A man who extended grace to you in person and helped you personally to promote your book was shot in the jugular while he was engaging in open discussion of ideas on a university campus—and you decide to take the opportunity to write about how orange man is bad? Classy. Real classy Richard.
Sorry I guess that was vague enough for you to act like you don’t know what he meant. I guess you should instead look at what miller’s wife, Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, and Laura loomer said.
I don’t think he needs to do a whole article of murder is bad. It’s fully ok for him to look at the turn the discussion’s taking and saying this murder is being used as a bad faith argument.
Maybe get your head out of Twitter and take The Economist approach: given an important incident, take just enough time for some rational thought, followed by enough cognitive cycles to mull things over and evidence to surface - before publishing.
Insta-posting based on Tweets is not intellectual work.
People will insta-post regardless. People all over the internet are insta-posting. May as well have some voices of restraint such as Richard insta-posting as well.
Notably, Kirk himself said that shootings were worth keeping 2A. I disagree and think that’s heinous, but at least he was willing to be up front about it and not hide behind “thoughts and prayers”.
And he got shot as he was answering a question about gun control, the irony can’t write itself better. This man’s last words were literally ‘gang violence’, jeez. Another family and group of children growing up without a father, tragic.
Easy to imagine a roles-reversed scenario, where a BLM activist is killed by an attacker with multiple convictions. In that scenario, you'd have right-wingers crowing about how the BLM activist got the police-free world they asked for.
Just give it a bit more, and we'll be totally incapable of any sort of cost-benefit discussion in situations where lives are at stake...
I won’t celebrate murder. But I won’t mourn Kirk either.
He argued on many occasions that he felt the deaths of innocent people were an acceptable cost for the 2A. So, in an ironic twist worthy of the Twilight Zone, his point was proven, I guess?
If you can’t mourn Kirk, mourn for his family. He had a wife and two kids. His parents have experienced the most painful possible event, losing their child.
I assume you hold the same opinion of the attempted assassination of then-78 year old Presidential candidate Donald Trump; totally fine and not worth talking about?
If I say that the occasional crazy person being radicalized by radical ideologies doesn’t justify the government restricting political speech, and am then gunned down by someone who was radicalized by online Marxists, would my death similarly deserve less sympathy?
Who's saying that? Look at the syllogism of my argument first before responding.
If you wanna sympathize with Kirk, be my guest. But he argued that "some deaths" are worth unfettered gun ownership. Well, he's now one of the "some deaths." and that's an ironic case of be careful what you wish for.
Right! I, personally, am saying that although radical political content probably does radicalize a nonzero number of people into committing murder and assassinations, the government should nevertheless not crack down on political speech.
Given that I am making that statement, I am curious: if I am assassinated, would my death be dismissed as “an ironic case of be careful what you wish for” and not worth mourning?
Maybe - depends on how dedicated you are, Tovarich. But who you choose to mourn is your business. I don’t have to mourn you, or him. People gotta live the consequences of their decision making. If that makes me evil in your eyes, fine, but the late Mr. Kirk, I should point out, was perfectly fine so long as other fathers died for his right; I’d argue thats just as evil.
Approximately 40K Americans died in car accidents last year. Many of those Americans are themselves vehicle drivers. They felt the risk of a road accident was worth getting places faster. Does that make them less deserving of sympathy?
Guns are also used for sport. And obviously self defense, which is sometimes a special case where killing is good, and other times involves no killing at all.
Do you think that most gun owners and gun rights advocates want to commit murder? Seems to me that the vast majority of guns aren’t bought for that.
Of course. And cars are also used for driving into crowds of pedestrians to mow them down by terrorists or loaded up with explosives and blown up by insurgents/guerrilla fighters.
But that's not a car's default/intended use, while fundamentally guns are for killing, or at the very minimum, maiming, causing damage to living things.
BTW I'm not arguing here for pro or anti gun position -- but against the car comparison.
And no, I don't think most legal gun owners/advocates want to have them to commit murder. Of course not. But as you yourself said, many probably consider some kinds of KILLING or maiming good (self defense is the obvious one). They probably don't want guns that are bad at killing/maiming.
As a aside, I can understand the "the gun homicides are regrettable but WORTH IT cost of the right to own guns and use them for legitimate purposes" position. I'm not sure if it's my position (it's a moot issue for me personally as I live outside US and the only kind of gun I could have is a hunting one, kept in a locked cabinet ;) but it's certainly honest and I can imagine assuming that position if I lived in the US.
A good analogy is legalising narcotics: you can honestly argue that you prefer the freedom to put whatever people want into their bodies and accept the cost of likely higher prevalence of addiction and overdose. I'm sympathetic to that argument. You can not, however, argue that heroin and fentanyl are like paracetamol, and the addiction and ODs are unfortunate and avoidable misuses. Their fundamental pharmacology is what makes them inherently dangerous, just as a gun’s fundamental design is what makes it lethal.
False equivalency. We tightly regulate driving and car ownership. Also, I absolutely want more safety features, better driving instruction, stronger DWI laws. I don’t want anyone to die on the road, and we should aspire for that goal.
If Kirk felt the same way about driving as he did guns, he’d say something to the effect of, “several deaths per year are worth it to preserve the right to drive recklessly, or operate unsafe vehicles.”
I actually agree with that. But there's a difference between someone who gets lung cancer because of ignorance or super serious mental issues that stop them from stopping smoking vs someone who decides to accept the risk. I smoked for 20 years before I stopped and if I get lung cancer OF COURSE I'D BE SAD AND PISSED OFF. But it'd also be pretty much totally self inflicted: I'd have taken a gamble/accepted risk and Iost.
I think the murder of Charlie Kirk is a bigger deal than you’re making it out to be, first, because of who he was, second, because it does say something about “the left.”
Kirk wasn’t an elected politician. If someone assassinated Trump, that would be wrong, but at least you could argue that there was provocation. Kirk’s thing was holding public debates. At least by the standards of American conservatism, he wasn’t that extreme. (In fact, he was one of the main forces opposing the Nazification of the right.) Are we now at risk when we give a talk at a university? This was different from killing a congressman.
We don’t know who the killer was or what his motives were. Theoretically, it could have been a groyper or a crazy person with no agenda at all. But most likely it was a leftist. And the left appears to be increasingly pro violence. There's widespread support for Hamas. Mainstream figures celebrated Luigi Mangione. Supposedly 57.6% of “left of center” Americans think it is at least “partially acceptable” to destroy a Tesla dealership. 55.2% say it is at least “somewhat justified” to kill Trump. (You could argue that this is a response to Trump’s unique evil, but I suspect you’d have similar results for almost any Republican president.) Obviously, there are major problems on the right, but the left is also moving backwards.
That there a bunch of leftists who openly support violence says a lot about the left. That one of them happened to actually shoot someone says a lot less. There's just not enough political assassinations for "who does more political assassinations?" to be a useful measure of which side supports violence more. What one guy did can never be strong evidence for what a group of millions of people are like. You can believe the left is violent, but I think the case for that should look more like "lots of leftists say they support violence" than "the left has had 5 major political assassinations and the right has had 4" or whatever the actual numbers are
It boggles my mind that the right doesn’t notice how inflammatory its rhetoric is, nor does it seem to notice that it is, in fact, the more violent side. Even in the responses today, every Democratic lawmaker has condemned this in the strongest possible terms, while Republican lawmakers are calling for blood. Not to mention their cruel and tasteless jokes every time a Democrat is attacked.
My thoughts are with Charlie Kirk’s family. This is a terrible tragedy, and the last thing America needs is more political violence. We’re hanging by a thread as it is.
Yes they're already all out there convinced it was a professional job. Very very similar to the Trump assassination attempt, and just like that one, it is going to end up being a random crazy person. Thing is, Utah is one of the most heavily armed states in the country, hunting is very popular, and there are fun clubs and shooting ranges of all types all over the place here. Hell my brother enters these crazy shooting competitions where they time you running through obstacles shooting pop up bad guys, almost every weekend. Very typical activity here, so there are thousands and thousands of people who could make that shot and they don't need to be former military or CIA or whatever.
A very sickening situation though. It's a beautiful day here. I also accidentally saw the video of him gushing blood when scrolling Twitter and my stomach still hurts.
I literally grew up watching way too many liveleak videos as a teenage boy and even that close up video had me a bit unnerved. I don’t want to get into the gory details since we’ve all seen it but Jesus that was brutal. Almost looked like movie levels of fake the first time I saw, I had to watch it three times to confirm it and cleanse my mind of it. Damn…
The problem is that people’s identity has become so interwoven with their political views that any challenge to their party’s narratives feels like a personal attack on them. They constantly seek validation and reinforcement of their worldview, which is built on an oversimplified “heroes vs. villains” setup. In this tribal state, truth is less important than anything that flatters their side.
They treat any evidence that contradicts their narrative as false because it threatens their identity, not because it is false. So they default to explanations that preserve their belief system. That’s why in today’s climate, the ecosystem of interpretation is more politically powerful than the reality of any given act or event.
The Minnesota shooter, Vance Boelter, is a good example. Most people agree that murdering elected officials is wrong, even from the other party. You’d expect broad condemnation with little partisan controversy. Instead, there was a debate, not about what he did, but to which “team” he belonged.
In spite of clear evidence that Boelter was a conservative (with ties to Christian nationalism), much of MAGA insisted he was on the left. A sane person’s response would be, “Yes, he votes like me, but he’s a murderer. He doesn’t represent my values.” But because his existence threatens their narrative, they had to find a different interpretation.
At this point, people are living in a cognitive matrix. Anything that disrupts their belief that they aren’t in the matrix becomes an existential threat, and must be reinterpreted, denied, or rejected. Scapegoats are frequently picked to maintain this reality and increase the group cohesion, the consensus of which is significantly more important than aligning with truth/reality.
This is what happens when prominent politicians line up on mainstream television night after night and promote the Right as the second coming of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Trying to get out in front of this with your lame message turns my stomach. The Democrat Party is guilty of the most vile and violent rhetoric, and you’re trying here to brush it aside. C’mon, man.
Three weeks ago Stephen Miller went on TV and called Democrats a domestic extremist organization. This isn't some yahoo on TV. He's Trump's most loyal advisor.
lol, Trump calls democrats animals and threatens to be the rights “vengeance.” His homeboy miller call democrats radicals. People are joining ice for the chance to smash immigrants’ faces into the concrete. But sure.
The murders of the Democrat couple in Minnesota occurred after she voted to withdraw state support for illegal immigrants. Yeah that must have been a Trump supporter angry at her stealing MAGAs clothes. Quick on the draw though I'd have to say.
This would be an intelligent and thoughtful article if you addressed the wall to wall praise for the shooter on sites such as BlueSky, Reddit, Twitter. It would be one thing if this was a singular act condemned by all, but the fact that a sizable portion of the country reacts with erotic passion at the sight of blood pouring like a fountain from the throat of a youtuber they dislike is a bit concerning.
I see tons of awful stuff, but I also see every single Democratic lawmaker and all the other various leaders of progressive causes and MSM condemning this in the strongest possible terms.
Random people are just incredibly shitty online in a way they’d never be in real life.
Elected and MSM democrats behavior is reasonable, so they use the mantra "the media lies! the politicians are liars!" to call them evil people.
Elected and MSM republicans behavior is unhinged, so they use the mantra "the media lies! the politicians are liars!" to imply they are actually good and well intentioned people.
MSM and elected Democrats do lie a lot. But I agree that in this case they’re reacting sensibly.
Elected Republicans and Fox are similar. See Mitch McConnell’s and Kevin McCarthy’s reactions to the Paul Pelosi attack. Trump himself is much worse than the norm in either party.
Yeah but the average left-wing person doesn’t take their cues from politicians they take them from memes saying how epic it is that Charlie Kirk got killed
It’s great that elected democrats are grieving. But the leftists I know irl do celebrate every prominent rightists’ death and also backed Luigi. The progressive base really is unhinged.
Where do you live, and what is your demo? I’m in SFC. I don’t know a single person who voted for Trump. I doubt that more than a handful even know who Luigi is, much less celebrate him.
This is like saying every Republican primary voter has a white hood in their closet.
Indeed people in this country should not be murdered for political speech - or for going to the grocery store or school or church. Gun violence in this country in a singular sickness and one I hope we can find the humanity to confront. Mr. Kirk said he believed that deaths “every single year” from gun violence were the price we have to pay to have the second amendment to protect our “God-given rights.” I deeply disagreed with him on this and virtually everything he ever said. But there is nothing okay about the ease with which people can obtain and shoot guns at people for any number of indefensible reasons including to silence the speech of someone with whom you disagree. I will pray for his wife and young children as I do for all victims of gun violence in this country.
What a shitty, psuedo-intellectual take on a horrible event.
Wow excellent counter argument. Really gave me a lot to think about. I like how you directly addressed the core point of the article
Tell us what you think is incorrect in this take. Do you think blaming it “on the Left” is a similarly bad take? If not, why
i just canceled my subscription. i no longer want to financially support mr. hanania. this was just an apologia to 'the left.'
Seem quite obviously correct? What specific problem do you have?
A man who extended grace to you in person and helped you personally to promote your book was shot in the jugular while he was engaging in open discussion of ideas on a university campus—and you decide to take the opportunity to write about how orange man is bad? Classy. Real classy Richard.
Have you heard of “whataboutism”, per chance?
Have you seen what Stephen Miller (Trump official) said immediately after the shooting?
Enlighten me, Jac. If it’s his tweet where he calls for defeating evil then I’m not sure it’s the ammo for your political point that you think it is…
Sorry I guess that was vague enough for you to act like you don’t know what he meant. I guess you should instead look at what miller’s wife, Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, and Laura loomer said.
Or the Jan 6er who posted a video saying “we’re coming for you.” Or that dude calling this the Reichstag Fire, but in a good way.
I don’t think he needs to do a whole article of murder is bad. It’s fully ok for him to look at the turn the discussion’s taking and saying this murder is being used as a bad faith argument.
A good man was shot and you take this opportunity to make it about Trump?
i just canceled my subscription. i no longer want to financially support mr. hanania. this was just an apologia to 'the left.'
Maybe get your head out of Twitter and take The Economist approach: given an important incident, take just enough time for some rational thought, followed by enough cognitive cycles to mull things over and evidence to surface - before publishing.
Insta-posting based on Tweets is not intellectual work.
People will insta-post regardless. People all over the internet are insta-posting. May as well have some voices of restraint such as Richard insta-posting as well.
I’m paying for this. Preference has now been noted.
Notably, Kirk himself said that shootings were worth keeping 2A. I disagree and think that’s heinous, but at least he was willing to be up front about it and not hide behind “thoughts and prayers”.
Gracious reply. You’re glad he’s dead and thought he brought it on himself.
I am perfectly capable of saying offensive things for myself thank you, so no need to put words in my mouth. Fuck off.
And he got shot as he was answering a question about gun control, the irony can’t write itself better. This man’s last words were literally ‘gang violence’, jeez. Another family and group of children growing up without a father, tragic.
Easy to imagine a roles-reversed scenario, where a BLM activist is killed by an attacker with multiple convictions. In that scenario, you'd have right-wingers crowing about how the BLM activist got the police-free world they asked for.
Just give it a bit more, and we'll be totally incapable of any sort of cost-benefit discussion in situations where lives are at stake...
I won’t celebrate murder. But I won’t mourn Kirk either.
He argued on many occasions that he felt the deaths of innocent people were an acceptable cost for the 2A. So, in an ironic twist worthy of the Twilight Zone, his point was proven, I guess?
Yeah it’s very hard to have sympathy for Kirk. He was giddy about the Pelosi attacks and the Minnesota murders as well.
Still, obviously, it’s not good that this happened.
What did he do after the Minnesota murders?
https://x.com/KatieMiller/status/1965872707297489260
No matter what your views on him, there are now two kids under 5 who are going to grow up without a dad.
Never said it wasn’t sad. But again, this is the sort of situation that he himself found acceptable. Can’t we acknowledge that?
If you can’t mourn Kirk, mourn for his family. He had a wife and two kids. His parents have experienced the most painful possible event, losing their child.
Oh, I do. But can’t we acknowledge that this is what he wanted?
Paul Pelosi was old and lives his life. Kirk was about dead in his prime.
So people have a sell by date?
Early or violent death are worse yes. 100%
Sure but the death and assault should still be looked at as tragic first and foremost
I assume you hold the same opinion of the attempted assassination of then-78 year old Presidential candidate Donald Trump; totally fine and not worth talking about?
You mean, that staged event? Yes, even though it was clearly fake.
Conspiracy theorist.
Yes, it’s ironic. And he also mocked Paul Pelosi. His family still doesn’t deserve this. Whatever he said, his children are innocent.
Not saying they did! Just pointing out the irony of someone getting what they wished for.
If I say that the occasional crazy person being radicalized by radical ideologies doesn’t justify the government restricting political speech, and am then gunned down by someone who was radicalized by online Marxists, would my death similarly deserve less sympathy?
Who's saying that? Look at the syllogism of my argument first before responding.
If you wanna sympathize with Kirk, be my guest. But he argued that "some deaths" are worth unfettered gun ownership. Well, he's now one of the "some deaths." and that's an ironic case of be careful what you wish for.
Right! I, personally, am saying that although radical political content probably does radicalize a nonzero number of people into committing murder and assassinations, the government should nevertheless not crack down on political speech.
Given that I am making that statement, I am curious: if I am assassinated, would my death be dismissed as “an ironic case of be careful what you wish for” and not worth mourning?
Maybe - depends on how dedicated you are, Tovarich. But who you choose to mourn is your business. I don’t have to mourn you, or him. People gotta live the consequences of their decision making. If that makes me evil in your eyes, fine, but the late Mr. Kirk, I should point out, was perfectly fine so long as other fathers died for his right; I’d argue thats just as evil.
When did he say that shootings are “perfectly fine?”
You’re strawmanning him.
He said they’re worth the price for his freedom. I’m not straw manning your hero; you’re excusing him.
Approximately 40K Americans died in car accidents last year. Many of those Americans are themselves vehicle drivers. They felt the risk of a road accident was worth getting places faster. Does that make them less deserving of sympathy?
The difference is cars' explicit purpose is not killing. Guns' is. Cars which don't kill are PERFECTED. Guns that don't kill are LITERALLY POINTLESS.
Sympathy is due, because all such deaths are tragic but this is closer to Russian roulette than driving.
Guns are also used for sport. And obviously self defense, which is sometimes a special case where killing is good, and other times involves no killing at all.
Do you think that most gun owners and gun rights advocates want to commit murder? Seems to me that the vast majority of guns aren’t bought for that.
Of course. And cars are also used for driving into crowds of pedestrians to mow them down by terrorists or loaded up with explosives and blown up by insurgents/guerrilla fighters.
But that's not a car's default/intended use, while fundamentally guns are for killing, or at the very minimum, maiming, causing damage to living things.
BTW I'm not arguing here for pro or anti gun position -- but against the car comparison.
And no, I don't think most legal gun owners/advocates want to have them to commit murder. Of course not. But as you yourself said, many probably consider some kinds of KILLING or maiming good (self defense is the obvious one). They probably don't want guns that are bad at killing/maiming.
As a aside, I can understand the "the gun homicides are regrettable but WORTH IT cost of the right to own guns and use them for legitimate purposes" position. I'm not sure if it's my position (it's a moot issue for me personally as I live outside US and the only kind of gun I could have is a hunting one, kept in a locked cabinet ;) but it's certainly honest and I can imagine assuming that position if I lived in the US.
A good analogy is legalising narcotics: you can honestly argue that you prefer the freedom to put whatever people want into their bodies and accept the cost of likely higher prevalence of addiction and overdose. I'm sympathetic to that argument. You can not, however, argue that heroin and fentanyl are like paracetamol, and the addiction and ODs are unfortunate and avoidable misuses. Their fundamental pharmacology is what makes them inherently dangerous, just as a gun’s fundamental design is what makes it lethal.
False equivalency. We tightly regulate driving and car ownership. Also, I absolutely want more safety features, better driving instruction, stronger DWI laws. I don’t want anyone to die on the road, and we should aspire for that goal.
If Kirk felt the same way about driving as he did guns, he’d say something to the effect of, “several deaths per year are worth it to preserve the right to drive recklessly, or operate unsafe vehicles.”
In this video he explicitly advocates measures to reduce gun deaths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVc9l6pjxtI
But not enough to prevent his own shooting, apparently.
You’re conflating “A is an acceptable cost for B” with “there’s nothing to mourn about A.”
Kirk never suggested that gun homicides aren’t tragedies.
I actually agree with that. But there's a difference between someone who gets lung cancer because of ignorance or super serious mental issues that stop them from stopping smoking vs someone who decides to accept the risk. I smoked for 20 years before I stopped and if I get lung cancer OF COURSE I'D BE SAD AND PISSED OFF. But it'd also be pretty much totally self inflicted: I'd have taken a gamble/accepted risk and Iost.
Apparently he did, because he said they were a worthy coat,
I think the murder of Charlie Kirk is a bigger deal than you’re making it out to be, first, because of who he was, second, because it does say something about “the left.”
Kirk wasn’t an elected politician. If someone assassinated Trump, that would be wrong, but at least you could argue that there was provocation. Kirk’s thing was holding public debates. At least by the standards of American conservatism, he wasn’t that extreme. (In fact, he was one of the main forces opposing the Nazification of the right.) Are we now at risk when we give a talk at a university? This was different from killing a congressman.
We don’t know who the killer was or what his motives were. Theoretically, it could have been a groyper or a crazy person with no agenda at all. But most likely it was a leftist. And the left appears to be increasingly pro violence. There's widespread support for Hamas. Mainstream figures celebrated Luigi Mangione. Supposedly 57.6% of “left of center” Americans think it is at least “partially acceptable” to destroy a Tesla dealership. 55.2% say it is at least “somewhat justified” to kill Trump. (You could argue that this is a response to Trump’s unique evil, but I suspect you’d have similar results for almost any Republican president.) Obviously, there are major problems on the right, but the left is also moving backwards.
That there a bunch of leftists who openly support violence says a lot about the left. That one of them happened to actually shoot someone says a lot less. There's just not enough political assassinations for "who does more political assassinations?" to be a useful measure of which side supports violence more. What one guy did can never be strong evidence for what a group of millions of people are like. You can believe the left is violent, but I think the case for that should look more like "lots of leftists say they support violence" than "the left has had 5 major political assassinations and the right has had 4" or whatever the actual numbers are
I’ll lay money it wasn’t a leftist. It’s Utah, which has ten million guns and no liberals.
It’s going to be some Mormon kid who thought Kirk was possessed by the Devil or some other weird shit.
It boggles my mind that the right doesn’t notice how inflammatory its rhetoric is, nor does it seem to notice that it is, in fact, the more violent side. Even in the responses today, every Democratic lawmaker has condemned this in the strongest possible terms, while Republican lawmakers are calling for blood. Not to mention their cruel and tasteless jokes every time a Democrat is attacked.
My thoughts are with Charlie Kirk’s family. This is a terrible tragedy, and the last thing America needs is more political violence. We’re hanging by a thread as it is.
Have the decency to be quiet for at least a day.
but the rightoids can call for civil war and race war as loud as they want immediately? xdddddddd
Demonstrate decency yourself, and you will get decency in turn
I’m waiting for the unhinged conspiracy theories from conservatives since the killer is still loose. It’s either gonna be Dems or Mossad. Can’t wait.
Yes they're already all out there convinced it was a professional job. Very very similar to the Trump assassination attempt, and just like that one, it is going to end up being a random crazy person. Thing is, Utah is one of the most heavily armed states in the country, hunting is very popular, and there are fun clubs and shooting ranges of all types all over the place here. Hell my brother enters these crazy shooting competitions where they time you running through obstacles shooting pop up bad guys, almost every weekend. Very typical activity here, so there are thousands and thousands of people who could make that shot and they don't need to be former military or CIA or whatever.
A very sickening situation though. It's a beautiful day here. I also accidentally saw the video of him gushing blood when scrolling Twitter and my stomach still hurts.
I literally grew up watching way too many liveleak videos as a teenage boy and even that close up video had me a bit unnerved. I don’t want to get into the gory details since we’ve all seen it but Jesus that was brutal. Almost looked like movie levels of fake the first time I saw, I had to watch it three times to confirm it and cleanse my mind of it. Damn…
*GUN clubs. Bad autocorrect there.
Or the CIA and the mythical ‘Deep State’.
The problem is that people’s identity has become so interwoven with their political views that any challenge to their party’s narratives feels like a personal attack on them. They constantly seek validation and reinforcement of their worldview, which is built on an oversimplified “heroes vs. villains” setup. In this tribal state, truth is less important than anything that flatters their side.
They treat any evidence that contradicts their narrative as false because it threatens their identity, not because it is false. So they default to explanations that preserve their belief system. That’s why in today’s climate, the ecosystem of interpretation is more politically powerful than the reality of any given act or event.
The Minnesota shooter, Vance Boelter, is a good example. Most people agree that murdering elected officials is wrong, even from the other party. You’d expect broad condemnation with little partisan controversy. Instead, there was a debate, not about what he did, but to which “team” he belonged.
In spite of clear evidence that Boelter was a conservative (with ties to Christian nationalism), much of MAGA insisted he was on the left. A sane person’s response would be, “Yes, he votes like me, but he’s a murderer. He doesn’t represent my values.” But because his existence threatens their narrative, they had to find a different interpretation.
At this point, people are living in a cognitive matrix. Anything that disrupts their belief that they aren’t in the matrix becomes an existential threat, and must be reinterpreted, denied, or rejected. Scapegoats are frequently picked to maintain this reality and increase the group cohesion, the consensus of which is significantly more important than aligning with truth/reality.
This is what happens when prominent politicians line up on mainstream television night after night and promote the Right as the second coming of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Trying to get out in front of this with your lame message turns my stomach. The Democrat Party is guilty of the most vile and violent rhetoric, and you’re trying here to brush it aside. C’mon, man.
Three weeks ago Stephen Miller went on TV and called Democrats a domestic extremist organization. This isn't some yahoo on TV. He's Trump's most loyal advisor.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6377384186112
lol, Trump calls democrats animals and threatens to be the rights “vengeance.” His homeboy miller call democrats radicals. People are joining ice for the chance to smash immigrants’ faces into the concrete. But sure.
The murders of the Democrat couple in Minnesota occurred after she voted to withdraw state support for illegal immigrants. Yeah that must have been a Trump supporter angry at her stealing MAGAs clothes. Quick on the draw though I'd have to say.
He had a list of seventy other Democrats he planned to murder.
This would be an intelligent and thoughtful article if you addressed the wall to wall praise for the shooter on sites such as BlueSky, Reddit, Twitter. It would be one thing if this was a singular act condemned by all, but the fact that a sizable portion of the country reacts with erotic passion at the sight of blood pouring like a fountain from the throat of a youtuber they dislike is a bit concerning.
I see tons of awful stuff, but I also see every single Democratic lawmaker and all the other various leaders of progressive causes and MSM condemning this in the strongest possible terms.
Random people are just incredibly shitty online in a way they’d never be in real life.
Elected and MSM democrats behavior is reasonable, so they use the mantra "the media lies! the politicians are liars!" to call them evil people.
Elected and MSM republicans behavior is unhinged, so they use the mantra "the media lies! the politicians are liars!" to imply they are actually good and well intentioned people.
MSM and elected Democrats do lie a lot. But I agree that in this case they’re reacting sensibly.
Elected Republicans and Fox are similar. See Mitch McConnell’s and Kevin McCarthy’s reactions to the Paul Pelosi attack. Trump himself is much worse than the norm in either party.
? Kevin McCarthy famously joked on the House floor about Paul Pelosi.
Yeah but the average left-wing person doesn’t take their cues from politicians they take them from memes saying how epic it is that Charlie Kirk got killed
As an average left-wing person, I can assure you that’s not the case.
OK, perhaps I was too broad. But the psycho lefties on Reddit/Bluesky/Twitter do not gaf what politicians or msm say.
It’s great that elected democrats are grieving. But the leftists I know irl do celebrate every prominent rightists’ death and also backed Luigi. The progressive base really is unhinged.
Where do you live, and what is your demo? I’m in SFC. I don’t know a single person who voted for Trump. I doubt that more than a handful even know who Luigi is, much less celebrate him.
This is like saying every Republican primary voter has a white hood in their closet.
I disagree with you on so many issues, but subscribe because I appreciate your measured take.
Your Classical Liberalism is on life support.
Indeed people in this country should not be murdered for political speech - or for going to the grocery store or school or church. Gun violence in this country in a singular sickness and one I hope we can find the humanity to confront. Mr. Kirk said he believed that deaths “every single year” from gun violence were the price we have to pay to have the second amendment to protect our “God-given rights.” I deeply disagreed with him on this and virtually everything he ever said. But there is nothing okay about the ease with which people can obtain and shoot guns at people for any number of indefensible reasons including to silence the speech of someone with whom you disagree. I will pray for his wife and young children as I do for all victims of gun violence in this country.