the point where conversations can not even happen because of confusion and mental models that lead to interactive errors that turn simple statements into threats of violence where there was none.
It really feels like denialism and lack of caring about language is at the heart of it.
If some people can't think conditionally, do not know the difference between blame and causation, don't understand what trust means in terms of contributions and tracking things ... Where to start?
This is what amazes me about U.S. politics - there's power-seeking individuals that are clearly trying to hurt other people and are objectively not good people (e.g. convicted rapist, multiple felonies and a long history of not paying bills if they can possibly get away with it).
I mean, it's worrying when public figures can decry "empathy" as being a major problem with society (e.g. "I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage"). To my mind, persuading others to not be empathic is a clear sign of being evil.
No the empathy comment is about it being confused with naive sympathy.
Empathy means fully simulating the other person state of mind and world. Empathy is cognitive spend.
Love thy enemy is a short cut because human brains seem to be unable to think properly in anger. You need to simulate your enemy to understand their positions and seek deals.
If you think that encouraging empathy is a bad thing and discouraging empathy is good, then there's little hope for you. The lack of empathy can easily be shown to lead to the evils of Nazism and the desire to be cruel to people who are not "in our group" (e.g. their skin colour is different or were born elsewhere)
It could be argued that France is one of the healthier modern democracies exactly because the French are willing to do a little violence from time to time to keep those scales balanced
This is quite backwards. Right now revolts in France are useless. When they were useful back in the days, a lot of citizens had guns. Guns laws changed to reduce their powers
They are not useless in the sense that they are visible and at some point the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever or else the dictatorship becomes assumed.
But current protests aren't revolts nor violence anyway. There is side/peripheral violence but that is not the point of the protests
> These aren’t people that would lynch anyone or burn a cross in someone’s yard.
They'd vote for someone who would, though. I'm not being flippant; this is why contemporary American politics is so shockingly polarized.
Republican lawmakers will institute extreme and overtly cruel policies (such as the ongoing crackdown on immigrants, tourists, and permanent residents), and people who are upset by this blame Republican voters regardless of how kind or personable those voters are in person. On the flip side, conspiracism has become so mainstream in the Republican party that many Republicans genuinely believe the Democratic party is responsible for a QAnon-style conspiracy, and they blame Democratic voters for complicity in this.
We certainly don't need another Hitler, but we didn't need the first one either. He rose to power because he won an election: More Germans voted for the Nazis than for any other party. Most of those voters were generally decent people who would never lynch anyone, and yet they elected Hitler anyway. Decent people do terrible things. There's no easy way out of this.
To be clear: Hitler was not put in power by any election. Von Papen and Hindeberg, under advice from industry leaders, gave him power.
In fact, the Nazi party electoral results were down from the previous election. Both the socialist and communist party were up however, and so the men in power chose Hitler to change that. All of those were killed or politically neutered within 6 months, and honestly, they made their bed.
The Nazis and the Communists won enough seats between them in 1932 that it was impossible for Hindenburg to form a government without one or the other. Hitler didn't win a majority, but he won more seats than anyone else, which was enough to ultimately finagle his way to the Chancellorship through broadly legitimate means. I'd call that an electoral victory, albeit a weaselly one.
Of course, then the Reichstag caught fire, and that was about it for Weimar democracy. But up until that point, his political success came off the back of genuine popularity at the ballot box. He only managed to became Chancellor because enough people voted for him.
He could forma coalition with the Socialists, but they pushed for an agrarian reform that would have taken power away from landlords/landowners in east germany, which was the conservative base of power.
It was a choice: Socialists, Nazis or communist, and as always "Plutot Hitler que le Front Populaire", the extreme center choose fascism. The more thing changes, the more they stay the same.
Oh I agree, I don't think the Republican agenda reflects some sort of authentic "will of the people." It's produced as much by propaganda as anything else.
Nevertheless, it's propaganda that many Americans have swallowed, and those people then go on to put Republicans in power year after year. I can't fault Democrats for their bitterness towards Republican voters.
I’m not aware of any rigorous modelling that supports what Goering argued though. It’s certainly possible but it’s also not a given by a long shot. FPTP in the UK is not based on the popular vote, it’s essentially the outcome of 650 mini-elections. If Nazi support was efficiently distributed, there’s a good chance they’d have won a strong majority, but if support was focused geographically, they might have ended up with fewer seats.
If you’re aware of any more accurate modelling, I’d be super interested though!
That doesn't really address anything in the post you responded to. Are you sure you replied to the right post? Usually replies address the post they respond to.
If you're intentionally responding to just any post to vent your anger at people who you disagree with (i.e. it wasn't a mistake) then feel free to ignore me.
Trump is actively arresting and deporting people for participating in pro-Palestine protests. What are Democrats doing that is even a fraction as censorious?
Who are "we," and what is it that "you're" not putting up with? The last act of violence comparable to this (against a Republican, that is—two Minnesota Democrats were shot in June¹) was the 2024 attempt on Trump's life, where the shooter was a registered Republican who espoused anti-immigrant sentiments on social media².
I give it better than even odds that the Kirk shooter, if they have any coherent political views at all, is right of centre. That's where all the violent radicalization is happening right now.
Anyway, pointing out that the right is engages in political violence at astronomically higher rates than the left is hardly "deflection." I'm addressing and refuting your point directly.
The most sustainable vision wins eventually. If history has anything to teach us, is that it's full of extremely unpleasant periods between the stable ones. And things aren't looking like they're improving.
That's what's happening. Neoliberalism is slowly drifting into fascism, as it has already done multiple times in the past. Maybe what comes after will be actually stable, and not just metastable.
That would be a great world if that vision could materialize. But as long as people continue polarizing society, exploiting emotions, and using divide and conquer[1] tactics to gain political power, not much will change, and things may even get worse. Social networks have amplified this dynamic more than ever before.
GP is currently the highest comment, and on other sites I've visited, while too many people cheer this or call for violent retaliation, most of the highly-upvoted comments (both liberal and conservative) condemn it and argue for de-escalation.
Anger and fear are powerful emotions, but so is hope. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and became President, winning his first election with the highest %votes since 1988. Donald Trump also became President in part due to hope; his supporters expected him to improve their lives, while most of Hillary Clinton's and Kamala Harris's supporters just expected them to not make things worse. Now lots of people desperately need hope, and if things get worse more will.
Irrational hope can be dangerous: all the time, people make decisions that backfire horribly, and deep down they knew those decisions would backfire horribly, but they made them anyways out of desperation for an unlikely success. Perhaps this is another example, where the assassin delusionally hoped it would somehow promote and further their desires, but it will almost certainly do the opposite.
But hope can also be rational, and unlike anger and fear (which at best prevent bad things), hope can intrinsically be for causing good things. If a group or candidate that runs on hope for a better world gets enough attention and perceived status, it could turn public perception back to unity and optimism.
Have we considered that the assassin, directly or indirectly, is a seditious third party actor trying to destabilize the US?
I am not claiming this is true. But merely that if I was employed to destabilize the US, I would claim to have been responsible for a number of recent events in order to please my boss.
I am hoping the possibility of a joint common enemy can perhaps unite people in America a bit.
There is also the conspiratorial possibility, that this was a planed false flag operation.
When the elected democrat couple was shot, the murder had "no kings" printed out and left in his car. Most names on his kill list were democrats but a few ones were republican, so fox news could tell the sheeps that it wasnt them, the MAGAs. No stochastic terrorism, just a single lunatic.
Hitler burnt down the Reichstag to justify his power grab and now we have trump coming out with a fast AI produced/polished response. IMO, timing and quality make this video special, maybe it was part of the plan too. And ofc, he doesnt blame voilent extremisn but "the left" in general, as usual.
I know most reasonable people have difficulties thinking about it. Many people "thought we are smarter" by now, but what if this is actually another fast paced playbook, to mobilize the violent sheep (which are obviously more concentrated and agitated on the right) to paralyze and take over the US. What if we are not smarter by now.
Exactly this, maybe slower, happened before and is happening right now not just in the US. You really should consider this possibility and how fair and balanced you can be, when the other side is not.
I believe that social media tapped inadvertently into the most effective way ever existed to do this.
None of the billionaires really wanted them, I think it was just a happy accident. But instead of recognizing that, they all doubled down with gaslighting and toxicity, because admitting they created a monster would just go against them becoming powerful and rich.
And also, let's admit it, because they genuinely can't see it as the monster it is, because it doesn't affect them directly.
edit: it's funny to see my post above offended(?) people who want to believe that americans are kind and loving, despite uh being on a post where everyone is arguing about how bad the political violence and polarization situation is in the US
A lot of people in the US seem to view deporting illegal immigrants as some far-right move bordering on fascism
Meanwhile, in Australia, it is a bipartisan policy. Read this article about what the centre-left Albanese government just did: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/04/labor... (that article technically isn’t about “illegal immigrants”, it is about a group of people who are predominantly legal immigrants who have had their visas cancelled due to criminal convictions-but they don’t treat the illegal immigrants any better)
We've been deporting illegal immigrants for as long as there has been an immigration policy--and yes, that policy is bipartisan. See the data at https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2022/table3... -- and consider who held office when the removal rate doubled in 1997. (2021 is an anomalous year, for reasons you can probably guess.)
The contentious issue is not whether the law is being enforced, but rather how it is enforced. Most first-world countries do it with a certain amount of decorum. We've been doing it since Trump regained office with a shock-and-awe approach that is highly disruptive, violent, and of questionable legality.
Democrats have been dreaming of “turning Texas blue” for years now, but I’m sceptical that will ever happen. The GOP-and Trump in particular-has been making big inroads with Hispanic Texans. The idea that a “minority-majority” US would result in permanent rule by the Democratic party relied on the assumption that Democrats have a permanent lock on ethnic/racial minority voters-an assumption which appears increasingly dubious
> Democrats (or, at least, democrat leadership) support illegal immigration because they want a demographically-guaranteed majority in the US
1. This makes no sense. Only citizens can vote, and so no number of undocumented immigrants in the country can affect an election outcome.
2. Democrats don't support illegal immigration as such. However, they do recognize the complexities of the labor force and the practical reality that undocumented immigrants do a lot of unskilled labor from agriculture to janitorial services, and thus tough enforcement of the laws and removing them all would have serious adverse consequences to our economy. They have tried to boost legal immigration but have been stonewalled.
> Anyone who says they don't understand this is a liar or a naif.
Personal attacks aren't permitted here. People are entitled to have reasonable disagreements.
Correction: hate unchecked and amplified by social media wins elections. David Duke and Pat Buchanan, both notorious racists (the former being Grand Wizard of the KKK), ran for President but the mainstream media (which were once the only media most people consumed) constrained their influence.
There is both Eros and Thanatos. Everything ad based (social media, evening news, YouTube, Reddit, elections) turns towards Thanatos ultimately. They used to put hidden images of skulls and other dark and dangerous subliminal symbology in whiskey ads back in 70s. Sex sells, maybe, but if it bleeds it leads.
I don't think this is quite true, it may have ended it faster, but I don't think it would still exist today if the civil war had not happened. Most other countries ended slavery without a violent civil war, especially if you think about the way technology vastly outweighed the usefulness of having slaves.
And then when Charlie Kirk says "Some deaths were worth it...", he is talking about accidents and abuses of guns by shooters. He doesn't mean that violence is the answer to politics, it would be great if nobody died from mass shootings. But he is saying that having the right to bear arms to defend yourself is preferable to the alternative where you have no right to do that.
He doesn't say that. You're editorializing on his behalf.
Here's the full quote. He's fully aware of violence cause by mental illness and domestic terrorism.
>> 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, I — 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.
>> So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?
it's such an insane american belief that the answer to safety is not: reduce gun amounts, reduce what guns people can buy, improve mental health counseling, improve healthcare, improve quality of life through cheaper housing and well-paying jobs, but instead the copout which doesn't even work--adding armed police outside of every school.
uvalde called, it doesn't work. and the rest of the world looks on in shame at this exceptionally american and exceptionally cruel system.
Just as a heads up, I do not condone violence of any sort nor mean to compare the ending of slavery with today's political violence.
Many Quakers believe now that slavery was irreconcilable, and that they prolonged the suffering of those enslaved by advocating against war and for unity in America at the time of the civil war even though it was obvious to many even then that there was no peaceful, tractable means to end slavery. Even today, many historians do not believe there was an obvious end to slavery in the US in sight. How much did the Quakers advocacy for peace, despite being a voice for opposition to slavery in the north, prolong slavery? Quakers to this day grapple with it.
Wishful scenarios slavery being peacefully resolved does read as speculative fiction similar to the naive hopes of the Quakers in this context. I think it reads as naive to the point of willful ignorance or apologetic to slavers to those of us who descend from slaves, too (not that you are willfully ignorant or apologetic necessarily - just stating how it might be received).
Would you bear with me for a comparable scenario that might lead to similar reactions: Perhaps if Britain and France never declared war on Germany, and then the groups responsible for crimes against humanity would have eventually created a society that promoted the equality of men? - This is to say, I don't think that's fair or certain to suggest slavery would peacefully end given there was no realistic political movement at the time for the end of constitutionally and judicially enabled slavery in the US.
I understand if this is a sensitive time, that comparisons to the civil war may not be the most helpful.
However, if these are not helpful, I would hope we would not attempt to use these moments that we should be united in attempting to claim that slavery in the United States would have simply stopped. Historians today reject this, and historians like Eric Foner, Gavin Wright, James Oakes have all written books that provide evidence that slavery was expanding and evolving, and that a major cornerstone for nearly half of the country's economy was not going to disappear in 10, 20, or 100 years.
IRC was invented before the end of the South African apartheid - the United States was lucky to avoid such a terrible fate.
As an aside, it's not pleasant to see speculative conjecture about the inevitable end of slavery side-by-side with quotations from RFK, and feels counter to the goal of the pinned comment.
Thanks to the mod team for generally keeping this comment section civil.
> Bobby Kennedy made that speech, was assassinated shortly afterwards, and Nixon won, prolonging the Vietnam War for another 6 years. Bobby Kennedy, also made a historic speech in Indianapolis that quelled rioting after the MLK assassination
You are talking about the same speech. It was a great speech
Aeschylus is a great greek poet. For our purposes here I might advocate for Jung (paraphrasing from memory)
In the end there is no going forward in the current context; there are no solutions there. It requires renewed vigor to move to a higher, better frame where growth is possible.
For us americans: political identity (libs v. Trump) has no solutions. Better: the political parties need to serve us. Dead kids or abused kids by adults (Epstein) cannot stand. What can 3.5 std deviations of center left and right get together over? Kids surely. And the knowledge (as Aeschylus narrates well elsewhere with the furies) that violence begets violence surely.
The crowd that gleefully mused about feeding immigrants to alligators would beg of you to please dig deep and find something nice to say about a man who died of gun violence, in the middle of an answer downplaying gun violence, after a long career of saying gun violence is inevitable and necessary for America.
When Republicans speak to the public, they engage in propaganda.
Begging you to say something nice about Charlie Kirk is propaganda.
Downplaying gun violence is propaganda.
A career of saying gun violence is inevitable and necessary for America is propaganda.
edit: Republicans are very upset in the replies to this comment. But notice that they aren't trying to engage with me or trying to critique my perspective. That is the dynamic that I'm pointing out.
I love how one of the flagged responses was saying how Kirk's killer was on the Left - providing a perfect example of the propaganda lies you mentioned
Well then you don't have to listen to them or consider how you might be wrong then, do you? How convenient.
Literally every person who's a "Republican" is speaking purely to manipulate people, dishonestly, towards evil ends.
Oh, and of course anyone who calls out you've installed yourself in a little ivory tower - where you can mutter your very-superior-and-above-them-Republicans "liberal discourse" - must of course be a Republican.
Frankly I don't think this is even driven by narcissism, but just a profound laziness. You budging and inch from any single thing you already believe - that inconvenience - would be a personal affront, a disturbance in your entitlement to feel maximally comfortable at all times.
He stated that we should not disarm ourselves because evil exists.
I’m not completely sure I agree with that answer, but it suddenly doesn’t excuse evil.
Also as immigrant I assure you that most of us are legal - please stop using us for your arguments in favour of illegal immigration - and would be unlikely to be arrested for a crime and would not try and flee if arrested, so there’s very little chance I will be eaten be alligators.
ICE indiscriminately rounds up citizens, visa holders, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants.
It does not matter.
They even got the Supreme Court to affirm that the palette of your skin is a fine indicator of whether or not you spend the next couple of months in a cell for processing.
I am glad you possess the certainty that the leopards will never eat your face!
The argument is not in favor of illegal immigration, it’s in favor of allowing people to go before a judge before they are deported. Because otherwise you can take literally anyone off the street and deport them to a gulag in El Salvador, and we may as well not bother with society.
It's not a left/right divide, it's a violent/non-violent divide. There've been people across the political spectrum on the violent side, it's not correlated to the left or right.
I'll give credit to all the folks on the left condemning the attack. I think Cenk is a fantastic and refreshing example of that. But the the political persecution and violence is overwhelmingly coming from the left.
> Numbers [of deaths] for right-wing extremist violence are far higher, with numerous high-profile terrorist attacks as well as lower-level assaults, vandalism, and other forms of violence. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, far-right extremists have killed 130 people in the United States, more than any other political cause, including jihadists.
Very intelligent argument there. It's a wonder why people don't respect you or your opinions. Clearly you're an unmatched genius, probably one of the smartest and most correct people that have ever lived
The answer was pointing out how much of 'gun violence' is gang violence, which is a valid point but seems some gloss over the gang problem so they don't look racist, so they just tell you you're 'downplaying' for mentioning it.
Your statement is patently false; gangs do commit mass shootings. While there is no 'standard' definition of one, let's use the somewhat accepted definition of 4+ humans shot. Gangs definitely do commit shootings that fall into this category.
That said, it's absolutely disingenuous for 2nd Amendment advocates to point fingers at marginalized groups (trans, the mentally ill, POC, etc) as the reason for mass shootings. This is a standard Conservative trope; point fingers at 'the others' in order to ignore the root cause of the issue which would most certainly reduce the severity and frequency of these happening in the US.
I'd like to point out though it would be highly unusual for someone to characterize violent gags as "marginalized groups" even if it might truly be the case. I don't know if that's what you meant but I was having trouble following the train of thought from the gang comment by Kirk.
History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels.
I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.
====
Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Something I like to remind myself of is that all past wars, even ones thousands of years ago, took place in as vibrant colors and fluid detail as we experience today, not in grainy black and white photos or paintings.
Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
> Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
As someone whose parents, grandparents, and entire family lived in Italy through WWII (and one grandfather who lost an eye in WWI), nobody liked talking about it.
If they did talk about it, it was usually brief and imbued with a feeling of "thank God it's over. what a tragedy that we were all used as pawns by the political class for nothing more than selfish ambitions."
Isn't that just a comforting fantasy, though? Germans also embraced the myth of Hitler as a guy who just somehow hoodwinked everyone and made good people do terrible things.
There was a prominent component of political scheming to his rise to power, and it was a totalitarian state that murdered political opponents even before it got to genocide, but he was enthusiastically supported by a large portion of the German society.
> Isn't that just a comforting fantasy, though? Germans also embraced the myth of Hitler as a guy who just somehow hoodwinked everyone and made good people do terrible things.
And there's no doubt about it - it was a myth. Most of Germany stood behind him, and were outraged by the failed July 20th coup... In 1944. Ivan and Uncle Sam were kicking down the door, extermination camps were working overtime, yet most people were still fully behind him.
The hardest thing for people to admit is that they've been duped.
And they liked it so much that 1918 nearly resulted in revolution.
Anyone picking up the paper could tell that the war wasn't going to be won by them in 1944. It was two years after Stalingrad, a year after Kursk and Italy's surrender, France was being liberated, Finland was collapsing, and Germany was fighting a three-front war.
Compared to all that, 1918 at the time of the armistice looked down-right optimistic.
> Isn't that just a comforting fantasy, though? Germans also embraced the myth of Hitler as a guy who just somehow hoodwinked everyone and made good people do terrible things.
Another way this observation is manifested is how out of nowhere you have countries voting in extremist parties and politicians.
As a point of fact, Germans never elected Hitler. The National Socialists never achieved a majority, and their share of the vote had been decreasing over successive elections.
Hitler was appointed to the chancellorship by senior political leaders (the president and the former chancellor) who thought they could control him. Unfortunately Germany at the time embraced the "unitary executive" theory of government.
Probably more fluid details than today where someone can push a button and level a building 1000 miles away without seeing the faces of any of the people torn to shreds. Maybe there would be less appetite for war if people had to still physically hack up their enemies with a sword or axe.
There was an idea that the key to the nuclear launch codes should be surgically implanted adjacent to the heart of the president’s assistant. If the president should desire to launch the nukes, they would have to personally cut down a man and pull the key from the man’s entrails.
It was essentially not done because it would be too effective.
I think there is a general distance to a lot of things in today's society. Very few of us have to farm or hunt for our own food, or clean an animal carcass. I don't have a strong view on the moral aspects of eating animals (I'm not a vegetarian or vegan), but I think it'll probably do some good if anyone that eats meat at some point slaughters, cleans and butchers one of the animals they eat.
I agree, a society shielded from blood either grows callous to it as long as the blood is somebody else's or becomes too traumatised to even defend itself even if the aggressor is perfectly fine killing them
It’s John von Neumann’s idea, at least from the biography I read. Before too much praise is heaped upon him, he also strongly argued for a nuclear first strike on Soviet Union before they got their own nuclear weapons because it was best strategy from game theory POV.
I think it was Call of Duty 2 (when the franchise was still WW2-based) when they would show, in my recollection, an anti-war message including this one every time your character died. I think this was absent from later incarnations of the franchise.
And the quotes showed up longer, like 5 seconds, so you could read them in full. Later games would display the quote for 1-2 seconds, which often wouldn’t be enough time to process the full text
Cod 4, World at War, and MW2(?) also did this to my memory. At least one of them did for sure. Not always necessarily anti-war, but historical quotes related to war.
I suspect that for every grandpa who likes telling war stories, there are probably a hundred who get quiet and sullen when the war comes up and have to excuse themselves and go be alone for a while.
I was at Auschwitz in summer. It was beautiful weather, the birds were singing, flowers everywhere. Hard to connect this to the conditions in a concentration camp. It would have been much easier in winter.
I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in February of 1995. It was well below freezing and there was some type of ice ball precipitation, perhaps because it was too cold to snow. I was the only person there.
I walked all the way back from the famous entrance gate, along the train tracks, to the monument at the back. The place was huge and imagining people suffering there during that type of weather was especially heartbreaking. I was luckily able to convince the taxi driver to wait for me. I have some black and white photos I took of it somewhere on my shelves. That visit sticks with me more powerfully than almost anywhere else I've been.
I was at Dachau a couple summers ago in similar weather. I actually found it worse and hit harder because it was such a pleasant day as I watched people stroll around the grounds, taking selfies, kids running around playing. It made me feel like I couldn't even breath.
I visited Dachau years and years ago. It was a nice summer day, but a pallor fell over when we went inside the camp. It felt like the sky darkened and the color drained from the entire environment.
It might have reflected the experience of the guards. One of the most astonishing facts i heard was that the guards used to get prisoners to play music for them and would even be moved to tears!
It reveals something deep about the human condition. Auchwitz was a perfectly lovely place for many of the employees as long as they disassociated themselves from all the suffering and evil around them.
It is so well preserved, because those who were liberated from it, were so horrified at what they witnesses, that they did not want anyone to forget. It was a herculean effort, many wanted to bury it,because of the pain, and many more wanted to bury it, like it never happened.
A personal salute to all those who fought to preserve it.
There is a great video on the Poles who worked to preserve it. A lot of it is ... Unspeakable.
I was fortunate enough to once have the daughter of a client I took care of in a nursing home ask me if I would escort her dad and her on a day trip as he needed help into the bathroom and such. We ended up going to a Ukrainian hall in Vancouver BC where he was going to meet some old friends.
The older ladies busy making handmade perogies was such a delicious treat.
But I also got to meet Stefan Petelycky. He wrote the book:
Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine
He ended up there and was one of the lucky ones who made it out. When he pulled up his sleeve and showed me his tattoo, the number he was given there, a chill crossed my entire body and an overwhelming sense of sadness hit me.
I of course had heard about the concentration camps but seeing a tattoo in person made the event much more real where I could connect to the tragedy in a way I never did.
A lot of war stories get embellished and no one is going to challenge it.
There's the story about the guy who says he was the hardest working man in Vietnam, and then when pressed about what he did, he states he was a trucker to the great surprise of anyone listening.
When asked why he thought that, he says "well I was the only one."
The story wasn't actually about the trucker being hard working (or not), though I'm sure he was. He wasn't actually trying to make people believe he literally was the hardest working.
The joke is that everyone else he went to war with was claiming to be something else, so he must have delivered all the supplies himself.
The response is interesting to me, because having fought in a war, though I am not a US veteran -- I instantly got it. And the place I heard it from was more veteran dominated, and everyone instantly understood/appreciated the joke.
I didn’t get it until you explained it. It makes a lot of sense - people who have actually gone to war know of stolen valor and embellishments - you can sniff them immediately. People who have never been and don’t hang around military types much have much less of this kind of context
I think COVID proved we're not smarter now in multiple ways and from either side. Human nature is a weird thing that we clearly are still grasping to understand
We had the technology to push out a vaccine in less than a year. Modern medicine is of course smarter than it was a century ago.
What went poorly is our society's collective response. From the medical and governmental establishment, there was much hemming and hawing over what measures to take for way too long (masking, distancing, closing of public spaces, etc). Taking _any_ countermeasures against the spread of the virus also somehow became a culture war issue. I'm assuming GP meant "left or right" by "either side" so make of that what you will.
Yeah but, at least in my bubble in Europe, being for or against covid measures had little to do with left or right. It was about listening to mainstream media or having alternative source of information
I followed the mainstream media exclusively and still realised immediately that nobody actually had a clue what they were doing. My trust in MSM died then. Most alternative sources are even less reliable but i believe spreading a wider net gives me a better judgement. Whatever you do, don't exclusively outsource your opinions and judgement to the MSM. Too often they take up the same wrong narratives. This is easier said then done. Read the opinions and news even from people you despise and be honest with yourself.
Try to participate in any government...went to a town hall in a US city and both the company I worked for and unions were having people hold spots in line for FIFO comments body swapping for 'natural' opinion people. Media didn't report on it...ruined any trust I had in them.
> All (virtually all, it's not hyperbole) of the "misinformation" during covid turned out not to be that at all
> There was no science behind social distancing, or masks, or the (so called, it's not an actual one) vaccine
These assertions are provably wrong. Regarding "social distancing" specifically:
There was adequate empirical evidence for the effect of
social distancing at the individual level, and for partial
or full lockdown at the community level. However, at the
level of social settings, the evidence was moderate for
school closure, and was limited for workplace/business
closures as single targeted interventions.[0]
As to the science behind "masks" and "vaccines", the former can be trivially shown to limit the distance of oral particulate expulsion and the latter has enough published medical research to make verifying vaccine efficacy a matter of accepting facts.
> Edit: I would like to remind people that downvotes do not, and never will, make me wrong
> depending on what "side" you were on during covid
It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue. I can understand differing approaches, but it's the extreme polarisation that flabbergasts me.
> It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue.
It's a political issue no matter how you look at it, and it was a very political issue at that, considering what the state (throughout the Western world and elsewhere too) proposed doing.
To paint it as merely a "public health issue" is doing people who don't agree a tremendous disservice, and it is very much part of the othering that has led us here. Please stop it.
Clearly, illnesses and diseases are public health issues as are systems to manage food safety. People who don't agree with trying to find the best way to manage public health are obviously sociopathic, though that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree on particular approaches e.g. masks may or may not be effective (though they seem to have now been shown effective in masking ICE agents which is ironic).
Certain methods of dealing with public health issues have historically been shown to be incredibly effective (e.g. vaccination, milk pasteurisation etc), so it's disconcerning when there's a political movement that pushes an agenda that is clearly based on fear and not rational evaluation of the issues. It seems to me that there's a push to make the poorest sections of society become less healthy and more vulnerable.
People who are scared award power to leaders, and leaders use that power to advance their social agenda rather than merely try and solve the problem that scared people. It was ever thus.
Public health is not a technocratic field where there's always clearly one right answer. It presents itself as deciding on things that may hurt individuals but help the collective, and so it naturally attracts collectivists. In other words it's a political field, not a medical one. That then takes them into the realm of sides.
I don’t think we should have shut down the country like we did and still believe that COVID is real and affects those who are at risk. But the shutting down did more damage than the virus itself
I don’t believe that at all. COVID was real and serious, especially for vulnerable people. My point is that shutting down the entire country caused damage in areas like education, mental health, and livelihoods that also cost lives and well-being. Protecting those at risk could have been done without blanket shutdowns that hurt everyone.
Overall, Sweden didn't fare worse than other European countries with harder measures. But these things are really difficult to compare due to geographic and cultural issues. Sweden is quite rural. Swedes value personal distance, and from my limited experience they easily more readily conform to rules and social norms, so I would assume there was less close contact, and better adherence to the few rules given out.
The US btw. also is largely rural/sub-urban, which should significantly reduce the risk of infection. I think almost all of my colds and flues I got on the metro or the overcrowded super-market.
Yes, there was one study showing that Sweden fared better than the US. However the US as a whole, some of the States, are the sizes of countries. So you get a patchwork comparison. We would have to find a state with similar demographics, culture, economy, etc to compare.
Anecdotal, Dunning Kruger. Just look at the fucking statistics. Old and weak people died, because we didn't lock down enough, for the sake of the fucking economy.
Hmm, the number found online is that Covid killed 1.2 million in the US, so guessing the shutdown and vaccines probably saved millions. But your take is different. Guessing you disagree with the the 1.2m deaths figure? (not trying to be pushy, just curious on your take)
The 1.2m number is what’s reported, but whether shutdowns and mandates prevented multiples of that is something we can’t actually prove. What we do know is that shutting the country down caused deep economic, educational, and mental-health damage that will take decades to unwind.
I’m not sure it’s right to say we didn’t know what to do. Beaches and playgrounds were closed even though the risk of outdoor spread on surfaces was minimal. Those kinds of choices made the shutdown damage worse without clear public health benefit. We had the science to tell us that viruses don’t survive on beach surfaces for example
It was frustrating to have some of the outdoor ban stuff at a point when it was pretty clear that things were safe in highly ventilated environments. But in my opinion, that was relatively harmless compared to the backlash against common sense precautions, like properly fit N95 masks when sharing enclosed space.
There's a lot of criticism of places that kept schools closed for longer than was necessary, in retrospect. But we really didn't know whether it would always be the case that the risks to children were low. The virus could have mutated in a way that brought more risk. Or there could have been chronic effects that could only be seen after the passage of time. Given the infectiousness of the virus, it could have been so much worse.
I get the vaccine hesitancy. But I think a lot of people were not willing to accept that vaccination is not just about their own safety, but a collective safety issue.
> We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could.
So public policy should have reflected that, instead of going into counterproductive authoritarian clampdown mode. In my country the authorities literally switched overnight from threatening to jail parents who took their kids out of school to announcing mandatory school closures.
Would you, personally, be willing to die to save the economy? Or is your expectation that others would die to save the economy for you? The opposite end of completely unrestrained COVID spread could've been the Spanish Flu, which decimated and destroyed entire areas.
It’s not about letting people die. The issue is that broad shutdowns caused massive long-term harm, and targeted protection would have been a better balance.
I don't disagree with you, but the Spanish Flu killed 50 million. That's twice as much as died in WWI. Seems like it was, overall, a reasonable trade off, to save possibly tens of millions, the world went into a protective state.
And the next time this happens (which it probably will given the statistics), the US will probably handle it much better and the lock down will be less severe. I'm Korean American, and something like 10 years before covid, Korea had gone through an earlier pandemic (swine flu?), so when covid hit, it wasn't that big a deal. They already all knew what to do and the lock down wasn't as severe.
Yeah, our lockdown was overkill in many instances, but it was all so new to us. There's a good chance it'll be a lot better managed the next time.
Some would argue that the deaths by covid are the same as every year deaths by other pulmonary infectious diseases. I've read a ton of books and analysis done by statisticians. So I doubt we should have went crazy like we did.
If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, you have to engineer the pathogen such that it causes every infected person to melt in a puddle of grease with near 100% probability in about a week, with near 100% probability of transmission via any casual contact with infected persons at any stage of their infection. You just watch everyone scramble to the same side!
I don't think that applies if one of the sides is using rational arguments and statistics. However, during the initial COVID outbreak, there was a lack of knowledge and statistics about it, so there was some element of guesswork involved (e.g. face masks may be effective as they help with some other infectious diseases, so let's try wearing them to see if that helps).
There is a difference between 'lets try something out' and we will use the force of law to compel you to do something. A lot of people seem worried about over use of law enforcement but really its not a general problem with law enforcement but rather a problem with what laws are being enforced. They are happy to have law enforcement cracking down on people flouting a mask mandate but less happy when law enforcement is going after shop lifters.
Yes, there's often a lot of discussion about law enforcement priorities.
In general, law enforcement is used to prevent harmful behaviour that disrupts society, so preventing theft is typically high up on the list. I think the people decrying shop lifters being targetted are highlighting the hypocrisy of societies that celebrate people who can steal huge amounts of money (e.g. not paying for work/services provided due to them being a large organisation) and yet demonise people who are struggling to survive and end up stealing food.
I was somewhat on the fence about mask mandates (I'm in the UK by the way) as I didn't think the evidence for masks being effective was particularly strong, but I had no issue with wearing a mask in public as it seemed like a sensible precaution that wouldn't cause me any harm. Then, we had social distancing laws introduced which were fairly draconian, but most people tried to observe them. The real kicker was when Boris Johnson and his cronies were caught not following the laws that he himself had introduced.
We've always been on a knife edge it's just streamed straight into your eyes balls 24/7 now and social media means everyone has to have a black or white opinion about everything.
While that may be true to an extent, the 24/7 nature of it now is the equivalent of constantly red lining the engine. It used to be you'd go to meetings/gatherings of like minded people to get hopped up and your engines revved up like that, but they would for the most part cool back down after getting back home. Now, the engine never gets back to idle and stays red lined. At some point, the engine will break down, only instead of throwing a rod or ceasing up, something non-engine related will happen.
> It used to be you'd go to meetings/gatherings of like minded people to get hopped up and your engines revved up like that
I would go so far as to say going to meetings physically was also a counterbalance.
When you're around other people, even ones who share your beliefs, and say 'I think we should murder that guy!' then in most crowds someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'
It's when you exclusively socially exist in online spaces that the most extreme actions suddenly become encouraged.
Or as Josh Johnson recently quipped, "The internet is all gas no brakes."
> someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'
We might be thinking of different types of gatherings/meetings. Specifically, I was thinking of someone with a particular set of extremist ideals that get together for a monthly meeting with others with those same extremist ideals. Someone in that group would likely not say "are you okay" rather they'd say "hellzya brother!" or whatever they'd actually phrase it. These types of meetings are also known to have someone speak intentionally seeking to get a member to act as a lone wolf to actually carry out the comment you're hoping someone would tamper. Now, one doesn't need to go to meetings for that encouragement. They just open up whatever app/forum.
> When you're around other people, even ones who share your beliefs, and say 'I think we should murder that guy!' then in most crowds someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'
There are crowds where that guy is not there, is not heard, or doesn't speak up at all.
In those crowds, people reach out for their pitchforks and outright murder people.
If you take a frank look at history, you will notice those are all too frequent. Even in this century.
There doesn’t even need to be anyone saying no. When you’re standing with a crowd shouting “murder! murder!” it’s much harder to say “I’m not one of the bad guys” than when you’re online and you can say “well OK, there are a few bad apples in our group, but I’m not one of them!”
Anything I say on the internet, someone will always have a compelling but sometimes wrong argument as to why im wrong. If you listen to them for confirmation you'd never be able to do anything, and im not exaggerating. I could probably say the earth is round here on HN and some astrophysics PhD would tell me I failed to consider the 4th dimension or something and it's actually unknown if we can call it round.
Where are these people going that they just see encouragement without resistance?
Maybe not only encouragement, but it's certainly easier to quickly label any opposition as bots/trolls/idiots/woke/boomer/racist/commie/nazi/etc, ignore them, and move on online. Someone's single sentence to you wasn't a perfect pattern match for your acceptable criteria? No need to interact with them, just ignore them and move on. Better yet, get a quick swipe in on them to score some points with your in-group.
Being right all the time on the internet is such a curse. Those damned learned people with PhDs thinking they know things going up against such an obviously more intelligent person. They should have their degrees revoked!
I was at a political rally a long time ago. One of the speakers said "let's hang all the people in <rich suburb>". As I remember it no one spoke out against him but neither did people cheer. Anyway I realized the rally was a bit too much for me and left. The speech was entirely inconsequential - no violence resulted nor was anyone arrested.
I'm telling this story because I think it's how things usually go, and I think you are quite mistaken.
From a personal point of view I agree, it's completely unhealthy, but from a global perspective it's always been fucked up all the time, open a wiki page for any year between 1900 and now and you will find loads of assassinations, terrorist attacks, wars, famine, genocides, coups d'états, &c.
There aren't many times when there's quite as much happening at the same time.
Over the last week or so we've had: serious riots in France, catastrophic riots in Nepal, a scandal in the UK featuring the ambassador to the US, hostile drone incursions into Poland, the murder of Charlie Kirk, the ICE raid on visiting South Korean workers, soldiers on the streets of DC and a threatened incursion into Chicago, a school shooting, revelations about the biggest paedophile scandal of the century and its links to the rich and famous, including the current president, and Israel attacking most of the countries around it.
In the background is the continuing war in Ukraine, China's increasing militarisation and threatened technological lead over the US, the situation in Gaza, the disassembly of the established US federal system of government, existential and economic dread over the impact of AI, and climate change.
If everyone's feeling a little edgy, there may be good reasons for that.
Interesting how different circles see different things though. Around me the biggest thing prior to Charlie Kirk was the murder of the Ukrainian refugee on a train in Charlotte.
My parents had the cold war, petrol crisis, September 11, dotcom, 2008, my grandpa fought in wars in the 60s, my grandma was born right before ww2 and talked to German soldiers when she was 6 and her village was occupied, &c.
Young westerners get scared because they're used to people dying far away, now that it's getting a bit closer they think it's the end of the world, the truth is that it's always been fucked up, we just got locally lucky for a bit
Get out of the news cycle, it really isn't that terrible out there
Your comment sounds like a new verse in Billy Joel's "we didn't start the fire" song. When Trump was elected, I knew, at least, that the news wouldn't be boring for the next four years.
Granted, I live under a rock, but I only knew of one of those events you mentioned (Kirk’s death). I intentionally dont read or watch news. It does absolutely wonders for my peace of mind.
I'll take my chances waiting for something to affect me directly rather than watching news channels 24/7 to get outraged every single second of my life about random shit happening in places I mostly can't even locate on a map or spell.
Men of Virginia! pause and ponder upon those instructive cyphers, and these incontestible facts. Ye will then judge for yourselves on the point of an American navy. Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president, the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
What's the Pindar quote again?
"War is sweet to those who have no experience of it. But the experienced man trembles exceedingly in his heart at its approach"
I’ve come to realize how sad it is nobody alive today will be alive to see how what’s occurring fits with a multi-century arch of history. The way we examine the Middle Ages or Byzantine Empire.
It would be fascinating to see how 2001-2025 fits into that.
> You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Do you know what Harding's famous "Return to Normalcy" stump speech in the 1920 campaign was about? I bet you don't; few do. My U.S. history textbook in high school mentioned it, but did not explain what it was about.
We in the USA find it totally acceptable (as in doing the exact opposite of other nations where it happens once) to have a mass shooting at a school two times a week. We have already passed absurdity.
The thread is part of that alignment. I mean, funny you got a left field chance to bring up the article in a tech forum. It is wild. The whole thing is strangely magical, too, considering the violent irony at hand. Twisted words, a curse, reap what you sow - as above, so below.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?”, Kirk replied. A rhetorical question, of course. He smirked and leaned forward, but to his surprise, he didn't find the hypnotic gaze of his audience, but a gray void. Instead of any thing at all, really.
AH, YES. THE QUESTION OF MASS SHOOTINGS IN AMERICA. A TOPIC OF MUCH DEBATE, I UNDERSTAND.
"Exactly. It’s an important distinction! So-", Kirk said.
I DARE SAY, I AM QUITE FAMILIAR WITH SOME NUANCES MYSELF. IT'S NOT IMPORTANT ANYMORE. NOT TO YOU, ANYWAY. THE UNIVERSE SEEMS KEEN ON IRONY. DESTINY AND SUCH. NOT REALLY MY DOMAIN.
"What- No! What irony?"
YOU WERE, AS THEY SAY, HOIST BY YOUR OWN PETARD. OR, IN THIS CASE, BY SOMEONE ELSE’S. BUT THE PRINCIPLE REMAINS.
"I was just talking! I am not finished yet.", Kirk objected infuriated. Well, the anger wasn't actually amounting to much, as one needs a body for these things.
TAKE IT FROM ME, YOU ARE IN FACT FINISHED. DO NOT WORRY. I AM SURE THEY WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO ARGUE ABOUT STATISTICS. IF YOU PLEASE…
"But- This isn't fair!"
LIFE IS RARELY FAIR. DEATH, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS ALWAYS PUNCTUAL. NOW, IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND AS TO FOLLOW ME. THERE IS PAPERWORK.
Yeah, Etsy is funny. On the basis of what I bought I got an ad for a spell to transform into a fox but if they had really looked at what I bought they would have realized I already had the material list.
On Sunday, I was talking a Mexican friend about how politicians get killed in our countries (Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico). Just in June, presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe was shot and killed in Bogota. In the head, in front of a crowd.
I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived). I guess I was wrong... and, in that case, Garcia Marquez might agree with you.
The US had one killed within the last two months, with an attempt on another, and the attacker had a list of other targets.
You could be forgiven for not knowing, since the collective coverage and attention to it since has probably been less, total, than what this received in the last couple hours.
A few years ago, a would-be assassin went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's house and — when he couldn't find her — beat her husband with a hammer. Here's what Charlie Kirk had to say about that [1]:
> By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.
The US is in the process of turning into a stereotypical Latin American country, caudillo and everything else. Driven by the same economic and social forces, and in some cases the same people.
haha, yes, the president dismissing anyone in the federal government who disagrees with him, and trying to turn the national guard into his own personal police department, and inciting a riot/revolt 4 years ago but the US populace still elects him again, and allowing Elon Musk access to all the federal government which he slashes to bits in less than a couple of months (including science research) and having that same person soon after turn on president and the multiple assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful... and it's only been 8 months since he took office. Crazy times we live in
1975-1988 we lived in the Cold War and the potential of nuclear strikes. The African, gay and trans communities (in particular but not exclusively) dealt with the AIDS epidemic. Iran moved to theocracy. In the 90s, we had the Iraq war that was not bad for the US but massively destabilized the region. In the 2000s we had 9/11 and let's not understate the fear from the Muslim community here. Africa has lived through famine and the pains of decolonization after their wealth was stripped and stolen over centuries.
This is worse, but we have always lived in "interesting times" depending on where you were in the globe.
As I've grown older and gone back through history I've realized why so many decisions and actions seem kind of irrational to outside observers. This is why I think study of ancient history is so important, because we have so few connections, that the analysis does not seem personal.
Nevertheless, I realize that it's usually a zeitgeist more than any particular thing that really flows through history.
I agree. It's hard to capture 'the vibes' in a history book. For example, I firmly believe that in 70 years, almost no one will be able to explain 'wokeness' or the anti-wokeness backlash.
Of all the days I've been alive, if I could pin point one that I remember vividly with every bit of detail and emotion, that'd be 9/11... I was 14, and all of the sudden, even that younger version of myself, understood every single thing was about to change...
We already did, on October 7th, 2023. Israel did not learn from our example, and they currently find themselves in a quagmire where they're spending billions to kill thousands of the people they're supposed to be saving from an authoritarian, terrorist-harboring regime, with almost no real benefit to their national security, and where they have most of the rest of the world bearing down on them diplomatically for their conduct and alleged war crimes. (This is the most charitable characterization I can muster.)
The response to 9/11 was one of the most foolhardy possible, and it's astounding that any other nature would attempt the same with it still in living memory.
Take a better look at it from Israels perspective. Any other response after Oct 7 would have been unthinkable. No israeli is particularly happy with what's happening in Gaza (a massive understatement) but there is still broad support there for the war, because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.
The rest of the world haven't been shy lately about expressing their opinion of the war, something that Israel recognises and care about, but they have provided no way out for israel to take any other course of action.
Our ideas and opinions should be as harmonious as possible with reality. If Israel was understood better and her concerns and fears engaged seriously it would go a long way to ending the war.
In the context of this assassination i feel the path forward is not empty platitudes of "deescalation" rather greater empathy and understanding of people you disagree with. This is mainly an internal process, but also one that should have outward expressions too.
> there is still broad support there for the war, because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.
A phrase like "the war" glosses over a lot. If the IDF were not deliberately shooting children¹, would the Israeli public be clamouring, "shoot more children"? If food shipments were not being blockaded², would the public be demanding that Gazans be starved?
I didn't see anywhere in the article anything about israelis calling for more dead children. Even if that happened it's the actions of a fringe group, not idf policy. Food shipments are being restricted because it's not generally accepted that you have to feed your enemies while you're at war with them. In any case the GHF was set up to deal precisely with this problem and is doing a great job.
On the charges of genocide... Again what you say should be in harmony with reality. In truth all those sources have an anti israel bias. One can't help but think they started with a conclusion and found the evidence to fit in with it, which is the wrong way round. In any event other bodies like the UK government don't agree. Genocide requires intent and there is simply no intent for genocide from the Israeli government. One can also argue that if indeed genocide was the goal the war would have been much faster. anyway i hope that gives you a better perspective of Israels point of view and interpretation of events. Their stated goals in gaza are destroying hamas and ensuring gaza is no longer a security threat. Hamas is very large and quite well embedded in the civilian population and has a lot of infrastructure which means that even waging a war will lead to a lot of civilian casualties. Something that hamas exploits and people who claim genocide ignore.
>Food shipments are being restricted because it's not generally accepted that you have to feed your enemies while you're at war with them.
Funny way to put it.
You do not feed the enemy, rest of the world feeds the enemy.
You make all effort to prevent the enemy being fed, to starve the enemy to death.
Starving the enemy is generally accepted as a war crime, but Israel disagrees.
Oh yeah, and enemy in this case includes infants.
From what i understand depriving active combatants from food is acceptable. In order to be a war crime there has to be intent to prevent civilians from accessing food and other things vital for their ongoing survival. Imo israel is very far from meeting both requirements. They claim there's enough food entering gaza, but hamas is stealing it. The GHF if anything establishes that the intent is missing. It is unclear to me how much actual starvation is taking place there. Certainly continued warfare creates conditions that are not optimal for human existence, but nobody challenges the legality of waging a war itself. This in no way reduces the suffering of civilians in gaza, but it does shift the moral and legal responsibility for it away from Israel so long as they are keeping international laws in good faith onto hamas. Which makes their speedy and complete destruction even more imperative.
You have to realise that genocide is not a realistic operational aim for the idf or the political establishment in any event because the cost is too high.
The enemy does not include children, but hamas cannot use them as a shield to protect or even deflect attention from their own fighters. Again it's awful but not criminal.
> there has to be intent to prevent civilians from accessing food
Intent, in cases of genocide, is basically impossible to establish except in retrospect. We can only establish what is happening right now:
> “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza,” UN-backed food security experts said on Tuesday, in a call to action amid unrelenting conflict, mass displacement and the near-total collapse of essential services in the war-battered enclave.
> The alert follows a May 2025 IPC analysis that projected catastrophic levels of food insecurity for the entire population by September. According to the platform’s experts, at least half a million people are expected to be in IPC Phase 5 – catastrophe – which is marked by starvation, destitution and death.
> It is unclear to me how much actual starvation is taking place there.
It sounds pretty clear to the UN.
Israel is in full control of this situation. If things were playing out differently to how they wanted, they could permit more aid to go through.
> They claim there's enough food entering gaza, but hamas is stealing it
The idea that there's plenty of food but Hamas has squirrelled it away so that everyone starves is ludicrous.
> so long as they are keeping international laws in good faith
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel multiple times to permit aid into Gaza.
> You have to realise that genocide is not a realistic operational aim for the idf or the political establishment
Sure it is. They just have to keep doing what they're doing right now. It's worked so far.
---
I cited a laundry list of expert organizations specializing in identifying crimes against humanity. You've cited an op-ed. The balance of evidence and expertise overwhelmingly indicates genocide, and it's not even close.
>> because most israelis feel it's a matter of survival.
How do you think Palestinians have felt living in an open air prison next to genocidal maniacs with zero ability to control themselves for the past 50 years. USS Liberty should’ve been the end of things, but it wasn’t.
I think the point being made is that you can create your own enemies. In this case, meaning enemies of the United States or politics of the United States. Many of the radicals of the world become that way due to harm that became them or their family.
If your family lived in a village in middle east and the military of another country came and seemingly killed your parents, you would think that the person would grow to have certain opinions on the things and certain enemies.
A lot of the policies being enacted have the potential to create a lot of enemies. Just to name a few, there have been thousands of people fired from federal government. Those people and their families have had their lives changed. You have people from other countries who have lived here their entire lives who are now being separated and sent to other countries. You have people playing politics with Ukraine where many people are dying due to something that the rest of the world has the power to solve. Or people in Palestine being murdered while some talk of building a wealthy paradise on the land where they were raised.
I'm not taking a side on these things. But you have to agree that these tactics have the habit of making very determined and malicious enemies. Many political policies, and the people who have strong opinions on them, have to realize that their opinions and the policies they support, do impact the lives of real people. Potentially causing devastating repercussions, death and suffering. If said people are determined to enact revenge, it is no surprise that feel justified in doing so.
I'm not justifying their thoughts or actions. But you can understand that people who have felt these impacts aren't acting particularly rationally or are stable.
> You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Not sure what the comparison with COVID is supposed to be. Spanish flu was not created in a lab. There was no vaccine for the Spanish flu. The only real similarity is social distancing, quarantines, and masks -- we did that back then too.
Funny, back then Americans didn't wear masks for much the same reasons they wouldn't during the last pandemic, and they died in their thousands for much the same reasons.
Why do we think we’re passed an Arch Duke Ferdinand moment? Trump is more than ready to use his secret police.
RIP Charlie Kirk, no human deserves that. The rest of us left are still not necessarily better people after that exact moment, hopefully everyone takes a pause.
Constantly fear-mongering that every event that occurs is a prelude to a repeat of history's worst atrocities is exactly the type of rhetoric we should avoid.
Do you think we have a Presidency with the same sensibility? They sent the national guard with zero pretense all over the country. This is about to get serious.
I'm having a hard time understanding why people think this is some sort of big deal. We have mass shootings in schools, we've been helping Israel kill 50-100 Palestinians a day for the past 2 years. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world... One person, who trafficked in promoting many of the above facts, got killed. I don't think this is some radical turning point.
Targeted vs untargeted violence. The former almost always comes with a broader message to society at large.
A school shooter isn’t trying to say “shut down all schools”.
But a terrorist flying a plane into one of the most important symbols of your most important city is certainly trying to send your society a message.
Same with this killing
Think about how you would feel if some guys beat you and your friends up in a bar fight, vs someone individually stalking you and beating you up outside your own house. You got beaten up in both cases, but the bar fight beating will unlikely make you feel as vulnerable and scared to leave the house as being stalked and targeted individually
I'm not too caught up with politics, but a (presumably) political shooting has the issue of being disruptive to the government and therefore the nation as a whole, since the USA is built on democratic ideals. And since it's a(/the) global superpower, its issues result in serious international problems as well.
What about all of the other violence I listed? It's orders of magnitude more severe. We don't know the motive of the shooting, but it could very well be someone who's related to the victims of the violence Kirk endorsed.
The main reason is that the side he's on his pretty unhinged and they think it's more important than all the other violence listed.
It's like when a conservative person is canceled they throw an absolute fit, then turn around and cancel someone on the left, without making any connection.
Events like this have often been used as trigger to implement measures that were already planned. The nazis did that a lot (Reichstagsbrand, Kristallnacht), You could argue that Israel used the October 7 attacks to accelerate efforts to get rid of the Palestinians. Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld used 9/11 to invade Iraq which they had wanted to do long before.
I am definitely worried what Trump and republicans will do as a response.
I agree to your logic, but scanning social media gives a totally different view: People feel like they need to take action now. The murder of the ukranian girl set a social fire, and the killing of charlie kirk put gasoline over it. You can feel the rage. I've never seen so many upvotes and likes for quite radical opinions like in the last hours on TikTok and X.
HN has thousands of comments debating the justification for killing tens of thousands of non-combatants in Palestine.
More posts debating the justification for killing 11 people in a boat in the Caribbean who did not pose an imminent threat.
HN rules do not prevent any of these discussions.
But here we have a individual who advocated those killings.
Here we have an individual who publicly justified school massacres by saying those senseless deaths are a worthwhile price to pay for gun rights in the US.
On HN it's perfectly fine to justify all this violence, to argue that the violence is regrettable but necessary, but any equivalent discussion about this one individual is somehow beyond the pale.
> Here we have an individual who publicly justified school massacres by saying those senseless deaths are a worthwhile price to pay for gun rights in the US.
I'm an outside observer, but isn't that the point of the right to bear arms in your constitution? I don't think the people who wrote it were naive enough to not understand guns could be used for evil purposes, so inherently they supported the price of the deaths of innocents as a trade off for the benefits of guns, right?
1. The goal of the second amendment was never "everyone should be able to have as many guns as they have, and if people use a gun to kill a dozen children then so be it", it was "it should be illegal for the government to take away people's weapons because the first step a tyrant would take is to disarm the populace so they couldn't fight back." That goal doesn't hold water anymore in a world where a computer geek working for the US military in a basement in Virginia can drone strike a wedding on the other side of the world. Instead, the NRA has made "guns good" into something that too many people make their whole personality, and the people who are actually trying to destroy society use that as a weapon to prevent any positive change when someone murders a dozen kids by making people feel like the only choice is between "anyone can have guns and children are murdered every day" or "the government takes your weapons and forces any dissidents into siberian-esque gulags".
2. Firearms were far less common, far less accessible, and far less deadly than they are now. Compared to what was available at the time, modern-day weapons like the AR15 are effectively weapons of mass destruction. If you went into a school with a civil war-era rifle and tried to kill as many people as you could, you'd maybe get one shot off which might not even kill someone if you hit them, and then you'd get tackled while you were trying to reload.
They were also loose powder hand loaded weapons, you could fire three rounds a _minute_ if you were really skilled. Everyone in town had to store their powder in a (secure) communal location because it was, duh, an explosive.
I think you've moved the goalposts here a little. You are making (good) arguments on why the second amendment maybe shouldn't apply any longer and that guns of now are different. You're arguing for gun reform.
However I was speaking in the context of the tradeoffs of danger and the awareness of what blood you get on your hands for agreeing. Although the writers of this bill couldn't forsee AR15s and drone strikes, I'm sure they could forsee that there was a cost to freedom to bear arms.
And yet the founding fathers made it pretty clear that they were all for every able-bodied man having guns, including private citizens owning artillery.
The relative lethality of a particular style of rifle doesn't seem to matter. Better guns than muskets were available at the time, and they didn't seem to think it necessary to limit that amendment.
I don't think your opinions about the history and purpose of the second amendment holds water.
I think it’s worth posting the actual wording of the 2nd amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
There’s endless legal debate how this should be interpreted, but it’s not obvious that there was an assumption that there would be mass individual gun ownership.
The Second Militia Act of 1792 clarified that assumption somewhat when it specified all free able-bodied white male citizens must be part of their local militia and are required to own a gun among other things.
What they couldn't have predicted is that the Bill of Rights would also apply to the individual state and local governments since that wasn't true until the 14th amendment almost 100 years later and didn't really kick off until the 1900s. This is obviously important to understand what the original amendments mean.
The supreme court ruled that the first clause of the 2nd amendment was just flavor text. We aren't going to be Switzerland, which has an actual armed militia where kids take military-issued guns into their community to support it (on the train even! although the bullets are kept somewhere else to reduce a suicide problem they had a few years ago).
I was responding to an assertion that the amendment authors must have known the implications of what they were writing. It’s irrelevant what a subsequent Supreme Court interpretation was to that point.
The Supreme court formally declared that the amendment authors wrote the amendment with the first clause of the second amendment as meaningless flavor text. It is obviously revisionist and I hope it doesn't hold for more than a few generations or so (assuming the USA survives).
I think that’s pretty much the only way you can make that work? I’m against gun ownership, but I feel like you really need to stretch things to read that any other way than ‘people shall be allowed to own their own guns’
I almost don’t want to respond since this is well trodden ground, but I would say that “a well regulated militia” casts doubt on the individual gun ownership interpretation. You have to decide who the militia exists to fight and therefore who should regulate them. It’s obviously not obvious though.
The term "well-regulated milita" predates the constitution and traces back to the days when white people were often a substantial minority compared to the populations of enslaved black people they lived among.
On St Croix where a young man named Alexander Hamilton grew up, the ratio was 1 free person to 8 slaves, so the well-regulated militia was to assemble at the fortress if they heard a blast of the cannon: they were required to come with their weapons in order to put down a slave revolt.
Source: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
It's also probably worth mentioning that "people" in "the right of the people" certainly excluded slaves from the right to own weapons, making the text even more burdened by its own history
My point is: what the founders understood was that some gun violence was the unavoidable cost of maintaining the system of slavery, itself a system of formalized/normalized political violence.
It's not. "The people" is a collective term, so this unambiguously says that collectively the people have the right to keep and bear arms, i.e. as a group. For example, maybe this guarantees that a well regulated militia of the people has the right keep and bear arms. An example of a less ambiguous statement would be: "the right of all individual people to keep and bear arms".
That's interesting. What is a reasonable alternative interpretation of "the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" than individual gun ownership though?
"The people" here were the states - the point was that the states could maintain their own militia (the modern day national guard). The 2nd amendment has been bastardized by a radical judiciary that is now unfortunately too entrenched to fix without repealing the 2A.
"Wilder times" is an interesting description of the early days of the country. When I look around at the violence the last several years (mass rioting, looting, uptick in murder pretty much everywhere, etc. etc.), I feel like that description applies pretty well to our times as well.
That being the case, I would say their opinions and beliefs are pretty important to the current national climate.
> "Wilder times" is an interesting description of the early days of the country.
Wilder, in the sense of less Organization, less infrastructure, slower transportation and communication. People had to protect themselves, because there was nobody around who could do it. But today, the majority of people can be reached in a matter of minutes.
> When I look around at the violence the last several years (mass rioting, looting, uptick in murder pretty much everywhere,
You don't understand that guns are the major reason for this?
It was also written at a point in time when the absolute peak of firearms technology was a musket.
The logic behind the 2nd amendment doesn't hold once Uncle Sam has nuclear tipped icbms and I'm not allowed to have them. I'm also not allowed to have tanks or rocket launchers or even high rate of fire Gatling style guns.
To paraphrase, "if you think the 2nd amendment is what's keeping the government off your back, you don't understand how tanks work"
You don’t need to take guns away to solve gun violence. He’s 100% right. Start dealing with crime. Stop allowing criminals into the country. Stop releasing criminals back onto the streets. Stop ignoring people with violent tendencies.
One thing that history shows again and again is people being killed for their beliefs. Charlie always spoke from his heart, from his deeply held intellectual and spiritual beliefs. He died, literally on a stage defending those beliefs.
He died doing what he loved: preaching hate and fabricating lies about minorities. He was literally spreading lies about trans people all being mass shooters when he was killed, a minority that is already four times as likely to be targeted by physical violence. He did not deserve to die for his beliefs, no one does. But his beliefs themseveles are morally abhorrent and certainly contributed to this climate of hatred and violence we find ourselves in. Let's not celebrate his life.
This take isn’t very hinged. Kirk was correct in identifying the issues with trans rights views on the left via anti-(insert euphemism for woman) wokeism. He also preached the views that offend the stonks go up brainwashing of the youth happening in academia.
Sure, I’ll unpack, sorry for the over-compression:
Academia and broader cultural messaging teach students to see career success, productivity, and corporate loyalty as higher priorities than caring for or investing in family.
People are encouraged to define themselves by their job titles, income, or the prestige of their employer rather than by family roles or community contributions. (Proven in polls)
Students may be groomed to see working for large companies as the “default path” to security, respectability, and self-worth. This is relevant with in the context of how few gen Z folks on the left view family as important (<10%) - this was major news this week.
Universities often emphasize employability, corporate partnerships, and internships with major firms, implicitly signaling that this is the “right” way to succeed.
If corporate work is framed as more important, family responsibilities can be treated as distractions rather than central parts of life.
Societies that reward corporate loyalty over family care risk weakening intergenerational bonds and making people feel alienated outside of work.
The critique is that academia is not only instilling blind faith in perpetual economic growth but also shaping values so that young people see serving corporations as more worthwhile than serving their families. Kirk’s main message was pushing back against that hierarchy—saying family, community, and personal meaning should matter more than being a cog in the corporate machine.
Charlie regularly received death threats. Implicitly or explicitly telling him to quit or else. He had the courage of his convictions and refused to change his beliefs or be deterred from acting on them.
His haters martyred him. Like Justin Martyr, who refused to change his beliefs and worship pagan gods, and who kept to his course despite being told he would be executed if he didn't change.
At the time he was shot he was talking about the problem of trans people being much more violent than average. If his shooter gets caught and is trans, well, that would be "died for his beliefs" in a very extreme way.
If they are trans or not he still "died for his beliefs", as he had said:
"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 God-given rights."
You're using subjective language so you can't really be wrong but it doesn't mean anything either. You're just perpetuating a general sense of hate. I'd say this kind of thinking and talking is why he was so hated - people enjoy being part of a mob expressing righteous judgement of whoever the popular target is.
I'm just shocked people like you are blaming the victim instead of the shooter. I didn't follow that guy and don't really care which topics he covered, he didn't deserve to be killed. If anything, this just makes the trans issue (or whatever the supposed issues are) more polarized. Unfortunately this mentality is in line with what I've been seeing on Reddit over the past year (ie., speech is actual violence and should dealt with with actual physical violence, punch a [loosely defined] Nazi, etc). Scary times ahead.
It doesn't matter how people feel about trans people, it matters what rights we have. Mine have been almost entirely stripped away. I can't go into public for more than a few hours because I can't use a restroom. I have to constantly fear being arrested and sent to a men's prison to be raped. Finding work is difficult and I have no legal recourse for being fired for being trans.
Of course those are all just words and not violence. But shooting the guy who's been lying for years to push those policies, that's crossing the Rubicon.
You'd watch someone being pressed to death and say they deserved it because they scratched the executioner as he added weight.
According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds.
This week in Nepal, before all the other news hit the fan, GenZ did exactly that, and overthrew the current leadership. 30 lives were lost along the way.
The military took over for security purposes, and asked the leadership of the movement whom they wanted for an interim government. It was not the happy, peaceful democracy we all long for. It was a costly victory. But I feel happy the legitimate grievances the protestors held will lead to change. I hope they can find some candidates who will stand for them and reduce corruption, and do the best they can to help with the economy.
Crack open a history book. That's the risk you run being an unpopular head of state. Head of state is probably one of the most likely to kill you jobs ever.
I believe that was after 19 students, non-violent protestors, were gunned down by security forces.
It's a tough proposition. The goal is for the elite to have the awareness, humility, and political courage to not let things get so bad. But that point is well before Dauphines lose their heads. It's when peasant children are asking for bread and not getting any. Maybe before even that. Don't reach that tipping point and you won't careen towards the other atrocities.
They were not intentionally killed, the security forces were untrained in the use of rubber bullets and shot them directly at protestors rather than having them ricochet off the ground.
That statement reflects a basic misunderstanding of small arms. If you shoot at someone, regardless of whether you're using less-than-lethal ammunition, death or serious injury is always possible. This was absolutely intentional by the soldiers and those who gave the orders. Don't try to claim it was some kind of accident, regardless of training or lack thereof.
As in the case of the United Healthcare CEO, we are very quick to demonize the immediate violence and killing, and rightly so.
But in doing that, we definitely overlook the many thousand uncountable lives that the behavior of the single person might have indirectly killed.
Except that United is doing the same thing it was before, with only a few months where they dialed back the pressure until their stock price started lagging.
Attacks on free speech - like social media censorship or bans - makes democracy not possible. It removes the process for peaceful and civil change. The protestors had to go there as a result. But revolutions also tend not to result in something better most of the time.
And yet many of the greatest accomplishments of humanity over the past few centuries have been shepherded by violence - abolition of slavery, the global transition to democracy, and decolonizatiom.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but humanity has not abolished slavery. Most recent stats estimate ~28 million people worldwide in the forced labour category that most would mentally associate with the term. That rises to nearly 50 million going by the modern definition that includes forced marriage, child rearing, and subservience without recourse.
Yes, in 2025.
Sadly the United States abolishing slavery for ~4 million within its own borders in the 1860s did not represent humanity as a whole.
On paper the problem is solved because it’s illegal to openly buy and sell another person. In practice the exact same treatment and de facto ownership and exploitation of other people remain without any meaningful enforcement in many parts of the world.
Going from institutionalized forms of slavery common around the globe for thousands of years to the almost complete absence of it in today's world is still a major accomplishment. Three hundred years ago, slavery was seen as natural by many, today that would be an absolute fringe position almost no one would feel comfortable stating out loud. That is progress, even if it is not yet enough.
Prison labor = slave labor, not slavery. Prison = slavery.
I blame how slavery is taught for the confusion. Slavery itself is a legal state where one's autonomy is fully controlled by another. Forced labor is something people commonly use slaves for, but the absence of labor didn't make one free - a slave allowed to retire was still enslaved as was a newborn born into slavery even before they're first made to work.
Many slaving countries were democratic as it was understood at the time. All modern democracies disenfranchise some people e.g. the young, people with criminal convictions in some countries.
At least in the case of the USA, then, there's still no universal democracy. Corporations have far more powerful and influence, in basically every election you can only vote for a neoliberal, and plenty of people get disenfranchised.
> Attacks on free speech - like social media censorship or bans - makes democracy not possible
The use of social media to spread misinformation with a specific agenda also makes democracy impossible.
There has to be a line, however fuzzy, somewhere. Remember Trump used misinformation to steer a crowd who then stormed the Capitol. Incitement should never be covered by free speech protection.
Nepal isn't a good comparison to the US. Nepal has been extremely politically unstable now for years and was wracked by a giant earthquake too. Nepal doesn't have stable governing institutions. In 2001 a disgruntled member of the royal family massacred the rest of the family, kicking off 20 years of instability.
corruption is only made worse by angry mobs tearing things down. what is erected afterwards is almost always worse ironically. the only way corruption is reduced is citizens becoming smarter somehow and slowly allowing the elite to get away with less and less bad behaviour while also creating an intelligent incentive structure for the elites as well as everyone else to drive productive, pro-social behaviour. whats going on in most of the world and nepal is the opposite of that
Kudos for citing actual facts/studies. But these are about sentiment, which in a digital age where personality has been reduced to opinion and thus amplified for effect, might be both manipulated and less significant.
By contrast, acts of bombings and other political violence were both more common and widespread in the 1970's and 1980's than now.[1] In those cases, people took great personal risks.
[Edit: removed Nepal, mentioned in other comments]
Its sad but most gouvernement also truly don't change (especially when they protect class inequalities) unless theres an actual threat of actual violence through social upset.
I tell you that as a french person.
The myth of possible peaceful changes at the political level is nothing but a myth precisely.
Shooting people like kirk does not seem particularly useful for such goals tho
"threatening or committing violence" could mean almost anything.
It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.
I imagine that "I support assassination to drive change" would be even less popular.
Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare?
Maybe it wasn't 23%, but it was certainly not insignificant.
> It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.
I don't think anyone conflates the phrase "threatening or committing violence" with "threatening or committing calling you a bad name". Yes, there's too much equating speech and violence, but the particular wording of threatening or committing imho is largely still reserved for the physical variety.
If a mafia boss orders a hit, he is no less guilty than the one who pulls the trigger. If a CEO orders vital funds to be withheld from those who are entitled to them, knowing many will die, he is similarly guilty of murder. The mafia boss can be sent to jail, the CEO won't. The corporate veil may keep you pristine inside the cynical circles of power, but all the people see is impunity. When murderers act with impunity, what redress is there but counter-violence?
It is unfortunate, but many people have lost hope the system can change, so revolution is getting more likely, and revolutions are seldom peaceful.
The CEO of a healthcare insurer is not involved in "withholding" funds. At best, he sets up policies that distribute a limited amount of funds among millions of claimants who are all in need of help to some degree, but he does that job poorly. If this juvenile logic is applied further, aren't you guilty of the same crime? There are people in need of life-saving drugs and treatments, yet you're just sitting behind your computer withholding funds.
1/ There is no "distribute a limited amount of funds". There is even less a "distribute a limited amount of funds after shareholder profit and massive executive paychecks". Customers have bought coverage; if the company overissued policies, they make a loss, or they go bankrupt and their own insurers cover the existing claims. Anything else is privatised profit and socialised losses, which even a callous teenager just blown away by their first glimpse at Ayn Rand should find objectionable.
2/ I carefully said "entitled to" to avoid a debate about personal responsibility and limit the conversation to "paid for a life-saving service they did not receive", which everyone will agree is wrong.
3/ If you think the CEO did not issue orders to make it as difficult to claim as possible, and drag the process as much as possible, you are a fool.
Denying help to a human is one thing. Denying them help after they paid for the help so you can buy a yacht another thing entirely.
Still the trend of calling speech a form of violence likely has the counter effect of legitimizing violence. It’s not hard to go from “speech is violence” thoughts to “well they used violence (speech) against us so it’s okay if I use violence (physical) against them”.
The second amendment literally defines a free state by its capacity for armed revolt, in other words, by violence.
Spend ten seconds around American gun culture. American gun owners absolutely believe the second amendment justifies violence, and Americans have believed as much for two centuries. Hell Thomas Jefferson thought any healthy democracy should have an uprising every 20 years or so.
That it happens to be illegal to shoot people under most circumstances is merely a formality. The founding fathers absolutely intended popular violence to be an integral part of the American political system, as a counterbalance to the potential violence of the state, because they inherently mistrusted the state. The only debatable facet of this is what specifically they meant by "militia."
Then again, the constitution was written when drawing and quartering was still practiced, along with slavery, and before the industrial revolution. Maybe the intent of the founding fathers as regards the second amendment no longer has a place in modern society. Unfortunately it can't be touched without triggering a full scale civil war so we're stuck with it and its consequences.
> The only debatable facet of this is what specifically they meant by "militia."
There's not too much to debate there; many militias existed at the time. Every state had them! Further, every border was susceptible to foreign aggression, and the frontier borders were too vast to be policed or patrolled by soldiers to protect civilians from war or banditry. Civilians needed to be able to protect themselves, and the militias needed people who could shoot prior to enlisting, as the nation was constantly under threat.
> The founding fathers absolutely intended popular violence to be an integral part of the American political system
This is also not broadly true, barring some choice quotes intended to stir up support for the war. It was intended as a last resort against a tyrannical government. The assassinations of presidents have no legal foundation within the Constitution itself, despite it happening. Likewise, American gun culture doesn't promote assassinating politicians, but rather being prepared in case of the fall of the Constitution itself.
France would be a much better example of a country that embraces violence as a matter of course in politics.
>The second amendment literally defines a free state by its capacity for armed revolt
Aren't you confusing the text[1] with what one person, namely Thomas Jefferson, said about it?
[1] "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
I think it would be much higher than 23%. I think most people would argue justification in using violence to oppose violence. The question would be what percent view the utilization of profit driven policy resulting in deaths as violence, and I think that too is pretty high.
>Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare?
Oh yea. A guy was murdered with an illegal handgun and an illegal silencer. and not one single Democrat usually so hot to call for more gun control did so.
I’d encourage you to do a bit more research. An entire state banned ghost guns and bump stocks following the CEO’s murder, just 9 days after it happened… and it was Democrats, as it always has been, that passed the law over majority Republican objection. You can find loads of articles about Democrats continuing to push for gun reform. https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gun-reforms-among-m...
Michigan has been trying to ban 3D printed guns for years before UnitedHealth CEO was murdered. That was just during the session and a coincidence, not cause.
> I imagine that "I support assassination to drive change" would be even less popular.
Except for in Japan? I noticed in all those reports Japan was at or near the bottom of countries measured for trust in their government. I was never able to find polling with regard to sentiment on Shinzo Abe's assassination but the majority of the country opposed the state funeral for him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe#Re...
Sure he was a right wing divisive figure and I'm not saying that wasn't a factor, but opposition to the state funeral had more to do with the use of taxpayer money IMO.
It was more than that. A remarkable number of Japanese came to the conclusion that the shooter was right about the relationship between the ruling party and the Moonies.
I know, but there would've been opposition to a state funeral regardless. The Japanese public perceived the state funeral and the decision-making process behind it as corrupt.
Here's a Japanese article from when the decision was made. Note that the scandal leading to his assassination, which was a significant issue in its own right, isn't even mentioned. That's because the decision to hold a state funeral was itself very scandalous.
Also the cost of the funeral was 1.6 billion yen, which is definitely not "a few yen." It's crazy to think that taxpayers would be just fine with that.
> It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.
That incites violence. Thinking we're oppressed when we're living lives that are immensely better than that of any oppressor of the past... We must stop that.
It seems like we're seeing a change where the pen is no longer mightier than the sword. Where thousands of demonstrators failed to censor Kirk, one bullet succeeded. In eastern Ukraine no words have been able to stop the invasion. In Nepal no political process has created a world that Gen Z wants to live in, but an uprising might. Force is winning. I expect it will continue to win.
Logically, we should start stockpiling force, lest others use more against us.
I don't think this is the right way to think about it. This is short term thinking--it doesn't solve the problem. This is just the road to more gun violence.
The problem is lack of long-term thinking. How do you instill long-term thinking when the people who should instill it have a lack of long-term thinking? Removing them from their positions is one solution. What others do you have?
Gerrymandering is not new, but the overt and direct and very public claims that gerrymandering is being used to push an authoritarian regime against the people's wishes is something recent and very present.
We all know (probably including you, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt) that the "cold civil war" comment wasn't about gerrymandering in a general sense, which has been around for a century, but about a specific recent redistricting (and gerrymandering) bill in Texas. The sentence doesn't really make sense if you interpret "gerrymandering and redistricting" in an abstract sense because (1) it's not a new thing and (2) everyone does it. That is why they didn't need to state it to make the reference to the Texas news clear. If you were aware of the Texas news, you would also have drawn the obvious inference. However, equivocating this Texas idiocy with actual political violence (which is what the "cold civil war" comment does) is disturbing at best.
This is not what I was calling out. You made a bad-faith strawman argument, stating something of which I think you knew would be _not_ what the other poster intended (i.e. "I'm glad you agree with me..."). Your point would have been better made if it was posed like "What do you think of redistricting in Illinois and Massachusetts?" That would have stood on its own.
The poster made a comment using imprecise generalities that was intended to imply specifics. When taken as a set of generalities, it seems a lot softer and less politically pointed than it is. I treated what they said as what they wanted to say in order to expose what they meant.
A strawman in the common usage of the term involves changing the argument to a weaker version that is not within the text you are arguing with. If you want to suggest that this is fallacious, you could call it a tu quoque fallacy, which was the point of the post.
However, when you want to claim the moral high ground to forgive/soften a political assassination, it does matter that you are being a hypocrite about it.
We're basically guaranteed to get one if we don't get two blue sweeps (or an independent party that fights the republicans) in the coming elections. The Republicans have rigged the game badly and have been escalating their use of advantage, Democratic states are going to start withholding taxes, and people are going to start taking shots at ICE in the streets. When that happens, it's already too late.
> wanted a border and were buying people flights home
This is a really really disingenuous way to describe what is happening, which I expect you fully understand.
The bit I don't get is _why_ does this smirking, bad faith, intentional misrepresentation happen? What good actually comes from pretending and trying to mislead? I find this kind of thing extremely discouraging. Maybe that's the answer to my question?
It is a bit ironic to post this in a thread where someone who arguably wielded only words succumbed to someone wielding violence. From Sartre:
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.
Here's a very recent example: Russia sending a drone swarm into Poland, and then making all sorts of cynical statements such as "those weren't even our drones" or "they were our drones but it was a false flag operation".
It happens, because itnworks well. For years and years, it allowed moderate Republicans to pretend their party goals are something they were not.
It allowed center to pretend to themselves both sides are the same. It allowed us all to to just dismiss those who actually read what conservatives say and plan as paranoid.
This dishonesty worked well and that is why it was used.
The argument against using violence to achieve you ends is that if everyone does it, it is bad for everyone. If those who do it do not face repercussions then they will gain undue advantage, motivating everyone to match their actions, which again, is bad for everyone. The solution is the social contract and the rule of law. If enough people agree that anyone taking that path should face repercussions sufficient to not grant a net advantage, then enforcement of the law prevents others from taking the path of violence to reach parity with the violent
When the rule of law is eroded, which it has been, in the US and worldwide. Then it does indeed become more rational to use violence to restore the rule of law. Unfortunately it also increases the motivation towards violence for personal gain, that makes the task of restoring the rule of law all that more difficult. Countries have spent years trying to recover that stability once it is lost.
You make a good point. For example, the rule of law in North Korea or Equatorial Guinea is whatever the HMFIC says it is. And that's written in law, the police and courts enforce it, all proper and aboveboard in a legalistic sense. Just not in common sense.
As far as the poorest 10%, though: There is always a poorest 10%. And a poorest 50%. If you're in the middle class or higher, you have every reason to prevent the poor from revolting and taking what you have. This can be accomplished by a vast array of carrots and sticks. Some countries lean more toward the carrot - we call them liberal democracies. Autocratic states use the stick.
But although greater wealth inequality may be a good indicator of the tendency of the lowest 10% to become lawless, it is not a good indicator of which method is used to keep them in check. Cuba has pretty amazingly low levels of wealth inequality - essentially everyone's poor. Keeping them from rebelling, however, is all stick, precisely because any kind of economic carrot would undermine the philosophy that it's better for everyone to be poor than to have wealth inequality.
For the most part, the bottom 10% in most liberal democracies are much better off than most people in most autocratic states.
Wealth inequality isn't great but the existence of wealthy people in successful countries helps fund service for the entire population. Yet I saw a poster the other day titled "class warfare" with a picture of graveyard saying that's where the "rich" will be buried. People don't understand at all how counties and economies work and how this system we live in works vs. the alternatives (I'm in Canada btw).
> Wealth inequality isn't great but the existence of wealthy people in successful countries helps fund service for the entire population.
I think it does the opposite. Those services were mostly built during the last century after the war when conditions were just right for people to get those policies implemented. Since then the wealthy have mostly been lobbying against those services, dodging taxes, spreading propaganda justifying the inequality, etc. Now we're seeing the results of this work by the wealthy.
I also think it's wrong to assume the wealthy are the creators of that wealth just because they have it. It can also be the result of using positions of power to get a larger share of a pie baked by a lot of people.
The top 1% of highest income in Canada pays 21-22% of the taxes. Their share of the income is about 10%. So they "rich" are paying for services everyone else is getting.
The top 10% pay 54% (!) of the taxes. Their share of income is about 34%.
The top 0.1% pays about 8-9% of the taxes.
So in Canada the rich are absolutely paying for the services everyone else gets. That's before accounting for their indirect contributions to the economy by running businesses, employing people, taxes paid by companies, etc.
Maybe some random billionaire has some scheme that reduces their taxes. But most of the the rich pay way more taxes than others.
I wouldn't call people working for a salary rich, which most of the people in those groups are. They pay plenty of taxes and many of them probably support funding public services as well. I meant the actually wealthy, who use their political power to reduce those services and the taxes they need to pay. They don't help fund them unless they are forced to, and currently they are not because the political power of their wealth has become larger than the political power of regular people.
Most people in the top 0.1% are quite rich. There are quite a few CEOs and founders of large companies that are billionaires from income they got from those companies (and paid taxes on).
Maybe you need to give me more examples. Who are "actually wealthy" people in Canada who do not pay any taxes whatsoever and contribute nothing to the local economy/country? e.g. they avoid paying GST or HST, they avoid paying property taxes, they don't pay capital gains taxes?
I do agree that some rich people (and also not rich people) campaign for a smaller government and less taxes. I don't think that's an unreasonable position. There is a sweet spot for taxation and taxes in Canada are quite high. It's not a zero sum game (e.g. we have people leaving Canada to go to lower tax countries like the US).
There are many books on this, you can start by picking up eg. Marianna mazucato and rutger bregmann to get some contemporary views.
In unequal societies governance is controlled by less people and they tend to divert money into activities that increase their wealth instead of benefitting everyone - this has in particular happened in the west over the past 40 years.
So their after tax income is far higher than their share of the population? Give me 50% of a country’s income and I will be more than happy to pay 60% of the tax.
Try for just one minute and don't think about this in terms of money, and you will see why your argument is completely failing.
It is clear that one rich person who leisurely spend their morning getting ready for a business meeting does not provide any care to any elderly.
Your comment is clear example of the type of misinformation that got us here.
In the end money is an institution. You can only get things done, I if someone are willing to take money for work. And that only works when there is a certain level og equality.
As a society we have a capacity to work, and we divide that work using money.
Your observation thst rich people pay for services is indicative of an oligarchy. When rich people pay, then it is not a plethora or small businesses, a democratic chooses government, or a consortium of investors bundling together to do something great.
You are literally pointing out the failure of the west.
Interesting how this is always about how liberal democracy (namely European supremacist nations like yours) who control the world as the global north and are the primary reasons for the “autocracy”
I don’t know where you can even think the bottom 10% of the west/liberal democracies are better than “most” in those other countries. That’s a wild thing to think. Seems like typical western centrism and chauvinism.
The average income in Egypt is ~$1900 USD a year (it's probably worse now but this is a number I've seen). Low income threshold in Canada is about $20k (EDIT: CAD) a year and that's about the bottom 10%.
So not sure what your point is re: wild thing to think. Do you think the average Egyptian is better off than the low 10% Canadian?
How is it that because liberal democracies "control the world" that Egypt is forced to be an autocracy? Do they have no agency? If Liberal democracies so control the world how come some countries have been able to do better (China e.g.)
> Hate begets hate; violence begets violence[...]Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate[...]but to win[...]friendship and understanding.
> The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence[...]
Well if surveys are to believed the predominant view in the US is that morality is dictated by God. I'm skeptical, but also, I have met people like that.
I think the argument for not committing violence when you are able to do so without any form of repercussion comes down to a morality issue, you don't do it because it is wrong. That works at an individual level, At a societal level you cannot assume all people to be moral. When faced with the inevitability of not all people being moral (or not agree on the same set of morals) you need a secondary reason to prevent violence. I suspect quite a lot of people would accept the morality of violence to prevent more violence. That is where individual morality might weigh in on the aspect of whether violence is appropriate to establish or protect the rule of law.
A more likely explanation is that pro-violence propaganda began swamping social media in 2016, which is 9 years ago. 18 year olds have been exposed to it nonstop since they were 9 and 34 year olds since they were 25.
The people who are disposed to anger and violence move along the radicalization sales funnel relatively slowly. But already once you've shown interest, you start seeing increasingly angry content and only angry content. There is a lot of rhetoric specifically telling people they should be angry, should not try to help things, and should resort to violence, and actively get others to promote violence.
Being surrounded socially by that day in and day out is a challenge to anyone, and if you're predisposed to anger it can become intoxicating.
A lot of people want to say marketing doesn't work or that filter bubbles don't matter. But the bare facts are that we've had nearly a decade of multiple military intelligence agencies running nonstop campaigns promoting violent ideology in the US. And it would be naive to think that didn't make a difference.
The same sort of campaigns were run at a smaller scale during the Cold War and have been successful in provoking hot wars.
>A lot of people want to say marketing doesn't work or that filter bubbles don't matter. But the bare facts are that we've had nearly a decade of multiple military intelligence agencies running nonstop campaigns promoting violent ideology in the US. And it would be naive to think that didn't make a difference.
Hmm, interesting thesis. I'm aware something like half of the Whitmer Kidnapping plotters were feds/informants, to the point a few were exonerated in trial. There's certainly some evidence the government is intentionally provoking violent actors.
Yes that's correct. In particular, not just run of the mill division, but impersonating right and left wing militants both calling for violence.
For example, just one that turned up at the top of a quick Google search
> And the analysis shows that everyone from the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, as well as military bloggers, lifestyle influencers and bots, as you mentioned, are all pushing this narrative that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war and thus Texas should secede from the United States, and that Russia will be there to support this.
I think you're right. Couple it with the increasing isolation driven by everyone being online 24/7 in lieu of interacting with each other in person and you have a recipe for disaster. Even though it's possible to be social on the internet, it has a strong distance effect and a lot of groups benefit by forging internet bonds over hatred, criticism, or dehumanization of others (who cares about the "normies"). In addition, in many cases one doesn't even need to interact with people for most needs (amazon etc) further contributing to isolation and the illusion that you don't need others. It's the perfect storm to make the barrier to violence really low—it's easy when you have no connection to the victims and you see them as less than human or as objects "npcs".
Your mention of "normies" and "npcs" reminds me of an unfortunate change I saw happen in autistic communities a few years ago.
Those spaces used to be great places for people to ask questions, share interests, and find relief in a community that understood them. But over just a year or two, the whole atmosphere flipped. The focus turned from mutual support to a shared antagonism toward neurotypical people, who were often dehumanized.
It was heartbreaking to watch. Long-time members, people who were just grateful to finally have a place to belong, were suddenly told they weren't welcome anymore if they weren't angry enough. That anger became a tool to police the community, and many of the original, supportive spaces were lost.
I am not in these spaces so it's nice to get your summary. I agree that is tragic.
I've wondered about this kind of shift being an inevitable response to the growing online trope of autism being the boogeyman used to shill everything from not getting vaccinated to making your kids drink your urine.
The head of us health regularly talks about autistic people as a terrible tragedy inflicted on their parents and a net negative to society. I expect that kind of rhetoric would fuel hostility across any group.
I don't know that but it predates the current head of US health being a major public figure.
At the time I did some data analysis on the usernames of people promoting these ideas. Before the Reddit API changes you could get statistics on subs that had an overlap of users. What I noticed was there was an overlap with fringe political subs. The autistic subs with more anger issues had more fringe political people in it and as the subs became angrier the overlap increased. Inevitably the most vocal and pushy angry people were active in those political subs. You can see similar things with the angrier comments on HN.
I don't think it's an inevitable response to the things you mention. But it may be related. For example there's the term "weaponized autism" [e.g. 0]. That is, politically fringe and extreme groups talk and joke regularly about weaponizing autistic people as trolls. I think the autism forums became part of the recruiting funnel for this sort of extremism. At least that's the hypothesis that seemed to best explain all the factors.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35947316/ # I don't know if this paper or journal are any good. It's just the top hit that seemed relevant. One of the authors is Simon Baron Cohen, a well known autism researcher.
What is the alternative to a generation who credibly has a shot at being the last generation of a functioning world economy before climate change severely contracts the worldwide living standard?
There is a lot of info out there about the long term damage and destabilization driven by climate change. Telling people it doesn't matter is rude at best and dangerous at worst.
Even your own flippant dismissal has holes though - what problem like every other problem have we solved well? Especially at this scale?
History is full of nasty times; trying to avoid them isn't extremist rhetoric and calling it that is shitty.
When you purchase a "carbon offset," you are paying someone not to emit carbon that they otherwise would have emitted. You're not getting rid of any actual emissions.
The current marginal cost of offsets is $50/person/year because nobody buys them. But if we all paid each other not to emit any carbon, what would the cars run on? Certainly you couldn't pay a person $50/year to stop using any transportation or power.
It can include that. But we also don't have a carbon capture method that scales to the point that it could balance out all our emissions, so tree-planting doesn't scale either.
There is violence, such as burning garbage bins or closing roads, and there is murder.
The former Brazilian president is standing trial today (literally) for a coup attempt that planned to kill the elected president, the vice-president, and the president of the election court.
The current president of the US endorsed a violent uprising that threatened to kill representatives in order to prevent the certification of election results after he lost.
I don’t think this is political violence with a clear agenda. Feels more like a hatred fuelled act of aggression.
Charlie Kirk was strocking violence against transgender people just before being assassinated. And the crowd applauded.
"Videos circulating on social media shows an attender asking Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” In response, Kirk says, “Too many,” as the crowd clapped."
I won't "debate" with someone with so much bad faith he would say with a straight face "1 mass shooting is too many" when there are hundreds every year.
Why don't you say the actual number? Why didn't Kirk say the actual number? Because it would make their argument -that trans people are such a menace to society they must be barred from their right to bear arms (for starters, because his hate of trans people was deeper than that)- ridiculous.
I fail to see how the response you’ve quoted would stoke violence against transgender Americans, but let’s say it could, what would that make the rhetoric Kirk received, given he was the victim of actual violence?
Are you seriously, with a straight face, asking why "trans people are crazy people who want to kill us" would stroke violence against trans people, who are already being villified and killed, had their treatments made illegal or uninsuranced, were expelled from the military after decades of service, and whose right to bear arms was suddenly questioned, when actual mentally unstable people are allowed to?
These studies are interest but should equally be interpreted as the desire for change - and I think it is reasonable to say that there is a huge desire for change.
In particular regard anti democratic developments, an increasing oligarchy, and increased inequality.
If I was a leader, I would take this really seriously and start to make some hard decisions.
Well, of course not. We agree that some types of violence are okay, like police or military using violence for police and military things. I'm sure he wouldn't have posted that if people were cheering that a serial rapist has been shot by the police.
Do you think it should have been said then or do you think it shouldn't be said now?
Do you think it matters that Charlie kirk did a lot of mean talking and bin ladin directed a lot of violence?
For my bit, I really appreciated dang's top post. I don't agree that there are no differences between a terrorist leader and a right wing troll, but I do think that anger makes us collectively less and we could all benefit from an extra moment before scribbling an idea onto the internet.
The philosophy espoused by the stickied comment is based on the idea that it doesn't matter what the deeds of the person in question were; it's about the concept.
Whether that philosophy is one I'd personally agree with, I'm not sure. But it's certainly one that doesn't match the idea of applying it to one but not the other - that's an entirely different philosophy. Which one is more valid is something we could discuss for many hours, and I'm sure we'd still end up with many, many different views.
> Finally, I’m delighted to announce that Daniel Gackle (pronounced Gackley), who has already been doing most of the moderation for the last 18 months, is going to join YC full-time to be in charge of the HN community.
They didn’t compare the reactions to the death of someone who led one of the world’s largest terrorist organizations for decades with that of someone mainly known for being good at debates. They compared the reactions to the death of someone who led one of the world’s largest terrorist organizations for decades with that of Charlie Kirk.
Does it really make any difference whether they compared the death of someone who led one of the world’s largest terrorist organisations for decades
- with someone who wasn’t good at debates,
- or with someone who was?
My point still stands: even if Charlie Kirk had been entirely unremarkable, it wouldn’t be right to compare him with someone responsible for thousands of civilian deaths?
You're seeing things that aren't there: me comparing reactions. What I was doing instead is looking at the stickied comment here
> By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer have a need to express it aggressively.
> The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
Which is a philosophy based on the idea of "it doesn't matter who it is about, it's about the concept".
Dang hadn't even begun working on HN in 2011, even as pg's helper (that only happened the following year). HN, and the world, were vastly different places then. Dang has now been doing the job in some form for over a decade, and I've been around for plenty of those years too. We've learned much about what is needed to keep discussions as healthy as possible (relatively speaking). These days it's not unusual for us to post a sticky comment at the top of a thread for a major controversial topic, to remind the community of the guidelines and the expected standard of discourse. In today's world, we would post that kind of top comment for any death of a major public figure that were likely to stir up strong reactions in the comments.
No, he was not comparing reactions. He went back to check the Bin Laden comment section to see if there were such comments to warrant a sticky from dang.
The sad irony is that he's at a college campus debating/arguing with people. At their best that's what college campuses are for. I know they haven't been living up to it lately but seeing him gunned down feels like a metaphor.
I know he liked to publicize the exchanges where he got the best of someone, and bury the others, and that he was a far, far cry from a public intellectual. Still, he talked to folks about ideas, and that's something that we should have more of.
That should be something that we strive for, but I fear we'll see it less and less. Who'se going to want to go around and argue with people now?
Feels like your second paragraph negates the first. That he wasn’t honestly debating ideas but fishing for soundbites to spread hate and appear intellectual, using the backdrop of college campuses to lend legitimacy to his divisive ideas. That is not what college campuses are for, and it is not a debate.
I’m not American, I never heard of this guy before. But I saw the video of the last moments and it’s a telling snippet. He was incredibly dismissive in his answers which were vague and devoid of information, while being clearly rage bait meant to be cheered on by his base.
As I've said in a few other comments, I agree it's a poor "debate". But sadly it's the sort we've got now in the public sphere. I hope for better, but I can't help but think his killing doesn't help.
Charlie Kirk was a 30 year old political activist. You pick the finest minds of the last century, a famous debate between them, and somehow compare that to Kirk advocating whatever he advocates. It's like comparing a middle school math teacher against a college math teacher (professor) and their teaching styles.
It is like comparing a mediocre magician who is ok at giving an illusion of a debate that gets a reaction from an audience vs people who give thought provoking points.
A quick example: Someone says they don't believe in objective morality. He responds with "do you think hitler was objectively evil?".
The whole point is you either answer A) no, and get a reaction from the audience for looking bad cause hitler or B) yes, and now you have conceded.
What part of trying to corner you using the reaction of the audience the moment you argue against objective morality the Socratic method? Obviously no one wants to appear as a Nazi sympathiser especially in public when that is not the point they are trying to make.
If he fails to corner you, then comes the escape hatch where he brings up God and how God defines morality. Now the debate is over because you either believe in God or you don't.
This is a script that turns the whole thing into a rigged game not a method for arguing.
As many people I knew in high school, you realized that you know as much nuance as there is and you're smarter than most already. No need to open the thick books and understand a new perspective.
Your comment seems to imply that Kirk was simply not as good at holding a good-faith debate as the "finest minds".
It's not a question of skill or aptitude, but rather that he actively sought performative "owning the libs" arguments than genuine rigorous intellectual debate.
Kirk's operation was about giving bullying lessons (read: Republican talking points) to Young Republicans
The point of his videos is to teach Young Republicans to identify weaker, more easily targeted members of the liberal tribe, alongside a set of disingenous talking points they could use to harass and ideally embarass those individuals.
But that's how I see everything happening on the other side of the political spectrum from me. All their books, pamphlets, blogs and debates are fake. Just like your comment. No one's honest. It's just a game to own the other side.
Of course there are instances of this on both sides. Kirk was just a prominent example of this on the right.
I'm not sure books or blogs are a good example of this though. While they may contain lies or disingenuous talking points, they are quite different from the type of "debating" Kirk partook in on college campuses. Specifically, that strategy is characterized by speaking quickly and finding "gotcha" moments that play well on social media and short form video like reels or tiktok.
Written material can still be harmful of course, but I feel that it lacks a certain infectious, viral aspect to it that is so politically divisive these days.
Sure. Our own mainstream media is very guilty of doing the same things with regard to editing down reality for the sakes of entertainment or pushing an agenda. I guess one admirable difference, to offer him some defence, is he is an appproachable guy. Literally. If you so disired you could go and view his debates or even debate him yourself. He has the right to make himself look good on his own channel.
He was only approachable as long as you were feeding him content. Turn the cameras off and the "debate" is over. It was a strictly transactional exchange in his favour.
I read an account of the "debate" immediately preceding his murder, it was quips and dodges. If that's at all representative of his conduct, he actively hurt the national dialogue by convincing people that that's what a debate looks like.
Steelmanning that position, though, would go like this. The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind. Good debate makes good viewing, which is why debates have audiences. And young people in particular tend to be impressionable because they don't have a lifetime of commitment to one position.
So if you want to engage people politically via debate, then university campuses are a good place to do that and thus - to someone extraordinarily uncharitable - any such debate could be described as "trolling immature leftist college students to score YouTube views". The same activity done by an academic would be described as "presenting the youth with mind-expanding dialogue", and they'd be doing it to score tuition fees, but nobody would quibble with that phrasing.
> The purpose of debate is to challenge people's views, even if they strongly disagree, in order to convince if not participants then bystanders to change their mind.
Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together. Unless you're very, very careful and good faith, and your counterpart is very, very careful and good faith, debates are a race to the bottom of psychological manipulation. They're not contests of facts; there's no way to objectively score them; they're not good ways for participants or bystanders to learn.
Facially, they're theater. But a system's purpose is what it does, and these performances serve as a venue/foundation to hone/push messaging. You'll almost never see right-wing "debaters" go up against "big" left-wing names like an Ezra Klein or Destiny (Ben Shapiro is kind of the exception, but he's far more conciliatory with someone like Klein--he did do one with Destiny, it went pretty badly for him, so it of course became a one-time thing).
Kirk et al lose--they lose frequently! You rarely see it because they have far bigger megaphones than their victorious rivals. But have these (many) losses changed their views? No. Debates are not two parties seeking the truth together.
One could say the same about this very debate you're participating in. And since that's how you see debates, one has to immediately assume that you're not acting in good faith.
A position like his doesn't really take well to steelmanning… It's not really the kind of viewpoint that's meant to be spelled out explicitly. You're supposed to shroud it in euphemisms.
I guess the steelmanned version of his beliefs would be something like, "racial and sexual minorities are an enemy to the white Americans who own this country; they threaten things we value about our culture and society, and we have no obligation to tolerate or accommodate them if we don't want to."
He spoke out against the Civil Rights act. He said the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory (that immigration is a deliberate attempt to dilute and ultimately replace the white race) is "not a theory, it's a reality." He said the Levitican prescription to stone gay men is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Social_policy)
Coverage of Kirk's killing has largely skirted around his views, because to describe them at all feels like speaking ill of the dead. If you bring up the fact that Kirk was a loathsome hatemonger, it somewhat tempers your message that political violence is never acceptable
Here's an attempt to steelman just one of the things you bring up: the great replacement theory.
The United States, like many developed nations, is experiencing a fertility crisis: it doesn't produce enough families and resulting children to sustain it's current population.
The US could take steps to address the underlying problems that result in declining fertility for it's current population, but it's unlikely to do so for several reasons that all boil down to political realities where the people that are most incentivized to vote (retired people who earn social security) would probably bear the brunt of the (significant) costs of such solutions. See the idea of "concentrated benefits, diffuse costs".
So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates (an option not equally available to all developed countries), resulting in young US citizens continuing to struggle to form families, and producing a fraying of the social fabric that such an inability to form families is likely to have on a society.
So you can see why some people would be duped into such a conspiracy theory, which purports to explain what people are seeing with their very eyes.
>So instead the US uses immigration to fill the gap left by declining fertility rates
Because that is working so good for Europe? At some point you need to understand that replacing a population is not the solution for low fertility population.
It's just that a lot of people argue badly, either because of lacking skill or lacking goodwill.
That doesn't mean their arguments are necessarily wrong. It is necessary to try to reframe such badly made arguments in a way that presents the message properly in order to be able to actually compare competing ideas and find truth.
If you compare one well-crafted argument to a poorly crafted argument, the well-crafted argument would seem to come out on top even if its underlying ideas were actually wrong.
E.g. if I say "Apples are good because my grandma loved apples and you are stupid!"
And my opponent says "Apples are bad because there are other fruits that can be grown much more efficiently and feed people better"
Then my opponent would probably "win" the argument. But that doesn't mean apples are actually bad. Try to remake the argument for why apples are good in a better way, in order to fairly compare the two sides and find the truth.
Haha that long rant where you project a liberal caricature onto me is exactly what I am referring to when I say he's destroyed the idea of a formal debate.
I've watched Charlie Kirk debate. He's an absolutely awful debater.
First off, he chooses his opponents. He's going up against college students, often unprepared ones. He never goes up against people with experience.
Secondly, he's the absolute KING of gish galloping [0]. If someone ever actually starts getting an upper-hand, he just resorts to spewing a non-stop tirade of bullshit. He'll ask 10 questions and then interrupt them after they've only answered one, just to go off on more bullshit. The problem is, people who don't know shit about debate thinks that's winning.
I admit I found him unwatchable, and did not watch any of his content.
But I also don't know why most people consume the content they do. For whatever reason, his format got traction with certain people, and it wouldn't have if they got nothing out of it.
Quite comical it is to act as a judge of what helps or hinders the "national conversation", whatever that is. I assume it's something one shakes one's jowels during.
This is absurd. If all you have is telling the other commenter _what they really believe _ then you have nothing and there shouldn't be a comment here.
I have not seen much of him, but I did watch a video from Jubilee where he was debating a bunch of people.
In that instance, I have to say I saw no indication of bath faith; to the contrary, he seemed to listen very carefully, and would use the most charitable interpretation of what people were saying. I’d heard a lot of negative things about him, so I was actually impressed. I might not have agreed with him, but he was genuine and respectful.
I think his death is truly a tragedy. I worry about how this will further radicalize the right, and the chilling effect it will have on already chilled discourse.
Agreed. He was respectful of differing opinion, and encouraged diversity of thought. All Americans, from the left and right, should view this as a Fundimental aspect of a healthy democracy. We don't always need to agree, but if we cannot talk we are no longer an Nation.
> but I did watch a video from Jubilee where he was debating a bunch of people.
Full, uncut video, or video edited and hosted by Kirk on his youtube channel?
I ask in good faith, I've seen him stumbling about badly in UK debating clubs where debate is an art form and I've seen "debates" on his channels that appear to have numerous edits.
Not op but I've seen the video they referenced and their account is accurate from what I remember and the whole debate is shown (it's actually a long video). There were preselected topics with time limits for each one. The way they picked who was up was a bit odd with them basically racing to the chair but the ones not up there could vote to stop the current debaters turn and let someone else take over. It was definitely interesting.
In that production he was pretty engaged and most of the time seemed to be putting out relevant, thought out responses.
That's not to say there weren't any gotcha responses being thrown around but IIRC (it's been a while) it was coming from both sides of the debate. IIRC, there was some one of the debaters was actually more ,than Kirk (provided I'm not mixing up videos, healthy distrust for my memory lol).
Jubilee does cut their videos just so you're aware. I've never heard of them ever releasing a full uncut version. They have good editors, it's hard to tell. They'll snip entire participant segments.
First thoughts, having never been aware of this whole "20 X Vs 1 of Y" Jubilee format before are that;
* this seems highly contrived, and
* "Now Casting 55+ year old Trump supporters for an upcoming SURROUNDED video" (on the home page)
supports that notion.
This isn't the format of Buckley V. Vidal (perhaps the start of the end of intellectual debate in the US) and nor is it a debate in the sense of equal time, three rounds (case, defense, conclusion), etc.
which at a first rapid skim appear to flesh out many of the initial issues and feelings that I have.
Right now I have hedges to trim and a roof to tin so it'll be many hours before I can watch an hour and half contrived 'battle' and take notes .. but I will give it a shot.
It’s definitely contrived, and Jubilee for sure seems to make clickbait-y videos. I don’t particularly fault them for it, it seems to be the arena they are playing in.
But I do think they are fairly neutral, and they get people who disagree to talk to each other, and I appreciate that.
I watched another video of theirs where it was inverted, with many conservative students debating one liberal pundit, and of course the students did worse- they’re just a bunch of kids. But good to be exposed to another point of view.
Best of luck on your hedges and roof! That sounds far more worthwhile than watching that video.
IIRC he did ask that at one point, and got a pretty interesting answer.
I also don’t see how that is a bad faith question.
I think in certain contexts the question “what is a Republican” would be important, for example the right wing has been trying to answer that since Trump ran in 2015.
It was never the question that was bad faith. It is that he pretends like there is only one definition to the word, so there’s never a fruitful discussion. His entire existence at these events is to get video footage to use as marketing for his political group, not to actually debate in good faith.
An informed take from Forest Valkai on Kirk’s “what is a woman?” Debate style:
No, Kirk used the same debate bro tactics about people who were very informed and nuanced about the biological facts. Forest Valkai has explained this ad nauseum.
Kirk was bad faith because he tried to distill a complicated, nuanced argument into TikTok clips.
He ran into plenty of college students who tried the thing you described, but he was equally dismissive of the people who knew more than him on the subject.
It's bad faith because womanhood, like (for instance) adulthood, is a social construct. If I ask you, "what is an adult," there's no simple and rigorous answer to that question. You can say, "you're an adult when everyone agrees you're an adult," but that's a bit circular, and it risks making you sound dumb. Or you could get into different cultural ideas of adulthood, what happens when someone who's an adult in one culture enters a different culture where they're considered a child, the role that legal systems plays in establishing an age of majority, the social agreements that give that legal system the power to enforce certain rules based on that age, and so forth. But that's not going to come over very well in a snappy debate video where the other guy gets to edit the footage of whatever you say.
If a progressive were running the debate, they would never ask a question like, "what is a woman." They don't care that Republicans think trans women are men. They'd ask, "why should your conception of womanhood be used to determine who gets put in a women's jail when putting transgender women in male prisons measurably increases prison violence?"
"What is a woman" is a nebulous cultural question with no real importance compared to the actual lives and freedoms of transgender women.
> It's bad faith because womanhood, like (for instance) adulthood, is a social construct.
And the Democratic Party still wonders why they lost. I’m saying this as not an American. The question is what’s 2+2 and the answer being it’s a social construct.
You're proving his point. Discussion of Peano axioms or however you want to construct natural numbers is irrelevant to the question what's two plus two, which has a straightforward answer to anyone who isn't being intentionally obtuse.
The context you are missing here is that Charlie Kirk spent a decade crafting this into a wedge issue while gaslighting the informed academics that their answer was wrong.
Kirk would always use the first dictionary definition of “woman” while academics would incorporate both the first and second definitions. And the cultural effect ballooned when this specific question became a meme and a virtue signal.
Why don't you answer the question of how many is "many"? Isn't it because the number would absolutely ridiculuous when mass shooting count is in the hundreds without any reaction from you (and Charlie Kirk himself who said it was the price to pay for the 2nd amendment)?
Yeah, I agree. It's a poverty of ours that he's the most prominent "debater" we've seen. Ideally we'd have a few dozen folks, maybe even a whole culture that debates. That way I think it'd be harder for grifters to gain a huge following through slick edits and rhetorical tricks.
Nonetheless I think his killing will have more of a chilling effect on debate of any sort, though I'd like to proven wrong and see a more trend of more sober, thoughtful debate take hold.
If you have a certain argument to a certain talking point, then you're always going to repeat that same argument whenever that talking point emerges. There's nothing bad faith about that. These kinds of arguments get repetitive so you're going to see people repeat the same points.
As for the value of debate, even bad debate is better than nothing. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing being gained from it, but if you question people who have engaged in a lot of debates, you find that they're much more informed after the debates — even very acrimonious debates, where both sides are just trying to defeat the other side — than they were before it. A society needs people to communicate, for it to progress in its ability to effectively coordinate on complex social issues, and that process of communication is not going to be without warts, given how complex these social issues are, and how high the stakes are for a great number of people.
Societies which embrace civil discourse and protect free speech are far better off for it. This killing strikes at the heart of a civil society.
Charlie Kirk’s “certain argument” was “what is a woman?”. He would gish gallop weak and fallacious arguments to pretend like his definition was valuable (it wasn’t) and he would steam roll the nuanced definitions provided by his interlocutors.
And no, bad debate isn’t necessarily valuable and that dichotomy doesn’t get us anywhere. Kirk was not the only person doing valuable debates. He was a propagandist with a façade of debater.
Medhi Hasan is an eminently more honest and more skilled debater. Destiny is decent (although he does streaming debates for a living, so he gets a little too “debate bro” for my taste). Matt Dillahunty and some of his crowd are more informed and charitable than Kirk was.
We should be encouraging young minds to seek out honest interlocutors, not ones that sate their “dunking” appetites.
I’m not arguing for killing and your framing is not valuable. I’m arguing that Kirk was not a good role model for the kind of debate where people might actually learn facts.
Regarding even bad debate being better than no debate, I used to believe the same, then realized how much progress had been made in the process of low-quality arguments between 'heels dug in' interlocutors. It was like the inverse of a frog slowly being boiled.
But the question "what is a woman" is trying to get at finding this honesty. Even many allegedly highly educated professors respond to that with the answer "anyone that feels like one," which is an absurd and and demands the obvious response "but what is that thing?" Simply because a position can be correctly assailed with such a blunt question does not mean the criticism is not valid. Of course, it doesn't.
I think Medhi Hasan is among the best debaters alive, but I think he’s 100% wrong on his religious views.
Generally I’m a fan of Oxford style debates, such as Intelligence Squared.
Kirk was a rapid-fire debater who made all of his content to go viral. I don’t see much value in that style, because it steamrolls so much important nuance.
This isn't a valid accusation. I believe "both sidesism" has cursed Americans into locked thinking patterns where they can never develop, because they have to spend an eternity giving sober consideration to endless wrong-headed positions.
My viewpoints don't align with flat earthers, and also I criticize their unscientific methods.
The kind of individual who shoots someone for saying things he doesn't like is a narcissist.
Ideas anger narcissists because if they are counter to what they already believe, they are a personal affront, and if they cannot reason the challenge away because - quite simply, they're wrong and the other person is right - it creates a great anger in them.
And narcissism is prevailing in our culture currently. People far prefer to call the other side bad, stupid, etc, rather than introspect and consider that maybe you're not that smart, and maybe you don't know everything, and maybe what you believe is actually naive and just a manifestation of your sillyness.
The problem of course is that the only way opposing narcissists can overcome each other is by force. So there'll be less argument, and more go-straight-to violence.
Can you explain your argument further? I don't think it makes much sense, and I think you would struggle to find actual sources blaming narcissism outside your own conjecture.
A world where pugilism prevails over debate would look markedly different. I doubt Kirk would bother holding events if any of what you said was fundamentally true about politics.
Leaving personal feelings about the person. What exactly does 2nd amendment guys think using guns to fight "tyranny" looks like? People rising up to a group of people clad on black clothes and an eerily fascist reminiscent symbol ala rickandmorty?
Some people using guns to defend themselves against who they believe are the harbingers of this authoritarian State is 2nd amendment working as intended. Not a "tragic but necessary sacrifice" as some will put school shootings, but actually what right to bear arms is supposed to be about.
And it's immaterial if you ultimately disagree to whether this administration is authoritarian, but these things will keep happening as long as enough people believe that to be the case. It's a feature, not a bug.
Apropos, you can listen to Charlie Kirk answering that precise question, during the Biden presidency in 2021. (I assume Kirk is fairly a representative voice of the far-right movement?)
He was asked this question: "When do we get to use the guns?" "How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?" [sic]
I think it's best to watch his answer in full, and decide the nuances for yourself.
From my PoV, he agrees with the spirit of that comment. His response to "When to do we get to use the guns?" is to concede: "We *are* living under fascism. We *are* living under this tyranny" [sic]. In the context of that 2nd Amendment question about shooting tyrants, he identifies President Joseph Biden as a tyrant.
It's not ambiguous who these people think deserve to be shot.
I think it's highly remarkable that in that answer, Kirk actually never once condemns political violence. Listen to it and hear: not a word breathed to say killing political opponents is wrong, or immoral, or abhorrent to civics or American democracy, or, well: murder. His non-response is in a qualitatively different direction: he explains to the "When do we shoot them?" guy that murdering leftists would instigate a draconian law-enforcement response (by that same US government he had identified as "fascist" and "tyrannical"), and that that would set back far-right causes. That is, beginning to end, the entire substance of his response to "Why not shoot them?": fear of consequences.
You're talking about the murder of a media personality, not a tyrant or even someone who has any say in how the government is run. You don't fight tyranny by eliminating people just because they have different opinions.
I'm mildly curious what the reaction to this will be compared to the reaction to other recent political murders, like the Hortmans, or of Thompson.
That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
> even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe
ok let's try data instead of feels. Per Capita, what is the number of mass shootings per year in the USA, and in Japan. I did't know the answer but asked Gemini.
The most recent year for which there is data, apparently, is 2023, during which there were 604 mass shootings in the USA, and 1 in Japan. Given the respective population counts, the per-capita rate of mass shootings in the United States was about 225 times higher than in Japan.
Given that, are you confident that your observation that "one guy made a gun once in Japan" is a strong refutation of the idea that the US could reduce mass shootings by strengthening regulations?
I think you're basically ignoring my point - that increasing numbers of targeted assassinations are not really a gun control issue (today's was seemingly a single shot, so things being discussed in this thread seem pretty not related), but a sign of major societal problems that need to be addressed.
Your response seems very off topic in focusing on "mass shootings" which are at best an ill-defined marketing term created to lump family annihilation suicides with more public mass casualty events like the pulse nightclub shooting in order to launder dubious policies.
But my whole original comment said nothing about mass shootings to begin with.
Strong gun regulations have a couple of orders of magnitude impact on one type of gun violence, but you think that’s irrelevant and off-topic to whether strong gun regulations would have an impact on another form of gun violence?
You didn’t clarify that by “everything that’s happening” as the preface to your suggestion that gun control is pointless you specifically meant “political assassination and no other gun deaths”. It’s reasonable that someone would see you say that gun regulation wouldn’t have an effect on gun deaths and think that you were talking about gun deaths generally.
It would actually be bizarre for a reader to read “everything that’s happening” and think “the person that wrote this is referring to the first shooting at a school today and specifically excluding the second shooting at a school today”
there are plenty of regulations already. what we need is to start enforcing them. and also mental heath destigmatization and assistance, since it's a mental health problem, not a gun problem.
Why cannot it be both? You definitely have a gun problem, and also a mental health problem. And you even have a mentality problem by thinking that gun is fine on you just to be safe, which is quite acceptable thought over there - the reaction of Americans vs Europeans to the fact that somebody has a gun on them in a friendly group is quite stark. But you have also a stochastic terrorism problem, a grifter problem, an inequality problem, an almost zero social net problem, many monopoly problems. All of these exaggerate your murder problem.
And you clearly have a “too few people want to solve these” problem. Most of you even voted to the person who campaigned that he wants to make these worse.
This won’t be solved, and will it be made worse in America for the next decade for sure.
Sorry, upon re-reading my comment, I communicated my thought incorrectly.
My intention was to point out that the not-mass shooting overshadowed the mass shooting in the news. Obviously both are bad, but 3 people dying in a single shooting incident is worse than 1 person dying in a single shooting incident, yet the 1 person dying is the one that gets the news coverage.
You’re quoting statistics that are irrelevant to the point. Mass shootings are not political violence.
I can come up with a multitude of political violence examples in countries with strict weapons laws - New Zealand, France, Japan. Then if you add in other weapons - cars, knives, bombs, the list gets even longer.
The point is - gun control won’t stop political violence. Perpetrators will use other means at their disposal.
> The point is - gun control won’t stop political violence. Perpetrators will use other means at their disposal.
Technically true. But gun control means political violence will have to engage much closer and is less likely to be as deadly. Do we want more or less death+maiming in our political violence?
Am I? The forest view is that political violence is an inevitable part of life. And that outlawing guns makes them less accessible and therefore less likely to be used in any violent interactions.
Just to be clear political violence is a broad umbrella of many actions, including violent protest and political assassinations. One can be more of an issue than the other. Personally, in my opinion it’s hard to political violence as a whole is an “issue” when looking from a historically context. However, I do think that political assassination specifically is something that has been an issue historically.
How come there’s no gun violence in prison but plenty of stabbings? Prison is the highest concentration of violent criminals and yet no gun violence. To quote the great Eddie Izzard, “you can’t just walk up to someone and yell BANG. The gun helps”.
"Of 267 incidents this year classified as mass shootings by the Gun Violence Archive, nearly all can be tied to gang beefs, neighborhood arguments, robberies or domestic incidents that spiraled out of control.
Indiscriminate slaughter by a lone gunman blasting away at a store, school or some other public place is rare, according to a Washington Times analysis of the archive’s data, accounting for less than 4% of the total."
Maybe the shooter was just having a "neighborhood argument" with Kirk?
I'm struggling to understand what point you're even trying to make? Gun violence is not a concern when we bucket it into categories? Some categories of gun violence are more okay than others?
> US could reduce mass shootings by strengthening regulations?
How? without decreasing access for sane people or using any of the previous talking points that have been rejected previously. now’s the time to suggest real change that could have an effect but suggesting the tired “no black rifles” will still go nowhere.
The fact that gemini is saying there were 604 is insane. That's literally ~2/day. That doesn't pass the sniff test for any reasonable definition of mass shooting (i.e. indiscriminate shooting of parties not known to the shooter).
The fact that you are just willing to run with such a number says everything we need to know.
> The U.S. averages one to two mass shootings per day, with the specific rate varying by year and definition. Organizations like the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) define a mass shooting as an incident where at least four people are shot and either killed or injured, not including the shooter. For example, the GVA reported the U.S. averaged two mass shootings per day in the first half of 2023, with a record-breaking number in 2021.
Here is an Axios article where Gemini is getting its information from:
We are at 300 so far this year. You can click on mass shootings and get an enumerated list for this year with incidents and sources, I'm not sure if you can go back to other years also:
Honest question: why would you even post a comment like that when searching online for the answer takes like 10 seconds?
The fact that you want to go with your feels and that you have the balls to degrade someone else who was actually correct is really what says everything we need to know:
FWIW your "reasonable definition" of mass shooter requiring the victims to be unknown by the shooter seems totally unreasonable to me, and it's not used by any organization that actually tracks these things (the Wikipedia article gives a list of definitions, none of them conforming to yours).
When I lived in Baltimore, mass shootings were a regular occurrence. And that was just one medium sized city.
The vast majority of mass shootings don't make national news, because they happen in high poverty areas. It's not just the inner city, there are parts of rural America that are also quite violent.
It makes the news when someone who "shouldn't be killed" gets killed.
While "mass shooting" does not have a solid agreed upon definition, there is a commonly accepted definition when we talk about one in the US. It's a shooting incident in which there are 4 or more casualties.
The fact that upping the bar to 4 per incident and still gets us 600 is frankly shameful.
> it would be politically inconvenient to separate them
Why? No sane person in the United States "likes" gun violence. I don't think anyone would disagree with the statement "600 incidents of a firearm killing 4 or more people is too many incidents." The question that divides people is how we ought to control it.
You're gonna have to explain your point better. No one said mental illness doesn't exist. Your comment has nothing to do with the definition of mass shootings. No one defines mass shooting as "a mentally ill person who shoots people." It's pretty much given that a mass shooter is mentally ill. The point of contention is what does "mass" mean.
I think of ‘mass’ in the context of defining groups of things as just ‘a lot under the circumstances’. A mass gathering for an NFL game is 100,000 people; a mass crowd for a high-school JV basketball game is probably 100; a mass crowd for a 1 year old’s birthday is maybe 50. It’s relative to what is expected under normal circumstances. 4 people being shot or injured is a lot because nobody should be shot or injured.
it’s simple, don’t use verbiage meant to manipulate emotions. so just call it a shooting. the qualifier mass serves no purpose and changes nothing about how the case is prosecuted. the suspect is still charged with individual murder or manslaughter charges, not one single charge of multiple deaths.
I'll do one further. I don't care if the verbiage is "manipulative" or has a spin to it so long as the term and definition are not specifically crafted to overload plain english terms to facilitate being misleading with plausible deniability.
That's how low of a bar I'll set and they still can't meet it.
"Doesn’t pass the sniff test" usually means "I haven’t looked at the data." The U.S. has averaged ~2 mass shootings a day for years. It feels unreal because it is — but that's life in America.
Meanwhile, overshadowed by the Kirk shooting, an almost mass shooting also occurred:
3 Students, Including Attacker, Shot at Colorado High School, Authorities Say
Three students, including a shooting suspect, were critically injured in a shooting at a suburban high school in Colorado on Wednesday afternoon, the authorities said.
You've arrived at something important intuitively.
The majority of "mass shootings" are gang related. Just from gang members with many prior felony's shooting each other (and maybe innocents getting hit in the process sometimes)
No it’s not. This is constantly reiterated in many news outlets. In fact, Charlie Kirk was probably making that exact point at the time he was shot (my opinion based on his last sentence).
Apparently we need to say it a little louder. We have multiple threads in this comment section of people trying to figure out how the US can have > 500 "mass shootings" a year and do nothing.
I won't be satisfied until we change the definition. Including gang violence from people with multiple felonies is not useful to the conversation.
> I won't be satisfied until we change the definition. Including gang violence from people with multiple felonies is not useful to the conversation.
Why should we not count gangs and felons killing 4+ people at once as "mass killing"?!
Because their victims may know them somehow? It's still a serious incident which would be much less likely if guns were illegal. And all we'd lose is some sport shooting and ego points.
Because these are fundamentally different crimes with different motives, people from mostly different walks of life doing them and different preventative steps.
The stuff you do to "solve" drive-bys and targeted drug industry violence won't solve school shootings and vise versa.
To lump them together serves no non-evil purpose. The people doing so are exactly as deserving of marginalization, and ideally legitimate state violence following due process (but that's just a pipe dream of mine), as the people who use a slight of hand to include prescription abuse in stats about cross-border drug smuggling or the people who try and act like literally every instance of domestic violence is the fault of alcohol or whatever. Nobody with even a shred of decency would stand behind those latter two examples. It speaks volumes about HN that the mass-shooting slight of hand is fine though.
And this isn't just a mass shooting crime issue. This is a "people feel emboldened to lie and be shitty because there is no consequence" issue. Bad people perform comparable dishonest slights of hand on all sorts of issues.
> The stuff you do to "solve" drive-bys and targeted drug industry violence won't solve school shootings and vise versa.
Are you sure about that? There are probably some differences in prevention and response, but also plenty of similarities too. Like better mental healthcare, outlawing private gun ownership, and teaching non-violent conflict resolution.
> To lump them together serves no non-evil purpose. The people doing so are exactly as deserving of marginalization, and ideally legitimate state violence following due process (but that's just a pipe dream of mine)...
So you're advocating for violence in response to speech?
>Are you sure about that? There are probably some differences in prevention and response, but also plenty of similarities too. Like better mental healthcare, outlawing private gun ownership, and teaching non-violent conflict resolution.
Targeting the overlap (mental health, guns, etc) is stupid and inefficient unless your goal is to take some action that can be done under that pretext and you don't really care about resource expenditure toward results. There's only so much political capital and surplus wealth round to be directed toward such ends. Something like gun control is massively political expensive. There's cheaper ways to get the same result.
I think the suggestion of addressing non-violent conflict resolution is a great example of that sort of "well I want to do a thing and this is my justification" because while it would certainly address the "traditional crime" end it's perhaps a generally good thing to do but it's not going to affect the mass shootings much because those people typically have little to no conflict with who they're shooting.
>So you're advocating for violence in response to speech?
Yes, and just to be clear I'm also advocating for all sorts of marginalization under the law short of violence leading up to that. Like all matters of law and social norms such marginalization is necessarily backed in violence though perhaps circuitously. The way I see it speech makes us all fractionally responsible for the results of what our words endorse. If society is willing to pay a bunch of cops to levy violence upon people over fairly petty misdeeds then I think it's at least arguably justifiable to direct the same kinds of violence at people who's speech greatly furthers tings and riles up people toward ends that are huge negatives. Politicians, news people, internet personalities ought not to be able to rile people up and then wash their hands of it saying that they were not there when the bricks got thrown or people to get shot.
I'm also aware that this is bad for freedom and human rights but that ship sailed so long ago. If we're going to have prolific law enforcement and subject as many things as we do to it, allegedly for the betterment of society, then screw it, lets' do speech too. If we're all gonna get stomped by the jackboot like this is singapore we might as well enjoy the upsides.
You are trying to change the definition of a term to something that literally nobody agrees with nor keeps records of. You are shoehorning data to fit your politics.
> remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
Countries with strict gun control enjoy far lower rates of firearm accidents, suicides, and murders. IMO it's clearly worth the tradeoff. Very few of us live in a place where only guns can solve our problems.
The fact that occasionally someone goes to great lengths to kill doesn't mean we should make it easier for everyone.
So... if anything, this is the exact situation stricter gun laws wouldn't really prevent. Which would be the targeted assassination of a societal figure by a determined ideologue or partisan or mole.
In which case you'd need a strong internal investigatory services in order to root these plots out before they happen by following up on leads and tips.
Well... not to get political, but I think we're hollowing that out too?
> So... if anything, this is the exact situation stricter gun laws wouldn't really prevent. Which would be the targeted assassination of a societal figure by a determined ideologue or partisan or mole.
My point isn't that outlawing guns would stop every possible scenario. Rather it would make killings of all kinds far less likely, which is a win for everyone--even hate-spewing pundits.
Well, you wouldn't be able to reproduce such a long-range kill with a shabbily constructed firearm. You would have to be up close, which would be harder to do.
I think it's simply too late for real gun control in the US. Like how would that ever be enforced? There's too many guns already, and we have too many people down south that would be happy to smuggle guns back up North. And trying to control the ammo would be even more unrealistic. The gun culture America created over the past 100+ years is a massive mistake, and I don't think there is any undoing of it. Should have been more control immediately post WWII imo.
I'm not from the US so I only have an outsider's view of the culture, and FWIW I'm also not from Australia although I have emigrated here now.
Australia seemed to have a deeper relationship with guns previously, that stemmed partially out of necessity (farming etc), but there are also a lot of parallels with US culture here – the American dream, being a colony hundreds of years ago, etc, some focus on personal rights and freedoms, being a federation of states, etc. I don't think it was as deep a relationship as the US, but coming from the UK it seemed that Australia had a very different view than the UK.
Australia turned this all around. The culture shifted, and people realised that for the greater good it was something they needed to get past, and they did.
Maybe there's hope for US gun control yet, although the turning point for Australia was a (single) mass shooting. Maybe the US needs a much bigger turning point. I'm a little surprised that the Las Vegas shooting a while ago didn't provide that.
I live in the US. I don't hold much hope in gun control changing after recent years. Recent federal and state policy is trending towards less regulation and removal of the previous administrations regulations.
In 2024, estimated 16,576 deaths in the US from guns (excluding suicide, which is a very large addition on top of that), and 499 mass shootings.
Worst take today. The 2nd amendment was the SECOND thing the founders put in for a reason. They just got done fighting a war against the government with WEAPONS OF WAR. It was written specifically to enable fighting against tyrannical government, which is VASTLY worse than all mass shooters combined.
100%. The US took all that capability and could not win in 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan against such a force. Same in Vietnam.
The US populace is vastly larger and better armed and capable than Afghanistan.
The US military requires a massive economy to function. If it tries to attack itself, those little armed people could stop it, the economy would crash, and the US military would crumble without needed support and supplies.
A final issue is the US troops would lose a lot of soldiers if they were told to go attack fellow citizens. The soldiers would quit, would hesitate, would not want to kill people they view as their own people.
So armed citizenry absolutely have major power against the govt.
Finally, if you were in a country where the govt set out to kill its citizens, would you rather have arms or be completely unarmed?
The US military would be the defending force, though, which would put The People at a disadvantage. Pushing through the defenses of a multi-trillion dollar military with AR-15s seems unlikely. I don't even think that China's armed forces could defeat the US military, let alone civilians armed with AR-15s
All being said, I am no military guru and I could be wrong
Citizens should be allowed to own UAVs, nukes, tanks, helicopters, and jets. It says in the text: "shall not be infringed."
Besides that, who do you think is going to do the fighting, exactly?
The 2nd amendment specifies "well regulated militias", but somehow this part is always left out by gun enthusiasts. The idea was to ensure states can have militias, and that those militias would be allowed to have guns. Somehow this has been stretched by the gun lobby to "everyone should be able to have a gun with absolutely no restrictions", when that's absolutely not what is stated in the 2nd amendment.
The members of militias at the time of the ratification of the 2nd amendment were required to supply their own guns by statue, which is how you get the individual right - from the duty to be a member of the militia. Which still exists today (though in statute it is often called the "unorganized" or "state" militia to distinguish it from the National Guard, which is actually a branch of the US Army by statue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_(United_States)...
The bill of rights are about personal freedoms, as is made clear during the discussion leading up to them. All states copied these in some form into their own constitutions, and if you go look at those, most are quite explicit this is a personal right. The claim otherwise is a very recent claim.
Congress around 1982 had the Library of Congress issue a study about this in great depth, with millions of citations to historical documents, which give ample evidence and quotes. You may have to dig to find it, but it's a good read to gain more understanding.
Also the second militia act of 1792 actually required all able bodied men to own guns, and this was the law for well over the following century.
The founders had no qualms about everyone having arms.
[As a necessity for a free state, A well trained and in good working order group of able bodies citizens capable of fight for defense of self and state, is required], the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Militia is just the people. Oxford 1800s has well-regulated to mean “in good working order”.
And when those countries run into issues because the government is incompetent, people start wishing they had guns again. It's all well and good to give up guns when the system works, but when it doesn't, you lose self determination.
Japan is, famously, a country where the system generally works. Hell, a late train would get you a letter for your boss. It's a bit different in places where the police don't have the resources, or dangerous individuals aren't removed from the public.
Japan has strict gun control and an extremely high rate of suicide. The US has more homicides per capita by simply beating someone to death by ones bare hands than many countries have total homicide rate (check data in FBI UCR). Restricting suicides and homicides to only those with guns is a dishonest comparison when the rates without the gun restriction are more useful and flip the outcomes of the discussion. I doubt a murder by non-gun is fundamentally different to a family or society than one by a gun, or any other method.
The Obama CDC study on gun control concluded that guns are used to stop far more crimes than they are used for in crimes. It concluded that a household with a gun saw far less bad outcomes than a household without during home invasions. It concluded a lot of things that didn't sit well with the left, so after all the fanfare to make it, it was downplayed by that admin. Read it, it's quite interesting.
> Countries with strict gun control enjoy far lower rates of firearm accidents, suicides, and murders.
So let’s define what your definition of strict gun control is. Also, if you want people to care more, stop including suicides because it drastically changes the numbers.
I see where you are going there, but I'm not so sure that rings true. Not to get too dark, but IIRC, Japan has higher suicide rates. And most are non-gun methods, like hanging, throwing oneself in front of a train, etc.
Trump was golfing instead of attending the funeral of the Hortmans and used their death to insult Tim Walz. He didn't order flags flown at half mast like he's now done with Kirk. Notable conservative publications like National Review barely covered the Minnesota shooting. He also mocked the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband.
So I would say the reaction will be quite different, given that Kirk was a political ally and not a Democrat.
In my head I'm praying it's not a Franz Ferdinand. But the trajectory in the cycle of economic booms and bust, it feels at least possible. I hoping I'm wwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
> I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
... having said that, isn't it funny just how much gun violence there is in the one developed country that allows for open slather gun ownership. It's like, yes, you can never stop a determined person from doing violence, but by reducing the availability and power of fire arms you do stop a lot of fools from doing "mass shooter" levels of damage.
Some years back, I had a discussion with an older woman who struck a conversation with me innocently enough about weather or something. She turned the topic to politics and volunteered an opinion, her tone and expression indicated to me that she expected me to agree with her statement. I told her that I respectfully disagreed with her and I also told her why. Her expression soured and she told me that because she was a schoolteacher she thought guns should be banned because too many children had been killed by people using guns on them. I agreed with her that it was tragic and that I hoped we could live in a world where kids wouldn’t die from people using guns on them. In my life I want to be rational and honest and I want to listen to people. I listen to people and I hope they listen to me because that’s how ideas are exchanged. I asked her how I myself could avoid becoming the victim of a genocide without guns. I wonder this myself. I’ve read about genocides, the millions of people dead in China, Russia, Germany, Poland, Africa and Gaza too, I’ve also seen rioting and violence firsthand in Los Angeles and Portland and I wonder how I can ensure that my girlfriend and I will be safe now and into the future. I have no solution except for responsible gun ownership. A few years ago our car was stolen in Portland, the police did not help and the 911 phone service was down at the time. The only way I could get the car was to physically go and pick the car up, a car surrounded by criminals, of course I needed a gun to make sure I was safe. I think about natural disasters or occasions where government is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens - how will good people defend themselves against evil people? I’ve seen violence firsthand so many times that I have a visceral reaction to the thought that someone would take my guns away - I simply wouldn’t let it happen because I know if I did then I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from being killed and dumped in an unmarked mass grave by a 19 year old kid who thinks he’s doing the right thing because of a mandate from a politician, and I wouldn’t be able to stop evil people.
She disagreed, I disagreed with her, she made points I feel were unfair oversimplifications “guns have more rights than women,” but we had a respectful discussion but she didn’t want to talk with me anymore after that. I would’ve talked with her after because I value what people have to say and I want to have discussions. I think we can have discussions but we should never take away the rights of citizens.
This comes across a lot like you're saying that your personal feeling of safety for you and your family is worth more than the actual safety of innocent schoolchildren who are being mass murdered.
I am personally concerned that I may be the victim of genocide, and far more people have died from genocide perpetrated by governments than by school shootings. I’m not trying to be dense, I’m simply saying that history of demonstrated this. I’m also concerned that I will be the victim of violent crime and I’ve also had to defend myself from violent criminals in the past. Have you had any of these experiences? I’m curious to hear your thoughts if you’ve ever feared for your life in this way? Call me selfish, but I personally don’t want to be hurt. Thank you for your response.
You've talked about your feelings a lot, which is the point.
Guns make people feel safe.
They don't actually make you safer.
You're more likely to be killed by your own gun than someone else's.
Realistically, you have no hope of protecting yourself with a gun if you're surrounded by gangbangers with a bunch of guns all pointed at you.
Etc, etc...
The gun debate isn't a debate about facts, it never was. It's a debate about feelings, and scared people won't change their minds unless they stop being scared.
Nobody in America right now is trying to make people feel safe, not in an era where the President of the United States feels it is appropriate to personally attack... anyone for any perceived slight, in public, with verbal violence and in the case of anyone looking even vaguely hispanic, physical violence.
I have had a gun pointed at me, and I've been where guns have been fired in anger around me.
I'm kind of surprised to hear somebody in America think it's a likely enough thing to happen to be worth the obvious societal cost of the wide spread weapons.
Realistically, if they did come for you, how much use would your weapon be? Do you believe that it would mean the difference between your life and death, or just that you'd feel better going having been able to put up some defence? Several genocides have happened in neighbouring countries from where I live in living memory, and it isn't at all clear that having access to a weapon allowed anybody who was targeted to survive.
The cost in mass shootings (now nearly two per day in the US) is a real cost borne by society at large. Your cost is still only hypothetical, and of unclear value if the worst did happen.
This of course plays into the fear US gun advocates have of any attempt to remove their gun rights. If it were to happen though, then maybe as a prepper type with a house and lands in the woods you'd stand a chance against an armed mob that came for you, but certainly not the government. If you're defending your sub-urban house (or even worse flat), I suspect that the gun you have for self defense would make very little difference to the final outcome, but might make you feel a bit better about it.
> how will good people defend themselves against evil people
The problem is in people assuming that they are “good”. That’s hubris. The reality is that everyone is equally capable of evil—we’re just looking at taking guns out of the equation so that gun violence becomes highly unlikely.
As someone not from the US I can tell you that the rest of the world just shakes their head in sadness at your logic.
The best offense against a tyrannical government is a general strike. Literally everyone sitting down and refusing to participate.
>I simply wouldn’t let it happen because I know if I did then I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from being killed and dumped in an unmarked mass grave
You seem to value rational thought. I'll leave it to you to find sources that show that, statistically, you're overwhelming more likely to be killed or injured by your own weapon (accident or suicide) than you are to ever get the chance to use your gun in self defense.
A general strike did not work in the past against most communist governments and it is much less likely to ever work in the future, anywhere.
In all the countries of the Eastern Europe where the communist governments were removed, this was possible only due to traitors inside the communist top layer, who had reached the conclusion that their chiefs are too incompetent, so it will be more profitable for themselves to remove all the figures well known to the public and to convert themselves into capitalist businessmen, ensuring the surviving of their power in another form.
For a general strike to exist, it must be coordinated. There must exist someone who must say "Let's do this" and everybody else must start the strike.
This is impossible under a competent tyrannical government. A half of century ago it was impossible because every company, institution or school was infiltrated with informants, who would report immediately any kind of criticism against the government, then the reported person would disappear, e.g. by being interned in a mental health institution. If somehow a strike succeeded to start in a single place, that place would be instantly isolated, with no communications, then nobody outside would learn what has happened, except perhaps many years later, and the strikers would disappear.
Nowadays, this has become much simpler, because the government no longer needs a huge number of loyal human snitches (which had to be redundant, as none of them could be trusted), it can use electronic surveillance monitored by AI.
As someone who has worked all over the world with several different cultures and types of people, including in war zones, saying “the rest of the world shakes their head” is an extremely broad generalization. Different countries have very different experiences with guns, governments, and resistance. I'm sure you have your own perspective that is valuable, but speaking for “the rest of the world” comes across as dismissive and small minded, rather than engaging with the point that was made.
No, we don't. Don't speak for the rest of the world, for not everyone lives in your country, let alone in your bubble.
I think your "offense" Is downright naive, if not moronic. You should know how difficult politics are, and what you are asking for, the civilians, the military, just sitting down to "protest" is not only an imaginative fantasy, but I would also wager downright impossible.
I hate to say this - but having known refugees from a tyrannical government, I have to shake my head at this. If a population tried a general strike against a truly tyrannical government, pretty soon that government will start bringing out gunmen. Like in Ukraine in 2014. Sometimes it will work out, but not without sacrifice.
Do you believe the results would have been the same under a Stalin instead of a Gorbachev?
This isn't to take away from what Poland accomplished then, or to say that such methods can never work in the right conditions. Violent revolutions against established tyrants do not have a great history. But I have a hard time understanding the belief that these methods can work in the worst of conditions.
>Do you believe the results would have been the same under a Stalin instead of a Gorbachev?
A little different if you're talking foreign invasion obviously. In Poland's case it was Poles vs Poles and regardless of the level of tyranny, soldiers have trouble shooting their countrymen if they're sitting in a factory.
If the other guy is actively shooting at you though?... The logic is simple to follow.
I am pretty sure that a general strike could not have been initiated in Poland without the support of traitors from inside the top layers of the communist party and of the security forces.
In any of the communist countries of Eastern Europe everybody hated the government and they wanted to start a general strike. However, immediately after somebody would say this in loud voice, they would disappear. There have been a few cases when strikes have succeeded to start in a place, but then the government succeeded to prevent everybody else to know anything about this for many years, usually until the fall of the communist governments around 1989, and the strikers would disappear in such cases.
The weakness of the communist governments around 1989, after decades of easily suppressing any similar opposition, can be explained only by an internal fight within the communist leadership.
You mean the Revolution of Dignity, where mostly unarmed (at least by firearm) protesters stood up against government snipers and successfully removed the pro-Russian government? If anything, it shows one can overthrow their government despite not having much firepower while the government has guns.
With more than a hundred people killed by those government snipers. The protestors succeeded, but some paid the ultimate price to do it. If they had a means to defend themselves, maybe there could have been less lives lost.
This was Ukraine, where elections still existed and there was still some air of democracy and institutions. In a place where a tyrant has an established, unshakeable monopoly on violence, what do you think could prevent the tyrant from using that?
You think there would have been less death if both sides were actively shooting at each other? Are you really following your own logic here?
How did the Confederate uprising go with their arms against the federal government in the US? More or less than a hundred or so deaths? And this was also a country that still had elections.
Do you actually have examples of civil wars in large modern-ish countries where both sides were well armed that resulted in less than 200 deaths?
I don't view civil wars the same way - these aren't individual protestors, but separatist military forces. They are violent by definition.
I did say maybe. Yanukovych ultimately fled - presumably he felt his position was threatened. We cannot know how many more he might have been willing to kill if he did not feel as threatened.
This is not advocating for a solution, only to point out that a committed tyrant can be next to impossible to dislodge.
What would have stopped the Maidan protesters from being labeled as separatist military forces if they were well-armed? You're drawing distinctions where there are none.
Where do you think the Confederate forces got their firearms from? They just suddenly popped into existence the moment they became "separatist military forces"? They were the people with rights to bear arms bringing up arms against their tyrannical government.
The Confederacy was made of states. Even before the Civil War, each of these had militias.
I'm sure Yanukovych would have labelled them a separatist military - but would the remaining institutions agree? We don't have to assume that the protestors bring weapons from the beginning - it could come only in response to Yanukovych committing to violence.
>I’ve read about genocides, the millions of people dead in China, Russia, Germany, Poland, Africa and Gaza too, I’ve also seen rioting and violence firsthand in Los Angeles and Portland and I wonder how I can ensure that my girlfriend and I will be safe now and into the future. I have no solution except for responsible gun ownership.
No gun will save you during genocide if you are a target. Best case scenario you kill few attackers and die anyway.
Did the gun actually make you safer when retrieving your car or did it just make you feel safer? Did having the gun actually solve any problem, or just increase the chances of someone dying over a parked car?
Aren't there other potential ways to fix society from your example of your stolen car other than "we should just arm everyone"? Shouldn't the answer be we should have police actually help these situations and we should do more to reduce the rates of people living lives where they're more likely to steal a car in the first place?
In my case, the criminals physically left because I had a firearm. That week the police response time was anywhere from three hours to three days. This was in Portland, Oregon and our car had been stolen three times before, my girlfriend‘s bike was also stolen and my car was broken into three times, my other car was totaled by a drunk driver without any repercussions. We left Portland shortly after meeting a British person who had been kidnapped and forced to withdraw money from ATMs.
I would love to live in a world where everybody has what they want but we don’t live in that world. That being said there is no excuse for somebody taking something that does not belong to them. I was deeply hurt by these experiences and forever changed in the way that I think and act. I learned that sometimes when I told people about the things that had happened to us, I felt that that person had sympathy for the criminals and no sympathy for me. I learned that it is a fact that police cannot be everywhere, they cannot react instantly, and even if they can react sometimes they won’t for political reasons. I still think of the time where I was sucker punched by some man on the street for no reason which is what initially lead me to purchase a firearm for self-defense. I can’t fix society, but I can protect myself and my loved ones.
There aren't any other solutions that empower the individual. The problem is when the police are underfunded and don't show up, or the judiciary continually lets dangerous individuals out on bail. We should be able to rely on the system, but it's not hard to see why people want firearms when the system fails.
> I'm mildly curious what the reaction to this will be compared to the reaction to other recent political murders, like the Hortmans, or of Thompson.
Trump has already issued a statement blaming his political opponents for the death before the perpetrator has even been identified.
"It's long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that funded and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country."
> That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.
The event was set up so nobody could have direct access to Kirk, which would have been required for the "home-made shotgun" approach. There were barricades and bodyguards in front of him, and a waiting car in case he had to be whisked away. Shooting someone from 200+ yards requires more precise weapons than someone can make themselves. I think it's also important to note that Utah literally started allowing open carry on college campuses a few weeks ago. Not only did all those "good guys with guns" not prevent the assassination, having a large number of armed people in a crowd makes finding the shooter more difficult, as we've seen from police arresting the wrong suspect multiple times.
There are a number of outspoken people on the other end of the political spectrum from me, that I vehemently disagree with. While I would love to see their words either ignored or condemned by the masses; I have no desire to see them killed or harmed in any way.
I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way. Either committing or supporting violence against those we disagree with, has no place in a civil society.
> I wish more people on both ends of the political spectrum felt that way.
Agreed. Sadly the leader of one side openly and repeatedly calls for violence against anyone who disrupts his speeches [0]. The former leader of the other side condemns political violence and even calls his opponent after an attack out of concern for his welfare. [1]
Actually, I think this opinion IS shared by most of the people on the other side. (Notice that I didn't mention which side I am on. I don't think it really matters.) But, to be sure, SOME of them feel differently.
The GOP and its entourage actively cheered on the Hortmans getting assasinated in their home by a republican guy disguised as a cop [1]. Trump was golfing during their funrerals and used the occasion to dunk on Tim Walz to the press. He didn't order that flags should be at half mast as he did for Charlie Kirk, depsite him not being a lawmaker. They also turned the attack on Paul Pelosi into a running gag [2], which lasted for years. There is no question as to which side of the political spectrum is normalizing and encouraging political violence, and I wish people scould stop with this very misplaced bothsideism.
The number of people I’ve seen basically condoning this act is sickening. This guy had views I 100% disagree with, and wish did not have a platform to espouse them.
But his children no longer have a dad in their life. That is just heartbreaking to me. It’s hard for me to understand people who are so wrapped up in political rhetoric that they think taking a person’s life is acceptable.
There is an astute comment floating around here that describes the tendency for human psychology to absorb information first through the limbic/emotional center first before the logical part. It is unsurprising to see horrible reactions after tragedies through social media. Living too close to the edge of the present brings out the worst in people. My faith in humanity hopes that many of these people will reconsider and regret some of the things they say and post.
Similar sentiments here. I can't find much common ground with Charlie Kirk but that doesn't merit an assassination. Unfortunate all around, and a situation not too dissimilar from the Mangione case (in the context of what happened, not necessarily why).
That said, while I don't condone it I can't say I'm surprised by it. It seems stoking divisions is a large part of the modern media landscape and all it takes is one person with the motive and the means.
Wonder if you had the same reaction to dads of immigrant children being deported and put in Salvadorian prisons to rot or straight up died in ICE custody due to neglect.
No, I didn't have the same reaction. There is a big difference between people being hurt or killed for their opinions and families being separated because a dad broke the law.
This happens every day when someone's dad is sentenced and incarcerated for something like armed robbery.
If someone died in ICE custody due to neglect as you suggested, then EVERONE would have heard about it by now.
Honestly, these kind of sane comments are very rare to find. A lot of other social media platforms have basically become a breeding ground for the very kind of hate that causes one side to lash out at the other in such means.
In March 2023, around the time of Donald Trump’s indictment, Kirk said conservatives are being provoked into violence, and said “we must make them pay a price and a penalty” by indicting Democrats.
There are claims from media/reporters that Kirk made statements about “dealing with” transgender people “like in the ’50s & ’60s,”
Also the famous and now ironic comment that "Some gun deaths are worth it to protect the second amendment."
Absolutely did not advocate for lynching and killing trans people like 50s and 60s.
Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Trans people must be stopped, for the children!
We all know what his words mean, the veil is thin enough that even a moron would understand it, and thick enough that the law protects him.
if you can’t correlate the exposure of the public to such comments with the rise in violence against LGBT people, I’d recommend some self-reflection and asking yourself what the consequences are if you are wrong.
Hopefully you are capable of feeling empathy towards others.
He did not in fact advocate for lynching or killing trans people. In the 50s and 60s they would have been treated as mental health cases, not executed on the spot by sharpshooters.
I guess that makes it better, mental health was great at the time and they probably would not be subject to torture. I would advocate someone with a similar view or belief to be treated like JFK's sister.
They probably would not have been subjected to torture, no. If you're thinking of lobotomy, I believe that was phased out around 1951 or so, and it wasn't intended as a form of torture.
I think it's only natural to not want children to be part of a group with very high suicide rates or otherwise be ideologically compelled to take life changing medication based on short term emotions and group pressure.
Hopefully you are capable of not only empathy but understanding for the opinion of others even if they fall outside of your beliefs.
Killing, incarcerating or attacking trans people for merely existing does not protect children, yet in the name of “protecting” the children violent is advocated for.
Never mind of course that this is parroted from the same people who push conversion therapy, where pastors and whatnot abuse, rape and otherwise damage children in the name of “fixing the gay out of them”.
Nobody is giving children cross sex hormones, so can we retire that argument already and have an honest and empathetic conversation?
If you really think people who take cross sex hormones are doing so because they are ideologically motivated tells me you are too far lost in the sauce. You have been lied to repeatedly and believe lies.
Maybe it’s worth it to talk to some real humans in real life and try to listen?
Cite one case in which he "extolled political violence." You are no different than those people on TikTok. You provide no evidence other than an appeal to mutual agreement.
Classic victim blaming, "well you could've chosen not to say mean things...". Kind of the leftist equivalent of the chauvinistic "well if you didn't want to get raped would you have worn that...".
No victim blaming, he is not a victim of anything other than his own actions.
He has been fanning the flames for years. He has exploited political conflict for personal gain.
What you clearly missed is that Charlie could have had a life that was different had his behaviour been different.
He was not attacked over an immutable or protected characteristic. He was not murdered because he is white/straight/gay/black/trans. His murder was independent of his characteristics and entirely dependent on his character.
There is no “hate crime” here as far as the definition is concerned.
There's video of the police carrying someone away, with his pants down. They drop him on his face at one point. Apparently the wrong guy.
Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.
Reports are that the single shot came from ~200 yards/meters away, which is basically the worst case scenario for good-guy-with-a-gun. In an active shooter situation, an armed bystander could in principle stop an attacker from continuing, but the only way that an armed bystander could hope to stop an assassination is if they were walking around looking for trouble.
Regardless of where you stand on the subject of concealed carry, I don't think its controversial to say we shouldn't be encouraging untrained/unvetted folks to go seek out would-be assassins before they have demonstrated themselves to be a danger. That's exactly how "armed security" shot and killed an actual bystander at the Salt Lake City 50501 demonstration earlier this year.
I'm certainly not encouraging armed individuals in a crowd to do anything. My point was that having a significant number of armed people in a crowd like that makes finding a shooter that much more difficult. I am not surprised the wrong person was grabbed. It could've been much worse.
I misunderstood you then. I wholeheartedly agree with you.
Even so, most folks who carry prefer concealed carry for tactical reasons, one of which being that unless you have your rifle in a ready position, its not very useful in a self-defense situation, and simply marks you as "shoot this one first". And it turns out that walking around with a rifle in a ready position is generally perceived as aggressive, regardless of actual intent, even by those comfortable with firearms (consider a police officer approaching with a holstered weapon vs one in their hand).
So in the context of this shot, it ought to be relatively easy to pick out the shooter in the moment, the problem is that a ~200m radius around the tent where Kirk was speaking covers a lot of territory, and that's a lot of ground to cover effectively without obviously interfering with students' free movement about their college campus.
The shot was clearly with a long gun (a rifle). There’s no way to make a shot at 200 yards with a hand gun (okay yes it’s possible, but disqualifyingly difficult and unlikely). And nobody concealed carries a long gun because it’s not physically possible.
Correct, no right to bear arms people think it stops bad guys shooting people, only that it caps the deaths - i.e. you'll have a few killed then the bad guy is dropped, rather than they get to go killing dozens of people at leisure without resistance until the cops arrive (and presumably, wait outside while the bad guy continues killing, to "secure the perimeter" or whatever).
The theory then is that this will act as a deterrent - an angry bad guy wants to go out taking dozens of people with him - a few people wouldn't be "enough" for his grandiose end.
Yeah, this happened with the shooting at the SLC protest earlier this year. A protestor with a gun was shot at by security, then accused of shooting the person who died. Open carry is allowed in Utah. Whether or not you think marching while openly carrying is a good idea. Unfortunately I understand the stress of the moment and it can be hard to figure out who is responsible while acting quickly.
Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow
> TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
They've been quite influential, and those campus efforts likely contributed to the Gen Z turnout that helped win in 2024.
Im not american, but consume american media because you guys are the world leaders. But charlie had the number 1 youth conservative movement in the country , he is pretty influential
Unfortunately controversial because impressionable people have been misled into believing that anything right of liberal progressivism is fascist and evil. How do you recover from that?
I saw his videos occasionally on youtube/facebook. I didn't really agree with his stances on immigration most of the time, though I thought some of his other arguments on other topics were thought provoking at least, and I also thought it was cool that he always had an open mic for anyone that wanted to debate him. Seemed like he had an encyclopedic memory when it came to things like SCOTUS cases or historical events.
I watched the start of the debate, having never heard of Charlie before the shooting. His position seemed fairly reasonable that women were happier with the get married and have kids model then the focus on your career one.
> His position seemed fairly reasonable that women were happier with the get married and have kids model then the focus on you career one.
Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations. Some want to be doctors, nurses, chefs, electricians, plumbers, or artists. Saying that women should get married and raise lots of children denies those aspirations, and says to me that those who ascribe to that model have no consideration for women as human beings. Let women pursue their own definition of happiness rather than prescribing one for them.
I'm not comparing anything to 1950s America. I am disagreeing with your assertion "His position seemed fairly reasonable ...". Kirk insinuated in the video that women in America would be happier if they had a belief in the divine and a lot of kids (which may correlate with beliefs from the 1950s, but that's besides the point) when he compared what women in America have to what women in sub-Saharan Africa have. That doesn't seem reasonable to me. (edited to fix a typo)
> Broad statements like that are just plain wrong and aren't reasonable. Saying women were happier with the get married and have kids model denies the fact that all humans have different aspirations.
No. They are right. When you survey people, most women are happier working for their children rather than their boss. Most women feeling that way doesn't preclude other women feeling differently. Not does it prescribing a definition of happiness for women that want to work for their boss.
Whether or not that may be statistically true, it's offensive for a man to tell a woman what they'll be happier doing with their life. Not your choice.
Of course they were happier, since the all-gender wages were much closer following price increases until Reagan. More money in family = more happiness. Conservatives want humans on average to work less (by proposing that every second human should be a homesitter of sorts with no full time 160h/week career) and at the same time they want humans on average to work more (by suppressing salaries indexing, suppressing social programs for low earners, and by focusing on tax cuts for billionaires and corporations and other "get even richer" schemes and laws). I'd say they a have a mild case of schizophrenia, IF they truly think both can happen at the same voluntarily, without authoritarian enforcement.
That might be one account of that debate, but certainly many disagree with you and the video. I watched the original and I think he did well in the debate. You posting a video that is clearly against him is only evidence of your stance.
> I didn't really agree with his stances on immigration
I haven't heard him say anything about immigration in general, merely illegal immigration which (should be) the exception, and should be a matter of crime not a matter of 'pro or con'.
At the moment he was shot, he was answering for questions about transgender shootings. If the timing was calculated, it could be a political message or very strong personal hatred in this context.
“Too many” sounds like a valid answer for any question about the number of mass shooters. Remove “trans” from the question and it’s still a valid answer. Substitute in any other demographic, and it’s still a valid answer (assuming someone from that demographic has been a shooter). Even one mass shooting is too many.
It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.
It's not a loaded question in itself, as much as a direct question to counter the anti-lgbtq propaganda that is being pushed. This question didn't start a narrative, it is asked to point out that an existing narrative is intentionally misleading.
This is a misrepresentation of the exchange. "Do you know how many are trans" "Too many" doesn't imply that there would be fewer mass shooting, it implies that the situation would be better if the same amount of mass shootings were happening, but the identities of the shooters would be different.
It's not an uncharitable interpretation, but a literal one. Even then, I can see a world where we could let it go, because people sometimes just misspeak, public setting or not.
But in this current case, the speaker's political background fits the interpretation perfectly, so I don't think that we need to explain it away.
> It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.
I honestly don’t know what the actual factual answer to the question is. 1? 2? But the question warranted an answer, even if it was “I don’t know.” Given that the answer to many questions about mass shooting, specific or otherwise, is “too many,” the answer he gave offered no factual data. Maybe he was prepared to offer something more fact-based and nuanced. But to me the answer he gave comes off as dismissive, lacking in additional data, and possibly ideologically-motivated.
I imagine the question was posed because many in the community adjacent to Kirk are looking for an excuse to see trans people further isolated and stripped of their rights. Forcing the debate - if we can call it that - into the world of facts doesn’t seem problematic to me.
Actually, context matters. This particular comment came in the context of several people high in the trump administration voicing the _baseless_ opinion that trans people are a unique cause of mass shootings. This is clearly being done with the intention of stripping the right to bear arms from a vulnerable group of people. Charlie Kirk's response was bigoted, because it was to further his argument that trans people specifically should not be allowed to own guns.
When 98% of mass shootings are carried out by men and less than 1% are carried out by trans people [0], it is - in fact - bigoted to blame the tiny, tiny minority.
I thought he took it in good sport. They didn't exactly hold back on him.
Given that and the fact that we're in the middle of a new South Park season, a show known for its last-minute incorporation of real-world news into storylines, it will be interesting to see how the show handles this tragic development.
They have moved to a 2-week cadence for the season. Next episode should be a week from today which does give them plenty of time to incorporate this development.
Interesting to see someone whose decision making is so disordered that they manage to carry out a shot from 200 meters and then disappear. That looks more like a carefully planned crime than madness.
There are still conflicting reports about whether the shooter is in custody.
The first person of interest was detained, but released.
FBI director says a suspect is in custody. That governor says a person of interest is in custody. Local police say the shooter is still at large. This is what Reuters was reporting as of 1 hour ago.
I keep seeing this. Why do people keep making the point that if you can make an accurate shot from 200 yards with a rifle that makes you a sane person?
I don’t know why this is downvoted. It’s not incorrect. I posit that everyone who’s willing to kill someone in cold blood is at least a little off their rocker.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
I think a difficulty in searching for such answers is assuming that it was a well reasoned decision. I'm not sure how often attempting to take a life is a purely rational decision, devoid of intense emotional motivations (hatred, self-preservation, fear, revenge, etc.). And that's all assuming the assailant was of somewhat sound mind.
I think one of the dangers of more and more extreme divisions in society is that those divisions cloud our mental processes, threaten our emotional health, and take away opportunities for meaningful civil discourse. All of which can lead to more heinous acts that we struggle to make sense of. One of the scariest parts for me is that this can all be too self reinforcing ("Their side did this bad thing to our side, let's get them back!!!" repeat/escalate...). How do we break the cycle?
In naive political terms he wasn't all that important but I think two points in response to that:
1. He was influential in a influential circle of people who roughly speaking drive what gets discussed and shown to a wider audience. In a favourite-band's favourite-band sense. His jubilee video just recently got 31 million views on youtube and probably a billion more on tiktok and reels.
2. If he wasn't killed by some nut who thought the flying spaghetti monster told him to do it then this is a really clear example of online politics and discourse jumping violently into the physical world. That's a real vibe shift if I have it right that it's basically the first assassination of that kind.
It wouldn't shock me at all if the driving topic here was actually gaza rather than domestic politics.
Charlie Kirk never really presented him this way but he was the founder & head of one of the largest think-tanks that is up there with Heritage Foundation. TPUSA was responsible for translating conservative values to Gen-Z/YA who were an all-but-forgotten demographic by mainstream GOP.
You are wrong. As well as organizing a large conservative movement on college campuses, he organized a large chunk of financing for the January 6 2021 riots in DC, north of $1m. This report outlines the financial infrastructure, you'd have to delve into the investigative commission documents for testimony about how he raised the money, I can't remember the name of his wealthy benefactor offhand.
I think he was more influential to the younger generation. I saw Gavin Newsom interview Kirk, and Newsom opened by saying his son followed Kirk to a certain extent.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
Yes, you're wrong there (no offense). He's quite popular beyond X (formerly Twitter), particularly amongst the young (~20s) conservative movements. For example, he has almost 4 million subscribers on YouTube and similar on TikTok.
I'd say X isn't even his most popular platform. He's much more popular on video platforms, due to his open campus debates.
I attended one of Charlie's debates this past year and they pretty much let anyone walk up to the mic. It wasn't scripted or censored, that I saw.
He was also very good at superficially solid rebuttals and responses that were hard to counter without providing a short course on the history and context of the issue at hand. I never thought of him as a "good" debater and I vehemently disagree with his public views, but he was very effective in the media and event situations he operated in.
Agreed and well said. I also disagreed with a lot of his views. But, at the same time when I started watching his content, I realized his detractors overstretched the truth about a lot of what he said. Not all of it, but a lot of it.
> Mom, you don’t understand. I’m getting really good at this. I have my arguments down rock solid. These young college girls are totally unprepared, so I can just destroy them and also edit out all the ones that actually argue back well. It just feels so good.
I think that there's great insight in your observation.
To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.
In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" kind of way some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.
And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.
I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.
On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.
its scripted in terms of that he had a script that he would run.
that cambridge woman had prepared for exactly what he would say in the same order than he said it and what order he would change topics in. he practiced his script a ton, even if the other person with a mic wasnt on a scrip
I think you're out-of-touch. It felt like he was the single most popular non-politician non-podcaster political commentator on social media for Americans under 30, and I'm not even in the target demographic that he's popular with.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
Yes, you are wrong, he was the leader of the most powerful campus conservative movement group in the country, was an extremely prominent figure in right-wing media, to the point where he is a central figure in pop culture images of the right, and a central target for being too soft of organizing figures for even farthe-right groups.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
Motives for assassinations (attempted or actual) of politicial figures are often incoherent. Political assassins aren’t always (or even often) strategic actors with a clear, rationally designed programs.
I think his clips were consistently viral on platforms like Tiktok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, etc., both by those who agreed with him and those who were doing reaction videos against him.
He was the public face of Turning Point USA, a political organization that focused on getting more youth in the USA to turn conservative / Republican, to vote, and to adopt a more conservative culture. By “public face”, I mean he was 17 when he cofounded it with an octogenarian and a billionaire funder.
I think he and the org were active on Twitter, but they were MUCH more active on YouTube, and short form video (Instagram, TikTok).
It’s not even clear we know who the shooter is (still conflicting reports about whether the suspect has been arrested, let alone a confirmed identity). Too soon to know what the motive is.
> Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7?
I’d heard of him-I’ve lived my whole life in Australia, and although I have a Twitter/X account, I almost never use it, and that’s not a new thing, I dabbled with it but never committed.
Do most Australians know who he was? I don’t have any hard data, but my “No” to that is very confident. But I remember briefly discussing him (in person) with one of my old friends from high school, who is deep into right-wing politics (he’s a member of Australia’s One Nation party, which a lot of people would label “far right”, yet mainstream enough to have a small number of seats in Parliament)
As a comparatively politically aware Australian, I had absolutely no idea who he is/was, but then I don't have any Twitter or general social media presence or consumption.
My (limited) knowledge of him was mainly from reading the traditional US media, not from social media… I swear I’d read some article about him in the NY Times or the Atlantic or something like that. My brain files him next to Ben Shapiro
Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.
My wife had no idea who he was when I said his name… but when she saw a photo, she remembered him from videos which appeared on her Facebook feed in which he argues about abortion and transgender issues. She is Facebook friends with a lot of right-wing Americans, she doesn’t share their politics, but they connected due to a shared interest in Farmville
Why do so many school shootings happen in the US? Often its simply that people who should never have access to lethal firearms are able to get them easily.
Paranoid time: Target him because he's notable for being willing to actually talk to the other side. Without people like him, all we have is people on both sides yelling at each other as hard as they can.
Why would someone target him? If they want more division. Maybe even if they want a civil war.
Who would want that? Maybe someone in government who wants disorder as an excuse to impose order by force. Maybe someone in Russia who wants a world order not let by America.
He gave an invited speech at the Republican National Convention on its first night, and is credited with helping Trump get elected. “Very influential” might even be an understatement.
The problem is that that kind of influence often goes under the radar for people outside the circles in question, because influence is no longer mediated as centrally as it used to be, it’s more targeted and siloed. That’s a big part of how the current political situation in the US arose.
You probably target the ones you have a chance of getting at? Trying to do this to Trump would theoretically be preferable to the shooter, but a great deal harder.
I'd never heard of him and now I hear flags across the US will be at-half mast. He's was a billionaire-sponsored influencer if I understand it correctly?
Yes, I'd say you are wrong. If you look at a lot of the clips of the right wing folks giving some of their most right wing comments, the stage they are on will have the Turning Point logos on them. So if not him specifically, his organization is very influential.
I first heard about him in around 2016, shortly after Trump was elected the first time. I'm pretty chronically online, but I was never very active on Twitter and I was still pretty aware of him. I've always found him pretty insufferable, though not as bad as Nick Feuntes or Steven Crowder.
My dude, the article in the Washington Post starts out with…
“Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump said.”
He influenced the US President, that seems pretty influential to me. Anecdotally, my kid in high school surprised me by knowing quite a lot about them.
Yes, you're wrong. He was very influential and a leader of the youthful conservative movement in our country. TPUSA is extremely popular. This was an abhorrent, horrifyingly public assassination of a very popular figure -- one who has been honestly quite milquetoast in terms of conservative ideology compared to other well-known figures. He wasn't even running for political office, he simply encouraged political participation, open debate, and the free exchange of ideas in a public forum. He grew TPUSA into a bastion of grassroots revitalization in community-first politics. Truly truly sickening.
Dude, if you followed his teachings you wouldn’t feel this way…
"I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up. new age term, and it does a lot of damage.” - Charlie Kirk
Dude, that quote is out of context. He said he prefers "sympathy" to "empathy" and went on to call out those who push selective empathy when it suits their political agenda. He was right.
In my country Australia, there's a backlash on self-destructive "empathy" decisions in criminal courts. Violent repeat offenders are granted bail or short sentences for violent crime, why? Because the judge empathises with their traumatised upbringing, for example when they come from a war-torn country. This pattern of "justice" has spiked crime rates including violent home invasions and stabbings.
Because it’s both a deeply ironic thing for him to have said and also fairly emblematic of his political movement. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy - if he’d said “only dumb idiots slip on banana peels” and then died after slipping on a banana peel, there’d be a lot of content posted organically about that, too.
Because it is incredibly apt. He and his campaigns and influence have worked very hard over the years to stop progress on gun reform, aimed at preventing the very kind of violent actions that he was unfortunately subject to today.
This doesn't condone violence but offers context as to how he would've assessed a similar situation if he weren't the target.
I don't see that he suggested a solution. Just the opposite, he pointed out that gun laws also aren't a solution. Much like the war on drugs isn't. Much like "though shalt not kill" didn't stop the inquisition, or the Moorish conquest.
It's almost like when a lot of people are posting some ideas get picked on and shared en masse. Why not say the same exact thing about all those "guys he's in stable conditions he's gonna make it" tweets that got spammed? Wasn't that a campaign also?
Fwiw, I don't think anyone should ever be killed, but nobody's entitled to anyone's sympathy, and it's not messed up that many people find it difficult to sympathize with Kirk, given the political positions he preached.
For example, maybe (or maybe not) for you it's just an abstract argument about far-away matters, but when Kirk called Leviticus 20:13 (the one about killing men who lie with men) "God's perfect law", it's not so abstract to gay people.
That is a definition of “violence” that does not register with most people, and especially in a discussion of one of the most brutal public murders we’ve seen in awhile in this country
I don't celebrate his death, I fear the consequences it will most certainly bring (especially with the hot mess going on in the US), but given his evidenced lackluster attitude to tens of thousands of gun victims every year in the US alone, a kick in the face to the relatives of all the victims and their families, yes I do not feel a single shred of smypathy for him.
My position is that guns should be strictly regulated and traffic as well to achieve zero traffic deaths ("Vision Zero"). Alternatively, the US could look into what gun culture difference they have to Switzerland, because the Swiss have amongst the most liberal gun laws of Europe but are pretty average amongst European countries when it comes to gun violence.
Kirk's position was to have guns as unregulated as possible, so I pretty much DGAF when the consequences of his position come home to roost.
Helsinki in Finland proves Vision Zero be possible [1] and a number of European countries have gun policies [2] that basically restrict carrying guns to hunters, people in proven danger of life, police officers and special security guards, in addition to gun sports who can own, but can't carry outside of dedicated venues.
Objectively, my position is both serious and not just realistic, but actually lived reality here in Europe. You are free to visit our continent whenever you want, I can only recommend it.
We've tried vision zero here (city in CA), and it's resulted in constant driver aggravation due to slowing down commute traffic, worse driving than before, and more traffic fatalities than before.
Helsinki may be a lucky coincidence. It doesn't prove it's possible everywhere.
We really should regulate cars far more than we do.
There are only ~16,000 non-suicide related firearm deaths in the US. There are about 40,000 vehicle related deaths in the US. We could save a lot of lives if we made our society far less car dependent and had more restrictions on allowing people to operate vehicles in public spaces.
Twitter and the terminally online need to touch grass and overemphasize things that the real world doesn’t care about, but, to an approximation, it is the vanguard and real world talking points, political trends, etc, are all downstream from there. So yes, someone very influential with the Twitter crowd is influential.
He was literally influential for touching grass on college campuses across the country, peacefully engaging in open discussions with people who disagreed with him.
Conservative, but definitely not alt-right. Kirk was a strong supporter of Jews and Israel, which put him at odds with the antisemitic alt-right.
Kirk regularly spoke out against antisemitism on both the left and right. So much so, in fact, Israeli Prime Minister tweeted[0] his condolences, praising Kirk as a strong, positive force for Jewish and Christian values.
Strong supporter of Israel; didn't give a fuck about Ukraine. Promoted the Stop the Steal bullshit. He's a strong positive for for American Christian values, but not the Christianity that the rest of the world follows.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
This would be a relevant question in many nations, but it's a bit beside the point in the US. Violence is a deeply respected and loved core of the culture for its own sake. It's an end, not means. Nearly all the US's entertainment, culture and myths are built around a reverence for violence. Even political violence has been pretty much the norm through most of the US's history. Celebrated cases aside, there's been something of a lull since the mid 1970s, but if as now likely it increases again, this will be a boring old reversion to the US's norm.
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot in politically motivated killings, governor says (cbc.ca)
102 points by awnird 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
Interesting to see the 100x(!) attention that this gets on HN, likely representative of similar media reach on more mainstream channels, when it's not even lawmakers in this case.
The comparison with the Minnesota lawmaker murders submission sounds political and you seem to care about this aspect a lot to mention it 3 times
If you’re genuinely curious why this event is likely getting so much attention, I’d wager it has less to do with politics than it has with the fact that this occurred in front of thousands of people, mainly young students, and was recorded by many on their phones. It was also being broadcast I believe. Multiple angles of a very graphic video of a person getting murdered are all over the internet
It’s terrible when innocent people are murdered. In this case, many people watched it happen too
We're legit not. We're showing anger at the attitude that just because someone's an obnoxious mouth-runner, it's OK he's shot.
Guess what, there's plenty of people out there - on either side - who would be genuinely happy if they got their civil war, their opportunity to replace their dull lives with the Viking-like excitement of slaying enemies.
The rest of us in the middle will, to put it bluntly, very much not enjoy it if they get their wish.
The path to that future is precisely the retarded shit-headedness being displayed around this. Someone shooting him, and then seemingly a horde of people on the internet very freely expressing that not only does that not bother them, the thing that does bother them is the stuff he'd said before he got shot.
So while I think some people would deserve the future they endorse, the rest of us would prefer that future didn't happen.
Give the full quote. He’s saying empathy as it is used now, is used to excuse evil. Just like equity is. Words change meaning. If you can’t understand or pretend you can’t because those are left wing examples, “make America great again” has also changed its meaning - it means something different than it would have in 2010.
>He’s saying empathy as it is used now, is used to excuse evil
What he said: "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage."
If he genuinely meant what you wrote, he could have said exactly what you wrote.
Also, context is very important. This empathy quote was not a misstep on his part, it fits the general narrative that he was pushing. So there is not much about it to misunderstand.
What's the full quote? I can't find it. But I'm familiar with the larger talking point coming out of nationalistic right-wing Christianity around "empathy is a sin". In that movement the definition of "empathy" is unchanged, the argument is instead advanced that it is spiritually dangerous because it elevates human experience above "God's truth". This is not a widely-held belief, and is closer associated with nationalistic Christianity vs. broader American Christianity.
Remember all of the people “joking” about lynching Obama or journalists, even to the point of having t-shirts printed? I remember seeing the winking acceptance that got what is now two decades ago and thinking that we were headed in a dark direction if people weren’t willing to reject political violence, ending up somewhere like 90s Sarajevo.
Yes - even most of the people who made those jokes wouldn’t want to live in a world where that’s true. I remember some guys smiling at the assassinations in Minnesota because the shooter targeted Democrats and it was like … guys like that will add someone you like to the list sooner or later. Nobody is safe for long in that world.
It’s a point on the same path: if enough people start “joking” about political violence, more people are going to try it. I didn’t want to live in a world where that’s normalized.
The linked page details otherwise, so you’re wrong as a matter of fact in addition to arguing against a claim I never made. I wasn’t saying Obama was shot, I was saying that when a bunch of people started “joking” about shooting politicians we started down the path where some of them would seriously try it and a couple decades later we’re at the stage of multiple political assassinations in a year. Nobody is going to be happy living in a country where that’s normalized, including the people who say they do.
Not my timeline. It's either people condemning political violence while noting they're not fans of Kirk, or people whining about how political violence is only condemned by both sides when the target is on the right.
> Seems like you have to look pretty hard to find it.
Here's a list of the top posts on Reddit in the last 24 hours:
Shooting at a Colorado school (More important than that other thing)
Charlie Kirk has just been shot
Charlie Kirk says gun deaths "unfortunately" worth it
If you preach hate, don’t be surprised when it finds you.
In an attempt to remove Banksy's art, the UK government has created a more iconic symbol of injustice in the UK.
Kirk once said gun violence is “part of liberty.”
Why do you think President Trump ordered all US Flags at half staff for the death of a Political Commentator, but not for the death of actual Legislators?
He died doing what he loved: trying to get other people killed
Bad Bunny Says He Didn’t Include U.S. in Tour Dates Due to Fear of ICE Raids
Ironic he dies in a school shooting.
Senate investigating Peter Thiel’s money ties to Epstein
“I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage” -Charlie Kirk
You can disregard most of it though, between bots, edgy 14 years old and foreign agitators you can probably remove 75% of these inflammatory comments.
People should never go on these platforms (twitter, reddit, &c.), it's full or radicalised deranged terminally online people discussing their radical political ideas 24 hours a day to the point of being completely disassociated from reality. Go to a local café, pub or other public place, talk to people, the extreme vast majority of them are still sensible and capable of discussing hot topics.
Going to reddit to get political opinions is like going to a circus to get medical assistance
And yet when the two Minnesota politicians were assassinated, that subreddit was full of its own blend of insensitive comments. Complete drivel all around.
Indeed on Hacker News all posts about the two Minnesota politicians were assassinated were immediately flagged and buried. It's clear where biases lie both here and on reddit.
I feel similarly. Too many people are delighted by this horrible event. They think that they are fighting some boogeyman but instead it’s just someone with a different opinion.
There certainly are a lot of bad people, but I think a vocal minority on the Internet isn’t a good indicator of what most people think. This was a sick and horrific act and the comments celebrating or condoning the violence are also sick. Unfortunately the vocal crazy people are dominating large parts of social media.
Just the other day I was reading about the Italian "Years Of Lead" [1] which I wasn't old enough to understand myself at the time in the UK. I was wondering if we could see something similar as various forces internal and external strained at the seams of western democracies. For context, there is quite febrile atmosphere in the UK at the moment so I feel it is useful to attempt to calibrate these things for stochastic effects.
Without knowing what happened, it's difficult to make the comparison between the Italian Years of Lead and what happened earlier today at Utah Valley University.
My understanding of the Italian political climate of the 60s, 70s, and 80s is that there were political groups/cells (on both the far right and far left) that organized around violent acts to further their political goals (which involved the eventual authoritarian takeover of the Italian government by either the far right or far left). For example, you can think of the Red Brigades to be akin to the Black Panthers, but with actual terrorism.
In contrast, most political violence in America has been less organized and more individual-driven (e.g., see the Oklahoma City Bombing). For better or worse, the police state in the US has been quite successful in addressing and dispersing political groups that advocate for violence as a viable means for societal change.
This was an intentional adoption of leaderless resistance[0] in response to the vulnerabilities in centrally administered organisations of the 60-80s.
Resistance orgs across the ideological spectrum were systematically dismantled after decades of violence because their hierarchical command structures made them vulnerable to infiltration, decapitation and RICO-style prosecutions.
The Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, European Fascist groups and many white supremacist groups all fell to the same structural weaknesses.
Lessons were codified by the KKK and Aryan Nations movements in the USA in the early 90s by Louis Beam[1] who wrote about distributed organisational models.
This was so successful it cross-pollinated to other groups globally. Other movements adopted variations of this structure, from modern far-right and far-left groups to jihadist organisations[2]
This is probably the most significant adaptation in ideological warfare since guerilla doctorine. There has been a large-scale failure in adapting to it.
The internet and social media have just accelerated its effectiveness.
"Inspired by" vs "carried out by" ideological violence today is the norm.
The KKK has been a distributed movement from the beginning, though, starting as isolated remnants of Confederate forces acting as terrorist cells in tandem with local officials and businessmen (e.g., plantation owners), and resurgent in the 20s and 30s (obviously sans the direct Confederate connections, replaced with local law enforcement).
It's not so much that we haven't been able to adapt to it as we've simply refrained from doing so. Their violence was in line with the interests of local elites.
Actually, it has been proven that at least two of the major terrorist attacks that happened in Italy during the lead years were actually false-flags attacks organized by a deviated part of the secret services (that were politically aligned with the far right), funded and supported by the US, in order to isolate politically the Brigate Rosse movement and stop any advance of communism in Italy.
Timothy McVeigh got his start watching Waco burn, hanging out with groups around the US "militia movement", and reading The Turner Diaries, and had like 3 accomplices.
The British government is much better placed to crush dissidents than probably almost any other of comparable maturity. They crushed the miners, they'll be able to deal with any nationalist movement if the institutional will is there.
pragmatically, you can't kill an idea with bullets. terrorism does one thing only: it triggers retaliation. nihilistic accelerationists who want a war can use terror to provoke one.
some of Charlie Kirk's last words:
> ATTENDEE: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
> KIRK: Too many. [Applause]
I don't think the shooter was trans. but I'm trans, and I don't see this going well for me, or for my community. the DoJ was already talking about classifying us as "mentally defective" to take our guns. now there's a martyr. the hornet's nest is kicked.
murdering this man was not just wrong, it was stupid.
I vehemently disagree with all that Kirk seemed to advocate for, but agree that this debate, not murder, is the solution.
That said, Kirk, in this exchange was not engaging in debate so much as theatrics. The question that was posed to him was intended to force him to acknowledge that being trans doesn’t seem to be associated with a unique propensity to engage in mass shootings. Instead, he responded in a way that was ideologically motivated. Quite a few people praised Kirk for engaging in debate, but if this is exemplary of his format, not bringing in facts, then I would call it more performative than debate.
Regardless, this is awful; and I hope the repercussions for the trans community aren’t dire.
that's a good point. honestly, very little. though the lawmakers almost certainly had a smaller, and less.. vigorous.. fanbase than Mr. Kirk. and it could be my bias, but I think the Right is more likely to react vigorously to assassinations than the Left.
murdering this man was not just wrong, it was stupid.
Depends what your objective is. If your goal is to accelerate political violence and set Americans at odds to an even greater degree than they already are, it's completely rational. I have no idea who did it; it could be domestic extremists, foreign actors, cynical strategists. It might be some isolated murderous person with a chip on their shoulder who totally hated Kirk, but that seems like the least likely possibility because of the fact that they've made a clean getaway - 12 hours with no CCTV imagery or even a good description is unusual for such a public event.
As an outsider, how did trans people get dragged into the gun debate?! Did I miss a major mass shooting by a trans person? Was their gender relevant to the shooting?
Being transgender is not relevant to shootings, but there are voices that are trying to make that happen.
My opinion on why it gained traction: the group is already marginalized, is part of a larger, also marginalized group (lgbtq community), and shootings are unpopular, so it benefits the speaker to connect the two. There are also narratives floating around that are in synergy with this connection, such as the tragic statistic that trans people have a very high suicide rate, and the false narrative that transgender is a mental illness.
IIRC there have now been two mass shootings by trans people. Dwarfed by those carried out by hetero, white males; but don't let facts ruin an opportunity to dehumanize a marginalized minority.
> murdering this man was not just wrong, it was stupid.
We heard what happened on July 13th, and even from this far, culturally and physically, we could see (and this is not to play down an attempt on someone's life) – ah, there goes that election.
How the impulsive acts of violence have changed the course of history too many times, how people in power, people looking to take power twist and use such events. We don't learn from all that history, do we?
Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’s assassination attempts and targeted violence seem to follow a similar pattern during periods of significant social and political shifts.
As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then.
Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.
This is dangerous false equivalency. Charlie Kirk was not advocating for the rights of the downtrodden. He was a right wing provocateur, and he’s on the record saying that “some gun deaths are ok” in service of the 2nd amendment, and in making light of the nearly deadly political attack on the Pelosi family.
Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.
"Some gun deaths are okay" is saying the quiet part out loud, but it's not wrong. When you let a large group of people have access to something dangerous then some number of them will die and kill using the dangerous thing, whether the thing is cars or paracetamol or wingsuits or guns.
I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.
I'm not an American, I'm an Australian. Our gun deaths sit at 0.9 per 100000 people instead of 14 per 100000 and I approve of our gun laws. In that sense, I guess I'd say that roughly 6% of this gun death was okay.
In a broader sense, it is of course not okay to shoot someone, but that's taking the quote out of the context of gun control measures.
Would you say that some car deaths are OK in service of transportation or that we should lower the speed limit until there are 0 deaths from vehicle accidents?
Tradeoffs between rights and safety are always made. I interpret "some gun deaths are ok" as to mean that they are inherently dangerous, and that seeking 0 accidental deaths is too high of a standard for something to be allowed. And we don't hold other parts of daily life to this standard, like vehicles or medicine. If you want to get into degrees, that's fine, but a blanket shutdown on the sentence doesn't do that.
> that we should lower the speed limit until there are 0 deaths from vehicle accidents
We totally should. I mean it isn't even controversial idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero . If we start with "all traffic related deaths are excessive" then trying to get rid of them in any way possible is only natural. Shame that 2nd amendment fans will be against any requirements for gun owners, event if they are similar to European commercial drivers tests.
Psychological test before buying a gun? What a heresy.
Transportation is required for daily life for almost all Americans. Gun ownership isn’t.
If it were upto me, we wouldn’t have such a car dependent culture. It is absolutely possible to invest in public transportation/multimodal transport and reduce this number significantly.
They certainly are, police cause gun deaths all the time in service of maintaining law and order.
But to middle class snobs who think they're morally above it all, such dirtiness is a reality they can wave away with a dismissive comment of superiority, safe from all that messiness, in their nice suburb homes.
So long as they intentionally ignore these lower class facts that some wrongdoers exist who can literally only be stopped by deadly force, they can continue to put their chins up and lament the inferior-to-them simpletons who think guns have to be a thing, in between taking long savouring sniffs of their excrement after every bathroom visit.
Speaking as an amoral low-class snob who grew up in Detroit, the prevalence of concealed carry didn't make me feel any safer than I felt in Windsor. Lot more gunfire at night on the stars-and-stripes side of the river too, which always struck me as rude when people are trying to sleep.
Even if we ignore the gun topic, he was extremely anti abortion, including in rape situations. He argued for heinous perspectives and oppression.
He didn't deserve to die, but he wasn't advocating for a world of opportunity and hope. Just oppression and hate. Let's not act like he was some saint helping people.
But the problem is what you're saying doesn't follow. Charlie Kirk believed that abortion involves murdering a human being, violently, which it does. He believe in the rare circumstance of a pregnancy occurring from rape that the child is still innocent and should not be killed. That is explicitly advocating for life and non-violence, whether you agree with the premise or not. I think the left really has to reckon with something extremely important. As much as the left is pompous and pretends to be so much more "educated" that conservatives, they have a hard time following through positions logically, which is seems quite odd for supposed intellectual superiors.
> hard time following through positions logically,
Spoken like a person who either doesn't know or doesn't care that current anti-abortion policies in several red states have women scared to get pregnant, despite wanting to do so voluntarily, because doctors are refusing life saving procedures on the mother if the state can possibly perceive it as abortion, leading to many scenarios of live births to dead mothers, including one case of a corpse being artificially kept alive for weeks for the sake of the baby.
The abortion laws of most blue states are already a rational compromise (still a very conservative leaning one) between the practical rights of women and the religious beliefs of far right totalitarians.
What about if a person can't support their child at that time in their life and they don't have a support system to help them? the government doesn't make it easy to give a kid up for adoption and also doesn't make it easy to adopt kids. The kid will likely not have a good life, especially as the government cuts benefits. Is it really worth bringing a child into this world if you're setting them up to fail? Is that really the correct thing to do? Are you really being kind to the child by kicking it in the teeth from birth?
What if the birth will kill the mother? Is that not okay either?
It's not even political. You just follow the logic and you kind of have to support abortion. There isn't really a logical reason not to.
I actually believe the world is really messy and you have to have solutions that deal with the messiness. Being absolutist in any direction will never be right. Taking the extreme opposite position of mandated abortions is equally stupid and quite frankly as childish. It's surprising anybody on this site would defend something so illogical.
You could read the links I posted to see the consequences of extreme policy decisions, like very wide bans on abortions. You can either meet people where they are and try to work with them, or you can be extreme and reap the consequences.
It's not like the people of Romania were then or are now woke lefties. Charlie Kirk would've loved Ceausescu.
This part of your post is very unfortunately worded given the context. I'll try to parse this in the most generous way possible, namely that you're talking about the consequences of abortion on adults and not advocating that right wing Christians "reap the consequences" of their "extreme policy decisions" by being murdered by leftist radicals.
Anyway, you're not responding to his point: the consequences of abortion bans are born by the adults instead of the children. Instead your counter-argument is that the consequences are such that violence against the children is legitimate and not "extreme". Kirk's argument is that whatever the consequences are, it doesn't justify violence or murder of children, which is inherently extreme. You aren't rebutting his argument, just restating the left wing position in different words.
You can have as topsy turvy thinking as you like, the extreme policy remains allowing the murder of the unborn, not the opposite.
The orphans of Romania were victims of shit adults with shit leftist (socialist in this case) thinking and all the negative consequences that followed.
The solution to this behaviour isn't "sorry tiny baby, we're going to kill you now to spare you from our shitty world", it's to stop being shit.
Fuck society is awful. How did everyone get so vile and evil.
Right it’s more that it’s odd that there’s all these assassinations of conservatives (UnitedHealthCare etc). And previously there were many assassinations of progressives. I think it’s just the leaders in a dominant part of a force in society become casualties. Loss of life is always tragic even if we disagree with everything they stand for. But anyway the historical part (if that is what is happening - hard to tease out if there’s just more gun violence in general) helps me make sense of it. The dominant wave has breaks or we see them more somehow.
When were all these assassinations of progressives by conservatives? If we take the official story, which is fine, JFK was assassinated by a literal communist. RFK, again if we accept the official story, was assassinated by someone with a cause quite popular with progressives these days. Hinckley's failed attempt was completely insane and cannot be interpreted politically in my view. Gabby Giffords assailant was pretty insane but reports from people that knew him claimed he was liberal. So, I don't know.
I don’t get why people are downvoting this. It is factually true, even if it’s uncomfortable to point out on the day of his murder.
Kirk was not a benevolent truth seeker. He was a political provocateur and propagandist dressed as a debater. And Paul Pelosi was one of the victims of his smears.
He was advocating for the rights of the living yet unborn. He was advocating for the downtrodden youth who are being unnecessarily overburdened with massive college debt and unable to afford a home. He was advocating for citizens who are being put last by their electorate.
I posted this article about political violence from Politico 3 months ago. It got 3 votes and sank. But it resurfaced on their website today because of this event (they revised the title of the front page link to make the subject more clear) so I'll bring it up again:
The author's point is that political violence does occur in cycles, and one thing that makes a cycle run down is when it gets gets so awful that universal revulsion overtakes the political advantages of increasing radicaloric and action.
He gives examples, which may be within the living memory of older HN readers (like me):
"I can remember back in the ’60s, early ’70s, it felt like the political violence was never going to end. I mean, if you were an Italian in the ’60s or the ’70s, major political and judicial figures, including prime ministers, were getting bumped off on a regular basis. And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out."
and:
"You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don’t know, but it did. It wasn’t just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down."
This is not particularly optimistic, but it it's an interesting analysis.
You're living in US i guess which is literally killing people of different faith for fun. it just happened near to you that's why you start feeling different.
you are living in society doing shit for people for long time.
You may think that upsetting ideas and hurt feelings are "damage" that validate violence, croes, but the other side can do the same. And maybe they'd be more organised at it, if those tables ever turned?
Maybe you wish to see a world where settling of questions of right and wrong is done by brute force, rather than reason, where the "right" side is those who have people left, regardless of how stupid or twisted there ideas are.
But a more likely scenario is that you had an abusive childhood, you're angry at the world as a result, and you'll like to see it burn.
Winning through "reason" seems kind of naive given today's social landscape. Are our politics broken because the facts simply aren't known? The misinformation-firehose/attention-economy/propaganda-machines are simply too powerful to be countered by merely being correct.
I'm not saying murdering everyone is the right alternative, but if you think trying to balance political power by "winning debates" or something seems reasonable, that ship has long sailed.
I think this is overblown. Most people do have reasons for what they believe.
I know everyone hates it when people “both sides” things these days, but one thing I do see both sides having in common is a refusal to honestly engage with and comprehend the other position. This doesn’t mean agreeing. It means understanding what someone believes and how they might have gotten there.
Where the echo chambers and other things that you mention do come in is in reinforcing that dynamic, in reinforcing each side seeing only a straw man version of the other.
The unspoken beliefs these people have are often that slavery should return, America is for white people, rules are for thee and not for me, etc. - genuinely the antithesis of any sort of good faith. You might call this a straw man, but I’d ask you to look into reconstruction era politics - this wasn’t a straw man at a point in history with similar conditions to the modern day’s. Everybody understands this because it’s unfettered human greed and selfishness; the only reason we don’t stamp it out completely is because enough people hold these beliefs that this would basically equate to stamping out the country itself.
Ask a parent, there’s no debating with a toddler, they aren’t interested in it. You just put them in a corner and wait it out.
I know a good number of conservatives and some MAGA people. I know zero people who believe those things.
Meanwhile here are some of the things right leaning people I know think about liberals and leftists:
They hate Christians and would outlaw religious faith if they could. They believe that humans are a cancer upon the Earth and therefore are anti-natal and anti-family and want us to die out. They hate the actual working class and want to import tons of immigrants to depress working class wages. They want to be able to give hormones and do gender surgeries on minors without parents permission. The “LGBTQ movement” wants to add “minor attracted persons” and legitimize pedophilia. Etc etc.
I know a lot of liberals and leftists and I know zero people who believe any of those things either.
This is all straw man bullshit.
People are refusing to honestly engage with each other, so we are devolving to violence. This ends with riots, civil wars, pogroms, or dictatorship, or maybe all of the above.
Check my edit. It’s not a straw man because the poor uneducated south never left their attitudes towards slavery behind (or otherwise rediscovered/were reintroduced to them for political benefit). Believe it or not, people actually have extreme nationalistic and ethnocentric beliefs - if things were so rosy in the world as they are in your bubble, people wouldn’t be getting shot
If it’s just the south why did the entire country shift right in the last election.
You can always find extreme fringe people who believe anything. There are not enough of them to sway national elections. The reasons for huge swings at the national level must be more inside the Overton window than that.
“If it’s just the south” like the south isn’t the larger of two cultures that define the U.S. historically.
Again, it’s not out of pocket for the US to be blatantly racist. You say these are extreme beliefs (and they are objectively) but in the US they never were really fringe. Compare that to whatever you made up for leftists, there’s no historical precedent. The “both sides” way of thinking is just not moored in reality here.
You're not alone here. Most people, including most on the right, seem like they can't do it either. People can't look at someone else's position honestly without assuming the worst possible version of it.
Where I do think your points about algorithms hold is that the algorithms have trained people to think this way. In the echo chambers bashing straw men and vilifying people is how you get upvotes and shares and likes. Look at most of X for the right, or any lefty subreddit for the left. These places are a bunch of people beating straw men.
All the things I listed are things I've heard right-wing people say about people on the left or liberals. When I hear that kind of thing I remind people that I know lots of leftists and zero people who believe those things, that those are either straw men or lunatic fringe positions held by tiny numbers of people.
Similarly: very few Christians are Dominionists, very few Southerners think the Confederacy should have won or that slavery should come back, very few people anywhere think the US should be a whites only ethnostate. There are people who think these things but they are minorities. I'm sure if I went fishing I could find pro-pedophilia-normalization LGBTQ people or anti-human pro-extinction greens, but these are also very fringe views. As I said you can always find a kook.
Most people are not crazy, but crazy people are loud. The question people need to ask is: why would a non-crazy person vote for Trump? Or if you're on the right, why would a non-crazy person vote for Harris?
Its been dead since like 2016. When you try to talk to "certain" people and they basically either say all the factual reporting is fake because its all from liberal media, or they pull falsehoods out of the blue like they are facts.
Just listen to any Joe Rogan podcast where he talks about the vaccine.
Hey Dan, you're probably not having a good time moderating this thread, so good opportunity for me to say thank you for dealing with this place daily. It's really nice to have a space, and we appreciate what you do for us.
This is untrue. You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. But to say he never participated in real debate shows you haven't adequately found information outside your filter bubble. There are many examples like the one below
Good faith debate involves being careful with facts and —very importantly — not lying.
The race baiting and conspiracy theories will be what Charlie Kirk is remembered for because that’s what he did constantly. There’s a whole section of his Wikipedia covering the falsehoods he spread about covid, election fraud, H1N1, human trafficking, protests in France etc.
It’s a bit strange to say that I’m somehow uninformed because of my “filter bubble” seeing as in order to call Charlie Kirk’s performances legitimate debate you would either have to have never heard of his many, many outright lies or believe that it’s acceptable to make stuff up in a debate. (If the latter is the case we simply disagree on what constitutes a real debate)
I’m familiar with his routine, which is why I described his performances as sometimes resembling legitimate debate. He was able to at times take (from your example) twelve minutes out of several hours of owning the libs to engage in a more mild performance, but that’s not the same thing as someone that has a genuinely good-faith interest in debate. That’s just taking a few minutes to make a marketing video for his podcast/speaking tours.
This is kind of what I meant about making things up about victims. Calling Charlie Kirk “respectful” is objectively ahistorical.
I understand the impulse to be polite about the deceased, but the guy (for just one example) -in the middle of the January wildfires in Los Angeles- took to his audience to say that the destruction that the fires caused was due to a lack of white firefighters. That is both deeply disrespectful and completely false. And entirely on-brand.
https://www.rawstory.com/charlie-kirk-white-men/
You're a clear example of what Charlie was not. You're not respectfully engaging in this discussion.
GP said Charlie Kirk was respectful during debates. You tried to deny this, not by showing one of his college debates, but by taking out of context what he said on one of his shows.
You just linked to a YouTube channel. Which totally-not-performance legitimate debate do you recommend? ”Charlie Kirk VS the Wokies at University of Tennessee“ or is “Charlie Kirk Crushes Woke Lies at Michigan State” a better place to start?
Sorry if I sound sarcastic, I’m not. If you had to pick between Versus The Wokies and Crushes Woke Lies which would you suggest best showcases how his debates were not performances meant to inflame but rather reasoned, dispassionate discussion?
I went to college at this place (when it was Utah Valley State College [UVSC], before it was UVU). I spent a lot of time in that part of the campus over several years. How strange to see these events unfolding there. Kirk seems to be a person with whom I have scant philosophical agreement, but I prefer to converse with such people rather than watch them die. What an awful mess this all is.
I have such disdain for the e/acc crowd given that I believe that "we do not understand the consequences of what we are building".
But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.
The wikivoyage page for the United States explicitly advises that neither politics nor religion should be discussed when meeting people in this country.
I don't think we ever left? The KKK was still marching in the annual parade in my home town when I was born, in 1994. Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, and still - to this day - racists make a habit of shooting at the memorial sign. [0]
Forget don't talk about politics or religion, there's still large portions of the US where you should avoid being visibly black or gay if you want to stay safe.
When I say "how did we get here", I don't mean "how did we end up with these opinions (e.g. racism) on our soil". I mean something more like:
1. Why is discussing these things so difficult? So many internet forums are a pure deluge of unkindness, anger, and dishonest discussion.
2. There was a video of someone promoting their social media handle and asking people to subscribe with the backdrop of the shooting. How does someone end up acting like this?
I do not think there will be a time where racism is eradicated like a disease, but I think it's possible to confine it to small spaces and individuals. Similar to how I believe the majority of views like pedophelia: people with those mindsets exist, they don't form (huge) groups, and are generally consistently condemned. With the values I believe the US to have (tolerance of opinions and religion) this will always be a constant struggle.
Continuing with this disease analogy, the internet + social media has removed all possible herd immunity strategies to stupid ideas. People with any kind of ideology can search up their groups and commiserate, without ever encountering a differing viewpoint.
Furthermore, people are offloading their thoughts more and more to LLM's, so much so that we're becoming the mental equivalent of those wall-e humans [0].
We're not thinking for ourselves. Other people are thinking for us, delivering those thoughts to us, pre-digested. This leads to reactionary behavior, I think. And in an environment with such a reactionary populace, populism becomes so easy to exploit.
P.S. Sorry for the rambling. You're not wrong that the US has been, and still is, incredibly hostile to specifically identifiable groups of people. However, I think that the ability to discuss how to go about solving/remedying/containing this has been uniquely hampered in the last 20 years.
> I have such disdain for the e/acc crowd given that I believe that "we do not understand the consequences of what we are building".
> But now I'm not sure if it's fair to ignore the consequences of building Twitter, or even the internet. Seeing people's behavior during this event has been incredibly disheartening.
For at least the last 5 or so years I've been right there with you with the same thoughts and concerns. I'm completely convinced after what I saw today that global social media platforms were and still are a mistake. Especially so for the younger generations that have never known a world without them.
I bang on a lot about not saying things like "this person is a threat to democracy" and other such apocalyptic statements. This right here is a perfect example of why: when you steep people in a culture that tells them someone is (or their ideas are) an existential threat, eventually someone is going to be the right level of scared + unstable that causes them to kill people to try to defend their way of life.
If you find this horrifying (and I hope you do, because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder), then I encourage you to really think about whether we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds. We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.
You start your comment saying we should avoid making apocalyptic statements and end it by saying "the cycle is going to destroy our society".
My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.
I'd say the appropriate read there is to slip the word "unjustified" into a few key slots. The view is nearly impossible to avoid in context. How do you see society surviving if the prevailing view is that anyone with a different belief is trying to bring on the end times? To the point where assassinating political opponents is justified?
It would bring on the end of a society. It might well happen in the US case, they've been heading in a pretty dangerous direction rhetorically. If we take the Soviet Union as a benchmark they probably have a long way to go but that sort of journey seems unnecessary and stupid.
> anyone with a different belief is trying to bring on the end times
The “just different beliefs” framing is a dodge.
We’re not talking about Coke vs. Pepsi here—we’re talking about beliefs that deny others’ humanity, spread lies, or justify violence. When a “belief” is racist, sexist, conspiratorial, or openly anti-democratic, it’s not just different, it’s harmful. Pretending otherwise is how extremism hides in plain sight.
Well, yes. We expect most religious people to put up with society at large damning souls to an eternity of torment and whatever. And people are forever pushing economic schemes that result in needless mass suffering. Not to mention that for reasons mysterious warmongers are usually treated with respect and tolerance in the public discourse.
An idea being "harmful" isn't a very high bar, we have lots of those and by and large people are expected to put up with them. Society is so good at overlooking them it is easy to lose track of just how many terrible beliefs are on the move at any moment. Someone being a threat to democracy isn't actually all that close to the top of the list, although moving away from democracy is generally pretty stupid and a harbinger of really big problems.
> How do you see society surviving if the prevailing view is that anyone with a different belief is trying to bring on the end times?
The point I was trying to make is: this is not what’s happening. It’s not “anyone with a different belief”. But some people, Kirk included, literally advocated for, e.g., stoning gay people. That’s not a reasonable position we can just compromise on. That’s reprehensible dehumanization.
> My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.
This is a nonsense argument. It is possible that constantly making apocalyptic statements can result in an apocalypse, and saying that people should stop doing that is not contradictory.
The words you use matter. If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated. If you're not advocating for murderous escalation, then stop using those words (for example).
Just curious, do you believe someone who, without evidence, claims that an election is stolen, and then successfully goads their supporters into violence over that claim is a threat to democracy?
> If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated.
Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat, who/what maintains the list of words which can replace "democracy" in that section, and what happens when someone disagrees with the maintainer of that list?
Those are all great questions, and why the point under discussion is whether or not we should choose our words more carefully and stop making apocalyptic predictions.
I wholeheartedly disagree - we need to be less concerned with who might say something and more concerned with how we teach society to react to it. Whether or not someone is making apocalyptic predictions should not define our ability to hold back from assassinating.
I'd agree there are aspects of how we say things which can reinforce how to react about it, but I don't think that's a good primary way to teach how to engage with polarizing content and certainly not via the way of avoidance of the types of statements bigstrat2003 laid out. I.e. there are very reasonable, particularly historical, examples of belief of potential threats to democracy which turned out to be true, so I don't inherently have a problem with that kind of discussion. I actually think calling that kind of statement as the problem would actually drive more extremism.
At the same time, I do believe there are ways to share such statements while also reinforcing healthy ways to react at the same time. kryogen1c's example ending in "he should be assassinated" crosses the line from bigstrat2003's talk of apocalyptic claims to direct calls to violence about them - the latter of which I agree is bad teaching (but I'd still rather people be encouraged to openly talk about those kinds of statements too, rather than be directly pressured to internalize or echo chamber them).
This is why the first question posed about the statement from kryogen1c was "Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat". The follow on questions were only added to help highlight there is no reasonable answer to that question because it's the call to assassination which is inherently problematic, not the claim someone is a threat to the democracy here. The latter (talking about perceived threats) is good, if not best, to talk about directly and openly. It's the former (calling for assassination about it) which is inherently incompatible with a stable society.
I agree with this, and, as a result, I don't believe there is any possible approach which results in 0 people assassinating political figures for what other people say. I think the same conclusion can even be reached if people were supposed to be expected to be perfectly rational beings.
I do believe education on how to effectively engage against an idea which feels threatening is better equipped to handle this apparent fact than bigstrat2003's approach of teaching people to not say certain beliefs because they'd be worth killing about. That doesn't mean it results in a perfect world though. Some may perhaps even agree with both approaches at the same time, but I think the implication from teaching the silencing of certain beliefs from being said for fear they are worth assassinating over if believed true ends up driving the very problem it sets out against. Especially once you add in malicious actors (internal or external).
I think they're politely asking for the far left to stop with the language inflation. Use words with appropriate and proportionate meanings. Do not try to gradually be more and more dramatic and impactful.
It's not clear that "existential" threat and "destruction of society" are the same. A society can be "destroyed" via a lapse in the social contract, turning it into a "society" or a different nature, or a non social population.
It can be both simultaneously true that the current administration and its supporters are genuinely dangerous to our democracy and that political violence is not an acceptable way to effect social change.
Yes, it's true that lunatics on both sides may use their side's rhetoric as a call to action but often this isn't even the case and they're just hopelessly confused and mentally ill people. It'd be nice if we lived in a society where those people couldn't get guns or could get mental health treatment and it'd be nice if one side of this debate didn't weaponize these common sense ideas into identity politics but here we are.
politicial violence in this case will be quite effective in terms of later voting results - kirk was a good story teller who could get people enthusiastic about ideas. attempts to make it such that a similar event dont happen again will be much more likely to succeed now that hes dead than they were while he was alive
So was Hitler. What Kirk did was exactly that: tell stories, not speak truth. He was a bad faith arguer.
I don't celebrate this, because it has a chilling effect on political debate and democracy. I also will not stand by while a single good thing is said about an unequivocally terrible person who wrought the political divisiveness that led to today.
If you can't bear to have a single good thing said about someone (anyone)... it may be time to consider whether you're taking it too far, and becoming someone who is working the political divisiveness that you abhor.
Take a break, walk outside, talk to some people... breathe.
I have. I went for a long walk and I also talked to people today of varying opinions about the state of the country and of the event.
If you can link me a video of Kirk being thoughtful, kind, humble, and calling for peace and unity for all Americans and that we should work for a more accepting and loving democracy, I would be interested.
Not all people are good people. That doesn't justify political violence. It means we don't have to automatically speak kindly of people because they have passed.
Is it bad to be a threat to democracy? Some people hold a point of view that there is something other than democracy serves their agenda better. I don't agree but it's actually a popular point of view. Are we supposed to be so afraid to point that out that we censor ourselves?
> Some people hold a point of view that there is something other than democracy serves their agenda better.
Well, since they don't believe in democracy, I suppose they won't be too concerned when their opinions are discarded. What do they want, representation?
The othering that is so very common in online discussion is genuinely dangerous. It's incredibly common and almost benign at this point because it's just everywhere.
It is historically proven as the first step to violence. People seem to think that words don't matter.
They matter very much. Just because you can read millions of words a day, doesn't mean they're not powerful.
Support him or no, he didn't deserve to die for his political beliefs.
Do we know if this violence is politically motivated yet? (Other common motivations are mental health issues, paranoia, revenge, desire for fame etc). Of course it seems likely, but it also seems premature to jump to trying to use this as proof of a particular personal position.
I definitely believe that people should be more understanding of each other, and less quick to jump to insults and othering, but we know so little about this situation, to be so confident that it was caused by speech seems extreme.
I am also aware that a lot of the political violence of the last few years ended up not being motivated by the reasons one might naturally expect.
> Do we know if this violence is politically motivated yet?
How many long-range rifle shot assassinations do you know of that were not politically motivated? Jilted lovers and such don't do that. In context it's hard to take this assassination as anything other than politically motivated.
I guess that largely depends on how one qualifies "politically motivated". By some definitions it's easy to include any of what you listed as also part of a politically motivated attack, by a narrower definition one could just as easily choose to exclude them. E.g. whether an attacker is paranoid is orthogonal to whether the attack involved the victim's political views/activity in some way.
At the root I agree in principal though. It's, for example, still possible he picked a bad fight with an unstable individual in a bar last night (over something not politically related) and they followed him to the event he was speaking at to shoot him. I'm not as convinced I've seen that kind of thing happen "a lot", but it's true we don't have post validation yet.
Isn't it more likely that this is a false flag operation designed to distract from the Epstein birthday card signed by Trump? The timing is suspicious and there's certainly a lot of bandwidth given over to a single shooting, compared to the school shooting on the same day (three shot).
Kirk would seem like an ideal target as he has a high media profile and is not involved in running the government. I would guess that the aim is to promote civil war and thus provide an excuse for martial law.
my basic guess would be that its epstein related, which is still politically motivated in some sense, but "killed him for protecting pedophiles" is quite different from "killed him for being right wing"
Violence should not be how we settle our disagreements. But if someone is genuinely a threat to democracy we should be able to express that opinion. Fear that someone may act violently should not cause us to suppress our genuine fears about the future of our democracy.
> But if someone is genuinely a threat to democracy we should be able to express that opinion.
All claims I see of a person being "a threat to democracy" are super exaggerated, and almost always of the "a thread to our democracy" (which makes one wonder: who is "us" in that phrase, and what about everyone else?).
Exaggerating threats is itself an incitement to violence. Maybe tone it down?
This may be true for Kirk specifically, but in general I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to say there are threats to "our" (meaning all Americans) democracy when there's frequent attempts to subvert and even overthrow election results.
See: January 6th insurrection, trump's call to the GA secretary of state, increased gerrymandering, and attempts to throw out certain ballots.
I remember when the tone started to shift. The onslaught of lies, hate and hyperbole. It only got worse since then, and things that are acceptable politically today were unthinkable then.
There have been no consequences, no corrections, no apologies for blatant lying and spreading hate. There’s not even a pretense of honesty anymore.
> when you steep people in a culture that tells them someone is (or their ideas are) an existential threat, eventually someone is going to be the right level of scared + unstable that causes them to kill people to try to defend their way of life.
Well, yes. People point this out regularly with mass shootings. Sometimes the shooters helpfully leave a list of all the violent rhetoric that inspired them. Anders Breivik claimed to be acting against an "existential threat". Those words get used a lot.
what if that persuasion is not logic, but propaganda, and the end result of following said goals is the loss of your way of life? What if lies are held as truth and money allows the lies to be repeated so often many don't even realize their axioms are baseless? What happens to the sheep when the wolves vote to eat the sheep?
> what if that persuasion is not logic, but propaganda
The answer to bad speech is more speech. If you refuse to do that then you are not convinced of being right -- you lose the argument when you resort to violence or justify resorting to violence over speech.
One can engage in democratic activity while trying to end democracy. Hitler stood for election, a pretty democratic act. And yet he was a massive threat to democracy.
The comment I replied to was making a blanket statement that could be extended to more than just Charlie Kirk, including folks who do things that undermine democracy beyond just fearmongering.
> because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder
As someone of Eastern European origins I would celebrate Vladimir Putin's murder, especially since he's responsible for the murder for so many in Ukraine today (both Russians and Ukrainians). I think the reality is a touch more nuanced than the absolutist ethical stance.
Perhaps you are unclear on the devestation in Ukraine that Vladimir Putin is responsible for, and continues to be responsible for while he lives.
Could you say the same if he murdered your friends, family, children? All for what? That man has no respect for human life, civilization or diplomacy.
While within a civilization we can afford each other grace, it remains important for the very security of our civilization that we retain our malice and use it sparingly on those who seek to destroy it. Otherwise i fear that we only believe in it because its convenient or makes us feel morally superior. Do really believe in it if you're not willing to get your hands bloody to defend it? If you were capable of defending it, would you not celebrate the victory?
Putin being murdered tomorrow would create a significant opportunity for peace in the region and spare many, many lives. Such an event would be worthy of cheer.
And yet huge portions of America celebrated Sadams and Osamas death. One must be cautious in believing that all people around them will maintain decorum and act civilized.
I'm more concerned with the fact that billionaires have a monopoly on the incentives that create policy and can afford to fund large scale social engineering operations to get whatever they want. Charlie Kirk doesn't exist in a vacuum. Peter Thiel funded him and Thiel has said openly he wants a dictatorship. That is why Kirk was in the propagandist role he was in, and why he is now dead.
I understand the thrust of your comment, but why is "this person is a threat to democracy" an apocalyptic statement, but "... or the cycle is going to destroy our society" not? Seems like you're being rather selective in what's considered apocalyptic statements and what's not.
There is no inherent threat of violence in saying "this person is a threat to democracy". This is why the US has strong protections for speech, so that we don't get arbitrary determinations of what's acceptable and what's not.
> This is why the US has strong protections for speech, so that we don't get arbitrary determinations of what's acceptable and what's not.
The First Amendment is about stopping the government from stopping you from saying the things you want to say. The First Amendment says nothing about social norms. People in this thread are asking for people to tone down the rhetoric, something that seems eminently reasonable. Think of it this way: if you want to insist that so and so are "a threat to democracy", what's to stop them from similarly inciting violence towards you? Generalized violence would not be good for anyone, including those who might currently feel safe from it.
My core objection is the claim that saying so and so is "a threat to democracy" is inciting violence. Where as so and so "is going to destroy our society" is not? One doesn't seem any more extreme than the other to me.
To be fair, you can incite violence and that speech is protected under the First Amendment as long as there is no risk of imminent violence.
So, yes, your speech saying so and so is a "threat to democracy" is protected speech, but it is in fact inciting violence.
> Where as so and so "is going to destroy our society" is not?
The quote was:
| We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.
Indeed that is very much not incitement to violence but actually incitement to de-escalation. The "or the cycle is going to..." part is not specifically a threat against any one person, unlike the "so and so is a threat to democracy".
> we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds
I genuinely can’t tell if you realize that this is a description of the victim, and your comment could easily be construed as a justification for what happened, or if you condemn the action so heartily you missed that.
Which leads to my point: there are discourses around this that completely miss each other. That’s a huge problem because so many people will loudly express strongly held emotions and two people will read completely opposite view points. US public discourse is at a point where language, without copying context, is failing.
Saying “both sides miss each other” isn’t true either: I’m convinced one side is perfectly capable of quoting leaders of the other, even if they find it absurd, but the reciprocal isn’t true. Many people can’t today say what was the point of one of the largest presidential campaign. They’ll mention points that were never raised by any surrogate or leaders. But they can’t tell that because the relationship is complete severed.
I don’t think there’s a balanced argument around violence, either: one side has leaders who vocally and daily argue for illegal acts violence, demand widespread gun possession vs. another where some commentators occasionally mention that violent revolution is an option, but leaders are always respectful. The vast majority of people who commit gun violence support one particular political movement, even the violence against the leaders of that same movement. If that’s not obvious to you, I can assure you that you are out off from a large part of the political discourse about the US, not just around you, but internationally.
The problem is, existential threats are more common than not in politics. Nearly every decision can kill, or change who gets killed, on a scope that varies from individual, to global, to more abstract, e.g. values that are just as important as life (freedom, language, culture, family, nature, take your pick - many have given their lives for each of these).
Deport an illegal immigrant? They may get killed back in their more dangerous home country (or die slowly due to less access to medicine), or grow their home economy instead of yours. Let them stay? Maybe they're a dangerous criminal and will kill someone here. Don't deport any? Your culture and nation get diluted into nothing - some value those things highly, others don't, but to the former, that's an existential threat.
Tax fossil fuels? The economy slows, there's less money for hospitals, more crime due to poverty, this can easily kill people, or maybe it's harder to keep up with China. Don't tax them, and now you're taking your chances with global warming.
Spy on everyone's communication? You've just made it much easier for a tyrannical government to arise, and those have killed millions, and trampled values many hold as dear as life itself. Don't spy? Well maybe you miss a few terrorist attacks, but you also have a harder time identifying hostile foreign propaganda, which could have devastating but hard to isolate effects.
Simply put, death, existential threats, threats to democracy, etc., are common in politics, and one cannot talk honestly about it while avoiding their mention. I would say that, unless you cannot keep a cool head in those circumstances, you shouldn't get into politics in any capacity. But of course, those that need this advice won't heed it.
How can we not call a spade a spade? The United States government is being destroyed from within, openly and proudly. A handbook was written saying it would be done this way.
If someone or something is a threat to democracy and rule of law, then they are. Period. I think pretending the ruling political party in the US is not intentionally destroying the government is not a valid strategy.
This is not an endorsement of what happened today. I worry this will have a big chilling effect on political speech in the country.
Telling the truth did not cause this. The Nazi regime, a machine that is systematically crushing the working class and minorities & driving large swaths of the population to despair - is what caused this. The idea that we can just adjust the way we speak to avoid the inevitable outcome of worsening material conditions under fascism is patently absurd.
What if that person is a threat to democracy though?
To be clear, I don’t think Kirk was. But there are people who are even vocal about their disdain for democracy. It would feel weird to treat them as if they weren’t who they say they are.
IMO the sad reality is that we live in increasingly dark times. Anti democratic forces are stronger than they have been in recent history. Us all agreeing to not talk about it won’t change that.
I am dating myself and making myself unemployable in SV but this was not a normal thing when I was younger. It seems to have become far more common post Bush II; the Supreme Court and hanging chads had a much bigger effect than you'd think.
(Incidentally, I also remember the "Your side lost, hippies" trolls, the "Peak oil" comments, and the apocalyptic "George Bush is going to impose martial law and cancel the election, they are building concentration camps" comments. Such a wild time for internet discussion, many of these were recycled later on.)
I grant that it wasn't too common before Bush vs. Gore. But it did happen. There was in fact a great deal of electoral fraud in the U.S. in the past, too.
Utah is also a mail-to-vote state. Republicans have tried showing how easy it is committing voter fraud in these systems, but get caught and charged quickly because it’s actually not that easy.
Incitement to violence is... not dangerous, got it. That's basically what you're saying. You're completely ignoring u/dang's exhortation, among other things.
Restricting freedom of speech (through "hate speech" laws and the like) is a danger to democracy then since it limits people from expressing their ideas and putting political power behind them.
There are lots of communists, authoritarians, fascists, socialists, even neo-nazis in the US. All of which want to remove democracy however, a political belief isn’t punishable by death.
But we’re not talking about someone advocating slavery, we’re talking about US politics, which is essentially a slow motion hysterical melodrama over whether to spend 30% or 40% of GDP on social welfare, and on which programs.
Wishes to remove it, and speaks or acts in ways that further that goal.
There’s a false right-wing talking point that the US “is a republic, not a democracy”. The US is both a representative democracy and a republic, but the talking point equivocates on the meaning of “democracy”, conflating it with direct democracy, and this apparently fools far more people than it should.
The goal of people who push such propaganda is to weaken support for, and understanding of, democracy. There isn’t any doubt that they, and the people who unthinkingly repeat the propaganda, are a threat to democracy.
I think you may have missed their message. That they self censored for fear of violent retaliation makes strong ridicule of the threatening group. It exemplifies its contrast with a free society.
It essentially says, "They are so lacking of basic compassion that even jokes are not allowed."
It is better to peacefully respond to fascism with speech until far after the point where most of the loud voices say "we need violence to oppose this!"
There comes a point where you have to oppose fascism with violence. There really does. But wow are people overeager to jump into it.
>There comes a point where you have to oppose fascism with violence.
I am betting if you read a history of germany, you would probably pick roughly the same point that the US has long since passed as the time to resist openly. Most people do in abstract.
Well, we don’t need to speak nicely about anything or anyone. We do have the First.
But we should be civil. Which is different than being nice, but is far more important. Many generals in war are not terribly nice to their enemies. They are, however, civil.
We lost more than ordered discourse in our abrogation of the societal pact with civility.
Because the other comment was flagged by people acting in anger, I want to make sure you knew that several folks are speaking up from both sides of the aisle. Here are two quotes from people whom you consider your political enemies:
> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."
> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."
I don't quite understand why you have to put words in my mouth. I didn't claim anyone to be my political enemy. In fact I have close friends on both isles of the political spectrum, and I don't identify myself with either of them. I just wish people would defend things out of principle, rather than just what currently supports the things that I (perhaps wrongly) presume to be their political identity.
Why was the first thing you reached for a claim that Democrats are bad because you hadn't yet heard any sympathies from Democratic politicians (alleged creators of the term stochastic terrorism)? That seems extraordinarily unreasonable.
As a former Republican, it makes me sad to see people supporting a party that claims to have values be extraordinarily unfair to their fellow countrymen. Toss aside all the other nonsense in the political arena for the moment. Democrats have been advocating for gun control for years. Years! Why would an attack about someone being killed by the very thing they warned about even enter the brain of a reasonable person, if not for the poison of propaganda?
This happened a few hours ago while the decedent was commenting on 5/5700 mass shootings being performed by trans people being enough to take rights, which the decedent normally argues should not be abrogated, away, and that most shootings were gang violence. This is after a few years long history of promoting inaction on guns despite clear Constitutionality and clear need.
Ironically it was at a school, making it a school shooting. Unironically, there was a school shooting in Colorado occurring at the same time.
Guns are the problem. Everyone knows this. Some try to justify it anyway, Mr. Kirk among them.
Like I said, I simply don't understand why someone's response mere hours after a deadly shooting is "I blame my political enemies who are wholly uninvolved and tried to help prevent these types of occurrences."
---
Edit --
Here are two quotes from, as you said, your political enemies:
> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."
> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."
Sure seems more and more like some person or nature is seeking to destabilize us. Seems anti-American to blame the other side and not realize we are better together.
Agree sad, but not because he was reaching across the intellectual divide. Kirk's debate responses/performances were very often bad faith. It seemed more performative than an actual debate - "owning the libs" and not an intellectual exercise. I really don't think there was a true willingness to listen to contrary viewpoints. For example, his positions did not evolve on most all positions, even when confronted with compelling arguments.
This is untrue. There are many cases of his debate where he acknowledged strong points made by his counterpart and commended them on the quality of their argument.
You may have seen one of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. Those exist, as do many examples like the below:
"Bad faith" is choosing the weakest, least useful, or intentional misinterpretation of a position. Typically this is then used as the starting point for a rebuttal.
> Wikipedia:
> A bad faith discussion is characterized by insincerity and a lack of genuine commitment to the exchange of ideas, where the primary goal is not to seek truth or understand opposing viewpoints, but to manipulate, deceive, or win the argument regardless of the facts
Discussion is most useful when parties attempt to make the strongest arguments for and against each other's positions to find an optimally logical position and/or to clarify ideological beliefs that underpin those positions. Good faith discussion enables that. Bad faith exchanges are often used to derail, to generate strawmen, to mischaracterize another party's beliefs or thinking, et al.
He was very civil and gave people the opportunity to express themselves. But it often had the result of giving them enough rope to hang themselves with.
You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. There are many examples like the one below, which is absolutely a constructive discussion.
The whole thing is aggressively imbalanced: he’s sat, protected by guards, on a stage over the other person; the people asking questions are standing, their back to a large vocal crowd that may of may not be armed.
He’s cherry-picking one interaction, has all the editing controls, and even with all that, he literally interrupted the guy less than a minute in.
This is exactly what I meant: the appearance of a debate, with a heavy anvil on the scale.
He got smoked at the UK Cambridge Union student debate club ("the oldest debating society in the world, as well as the largest student society in Cambridge.").
Bad faith arguments and cheap rhetorical trickery didn't wash.
The only excerpts from those debates on the Charlie Kirk channel are edited to show him in a good light - the original full videos tell a different tale.
This is a link to a full 12 minute video. You can't watch it and claim that he's not interested in having a constructive discussion.
I don't doubt he lost debates. I don't doubt that there were instances where he took cheap rhetorical shots. I've done that, you've done that, and he did that.
Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point
There were multiple Cambridge Union debates, 1 hour forty minutes in total. He did poorly on all of them .. almost as if he'd never encountered a proper formal debate with rules and procedures before.
Cambridge debating is a microcosm of parliamentary debates in the UK, AU and elsewhere that I'm not entirely sure the US has in government anymore, if ever - the CSPAN footage I've seen largely features lone people showboating unchallenged, often with props.
Your 12 minute video shows a back and forth near Q&A exchange between Kirk and another not entirely opposed with Kirk taking various interpretations of well regulated militia as he saw them with little push back.
It has edits and has been self selected and post produced by Kirk to post on his channel to highlight how "good" he is.
Multiple people not simply one, all still students (given it was May 2025), but headed for careers as professional orators in law, politics, business, and able to debate with structural rules, yes.
I was more thinking that girl who is now signed up to a talent mgmt company. The real debate fanatics doing it for the love of the game all do it in proper clubs in london and so on.
I think this because I saw him go on a college campus, give a microphone to liberal students, and give them a chance to defend their views while also providing an alternative point of view.
Because you are able to watch a carefully staged piece of theater and mistake it for reality. I thought most people, in general, were able to discern the difference, but you and many aren't
Also, >Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk said of gun deaths on April 5, 2023, "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."<
There's going to be a colossal manhunt. Every possible technology will be mobilized. And it's very hard not to slip up on opsec. Unless the guy leaves the country very quickly, I would expect him to be caught (or killed resisting arrest, the common fate of mass shootings).
When I was in college a kid used a computer in a lab to send a death thread against Bill Clinton to whotehouse.gov. I recall this in part because it was the lab I did most of my hours in both as an employee and because it was near my friend’s appt so we would study there. Dude sent it from a computer two rows back from where I usually sat.
Someone got up to use the bathroom and didn’t lock the machine. Dude thought he was being funny. But of course since he logged on to the adjacent machine he put himself on the suspect list and got caught. And in a hell of lot of trouble as I recall. I think he got expelled, too.
That was for a prank, not an assassination.
The thing some crime dramas don’t get right is that while circumstantial and tainted evidence cannot get you a conviction, it is absolutely possible for it to be used to prioritize manpower used to narrow you down to the top of the list.
There’s a thing in law enforcement called Parallel Construction. It can be used to protect confidential informants such as in undercover operations, but it can also be used to replace evidence that was found illegally, such as illegal recording or theft by a neighbor.
They just need to find something that follows process front to back. They don’t need to do that in order to figure out it was you in the first place.
Statistics say the spouse or partner almost always committed the murder. Even lacking any evidence they look really really hard at these people. It’s not illegal or unfair to do so. It’s triage. If I’m looking at Mrs Fredrickson’s murder, I’m not looking at any cold cases or spending effort on many other active cases. It’s unfortunately a numbers game.
Pedantic, but...why is this an assassination and not just a murder? Because he was more than likely targeted? Tupac was targeted (for some street-level bullshit), but I don't think anyone would call his demise an "assassination".
Assassinations are surprise killings of prominent individuals for political purposes. Targeted gang killings are an interesting case, because they are political within the context of intra- and inter-gang politics, but not viewed in that light in a broader context. If I was watching a documentary about two rival gangs, I probably wouldn't blink twice at someone referring to a hit on a rival leader as an assassination. In every day conversation, it would probably be weird, because the normal assumption is of the broader political sphere.
People are calling this an assassination because they are making the (probably reasonable) guess that the reason to shoot Charlie Kirk during a political speech is to make a political statement.
(Your account is far from the only one posting abusively in this thread, and it's probably random that I happened to see your posts, but still - this is not ok.)
very likely he will be caught by his friends or family- everyone that does something like this slips up. The guy that shot United Healthcare's CEO was outed partially by his own mom in fact.
Depends on shooter's background. For state actors the easiest way to undermine US is to continue pushing towards more political violence in US via any and all means.
I wonder how quickly the gunman will be found. I've always wondered if the authorities would ever be able to find someone who patterned themselves after a character like The Jackal.
I had a convo about law enforcement's tools with a California detective last month. He was very clear its only a question of resources, and if the federal gov't is motivated to find them, they will.
You know I’ve generally thought it’s is true. You WILL get caught. Then I wonder if the government knows who Satoshi is. I know he didn’t kill someone but I wonder if the resources exist to figure it out if they truly wanted.
"The government" is not a monolith. It is an organization staffed by people who have different opinions, motivations, goals, etc., and often work at cross purposes. It's entirely possible that some in the government know who Satoshi is and aren't telling others (especially higher-ups) about it.
I hope you're talking about the original The Jackal. That's a great movie that has fascinated me essentially because of the theme you've identified. A truly motivated, highly-intelligent person could commit horrendous acts without detection. So far, whoever committed this assassination has succeeded; but I suspect, there is simply too much surveillance in 2025 to get away with it.
edit: regarding the surveillance issue, wonder what the retention on google earth/maps logs is for the location of the shooting?
As an outsider, I can only offer my hope that somehow you all manage to collectively take a breath, agree that you're heading down a dark path, and take a few steps back towards consensus and compromise. Godspeed.
A therapist once explained to me that the human mind first processes things through the emotional regions of the brain (limbic) and only afterwards can it reach the logic center (pre frontal cortex).
This has helped me to understand a lot of human behavior and social media posts and reactions (also propaganda, cults, sales, etc)
You may think you have come to a logical conclusion about political issue x or political party x, but very likely the vast majority of us are first having a triggered emotional reaction and later using our pre-frontal cortex to logically create a narrative on why we feel this way and justify it.
Taken to extremes I think you can see things like today happen and see how people react.
Sometimes I catch myself defending someone or a position and later realize I am just wrong, it’s just that I had an emotional reaction felt a possible connection with the person or a cause or vibe they expressed or are connected with and then my attorney brain kicks into overdrive trying to make it all add up.
It also explains a lot of domestic issues, if you are upset or scared your brain stays in the limbic center and is literally incapable of rational thought until you calm down or feel safe.
Nick Fuentes built his entire empire on hating Charlie Kirk, and his fans (groypers) are insane. Laura Loomer just came out and attacked Kirk a couple days ago. It's entirely possible he was fragged from the right.
I’ve thought this as well. There is a lot of disagreement within political parties. Given the polarization, I’d wager this is more true today.
You may be stuck with extreme people you disagree with despite leaning one way or another. You just want to dabble in politics but supporters of the parties can be rabid. It can be even harder to get a word out within the echo chamber.
Even if the shooter turns out to be from the right, the damage is done. A large number of people on the left have made it clear that they support this. The best thing sane people on the left can do is make it clear that you DON'T support this.
It's not impossible, but I find this to be very unlikely.
Nick Fuentes has repeatedly condemned political violence for years, he and his followers have also been trying to get Kirk to debate him, so killing is counter-productive from that perspective. Furthermore, the "attacks" by Laura Loomer that I've seen don't get anywhere near calling for violence.
If you were going to have an organized hit from some kind of unnamed leftist extremist group, I could think of a dozen more impactful targets than Kirk off the top of my head. So I don't know how much sense that theory makes either.
If it's a lone nut, that could come from anywhere.
I think you're underestimating Charlie Kirk's influence. I regularly see him attacked in left-wing online sites/groups I visit. I've regularly seen him on the Reddit front page or mentioned in predominantly left-wing comment sections. Various popular left-wing political streamers, Destiny comes to mind, have millions of views on Kirk-related videos/streams.
it was the performance of a guy "owning libs". It is not much of an honest debate if the guy enters it with a set of pre-packaged ideas that never get updated.
I don't think you should be killed for performances either
If you/society see the performance as beyond the pale, inciting violence then you should arrest the person and give them due process, or change the laws to reflect your beliefs
You're right, but this man did not share your opinion.
When Nancy Pelosi and her husband were targets of political violence, Charlie Kirk's response was to suggest that whomever bails the attacker out would be a national hero. [1]
To her credit, her response to the attack on him is much more dignified than his was.
-----
[1]
"Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy (David DePape) out..." - Charlie Kirk
We need to stop dismissing these comments and take them seriously. False claims like this are defamation, libel, and are inciting violence. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure these are all crimes that we’ve just been shrugging off. These are the results.
If we want freedom of speech we need our speech to mean something and use it to seek the truth in good faith.
This is especially true for those holding political office or in the media. They should be held to a higher standard, as they are the example for the people.
Dude, you need to take a pause and read up on this. It’s your civic duty to be informed and you are so very wrong about everything here.
Inciting violence is very different from defamation/libel.
No, lawmakers making false statements is not defamatory nor libelous. In fact, they have complete immunity while on the debate floor.
And defamation/libel have to be knowable false statements of fact which created demonstrable damage. Opinions can’t be defamatory. True statements can’t be defamatory. When Trump’s Chief of Staff, General Kelly, calls Trump a fascist and lists the definition of fascism and saying that he meets each one, that’s neither false nor inciting violence.
Maybe check your priors to see if you are more mad because people aren’t being prosecuted, or because what they are saying has truth to it.
Name media calling for the death of republicans or republican commentators.
I can name someone who called Trump a NAZI, JD Vance.
Go look at Twitter right now, it’s NYE for republicans. They’ve convinced themselves, sans evidence, that this was a leftist shooter. There are literally hundreds of thousands of posts foaming at the mouth that they can now hunt liberals and that the civil war has started. You’re doing the thing you claim to hate and frankly it’s disgusting.
'I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage.' - Charlie Kirk
That’s one way to frame it. A cynical and disingenuous one.
He presented an alternative to the indoctrination students often receive today at college campuses and through the media. He gave students a microphone and a chance to defend their views.
If presenting an alternative political philosophy causes someone to become enraged (or worse), we’re in a really bad state.
Because he would then hand you a mic to challenge his point. In a healthy debate. And you connected your own dots on the second point to satisfy your sick sense of justice.
Wow what an upstanding guy. He would hand us the mic. For what? To create a thumbnail on YouTube on how you pre-determinately got "owned" before you even received it?
How can a civil exchange of ideas not be healthy? Agreement is not a requisite to the definition. If such a debate feels unhealthy to you, I’m not sure what to say.
What's unhealthy and double-standard-y about this is, people like Kirk in many quarters on the right have been talking about taking away constitutional rights like second amendment, maybe even first, for transgender people.
You would probably get more out of debating with an LLM. Let's have an LLM with a mic on every campus for these "healthy" debates that are progressing humanity.
Or maybe we can fine-tune an LLM with all his dialogue that has been recorded.
I guarantee in the latter case no one would care, because the showmanship aspect would be gone, which is what it really was about. Entertainment.
> Because his abhorrent ideas have already been rejected by civil society.
I hate to break it to you, but judging by the outcome of last year's election, this statement is provably false.
This means his opponents' ideas are by-and-large rejected by civil society, and the amazing irony is, he invited those ideas to be tested out in the open. Kirk gave a platform to ideas he and his audience abhor.
If someone's views are "too egregious" to be tested openly, it's almost always the case that the person suggesting this knows their own views wouldn't hold up. It's a tell that they know they've lost the argument, before it even happened. Calls for censorship and deplatforming are the key tell for how feeble a person is.
If their ideals are so great, why can't they survive under scrutiny?
I would retort that a sizable fraction of society isn't civil, the gleefully malevolent who long to punish minorities. And a larger fraction is ill-informed about the first part, due to platforming liars and psychopaths, like you suggest.
Only part of Trump's voters thought this would be the outcome, but we're stuck with the results.
Please, quit playing word games. We've moved past that, and America won't survive if you treat this like your high-school debate club.
For some people those issues exist in a realm of debatable topics because they're not affected by it. It's apparently within the realms of debate to justify mass holocaust of babies abroad. Kinda like a video game. And clearly, people shouldn't be assassinated for merely playing video games.
> But Kirk was definitely not advocating for "healthy debate and disagreement."
Whenever I saw him engaging people, he certainly was. Often, they weren't, but he pretty much always was, even going so far as to deescalate. Although what you said is often parroted, there's no much evidence in your favor, if any.
When Kirk was on camera talking to a college student he typically used soft words and spoke calmly. The output of his life went far beyond these camera-ready moments.
Saying "we should handle things like we did in the 1950s" when speaking about trans people using the bathroom of their choice is not my idea of kindness.
You still haven't supplied any evidence or proof of your claim:
> But Kirk was definitely not advocating for "healthy debate and disagreement."
His main purpose on his college tours was to promote the debate and discussion of different viewpoints. Very often the viewpoints of his listeners were very different from his, but he invited open expression and dialogue regardless.
Kirk deliberately deadnamed Lia Thomas in public. Is that healthy debate and disagreement? Kirk said of transwomen using the bathroom that "someone should've just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s." You know, when LGBT people were famously regular victims of violence from citizens and cops alike?
Yes, Kirk had strong opinions and wasn't afraid to express them. And in his public tours, he always had an open mic to give anyone an opportunity to express opposing views.
The context of Kirk's words you are quoting are actually about a trans person winning an athletic event. More significantly, you misinterpret his words to fit your framing of him. He did not advocate for violence against LGBT people.
The Sacramento Bee also initially misinterpreted his words in the same slant you are and after careful reexamination, realized their mistake, retracted their accusation against him and apologized.
> An earlier version of this column included a statement that Charlie Kirk had “called for the lynching of trans people.” The basis for this accusation is a video clip in which Kirk was upset that a trans woman had won an NCAA swimming championship. In the clip, Kirk said that instead of letting the woman compete, “Someone should have took (sic) care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s.” Some trans advocates on social media extrapolated from Kirk’s comments that he called for trans people to be lynched - an accusation The Bee repeated. But a review of the video shows that Kirk never advocated for trans people to be lynched. In fact, he strongly denies the accusation. These notes have been added to the column. The Bee regrets its comments and we apologize for any misunderstanding this earlier version may have caused.
I said that his words were not "healthy debate and disagreement" and I absolutely stand by the claim that deadnaming trans people is not "healthy debate and disagreement," even if that trans person did well in a sporting event.
> You know, when LGBT people were famously regular victims of violence from citizens and cops alike?
What point were you trying to make here?
Requoting your earlier claim:
> But Kirk was definitely not advocating for "healthy debate and disagreement."
This seems to be a general characterization of Kirk, that he generally did not advocate for healthy debate and disagreement. By watching his many videos where he frequently listened to opposing viewpoints and also by the fact that he always had an open mic during speaking events, it's pretty easy to disprove your claim.
Cherrypicking one or two incidents where you interpret his words as against healthy debate doesn't support your claim.
Maybe you can help me understand how precisely he'd like to deal with trans women using the bathroom. And perhaps we can understand this within the context of the legal policies he advocates for regarding trans people.
I also still insist that deadnaming people is the polar opposite of healthy debate. It is an action done to demonstrate a total lack of respect for another person.
> your deliberate lie to claim otherwise is grist for the hate mill that led to his death
Please don't respond to a bad comment with another bad comment. This kind of accusation is highly inflammatory and unfounded, and clearly against the guidelines.
It is false to claim that Charlie Kirk "call[ed] for the deaths of specific groups, but . . . indirectly"
People need to be reminded that they "cannot, month in, month out and year in, year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault . . . and not expect that brutal, violent natures . . . will be unaffected by it." (Theodore Roosevelt)
It's fine to refute a claim with opposing facts or opinions. We agree it was a bad comment, and we would have had no problem with a response that kept within the guidelines.
But the guidelines are very clear about making swipes and posting in an inflammatory style. These are the guidelines are relevant here:
Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
It's clearly against the guidelines to accuse someone of telling a "deliberate lie". None of us can know what they knew or sincerely believed when they wrote that comment.
As I've kept saying I agree that theirs was a bad comment and agree that it should be flagged and killed, but we need you to try harder to avoid personal attacks and escalatory rhetoric like this. You've been here a long time, we value your contributions and tolerate some boundary-pushing from you because we want a broad spectrum of views to be represented, but sometimes we have to say "enough". Please just do your part to make things better here not worse.
What are you even talking about? He was a shining example of what healthy debate looked like. I cannot think of a single other influencer that debated as openly as he did, on either side.
Members and leaders within the TPUSA chapter at my local university engaged in a year+ long harassment campaign against multiple professors, including a friend of mine. This included writing hate speech against trans people (my friend is trans) in coursework right up to legally protected boundaries. This was done in concert with an effort to get these professors fired for "discriminating against conservatives."
I am confident that this was done in an organized fashion with support. There is no chance that these random children knew precisely where to place their hatred in ways that which keep them from getting expelled and also ensure that their professors had to regularly read hate speech whenever they went to grade assignments.
Kirk has visited this university and celebrated the TPUSA organization there.
Kirk's twitter feed is also filled with egregious homophobia, transphobia, racism, and sexism.
Kirk attended organized debates and used soft words in those debates for the camera so that he could "own" college students. But if you expand to look at his public words they quickly stop being so soft. And if you expand to look at the output of his organization, things become much worse.
Even if Toilet Paper USA was mean to people in your university, I doubt that had much to do with Kirk.
I never claimed that Kirk wasn't racist/misogynist/*ist, just that he invited open debate like nobody's business, which is a good thing regardless of your beliefs. I strongly disagree with Kirk's beliefs but I have zero problem with him sharing them. Open debate and even open criticism of people is critical to a functioning society.
While I don't believe that Kirk personally organized this campaign, I do believe that this was materially supported by the TPUSA organization and that Kirk is responsible for the culture of the organization and the output of that culture.
Kirk invited open debate in particular contexts while acting against open debate in others. He was not operating under a principle of supporting open debate but instead used specific on camera interactions as a rhetorical device.
I completely disagree with Charlie Kirk's rather unsympathetic preachings on many topics. But this act - it gives me a very sinking feeling. What worries me more than the yet undetermined identity of the killer is how a lot of people are responding to the news.
Why do some people celebrate his death? This was not a person who was declared as an enemy of the state. He was someone holding a public political debate. Can't they see that this incident is going to have extreme repercussions on their own welfare and the values they stand for? Can't they see the fear, pain and tears on the other side, that's gradually getting replaced by outrage and resentment? How do politics make people so blind to the sufferings of the others? Doesn't the nation exist to support opposing ideas without such carnage? I know that Kirk has expressed opinion that downplayed the value of human life (like in case of gun rights). But how does that make the side that advocated for dignity, equality and empathy just suspend those values in his case?
You can't seriously convince any opponent with violence or hatred. And guns aren't the best tools for genuine persuasion. The mockery of their pain will only lead to their conviction and resolve. And at some point, it will become irreversible. Please don't let politics and bias cloud your judgment. This isn't a victory for your cause.
And no matter what sort of a person Kirk was, his role in this world is over rather abruptly. His grizzly demise displayed around the world leaves terrible wounds in the psyche of his family, friends, followers and numerous others. I hope that their pain doesn't mutate into destructive energy. I hope that they find the strength to overcome it and find peace.
This is looking to be far more organized than a lone-gunman scenario.
The shooter and the escape plan which is clearly planned. But the multiple decoys in the crowd who distracted law enforcement and diverted crowd attention makes this seem more sophisticated.
Then there's the head of a foreign country (known for clandestine behavior) posting condolences 20mins after the shooting - before any of it hit the wire.
While I'm not a fan of Charlie's beliefs, actions and his brand of conservatism, he was willing to go across the political divide and foster debates with those that do not share his values.
Condolences to his young family and everyone close to him.
I'm interested to know who you think is a leftist Ben Shapiro/Charlie Kirk type who debates right wing students. I haven't heard of any, but I'm sure they exist.
What's disingenuous is substituting my "this" for whatever one pleases, when in context it was obviously the concepts referred to in the post it replied to - debating for one's own advantage, and milking wins against weak interlocutors.
I don’t need to “rule out” nation state actors. The onus is on someone to prove it involves nation state actors (and which nation is pretty important, too).
haven't seen it, so I shouldn't comment, but from the reviews they went out of their way to make the movie apolitical, or at least to obfuscate the setting's relation to our current zeitgeist. which resulted in a tortured, implausible scenario.
if that was their goal, it would have been better to never explain the conflict in the first place. just start in medias res, with asemic dialogue and references.
It may make no difference but as of now we have no idea who did this or why. We still have no idea what was the motive of the man who shot Trump's ear.
We don't have "no idea". We have god knows how many hours of the dead guy spewing his opinions in 1080p and 4k. And for all of those variety opinions we know who gets pissed off by them.
I mean, sure, it could've been a crazy ex or a former business partner or whatever. But how many crazy ex's can one guy have? And he's pissed off god knows how many people by saying things? Strictly by the numbers this was almost certainly someone who hated him for what he said.
Statistically most people don't go out like Ozzy (i.e. spend a good chunk of your life doing something likely to be the death of you only to get dead by something completely unrelated)
If we're placing bets, you'd bet on political motive but we're not placing bets. I'll throw out one option that's been very popular on the right wing conspiracy circuit and maybe it was a false flag to set the stage for Martial Law. I have no proof it's true and no proof it isn't.
Martial law has never been applied nation-wide, and it would likely not work at all but rather it would set the stage for some states to refuse federal authority, possibly leading to civil war. I know many fantasize that Trump wants all of that, but any sober observer realizes those are just that: fantasies.
We don't know how motive? He didn't shoot Trump's ear, he shot Trump, because he wanted to kill Trump... I don't get how much clearer a motive could be!
His actions aren't a motive. They turned his life upside down and didn't find any strong political opinions and no indication he hated Trump. People also do stuff like this to get attention. The guy who shot at Reagan wanted to impress Jodie Foster.
The biography of the kid shows no coherent political beliefs. He appeared to be interested in also killing Biden. It just so happens, Trump’s campaign event was very close to Crooks’ home.
> I know they are worlds apart, but just look at what happened in Nepal...
They let hotel inhabitants leave before burning it down. The finance minister got caught by the mob and survived. Does make it seem quite controlled, imo.
Not “some guys” but Hamas leadership. Those “guys” brought the worst atrocities for Jews since the holocaust. Israel went after them just like it went after the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, and like US went after Bin Laden.
Btw It’s really crazy to read what a person who has 225M followers on X writes when he replies "Exactly" directly to claim that people who fund the Left, like Bill Gates, are murderers.
Looking at that source I’m skeptical of the validity of graph.
Anecdotally in recent years I generally see far more casual references to violence from left leaning people both online and in person. After the attempted assignation of Trump, my Facebook feed was full of left leaning friends saying “shame he missed!”. It was gross. Similar comments abounded on a Washington Post article about Kirk’s shooting. Or the guy who murdered the UnitedHealth CEO, etc.
On the linked graph take the case of that attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania where the shooter is listed as “conservative/right leaning”.
However no motivation for that shooting has been found and the shooters politics were mixed. Seems he registered to vote as a republican but that’s not uncommon in a rural state as otherwise you don’t get to vote in primaries. He also donated to a democratic cause. His Wikipedia page lists his political beliefs as unknown.
Other cases I’ve looked into in my local Idaho area were listed as “right wing” or “white supremacist” but were a couple of members of a gang trying to free another who was imprisoned for dealing drugs.
Most of those drug gangs aren’t left or right leaning, just thugs.
Using that list, let's look back at the last ~40 years:
1978-1995 : Unabomber - Not WS
1980-1985 : Jewish Defense League - Not WS
1995 : Oklahoma City Bombing - WS(Possibly Political and not WS but will count as linked)
1996 : Olympic Bombing - WS
2009 : Fort Hood shooting - Not WS(Radical Islam)
2012 : Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting - WS
2013 : Boston Marathon bombing - Not WS(Radical Islam)
2015 : Cartoon Drawing Contest shooting - Not WS(Radical Islam)
2015 : Charleston church shooting - WS
2015 : San Bernardino shooting - Not WS(Radical Islam)
2016 : Orlando nightclub shooting -Not WS(Radical Islam)
2017 : Congressional baseball shooting - Not WS(Political left)
2017 : Charlottesville car attack - WS
2018 : Pittsburgh synagogue shooting - WS
2019 : Escondido mosque fire and Poway synagogue shooting - WS
2019 : El Paso Walmart shooting - WS
2025 : New Orleans truck attack - Not WS
I would note; I know of at least one missing item, the attack on protesters in Denver. I also added back in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting which was linked to the page but also missing in the list.
Also possibly missing: DC Sniper attacks
However for sake of argument, I will only look at data prior to 2021:
8/16 attacks on that list are linked to White Supremacists(Counting OKC) ~50%
In the last 15 years, again about 50% are linked to White Supremacists and ~41% linked to Radical Islam.
First of all, the current calendar year never gets stats. It usually takes the FBI 1-2 years to release data because it’s mostly collected by 10,000s of local police agencies, then collated and normalized by the FBI. Even then, there were problems with the data because some police departments lied when filling out the forms (notably one department in Louisiana). But I also heard that the FBI stopped collecting it as part of the DOGE / DEI policy changes (because some of the fields / dimensions of analysis are racial).
That said, the next challenge is to agree on what constitutes the left-right political spectrum in the US. I would argue it’s too vague to exist. It’s important to realize when a data point is describing gun violence or any source of violence, and whether it is violence against civilians or violence against the government as well.
Your view is simply one that is not in line with reality.
There's the numerous Obama assassination plots, 2017 Unite the Right rally, Jan 6, the recent assassinations of Democrat politicians, Abbott in 2024 pardoning murderer Daniel Perry who went to a BLM protest with the intention of killing protestors, and the terror groups like the Proud Boys, the 3 Percenters, The Base, the O9A/Cvlt/764.
And that's not to mention the Christchurch mosque shootings, the Club Q or Pulse Nightclub shootings, the El Paso Walmart shooting, the Jacksonville Dollar Tree shooting, or the Charleston church shooting.
And these are just the ones off the top of my head. These aren't cherry picked; the stats disagree with you too. Here is one such study, but you would be hard pressed to find one that shows otherwise: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9335287/
The right commits far more political violence. That is just a simple fact of reality.
(edit) If you are sincerely concerned about political violence, then it's worth keeping up with the far-right accelerationist movement. They have been increasing in activity since 2020, and attacks on gun proponents and conservatives are part of those plots, like The Base's foiled 2020 attack on a gun rights rally in Virginia, or the the foiled 2024 energy grid attack ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atomwaffen_Division_me... )
I forgot their names; Melissa and Mark Hortman were the assassinated Democrat politicians I mentioned, yes. I did forget the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot though-- no reason other than it slipped my mind.
It slipped your mind because 12 of 18 conspirators in that plot were FBI plants or informants, 2 took a plea deal, and 4 got off due to the entrapment.
This is a non-sequitur, why would that make it slip my mind? Those aren't even details I readily remembered, and searching them up, it looks like those details aren't even factual. Searching it up, it seems thirteen people were arrested. The defense claimed three and a half years ago that there were twelve FBI informants.
I think it slipped my mind because there were already too many examples of far-right and conservative terrorist violence, and I was not intending to write an exhaustive comment in the first place.
The reason for the non-sequitur is because if there were anything behind this plot, it would have gotten a lot more news coverage than it did as an FBI-seeded conspiracy. As it stands, there were better examples of crazy right wingers (many of whom were actually crazy right wingers), so they moved on to those. In some other parts of the country, the demand for crazy right wingers exceeded the supply, so hoaxes filled that.
Thirteen out of eighteen were arrested. Five were directly agents, and FBI agents tend not to get arrested when they are the ones doing the arresting.
I just logged in to Bluesky to see what the left think of this and I wish I hadn't.
I find it extremely disturbing that half the country are people who are very well educated, earning well above average from their white-collar careers, yet they still think political violence is acceptable or funny.
100% serious statement here, who are you looking at on Bluesky or how? Looking at the Discover (so a general feed) my follow which would be unique to me, and the trending ALL I see is people talking about this being bad OR posts showing how everyone is saying Bluesky is celebrating. I truly do not see this celebration happening that people are saying is happening rampantly. Right now, in a private browser going to https://bsky.app/ there is 0 celebration.
(quick edit) And anyone who doesn't believe me go to Bluesky right now and look.
The majority of what I see on Bluesky is people saying that political violence is unacceptable. There are a good number juxtaposing Kirk's saying mass school killings are an acceptable price to pay for the right to bear arms. They are not, however, saying that political violence is acceptable. I haven't seen anyone say that.
I have seen right-wing commenters say that the left was saying this. When I asked for examples I got nothing. I got responses, but the left-of-center commenters they pointed to were in the two categories I describe above: those saying the event is terrible and those saying it's ironic.
Now, I'm sure you can find people saying political violence is okay. I'm just saying I haven't seen it at all and therefore it isn't the central tendency in my feed.
I can’t help but think this is 99% due to the media. I would bet a million bucks, no matter who you are, that you personally will not get shot. That’s easy math.
But I also know human brains are bad at statistics. Meh.
I mean it does sound like you are bad at statistics.
You don't need to get shot to be a victim of gun violence. I've honked at a car that was driving aggressively and that driver pointed a gun at me. This is a common enough story in Texas to be meme-ifyed.
Your questions are irrelevant in the context. If you live in a country with lots of gun related deaths, you'd be concerned about getting shot. Having an equally high number of knife related deaths does not change this fact.
The argument doesn't seek to change facts, it seeks to invite a broader view of the facts at hand, and the issue, which is murder. Reduction in murder is the goal. Recognizing that murder is very closely related to poverty, not gun ownership, is relevant if you're honest and objective about that goal. If you discover that reducing gun ownership increases knife related deaths, that would be very relevant to the goal. It would then be irrelevant to talk about guns. Right?
I've been once threatened by an ex-gf with a knife, telling me she was gonna kill me. You know what I felt ? A mild worry, "come on, drop that, it's not worth it". She threw it across the kitchen and cried in my arms (difficult breakup, she has an history of family violence and alcohol abuse and comes from Myanmar, a tough place. We're both fine).
She would have had, to actually endanger me:
- to have enough strength to penetrate anything
- the courage to see a lot of blood and cries to actually go through with a full murder
- resist me fighting her back if it went to that, close range
- not react to any rational argument I would beg her to listen to while she attacked me
It was a bit traumatizing, but we laugh at it now... she failed at the first rational argument I presented "don't do it, don't ruin your life for a guy".
Imagine if we were in a gun country, and she pressed the trigger accidentally... it's not the same, you must understand that, knife murders are really really hard, gun murders really really easy.
I've never heard anyone say knives are particularly dangerous outside of people trained in how to fight with them. They tend to be pretty damn short to begin with, unless you're sneaking a machete around in your pants (or are you just happy to see me?)
There have been more than a few mass stabbings in China where lots of kids, from people who aren’t particularly trained in knifing people. There was the Wuxi vocational school stabbing in 2024 where 8 people were killed, there is a long list of school attacks, most of them are stabbings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_attacks_in_Chin...
Note that China does have a pretty low homicide rate, probably since guns are so hard to get ahold of (death penalty for even producing guns in backyard workshops).
And 66th by murder rate. Scoping it to gun deaths is disingenuous, and exactly the kind of thing Charlie Kirk is being (rightly imo) accused of here. Please be better.
One quote of Charlie’s that resonates deeply with me is:
"""
When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts.
When marriages stop talking, divorce happens.
When civilisations stop talking, civil war ensues.
When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.
What we as a culture have to get back to, is being able to have reasonable disagreement, where violence is not an option.
"""
This belief in the power of conversation over conflict defined Charlie’s work. He didn’t just preach ideas; he lived them, fostering discussions that encouraged understanding despite disagreement. I did not agree with all his standpoints, but what I admired most was his insistence that dialogue could bridge divides.
Never really followed this guy and only knew of him because he'd randomly be mentioned in news stories.
Regardless of your political bent, this sort of shit is sickening and genuinely disturbing, particularly when it occurs at (as this did) at a university whose ostensible raison d'etre is to ventilate different ideas, offensive or not. I realise this event wasn't a 'debate' per se but nevertheless it's the ethos and optics that matter.
There's also the incredibly myopic immaturity inherent in using violence for the sole or primary purpose of silencing the speaker and signalling to others that violence is somehow an acceptable form of dialogue. The myopic absurdity of this is of course that it is a cycle that can never end if all participants share that view, ensuring that it is inevitably self-defeating. Violence can make sense under certain circumstances - coups, revolutions, wars - but in the context of mere rhetoric it's abhorrent to witness.
Just a grotesque reflection in a long list of them that we as a species, or very many of us - perhaps more than we want to admit - are extremely violent and brutal.
Sickening and sobering, and again you could plug in any speaker/polemicist from whichever part of the political spectrum in here and it would be no less true.
I wasn't overlooking mankind's potential to do amazing things. I'm reflecting on the fact that despite our ability and propensity to do amazing things, we are also at base more violent, far more violent, than I think we give ourselves credit for. I'm sure this sentiment isn't new. I can remember the opening page of Blood Meridian being a newspaper clipping from Arizona reporting on the fact that, essentially, we've been scalping (ie violently brutalising) one another for tens of thousands of years. Perhaps it's a sine qua non of being human.
Despite all our fancy gadgets and fancy thinking and fancy philosophies, we aren't really all that different from those who lived a thousand or ten thousand years ago.
What if the person in question preaches violence? I don’t know that he did, I don’t follow the guy, but more just wondering where the line should be drawn.
If a person espoused and encouraged assassination as a means to achieve his political or philosophical goals then it's difficult to see how he could be surprised if he himself were to be assassinated or affected by violence. In a sense that would just be logical cause and effect.
But to my knowledge Kirk never did and 'live by the sword, die by the sword' wouldn't apply here. In fact I can't think of an instance in recent history where this would have applied - the logical implications inherent in such rhetoric are obvious to most people immediately. Even the Russians as a general rule don't murder their exiled former rulers - the new Czar figures he could be next, and wouldn't want to set a precedent.
He literally said a few gun deaths a year is an okay price to pay for the right to bear arms. He became part of that statistic today. Quite evidently a _live by the sword, die by the sword_ moment.
If you can't tell the difference between the quote you've attributed to him, on the one hand, and actively encouraging assassination and political violence on the other, then I don't know what to tell you other than that they are categorically different statements. The statement "I think a few people dying in car accidents is a valid price to pay for being able to travel quickly in cars between point A and B" very obviously is not the same thing as the statement "I encourage people to kill themselves in their cars while driving" or "I am glad people routinely die in car crashes". It's expressing the balancing of two things, endorsing State A over State B (Guns vs No Guns) without endorsing violence itself; seen another way, it's endorsing A over B without necessarily saying A is the ultimate ideal - it's just that A is in that person's opinion preferable to B. Personally I think the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh the risks and indeed I'd say the benefits of being vaccinated are worth the harms they may cause, even to myself; surely it's obvious to you that I can extol vaccine benefits over their known harms while simultaneously hoping that nobody is in fact harmed by them, even thought I know some subset of the population will be (by myocarditis, for example). You've conflated the expression of a preference for active malice.
Apathy or acceptance of something is passive; incitement and encouragement of something is active. Surely that's obvious.
As far as I know he never advocated murder through assassination or targeted extrajudicial killing. His views on guns and indeed the fact he was speaking about gun violence when he was shot may qualify as ironic, but his philosophical views on the availability of guns to the public were not tantamount to actively encouraging violence.
i dont think passive is a good description of going out of his way to influence politics to enforce that his position is law.
improved gun control could have prevented his death, but he advocated hard against it, and fundraised against it.
he may not have actively pushed for people to kill somebody in particular, be he doubtlessly influence people to murder students on campus, and put effort to making sure that people would be able to continue to murder people in schools.
charlie kirk isnt an abstract concept who only said one thing ever. he's more than that one quote.
If you agree that he never actively promulgated violence and if you agree that there is a difference between (i) actively promulgating violence, or (ii) saying that people should have a right to own guns, then I'm sure you and I don't disagree so far.
Look, I haven't lived in America in 20 years (dual Australian-American citizen), nor have I been back there since the mid 2000s. I live in a place that doesn't really have regularly occurring mass shootings and, personally, I do take comfort in knowing that almost nobody I am around and interact with in public is carrying a lethal weapon - for better or worse even pocket knives and pepper spray can't be legally carried around here. Having said that, while I disagree with Mr Kirk about guns philosophically, I understand the constitutional, legal, and philosophical arguments that some Americans make vis-a-vis the 2nd amendment, and I don't see how you could conflate those arguments with an exhortation to actively kill other people.
We can both agree that if a judge interprets US constitutional law in such a way that he issues a judgment protecting the right to 'bear arms', he isn't also necessarily, by virtue of the ruling, promoting violence, right? Guns and violence aren't the same thing. Guns no doubt are used as instruments of violence in many cases, but at least in many respects they are also used solely for their deterrent effect, and it doesn't seem difficult to me to understand that you could support one (a right to bear arms) but deny the legitimacy of assassinations or extrajudicial killings. Indeed, several legal judgments from America have featured judges that are personally opposed to guns and who personally don't carry or own guns nevertheless finding that under American law they have to rule in a way that results in increased availability of guns to the public. That's very clearly not the same thing as advocating violence.
> actively encouraging assassination and political violence on the other
Quit putting words in my mouth.
I am not encouraging violence or assassination of political differences. I merely said, his death is quite literally _live by the sword, die by the sword_. That's it. He advocated for freedom of firearms, and died by one. Nothing further to it to read into. This is not malice or extolling violence.
Here's a couple of sources of the quote I attribute to him, since you don't believe me or are willfully, obtusely, ignoring what he said.
You've got some issues with reading comprehension. I was (quite obviously) not referring to you there - I was pointing out that those are two different things (in reference to what Mr Kirk said, not you).
I also never denied that the quote was accurate. I drew a distinction between his quote, on the one hand, and actively advocating violence on the other. The only part of this discussion that involved you was related to your apparent inability to understand that distinction.
Getting the vibe this isn't going to be fruitful. Good day.
You know nothing about me. Take your 'so-called tolerant' crap elsewhere. The social construct of tolerance was already broken by others like this, don't expect me to abide by it when you don't.
What is dishonest about the mans words being brought up in relevant context?
> I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.
What does 'preaching violence' mean to you? Because to some people, simply supporting the talking points of the political party they don't like counts as violence.
Your comment HERE could even be interpreted by some as preaching for violence - because you're implying that there's a line you can cross where the opinions you share justify your death.
The only reason I know of him is the master debate episode from South Park. I wanted context. Fwiw, he was a bad debater but he openly said he didnt know about something in public and thats something I dont see people doing often. I appreciated that.
There is an increased amount of energy in the system. This is a bad thing. The amplitudes of the fluctuations are too high. Time to bring things back down to normal. Political violence cannot be accepted: Luigi Mangione, the Hortmans' killer, Kirk's killer all have to be brought to justice by the law. And from the rest of us, they all have to be denounced.
Increased political violence is bad. The state starts breaking down since the price for everything is death so action stalls.
This cannot be an explanation since the 2008 Financial Crisis did not have a similar rise in political violence and that was far greater economic disruption.
2008 did have an rise in political violence. you're seeing the results of it right now. we never climbed out of that hole and we're still living in the aftermath of 2008 and its effects on our society
I don't know who this is, but given the number of comments, seems to have mattered. Only point of this comment is assure others who don't know his work that you are not alone.
I have only seen Charlie Kirk on this interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Apparently he was someone who was promoting tolerance to more diverse political points of view. And he made many valid points that made the Governor squirm and agree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XJ6rQDRKGA
> Apparently he was someone who was promoting tolerance to more diverse political points of view.
Definitely:
> "I think the Democrats do not believe in the nuclear family, and they've already destroyed it in the macro, and now they're trying to destroy it in the micro."
And this is what I found in 10 seconds. Really fostering that political diversity. He's just another twitter/youtube pundit in the Fox News classic style, and there's endless hours of him talking just like this.
I think there’s a kernel of truth in what he said, surrounded by some exaggeration. The rural parts of the country, where people get married under 25 years old and have a higher fertility rate, probably do place a higher value on having a family than the urban parts of the country where career is prioritized. Good politicians (like Barack Obama did in his prime) take pains to acknowledge truths from the other side.
The rural parts of the country, where people get married under 25 years old are overwhelming divorced by 35. If you call that "place a higher value on having a family" than the low divorce rates of educated, high earning women, then we disagree on definitions.
The mainstream media reported on Iryna’s murder as soon as there was video, but it has been a constant subject of reporting in Charlotte since it happened with immediate political ramifications.
I don’t read Twitter, but I do read my local news. I’m not quite sure that anyone is better off now that her murder is being nationally reported, to be honest.
It took CNN three days after the video was already circulating and getting huge traction; before they reported on it themselves.
four days for NYT.
This is after the video had already been circulating for days and received a lot of attention, the killing happened on August 22nd and the video has been going around since the 5th of september: https://www.mediaite.com/media/conservatives-call-out-media-...
These same outlets reported on George Floyds death effectively immediately.
Mark Duggan was shot in London and the US MSM picked it up faster.
Not aware of anything regarding local news, but when one killing reaches international news and the other has to be already organically international news via social media before reporting happens: people start to make presumptions.
If you're accustomed to combat footage or other videos of victims of violence, this is pretty tame in the grand scheme of things that people are subjected to.
For those who want to know without exposing themselves:
He's sitting in a chair when he takes a round to the neck. Clean exit. It's over within three seconds.
I watched the video of the Christchurch shooting and while I don't regret seeing those horrors, there is a particular moment of it that is so horrifically callous that it sticks with me and is particularly haunting (for those that know; its that moment near the curb).
For anyone else who's accidentally watched the video and feels uncomfortable with the gore, immediately go do a high focus activity to not let it settle in your mind, can be something like Tetris.
I've seen a paper or two supporting the claim, but I remember that I didn't put much faith in them at the time. Seems plausible enough though, and probably wouldn't hurt anyone so until there's a ton of of high quality evidence for it'd still be worth a shot.
I don't want to watch it, and I'm glad I haven't seen anything more than a still yet.
I always wonder if media hiding gore allows people to not get more upset about violence. The lynching of Emmett Till would not have had the same impact without his mother having an open casket funeral. Would things have gone differently if more people had been exposed to images from Sandy Hook?
The one thing that Aphantasia is good for. I accidentally saw it on Reddit. No clue, how normal people deal with being forced to see stuff like this over and over again.
Yep, a friend shared the link and a low resolution blurry screenshot, and though I usually click anyway, I kind of just knew that this one would be a bit too graphic to move on from easily.
Even though I have an extremely negative opinion of Charlie, I'd feel too bad thinking about the pain his family would be experiencing. The family (especially children) don't deserve that.
What does it say about me that I've seen so much stuff like this that it barely affects me? I'm in my 30s and have had unfiltered internet access since I was about 8.
Gore definitely made me a depressed person in grade school, but the only reaction I'm having to this is concern about:
- conservatives getting ready for violence
- the state getting ready to use this to further erode civil liberties
- the left fanning the flames for conservatives
Desensitization isn't a profound or "bad" phenomenon in of itself. Humans adapt to their environment and focus more on concerns of a surprising nature.
many are desensitized, for anyone reading, if you consider yourself that way it’s not haunting or giving feelings of sickness, it depicts a predictable outcome of a high powered shot that hits an artery in a neck. No ability or physical capability for your body to react no matter who you are.
It is graphic and shows how fragile we are, how it will go down if you are in that situation
TBH I think as a society we have become so desensitized to violence because the only exposure we have to it is glamorized in movies and TV.
If we saw death up close and personal, perhaps we could become a bit more empathetic. I seriously wonder if, for example, we published the horrific photos of the aftermath of a school shooting, that would result in more honest discourse in this country on gun control.
And if we got the horrific photos after the Nice truck attack or the Christmas Market attack in Germany we might realize that being killed by a truck is no less horrifying.
No, please WATCH IT! It's important to learn how reality really is. This is the process of using 100% of available information. You have been trained to block, censor and avoid everything that doesnt do good on you, but it's extremely important to open your eyes as wide as possible, and let your brain process this, then build conclusions on this data.
I agree with you. It's easy to become desensitized to tragedy when you're only reading words. Regardless of opinions, it's hard not to empathize with a man shot dead before your eyes. I think it does a lot of good to remove that degree of separation, and reflect on it instead of purging it from your mind.
Well you obviously don’t have an understanding of how people can be permanently debilitated by mental anguish and trauma. This happens to be an unnecessarily gruesome thing for me and it certainly doesn’t teach me anything to watch it that I didn’t already know.
I know how reality really is, and it's already hard enough to deal with. I don't need it made more visceral. When bad things happen, you don't have to stare into them with your eyes wide open, any more than you have to maximise your photon intake by staring into the sun.
Yes, I feel sick because I cannot process all of reality, and increasing the burden of what I have to process does not make that task any easier.
It's incredibly accurate as most such events go, with the grade of shooters and weapons typically seen. It's not terribly remarkable for a trained shooter with a good rifle. A 1 MOA or better rifle with a reasonable optic makes such shots highly feasible given a stationary target.
So this is a outlier only in that someone was equipped and trained to a fairly serious degree. Someone on the order of a squad designated marksman (SDM) is certainly capable of this. The US military has a few thousand active duty personal trained to that level across the several branches, and there are 10's of thousands of veterans. There are also many SWAT and other LEOs and an uncountable number of enthusiasts and serious hunters with sufficient training and weapons.
If the reporting is correct, the shot was at 200 yards. Anyone who hunts with a rifle is (or should be) capable of making that shot, it's not exceedingly far (and like you said, if your rifle isn't junk and you're shooting 1 MOA, that's only a 2" difference @ 200 yards).
No serious training or equipment would be required for this close of a shot. I've taken deer over 200 yards away with my $500 rifle, no training other than shooting on and off since I was a kid.
I believe this underestimates the difficulty of such an attack and the value of training. This isn't deer hunting where little to nothing is at stake. It's a homicidal attack in the midst of an urban area, with armed law enforcement in the vicinity, the risk of discovery, the knowledge that aggressive pursuit will be immediate, and extreme consequences for the crime.
High pressure.
Under pressure, a poorly trained person is unlikely to be capable of this. It takes some degree of training to simultaneously deal with this pressure and still perform.
Completely untrained yes but there’s lots of people with these skills. I do IDPA matches with my son at a tactical range near Waxahachie TX, people there do these kinds of drills constantly. There’s also lots of ex-military instructor led close quarter and urban combat training available to anyone. Combat trained random people are probably more common than you think. It’s sort of like martial arts, some people are just really into it.
Yes, this is the level of training I imagine as sufficient. A match applies pressure: you're on a clock, there is an audience, you have a safety regime and people scrutinizing you on it, and at the end, there is a score. I don't claim Fort Benning sniper school is necessary. Only that you likely can't just wander out of a gun shop with your scoped deer rifle at any price and snipe targets at range under pressure: there is more to it than the weapon.
> Combat trained random people are probably more common than you think.
I listed a wide variety of people with the training I believe is sufficient.
Not directly relevant, but it should be noted that we live at a time when someone who can afford to drop a few thousand dollars on a scope basically doesn't need to learn how to shoot.
It was reportedly a 200 meter shot on a pretty static target. At that distance a competent shooter can place it within a couple inches all day with a decent rifle. This shot didn't require special skill.
Modern firearms don't really require that much training to hit a static man sized target at 200m from a supported position. This is well within the "point blank" range, meaning that vertical deviation of the bullet is too small to bother adjusting for, and wind effects on rifle (i.e. very fast moving) bullets at this range are also fairly limited. So long as the rifle is zeroed, lining up the scope with the target and pulling the trigger without jerking it is basically all it takes, and those kinds of skills can be acquired in a few trips to the range.
Can you do this? Like, I’ve killed every animal I’ve shot at so far (legally, while hunting) and I know I couldn’t make that shot. The nerves alone Jesus. I’m always surprised and dubious when I hear this claim repeated. A blood vessel in a human from 200 yards. After a few trips to the range. Really.
Who says he was targeting that specific place? In fact, it seems likely that the target was his head and the shooter pulled the shot a bit but was still within tolerances (with a 1 MOA scope @ 200 yards you're only looking at 2" of variance).
I've killed deer beyond 200 yards sitting on a stump with a cheap rifle, it's not actually that hard if you've shot a bit before. The nerves though... you're right there, I couldn't imagine.
I'm not a particularly skilled shooter (don't get to practice as much as I'd like.) And I can hit a target at 300m using a $500 AR-15 and a $300 optic. It's not that hard at the range.
The shooter wasn't likely aiming "anywhere on the body" as the target... they were likely either trying to hit the center of the head, or the chest. In either case, they were off quite a bit and that they made a deadly hit as much as they did was most likely still luck as much as anything.
Aiming for the head is most likely. For reference, a military M16 is considered within spec if it can produce a 4 minute-of-angle group from a prone supported position (but aimed and fired by a human, not fixed in a gun sled). At 200 yards, that would be a circle of around 8 inches. However pretty much any hit with a rifle bullet within that circle is likely to be lethal if it's centered on the head...
Anyway, the point is that it's really not a difficult shot at all, and only requires very rudimentary training that is readily available to anyone who can make a few trips to the range.
I'm not sure that most people are disciplined enough to make that shot all the same. I don't know anything about the shooter in particular though. Mostly in that from the center of the head to the neck is still a bit away. It could just as easily have missed altogether.
I'm guessing center of head. It is common for right-handed shooters without a lot of training to jerk the trigger down and to the right, which will show up as displacement at 200 meters.
The bullet drop at this distance with say a .223 is 3-9 inches depending on the exact velocity and basically nothing else has significant effect at this distance.
At say 3000fps velocity, time to target is less than 450ms.
This is almost point and shoot. It’s entirely possible someone fairly untrained just aimed at the forehead and ended up with neck
He could have been aiming for the skull for all we know. He could have been aiming for the chest. Hell, he could have been aiming for someone behind Kirk.
Supposedly the shot was taken from 200 yards away.
In my nonprofessional opinion, that is crappy aim. I can hit an apple from 100 yards away, with a black powder rifle, with an unriffled bore, with iron sights, standing up, repeatedly. I would expect a modern rifle with a riffled bore and a scope and a larger target to be much more accurate from a prone position.
Everyone is underestimating how hard it is to willingly kill a person. Shooting a paper target or apple at a range is nothing like sighting on a person, letting out your breath and pulling a trigger.
The american state was brought into existence and persists through unrelenting political violence - internal and external. The estimated 90% of Indigenous population that perished; persistent excess deqths of indigenous peoples https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1698152/; persistent racialized violence perpetrated by the state on Black communities; the exploitation and arbitrary state violence upon documented and undocumented non-citizen workers (or those perceived to be non-citizens); the 5 million that have perished during GWOT; the 5 million or so excess USSR deaths from US policies during the early 1990s; the violence of carceral warfare (the so-called “mass incarceration”) against racialized populations.
Aime Cesaire called it “imperial boomerang”; Malcolm X said “chickens coming home to roost”.
Yet the only form of violence that legible to the bourgeoisie is even the prospect of resistance & counterviolence - most of the recent attacks upon capitalists & those labeled as “right wing” seem to have not come from “the left”.
If this turns out to be real, a direct shot to the left carotid artery. Theoretically could be survivable but not without serious deficit and stroke. Agree likely fatal.
He lost conscious immediately which is not explainable with blood loss alone that fast - which may indicate that there was a higher impact from the shot.
It's not a case of losing blood, it's a case of failing to move blood to the right place. If the shot took out the carotid, then (nearly) 50% of the blood supply to his brain is gone because of a piping failure. That can absolutely cause instantaneous loss of consciousness, no direct brain trauma necessary.
This is very different than bleeding from, say, a major artery in a leg. In that case the issue isn't loss of piping to the brain, it's losing blood until the total blood volume in the body isn't sufficient to maintain a workable blood pressure, and yes that can take multiple minutes before a person loses consciousness.
I am a physician, so I can say this with a high degree of confidence.
That snippet is referring to the circle of Willis*, which is a "backup" circuit that can route around a blockage to the blood flow to the brain on one side.
The thing is the circle of Willis is tiny and near vestigial (there is a substantial fraction of the population where it doesn't even make a full circuit), whereas the carotid is one of the largest blood vessels in the body. The circle of Willis isn't nearly large enough to reroute all that flow. It has to be made bigger over time
through a process called collateralization, and that's a process that happens over months to years, not minutes or seconds.
In short, the circle of Willis will save you from years of high cholesterol that lead to a huge cholesterol plaque completely blocking off one of your carotids. It won't save you from your carotid being severed by a bullet.
*And some other tinier vessels, but mainly the circle of Willis
Not a physician, medical examiner, or the like. But a paramedic who has attended more than one fatality shooting. My educated wild ass guess is that hitting the neck with a high-velocity rifle would cause the shockwaves of the impact to be very, very close to the brainstem and to have a significant effect on it.
[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
Really any kind of deer hunting rifle will do that. Any .30 cal or larger rifle is going to cause catastrophic damage to almost everything within atleast an inch of the bullets path, and massive bruising to 4 inches out around it, and that wound area only goes up as you go up through .30 cal bullet sizes. You have to go down into medium and lower handgun calibers for bullet wounds to start becoming mostly localized to the hole itself
Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.
Go watch high speed footage of anyone shooting a gun at ballistic gel (ballistic gel is a material selected for having a similar density and fluid dynamics behavior to mammalian flesh.)
A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).
For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.
There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.
Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole
Any hunting rifle round will do this as well, except the smallest calibers like .22 LR that are meant for hunting squirrels and the like.
But also, no, the smaller rounds don't have a "tendency to bounce around in the body". It sounds like you're referring to the phenomenon known as tumbling, where the wound track ends up being curved because the bullet loses stability as it hits. This happens because bullets are heavier at the base and thus unstable; while in air, they are stabilized by rotation imparted on them by the rifling, but once they hit anything dense (like, well, human body) it would take a lot more spinning to keep them stable, so all bullets do that. It does not involve any bouncing, however.
Light and fast bullets like 5.56 are particularly unstable and will do it faster, though. But even then, for 5.56, the primary damage mechanism is from bullet fragmentation: between the bullet being fairly long and thin, and high velocity of impact, the bullet literally gets torn apart, but the resulting pieces still retain most of kinetic energy. Except now, each piece, being irregular, travels on its own random trajectory, creating numerous small wound channels in strong proximity, which then collapse into one large wound cavity. But, again, this is mostly a function of bullet velocity and construction (e.g. presence or absence of cannelure), not caliber as such.
Yes. People should have the choice to watch and understand what political violence. This is a powerful video and one that I don’t recommend everyone watch (that is a personal choice). If you are a person who has chosen to cheer on political violence, then I do suggest you watch. It’s is important to have a clear understanding of what that entails and the realities of that choice.
Fair points. I guess some level of uneasiness can be a good thing for some folks.
But I also recognize it can possibly trigger anxiety (overwhelming, in some cases) for some folks, even if you don't realize that it might (until it's too late).
Not suggesting we turn to censorship. But at the same time, I guess I'm mostly looking out for folks that may not be aware of the effects it could possibly have (e.g. naive and/or not taking warnings seriously enough).
Others are watching and expressing interest. I have similarly chosen not to watch the video, which is the responsible choice for me if I think I will find it disturbing (I probably will).
There are handungs used for defense against brown bears, look at 10mm, or even 500 mag, 454 casull, you can shoot this from a handgun. It's very unlikely to be the case here but you wouldn't be able to tell just from the damages
The argument that I keep hearing that he was just a guy talking does not quite fly.
The most horrible people in history did not do any physical harm to other people themselves. Many were also very nice to hang out with and had lovely families. But they definitely inspired and ordered others to do unimaginably horrible acts.
Obviously witchcraft doesn't actually work, but the timing on this Jezebel article "We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk" is darkly comical.
The day that terrorists tried to bomb the World Trade Center with a moving truck in the parking garage, one of the cartoonists for The Onion had made a joke about how one of his characters was going to go blow up the World Trade Center. He got a brief but uncomfortable visit from the Feds.
> For the “POWERFUL HEX SPELL,” I had to provide Kirk’s date of birth for “accuracy.” The witch performed the hex, but her response was unsettling: “I just completed your spell, and it was successful. You will see the first results within 2–3 weeks. However, I did notice disturbances… negative energy not only from you, but projected at you. Likely from toxic family members, co-workers, or new acquaintances.”
That's something I wonder about. Wouldn't people who believe in this stuff demand punishment for the publication and the witches?
Let's say it wasn't witchcraft thing but something more widely accepted like prayer session at mainstream church/mosque or something of this sort. Wouldn't the devout people see this as a contract killing? What if the soother says he felt possessed? Shouldn't then he be let go in a religious society?
It seems strange to me to say "but shouldn't people who believe in things that require a tremendous load of cognitive dissonance be more logically consistent?"
> Wouldn't people who believe in this stuff demand punishment for the publication and the witches
Many of the witches who believe in this stuff also believe that what you put out into the world will come back to you, typically with a multiplier.
Presumably, some of the Christians who believe in this stuff also believe "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and that ultimately God alone must and will mete out punishment with the wisdom of divine omniscience.
None of this stopped people who claim to be witches from taking money to curse a guy, and in my experience, people who claim to be Christians love judging others and their zeal for punishment often seems fetishistic
I guess it'd be for the courts to decide... But yesterday I saw the words "Supreme Court" and I thought about the "Supreme Ayatollah of Iran", who's a guy who says God speaks to him.
And with our Supreme Court, who knows if they'll say witches casting spells are assassins after all.
Wikipedia says the pilot was filmed in March 2001, and production began in July 2001, so the broad strokes of the show were maybe mostly written prior to 9/11, but most of the actual filming likely happened after (which means writers also had time to rewrite at least some things).
I find it interesting that 24 format, total chronological order, allowed them to react to that 9/11 if it was required. Kinda like South Park episodes are at most 2-week old when aired. South Park it's easy since episodes aren't connected and due to how it's made, but the idea is the same.
I'm not a very TV or movie oriented person but I do find the way things are produced quite amazing. I lived in Los Angeles for years and saw many things being filmed as a result. It was always a treat, an extra fun when I saw it on TV later on.
Everything and everyone involved does incredible stuff, IMO.
As far as I can recall it was a very convoluted prison-break for someone thought to be dead that included an attempted revenge assasination, distraction bombing of a federal agency, kidnappings and multiple double agents.
The fact that we're talking about this using terms like "sides" is the problem. American politics has long since stopped being about policy, but is treated like a sport where you follow your "team" and defend them no matter what. It's as though people are incapable of having thoughts on an issue more complex than "does my side think this is good or bad?" and suddenly those who disagree with you are evil, and with partisan media suddenly you see the "other side" as some faceless evil rather than people with differing and complex experiences and views.
I don't agree with a lot of the things Charlie Kirk said, and as someone who is not an American, there was also a lot of things he said I simply didn't care about because they didn't apply to me. I also found that his way of communicating was more geared towards encouraging discussions that would generate views. But despite all that, I can appreciate that he was a man who was willing to have a (mostly) civil conversation with all sides, something I wish more people would try to do.
American politics isn't politics, it's one step short of being like football hooliganism for supposedly smart people.
Part of the problem is that many claim violence has been done ... with words, and in so doing they incite actual violence. If we want violence to stop then we need to:
- talk to each other about politics (as we used to) so as to moderate each other's opinions
We also need to unequivocally defend free speech. Not violence or criminality but free speech. We shouldn’t tolerate uncivilized counter rioting or other aggressive ways of dealing with others’ opinions - it’s a path to exactly this kind of violence.
I agree. And funny enough the top comment in this thread describes Hans potential replies to this news as “violent”. It’s a form of newspeak. Peach is never violent. Come up with a thousand other words, but that’s what violence is to mean we then need another word for actual violence.
> But despite all that, I can appreciate that he was a man who was willing to have a (mostly) civil conversation with all sides, something I wish more people would try to do.
could you give some examples of good, civil conversations he's had with people he strongly opposed? I'd like watch them. I think it's a skill we all need to cultivate.
Just look up his college campus debates. He would do a very unique round table debate format where he would have 20 college kids sit in a circle and each while get a minute to debate with him. It’s very wholesome and civil.
I agree with you. There should not be sides in the American political system. Yet here we are, because the people we elect seem to want to create a boogeyman in the other "side" and blame all of society's problems on them. Maybe that's just a reflection on American society.
And the news networks eat that shit up. They love a boogeyman, because it's good for ratings.
The news networks and social networks have determined that controversy increases engagement which increases profit.
You could imagine a different algorithm that promoted peaceful, thoughtful interactions. But that would have led to the death of Facebook, twitter, news networks, etc.
We may in fact be here due to sheer greed. The media companies have profited by creating discontent in our society rather than content.
This really can't be stated loudly enough and they studied it and figured this out with A/B testing and implemented it. It's on the level of tobacco companies covering up cancer.
In another HN post about New Mexico offering free childcare, there was a comment that basically hit on the same point [1]. Capitalism has really fucked our society in so many ways.
I have news for you: it's not just American politics that has "sides". In fact, it's exceedingly surprising to me how much politics has aligned (not necessarily in terms of party names and labels) throughout the entire Western world in the past several decades.
I don't disagree. I don't know anything about the political systems of other countries. I'm just talking about what I am familiar with, which is the American political system.
You're right, though. Americans actually agree on most things [1]. In that sense, there is really only one "side." Yet the media exploits the small differences that people don't agree upon to create a giant divide.
Anecdote:
I firmly believe Trump is going to destroy our democracy, or at least put it to its absolute limits. Yet, I have many friends who voted for Trump. They're great people. We don't ever talk politics, but whenever we talk about economics, or society, we actually agree about most things. If we didn't, we probably wouldn't be friends.
Yet the talking heads on TV would have us believe that democrats and republicans are enemies. And that may very well be a self fulfilling prophecy.
Incomprehensible how someone can view a traitor, and those who support a traitor, as great people or friends.
If I think someone is intentionally setting out to destroy my country, then by definition, they are not great people (because I like my tribe surviving and prospering).
This isn’t disagreeing about tax policy or mass transit or zoning regulations.
There is only one "side", and they're die-hard. The left is a rag-tag group of misfits who simply don't identify as conservative for one reason or another, which is part of the reason it's so hard for the democratic establishment to find a message that resonates with such a varied and untethered group.
So no, no one is talking about "sideS." A single, cohesive group of people has been building an unearned narrative of persecution and victimhood as a pretext to lash out at and antagonize every person who isn't them.
treated like a sport where you follow your "team" and defend them no matter what
I don't understand this. Sport is just sport - just watch, enjoy, have a good time. And the better team that day wins - enjoy and go home. What's with "defend them no matter what"? Defend from what and why?
It’s also stupid to be talking about “sides” when we don’t even have a handle on the shooter.
It could be a random crazy person, a Democrat, Trump supporter pissed off that Kirk was trying to help Trump move past the Epstein stuff or any number of in-betweens.
And you can knock off the white washing of Kirk’s political life. In recent memory, he has advocated for military occupation of US cities, making children watch public executions, and eschewed the idea of empathy. This “well, he said it in calm voice” handwaving is spineless.
I'm not seeing that death date. And history shows that even traditional news outlets can be badly wrong in the immediate aftermath of a shooting. James Brady didn't die in 1981 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brady#Shooting - even with "all major media outlets" (per Wikipedia) saying that he did.
Watching the video of his shooting may change your perspective. I don't advise you do, though I'll absolutely confirm it would be miraculous to come back from something like what the video shows.
It was an absolutely brutal video to watch. I agree. Even with the absolute best field first aid, EMS and surgical response, arterial bleeding I think has a 60% survival rate? Again, if everything goes perfectly, timed perfectly etc.
TIL there's a term for this! I've always been quite troubled by this propensity some people have to be the first to report the death of someone famous.
The Enlightenment directly led to violent revolutions in the US and France. Political violence has never not been a part of political society in some capacity. What is effective is not always what is right, and violence is often effective (not in this case, in my opinion).
> and violence is often effective (not in this case, in my opinion).
Depending on your interpretation of "effective" I'm not sure I entirely agree. Political campaigners on both side of the political spectrum have a lot of respect for Charlie Kirk and his ability to raise funds and make a difference in his political activism. From what I've heard, the stuff he did on camera was actually the weaker part of his skill set, its his off-camera work that the GOP will sorely miss.
As an outside observer of US culture I disagree, the normalisation and glorification of violence has always seemed to be a distinctly American value to me.
Have we? The culture and values that built this country are stained in blood, violence, and subjugation. I feel we are actually losing the enlightenment that came afterwards and regressing back.
As a kid in the UK one of the main ideas I had of the US was Cowboys vs Indians either as a show or a game, and the establishment of the US was largely that - white guys killing the native Americans and taking the land.
Well only a couple countries participated in the creation of the Atlantic slave trade, and very few in history have engaged in chattel slavery to the scale the USA did.
Seems like a very Americentric perspective. There's still plenty of chattel slavery out there right now[1]. In that respect, the idea that the US is uniquely bad is like the "evil twin" version of American exceptionalism[2].
It's hard to find other examples of it (or at least the inherent natural inferiority of one group of residents) being written into the country's foundational legal document. We are indeed exceptional in that regard.
It's time to get off your high horse. If you eat meat, future humans will regard you the same way as we regard the slave owners of yesteryear. Perhaps even worse.
Judge people by the ways in which they push their society's morals forward, not retroactively after hundreds of years of morals evolving.
No. Slavery is a unique evil and people knew it was a unique evil since the time of the ancient Greeks.
I refuse to accept "it was just the way things were at the time" when there were people opposed to slavery thousands of years ago. Aristotle wrote about them:
> others however maintain that for one man to be another man’s master is contrary to nature, because it is only convention that makes the one a slave and the other a freeman and there is no difference between them by nature, and that therefore it is unjust, for it is based on force.
There were abolitionists in the first days of the United States through to the civil war. People knew it was wrong or had ample opportunity to hear it argued that it was wrong, and furthermore, the inherent wrongness of it should be obvious to anyone that encounters it, and I don't give a moral pass to anyone that brushes it off because it was common any more than I do for American politicians that brush off school shootings because it's common.
Incorrect. There were some people that understood slavery to be a unique evil. The vast majority of humanity understood it to be "just how things were."
Really, not much different from how we view factory farming today.
Slavery is evil though. It's pretty straightforward. People that participated in it were wrong to do so, and that should be self evident to all participants. I don't accept any excuse for participating in the slave trade.
Would you like to argue that it isn't? The floor is yours. Otherwise your point about consensus is moot.
The things you listed have always been with us, sure. What we’ve lost is the ability to see objective truth. And maybe people celebrated senseless killing in the past too and we just didn’t have access to their sick mentality before the internet.
Mobs of white people (including children) used to gather around the town square to hang black people. They would literally have picnics while doing it. I feel like the majority of our population is historically illiterate. On the scale of senseless killings, this doesn't even rank.
This is the kind of rhetoric which seriously undermines the history of American philosophical thought. The things you mentioned are found in the history of every nation. It's important to keep track of what should be improved, while also acknowledging what worked well and why.
> This is the kind of rhetoric which seriously undermines the history of American philosophical thought.
Hard disagree. Ignoring it is what allows systemic injustice to persist -- why do we care, today, what Eugenicists in the early 1900s had to say? Jim Crow implementers and supporters? Daughters of the Confederacy?
If the reality of history undermines your respect for American philosophical thought, then perhaps the American philosophical thought is not quite worthy of the pedestal it was placed on.
You’re right that it’s important to acknowledge the pain and suffering caused by bad policy and practices, and it’s important to examine what went wrong so we don’t repeat those mistakes.
That said I think it’s important to separate good ideas from their troubled past and use them where they still apply. People are not perfect, but a good idea is good no matter where it comes from. Those good ideas shape culture and shape the destiny of nations. That’s what happened in America, and there’s a lot to be learned from the past. Unless the point is to undermine the recipe that made America into what it is today, then it doesn’t make sense to measure people who didn’t live in our time by our sensibilities, morality or ethics.
We can learn their good stuff, and improve on what they didn’t do well.
Maybe it would help to pluck out the few good ideas from the bad slop. What do you consider specifically unique in the American experiment that transcends the toxic swamp of suppression of freedoms America often engages in?
> the toxic swamp of suppression of freedoms America often engage
Seems extremist to take that view, especially when all nations have just as bloody or dark histories.
But a lot of what shaped initial American thought were Enlightenment ideals, primarily the works of John Locke. So the foundation is solid enough, but is there more that can be done to produce effective implementations? Definitely.
It’s important to note that there are good ideas everywhere, and no one culture or nation has had hegemony or monopoly on producing the best works over time.
I personally also like the fact that the way the American revolutionaries thought shaped the progress of American science up to the 20th century. Here’s a recent lecture on this, but there’s no recording that I can find.
First off, not extremist. Let's give you the benefit of the doubt there, perhaps you simply didn't recognize you undercut your credibility in a discussion when you dismiss people having a different view of history by assigning them to an extremist bucket -- nowhere left to learn or discuss when you start there. Further, mild whataboutism doesn't support your case either.
Second, the Scottish enlightenment wad wonderful! Not unique to America, so recognizing that the darkest parts of our history are decidedly not representive of the Enlightenment, my classical liberal ideals, and I suspect yours too, does nothing to the case that America did a good job adopting some of the ideals of the Enlightenment in the constitution. We could have gone the French route with the horrors of Robspierre, but we didnt, whether due to lack of population density, aristocracy, or any number of factors.
We agree completely that cultural differences, known as diversity, have outsized benefits.
I'll review the science idea.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. We really aren't far apart. I simply see slavery, genocide, and other horrors of the American past as necessary to recognize in order to set context, and in no way does that diminish the astonishing success of our American experiment. Indeed, in spite of these stains on our history, we remain a nation that does the right thing, as Churchill puts it, after exhausting all other options. And that's a uniqur thing to history.
In my view, if we can't acknowledge our past deficits, in no way can we comprehend the present flaws sufficiently to motivate action and collaboration.
It’s better for people to acknowledge that such a problem can span all types of people and cultures, so we can perform root cause analysis without being biased or disingenuous.
For example, see the hesitation of scholars in classifying Mongol invasions as a genocide. Is it the case that only white settlers committed genocide across history? If we think of it that way, then we’re ignoring atrocities committed by inter-group violence (war crimes), or same ethnicity violence. The goal should be to prevent violence between groups of people.
Regarding slavery, again it’s a problem that has occurred across time and cultures. Why were different ideologies and cultures unable to prevent slavery? It’s a disgusting stain on human history.
Civil wars have often occurred with war crimes (like killing non-combatants) with the purpose of performing ideology annihilation. At least one example is here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre
Creating distinct categories (ethnic cleansing or genocide etc.) of terrible things is an important exercise, but it can also dilute our overall understanding of human behaviors. The categories are useful for geological or historical analysis, but not for understanding baseline human behaviors.
> Fascism has never in history been stopped by scholars. It is uncomfortable to directly acknowledge "what worked well."
Your comment maps precisely to: we've had zero network intrusions, why are we paying these cybersecurity professionals?
So much fascism and authoritarianism was blocked since WW2 because scholars called it out early.
Guess what scholars called out in the US in 2016, but most politicians put party over country? "We scaled back our cybersecurity professionals and saved a ton of budget! On an unrelated note, do we have data breach insurance?"
There is certainly room to punch fascists in the face when hostilities are hot. We can't start there and remain a tolerant society dealing with the paradox of tolerance. The first steps are shunning and ceasing support, isolating the infected into appropriately deprived states of resource loss, and not political violence.
I agree that civil debate and cooler heads deterred and delayed fascism in many cases. I was referring specifically to when it has taken hold and needs to be stopped.
An apt comparison would be instituting mandatory cybersecurity training for employees as a direct response to a breach. That is a great step to take post-cleanup but does basically nothing to address the issue at hand.
Many of those values were not coherent nor beneficial.
Slavery, patriarchy, indentured servitude, excessive religiosity, monarchy, rejection of other cultures, all these seem to be good things to leave in the rearview mirror.
Slavery was in the culture for thousands of years. In fact, it is that culture that is the only culture that ended the practice of slavery (largely, it does still exist in places where allegedly never did).
I think GP means in film, media, and by proxy, education.
The items you listed fluctuate rapidly by popular vote. These others aren't governed by democracy, but by the economic advantage of the wealthy few who control them.
I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc. We've all been taught since grade school it was a good thing to kill Nazis, even in small percentages there are mentally unstable people who will hear you call someone a Fascist and take the logical step from "it's good to kill nazis" to "they're a nazi so I should kill them". I am both very pro freedom of speech and right to bear arms, and I think where Canada and the UK have gone with hate speech laws are too far, but I don't know how you solve this.
It of course has a technical/historical definition but it's not used in that principled way by most people.
Just like "neoliberal" this is a kind of buzzword that generates a particular emotional reaction for those on the left. Meaning people being labeled with them are not just bad but really bad.
We are an excellent example of what happens when the Hegelian Dialectic is applied successfully by the small minority.
We are also an example when a people becomes completely divorced from their cultural and religious heritage. Without a moral anchor, we are a people cast adrift, lost in confusion, calling evil good and good evil, all trying to do our own thing and benefit ourselves, consumed by greed, by self-interest.
Freedom of speech, or lack there-of, plays no role in what is happening in the United States. This country and its founding charters were written for a moral people. That the country is byzantine, crumbling, has more to do with a people who have lost their way than it has to do with this-or-that law that the government no longer heeds.
america is not a country founded on a religious heritage. and regardless of what you may think of the beginnings of the country, it very quickly became a country of immigrants. there is no religion that should be placed at the head of the country’s belief system.
It's not even a matter of calling people fascists or nazis - there's been plenty of violence towards the politicians on the opposite side of the aisle, too. Nancy Pelosi and her husband. Melissa Hortman, John and Yvette Hoffman earlier this year.
If it was just a matter of people internalizing that killing fascists is fine and thus that calling people fascists is dangerous, then we would not see the same sort of violence being perpetrated against other politicians not getting the same label.
Kirk himself suggested that a "real patriot who wanted to be a midterm hero" should bail out the man who nearly killed Pelosi's husband. The rhetoric around political violence in this country has been ratcheted up to an insane degree, with or without any accusations of fascism, and this will continue or get worse as long as that remains the case.
No one shot the Skokie march Nazis and they literally showed up at a Jewish dominated town at a time when there weren't even background checks for guns. The ACLU even defended them in court, which is unthinkable that they would stand on their principles and do that today.
There's just less tolerance for discussing or exhibiting "extreme" or highly unpopular opinions, nowadays, it seems. Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.
> Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.
I mean, you're almost there realizing the recency bias. The 1970s, when the Skokie Affair occurred, were arguably the high point for political violence in the post-WWII US.
I'm old enough to recall MSNBC in 2011 cropping video footage of an Obama townhall protestor to only show his long-sleeve shirted back with slung open-carry rifle. They used it to immediately launch into a pundit discussion claiming that the protestors were motivated by racial animus. Turned out the protestor was black.
News manipulating footage to cast aspersions to historical boogeymen is routine. All it takes is one pundit mentioning an imagined similarity to play the edited B-roll.
"Hate speech" isn't just hateful speech, it's a specific term with a specific meaning. Being a nazi isn't an inherent characteristic of a person, it's an affiliation or ideology that they consciously choose.
No when it's a label deliberately misapplied to run of the mill conservatives. That's defamation with the purpose of generating hate against those people.
If someone voted for the autocratic authoritarian with a track record of hating American liberties and institutions, it's dishonest to keep calling them a conservative. If Trumpists were conservatives, the slogan would have been "Keep America Great". The actually conservative vote was Harris/Walz.
What do you mean hysteria? These are straightforward applications of terms:
Trump is an autocrat - he expects everyone to simply fall in line with his orders, as opposed to delegation, separation of powers, and respecting the supreme rule of law. He's an authoritarian, in that he sees government intervention as the main answer to problems (most mainstream politicians are authoritarians, but bureaucratic authoritarians).
Liberty examples from before the second round ("track record") are less clear cut, but a straightforward one is the way he shunned the second amendment when police retaliated against Kenneth Walker for exercising his natural right to night time home defense. But now into the second round, we have gangs of thugs roving around and attacking citizens, so the obvious prediction was indeed correct.
And institutions? His first term, he picked a fight with the CDC for being politically incorrect. This time around, how many government institutions has he outright destroyed? Furthermore, he's graduated to attacking private institutions like universities. His whole popular shtick is basically one big rambling of grievances about US institutions.
I'm sorry that words mean things, and that you apparently have a negative emotional reaction to words that correctly describe Trump. I would call your statement an attempt at gaslighting. "Make America great again" is plainly a revanchist or reactionary (Moldbug's term) slogan, and therefore not conservative.
(1) A summary of lots of people's judgements of him, which line up with my judgement of his actions. I see the type of person that just barks orders, and when someone tells him it's unwise/impossible/etc he responds with "get it done". And when it doesn't magically happen "you're fired". He surrounds himself with sycophants instead of competence, which is why all of his policies have such terrible execution - one person simply cannot micro manage every detail.
Do you disagree that he is basically running the government as an extension of himself? To me, it sure seems that way when he uses chaotic tariffs to pressure other countries into making "deals" that often include his own personal financial interests.
(2) As I said, I don't understand what specific point of mine you're referring to. There are laws and enforcement in both individual liberty respecting societies, and also in dictatorships. So clearly it matters what the laws are, and how they're being enforced.
(3) No, which is why I was talking about respect for societal institutions. For every American thinker's elucidation of conservative values that I have tried to apply, if I squint I can see maybe 20-40% of them being applicable, with the rest being openly rejected.
Perhaps you would like to reference what specific set of conservative values you see Trumpism actually following? I don't mean aiming to destroy our society such to the point that conservative values will become more important, but actually applying those values to the present situation. Because as a libertarian who has entertained ideas all around the left-right political spectrum, the only thing I can find that lines up is anarcho-capitalism.
Or to come at it from a different direction, read Moldbug's "A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations". He lays out a left-right framework that seems to be underpinning much of this movement, and explicitly rejects conservatism as ineffective.
Plenty of people I know believe illegal immigrants should be deported. The difference between them and people accused of being a Nazi is they don't go around calling them all rapists and murderers.
The problem isn't the claimed actions they want to take, its the dehumanization being resorted to.
You’re exaggerating greatly, of course. Among those deported are rapists and murderers, naturally, and no one has stated that everyone being deported or even targeted is one (the recent Hyundai bust comes to mind). I challenge you to find that quote.
Can you provide a source where a Republican says we need to target all immigrants? Or are you simply imagining things because the media always conflates illegal immigrants with legal ones?
“It’s good to kill Nazis” — this is certainly the prevailing sentiment in modern culture, reinforced by the vast number of books, stories, movies, and video games that support the premise. But something important is often overlooked in this view of righteousness:
1. People who believe they could never become Nazis are often the most unknowingly susceptible to it.
2. People who believe they can confidently identify a Nazi are often wrong — a mindset akin to witch hunts, where everyone is seen as a witch.
I’ll throw my hat in on another comment on this thread - my last wasn’t well received but ask you take it honestly.
Circa 2017 during then “punching Nazis” era of social discourse, I started a new job. The first week in I went for lunch with a Junior teammate and was told “violence against ‘Nazis’” is fine, it’s justified. I asked how. I was told, my brain is a part of the body, so if someone says something so stupid that it ‘hurts the brain,’ the speech is now assault, so counter-violence is justified.
I, with hint of irony, told my new coworker that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard and asked if I should now assault them for hurting my brain… and was met with hostility.
I don’t quite known I’m going with this exactly, but I feel folks are not giving the world around them an honest assessment, no matter their Ivy diploma. Politics isn’t a “gotcha game” and please stop tying to make it such.
Don't forget law firms that participated in cases Trump doesn't like have been bullied into doing hundreds of millions of dollars of pro bono work for the administration. And his supreme court just decided, with no explanation, that picking people off the street based on their perceived ethnicity is OK. And people are being deported to prisons in countries they've never visited, where they spend all day shackled with no prospect of a trial.
Isn't the whole point of the MAGA, non woke right, not to tone police people? How are you going to stop people from abusing other who they don't agree with? That is the basics of free speech.
Not calling people Fascists when they are following every step of every Fascist playbook is bad as well. Obviously there are people at the far edges of the political spectrum who go overboard but we need to call people out when they're actively pushing our country down the road to Authoritarianism / Fascism. There's not much that can be done to control how a mentally disturbed person interprets what they hear, as we know from the lists of right-wing people who have attacked politicians, pizza parlor employees, etc. over obvious nonsense.
> I don't know how a country filled with guns can survive the normalization of calling people you disagree with Nazi, Fascist, etc.
The same way it did for the last 250 years as the world's oldest Democracy. By respecting and upholding our Constitution, especially the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
Can we stop pretending like the are not serious tribalization, polarization and problems on both left and right. Both sides are insane and there is no longer any people in the center.
Genuine question: What makes you believe actual nazi and fascist beliefs are being normalized?
I have personally not seen this at all. I've seen a lot of talk about it being a thing, but I've still never seen it. I know and talk with many conservatives and they are all extremely anti-nazi and definitely do not promote fascist ideals.
There are federal law enforcement agents performing their "duties" while wearing masks. This is normalization of _something_, certainly, something that as far as I'm aware hasn't really occurred historically in the U.S. (happy to be corrected).
I'd call that something fascism because it's the word that comes to mind when I see secret policing.
That is certainly alarming and I am firmly opposed to what ICE is currently doing and what they've been ordered to do.
However, they are obviously keeping their identities a secret because they know if they don't, they will become targets of violence. I don't see how that can be attributed to fascism beyond the surace-level aesthetic of masked law enforcement. The mask itself says nothing about their ideology.
Secret police wear masks to instill fear into the population because they never know who's watching. ICE is wearing masks so they don't end up like Charlie Kirk.
I have to strongly disagree with this. From what I've seen, it's very rare that positions espoused by those being called "nazi" have anything to do with fascism.
Often people get their impression of someone like Kirk without ever actually engaging with the content. Too many hot takes and not enough real engagement. "It's cool to hate this guy..? Ok I guess he must be evil."
Has he ever changed his mind from those debates? Or does he always pretend to "win" them?
I ask because for a while it was a common "right wing faux intellectual" thing (think Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yulianopolis etc) to go around asking to debate. Then to not actually do much factual debating or any learning of other perspectives, and claiming that the left is simply uncapable of civilized debate because they eventually just refuse to go along with the act.
When I talk to people that watch a bunch of right-wing content I shut down political topics immediately. They never change their position and are convinced their point of view is the only point of view. If you concede there's more than one side to a topic they care about, they think they've "won" and it reinforces their belief they're right about everything.
I consider myself to be a centrist. There are definitely things I like and don't like on both sides of the political spectrum. If someone gives me a solid logical argument for or against something, I'll either change my point of view or, more likely, end up with a better understanding of both perspectives.
I'm only one person, but my experience is that people on the political left or center are willing to accept the fact there are often two sides to an issue and that everything needs to be a balance. Most people on the political right won't do that.
It's really hard to argue against someone that never concedes anything especially if you're acting in good faith and acknowledge when they make a convincing argument for their point of view.
> claiming that the left is simply uncapable of civilized debate because they eventually just refuse to go along with the act
> I'm only one person, but my experience is that people on the political left or center are willing to accept the fact there are often two sides to an issue and that everything needs to be a balance. Most people on the political right won't do that.
If you say so. My experience has, broadly speaking, been the exact opposite.
I've never even met someone I would consider an extreme leftist, but I've definitely met people that parrot far right talking points all day long and they're increasing in numbers.
Almost everyone I know would be center-left or center-right except the ones that have shifted far to the right from watching influencers. The center-right people will come towards the middle, so I should have been clear that I'm talking about the new normal of right wing politics that is way further to the right than it used to be.
> I've never even met someone I would consider an extreme leftist, but I've definitely met people that parrot far right talking points all day long and they're increasing in numbers.
Again, my experience is very nearly the opposite. I have to seek out rightist views if I want to hear them (I have them in carefully curated feeds so that I can make sure I understand their logic); I can scarcely avoid being exposed to leftist ones (before the Musk takeover, even opening Twitter logged out and in an incognito tab would do this; now I can still have that experience on Bluesky and on most Mastodon instances).
> Almost everyone I know would be center-left or center-right except the ones that have shifted far to the right from watching influencers.
I have been in communities full of people who were commonly accused of having "shifted far to the right from watching influencers", and consistently noticed that no such thing had actually happened if I listened to their actual views.
> I have to seek out rightist views if I want to hear them (I have them in carefully curated feeds so that I can make sure I understand their logic).
I don't watch anything political on platforms with recommendation algorithms. If I want to understand something like a proposed law I go skim the legislation. I might read opinion articles from leaders in a field.
I pretty much only talk about politics to people I've known for decades. We should probably talk about something else. Do you like technology?
> I pretty much only talk about politics to people I've known for decades.
I'm guessing you don't know dotnet00 personally, but you still felt justified in replying with some ideological warring. My goal was not to "talk about politics" with you, but only to show that you are presenting a biased worldview that doesn't reflect a universal experience.
I can't really comment on left-leaning equivalents, they don't really tend to bleed into my circles the way right wing ones do. I think Destiny is kind of a left wing equivalent?
I was mostly thinking about how the way they (that is, "debate me!" types) approach debate doesn't really lend itself to actual debate.
They love to throw around unnuanced statistics, relying on the ability to throw so much shit at the wall that the opponent doesn't have the time to dissect it on the spot. This one's poisonous because to viewers it lends legitimacy to numbers that may actually be deeply flawed.
Another popular tactic is to never clearly answer a question and constantly ask for more clarification than necessary. Eg when asked how many trans mass shooters there have been in some period of time, answer "too many", then when given the answer and asked how many mass shooters there have been in that period in general, deflect from the point by asking if that's counting gang violence (supposedly this is what Kirk was doing before he was shot, but I can't be sure).
With tactics like these, it's no wonder that people wisen up and begin refusing formal debate. Debating them lends legitimacy to people who are far less interested in being responsible about the truth.
A related aspect about this is age, Kirk was ~31, he's been at this since 2012. He didn't finish his college education, and his experience in politics "proper" was limited. If a 31 year old undergrad dropout with no experience in astrophysics went around claiming to debate astrophysicists on the nature of black holes, he'd be laughed off as a quack.
Many others are very similar, they are/were young and lacking in education and/or experience with what a meaningful debate looks like, instead assuming that debates work the way the idiot box likes to portray them.
Aren't they being very non-racist ? AFAIK all illegal immigrants get deported - brown or yellow or whatever. Why have immigration laws if they are not enforced ? If there should be 100% open entry & benefits to the US, then Congress should first abrogate those laws, right ? It seems in the recent past, I beg your pardon - only suckers - entered the legal way with documentation.
Because if you're racially profiling, you probably aren't tossing out the white immigrants. You may, in fact, revive the Office of Refugee and Resettlement for the creators of South American Apartheid instead.
Nah - ICE under the Trump administration has deported dozens of Irish folks who have overstayed in the US, even folks from Germany and UK. There have already been famous cases like Cliona Ward from Dublin. Lot of whites kept in solitary confinement.
You can accuse the agency of authoritarianism but not racism. They are going after everyone illegally in the US.
It's interesting that you don't think I'm talking about both sides. Rush Limbaugh used to call women he disagreed with feminazis. The "tea party" under Obama used to call everything communist and fascist.
Kirk’s incendiary brand of conservativism was inherently divisive and provocative.
There are unstable people of all political persuasions and the marked lack of widespread political violence is hard won by years of obeying political norms that include not resorting to violence within political systems.
In the United States there was first a fraying of norms and now there seem to be fewer and fewer norms people are willing to uphold each day.
To focus on calling people “Nazis” and “Fascists” is to miss the wood for the trees.
This is a pretty one-sided way to put it. Some of these people (Kirk included) aren't just "people you disagree with" when they have the ear of the president and use that power to shamelessly push for and celebrate harming others.
What happened can't be condoned, but the violent rhetoric isn't just from people being called nazis.
You might be cooked, though I don't know about anyone else, as that's an extremely uncharitable reading of my words, considering that I said that his murder shouldn't be condoned
Whichever side of whatever fence you're on, it's universally a bad thing when politicians, political activists and political representatives get assassinated.
and spending millions of dollars to bus people to a violent insurrection, apparently. I'd forgotten until I was reading wikipedia as a consequence of this news.
Yes, he constantly debated left wing people, sometimes nice, sometimes extremely rude, and almost always seemed to find ways to pull conversations back from ad hominem stuff or thoughtless claims to something useful and uniting between him and the person he was speaking to. The people were generally college students, more used to memorising and repeating still, but he did sometimes seem to spark a genuine thought out of them.
The problem is that if you think assassinations can be good, any individual person starts to decide when it is okay to assassinate someone. Giving out that power is not a good idea.
And we give our car licenses. Doesn’t mean you can run over your political adversaries. I didn’t expect the popularity of this line of reasoning: being pro-2A means license to kill. This is sickening.
> A gun license literally means you are licensed to use this weapon for sport or self defense.
I don't know what that has to do with anything. Plus, the 2A forbids mandatory licensing for firearms users.
> I’m not a public figure but I support the 2A, would you feel sorry for me if I was shot giving a speech?
It's not about whether someone supports the 2A or not. It's what they do with their lives that matters. If a person's life's mission is to deny white privilege and defend the 2A despite its obvious risks, then make a public statement that school shootings are an acceptable price to pay so that we can have it, then no, I'm not going to feel sorry for that person if they are shot. It's poetic justice. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
> Would you feel different if Charlie was murdered by a machete or hand grenade?
A machete, yes. That has a legitimate use; as with a car, its primary purpose is not to hurt people. A hand grenade, no, as its primary purpose is to harm people, and Mr. Kirk's mission was to protect the rights of those who want to possess devices whose sole purpose is to harm people.
It is literally impossible to run a modern society without giving out that power in some way. Hell, even if you somehow managed to not give out that power, people would create it themselves.
I do not condone political violence. My country has seen enough of it and still suffers from its consequences. (Spain)
That said, the assassination of Carrero Blanco, who was set to be Franco's successor, was instrumental in Spain's transition to democracy.
The difference between the murder of the planned successor of an actual, literal dictator in an actual, literal dictatorship and what happened today is, I hope, evident to everyone.
Rabin and Abe seem to be examples where the assassin more or less got what they wanted (derail the peace process and damage the Unification Church respectively)
The assassination of Shinzo Abe is pretty widely considered massively successful thanks to rooting out the Unification Church corruption. That required the shooter in question to be incredibly sympathetic since their motivation involved links to said church destroying his family.
This isn't to say this has any bearing on this event though.
There are a few pretty notable assassinations around people that helped or collaborated with the Nazis. Argibly those assassinations prevented further worse outcomes.
But in _recent_ memory, the one that comes to mind immediately is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi not too long after 9/11. His death disrupted Al Qaeda in Iraq which almost certainly was a net benefit.
Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.
> But in _recent_ memory, the one that comes to mind immediately is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi not too long after 9/11. His death disrupted Al Qaeda in Iraq which almost certainly was a net benefit.
Giving rise to ISIS.
> Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.
Debatable as to weather it delayed or intensified ISIS but I think you're missing my broader point; his disposal prevented immediate harm and that was a net benefit.
> Political theater at best.
I'd argue there was a very symbolic benefit and even if there is/was a power vacuum.
I floated this question to a friend that likes to nerd out on geopolitics and they suggested that there's a few warlords in africa that tend to end civil wars and make way for successful peace talks after they're dead. I had never heard of the UNITA but as soon as
Jonas Savimbi was assassinated, a decade+ civil war ended and Angola had elections shortly thereafter.
Goodwins law would apply if any of the _many_ attempts had succeeded.
> Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last week put the number of foreigners now arriving in Iraq to join the AQI-led Sunni insurgency at "perhaps several dozen a month" from neighboring Syria, most of them volunteers for suicide-bombing missions.
> Little more than a year ago, AQI's back was against the wall, its efforts to recruit Iraqi Sunni nationalist and secular groups undermined by its violent tactics against civilians and the fundamentalist doctrine of its founder, Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Its attempt in January 2006 to draw other insurgent groups under the banner of a Shura, or consultative council, was largely unsuccessful.
> "When Zarqawi was killed in June," a senior intelligence official said, "a lot of us thought that was going to be a real milestone in our progress against the group." Instead, he said, "al-Masri has succeeded in establishing his own leadership, keeping the operational tempo up and propelling sectarian violence to higher levels." From the February 2006 bombing of the golden dome of a Shiite shrine in Samarra through the huge bombings in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad in November, AQI steadily "pushed the sectarian violence into a new era," the official said.
You know, I’m sorry. Can you introduce me to that geopolitics nerd friend you have? I wasn’t even aware of the full context of this thread. I just had the urge to nerd out and share resources and make points and do anything short of trying on only prove you wrong about one specific part of an argument that I don’t even agree with—that assassinations are universally bad.
I think whether it's viable preemptive measure depends on a lot. In the present context (Kirk’s), it’s doubtful.
I’m sorry for putting you through this, baby_souffle.
And did you mean to refer to Godwin or Goodhart’s law.
Any rational person knows that if people are afraid to go into politics because of political violence, you are reducing the subset of possible skills available to improve society.
However if you are a nihilist, none of this matters anyway.
> you are reducing the subset of possible skills available to improve society.
This happened long ago. Politics is exhausting (constant campaigning), poorly paid (unless you can leverage your position to sell bestselling books and speaking engagements later), and you have to check your logic and common sense at the chamber door. You have to have unlimited optimism to not become overwhelmed with cynicism and demotivated by despair from the sausage making process. Overall, politics is a shitty job mainly practiced by hucksters, psychopaths, and well-meaning but naive people who turn into a huckster or psychopath.
My 2 cents from Australia. At the very least he encouraged debate, and motivated others to challenge and vigorously discuss ideas, data, history, politics and perspectives. That's healthy, not dangerous. We're meant to defend the right of such activities.
I didn't agree with his religious convictions that underpin much of his arguments, but that's because I'm not religious. He presented other arguments on various social issues that sounded sensible. He also respected anyone who fronted his events, listening & engaging intellectually in a civil manner.
Apparently his last word spoken was "violence" (unconfirmed). Anyone celebrating his death is an extremist, and if that turns out to be a lot of people, then we have a bigger extremism problem than people care to admit. How to fix that? We need more bipartisan condemnation and unity across the floor - in my country too. Sounds like they couldn't even agree on a moment of silence without a shouting match. The division is fuel for extremism.
//Kirk was an outspoken promoter of gun rights. At a Turning Point USA Faith event in April 2023, Kirk argued that “you will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death.” He added: “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.”//
—
Personal interpretation of additional article details:
Kirk was a fortunate son and community college dropout with a chip on his shoulder that he was rejected by West Point in favor of a less qualified person on basis of gender. He got noticed by Breibart and they funneled him to a Tea Party (Republican) billionaire whose money founded Turning Point. Kirk was lavishly funded to go around schools nationwide and condemn liberal post-modern Marxists, encourage book burning, stoke vaccine fears, promote guns, and rally for "God". He went onboard with TRUMP campaign and made millions. He was being groomed to lead the Republican National Committee.
But by an incredibly fortuitous stroke of divine intervention, someone put Kirk's ideology into direct action and future generations have been spared his influence.
One thing I noticed here and elsewhere online today is that I've not seen any memories of Charlie.
It's all been about the politics and ramifications of the assassination. But nothing about the man himself and how he positively impacted the lives of others, no matter how small.
I'm certain this is my filter bubble, but it's still strange nonetheless.
If anyone has any positive things to say about the man, I'd love to know them. As I'm on his political opposite, I never really engaged with his content or knew much past any controversy that boiled over.
I turned on the Daily Wire’s live coverage briefly to see what they were saying. They were talking about Charlie as a person and holding back tears. The one guy was recounting a one-on-one basketball game they played where he thought he’s school Charlie, but quite the opposite happened.
The other guy was mentioning how he loved to debate, not just in the forums like the schools, but even with his friends. And how he’d debate them even harder in private, and was willing to change his mind, searching for truth.
They also talked about his faith for a while.
I didn’t watch for too long. When I was switching it off they were brining a woman on and it sounded like she was going to tell some of her own stories about him.
I think these people were actually friends with him vs the talking heads on many other networks reporting who only knew him through his work. If you want to hear the real stories, you need to get them from the people who were closer to him.
He also had a wife and kids, I can only assume he has some positive impact on their lives. His kids would have no concept of what he is professionally, he’d just be “dad”.
I think the "gotchas" were a side effect of his true mission. If you look at all the gotcha clips for Charlie Kirk and others like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, they're not created by the official accounts, it's mostly leech accounts that grab the "best of" clips for their own click-bait benefit.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure the creators aren't sad that they have these followers but I don't think they go out looking for this.
Well, it's a good thing what you are saying is a lot of nonsense. You can easily go on YouTube and find many people speaking about all the positivity and caring Charlie brought into their lives, people from many different walks of life. So, nice try.
The guy was the embodiment of the "prove me wrong" meme.
His choice of getting in to the middle of people and answering anyone's questions in a situation where there's no re-takes, no edits, even if he might've felt overbearing, was quite a fire test of the commenter's arguments versus his counter-arguments.
His assassination really is a direct attack on debate itself.
There really isn't a world where the sick people cheering this have any real respect for democratic values of a free world full of all kinds of thinkers. Maybe for something more akin to that one dialog "choice" in Avowed. You know if you know.
Off-topic, but I was about report a very hateful response before I refreshed and saw that it had already disappeared. Thank you to @dang and HN's other admins!
Indeed, but in general I'm ashamed at HN. I've read several hundred comments already at this point and have not seen a single word of sympathy for the wife and two babies that he's left behind. Everyone's in such a rush to draw their political lines in the sand...
I watched a few clips of Kirk on college campuses leading up to the election.
On campuses today, there’s no shortage of professors, student activists, and guest speakers beating the drum of modern liberalism, but very few brave enough to take an alternative view.
So I respected him for getting students to question and defend their beliefs.
It's crazy to me how many people are lost talking about gun violence on here when he died as a victim of political violence. The problem is the mainstream narratives that are making people's brains melt who then go out and shoot people who disagree with them. Go read any comments to Kirk's videos on X. It is literally a fucking mental asylum.
It was likely both, at least we know for sure it was gun violence, we don't know the motivation of the shooter yet. In the Trump shooting attempt the motivation didn't seem very political so much as a loser type wanting fame and power.
And dude had kids and a wife that aren't going to see him again. That kinda kicks me in the feels. You don't have to be in his political camp to feel bad about that.
We've banned this account. You can't post like this here, regardless of who you're attacking.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I find myself pondering how the families of victims of stochastic terrorism feel, do they try to rationalize why their loved ones died?
I am in the unfortunate situation to have found myself a victim of hatred — nearly got abducted — found myself threatened and discriminated against on the basis of my sexuality and appearance, had people spread rumours about my birth sex, and I wonder, do the perpetrators of stochastic terrorism ever feel any remorse? Are they capable of seeing us as fellow humans? Have they a heart that can feel pain for people they can’t relate to any more than just being other people?
Given that bin laden initiated violence, I'm not sure this is a reasonable comparison. I do not know anything about Wissam, so am saying nothing about them.
There is room for nuanced conversation here. If the status quo in this thread is "violence is never justified" then I feel that flaggers and downvoters should justify their position with more nuance when confronted by a litany of human history that runs opposite of that notion.
I wonder at which point you consider locking this thread, if even a simple question asking for precision on a viewpoint is being flagged and downvoted.
What curious conversation is happening outside of the normal thoughts and prayers top comment and inane one-liner quotes. Seems like the mods had no problem whatsoever letting the other politically motivated assassinations get flagged away and removed swiftly. How interesting.
Forgive me if I will not celebrate this man's life.
This site is a consevative and fascist bastion that masquerades as an open and free thought forum. Your personal moderation efforts are evidence for that. That you timed me out for so long after unflagging the comment indicative of your bad faith.
It would certainly interesting to have a greater diversity of moderators, for instance if this platform runs techno-centric (reflecting the beliefs and biases of managers and corporations in the tech industry) then maybe some academic, scholarly, and/or public intellectual type of person so as to balance out the implicit editorial voice that is inevitable in any online moderation scheme.
A man holding open debates on college campuses, regardless of political beliefs, is categorically different to a man whose legacy was founding al-Qaeda and masterminding 9/11.
Not to mention Kirk's views were not too different from the majority of American voters who elected our current president.
Why make such a comparison? Don't you think this sort of rhetoric contributes to the toxic political landscape we find ourselves in?
Things are not healthy in the USA, and have not been for a long time. It's all about scoring points now, owning the other side, getting soundbites, etc. It's sad that it's progressed to this.
From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".
I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.
Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.
If you look closer, I'm pretty sure a majority of us aren't really on a "side", think the whole situation is incredibly stupid, and wish the politicians would just shut up and actually...govern...instead of playing silly games and pandering to the crazy people (on either "side").
However, both the established parties seem to have become totally incompetent to do that, in very different ways. One party got taken over by people who make public statements on a daily basis that would have been immediately disqualifying at any time since 1950 or so. The other party is so bad at doing politics that they're beaten in elections despite running against those people.
> I'm pretty sure a majority of us aren't really on a "side",
Many of us don't vote either. And our two party systems have created extreme partisanship. I wish it could be different because I do love this country, but our politics are so broken by the two party system, fueled with misinformation through these partisan news networks + social media algorithms (the way Youtube turns one person into an extremist of either side is an example...)
Violence has plagued US politics since literally the creation of the country. Four sitting presidents killed and a few other close calls, governors and senators shot, almost in every decade. So it’s not like horrific events like this are new to us and we are just recently starting to fall into an unknown downward spiral of violence.
I do see many comments at the bottom that appear to have been deleted, but I can't see what they said, so it isn't possible to know if it was deserved.
A lot of people here are no better than reddit. Worse in some ways because they wrap their gravedancing in an additional layer of pseudointellectualism.
I think the main problem of social media in general is that it allows for people to find things to instigate them. In essence, a single person's opinion can be amplified. This leads to at least two outcomes. One being that people "on the side" of that opinion will unite into an echo chamber of people with that opinion. Two being that people "on the other side" of that opinion will use it to justify the need for their unification and propagate it through their echo chamber.
Prior to social media, or the internet in general, it was quite difficult to amass large numbers of people in your echo chamber without becoming a person of power (like a president or equivalent). But today, it isn't uncommon for someone with views towards conspiracies or extreme viewpoints to become a "popular" voice in social media. In fact, one might argue that it is easier to become popular by being divisive. Even though most people aren't on either side. The ability to grow a "large enough" side is enough to become an existential threat to the other side. And they end up justifying their own existence.
I don't know what the solution to this is. I don't even know how to reduce it at this point.
Yes the two extremes feed off each other, and make everything worse for the rest of us.
Personally I think there needs be laws regarding social media, perhaps limiting the number of followers/viewers for anyone engaged in social or political commentary, and/or making promotion of political content illegal if it is false or misleading. Something akin to the fairness doctrine that used to exist for television prior to 1987.
Yea it becomes a vicious positive feedback loop unfortunately, amplified by social media. Moderate voices gets drowned out because they're boring. Some outlandish thing on one "side" gets some strong reaction from the other side, which gets some strong reaction from the other side and so on. The whole system is set up for amplifying extremes.
The national divorce was tried once in 1860. Hundreds of thousands died to effectuate it or stop it.
When people say the north fought to preserve the union, I always thought it meant the physical union. But recently, I saw a lecture by Gary Gallagher at the UVA that shone a brighter light on what union meant in 1860. It's worth a listen, search for it on YT.
America is founded on the principle of human selfishness. People are selfish, so let’s harness it instead of pretending that people are utopian selfless creatures.
More recently, selfishness has taken second seat to hurting the “other” (whatever other happens to be) even to the detriment of one’s own self interests. America is not built for this.
A lot of mythologizing about the US, its constitution, and its government has come crashing down in the past 20 years, pretty much since 9/11 and the rise of the internet. I think this is overall less a story of America is unhealthy now than US citizens have been believing comforting lies about its nation/government since the actual victory in WW2 and the cultural victory in the aftermath/cold war. The internet and 9/11 really woke people up I think.
The truth is the US has been seen periods of extreme rhetoric and even political violence, including most obviously an actual civil war, and also key periods like the labor movement and civil rights movement. It will happen again even if things cool.
Political violence and assassinations are obviously terrible and should hopefully not happen as debate allows consensus or at least compromise to be reached, but the reality seems to be if you allow the people a stake in their government, passion and anger will be instilled in some subset of those people cause government policies have real world implications, and the end result is extreme acts, many of which are detestable like this one. I don't see a way forward other than to prosecute crimes and let the debate rage on.
America has had political violence for a long time. The unique combination of post-war economic prosperity and centralized mass media (radio, TV) imposed an unnatural coherence on an incoherent body of people. This was a trade-off that paid off wildly for the baby boomers, and provides most of the backdrop for American nostalgia in a way that Reconstruction, for example, does not. The advent of the personalized, always-there screen has brought viewpoint diversity back into the body politic with such ferocity that it has caused wholesale abandonment of shared reality. In 2025, most Americans are untethered to any moral framework, do not require that their leaders even appear to act in a civilized way, and are frantically grabbing at anything as a substitute.
The best we can hope for is that the convulsions will be short and sharp and no foreign power takes advantage of our convalescence. In 1945 the Germans learned a hard lesson about fascism, and learned it well; we can hope that Americans will learn something too, and at less cost.
Maybe its time...we consider separating? We seem to be evenly divided, with neither side making any ground in more unifying the American people. Trump leans into division (he has never been a unifier, and screws up any chance he has to call for unity rather than going after his enemies), the Democrats seem to either have moribund leadership or leadership that are taking lessons directly from Trump and won't be unifiers either. Both sides are getting more angry, maybe we just shouldn't be one country?
How are you going to split the country up? Because it certainly doesn't make sense to do it by state. Rural California is as conservative as urban Texas is liberal.
There would never be an agreement of terms. Talk about separation is generally based on the fantasy that states would just each go their own way, which is both absurd and a terrible precedent to set, do you think California would agree to part with much of its wealth? Because I don't, and something like that would be a basic requirement.
The economic engine that powers everyone's lives depends on being one country, and even in heavily R/D districts there are people on the opposite side of the fence. It's never going to happen.
No it really doesn't. You have rich countries that are much smaller with less diverse industries than a blue or red America. I get that the red parts of the country still wants wealth transfer payments from the richer blue parts, but that is just hypocrisy on their part.
It looks like Trump's term is going to end in either the end of America as we know it or a constitutional convention anyways. Anything is on the table given how America is currently being torn apart anyways.
How? If we split by political grouping all the major population centers go Blue everywhere else goes Red? Unless we have a very polite split (unlikely in this case) the Blue side is just signing up to starve to death.
Separating across what lines? Within group difference might be more severe than between group differences even. Most people identify as independents, there are more than two sides, and even if there were two sides, we're geographically intertwined. Conservatives threaten conservatives and liberals threaten liberals all the time, maybe even moreso! and that's not to mention religious conservatives vs libertarian conservatives, lefists, centrists, etc et. al.
I actually think it’s possible a national divorce makes the problem worse. Lots of these killers have not had clear motives or “sides”
I personally believe that every violent death is tragic and should be avoidable.
But how many of us can say that they died for what they believe in? [1] Isn’t this really a personal victory for him at the end of the day?
> 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.
I hope he had solace and peace in his final moments, knowing that he kept true to his words right up until the end. Thanks for the sacrifice for our god given rights to stand up to a tyrannical government!
so this is the end of the debate bro culture he pioneered? i dont imagine any other right wing thought leaders are going to want to put themselves at risk of being shot over and over again, now that its happened.
many on the left point out charlies comments on gun crime, school shootings. this has nothing to do with any of that because it was a political assassination. this is not gun violence in the colloquial sense. you could ban guns fully and there would still be political assassinations using rifles because these people are either enabled by high level political forces or highly motivated in an idealistic, political manner and will do whatever is necessary to get a rifle unlike most common criminals.
Call me crazy, and maybe I'm just out of touch, but something seems... off with the reaction to this. The amount of people on reddit that I'm seeing gloating, openly celebrating this, it's really just something I have never seen before. Not even the Trump assassination attempt had this kind of reaction.
All I'm saying, is that if I was a US adversary, I would absolutely be spinning up a million LLMs to post the most provocative possible stuff. The technology absolutely exists - just yesterday sama@ was talking about the dead internet theory. I'm worried that someone is going to see that horrifying video of the shooting, and then see all these horrifying comments online, and do something equally horrifying.
Yeah, fair enough. No doubt there is some real-ness to the sentiment. I do think it's an easy way to hurt the US to fan the flames of divisive things like this. But at the end of the day flame doesn't exist without kindling... I guess it's just the world we live in. How depressing.
I have become something of a statist over the years and I apparently annoy a whole lot of people, when I argue for not upsetting the status quo much further. Needless to say, this obviously is not a good thing if you share that perspective with me. This is actual political violence. And it has little to do with guns. If someone really wanted to get to the guy, one would. The issue is further societal deterioration in basic standards.
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.
Believe it or not 4 out of the last 30 Presidents were assassinated, an additional 3 were shot, and a few more were shot at or otherwise survived attempts. There's a long history of political violence in the US (and the world). We've been in a bit of a lull of late but what we're experiencing today is not all that abnormal.
Yes - makes me think of the assassination of Shinzo Abe.
The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.
My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.
You might want to look into what happened in Japanese politics after the Abe assassination. Public opinion was not unfavorable to the plight and motivations of the attacker.
I just wanted to mention that. Recently I was wondering what was that even about, and I was surprised to read this on Wikipedia:
> Yamagami told investigators that he had shot Abe in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church (UC), a new religious movement to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002.
> The assassination brought scrutiny from Japanese society and media against the UC's alleged practice of pressuring believers into making exorbitant donations. Japanese dignitaries and legislators were forced to disclose their relationship with the UC, (...) the LDP announced that it would no longer have any relationship with the UC and its associated organisations, and would expel members who did not break ties with the group. (...) [The parliament] passed two bills to restrict the activities of religious organisations such as the UC and provide relief to victims.
> Abe's killing has been described as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in recent history due to the backlash against the UC that it provoked. The Economist remarked that "... Yamagami's political violence has proved stunningly effective ... Political violence seldom fulfills so many of its perpetrator's aims." Writing for The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth described Yamagami as "among the most successful assassins in history".
Risk mitigation; statistics and funnels. It's all just trying to reduce the likelihood and severity of bad outcomes, not preventing them altogether. Same story as seatbelts and stoplights.
No, they're the same thing from a risk management perspective. As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations. Seatbelts protect against genuine mistakes (by you or others), mechanical failures, road rage, etc.
There's a long funnel of all the things that could happen, probability of each, and total resulting probability. That's no different for being in a car wreck or being shot at.
Now, on a moral level, sure, malice is different from negligence is different from coincidence.
> As a defender, you do not (or at least should not) care about motivations
The motivation is not the important part. Sentience is. This person is playing a chess match trying to defeat you.
Consider biology. Cancer is a hard problem to solve, but it's not scheming against you with an intelligence. What about someone in a lab engineering bioweapons?
It's only an accident when taken out of the bigger picture. There is a reason it's often called car collision (or similar nowadays): Because it's a statistical inevitability when taken in aggregate.
There are whole continents of countries showing how effective gun control is. At this point you've got to be ignoring it on purpose.
It's not some statistical difference between almost no violence and no violence. It's night and day. Orders of magnitude. Teens walking back from parties through the middle of the city at 1 am with their parents permission vs clan wars.
I don’t doubt you’ve heard someone argue that, but I never have. I’ve always heard it as a right to defense, generally as in a right to defend yourself from oppressive authorities. I never took that to mean assassinations as much as militia actions against militaries.
You can argue whether or not that is an effective approach to securing freedom, but that’s the argument I’m most familiar with.
The 2A people couch it in metaphor and implication, but "we need guns to stop tyranny" is fundamentally saying that tyrants ought be shot. We can argue whether the semantics of whether death in battle counts as murder, but I think that's just quibbling over the definition of "assassination".
More of a distinction without a difference. Once you get to that situation, you've legitimized murder; now we see what that looks like.
"Militia" action against "military"? Neither side will bother with the scruples of waiting for the enemy to put on a uniform and pick up a weapon. It will be death squads vs car bombs.
It was actual political violence when MN state representative Melissa Hortman was killed. It was political violence when Gabby Giffords was shot. Actual political violence has been happening. We live in a politically violent time.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. I am concerned about the increasing frequency of such events more than anything else, because, to your point, why things did happen in decades prior, it was not nearly as common.
Gabby Giffords's shooting was tragic. But thankfully it was an isolated incident.
In the past year-or-so we have seen two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the assassination of the CEO of an insurance company, the assassination of Rep. Hortman, and now this. That's five political assassinations/attempts in a year.
It would seem fair to argue we are now firmly in a state of contagion which is unlike the situation in 2012 when Giffords was shot.
Additionally, I’ve seen a troubling amount of online sentiment positively in favor of the Trump assassination attempts, the murder of Brian Thompson. The sentiment in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder looks like it might be similarly troubling.
The rhetoric on Paul Pelosi's hammer attack was unhinged - it also was political violence.
I don't doubt the same figures who made lurid comments, mocked or ridiculed the attack will now act more measured and asking for decorum due to the victims "team".
January 6 was mass political violence, and I my unprofessional opinion is that the pardons marked a turning point in how engaging in political violence is viewed; all is forgiven if/when your team wins.
Hyper-partisanship, and choosing not playing by the rules when it benefits you will be America's downfall. At some point, people on the other side of the political fence stopped being seen as opponents,but became "enemies", I think cable news/entertainment shoulders much blame on this, but the politicians themselves know outrage turns out the vote. I wonder if they'll attempt to lower the temperature or raise it further.
I agree that the Pelosi attack was political violence and the rhetoric was unhinged, and I agree that January 6 was mass political violence. I didn’t include them (or some others that came to mind) since I was keeping it to the parent post’s “past year-or-so.” But they serve just as well at making the point, that louder and louder subsets of society are claiming these attacks are actually good, which is a disturbing societal shift. I remember when Gifford was shot; the discourse was all about assigning blame for the bad thing, as opposed to saying it was a good thing. Feels like we’re moving in a bad direction, as your examples and my examples both illustrate.
> But they serve just as well at making the point, that louder and louder subsets of society are claiming these attacks are actually good, which is a disturbing societal shift.
There has been widespread discontent for a while now - it's the vein Obama and Trump tapped to win their respective first terms. AFAICT, it is an evolving class war[1], with American characteristics.
1. One could argue which side tore up the social contract first, and quibble with the definition of what counts as "violence"
It was political violence when Trump was shot on stage too.
I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
> I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.
If you haven't noticed a difference between his first and second terms may I suggest you go for a vacation outside the US and try coming back in? For bonus points make a mistake on your forms.
US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports.
I know plenty of people who will be giving NeurIPS a miss _on the advice of their governments_. This _did not_ happen during his first term.
> US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11
You mean that time when millions of American citizens were placed on the No Fly List with no recourse essentially at random? You can't be serious. After 9/11 was far worse.
I've been in and out of the US several times this year through several ports of entry and it has been hassle-free so far. They don't even ask me questions, they just wave me through.
He and his enablers played that argument during his 2024 campaign as well, but everyone is missing a crucial aspect of it. During his first term, he was surrounded by a large number of career administration staff, who put guardrails around him. This time it's all 'Yes men' and his well-wishers. Notably, no one from the previous admin staff had endorsed him for 2024. That should have given a clue to people. But, nope.
> US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports
Apologies, but "citation needed"?
(As a non-US citizen) I flew into JFK earlier this year and did my (first) Global Entry interview. It was the shortest and most polite immigration interview I've ever had anywhere, and I've had a few.
The country may have fundamentally changed, but I suspect that comment was about Trump. Everyone knew they were planning to destroy the place if he got a second term, they wrote a book explaining it.
Yes, I was referring to Trump, not the state of the country. Republicans have full control this time around, but the goals and rhetoric have not changed. Trump was not "radicalized."
The differences we’re seeing were all planned years in advance. This time around Trump had the time and experience to build his own team instead of taking the team the Republican establishment handed him. As for policies, it’s all in Agenda 47, his manifesto, including universal and reciprocal tariffs, ending birthright citizenship, immigration crackdowns, he laid out exactly what he was going to do back in 2023.
Heh. You know. I don't want to be too flippant, but I will respond to this, because it raises an interesting point.
I would like to hope that you recognize that registration of political affiliation is just one data point. Spring it does not make. You know how I got registered as a republican? I got incorrectly registered as one during judge election volunteering.
I am not saying it means nothing. What I am saying is: some nuance is helpful in conversations like this.
PA has closed primaries though, so he likely would have fixed it if it was a mistake. In any case, if you're looking for nuance, there's not a lot of it in political violence in the US.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Timothy McVeigh, Jim Adkisson, Dylan Roof, the Tree of Life shooting, J6, the 2022 Buffalo shooter, Jacksonville 2023, Allen, TX 2023, etc.
Nearly all political violence in the US is committed by people espousing right wing ideology, so if it walks and talks like a duck, is telling you it's a duck...
The moment trump was shot (or whatever ricocheted and hit his face) and the picture was taken of him with the flag, I knew he had the election won. There was just no way for an opponent to top that photo op.
There's no way Trump has the chutzpah to intentionally get shot and hit, no matter how many guarantees he has that it won't be fatal or long-term damaging.
I don't give a single fuck about the wellbeing of Crookes, which might be immoral, but I can tell you from the perspective of usefulness of the photo op, it doesn't appear your concern reached a position of influence.
How does that make it not a photo op? And why the hell didn't you just say who you were referring to since multiple died, rather than just saying ' a man' and then degrading yourself to name calling when I took a wrong guess at who you were referring to?
Please touch grass. I didnt pick for the guy to die, nor did I want this iconic photo op. I don't understand your beef with me and your little guessing game name-calling trap but I hope your day gets better.
> And it has little to do with guns. If someone really wanted to get to the guy, one would.
Disclaimer that this is early and I may be wrong, but I read that he had a security detail (which seems rather likely). I doubt an attacker with a knife would have had success.
I've tried to tease that apart and failed. All of the sites hosting statistics I could find count suicide and justifiable homicide as in self defense in the statistics as homicide. I wish I could find a trust worthy source that differentiates in a truly unbiased scientific manor.
Cross, I know we interacted before. I sincerely hope you do not advocate that ends justify the means. "The bourgeoisie" as you call them, will be fine ( more resources at their disposal to ensure that happens ). They always are fine. You know who actually does suffer? Regular people.
Regular people suffer no matter what the problem is, they have always been the front line to blunt the effects of economic, political, or military tolls. The whole reason people resort to political violence is to inflate a problem so large that not even the "bourgeoisie" can completely shield themselves from it. If someone feels they are suffering or dead without doing anything, then suffering or dieing from actually taking action against your perceived oppressors seems like a decent option.
> "The bourgeoisie" as you call them, will be fine
I meant the bourgeoisie as in the middle class. A lot of idiots think rolling out guillotines will hurt the rich and help the poor.
It won’t. It almost never has in the last millennium. If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
I've always thought that the middle class were proles as well, or petit-bourgeoisie at best. I don't think you're wrong, but one thing that I've noticed in my time of thinking about and discussing societal problems in the US is that nothing ever really seems to help the poor anyway.
If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.
I actually wish that were the case.
The problem today is that we've scaled up the damage that a single attacker can do. I won't go too far into it, but think of it this way, what happens when someone wakes up to the fact that they can use autonomous ordinance (e.g. - Drones)?
We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious that it set us on a slippery slope.
> We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse
I remain a fan of bringing back the Athenian institution of ostracism. If more than a certain fraction of voters in an election write down the same person’s name, they’re banned from running for office or have to leave the country for N years. (And if they can’t or won’t do the latter, are placed under house arrest.)
Haitian Revolution comes to mind of "the bourgeoisie" that were actually in country, basically got slaughtered, at least the white ones. If you frame it to include the ones even higher up on French soil, maybe not though.
Hello. I witnessed racial and religious persecution.
I can tell you my stories. But I always wonder what is the alternative when someone like me is attacked? Should I give my left cheek? Should I attempt to be a pacifist?
People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged because they never have to witness someone’s head roll down. So they don’t know how it feels to be the receiving end of suffering.
<< People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged
I think you misunderstand the point. My argument is that each act of political violence ( especially on a national stage ) further degrades existing society. That ongoing degradation is a real problem and, yes, individual suffering is irrelevant to it, because, society is a greater good.
You may say those say it are privileged, but to that I say that I like having working society. It keeps being us civil. I like it to stay that way.
If you feel otherwise, please elaborate. It is possible, I am misunderstanding you.
I'm of the strong opinion that statism is the way of corrupting any ideological revolution. From communism, to democracy.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion as to why letting the status quo be is a good thing. The path society is on is clearly towards a cyberpunk distopia, than anything that would unburden and improve the human existance of the many.
> Once it starts and everyone joins, it will very, very hard to stop.
Despite the constant braying of right-leaning people, left-wing violence is a tiny fraction of domestic terrorism compared to the right. I think their insistence of the opposite is a form of projection.
A reason that the left has been less violent is that there's a general ideological belief in taking on systems instead of people. That, combined with the general left/liberal stance on gun control, has historically meant that guns are viewed as not an option.
The last decade or so, the left has completely lost faith in the democratic party and the liberal establishment. There's a real sense of "we need guns to protect ourselves."
I'm afraid that we're already past the point of no return.
<< A reason that the left has been less violent is that there's a general ideological belief in taking on systems instead of people.
I think you are mistaken in thinking that 'left' ( quotation, because while I want to keep the identifier for clarity's sake, I think it does not properly reflect US political spectrum ) is not violent or that somehow their violence is lower in percentage.
The reason I am hesitatant to go for that discussion is because it has a good chance of derailing the conversation.
Can we just agree this is a bad thing for now instead?
I think most of us understand the why. That part is not exactly a secret. Naturally, it does not help that the why is a list of multiple factors playing into it and most pick the favorites and I am sure each power center will spin this to their particular benefit further polarizing society.
> Violence is very, very often the answer because power only understands greater power.
Unfortunately, power's usual counter-move to that "answer" is a vastly-more-violent rebuttal. With minimal concern for "collateral damage", or other euphemisms for innocents being maimed and killed at scale.
"The present-day concept of the relatively longer "week-end" first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century... In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a predecessor of today’s AFL-CIO, called for all workers to have eight-hour days by May 1, 1886, playing a crucial role in the push for a five-day workweek."
<< This country has soundly rejected any form of sensible gun control.
Hmm. Do you know why? Having seen the basic pattern of action of anti-gun people, I have come to realization that nothing is ever enough. They will just keep pushing for more stuff regardless of 'wins' they score.
Granted, some of it is various organizations and they really don't want to say 'mission accomplished'. Still, my point remains. I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
> I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
How about, at the very least, making it mandatory to report firearm theft? IIRC currently only 15 states actually have such a requirement.
I'm not American and for a long time I could not understand why American fiction, be it books or movies, assumes guns are available even in a zombie apocalypse. That is until I learned the above fact.
The fact that one can steal a gun and have no one report that makes firearms essentially a natural resource in the US.
I think though joked about, one of the most telling things about the NRA is their absolute militancy about gun rights... when it suits them. As you pointed out.
And as also evidenced by things like "From my cold, dead hands! ... unless you're at an NRA convention, in which case please use these lockers or leave your gun at home, and walk through this metal detector, please."
In the USA: There are more suicides than murders every year. The ratio is typically 2:1. The "deaths due to gun violence" statistic includes suicides. It's not exactly that plain and simple either.
"Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. The availability of firearms has been linked to suicides in a number of peer-reviewed studies. In one such study, researchers examined the association between firearm availability and suicide while also accounting for the potential confounding influence of state-level suicidal behaviors (as measured by suicide attempts). Researchers found that higher rates of gun ownership were associated with increased suicide by firearm deaths, but not with other types of suicide. Taking a look at suicide deaths starting from the date of a handgun purchase and comparing them to people who did not purchase handguns, another study found that people who purchased handguns were more likely to die from suicide by firearm than those who did not--with men 8 times more likely and women 35 times more likely compared to non-owners."
It has been stated before, but perhaps we should only allow older people to have guns, probably 40ish. Of course that filters out all but one mass murders - Las Vegas (at least from brain memory).
I would think addressing the reasons people commit suicide leads to a better society. I would think that simply removing a popular tool for them only hides a symptom of a broader problem.
The other break in your statistic is people who own guns and commit suicide, and people who own guns and have a family member steal them to commit suicide. The later is far more common. Which suggests that part of the issue is unrestricted access to firearms by children in the home of a gun owning parent.
> I would think addressing the reasons people commit suicide leads to a better society.
Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
"The rate of non-firearm suicides is relatively stable across all groups, ranging from a low rate of 6.5 in states with the most firearm laws to a high of 6.9 in states with the lowest number of firearm laws. The absolute difference of 0.4 is statistically significant, but small. Non-firearm suicides remain relatively stable across groups, suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to get."
> Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".
This is perhaps one of the worst ways of looking at it. People kill themselves slowly by many means, including alcoholism, smoking, risky activities (reckless driving, etc.). These are grouped broadly under the term "Deaths of Despair" (see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8221228/). It may be more informative to look at other countries, such as Russia, Norway and Finland, which have incredibly high rates of alocholism leading to a high rate of deaths of despair.
There are many ways to reliably kill yourself. Guns are just the quickest. A serious discussion on the topic cannot avoid this fact.
The faster the method, the less time there is to change your mind. An alcoholic can go to rehab. A smoker can take up vaping. The guy with a shotgun wound to the face… is in a spot of bother.
Yes but addressing it as far as "can go to rehab" misses the point: deaths from chronic fatty liver and its complications or lung cancer are dramatically elevated in these countries. It is quite literally "too late". The problem needs to be addressed much earlier.
I do but why is the argument you presented is about how guns are the cause of the deaths. The deaths of despair occur with or without firearms. The focus on the firearms par of "firearm suicides" does not reduce suicides.
Again, the statistics demonstrate that the non-gun suicide rates are about the same between highly and lightly regulated American states. That is a hard point to dodge.
With respect, I think you ignored the point I'm making for the sake of pushing an agenda. Suicides are deaths of despair. Whether someone ultimately kills themselves with a firearm or a needle is secondary to the policy goal: to attempt to make America better for people to not want to kill themselves (barring an inherent medical issue related to chemical imbalance causing depression).
Are those "suicides" in the classical sense? No. But they are deaths of despair, and from a public health and policy standpoint, must be approached in a manner similar to suicide.
I don't believe you have even attempted (or acknowledged) an opposing point exists on this topic. Your points amount to banal agenda pushing as opposed to seeking to understand the root causes of many challenges today. This is emblematic of (and partially why) there is such division in the USA today: a lack of willingness to study and understand societal problems, particularly those that are multifaceted and require broader reasoning about the topic.
guns are a very efficient tool for murder or suicide. They absolutely will increase the number of deaths due to their effectiveness. Whether that's worth the societal price is up to the people.
Sure but the people asking to track gun deaths properly are rebuffed by the people who want to keep guns, so even the guys who want to keep guns infer better stats will make them look worse.
According to that Wikipedia link there are 1 million registered firearms in the USA and 400 million unregistered firearms. Could somebody explain these numbers, since they seem very odd?
Only a tiny minority of firearms need to be registered. My guess is that covers NFA weapons like machine-guns, which are uncommon. Virtually all typical firearms people own don't need to be registered.
No one really knows how many firearms there are in the US or who owns them. Just the fact that something like 15 million firearms are sold every year in the US gives a sense of the scale. The number of firearms in the US is staggering, no one knows the true number, and they have an indefinite lifespan if stored in halfway decent conditions.
I'm not sure how Wikipedia is distinguishing them but for the most part firearms do not have to be registered in the United States. Some states require firearms to be registered but most do not. Unregistered firearms can nonetheless be counted because they are inventoried and sold legally (firearms dealers must be licensed and regulated), even though the end purchaser is not registered anywhere.
Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.
Certain kinds of firearms are required to be registered, like machine guns, short barrel rifles, and short barrel shotguns.
Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.
Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.
This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).
So we can conclude that proliferation of guns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for excessive gun violence. Remove the necessary condition, remove the violence.
You can email hn@ycombinator.com to verify, but I'm willing to bet the charged comment mob flagged it before a mod had a chance to see the post and protect it. This jives with other posts, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44277177, being "allowed". The second may have met the same fate, or possibly have been considered a dupe by some users who had already seen the other postings of the same story active.
If you can catch posts you think are unfairly flagged as they happen you can also send them to hn@ycombinator.com. Even if it's a day late they can unflag it, second chance it, and/or watch the comments.
The mods hold a strong opinion that making the moderation log public in some way (so these kinds of things can be seen directly) would cause more problems and discontent than it would solve. I strongly disagree, but I respect that the mods have always delivered satisfactory answers for me when using the emailing process - which is their main counterpoint to the need for a public log.
Your second link stayed up and was quite popular. The first one is clearly not in the same category: the CBC reporting on current events is quite apart from an Axios editorial.
Based on my memory, GP's second link did not show as being up when they shared it and seems to have only changed after the fact. I also find this (much older) archive which at least showed [flagged] when it was at 75 votes https://web.archive.org/web/20250614213042/https://news.ycom...
Another shameless note that this is the kind of thing I think a public moderation log would really help.
We're talking about the same site that constantly has submissions from politically biased sources alluding to various ways that the orange man is bad, where comments pushing standard right-wing talking points are frequently flagged and killed within minutes, and a recent Ask HN seriously entertained the question of whether HN is "fascist" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44598731) because the "orange man is bad" posts get flagged?
But Trump is actually bad. That's not a controversial opinion outside of a narrow segment of the global population, mostly American Christian fundamentalists, who themselves aren't exactly grounded firmly in reality.
Not fair. Its not right wing or any wing. I think the decent thing to do is not speak ill of the dead. I didnt like him, I barely took notice of what he did. He was not on any side just on the side of opportunity. But there is no solution to be found in violence.
I’ve noticed a trend where posts that paint conservatives in a bad light are quickly flagged before getting any traction here. And then this one doing the opposite is one of the most voted and commented on ever for this website. It blew up during work hours when this board is usually quite slow too.
Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but... this extremely unfortunate event is going to be a very telling test for the media and society at large.
A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered and another attacked by the same man only a couple of months ago, back in June. How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?
My cynical side suspects we are about to hear a lot about "violence from the left" in a way we did not about the right back in June.
This is so true and so sad at the same time that it almost portends a kind of tragic fatal destiny to the US. You can almost see factions warring for no other purpose than to gain "followers" and "likes". (Might even make an argument that we're already there?)
What you’ve described sounds like the logical outcome of Democracy in a post-digital world. I can envision a world where the future Secretary of State was a former Reddit moderator. Or worse. A Lemmy maintainer.
I'm glad this was shared and that this did not go unnoticed, it made me know where things were going. Figureheads weren't even pretending to care anymore - escalations are in order way before any call for de-escalation will be made.
Yeah, guess they really are unknown. By the way, there are 7,386 state congressmen. A lot of Americans probably aren't even aware that their own state even has a congress. You don't even know about it and you're bringing it up.
> How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?
I couldn't have named Kirk if I saw him or heard about him before he shot and it entered the news. Not sure what that tells us -- we should know more who our representatives are, or know about various "influencers" in politics and such?
EDIT: I saw you initially mentioned two representatives who were murdered but now it looks like there is only one. So even though you criticize others for not knowing who these murdered representatives were, it seems you don't even know who they were or if they were even murdered.
> Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but...
Well this is how usually talking in bad taste early starts ;-). It's kind of like saying "No offense, but ... $insert_offense_here".
One key difference here is that the MN Democrats killed and injured were relatively niche/local participants in the Democratic party in MN (none of that that makes their death or injury any more acceptable or less appalling). Kirk is a highly significant figure in the right wing media world.
I made no claim that she was a national figure. Merely pointing out that calling a politician holding one of the highest offices in state government a niche, local politician intentionally diminishes them.
I suspect that unless you live in New Mexico, you have no idea who the speaker of the NM House is. That's not a diminshment of the office or the person holding it, it's a recognition that while such positions come with significant power within the context of a state, they are quite hidden from residents of other states.
And how many people outside of Minnesota you think would know her. I bet the majority of people in MN wouldn't didn't know who she is.
For instance do you know Brandon Ler, the Montana House of Representatives speaker? Or, say, Nathaniel Ledbetter, the Alabama House of Representatives?
Are they "niche" politicians? In their states, no. But, absolutely yes when it comes to people from other states and more so from across the world.
The other thing you're leaving out is that Charlie Kirk was actively provoking people with outrageous takes, perhaps as a social media strategy.
It doesn't justify death, but it certainly makes it less surprising and more understandable.
Imagine if a democrat went into the deep south and said "The confederacy was a stupid joke you should be ashamed of, it only existed for 4 years, get rid of the flag already." etc etc and posted it to social media while talking over people trying to engage in debate.
Then that would be an apples-to-apples comparison. Not an elected representative.
No, they weren't US congressmen. Funny you just like that other whining guy don't even know anything about the subject. "They" (actually only one) was a MINNESOTA CONGRESSMAN, not a US CONGRESSMEN. You probably aren't even aware there is a Minnesota congress.
> MN Democrats were not random “niche” “Democrats” but US CONGRESSMEN
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> Minnesota is part of Canada now? Must have missed that… :)
When you've dug yourself into a hole it's good idea to stop digging and get out instead of keep digging. As the GP pointed out, a US member of Congress refers to representative in the US Congress (that one from Washington, DC).
In addition to the US Congress, states have their legislative bodies. Melissa Hortman was a member of such a state legislative body -- the Minnesota House of Representatives.
So on one hand you sound like you know a lot about her and want her to be more well known, on the other hand you don't even know what legislative body she was a representative in. So that's pretty confusing.
We fail this test over and over and the fact that you don't realize it is telling in and of itself. Not as a remark on you, but on the media in general.
There was no presidential message expressing sympathy and outrage then and complete radio silence from Republicans in general. And the amount of misinformation from the right was incredible. Even in this thread of nominally intelligent people, they're still repeating falsehoods.
Any expression of shock and dismay from conservatives now is pure theater. The right wing is absolutely fine with violence. Accusations of the violent left is of course a talking point projection as usual.
> Mr. Boelter developed a strong distrust of government, especially Democrats. According to Mr. Carlson, he believed that the criminal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump were politically motivated, and that a victory by the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, would lead to civil war. He followed the Infowars website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
It's not so much a matter of who "knows better." There's an element of whether you trust a murderer, or are all the facts and evidence around their case, more.
Take a look at the next sentence from your linked article.
“I am pro-life personaly [sic] but it wasn’t those,” he said, using the jail’s internal messaging system. “I will just say there is a lot of information that will come out in future that people will look at and judge for themselves that goes back 24 months before the 14th. If the gov ever let’s [sic] it get out.”
For every single conservative each mass shooting was done by a transgender illegal immigrant Democrat until thoroughly disproven through dozens of means. Then they will just ignore the "lone wolf" white male Christian and just expect everyone else to move on with them in thoughts and prayers. It's time to stop engaging with conservatives as if they were serious people worthy of serious replies.
> Federal prosecutors confirmed 45 Democrats were listed, including dozens of Minnesota lawmakers and members of Congress such as Rep. Angie Craig, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Sen. Tina Smith. It also included members of Planned Parenthood, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the organization, and several healthcare centers across the Midwest.
> Authorities in Minnesota said Monday that the man arrested in a Saturday attack that killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded had a "hit list" of 45 elected officials — all Democrats.
Nobody is whatabouting any of the violence. They are however pointing out that media isn’t an impartial observer, and that skews everyone’s perception of what is happening.
Anyway someone else responded with citations for the dem hit list, which backs up everything i said except “he voted for trump” which is impossible to know because we have secret ballots but he told his friend he voted for trump. (Citation: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/vanc...)
Now tell me honestly, if the guy who shot charlie kirk turns out to have no known political affiliations but a hit list of republican politicians and activists - you’d be saying it’s complicated?
He was a Christian and a intellectual thought leader in one of the more reasonable groups of conservative youth in the USA. You can paint TPUSA however you like but political engagement is political engagement, whether it's happening with the same color uniform you decide is the better choice or not.
Welcoming and encouraging the free exchange of thought and ideas in an open forum. Free speech and American values are based directly in morality which comes to us from a higher power. This is all quite clear in the writings of the Founding Fathers and other contemporaries, but of course nowadays "American values" is shibboleth for "Nazi dogwhistles" to some population.
> How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines?
I don't know - how long did these stories stay in the headlines?
A 26 year old man from Irondale, Alabama was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombing. Prosecutors stated that prior to the bombing, the suspect had been spotted placing stickers on government buildings, displaying "antifa, anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement sentiments" and had expressed "belief that violence should be directed against the government" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marshall#Bombing
10 arrested after ambush on Texas ICE detention facility [..] When an Alvarado police officer arrived on the scene, one of the individuals shot him in the neck. Another individual shot 20 to 30 rounds at the facility correction officers, according to Larson. - https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-arrested-after-ambush-texas-ice...
Last but not lest, there was also an assassination attempt on Trump, though I concede that one did get plenty of attention.
The motives in that case don't seem to immediately be as clear cut yet. I've been waiting for this trial or more information myself because that shooter has made some very bizarre claims. He admitted that he was a Trump supporter and pro-life, but that had nothing to do with why he did it. He then made the claim that Tim Waltz had hired him to carry out the execution. It's very odd- but I can't say why media orgs didn't cover it for very long at all.
Think of it as a hardening. From outsider perspective, IMHO your left is very weak and inconsistent and it's not even left from a European perspective.
The far right developed stars, stallions and philosophers that are effective in the popular culture no matter how vile some of those can be. There are up and coming leftist Americans but they will need to hustle to develop intro strong leaders. The mainstream figures from the American left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are just too lightweight.
Edit: funny how this comment fluctuates between 0 and 2 points. This edit will probably tip the balance though :)
> and it's not even left from a European perspective.
This is a meme that needs to die. Its just not true.
The Democratic party in the US is right in line with Labor/Socialist/Whatever Mainstream Leftist Party you want to point at in Europe. It has members who end up on various sides of the left-wing spectrum. There are no "far left" parties in the US because we have a two party system.
There are obviously topics where this is not true. But that goes both ways: almost no country on Earth has the level of abortion access that the Democratic party in the US demands. And there are examples of European right wing parties who fight for zero abortion access, which is not the GOP platform currently.
What is actually a meme is this need to squash the entire universe of unrelated political beliefs into a single axis of "left vs right".
The Democratic party is just as, if not more socially progressive than many European "left wing" parties on certain issues, that's true, but that's not what anyone is talking about. Issues like abortion and LGBT rights concern personal freedom, they're orthogonal to the left-right axis.
When we say that the Democratic party is to the right of every European left-wing party, and to the right of most right-wing parties, what we're talking about are the economic policies that affect the lives of everyday people.
US democrats can't even get behind table stakes leftist issues like universal healthcare, social safety, progressive taxation, and wealth inequality. They know who pays for their re-election campaigns and who controls the media - it's not the working class. Democrats aren't leftist, they're liberal, which is a night and day difference.
Democratic Party voters seem to be more aligned with Euro-style socialist policies, but among elected Democrats this is a small minority view.
European socialists usually advocate for direct state ownership of certain industries, sector-wide union contracts, universal (not means-tested) child allowances, fully public health care, wealth taxes, free college, etc. There are a handful of elected Democrats that sign on to some of these views, but these have never been in the actual party platform, since the mainstream of the party roundly rejects these. Democrats are only somewhat radical in certain social/bioethical issues like abortion and LGBT rights (although the latter is being tested, with some influential Dems defecting); otherwise, the better European analogue would be Macron's Renaissance party (formerly En Marche), the UK's Lib Dems, the Nordic countries' social liberal parties.
Yeah, there are just so many mismatches it doesn't make sense.
- Nearly all European countries have and support a very high consumption tax (VAT). In the US, nobody would be really for this (although some conservatives favor such taxes), but US liberals would be extremely against it due to the regressive nature of consumption taxes.
- The majority of EU countries institute voter ID laws, something supported only by conservatives in the US. States with voter ID laws almost always allow some valid voter ID to be gotten for free, but they are still opposed by liberals.
There are plenty of other examples when you start thinking about it.
I agree that we should not try to resolve America's current problems with violence. (And to be clear, I am an ardent pacifist and urge change in the ways of King, Gandhi, etc.)
Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.
I'd recommend you watch this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8N1HT0Fjtw) video by Norman Finkelstein about Gandhi. A lot of people get him wrong apparently; he wasn't a pacifist in the way you are suggesting.
TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action.
I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said:
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire
another book (that i have admittedly been dragging my feet on finishing) that covers this idea is 'The Wretched of the Earth' by Frantz Fanon. i have never personally been directly exposed to the ill effects of state-imposed violence to the degree that others have. it's eye-opening to more-seriously consider the positions of those who have.
> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a point, one can only fight fire with fire.
Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:
> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
Martin Luther King was regularly labeled as a violent rabble-rouser during his lifetime; just look at some of the contemporary political cartoons about him. It was only after his death that he was recast as a figure of absolute peace who made racial progress happen just by giving thoughtful speeches.
Anyone who says violence is _never_ the answer is frankly, naive to history and power.
Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more.
Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation
“…and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city of Savannah, and its dependent forts, and shall wait a reasonable time for your answer, before opening with heavy ordnance.
“Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah…”
- W. Tecumseh Sherman’s ultimatum to the garrison of this city, December 1864
Sherman’s March to the Sea was an apotheosis of political violence. It deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure.
How long would American slavery have persisted without the march (the war to which it belongs)?
How could non-violence have triumphed in the same crusade?
Unfortunately headlines and memories are extremely short-lived. Not sure anyone will be talking about this in a month or two. Which is a lesson I try to remind myself whenever I take myself too seriously.
> what retribution measures his death will be the justification for
To be fair, crazy people will justify their craziness with anything. The problem is less what this may be used to justify and more that it creates a more-permissive environment for further political violence.
Depending on how you turn the lens, the Civil War is an excellent example of violence not being the answer.
The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s.
Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result.
(On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time.
And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet.
People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)
Okay but black people were freed from chattel slavery. It's true that it was followed closely by jim crow south, but given an option between the 2, none of us are picking chattel slavery right?
No, of course not. My point is that the South started a war because they believed they were so right that the only recourse was political violence. Their reward for it was to lose everything they feared they were going to lose... And more.
Americans have this unfortunate tendency towards exceptionalist self-image. They remember the Revolutionary War and forget the Civil War. They remember World War 2 and forget Vietnam. They believe when they wield violence it is because they are right and the cause is just, when history shows that, even for them, the victor in such conflicts tends to have very little to do with just cause and a lot more to do with dumb luck (or, if I'm being a bit more generous, "material and strategic reality divorced from the justness of the casus belli").
Ah I see, you're saying it was a bad decision for the South to start the war.
I agree history records fort sumter as the official start of the war, but I guess I was looking at it big picture that "a war was on it's way" regardless of the singular event that sparked full war.
My perspective on the civil war is "good thing it happened and the Union won, otherwise who knows how long black people would have been enslaved". It would have been nice to end slavery without the war, but Lincoln tried to negotiate to this end extensively and couldn't secure it.
Also, yes I agree the vietnam war is severely undertaught. And in the modern era, Afghanistan.
I mostly agree, though I think slavery likely would have ended with industrialization anyway, a few decades later.
It's also worth noting that most people don't realize there are more black people enslaved today than in the US Civil War, not to mention other enslaved groups.
Depends on how you feel about a foreign occupied military outpost in your state/country that you've broken ties with.
This isn't in support of the reasons the ties were broken, but I can absolutely see if say Germany leaves the EU, then they'd probably want an EU military occupied base in Germany to leave said base.
And it was even a failure for the North - sure, in theory they won, and in practice they just let the South stay as they were but poorer and with a few Black people able to leave.
> The confederates should have been punished, publicly.
No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.
The North 'saved' the union by allowing the South to continue its brutal practices against the freedmen leading to almost a hundred years of violence, lynching and the Black Codes designed to keep control over the 'freed' slaves.
Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.
“Here we are”, indeed. Lynchings, massacres, expulsion, mass criminalization, a slave workforce for the plantations…and I’m only talking about the immediate aftermath for black southerners, not the centuries of continued violence.
I don't think parent poster is arguing that point. I think parent poster's point is that all of those things happened and the alternative, had the South been brutally subjugated, decimated, or humiliated, would have been objectively worse.
I agree with you. Violence is never the answer. Same goes for all the wars including the ones going on right now. And same for implicit and explicit violence and physical harm to make money.
Charlie Kirk said repeatedly said it was okay to have a society where people routinely get shot and killed. Pointing that out right now highlights just how wrong it is.
Charlie Kirk shouldn't have been shot. The way to have prevented that would have been gun control.
"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." - Charlie Kirk
He thinks it's an acceptable cost. So let's honor his memory with his own words.
It's a simple matter of 2 wrongs not making it right. How can you in the same sentence say that Kirk is wrong for endorsing violence, while at the same time endorsing this shooting?
That sentiment comes across a bit oddly... if the people in power in Germany hadn't started using terror and violence against those they didn't like, WWII wouldn't have happened.
I agree that Charlie Kirk was both responsible for fomenting political violence and was the victim of political violence, but I disagree with the causal suggestion. I think it's more likely to be the opposite. When he said gun deaths are an acceptable price to pay for gun rights, I think that must have come from a position of never imagining he'd be far less likely to be one of the deaths.
“
Kirk went on to say, “And by the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out … Bail him out, and then go ask him some questions.”
"
I'd wager you not a single right-winger saw that video and thought "we need to ban guns". They're thinking "I need more guns to protect me from this kind of leftist violence".
We rarely hear about motives. Paddock was responsible for the deadliest shooting in American history. We never got a motive. We got a bumpstock ban which was deemed unconstitutional
The second amendment fundamentalists are decidedly thawing. I expect at least some of them are thinking, “we need to ban guns from those people” for some value of “those people.”
The response to the last high-profile public shooting was, if you’ll recall, noise in the DoJ about taking gun rights away from transgender people. So some kinds of gun control are apparently on the table.
The second amendment was passed when there were slaves, and I guess the 2A supporters at that time didn't see it as contradiction.
These people aren't mellowing on their position on 2A; they're instead starting to think "Hmm maybe some of these 'people' shouldn't be considered fully people from legal point of view ..."
I agree that they don’t necessarily view it as a mellowing of their position, but as a matter of policy the net effect is the same.
All my life I’ve heard conservative talk radio types (and more recently, conservative influencers) chant “shall not be infringed” as a mantra and oppose any restrictions whatsoever (at least, post-Reagan; see the comment down-thread). That old state of affairs has subtly changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)
After the Civil War many Democrat dominated Southern state governments enacted Black Codes that regulated virtually every aspect of freed people’s lives. A common element was restricting possession and carrying of firearms by Black people (or by anyone without a license), often implemented through local ordinances, licensing requirements, or explicit prohibitions.
The Black Codes precede the Mulford Act by a hundred years.
I intend motivation to choose actions that might make a difference. Can anyone make the case that prayer actually works? Consider the massacre of children actually praying at a Catholic school a couple weeks ago. Was that the result of someone praying for it to happen? Was any deity looking out for its flock? Whereas making guns a lot harder to obtain would definitely reduce gun usage.
Who asked? Countless criminals worse than him are pardoned by every president. Clinton pardoned dozens of terrorists. Liberal prosecutors pseudo-pardon thousands of violent criminals by refusing to charge.
USA is outpacing everyone. I guess you hear things but the data and reality don’t really reflect that. America has problems like everyone but a declining empire it is not.
> For people who seem to think this is what Kirk deserved because he said things from different view points, you need to reclaim yoursel
Kirk both personally and as part of his group advocated for using violence to achieve goals.
This doesn't make him particularly unique, but lets stop with this idea that speech exists in some kind of abstract realm with no bearing on "reality".
There was a guy in vietnam about 70 years ago who made a lot of speeches about what he wanted to achieve and then a few million people died.
This is an interesting phrase that pops up every so often. What exactly is "political violence" and how does it differ from, uh, regular "violence"?
If someone shoots at me because he wants to steal my wallet, is that different from someone shooting at me because I'm black? Or because I voted for something? What if I shoot someone shooting at someone else? Is political violence supposed to be more morally reprehensible? Or maybe it's less?
> This is an interesting phrase that pops up every so often. What exactly is "political violence" and how does it differ from, uh, regular "violence"?
I know your entire comment is rhetorical questions, but I'm going to answer them. The difference is intent. Political violence is violence against your political enemies to silence them and discourage their allies.
> If someone shoots at me because he wants to steal my wallet, is that different from someone shooting at me because I'm black? Or because I voted for something? What if I shoot someone shooting at someone else? Is political violence supposed to be more morally reprehensible?
IMO: Yes, yes, yes, no. But none of this has to do with him advocating for guns. He's thinking about defence. He lives in a country where everyone else is armed.
I don't own a gun. More gun owners does make the overall climate of violence worse. But I probably would own a gun if I lived in the US.
> “Why has he not been bailed out?” Kirk said Monday on his podcast of the man who allegedly beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul with a hammer last Friday. “By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks.” With a smirk, he added: “Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.”
I can’t force you to see things you are unwilling to perceive. Consider how you might feel about a prominent liberal figure trying to pay bail for one of Trump’s attempted assassins.
Really dislike this. It risks sounding like a justification, because even if it only means someone will inevitably react violently, its vagueness makes it read as though violence is excusable or natural.
Not so. People can and should endure rudeness, even disgusting behavior, without throwing so much as a punch.
Our entire legal system is built on the premise that violence is not the natural/inevitable outcome of incivility. Courts, contracts, and laws exist precisely to channel disputes, insults, etc. into nonviolent processes.
If violence were the automatic consequence of rudeness, there'd be no point in having civil courts/workplace dispute procedures/defamation law... or even law enforcement protocols in general. The system assumes that people can and must respond to incivility without physical aggression and it punishes those who don't.
It isn't a justification, it is an acknowledgement of the reality that most people do not have self-control. In politics, this is part of a theme where certain political viewpoints deny that humans have any innate negative nature and that they only behave that way because of structural factors.
Laws exist for this purpose, certainly true. But this fails to go far enough because there is a greater context of norms that govern behaviour in many ways. Not only in situations before the law is required but that govern how lawyers and judges behave.
This is a far more complex problem than people think. To be clear, the decline in law and order is bad, the decline in ethical behaviour from lawgivers is worse but there is a far broader failure in values that will require a generation of turmoil to erase.
I am not one for internet censorship but you look on here, on Twitter, on Reddit, and you read pages and pages of stuff that you would rarely see anywhere online twenty years ago...and this is accompanied not by the outrage that you see everywhere but by a celebration of the intense moral purification that many think we are undergoing. Human nature does not change (i live in the UK so it is obviously particularly jarring to experience people joyfully celebrating murder and also see people go to jail for calling the police muppets...weird world).
i don't read it as a justification at all. it's a very pragmatic observation; and not one that goes without saying, because if we have any interest in a positive peace, we have to understand the factors that threaten it.
> Our entire legal system is built on the premise that violence is not the natural/inevitable outcome of incivility. Courts, contracts, and laws exist precisely to channel disputes, insults, etc. into nonviolent processes.
i think our legal system is built on the necessity of response to the natural outcome of incivility. we have an extremely punitive system in the USA - the entire judiciary is set up to respond to incidents of incivility, not prevent them (no matter how much tough-on-crime politicians like to convince us that stiff punishments act as deterrents to things like murder or rape).
The US is a relatively permissive societies. Justice is frequently seen not to be done. Law and order is, mostly, non-existent with courts used as a last resort (and even then, very loosely).
I am always puzzled that people think other people believe the purpose of law and order is "deterrent"...have you ever met anyone who says this? It is simple: some people are criminals, if they are in jail then they are unable to continue committing crimes, if you let them out they will commit crimes...this has been seen in the US, in many European countries, over and over. Further, the purpose of stiff punishment is also so that victims and the public see justice being done. If you live in a society where you see people abuse others without consequence, you will leave that society. That is it. Simple. Basic logic that was understood four thousand years ago but which continues to be impenetrable to people with all the advantages of modern life.
Yes, PG in political science and I have worked in policy research. How about you?
The probability of committing a crime is significantly higher if you have committed a crime before. This is constant in every society that doesn't put criminals in jail. You seem to be suggesting some interesting new theory that not having a leg is really what everyone should care about...if you were reading someone else say this would you take this seriously? No, a tiny proportion commit the majority of crime, serious crime in countries like the US is almost all committed by 1% of the population. The solution is simple: put them in jail, crime disappears.
How? Franz Ferdinand's assasination caused an international crisis, whereas this event is clearly US-internal. People outside of the US do not care about Charlie Kirk, nor did he greatly care about countries abroad.
Among young people (especially on TikTok, I’m told, not on that platform though) I would say he’s more well known that a figure like Stephen Colbert. Just trying to put this into perspective for those who aren’t familiar. Nobody can know every publix figure, especially these days.
Franz Ferdinand's assassination could, from the perspective of the Austro-Hungarian empire (a surprisingly liberal center of intellectual cosmopolitanism) be viewed as a match lighting a "civil war" that only later become international.
The biggest risk is that the current US admin uses this event as a prop to justify increasingly fascistic policies. In fact Stephen Miller has already signaled that at least he probably has this in mind. America gone full fascist won't immediately be an international problem but it eventually may be.
Not just lower the temperature. Talk to each other, and listen carefully, in a civilized manner. Prefer to listen carefully first, then speak. Bring, and stick to, facts as much as possible, and focus on policy and real-world outcomes rather than politics.
That's exactly what Kirk did. He was always polite and open to dialog. Many people didn't like what they heard, but it wasn't because it was mean or wrong -- it was because it challenged their ideologies.
I think Charlie Kirk thought he was safe because he was a good person. He didn't provoke political division, he tried to reconcile it.
I wish this hadn't happened, but let's not rewrite history with our eulogies.
> Many people didn't like what they heard, but it wasn't because it was mean or wrong
He was often wrong, as most people are, and he often doubled down on it. For example, he repeatedly lied about the 2020 election being stolen.
> He didn't provoke political division, he tried to reconcile it.
He paid for people to attack the capitol on January 6 and advocated for Joe Biden to be given the death penalty[1]. He repeatedly tried to frame "the left" for things they didn't do or didn't even happen, and said things like "prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people" (verbatim quote from his podcast).
What was divisive were the attacks and mockery of Kirk, not the man himself.
I noticed that Comedy Central has now pulled their "Charlie Kirk" episode.
The link I gave was just direct quotes with attribution. The publication's bias was just in choosing to write that article at all.
Also please skip the "there is much to question" nonsense. The conspiracy theorists had dozens of days in court and ended up with losses, fines, dismissal, and jail time because they couldn't provide proof.
It would also be very strange for people to partially steal an election, allowing their opponents to take statewide offices in states like Georgia where the vote split between parties.
The irony in this statement as it's exactly what Charlie Kirk himself tried to bring to the table. Even if you don't agree with his positions, he was always calm and rational even in opposition to pure appeals to emotion.
Keep trying. It's all you can do. Also, you can't expect everyone to accept your facts. A few % of the population are going to be nutjobs (specially when there are various propaganda networks around which compound it), and that's fine, thankfully I think they aren't majority.
Very US centric view. I doubt it. I didn’t know who the hell he was until 3 hours ago and will probably forget he existed within a week.
As for lowering the temperature, good luck. Anyone with above average influence is in a position to try and extract as much personal gain from this already.
It kills me inside because I would like to live in a world where this isn’t the case.
This is just another form of belief in US exceptionalism.
No, a political activist largely unknown outside of the US is not going to be the catalyst of a world war. I live across the pond and never even heard of this individual until an hour ago.
You might be afraid that this could inflame political tensions in the US, and not even that is a given. The US has a long story of political violence, this is unlikely to result in any major changes.
If I was a betting man, I would bet that in two months time most will not even remember this. Too much spectacle in the news all the time for any subject to stick for too long.
More of a krystallnacht. I expect there to be some kind of reprisals, through the legal system or otherwise.
Lowering the temperature does require cooperation. There's a prisoner's dilemma effect where the people with the most heated rhetoric tend to get what they want.
The "virtual realities" people construct to deny actual reality is incredible. Like Alex Jones spouting stuff that those grieving parents are paid actors.
Anything rather than accept the cold truth. At least I partially hope he believes his own stories, because if he knew he was just screaming lies about dead children into people's ears to earn money, then he's a psycopath (obviously that's also a possibility).
I think people invent those realities so they can say their actions are moral and good, and in their reality, for example the Sandy Hook parents are the bad guys because they are part of a conspiracy to take Americans' guns.
If anyone has 2h30m of free time, a good example of a man creating his own reality (and having it crumble bit by bit) is the subject of the documentary The Act of Killing, someone who murdered thousands of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJZb2Q1NmE
The director convinced him and his friends to make a movie about their actions (which they proudly boast about anyway), and one scene in the movie has the song "Born Free", "angels" dancing, and the killer being thanked by his "victims", for saving their souls from Communism and sending them to heaven by killing them...
I really don’t understand why people are downvoting these remarks. We can feel desperately sad and sorry for his wife and child and family while also recognising that he has literally espoused wide availability of guns AND the inevitability of gun deaths as a result.
He talked the talk, and now he has walked the walk.
Gun deaths are inevitable because there are bad people that we can't expunge from civilized society that will kill regardless, not because he wanted to be killed by one.
Considering this happened in a red state in a community that leans conservative despite having a university there, I don't see how Trump could spin this as a way to send troops into Chicago.
Best not to speculate on motivations at this time, IMO. It's the most likely scenario given his notoriety, but we don't know anything yet and that's a slippery slope.
That is a ridiculous thing to say. In my opinion it’s unconscionable. His point was never “the second amendment is good because you can murder those you disagree with.”
I do believe it was closer to "The second amendment is good and we have to accept some people are going to die because of it". I do have doubts that he expected to be one of those victims.
>"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." --Charlie Kirk 2023
Is irony a sickness? It may be unpleasant, but as he says, maybe it's a prudent deal.
It's being posted as a gotcha because he fought against firearm control and he was killed with a firearm. His death, like many firearm-related others, would have been significantly less likely to occur if firearm possession was properly regulated and curbed, like it is in many other countries.
One could argue that advocating against firearm control and regulation has resulted in significantly increased societal harm, which could also be identified as not fair, if not even evil/hateful, especially from those who have directly suffered from it.
Of course two wrongs don't make one right, and people can be more classy than this, but it's a totally understandable sentiment and response.
None of my claims disagree with what you just said. People posting the "gotcha" also likely don't disagree with you.
In fact, I suspect that most hate firearm-related violence and have worked to stop/curb it, and were opposed by Kirk who undeniably unfairly got a taste of his own medicine.
Of course not, as far as I can tell they don't even have the perpetrator in custody. It's unfortunately normal for the extremes on either side to immediately accuse the extremes of the other side of being guilty when something like this happens.
> "Give me liberty or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to American politician and orator Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. Henry is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the convention to pass a resolution delivering Virginian troops for the Revolutionary War.
Even California and Hawaii don't ban hunting rifles. Same with Australia and the UK. Can you name a single country that totally bans the ownership of all firearms and enforces it? Would you like to live there?
(The rifle used isn't known yet, but only one shot was fired)
Agreed, but the difference in the use of rifles in assassination attempts between the US and UK/EU/AUS/etc can't purely be because of a lack of gun control in the US if the same rifles are available in those other countries too. (semiautomatic military style rifles like used in the first attempt on Trump are almost always more restricted overseas, but again this was only a single shot and could easily have been from a bolt-action rifle)
That's not the whole story though. Whatever weapons are available in the UK, they're far harder to obtain than in the US. It's a mixture of both of these issues. Whenever I visit the USA, what always strikes me quite quickly, is just how many mentally ill people there are literally everywhere just roaming the streets, and how the non-mentally-ill people deal with them. I've only had my life threatened once in my life, and that was when a homeless man threatened to kill me in New York. No big deal in the USA, happens all the time, but quite difficult to understand how you guys accept this "way of life" and just let it be and choose to do nothing about it at all.
Interesting choice of countries - as someone who was actually born in the UK, grew up in Australia, and now lives in the US, I have no idea what the relevance of those details has to what I said.
I merely remarked that someone else considered preventable gun deaths an acceptable cost to what he considered as sacrosanct. Well, tragic as his death is, I'm not the one who considered it an acceptable cost.
Australia and the UK are commonly used in the US gun control debate as places where gun confiscation worked, and CA/HI are the states with the most restrictive gun control policies.
My response was meant to illustrate that this was essentially not a "preventable gun death", or at least not preventable by any level of gun control ever implemented in a Western country. Similarly, the assassination of Shinzo Abe using a homemade pistol/blunderbuss was not a preventable gun death.
Australia now has more guns per capita than it did prior to the national unification of gun laws.
Unwanted guns, guns no one was willing to license, and guns not acceptable for licensing were bought back for cash, filling skip bins full of guns - much publicized as confiscation in the US.
Australian gun control was about regulation - every legal gun registered and tracked, every gun sale logged, twelve year olds joining gun clubs only with qualified supervision and unable to purchase and own a gun until adulthood.
Gun regulation following the Port Arthur massacre, the largest mass shooting in the world at that time, changed relatively little in West Australia at that time - what did happen was that regulation in Queensland, in Tasmania, and the Northern Territory and the ACT were all bought in line with with the major states of Australia for a uniform nation wide code.
I'm in rural Australia, I have firearms, my close neighbour target shoots at 5,000 yards (not a typo - 24 inch steel targets at five thousand yards - longer than any confirmed sniper shot as he and his partner are ULR (ultra long range) fanatics .. and good at it).
What regulation in Australia has achieved is a near elimination of mass shooting events, since Port Arthur there have been fewer than fingers on hand such events in 25+ years total - ie fewer mass shooting than occur in five days in the USofA.
It's also made guns extremely difficult to access for village idiots, the stupidly violent, petty criminals, etc.
Unregistered guns are on the rise in Australia being smuggled in and used by criminal enterprises with not stupid ex military enforcers, ghost guns are about, etc.
Having strong regulation makes for more open ground and an easier time of it cracking down on criminal use of guns.
It hasn't eliminated assassination by gunshot, but such events are relatively rare in Australia.
> While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.
its not the 2nd amendment that killed him, it is political violence.
Political violence cannot be deterred with strict gun laws. Remember, it is only law abiding citizens who are affected by the gun laws. Criminals by definition don't need to follow the law and they don't need the 2nd amendment
> Criminals by definition don't need to follow the law and they don't need the 2nd amendment.
This is kind of an argument from tautology that is disconnected to reality. In the real world, supply of criminality and violence is elastic, if you raise the cost, you lower the amount supplied. Crimes and violence committed are affected by committers having the opportunity and tenacity to do so. If you erect more barriers to achieving it, make it less convenient or straight forward to do it, you'll deter some percentage of violence/criminality who just give up or don't make it past the hurdle or whatever.
Otherwise, to take your argument to its logical conclusion, we could get a whole bunch of dumb conclusions, like:
We should just abolish auditing and other anti-corruption accountability mechanisms. By definition, cheats don't need to follow the law, so auditing doesn't catch them, it just imposes extra paperwork on law-abiding citizens!
> Political violence cannot be deterred with strict gun laws.
Definitely, considering what is happening in Nepal ATM. However, some kind of ban on gun supply (not just controlling them) definitely has an impact on your country's murder rate. You can't just expect 20 million guns produced in the USA for consumers not to get in the hands of people who want to do bad things with them. Really, I would be happy if they just lowered that number a lot (to say 1 million) without any other gun control laws, the murder rate across the whole continent would fall.
or just jail criminals El Salvador style. Bukele showed us that having a high crime environment is a policy choice, an explicit policy chosen by the government
Rate: Over 1,000 per 100,000 residents as of early 2024, with a specific rate of 1,659 per 100,000 in March 2024.
USA:
The U.S. incarceration rate was approximately 541 per 100,000 residents in 2022, with nearly two million people in state or federal prisons and local jails. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate among independent democracies and is home to the world's largest prison population.
(we don't get a rate for 2024, but it probably hasn't grown much since then)
Criminals, plus the other (and this is a very lowball number) 50,000+ people incarcerated for life with no due process. El Salvador has incarcated 2.5% of the entire adult population, most of those in sham mass trials where an entire group of people get marched through the same kangaroo court with no individual legal process.
One of the most popular arguments in favor of the necessity of the second amendment as an individual (not collective) right is precisely so ordinary people can engage in political violence.
The current president even suggested doing so was ok, in his first campaign, naming the amendment in the process. (Anyone who was paying attention at the time and noticed this didn’t immediately end his campaign like it definitely would have in any prior election in living memory, should have been able to guess we were about to have a spike in political violence)
There’s no “defense of liberty” justification for the individual right to bear arms that isn’t also saying “political violence is sometimes necessary”.
(I happen to think that justification’s silly, personally—I’m not endorsing it)
> Political violence cannot be deterred with strict gun laws.
If a simplistic definition of political violence is targeted killings of political leaders, then this is trivially false. Look at Europe, Australia and other countries with comparable statistics to US and look at the number of events you'd classify as political violence. It is likely zero. The only person I can think of from recent memory is Shinzo Abe.
In the US alone, thanks to no gun control, we have attempts at Presidential candidates, and successful killings of state-level law makers, CEOs, and now, political influencers.
talking about gun control as a form of solution is talking about spilled milk under the bridge. There are 100 guns per capita in the US and even if gun sales are banned, the black market will be enough to supply guns for another century
> Criminals by definition don't need to follow the law and they don't need the 2nd amendment
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. " - The US Constitution
Neither do private citizens.
What part of "well regulated militia" is unclear? Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."
It means what it says, not what some gun owners like to pretend it says and the simple truth is that making them harder to get does actually reduce crime every single time it's been tried.
The definition of "militia" has been explicitly written into US law since the 18th century, you don't need to guess at its meaning. It essentially includes every able-bodied male and explicitly recognizes that this militia exists separate from any "organized" militia. Being part of the militia is not an exclusive club, a large percentage of all Americans are a member as a matter of law.
That said, I would argue that the definition should be updated to include women as well.
Actually, lets let James Madison (who wrote the amendment) explain what a militia is:
Madison said "the advantage of being armed," together with "the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
This is off-topic, but it always amuses me that the sentence isn't even a grammatically correct construction in English, and I don't think it was in the 1770s or whenever this was written.
- A well regulated Militia: noun phrase,
- being necessary to the security of a free State: parenthetical phrase,
- the right of the people to keep and bear Arms: another noun phrase
- shall not be: verb
- infringed: adjective
Two consecutive noun phrases separated by a parenthetical is not valid English grammar. The only time I can imagine you'd see consecutive noun phrases is as part of a list of at least 3 elements (like "x, y, and z"), but there is no list here.
The history explains the oddness a bit. It was originally loosely based on Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Bill of Rights which said:
> "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."
I think that's very clear. They were deeply concerned about the threat a standing army posed, and wanted the militias to act as a balance. Based loosely on that Madison's first draft then said:
> "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."
Again, more comprehensible than what we have today. Still a bit oddly phrased, but it's clear that the right can't be infringed BECAUSE we need a well regulated militia.
Then, after much debate and quibbling over the exact phrasing and in regard to religious objectors the committee submitted this to the senate:
> "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
As you can see, even this version was a more complete thought, and made it very clear what the purpose of those arms actually was.
However, the senate then did the final butchery, that resulted in the version we have today and because unscrupulous people have exploited it's vagueness, school children can't be safe:
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
To me, the real bitch is that the original purpose (to serve as a balance against the standing army) is completely null. There is no militia, or even professionally trained army strong enough to stand against the permanent army the founding fathers didn't even want us to have. Thermonuclear warheads and fighter jets didn't exist back then.
Even though the NRA likes to claim the "militia" means every American, that is NOT what Madison and the others meant by it. It's made clear in the Federalist papers, and even if it were what the founding fathers meant not even the NRA seems to be taking the stance that since the "miltia" means "Everyone" then "Everyone" can own thermonuclear warheads.
The second amendment has been wrongfully interpreted, and it's killing people.
> What part of "well regulated militia" is unclear?
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is unclear? If you're going to base your argument on the first few words you can't win against the opposition does the same with the last part.
> Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."
What WMDs can be had for only $100 that would actually fall under firearm regulation?
It did, but it was a politically motivated decision that had most serious scholars without an agenda agree was flawed. Scalia decided to treat the miltia bit as if it were entirely prefatory, which of course begs the question "why did the put it in there if they didn't mean it?"
Again, common sense says that it means what it says and you don't get to ignore the bits you don't like.
"I can't stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage" -- Charlie Kirk, who would be very angry at your condolences apparently.
But then again, when it comes to quoting a culture war grifter, you can find a lot of stupid ass quotes.
I don't agree with Kirk's politics but it really doesn't take much effort to recognize that no, he didn't say he wanted to live in a country with gun violence. I think an honest interpretation is that he valued the freedom to own guns, despite recognizing that freedom might result in violence or death.
Gun violence doesn’t just happen to other people, it happens randomly and to anyone, even those who choose not to own guns.
Pointing out the irony that he died because of gun violence despite stating that gun violence is an acceptable cost is mean spirited and insensitive in the moment, but not incorrect.
He advocated for circumstances for which this could happen, he probably just assumed it would never happen to him.
I didn’t say Kirk wants this to happen, I said he wants to live in a country in which this happens. He knew gun violence was a trade off for the policies in which he advocated and he was willing to make that trade.
He didn't wish for stuff like this to happen. He was saying that the 2nd amendment is more important than losing it even if some people die as a result.
This is no different than many of us who think that the 1st amendment is worth retaining even if people use it to hire hitman or coordinate kidnappings and what not.
Part of the problem with defining the 2nd amendment as a defense against tyranny, like Kirk did, is that none of us have any control over how one crazy individual defines tyranny. I don’t fear what that hypothetical crazy individual can do with their 1st amendment rights, but I do fear what they can do with their 2nd amendment rights.
> I don’t fear what that hypothetical crazy individual can do with their 1st amendment rights
Plenty of people use free speech to do bad things. Look at Trump using his rhetoric to get into power. Or outside the US you can see all sorts of crazy leaders gaining power.
Sorry, I’m not going to follow you down this path. Violence is more dangerous than words. It’s one of the first lessons we all learn as kids, sticks and stones…
I'm not saying that words are more dangerous. I'm saying that allowing certain speech can lead to violence yet many of us would still like to protect free speech.
I'm talking about indirect calls to violence that are protected. Trump's rhetoric, despite an explicit statement to not break the law, led to January 6th.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. People support encryption saying they have the right to private communication and algorithms are protected under the first amendment. People use encrypted communication to do unsavory things like hiring hitmen, viewing child porn, etc.
Neither of those things are considered protected speech, and you can be imprisoned for conspiracy to commit kidnapping/murder even if neither actually occur.
And murder is against the law and not a proper use of the 2nd amendment. My point is that people can abuse their rights to do bad things. We don't use people doing bad things with their speech to remove the 1st amendment.
That's one way of seeing it, but antagonizing and alienating a big portion of the general population like blacks, immigrants, gays, trans and everyone who doesn't share your same religious views, in a country where teenagers can get easy access to assault rifles, might be a bit dangerous to say the least.
I think this is disingenuous. Charlie Kirk's content was specifically around "triggering the libs". He deliberately tried to make people angry, not looking to make any kind of common ground for discussion.
You don't deserve death just because you justify a situation in which some people die.
If a person is against, say, laws against tobacco, that person doesn't deserve lung cancer. If a person argues for leniency on criminals, they don't deserve to be murdered.
I am baffled that I have to explain this. I don't think you understand the logic you are defending or its consequences.
It's irony not an argument. From people that refuse to acknowledge that gun laws need to be changed and have a brain rot interpretation of the 2nd amendment in an age where a supreme Court is treating the document more like guidelines.
Kirk didn't believe he was going to be affected by the open gun policies he supported and now he died due to not fully unrelated causes. Pointing that out doesn't imply thinking he deserved it.
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I really hate the use of this phrase, it lacks specificity and has a sort of unknown unknowns quality whereby we are meant to believe that some speaker utters vilification until some threshold is met and some unknowable person will be impelled to violence. It feels like one of those concepts that oozes out of intelligence connected think tanks and into the discourse. It completely lacks any predictive power and is entirely about crafting narratives around lone actors committing political violence.
> “Why has he not been bailed out?” Kirk said Monday on his podcast of the man who allegedly beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul with a hammer last Friday. “By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks.” With a smirk, he added: “Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.”
If describing someone as an "amazing patriot" for bailing out someone in jail for political violence (against "the other" side) is not supporting political violence, words have stopped having any meaning.
Words continue to have meaning. A patriot is not someone you agree with, it is someone who loves their country and engages in peaceful political behavior.
Charlie Kirk may not have offered ideas you agree with, but his methods were exemplary. He was killed by sick and twisted dialogue that has driven weak minds to cowardly violence.
My point is that when Kirk engaged people in debate, he fought with ideas and logic. ( Check the numerous video shorts posted. )
We need more people like Charlie Kirk, and less violent thugs. Martin Luther Kings niece has just posted the Kirk has won. When a person is martyred, they will be remembered for the merits of their arguments.
He spoke his mind and invited dialogue without violence.
He was killed by the same attitude that led to school shootings, political assassination attempts, and Tesla scratching. These people are the worst of humanity, they are vile scum.
Most of us don't understand it either. The majority of citizens support some degree of gun control reform and yet congress refuses to act. And even if they did, it seems like the supreme court has decided to interpret the 2nd amendment in such an obtuse manner that any reform at all would likely be unconstitutional.
No, this is completely false, for the general population [1]:
> Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?
> 2024 Oct 1-12: Yes: 20% No: 79% No opinion: 1%
Your next sentence
> The majority of citizens support some degree of gun control reform and yet congress refuses to act.
is somewhat true, at 56%. But, this question involves things like more restrictions for those with mental illness, criminal backgrounds, etc. Any conclusion about this question must understand how broad it is, and have the 79% support of gun ownership, above, in mind. See the rest of the results for a more wholistic perspective.
Is it when it does or when it does not benefit your particular position on whatever issue? I am not being difficult, I am tryign to understand your frame of mind. It is possible you are already too far gone.
It's when the minority functionally has more rights/say in things than the majority. Take the electoral college for instance, I consider the fact that you could win an election with only 23% of the population voting for you makes it fundamentally flawed and should be removed.
The same can be said for how we distribute seats in the senate and house. The difference in population between the largest and smallest state when the constitution was ratified was around 12x. It's now 70x and I consider that to be unacceptable in terms of weight of power wielded by those smaller states.
Interesting. If you know how this country was created, you likely know why senate looks the way it looks and why house looks the way it looks. If you are suggesting update, it is well within your rights to argue for that change. However, there are enough people, who think it is important to keep senate seats limited.
I obviously disagree with you on civics, but what would you suggest? I already think there is way too much concentrated power ( I absolutely do not want it ruled by biggest available mob per given state ), but I think we disagree over why.
It's more like tyranny of inalienable rights which is a good thing in my opinion. Every society should have a bill of rights that the public nor state can't change. That's how you protect against fascism.
If our bill of rights was truly immutable, slavery would still be legal and women wouldn't be able to vote. Doesn't sound like protecting against fascism to me.
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I know you're just willfully dumb, but other people reading might think you actually have a point.
No army in the world including the US could stop a civilian uprising of even a million people who have just rifles and the will to fight. They don't need nukes, tanks, or airplanes. If a large enough percentage of people, say 2% of the population, decided to fight a civil war, the US army/gov would fall in a few months if the rebels knew what they were doing.
It would be a guerilla war. And all of the critical infrastructure in the US could be destroyed in a month. No gas. No electricity. Smaller uprisings would be easily squashed.
Now, would this ever happen? Unlikely. Americans can barely get their fat asses out of bed much less do military operations for weeks at a time. Things would have to get incredibly bad and a leader would have to organize it. But it is possible.
My problem with this thought is that a civil war = government forces vs cilivilan militias.
I imagine it more a weakened government (but still with a functioning military) supported by civilian militias backing the government, versus various large and small insurgencies possibly with foreign backing.
I mean, don't color me surprised if a civilian uses a drone to commit an act of violence in the future. We're on the precipice of autonomous drone assassinations.
I don’t mean to be snarky or insensitive, but it is really ironic to ask that question in a thread discussing the assassination of a far-right political figure.
This argument is always kind of silly to me. You really think they'd use a weapon of mass destruction just to take out a few people they don't like? On their home soil? I mean, I find myself being surprised by Trump daily, but still... It's far more likely that they'd use more surgical means, like the ICE raids, to root out people they don't like. In that case, I'd say being armed would make at least somewhat of a difference, or at least give pause.
Some guys with AK-47s kept the world's most powerful military pretty busy for 20 years, so I wouldn't underestimate the value of a few rifles against authoritarianism.
Do you think they’d bother shooting anyone themselves?
Either of these situations are going to be stochastic and with difficult attribution.
And don’t forget - they want a degree of unhinged shooting back, it feeds the authoritarian tendencies and ‘justifies’ the increasingly unhinged violent responses.
I would have agreed with you but look at what is happening in some Asian countries right now. Imagine a situation where the thugs knock on your door with their guns. I will probably never own guns but there is an argument to make.
When those thugs show up at your door with all of the weapons drawn and at the ready, what do you think you and your little hand gun or even riffle are going to do? Wound the first person at the door before you get lit up? To what purpose?
> you US guys can live in an environment were your next door neighbor, the person beside you in the supermarket etc can carry a lethal weapon that can end your life.
Something to consider is that even though one can, the vast majority do not. Typically, the only time I see people utilizing their right to open carry are the exact types of people you think would do that. They are a very small number in the real world. However, they get so much attention that it distorts the perception that everyone does it. I'm certain there are more people carrying concealed weapons than I pay attention to, but it's not like it is the Old West where you have to leave your weapons outside before entering the saloon.
If this is how you think it is, then you have fallen for the hype machine. Yes, lots of people own weapons. Some of those people own lots of weapons. Only a small number of them carry like you seem to think.
Most of the mass shooting events are not these open carry types. That seems to also confuse things
again, just because you are permitted/licensed does not mean that you do all of the time. there are enough places where it is posted that you are not allowed inside if you are carrying. people often get it so that if they ever need to they can, but not that they will 100% of the time
a lot of people in Texas do not bother with a conceal permit because it is already an open carry state yet the vast majority of people do not walk around with a pistol on their hip or a rifle slung on their chest.
I'm not here to defend the US, but here's one way to look at it: the death toll of alcohol abuse is much higher, so how can one conceivably defend a society that allows its consumption? Almost everywhere in the West, the answer is basically "we like it, we like the freedom of being able to drink, and it's an acceptable price if tens of thousands of people die".
It's essentially the same thing, except unique to the US. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but your exasperation is essentially the same as my exasperation, as a non-drinker, that I or my children can be randomly killed by someone driving under the influence - and everyone is somehow kinda OK with that.
It's much higher because of the US unique car culture and car-centric infrastructure:
14.2 deaths / 100K inhabitants in the US
4.8 / 100K in France
3.35 / 100K in Germany (despite autobahns)
2.1 / 100K in Japan
Sure, drinking is a problem. But people drink in other countries too (as much or more). But they don't have to drive a car everywhere because they have more sensible infrastructure.
Let's compare with the homocide rate in the US:
5.9 - 6.8 / 100K (depending on source)
Yes, that's half the car fatality rate, but not all car fatalities are due to alcohol abuse.
But the big takeaway is that you have 3 times as much chance of dying from a gun in the US as dying from a car in Japan.
Am also in Europe but consider how as a pedestrian you're passed by hundreds drivers daily each of whom can end your life any moment at a whim. Not saying that weapons carry is a great idea just explaining how it works.
There is no but. There are 700x more gun homicides in the US vs the UK, with just 5x the population. You are the only developed country in the world where active shooter response training is a thing. Tools do make it easier, so it should be hard to get them, especially when they are specifically made for no other use than killing people.
This is not a good argument. How many people in Japan die from gun shots in a typical year. Tools are absolutely the problem. With that many craY guns out in the US you are simply significantly increasing chances of shit happening.
Your next door neighbor already can end your life, though. Believe it or not, a gun is not the only way to kill someone. The question is, do you trust your neighbor (or do they have a life-long history of mental health issues, bullying, extreme politcal views, etc)
It's a cultural thing & very hard to explain to people outside it. Imagine banning cheese and wine in France or something. For a very large part of America that's what its like
It genuinely comes down to an American belief that "the individual is the primary unit" and must be equipped with tools to secure his safety, security, and well-being through his own actions. ALL of the idealogues around gun ownership loop around this single virtue. To take several examples:
- "When seconds matter, police take minutes"
- "Guns are the last line of defense against tyranny"
- "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- "Your home, your property, and your family must be your right to protect"
To some degree, it comes from the same reason high speed rail doesn't work here in the US while it's a pleasure in Europe. The vast majority of places in this country are truly out in the sticks, and defending yourself from wildlife or humans with bad intent are real worries. In our cities, we have gun control laws similar to Europe.
Open and concealed carry, both unlicensed, extremely common in Phoenix which is the 5th largest city in the USA. 3d print yourself a frame, mail order the unregulated parts, stick it down your waistband, and you are legally good to go.
Interesting interpreting those as individualist. First can be read as a concern for family. Second is community and society. Third is also protection of community, you would be making a choice to intervene (an individual would leave). Fourth also is not the individual but again, family.
It's the right to have a capacity for individual action, which is expected to be exercised for the good of society - this has been an original premise for as long as Western Originalism has been a thing. Locke advocated for individual capacity for action, and believed people enter into social contracts to protect those rights for themselves and others. Rousseauist beliefs include the idea that liberties exist within the context of serving the common good.
Yeah. As an American these arguments are really absurd though. When was the last time a lone hero with a gun stopped gun violence? I think those arguments are really just the gun companies trying to market this idea of the "lone individual" as a hero protecting their personal space. It helps them sell more guns. But when the rubber meets the road, a "good guy" packing is more likely to shoot a bystander than an assailant.
The marketing seemingly appeals to men on the same grounds as video games -- there's some great protagonist who saves everyone with their powerful and timely shooting.
My man was only 22 year old, no CCW license, even broke the rules of the mall and carried anyway. And he smoked a mall shooter before he could barely even get started, with a pistol from like 60 feet away.
That simply isn't true and the statistics on "good guys with guns" do not show that they are more likely to shoot a bystander. I dont; want everyone on the street packing, either, but at least use real info to make arguments.
Are you asking me to accept a country where parents have to consider sending their kid to school in a bullet proof backpack because the school shootings are a matter of course? How high should I be willing to accept? Should I be okay with shootings in traffic, or at bars, or at concerts?
What do you think should be done about that? Should I just accept that my son might not live to adulthood because some maladjusted kid gets a rifle from their parents and decides to start shooting their classmates? This is the only country in the world where that regularly happens.
If guns are the last defense against tyranny then they bloody well better get to work. Unless that was all BS and they’re on tyranny’s side.
Thought I’d provide a follow on. They could make noise, protest, support court cases, criticize politicians, …. All short of actually using the arms. Crickets.
Exactly, you can't just change the law or constitution. You can but it wouldn't do anything.
Fact is the cat is out of the bag. FGC-9 can be 3d printed and the barrel and bolt carrier made out of unregulated parts available anywhere with shipping access to China, or with a bit more effort anyplace with a lathe.
Gun powder is more an issue, but even then black powder is easy enough to make and with electronics can be ignited electrically without any sort of special cap or primer.
It can be culturally changed, but even then, if the criminal culture doesn't changed -- now you have a bunch of criminals with guns smiling that the rest of people are disarmed.
Its not a cultural thing, its marketing, this did not exist, it was completely created out of thin air. Americans were not buying assault rifles and posing with guns out of the army, people have been made to believe this is normal, natural and "cultural" and its absolutely not.
“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death ... 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.”
I'm sure when he said that, he never thought he'd be the one paying for that right. Would be interesting to see if this does or does not affect that stance
Audience member: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
Kirk: “Too many.”
The same audience member went on say the number is five, and proceeded to ask if Kirk knows how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years.
Kirk: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Seconds later, the sound of a pop is heard and the crowd screams as Kirk gets shot and recoils in his seat.
Remember: The vast majority of mass attacks in the US have no connection to transgender people. From January 2013 to the present, of the more than 5,700 mass shootings in America (defined as four or more victims shot and killed), five shooters were confirmed as transgender, said Mark Bryant, founding executive director of the Gun Violence Archive.
It's really not that large. A lot of people need guns; folks who live in super remote areas where wildlife needs managing, folks who enjoy actual hunting, but these types of gunowners are generally fine filling out their paperwork and getting licensed. They see guns as tools.
Then there are the ammosexuals and they're the ones that honestly scare the shit out of me and need their guns confiscated. Like I'm all for the purchase and enjoyment of stupid shit, God knows I own my share of things other people would call ridiculous; but guns are unique in that inflicting harm to others is literally why they exist. It's the only reason you'd have one, and the way these guys (and it is far and away mostly guys) talk with GLEE about the notion of being able to legally kill someone for breaking into their houses... if I wasn't already a hermit, this shit would make me one.
There's an attitude of, to quote Charlie Kirk, "It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment."
I don't. People are rarely objectively good or bad. Good people can have a bad day. Good people can have a drink or two and turn into bad people. Good people can have their guns stolen from them by bad people. Good people can leave their guns unlocked where their children can find them and do who knows what with them. etc.
> America is...objectively the best place to live in the world rn
I'm American and a frequent international traveler, and I could not disagree more. Almost every other country I've been to has been superior in every way that truly matters. The only reason I stay here is because I don't want to abandon my loved ones.
"objectively the best place to live in the world rn"
I feel like you were just patronizing the crowd and this is pablum, but the US is one of the angriest, most dissatisfied countries on the planet. It always does poorly on happiness metrics, doesn't do great on corruption indexes, and has a median lifespan and child mortality rate more in the developing country range.
In no universe is there an objective reality where it's the best place to live.
But too much is made about deadly weapons. Every one of us has access to knives. Most of us drive 5000lb vehicles, with which a flick of the wrist could kill many. We all have infinite choices in our life that could take lives.
But we don't, because ultimately there are social issues at play that are simply more important than access to weapons. Loads of countries have access to weapons and it doesn't translate in murder rate at all.
Please outline how you would go about changing policy and removing the approximately 400 million firearms in civilian hands within the US. Ignore any political complications like financial cost, or uncooperative media.
There are people willing to go on murder sprees, and they number in the tens of thousands (or more) if anyone attempts this. Many of them are waiting, nearly holding their breath, hoping that the government tries such a thing. Quite possibly, a few of the mass shootings you've heard of were just those who "jumped the gun" (forgive the expression).
Visited Europe a few years back for the first time.
There was a day when I woke up, a few days into the trip, and felt very, very light. Just "weight off my shoulders" lighter. Oddly euphoric.
Took me a few hours to realized that it was the subconscious realization that it was extremely unlikely that anyone around me, for miles and miles, was armed with a gun.
To answer your question: we survive it the same way any human being under perpetual stress survives it. We get on with our day and we don't even notice how bent-out-of-shape we are until and unless we're in a circumstance where we aren't anymore.
Their argument is that the biggest cause of preventable deaths in the 20th century was governments killing their own citizens (genocides in Nazi Germany, communist Russia and communist China led to over a hundred million deaths), and widespread firearm ownership makes it very hard for that to ever happen in America.
Statistically it’s really not an issue. Most gun violence are suicides and gang violence. Yes it’s there and innocent people get shot on occasion but it’s not a big risk for most people.
> if you want to assassinate a culture warrior jerkwad at a public event
The root post's comparison was to someone beside you at the supermarket, rather than "sniper at a distance". The capacity to kill is almost universally distributed, it's just that the vast majority of us are not murderers.
But sure, it's actually one of the justifications for the 2nd amendment. Firearms really are sort of an equalizer, and do more equally distribute the risk to even the most powerful.
You can't make a targeting killing at a supermarket any easier with your car or cleaning products either. Not sure how that changes the calculus. If you want to kill someone with non-gun products, it's very difficult: the evidence being the notably higher number of gun killings over poisonings or deliberate collisions.
With guns, it's literally just a button push kind of UI. That this is controversial is just insane to me. Every 2A nut knows that guns are effective killing machines, that's why they like guns. Yet we end up in these threads anyway watching people try to deny it.
Please try citing numbers if you want to make a numeric argument. The USA has four times as many guns per capita as Finland. And in fact Finland has a much higher gun death rate that the rest of industrial Europe (about 3-4x that of the UK or Germany, for example), which has fewer guns. Finland is, to be sure, safer than the US, with about half the per-capita-per-gun fatality rate. So sure, you can do better than the US without reducing guns.
But clearly guns are the obviously most important driving variable here, and to argue otherwise is just silly.
> The USA has four times as many guns per capita as Finland
42% of US households have one or more guns. 37% of Finland households have one or more guns. That US collectors are aficionados doesn't seem relevant. Access to guns is similar.
> And in fact Finland has a much higher gun death rate
This is an amazing claim given everything we've talked about. Finland's homicide rate is the same as Germany's, and significantly lower than the UK. Do you understand how catastrophic this is for your very argument?
There are more guns so murderous people use them, but murderous people have other methods otherwise, as seen by the UK having over 40% more murders despite having 1/7th the number of households with guns...
No, it doesn't, not in the context we're talking about. A quick Google says per capita knife deaths in the UK are 4.9/Mpop, gun deaths in the US are one hundred thirty seven per million.
Europe should absolutely solve the "knife problem", sure. But even eliminating it entirely would equate to like a 3% reduction in US deaths. Arguing, as you seem to be, that the US should do nothing because Europe has a comparatively tiny problem seems poorly grounded.
First, just from a "danger" standpoint - more people in the EU die from heat than from guns in the US. And roughly 8 times more people die from cold than heat in Europe. So, I would say, that we live in an environment where our neighbors are armed the same way you live in an environment where you're often dangerously hot or cold - i.e. we get used to it.
Second, you can walk or drive on a street. Every passerby in a car could kill you if they wanted to by colliding with you. It rarely happens. Stand next to a tall ledge or overpass with crowds walking by and watch the teeming masses - you're unlikely to see any of the thousands of people walking by leap off to their end. Similarly, in life, even though basically anyone could kill you, it's very rare to encounter someone who is in the process of ending their own life, and killing you would basically end, or severely degrade, their own life. Almost nobody wants to do it.
Charlie Kirk is/was kind of an extreme example. He said many things that severely angered hostile people. He went into big crowds and said provocative things many times before being shot. I think in most situations you have to push pretty hard to get to the point where people are angry enough to shoot at you. If you can avoid dangerous neighborhoods and dangerous professions (drugs and gangs) and dangerous people (especially boyfriends/husbands) then you are pretty unlikely to be shot and you benefit from being able to carry guns or keep guns in your home to protect yourself and your family.
For one example, consider the "Grooming gangs" in the UK, where thousands of men raped thousands of girls for decades with the tacit knowledge/permission of authorities - and despite the pleas of the girls and parents for help. Such a thing could be handled quite differently in a society that was well armed. If the police wouldn't help you, you might settle the matter yourself.
This narrative isn't helpful. Even in this specific case, it's extremely unlikely anyone would have been able to get close enough to him with a knife to kill him without someone noticing.
Guns allow you to kill 1) multiple people, 2) from a distance, and 3) with nobody aware of the imminent threat.
Of course other weapons can also be used to harm people. Of course no solution is perfect. But it's absolutely incorrect to say "the problem isn't so much the tools." The tools undeniably and irrefutably play a role in every study that has ever been conducted on this topic.
See here for the impact of Australia's gun buyback program, which saw zero mass shootings in a decade after their removal, after 13 mass shootings in the 18 years prior the removal, as well as an accelerated decline in firearm deaths and suicides:
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365
While true, Australia reclaimed ~650k guns by 1997 and then another ~70k handguns in 2003. By comparison the US is estimated to have around 400M guns, with law enforcement alone having 5M guns (as the “fast and furious” scandal showed, law enforcement guns often end up in the hands of criminals as well).
I don’t know what the answer is for reclaiming the guns, but I think logistically it’ll be hard to implement in the USA even if there wasn’t bad faith attempts to try to thwart regulation (and arguing that there’s still violence with knives and guns aren’t the problem is definitely bad faith/uneducated arguments)
Yeah I'm not suggesting the same process could apply in the US, I'm just trying to aggressively refute the point that guns are not the problem (or, at least, a major component of it). We need to be creative about solutions, but people have to want to find a solution to be creative about them, and right now many do not.
On that we’re 100% agreed. The science is exceedingly clear that guns are the reason for so much gun violence and mass shootings (which makes sense since without guns you couldn’t have either of those by definition).
> it's extremely unlikely anyone would have been able to get close enough to him with a knife to kill him without someone noticing.
What do you mean? If you go to any public place in the world, you can get very close to hundreds of people in a very short time. Knife assassinations happen all the time.
You could have quoted the beginning of the sentence, where the point was about this specific case, and how in this particular case, a gun clearly allowed an assassination that would have been challenging to pull off with a knife.
That is not a way as saying killing someone with a knife is impossible. It's a way of saying that guns allow you to kill people in ways and distances that knives do not.
The Charlotte attacker was a schizophrenic person who had been in and out of prison. Decades ago, public mental health institutions were closed down and the patients left out on the streets, or given a bus ticket to California.
If you want to have a society, you have to care about and for the people.
Yeah totally you know how people throw thousands of knives from a hotel window and kill a ton of people at a concert? Or at a gay club? Or at a school?
Stop this false equivalence argument, I absolutely despise it
yes knives are a problem, but they're multipurpose so a lot harder to eliminate. You can't afaik use a gun to cut parsnips.
I can't really think of any situation were someone done something evil with a knife that would have worked out better if that evil person had a gun instead.
> I dont get how you US guys can live in an environment were your next door neighbor, the person beside you in the supermarket etc can carry a lethal weapon that can end your life.
Knife killing can happen for the every-day citizen that doesn't have a security detail. The OP is scared about the neighbor having a weapon to kill them with... and every household already has one in the kitchen.
If you are scared about being killed in a given society, it's more likely a cultural problem rather than a tool problem. Yes, guns make it easier to do. The question is, why are more people doing it now adays? What changed?
Go back a few decades, and you can find plenty of kids in highschool in the US that would keep rifles in the back of their truck in the school parking lot. They would use those guns to go hunting after school. They weren't being used to shoot eachother.
Has there been a case where a single person killed hundreds with a gun? The worst I know of is the Vegas shooting, which was 60. There have been mass-stabbings that have reached ~30 people killed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_stabbing#Examples_of_mass...).
> I get the good guy vs bad guy with a gun argument…
Trump was shot surrounded by (in theory) some of the best-trained armed guards on the planet. Uvalde saw several hundred "good guys with a shitload of guns" mill around for over an hour while schoolchildren got massacred by a single shooter.
Even in the cases where the ostensibly-good guy with a gun steps in, it's not necessarily a happy ending.
There was a shooting at a protest in SLC in June[0] in which a volunteer working with the group organizing the protest shot and killed an innocent man while trying to hit someone carrying an assault rifle. (Primarily due to a misunderstanding that could have been avoided.) His intentions were good, thinking he was saving people from someone else who had bad intentions.
I was personally about 50 feet away from the incident. It's hard for me to imagine what a good guy with a gun actually does in practice.
> It's hard for me to imagine what a good guy with a gun actually does in practice.
Something like this?
> A brutal stabbing at a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan, left 11 people injured on Sunday, but a much larger tragedy was averted thanks to the courage of two bystanders. Leading the charge was former Marine Derrick Perry, now hailed as a hero across social media.
Verified video shows the suspect cornered in the store’s parking lot, motionless as Perry kept him pinned at gunpoint until police moved in.
> His intentions were good, thinking he was saving people from someone else who had bad intentions.
I find the characterization of the shooter having good intentions to be a bit too generous; the person he intended to shoot wasn't doing anything more threatening than just carrying a gun (as the shooter was also doing): https://bsky.app/profile/seananigans.bsky.social/post/3lrp66... . It wasn't being "brandished" or pointed at anyone.
I can't imagine any justifiable reason to fire a gun in such a thick crowd, when no one else has fired their weapon.
> It wasn't being "brandished" or pointed at anyone.
This is kinda missing the point, from my perspective. The reason the shooter thought Gamboa (the guy with the assault rifle) was a threat is because he was walking with an assault rifle in his hands rather than slung over his shoulder. It's the same difference as someone holding their handgun (down pointed at the ground) versus keeping it holstered and it's in how quickly the wielder could aim and fire. It didn't need to be brandished at the moment because it could have been in less than a second.
All things considered, I don't think Gamboa had bad intentions but I do think his actions that day were stupid. The shooter made a bad call for a bad outcome but it still doesn't make sense to pin the blame entirely on them.
The shooter here was a police officer firing on a civilian operating within the confines of the law. The shooter ended up missing and killing someone else.
Note, that to shoot this man, the police officer also held his gun in his hand. I hope you're at least consistent, and would also say "it doesn't make the sense" to put blame "entirely" on someone if that someone goes around shooting police officers as soon as their hands touch their guns.
There aren't any instances of politically motivated violence within a society increasing its fairness or plurality. That happens only when a large majority view it as desirable and worth risking harm for. Right now the US, Turkey and Poland are relatively evenly split between those who want more pluralism at the price of a decaying status quo, and those willing to discard that pluralism to fight what they view as existential threats to their society. They might not be wrong about the threats, but discarding political freedoms selectively doesn't work. The point is that in a polarized context, political violence only decreases pluralism, no matter who is better at killing. This political violence becoming self reinforcing is just as deadly to our democracy as a failure of judicial independence. The way back involves climbing out of echo chambers and having calm rational conversations with people who hold views you find incomprehensible. So that you can comprehend them. What are they worried about that drives their priorities? Don't dismiss those worries. The majority in any society want fairness and rule of law and to be able to meet their needs. The minority get us disagreeing on how those common goals should be pursued so that they can prevent it happening. Go find some grounds for agreement.
He was a religious fundamentalist. Pretty far from a "moderate".
He did not deserve to die for his fundamentalism, but trying to paint him as a moderate who engaged with the process genuinely and in good faith is wildly mischaracterizing his entire life and political career.
What exactly is a religion fundamentalist? He was a Christian, but what makes him a "fundamentalist"?
What exactly did he do that wasn't in good faith? All he did was talk to people respectfully and engage in open dialogue. He had no notes with him ever, and he just talked with people. And for that he got murdered.
He doesn't support the stoning of gays and that's another outright lie. He's pointing out that she can't pick and choose Bible verses because the verse just before talks about stoning gays.
He's pointing out the hypocrisy of San Francisco letting out people on bail for everything, but if they attack a Pelosi, they can't get bail.
You are the one who is acting in bad faith. People like you are the reason why he's dead. You think that because you disagree with him, it's perfectly okay to lie about him and vilify him and hope he gets killed. It's sick and needs to stop.
>He doesn't support the stoning of gays and that's another outright lie. He's pointing out that she can't pick and choose Bible verses because the verse just before talks about stoning gays.
Sure, if you ignore his exact words, the context, and his tone, you can convince yourself of that. Or anything. He says, verbatim:
> It doesn't just say love your neighbor though. It does say love your neighbor except in a sense as yourself But hold on she's not totally wrong when she says first of all The first part is deuteronomy 6 3 through 5 the second part is Leviticus 19. So you love God So you must love his law. How do you love somebody? Here we go You love them by telling them the truth not by confirming or affirming their sin and it says by the way, miss Rachel You might want to crack open that Bible of yours in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18 is that thou shall lay with another man shall be stoned to death just saying so miss Rachel you quote Leviticus 19 love your neighbors yourself the chapter before affirms God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.
Kirk states Leviticus 19 is "God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters." That doesn't rhetorically serve the argument you claim at all. That is his endorsement of the idea that homosexuality should be punished by death. You are deluded or lying to claim otherwise.
> He's pointing out the hypocrisy of San Francisco letting out people on bail for everything, but if they attack a Pelosi, they can't get bail.
And that's respectful, is it? Really, you think jokes like that can be characterized as respectful? And do you genuinely think men who are witnessed by the police beating an 83 year old in the head with a hammer are regularly getting bail in SF?
How about this gem? What's the ironic juxtaposition he's going for when he says this?
> They platformed a biological male who won a national championship and then was allowed in incredibly disturbing detail to be around you and your fellow competitors. And again, I blame the decline of American men. never should have been, you know, you should have, someone should have just uh took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s.
Let me guess, he's saying American men in the 50s and 60s would give trans people hot cocoa and foot massages.
Nope, clearly calling for violence.
The man put hate into the world, and per Galatians 6:7, that's what he reaped.
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I don't think that's a particularly helpful statement, given the person responsible is one person, given that the "left" or the "right" aren't really solid concepts and are rather used to describe individuals that vote once every four years for a party that pretends its eiter "right" or "left".
Furthermore as someone outside of America, I sometimes feel like I care about America more than Americans, given the current government and its dismissive attitudes to liberty.
Aircraft are very heavily regulated to prevent accidents. Any time there's a major incident we move heaven and earth to investigate and mitigate it so that particular failure doesn't happen again. As a result, US airlines have had one fatal crash in the last ~16 years or so.
Have you ever seen me advocate for aircraft deaths to justify the continued existence of human powered aviation? I'm sure you're trying to be clever, but you seem lack the requisite abilities.
"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." - https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
I'm from India. In the last few months it has become exceedingly clear how much racist disdain people like Charlie Kirk have towards people from my country. But what you just said, is just misguided and off putting, nonsense. This line can be used against anyone and can be used to condemn anyone. People should be punished for what they have done, not for what someone thinks they will do.
By the way, I don't have much faith in free speech but I value being able to see people for who they are.
They are just playing his own playbook and using whatever means necessary to push their agenda. These people trying to make him seem like he was some sort of Aristotle the moment he is dead know what they are doing.
If we (charitably) take kevinventullo at their word, then your reply doesn't make much sense to me.
It makes it sound as if kevinventullo ought to mourn Kirk's death much more than Kirk would be mourning kevinventullo's death, and it's likely kevinventullo also has a family who would miss them.
I'm guessing the intent is more like: "While your comment is logically neutral, the subtext or tone is callous."
The problem here is that everyone thinks their ideas aren't radical and that sharing them isn't indoctrination. I once left a religion, peacefully, not loudly or trying to tell anyone else how to live their life. People still in the religion thought I was radical and dangerous to the fabric of society. Charlie invited people to have a debate. Whether he was right or wrong at least to me with my lived experiences feels irrelevant, if that's dangerous to society then society is wrong.
There may be no systematic way to draw the line between dangerous opinions that need to be silenced and those that do not. There may be many people who draw that line incorrectly.
But that doesn't mean there is no such line. Almost everybody agrees there should be some cost to expressing highly dangerous views -- where we disagree is what that cost needs to be for a given view (reputational, financial, capital).
And in this hypothetical world where having dangerous opinions has consequences even though sometimes we draw the line incorrectly, I'm assuming you think your personal views could never be marked as such? We still live in a free society where at least the aim is to not hurt people in any way for expressing their own views.
That's a bizarre position to take. It's in poor taste, certainly, but not something that warrants reporting to the FBI. Comments like those indicate neither an intent to commit similar actions nor that they aided in today's actions.
Yes, there were two more school shootings today you won't hear anything about, certainly not on Hacker News.
But every time a rich white asshole gets shot there's bound to be thousands of comments here and people clutching their pearls and saying it's the end of civil society. But the pile of dead schoolchildren, black people shot by cops, brown people shot by the military, Jews and gay people shot by spree killers? Not a care in the world, that's just background noise.
Trump (or whomever controls his Truth Social account - I seriously doubt he knows how Photoshop works) posts a meme about "Chipocalypse now" bragging about the violence he intends to commit against his own people and no one seems to care. Presidents have been taken down for far less egregious behavior. But it's Chicago, it's full of black people and immigrants so who gives a fuck?
I think you're right. I think Americans are afraid because for the first time in their lives they're being treated the way America has treated everyone who isn't straight, white, Christian and American, that the systems of oppression they built and which feed their empire are actually being turned on them. The only thing I can say is they aren't nearly afraid enough.
Hell, as mentioned a few months ago Melissa Hortman got assassinated and she was a sitting representative. Trump used this opportunity to fling further shit, the far right media sphere immediately went to work claiming he was a marxist and that it was a hit ordered by Walz. Every single person in the Charlie Kirk far right media bubble immediately called for violence, government crackdowns and that it was time to finally stop the far left.
It's a damn shame we've gotten to this point but the reason why we're here is obvious and extremely predictable.
I am at a loss, honestly, it's all over the internet though, not just here. For me, it's the first time I hear of the guy, although I've seen some of TPUsa's work.
I think there is a flywheel of outrage in the USA that is spiraling out of control.
While you can make this comment in an objective way, your vitriolic expression of this is not a good way to approach the situation.
For a simple first question, do you know of Iryna Zarutska? Killed with a pocket knife. Do we need to ban pocket knives too? Or do we need to have foundational discussion about how we quell violence and deter violent behavior in this country?
It’s not a given to presume that gun bans are the answer. And expressing that opinion is not something that should get you shot.
I'm not making a statement about what should be done with guns.
I'm making a statement about a person experiencing the consequences of their stated position.
If he'd staked out a position on the necessity of compelling everyone to engage in autoerotic asphyxiation to achieve maximum satisfaction and then subsequently died from it in a suffocation incident himself, then it wouldn't really be much of a tragedy compared to a bunch of children being randomly strangled to death in their classrooms.
Insofar as I can tell it looks like Charlie Kirk died doing what he loved and in a way that aligned existentially with his zealously professed ideology.
In the context of recent action on exploring removing 2nd amendment rights for trans individuals on mental health grounds AND getting 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' classified as a mental illness, it's difficult to imagine this playing out in a mundane way.
It's not a gun problem that we have in this country. Iryna Zarutska was murdered with a pocket knife. What we have is a spiritual sickness, which cannot be legislated...
The only thing I can think of that the government can do is to clamp down hard on violence, including speech which advocates for violence (e.g. glorifying Luigi Mangione, calling everyone a Nazi/fascist, etc.). Freedom of speech ends where it actually turns into violence.
you might have some blind spots yourself though. the biggest set of spiritual sickness and violence are whats happening to immigrants by ICE, and the support americans are giving to israel to do mass horrors to gazan civilians.
theres tons of violence going on thats much more current than talking about luigi or calling somebody who is a fascist a fascist
I'm not sure we have a "the government" with all the federation involved; and a treacherous administration.
Reducing rights to speech that advocates for violence makes some sense, but what I'd like to see is reducing the lies and disinformation. Install a duty of candor to everyone who speaks in greatly public ways
>Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk said of gun deaths on April 5, 2023, "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."<
I hate the idea that the reason the perpetrators keep killing is because the victims didn't have enough love and sunlight in their heart. The far right has convinced us to never think about problems systematically and always blame the victim and this never ending thread of 'fascism wouldn't exist if we were nicer to fascists' shows their vision of the world won. Good luck teaching people violence is bad through social media and not by totally reimagining our hate speech and media laws
People who get excited enough about politics in this country to shoot someone are stupid. Love him or hate him, Charlie is just somebody's puppet. If you see them on twitter or television, they are puppets. Puppeteers are smart enough to stay out of the spotlight. There is only one person in recent memory who was smart enough to go after a puppeteer.
> If you see them on twitter or television, they are puppets. Puppeteers are smart enough to stay out of the spotlight. There is only one person in recent memory who was smart enough to go after a puppeteer.
Sounds like you know more than you're saying. So it's someone controlling him or blackmailing him or something? Who's puppet do you think he is?
I never watched him and only vaguely remembered his name when it just hit the news.
A person does not have to be a _neither here no there_ to be a conduit by the wealthy and powerful. Single voter issues are another means.
_Rob Schenck_ [0] anti-abortion activism was a great tool for politicians to gain power. _The Dark Money Game_ [1] documentary goes it great length of highlight this feature of "democracy". His mind set at the time was that the wealthy are paying to end abortion and that is a good thing. Indirectly, he helped the speaker of the house, Larry Householder [2], gain enough power to launder money through bribery and force tax payers to bail to a corrupt power company's fail nuclear infrastructure [3].
Rob Schenck has since supported legalized abortion after sitting on the bed side of a women who slowly suffered to death from complications which an abortion would of kept her alive.
Not to detract from your larger point, but if he had gotten a 'real job', it's almost certain the tab for that job would also be picked up by high-net-worth individuals and corporate benefactors. Except that job would be in the direct service of making them richer rather than promoting their ideology (which is probably in service of making them richer after all anyway). I mean wouldn't Fox News talking head count as a real job?
Almost all of the builders, mechanics, landscapers, chefs, etc that I know are also employed by corporations. If the only 'real jobs' are independent contractors then I guess we're all house slaves.
One might wonder, however, if it's kind of different now because it can be "less personal?"
Like, it doesn't have to be "a small number of very powerful rich benefactors who know exactly what they're doing" -- it could be some less rich, or less powerful people who know how to leverage "the internet;" or even something like "the internet sort of made this on its own?"
Best way I've ever seen it put. There is no "essential" Charlie Kirk, just as there's no "essential" of any of these talking heads. They are a reflection of beliefs from the person's payroll they're on. He didn't even think twice about the Epstein files with the MAGA base imploded, and was happy to say - to a camera - that he "Trusts his friends" to sort it out.
>"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" - Charlie Kirk, 2023
If trump somehow does not use this to push what everyone has rightfully labeled his authoritarian nazi agenda on the entirety then I will refrain from the very offensive things I want to say about charlie kirk.
However if I start hearing about another illegal use of military force in america in response to this the asshole in me currently trying to force the door open will be let free and never silenced again. republicans need to stop larping as fucking chuck norris, kevin sorbo or whatever 90s macho man they love so much and realize who shot first to bring us to this point because it wasn't the guy who killed kirk.
Adult Utah Valley University student here. CS-Humanities dual major. My two cents.
I feel sick to my stomach. Charlie was a pundit but he didn't deserve this. Not at our university. I've always felt in danger at UVU as the whole complex makes Michel Foucault look like a Hebraic prophet. I wasn't on campus at the time- I'm currently attending a guest class at BYU across town.
I'm going to drop out of university. There's no point anymore. The society I wanted to live in as a child has started to eat itself. What makes me sick is that before the announcement my attitude was very, "let's make cynical jokes; he'll most likely be ok..." this all happened 15 minutes away from my house. I'm afraid of violence toward my left-leaning family. I'm currently battling chronic illness (lungs, throat, stomach. Don't smoke!) and I can't take this stress anymore. I love you uncle Douglas Engelbart; I wanted to take on the work Alan Kay did in his life. I wanted to make tools to expand human intellect. I wanted to help make good on the Licklider dream. Now my dream is manipulate a doctor into giving me a diagnosis so I can enter into palliative care and take Methadone until I die.
You and your fellow students experienced something extremely traumatic. Perhaps go to therapy first to process how you are feeling before making any significant life choices.
I'd just like to say that I feel you and understand you. I'm a university student as well, feeling a similar way. I'm in Electrical Engineering, and I feel disillusioned with the way society is degenerating. Best of luck, friend. There still are good people out there. We may not be able to cure or fix society or even stop it from degenerating, but you can always build a life with loved ones and create your own world <3
Yikes, that's a rough outlook. Not disagreeing with it, just poking at it a bit from a distance, and hoping that you experience a change in direction after a couple days.
Why should I play this game of pretend?
Remembering through a secondhand sorrow
Such a great son and wonderful friend
Oh, don't the tears just pour?
I could curl up and hide in my room
Here in my bed, still sobbing tomorrow
I could give in to all of the gloom
But tell me, tell me what for
Why should I have a heavy heart?
Why should I start to break in pieces?
Why should I go and fall apart for you?
Why should I play the grieving child and lie
Saying that I miss you
And that my world has gone dark without your light?
I will sing no requiem tonight
We gave you the world, you threw it away
Leaving these broken pieces behind you
Everything wasted, nothing to say
So I can sing no requiem
And hear your voice, and feel you near
Within these words, I finally find you
And now that I know that you are still here
I will sing no requiem tonight
Why should I have a heavy heart?
Why should I say I'll keep you with me?
Why should I go and fall apart for you?
Why should I play the grieving child and lie
Saying that I miss you
And that my world has gone dark without your light? (I can see your light)
I will sing no requiem
Tonight
'Cause when the villains fall, the kingdoms never weep
No one lights a candle to remember
No, no one mourns at all
When they lay them down to sleep
So, don't tell me that I didn't have it right
Don't tell me that it wasn't black and white
After all you put me through
Don't say it wasn't true
That you were not the monster
That I knew
'Cause I cannot play the grieving child and lie
Saying that I miss you
And that my world has gone dark
I will sing no requiem
I will sing no requiem
I will sing no requiem
Tonight
Do leftists, especially the ones one reddit, not realize that to a normal person, Kirk wasn't George Lincoln Rockwell, but just some boring, establishment Christian, conservative dweeb doing the well-worn campus "debate me bro" shtick of Shapiro and Crowder before him, and that the optics of them celebrating his death are really, really bad?
By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer have a need to express it aggressively.
The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.
If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.