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.
>> 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.
> 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.
There were votes involved (and Nazis pointed out after the war that in a First Past the Post system like the UK they had enough votes for total power) but, like Charlie Kirk, Hitler and the Nazis had the backing of the rich and the powerful.
That's why both of them managed to get their message out to so many people. That might then convert to votes, but are the voters that believed the propaganda at fault as much as the people who paid for it, those who created it, and those that spread it?
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!
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
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.
this is what was going on before his assassination:
"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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Another way this observation is manifested is how out of nowhere you have countries voting in extremist parties and politicians.
> 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
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."
> 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.
> 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.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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"
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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'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.
"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 corporate veil may be a nice legal cover, 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.
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”.
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.
> 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.
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.
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[...]
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.
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.
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."
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.
In light of the top post by dang, I went to check the Bin Laden death announcement comment section, and there was no such call against celebration despite several comments doing it. To be fair, it was 14(!) years ago, but I do really doubt we'd have seen a similarly worded one had Bin Laden been killed last week instead. They're different people with diffferent acts, but the claim in the post is exactly that it's about the concept and that it shouldn't matter who the victim was.
You’re now comparing the reactions to the death of someone who led one of the world’s largest terrorist organisations for decades with that of someone mainly known for being good at debates.
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".
"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."
He was not even close to being good at debates. A flurry of shit that all needs to be rebuked in limited time by inexperienced college kids isn’t “being good at debates”.
Whenever he had to argue against mature debaters like destiny on equal footing he seemed like a fool.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
Not only that, but he was falsely accusing transgender people of being mass shooters. Do you know many transgender are being attacked and assassinated every year?
To be fair, Charlie Kirk never debated in good faith. He had the same basic talking points, constantly pivoted to make his interlocutor appear to adopt the worst strawman argument.
And these tent events with him rapid fire arguing many interlocutors were silly. Nobody learned anything, he only gained lots of 10 second short form video clips of him “owning” some feminist or leftist or whatever. Lots of slop for the YouTube / TikTok algo to pull lots of young people down the political outrage rabbit hole.
His recent debate at Oxford Union with Tilly Middlehuest was pretty eye opening when she was interviewed after. She had analyzed his speaking style and he was insanely predictable. A Robot Rubio, if you will. The interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A
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.
> 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.
Really? All I know of him was was his "What is a woman?" stunt, which seemed bad-faith.
It seemed just try to be a jab against trans identity without even bothering to make an outright argument. You could do the same shtick with "What is a Republican?" or anything else.
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:
It probably seemed bad faith because you did not like the outcome. Usually what happens there is someone says "a woman is anyone who thinks he/she/ze/xe/they/it is a woman". At that point no further argument is required, most people can think about that definition on their own and realize that it is dumb.
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.
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.
2+2? That’s 1! In Z mod 3 field. Gender is a social construct. How we define numbers in a field? Also a construct. Sorry you’re dumb and can’t figure that out
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.
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.
I disagree, I think his positions are generally quite logical and based on facts. I think it is also clearly a positive when positions are predictable because positions that follow logically should be predictable. If you mean his "style," I don't know what that means or how that matters, even the so-called "most qualified presidential candidate in human history," as she was actually numerous times, Kamala Harris was quite predictable in what she would say in terms of being a "middle class kid," and so forth. I would say your video is just an example of a couple of smug leftist dilletantes congratulating themselves. I listened to her and it sounded like a child less educated than myself lecturing me about what an academic is or some such nonsense.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
"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.
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.
> 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?
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.
When 1/3 of the country debates whether a different 1/10 to 1/3 of the country has a right to exist and/or live their lives as they wish (within the bounds of the law!), this can't happen.
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.
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)...
[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.
> 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.
> 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.
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Charlie Kirk did not feel the same way.[1] The political violence today exists in large part because he built a movement extolling political violence. It is supremely ironic that he was one of its victims.
[1] When he was shot, he was blaming the transgendered community for the rise in mass shootings.
So when you're shot, you were to blame for suggesting your opponents might shoot people. That's some A-grade, twisted mental acrobatics.
I think comments like yours being on the internet are valuable. They show what kinds of human beings we're all - secretly - surrounded by, discouraging people from assuming their fellow citizens are good minded and just thinking, so they can prepare accordingly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
The problem with what you just wrote is that you are contributing to the leftist cause to make words have no meaning. Now, you are eliminating the word "bigoted" from the pool of words for which we can have shared understanding. In what universe can saying "too many" shootings come from a particular group? This is an obvious extension from the general notion that anyone with common sense has encountered which is generally that "any life lost is one too many." It's just intellectual dishonesty.
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.
> 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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
> 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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
It's relatively unsurprisingly. A very large proportion of the population are simply scum.
Being a good and moral person takes effort, so you can reliably assume only a minority of the population will make it.
Hence why unqualified democracy is fundamentally flawed. Many people have as much moral right to vote as people who torture animals for fun, and yet they can. The vote should be earned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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 just as soon say the same thing after birth. Which probably, you do. The mindset of people like you is that a killing of the young is moral and just, if it unburdens inconvenience and responsibility from adults.
Yours is a mindset only a profoundly rotten culture could produce. Hopefully it'll one day be relegated to the history books and more moral countries will take over.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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 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'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 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.
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?
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.
Maybe don't destroy the federal government, try to overthrow elections, sully the rule of law and wreck the economy and advocate political violence, and fewer people would worry about democracy.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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."<
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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[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
That's not possible when political parties and the media keep calling those they disagree with Nazis, fascist, and calling for their death. Go look at blue sky right now, it's like it's like it's New Year's Eve
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
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
As far as i can tell, moderates turn right because they dont like women running for office, and they like that trump has been on TV. they maybe also dont like brown people running, but thats only the one case.
who cares what moderates think though? elections are won by motivated your diehards to vote, and discouraging your opponents from voting
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.
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.
“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.
this country is literally building concentration camps, masked gangs are kidnapping people off the streets with no due process and the executive branch is threatening business leaders into public humiliation rituals of loyalty. What exactly should we be allowed to describe this style of politics as? Please frame your answer like I'm the dumbest guy who's ever lived and have never read a book
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is so intellectually dishonest and not the same same at all. Kirk was a devout Christian and extolled peace and forgiveness. But, this is what I expect from the so-called tolerant left.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
A good lesson to be learned here: If your life is dedicated to divisive, boil-over controversy filled gotchas in the name of making more money... That is what you will be remembered for.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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!
Leftists have had complete freedom to call and celebrate the murder of people they hate for decades.
Check out Blue sky right now for examples of this.
On college campuses and in the media, non-left wing opinions are censored. Now that we are starting to have true freedom, People can't handle even moderate opinions that go against their personal beliefs.
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.
//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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
Please appreciate that this might well be the assasination of Franz Ferdinand of our generation, the event that set the wheels in motion for World War 1.
I urge everyone to lower the temperature. Not just in the comment section, but in real life and in your minds.
If you're on HN reading this, then you have above average influence. If you're working at Google, Meta, Tiktok, X, etc, today's the day you for you to act in service of humanity. Lower the temperature.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
<< 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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
reply
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0
Speech made in April, 1968, assassinated on June 5, 1968. Wild.
>> 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.
this is the complete transcript of that excerpted speech, often titled "I've Been to the Mountaintop"
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemou...
It turns out, at least so far, we can still choose violence.
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.
It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurra...
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.
> they are generally good people.
No, they aren't.
> 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:
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.
> 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.
There were votes involved (and Nazis pointed out after the war that in a First Past the Post system like the UK they had enough votes for total power) but, like Charlie Kirk, Hitler and the Nazis had the backing of the rich and the powerful.
That's why both of them managed to get their message out to so many people. That might then convert to votes, but are the voters that believed the propaganda at fault as much as the people who paid for it, those who created it, and those that spread it?
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!
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
However France has strict firearms control so the scale of violence is still in control and shooting political figures is not common nowadays.
Tragic, what a waste.
The most sustainable vision wins. And this is a great vision. Thanks for posting. Helped clarify how to think about today.
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.
If that's the case, then the most sustainable vision gradually devolves into unsustainability.
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.
this is what was going on before his assassination:
"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."
Hate, hate, hate.
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.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer
There is hope.
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.
Thanks, this is what I needed to hear.
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hate wins elections
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.
That isn't happening anymore, and now we also have social media.
Source?
I think feelings on immigration show that there isn't a "vast majority" of people who want to "live together" and "abide" each other
35% of americans are happy with how the current administration has been handling immigrants
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
approval of ICE is around 40%
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/27/republicans-...
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
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.
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.
Same in Sweden, the majority popular opinion started shifting away from supporting Germany late in the war as they were obviously losing.
> 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.
> 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.
> Most of Germany stood behind him, and were outraged by the failed July 20th coup... In 1944.
Most of Germany had seen the defeat of 1918. Once a war is started the only way is forward.
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.
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 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.
"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee
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.
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.
Thanks, I didn’t recall
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.
Much much smaller scale but we did a 'Salem Witch Trails' tour and it was a grey dreary autumn day and I felt it complimented the story.
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.
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.
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 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.
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."
If you're talking about the ones who drove supply trucks during the war years, the hardest working men were women.
https://vietnamnews.vn/sunday/features/947180/female-drivers...
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
When history becomes prehistory, we have to go through it again
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
"Either side"? The virus or humanity?
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.
I wish it was as simple as this :(
This comment too can be interpreted either way. Well done, I guess.
> 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.
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.
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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.
We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could. All the anger didn't help.
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.
You can vaguely understand it by looking at hospitals overwhelmed by mass casualty events and then imagine it happening over the course of a year.
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.
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!
> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, you have to engineer the pathogen such that it [...]
Interesting phrase. "Engineer the pathogen".
> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, (...)
Why do you believe a pandemic has sides?
I believe it was recently observed.
And look. The government doesn’t have to do anything!
> 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.
It was simple. People without ethical limits seen their opening to weaponize fear and discomfort ... and succeeded.
Your sentence can also be applied to both ‘sides’
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."
> 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.
> 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.
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?
It's not perfectly spherical, actually.
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!
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.
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.
Are you saying you didn't know/hear about any of those things or that your circle didn't consider them very important?
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 genuinely hope none of the bad stuff reaches you or the folks you care about under your rock.
Yup - you’d just never hear about all the ones that weren’t right next to you. At least in gory detail while they happened.
Here, I get to read all about the latest insanity in the last 24 hrs from…. 4 major countries in Crisis?
Tchau, from central Brazil (today).
Insanity...
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."
-- James Callender, The Prospect Before Us, 1800
IMHO, you're correct on many counts.
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"
> 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.
I really don't like how interesting these times are.
I don't like that I'm starting to understand Magical Realism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_realism
For a wild alignment of timing - https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c... - published September 8.
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.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-...
> I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived).
You are clearly not paying attention.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgv4y99n7rt
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
What times were not interesting?
1992-94
Los Angelinos would disagree https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots
He's semi-quoting the proverb "May you live in interesting times".
In the US, from about 1975 to 2015 were less "interesting" (in the sense of "may you live in interesting times") than current times.
IDK, man, the '70s sounded pretty wild: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
At least one year in that range where something happened.
Yes, I for one am thoroughly tired of living in interesting times.
So are all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
> what to do with the time that is given us.
Doomscrolling, mostly.
Have you tried a mix of hyperfixation and eBay browsing?
We know more now, but we're not smarter now.
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.
> History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels.
Great quote. I feel the same way about 9/11 - the feeling of confusion, like "wtf is going on?!" IMHO, only those who lived it can really relate.
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...
I can recall that day almost minute by minute starting with learning of the first plane hitting the WTC.
I don't live in the U.S but I watched 9/11 live from the television, and I can still feel it and remember it. It was so big deal.
It's time to revisit 9/11 and think about what it means in the modern context
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?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-... [2]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gaza-malnutrition-children-blo...
I'm sure some form of military action was necessary in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks. Genocide³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ was not.
[3]: https://www.fidh.org/en/region/north-africa-middle-east/isra... [4]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/un-special-committee-pre... [5]: https://amnesty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amnesty-Intern... [6]: https://msf.org.uk/issues/gaza-genocide [7]: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/middleeast/israeli-human-righ...
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.
Bush threatened the Taliban, and they responded. How many is donald threatening?
The modern context is we have gone from a benevolent nation to a blidgerent nation. Not really progress. But the context is decisive.
Eh?
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.
> Spanish flu was not created in a lab.
Neither was covid-19: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
Your article is a little out of date. The general consensus of spy agencies is that it was definitely leaked from the lab. Created in a lab? Maybe.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7vypq31z7o.amp
> Spanish flu was not created in a lab.
This seems vague. Can you elaborate on the claim you’re making?
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.
Which reasons are you referring to? I've never heard this comparison between masking during two pandemics 100+ years apart.
It's quite well documented. Try this site:
https://liberalarts.vt.edu/news/articles/2020/08/virginia-te...
It has not been conclusively established that COVID came from a lab: https://www.who.int/news/item/27-06-2025-who-scientific-advi...
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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
The killing of Palestinians is targeted.
If it is, they are pretty incompetent.
Being totally amoral and incompetent are two different things.
Which is why it feels so much more despicable and awful than all the other conflicts that are currently ongoing in the world.
There was a school shooting in Colorado within about an hour of when Kirk got shot
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.
He was a Youtuber, not a politician though.
Martin Luther King Jr. was just a preacher, I don't understand the the big deal about him getting shot. /s
It's a big deal because he's very important to part of the 30% that supports DJT.
This is the sort of violence that begets more violence.
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.
The US is already well into this cycle, e.g., the killing of Melissa Hortman.
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.
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?
The distinction is:
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
That constitution was written 250 years ago, after a war. Those people lived in different times, wilder times. How does their opinion matters today?
"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.
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.
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.
Looks like a storm is coming.
Just like when Trump got shot, right?
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.
Yep, he died doing what he loved, arguing for the oppression of trans people
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.
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.
I agree with you.
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 don’t think you two agree.
I was just at a conference today where one of the presenters referenced the "Trust barometer": https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer
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.
Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0...
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.
"Not peaceful" is an understatement. They burned innocents alive.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/former... ("Former Nepal PM Jhala Nath Khanal’s wife Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar burnt alive as protesters set his house on fire")
IMO it's far too early for anyone to declare any kind of victory, in that unresolved, chaotic power vacuum. No one can guess where that will go.
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.
It was the former PM's wife not the former PM. Also heads of state are probably a lot safer than fishermen or loggers.
The PM of Nepal is the head of government, not the head of state.
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.
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.
Prison labor = Slavery.
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.
> abolition of slavery, the global transition to democracy, and decolonization
It's notable that all of those are pre-democratic.
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.
Could you please clarify your statement?
>> Attacks on free speech - like social media censorship or bans - makes democracy not possible.
GP stated this.
Parent replied with a list of scenarios where violence created progress, albeit none of which featured universal democracy before the violence.
IOW, they are loudly agreeing with each other.
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.
It seems like bike-shedding to equate complete lack of franchise with vote dilution.
They are very different levels of democratic access.
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.
Translation: The government lost support of the military. GenZ were allowed to topple the government.
Didn't the government open fire on protesters killing over a dozen people the day before the protesters turned violent?
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]
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OPSR_TP...
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.
That way leads to civil war.
With States redistricting/gerrymandering, a cold civil war has already begun.
Gerrymandering is hardly a new problem or a sign of a civil war, it's literally been happening since near the founding of the Republic.
> Gerrymandering is hardly a new problem (...)
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'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.
It's rhetoric like this that gets people shot.
"If my side doesn't win then the only way forward is violent."
We didn't go to war with the Nazis because they wanted a border and were buying people flights home.
> 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.
A mega prison in El Salvado frequently described as hell on earth - "home".
Ya it's just clean fun border talk and the people black bagged by masked men are surely enjoying their complementary airline pretzels.
"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 corporate veil may be a nice legal cover, 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.
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”.
> Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare?
I hope not, because that would mean people would already forgot why supporters were describing it as reacting towards violence with violence.
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.
Must have slipped their minds.
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...
Thanks, but I live here.
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...
Opposing his state funeral is very different from supporting his assassination.
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.
His public image took a nosedive after his death.
I think that had far more to do with it than saving a few yen.
It will be a range of opinions within that area, but even at the tail there are a concerning number of people.
One person in a thousand prepared to commit violence for political ends can be enough to turn a country into chaos.
Because one person in a thousand is equivalent to a small military force.
Only if armed and organized
If you read the linked pdf, “attack someone online” is a separate subcategory (27%)
> 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.
Is it possible that violence is just more rational for today's 18-34 y/o than it was at some other points in recent history?
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.
Rule of law in itself is not a worthwhile institution - and is not enough to keep violence at distance.
You need protection, non corruption and a level of equality to be protected by that rule of law.
I think that is what mostly has been eroded - also the poorest 10% need a reason to believe in rule of law.
Rule of law is necessary but not sufficient.
The others don't matter if it's lacking, because social contracts without contracts meaning anything are worthless.
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.
Very good points.
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.
This is factually not true. For example: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111000...
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.
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 sibling commentors say, this is just not true.
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.
Let's look at one example.
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.)
Relevant:
> 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[...]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_begets_violence#Words....
> The argument against using violence to achieve you ends is that if everyone does it, it is bad for everyone.
If you subscribe to Kant perhaps, but most people's argument against violence (and morality in general) is probably not Kantian.
It is, however, frequently the way by which countries reset themselves.
They also might be least aware of the consequences as they've grown up during the least violent time in US and human history.
unlikely.
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.
I believe parent was referring to the US government and other national governments.
It's on record that Russian and Chinese propaganda campaigns in the US were aimed at sowing division generally, more so than any particular viewpoint.
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.
https://www.kut.org/texasstandard/2024-02-14/russian-propaga...
Government employees are just trying to get promoted. So they entrap crazy people that they can then stop.
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.
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 are record low deaths from extreme weather:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65673961
This kind of dooming extremist rhetoric is why we are where we are today.
No, it is not the "last generation of a functioning world" and we will solve climate change like we solve every other problem.
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.
> No, it is not the "last generation of a functioning world" and we will solve climate change like we solve every other problem.
half-assedly, far too late and at tremendous cost, after multiple wars. but we will survive.
How?
Emission offsetting currently only costs ~$50/human/yr:
https://founderspledge.com/research/climate-and-lifestyle-re...
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.
Offsets are a dead end.
Rational by what calculus?
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."
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.
In light of the top post by "dang", I'd like to apologize for my own comments. Forgive me brothers and sisters, I was obviously on edge.
In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait.
To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.
In light of the top post by dang, I went to check the Bin Laden death announcement comment section, and there was no such call against celebration despite several comments doing it. To be fair, it was 14(!) years ago, but I do really doubt we'd have seen a similarly worded one had Bin Laden been killed last week instead. They're different people with diffferent acts, but the claim in the post is exactly that it's about the concept and that it shouldn't matter who the victim was.
I don't know the victim, but I believe there is a huge difference. Bin Laden did engage in war against the US.
Even then celebrations of death might not be fitting, but perhaps the excuse here is still on another level.
You’re now comparing the reactions to the death of someone who led one of the world’s largest terrorist organisations for decades with that of someone mainly known for being good at debates.
Are you sure you want to do that?
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".
>someone mainly known for being good at debates
And stoking hate and violence through lies:
"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."
He was not even close to being good at debates. A flurry of shit that all needs to be rebuked in limited time by inexperienced college kids isn’t “being good at debates”.
Whenever he had to argue against mature debaters like destiny on equal footing he seemed like a fool.
He was good enough that someone decided he needed to be shot.
He wasn't "good at debates", he was Gish Galloping[0] so fast people couldn't keep up
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
>Are you sure you want to do that?
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.
They were both controversial religious nationalists, it is somewhat prudent politically-speaking.
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.
I don't think dang was a moderator at that time
I'm glad to see people following their instinct to de-escalate. Kudos.
Good on you for owning that.
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?
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.
how would you steelman his position?
I wouldn't. It's a position selected specifically to troll immature leftist college students and score youtube views.
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
I'm comfortable saying both that charlie kirk was a loathsome hatemonger and that he also shouldn't have been murdered. This hurts everyone.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Don’t steel man a dead man. Especially a transphobic POS
Not only that, but he was falsely accusing transgender people of being mass shooters. Do you know many transgender are being attacked and assassinated every year?
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/...
https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-tra...
He kind of reap what he sown.
To be fair, Charlie Kirk never debated in good faith. He had the same basic talking points, constantly pivoted to make his interlocutor appear to adopt the worst strawman argument.
And these tent events with him rapid fire arguing many interlocutors were silly. Nobody learned anything, he only gained lots of 10 second short form video clips of him “owning” some feminist or leftist or whatever. Lots of slop for the YouTube / TikTok algo to pull lots of young people down the political outrage rabbit hole.
His recent debate at Oxford Union with Tilly Middlehuest was pretty eye opening when she was interviewed after. She had analyzed his speaking style and he was insanely predictable. A Robot Rubio, if you will. The interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A
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.
> 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).
I saw the video on the Jubilee channel- so far as I’m aware it is full and uncut.
I have not seen any videos from his channel, I wasn’t aware he had one though obviously in retrospect it is unsurprising.
I found it: https://youtu.be/WV29R1M25n8?si=N9dU3r4DxJzK1a2i
Perhaps if you watch it you’ll have a different impression than I did.
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.
I've moved on to looking at:
The Problem with Jubilee’s Political Debate Videos - https://fhspost.com/10276/forum/the-problem-with-jubilees-po...
The ‘one voice against 20 extremists’ format is designed to monetise hate - https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/the-on...
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.
Thanks for the link.
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.
Really? All I know of him was was his "What is a woman?" stunt, which seemed bad-faith.
It seemed just try to be a jab against trans identity without even bothering to make an outright argument. You could do the same shtick with "What is a Republican?" or anything else.
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:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M0uCLgFMC-c
It probably seemed bad faith because you did not like the outcome. Usually what happens there is someone says "a woman is anyone who thinks he/she/ze/xe/they/it is a woman". At that point no further argument is required, most people can think about that definition on their own and realize that it is dumb.
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.
> Kirk was bad faith because he tried to distill a complicated, nuanced argument into TikTok clips
Marshall McLuhan would like a word with you
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.
> The question is what’s 2+2 and the answer being it’s a social construct.
Brother, you'll never guess what type of construct numbers are.
If American voters prefer simple, incorrect answers over complex truths, that's a problem with their education system, not with trans rights.
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.
Forest Valkai explains this all in a few minutes:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M0uCLgFMC-c
2+2? That’s 1! In Z mod 3 field. Gender is a social construct. How we define numbers in a field? Also a construct. Sorry you’re dumb and can’t figure that out
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.
Nope, you just didn't like what he had to say, so you attack the form rather than the content, i.e. bad faith.
I’ll leave this here in case someone else forgets how terrible Kirk’s content was:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk
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.
I disagree, I think his positions are generally quite logical and based on facts. I think it is also clearly a positive when positions are predictable because positions that follow logically should be predictable. If you mean his "style," I don't know what that means or how that matters, even the so-called "most qualified presidential candidate in human history," as she was actually numerous times, Kamala Harris was quite predictable in what she would say in terms of being a "middle class kid," and so forth. I would say your video is just an example of a couple of smug leftist dilletantes congratulating themselves. I listened to her and it sounded like a child less educated than myself lecturing me about what an academic is or some such nonsense.
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.
Do these 'more honest and more skilled debater'(s) happen to align with your political viewpoints, by any chance?
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.
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.
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.
Alas, we can agree to disagree.
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.
The professors are likely willing to differentiate between biological sex and gender. Kirk purposefully conflated the two to suit his debate needs.
The question doesn't predispose that one consider sex synonymous with gender.
The question was never the problem. It was always how Kirk chose to respond after the answer.
I think that's the point.
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.
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.
> I think you're basically ignoring my point
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.
This was not a mass shooting.
I think the fact that this wasn't a mass shooting makes it even worse.
What an unhinged thing to say.
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.
Asking geminy is like copy pasting a random reddit comment. Fine if it links the resource, not fine otherwise.
> 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.
If every adult that could carry a gun did, there would be much less mass shooting. It would be minimized shooting, in fact.
This seems tenuous and directionally wrong based on priors. What evidence do you have for this?
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:
> https://www.axios.com/2023/07/31/us-mass-shooting-2-every-da...
The data is available at: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
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:
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
You could sample some of the incidents and see if they are being honest or not.
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:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th...
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.
Not believing facts because you don’t want to believe them? Says everything we need to know.
more like mass shooting is poorly defined
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United...
That's a very low bar.
It's a dishonest bar. The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people.
Gang related incidents are something entirely different.
The definition should not obscure the two (but it would be politically inconvenient to separate them)
> The vast majority of us picture a deranged lunatic indiscriminately shooting innocent people
Just because we picture one thing when we hear a term doesn't change the agreed upon definition of the term.
If the definition of "mass shooting" were a single person, 600 is still way too many to have in a year.
Other developed countries have fewer than 600 gun-related deaths total per year. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/10/31/1209683...
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.
we would all love no crime, most of us live in the real world and understand mental illness is a thing that exists.
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.
this definition is only commonly accepted amongst the left. as an example, would you call a gathering of 4 people a mass gathering. most wouldn’t.
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.
Probably because those are two different contexts.
I'd love for you to define it then.
More like that it's politically defined when the numbers become inconvenient.
It's OK to criticize the source of the info (LLMs routinely make things up). But it would be been easy for you to verify the info as well.
The definition of mass shooting has been contested for a long time. The WaPo database and the FBI database used different definitions.
IIRC, the difference lies in how many people are involved versus how many people are killed.
Meanwhile, overshadowed by the Kirk shooting, an almost mass shooting also occurred:
3 Students, Including Attacker, Shot at Colorado High School, Authorities Say
~ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/us/colorado-high-school-s...That's just one below a common mass shooting definition threshold.
It's telling that event, leading news in any other country, will likely get buried below the Kirk shooting as "just another day in the USofA".
"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.
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)
This is kept from you purposefully.
> This is kept from you purposefully.
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.
> 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?
>strong internal investigatory services in order to root these plots out before they happen
Who will necessarily be so strong they'll be capable of pulling such things off to serve their own ends.
It's an intractable problem all the way down.
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.
>for the greater good
When 1/3 of the country debates whether a different 1/10 to 1/3 of the country has a right to exist and/or live their lives as they wish (within the bounds of the law!), this can't happen.
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.
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither.
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)...
Does it say "the right of the well-regulated militias to bear arms" or "the right for the states to bear arms"?
I'm for a lot more gun control than what we have today, but it's "the right of the people" in the text.
Neither.
[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”.
A lot of stuff would not happen if it took a little more effort. Giving people some extra time to second guess themselves is a big deal.
This problem didn't happen in the 50s and 60s, when people brought their guns to school for funsies.
Actually it did, just without so much press.
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.
No one wants to get stabbed either.
> 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.
Suicide would be more rare if guns didn't make it so easy.
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.
Are you sure you don’t mean South Korea? Japan is about at level with the USA, and actually lower since 2024.
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot in politically motivated killings, governor says (cbc.ca) 102 points by awnird 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
At least one HN, this story is already getting 100x(!) the reach, when it doesn't even involve lawmakers.
Gun control doesn't need to solve 100% of gun violence to be worth doing.
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.
> 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.
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...
............aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy off.
Yeah I have an unfortunate suspicion that 9/10 will be known as the date something went down in the future history books.
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.
IF you are going to be the victim of genocide they will take away your ability to defend yourself first.
> 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.
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.
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.
>but having known refugees from a tyrannical government
my family escaped Poland as political refugees before the end of communism. Poland famously had bloodless revolution in 1989 exactly this way.
Down tools. stop work and the economy essentially seized up (practically over night).
>Sometimes it will work out, but not without sacrifice.
Sacrifice is always necessary.
If the factories stop, there is no way to move forward, regardless of how tyrannical the government.
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.
> Like Ukraine in 2014
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?
>If they had a means to defend themselves, maybe there could have been less lives lost.
dude c'mon, be serious.
the response to "my house is on fire" is not "gee I wonder what would happen if I added more fuel..."
The response is to starve the fire of oxygen. Labour is a government's oxygen.
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.
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.
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 have no desire to see them killed or harmed in any way.
As long as you understand that this opinion is wholeheartedly NOT shared by them at all.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Both things can be true.
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.
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.
Charlie Kirk did not feel the same way.[1] The political violence today exists in large part because he built a movement extolling political violence. It is supremely ironic that he was one of its victims.
[1] When he was shot, he was blaming the transgendered community for the rise in mass shootings.
So when you're shot, you were to blame for suggesting your opponents might shoot people. That's some A-grade, twisted mental acrobatics.
I think comments like yours being on the internet are valuable. They show what kinds of human beings we're all - secretly - surrounded by, discouraging people from assuming their fellow citizens are good minded and just thinking, so they can prepare accordingly.
A trans person is not a political opponent any more than a white male is a political opponent.
Stop pretending Charlie wasn’t pushing a harmful narrative that lead to an increase in hate crime.
This is a pretty inflammatory claim to make, especially without evidence. When did he praise the use of violence?
He supported Jan 6. That’s was a violent mob attempting a coup. He loved violence
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."
Who's inflammatory now?
None of those statements advocate violence, much less extol it.
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.
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.
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.
You don’t need someone in all of that space though. Just in the locations that give you a decent shot at the tent.
College campuses are not known for their well-shielded outdoor spaces.
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.
https://www.utahpoliticalwatch.news/what-actually-happened-a...
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:
How Does the Cycle of Political Violence End? Here's What an Expert Says. (Was: The Kindling Is a Lot Drier Than It Used to Be) https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/02/political-...
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.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_USA
> 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.
I was doing Masters in the US from 2021-23 and do recall getting their emails to my University email.
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.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/...
Also an enthusiastic proponent of military force (against other Americans)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/charlie-kirk-calls-full-...
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
I'm not American either
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.
Charlie didn't debate so much as followed a script and steered you towards his gotcha questions to create content for his show.
He recently went to Cambridge Univ and debated a student who actual knew his routine. It didn't go well for him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A
Instead of linking to a one-sided reframing of the debate, here's the actual debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvIktYig9Y
It seems to be a healthy debate for both sides.
That's a link to Charlie's own post of the debate.
It seems to be a healthy debate to someone who doesn't know Charlie's logical fallacies and scripted style.
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.
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.
And his answer was bigoted. I'm paraphrasing, but I believe someone asked "do you know how many mass shooters are trans?" and he said "too many."
Didn't like the guy, but he was just a guy expressing a horrible opinion. Violence was not the answer.
“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.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-mass-shootings...
>Even one mass shooting is too many.
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 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.
The problem with what you just wrote is that you are contributing to the leftist cause to make words have no meaning. Now, you are eliminating the word "bigoted" from the pool of words for which we can have shared understanding. In what universe can saying "too many" shootings come from a particular group? This is an obvious extension from the general notion that anyone with common sense has encountered which is generally that "any life lost is one too many." It's just intellectual dishonesty.
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.
[0] https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/09/trans-people-...
He was just made fun of on the new season on South Park, if you consider that to be influential.
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.
As a non-American, non-Twitter user, this was how I heard about him.
> 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?
>why even target the poor guy
There are plenty of dangerous mentally ill people out there who don't use any type of logic or reason as a basis for their decision-making.
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.
200 meters isn't that far of a shot if you are familiar with shooting or a hunter. I regularly take down deer at 200-300 yards.
The shooter is also in custody already and captured thankfully.
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.
second suspect also released...
Just saw that. LE gotta be going wild atm.
Oswald was 300 yards away.
That they didn't account for drop and hit the neck shows that they weren't in fact very competent.
[flagged]
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.
He ran a very large conservative organization that operates on college campuses across the country. He's definitely an influential figure.
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.
He was a cofounder, along with Bill Montgomery, an octogenarian Tea Party Republican.
Kirk was the young face who brought lots of energy, but he was well funded by old Republicans (incl. Foster Friess).
He drew a massive college crowd and was shot at that event. That's your answer.
His assassination is making the front page across the world. I'd call that influental.
As a practical question: it would be useful to have a transcript of his final speech, on a page without any graphic images of his death.
Almost all politicians have tweeted about him now. There’s no way he’s not influential.
The Economist did a briefing on him in July which explains his increasingly large influence pretty well.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/07/18/charlie-k...
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.
> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?
We don't know yet, but we can infer these possible changes "the person who shot him [was] hoping to elicit":
- stop an effective communicator from further moving the needle of public opinion in his side's favor
- intimidate other effective communicators with similar views
- intimidate other future possible effective communicators with similar views
- cause more violence (some people love chaos and violence)
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.
>> Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7
That is a lot of people
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?
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.
The South Park version of him put it well:
> 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
> 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.
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.
He’s a martyr now.
Over the next short while, he might be. Let's see.
He is now.
It is just as likely that the suspect is from the right wing as the left. Nothing about them is known right now.
It doesn’t matter. He was a white Christian conservative guy that went to colleges and talked to people. Now he’s dead.
> If so, why even target the poor guy?
Crazy people murder all the time, hell he probably did it for a girl. See the movie Taxi Driver.
> 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)
One Nation voter checking in.
Been following Charlie Kirk for two or three years now.
The shooting is front and centre on the ABC news website.
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
> I had absolutely no idea who he is/was
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
even if he s not that famous outside US, he might be targeted to send a message
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.
Benjamin Netayahu and Trump tweeted support for Kirk within half an hour of the shooting.
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.
Twitter has an estimated monthly active users in excess of the population of the United States by nearly a factor of two.
Even if we assume those numbers are inflated, that's quite a bit of influence if someone is influential only on Twitter.
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?
Correct
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.
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.
> one who has been honestly quite milquetoast in terms of conservative ideology compared to other well-known figures.
That says a lot more about those "other well-known figures" than it does about him and his already extreme ideology
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.
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.
He was close friends with Trump, was on TV quite often, and visited college campuses for conservative discussions.
He also lied about widespread election fraud among other things so there are many reasons a person would want to target him
Lying about election fraud is a pretty silly justification for assassination.
The January 6 insurrection at the US Congress was based on untruths about the prior election.
Saying he lied about election fraud assumes he knew it was fake and said it anyways.
Charlie Kirk may have been incorrect but he generally seemed to believe his positions.
That is weak sauce. He was a skilled political operator. To suggest he believed what is provably false suggests he was a fool.
The point is it doesn't matter. Nobody should be murdered for spreading a lie.
What do you think how Trump and his administration will react.
What if that is purpose?
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.
He hand picked many of the Trump admin cabinet. He absolutely wielded power
Yeah, he was a minor / outlying figure in the same sense that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was.
Southpark made fun of him in a recent episode. Heard the name assumed he was a yet another alt right influencer podcaster.
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.
[0]: https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1965888327938158764
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.
It has been extremely disheartening to see people celebrating this across other social media platforms.
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.
Both are sick and deplorable. I do think it’s fair to say that political violence hasn’t been repudiated enough.
I haven't seen much at all on twitter, Facebook or bluesky. Seems like you have to look pretty hard to find it.
Bluesky is full of pro-murder posts.
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
I didn't name reddit. I rarely go there.
This is like going to the desert and being surrounded by sand and saying you cannot find a single grain of sand.
Do you have a bluesky account, or are you just getting highlights from your twitter timeline?
if you sort by 'controversial' on most of the reddit threads that's where you'll see the the more nuanced takes.
Nuanced is a nice term for blood-thirsty monstors.
Like I said, not when you sort by controversial. Top post right now when sorted that way is "Hate Kirk with a passion. But I hope he pulls through."
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1ndmobl/charlie_kirk_...
Flamebait comments like this will result in an account ban and (further) flagged comments.
Especially reddit. I am done with reddit after this point. Disgusting sick people, most of them.
I went straight to HN for commentary because I know exactly what is happening on Reddit and for the first time can't bear to look.
Two of the default front page posts were the conservative sub complaining about all of the insensitive comments on Reddit.
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.
Check out bluesky. Just a website filled to the brim with terrible, ugly, inside and out, "people".
Same. I went to this thread and saw similar talking points brought up. Dangerous time for the US ahead.
It's relatively unsurprisingly. A very large proportion of the population are simply scum.
Being a good and moral person takes effort, so you can reliably assume only a minority of the population will make it.
Hence why unqualified democracy is fundamentally flawed. Many people have as much moral right to vote as people who torture animals for fun, and yet they can. The vote should be earned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the same time the POTUS calls for murder of a metnally ill man should have been in treatment instead of being at large.
Genuine question.
2 Minnesota lawmakers shot in politically motivated killings, governor says (cbc.ca) 102 points by awnird 88 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 19 comments
What retaliation did this trigger?
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.
Fun fact, the percentage of transgender mass shooters is lower than the perecentage of transgender citizens.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-be...
[2] https://www.memri.org/reports/al-qaeda-military-strategist-a...
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.
He wasn't a "lone wolf".
But he also wasn't actually acting as a part of anything like the Red Brigades either, so the GP's point still stands.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Blowback/Margaret-Rob...
you are inexcusably wrong, since the comment you are replying to have a Wikipedia link with further links to the work of historians.
you really try hard to see "bad commies" uh?
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.
Practice makes perfect. 500yr of keeping the Irish down trained them well.
I don't want to live in a place where people are killed for expressing opinions I consider highly offensive and damaging.
How much damage is ok?
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.
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.
Indeed.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Was this one of the OK ones?
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.
He wasn't smashing someone's head off the ground, he was uttering "harmful" ideas. So according to leftist logic: yes.
id interpret what he meant differently than "some gun deaths are ok"
instead his opinion is more, "all gun deaths are ok"
he was never going to be worried about the count or a more nuanced comparison of how many gun deaths are acceptable
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.
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.
Also read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-w...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
You could just as soon say the same thing after birth. Which probably, you do. The mindset of people like you is that a killing of the young is moral and just, if it unburdens inconvenience and responsibility from adults.
Yours is a mindset only a profoundly rotten culture could produce. Hopefully it'll one day be relegated to the history books and more moral countries will take over.
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.
Also read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s%E2%80%931990s_Romanian...
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.
It's not like the assassinations of progressives ever stopped - the Hoffmans were killed literally a few months ago. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
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.
He also spread the rumors that Pelosi’s attacker was just an upset gay lover.
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.
This is the worst kind of censorship. I guess debate is also dead.
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
I feel like this quote needs a qualification. You can still fear what someone might say without fearing they are correct.
This is exactly what the quote is saying. You are adding on your own layer of bias by assuming he’s incorrect.
I don't agree; pointing out the words are lies certainly turns the quote on its head for me.
> I guess debate is also dead.
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.
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.
He was willing to debate to his own advantage.
He used the less talented debaters to ridicule the opposing side.
Both sides routinely do this.
Do you like this outcome, croes? Be honest... It's the internet so you can speak your true feelings
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.
Those are not the only recent political killings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203644
> not even lawmakers
But he was more famous than those lawmakers.
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.
How did we get to this point.
> How did we get to this point.
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.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/emmett-till-memori...
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.
[0]: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1100/format:webp/1*uFK...
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.
It was always like that or worse. Social media just surfaces it.
So sad, he was more willing than most to hear and debate contrary viewpoints (the "prove me wrong" table).
The guy in the meme with the table saying "Change My Mind" is Steven Crowder, but I imagine they ran in similar circles.
Yeah, I think it was a similar concept.
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw
"bad faith" is an euphemism for "someone whose views you don't agree with".
> "bad faith" is an euphemism for "someone whose views you don't agree with".
This is not correct.
But is it bad faith?
"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.
Both can be true at the same time.
His assassination is a bad thing. And, he was a bad faith huckster who made his money and fame on trolling. He was not open-minded or considerate.
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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.
He's not, actually.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw
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.
Actually, not “may or may not.”
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
> Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point
"I am right therefore I win" is all the proof I need that you have watched a lot of Charlie Kirk edits.
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.
The oxford and cambridge unions both solely function to facilitate the careers of people debating now (e.g. someone got a career out of the kirk one)
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.
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It's unlikely that you're actually familiar with his work.
There are many examples of videos like the one below, and if you'd seen any of them, you would absolutely understand why people think this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw
I've literally seen this before but thanks for telling me about yourself
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.
Can you explain why you’re flabbergasted?
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
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.
> I'd say the appropriate read there is to slip the word "unjustified" into a few key slots.
"You shouldn't do anything unjustified" is an uncontroversial and useless prescription.
> 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.
Extremists don't like to address the paradox of tolerance.
> 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).
> If trump is an existential threat to democracy
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?
I don't believe you are "just curious", but my answer would be: yes, and that is not a fair description of Trump.
> 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.
Humans are not rational machines.
You can "educate" someone all you want, they will still suffer from all the normal biases and those biases will still affect their choices.
This is why we have double blind trials even though doctors are "experts"
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).
How we say things is how we teach society to react to it. We're all teaching each other, every day.
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 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?
Yes
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.
I mean... it could have been a jilted ex-lover.
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?
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.
“Tone it down!” That’s rich!
Maybe don't destroy the federal government, try to overthrow elections, sully the rule of law and wreck the economy and advocate political violence, and fewer people would worry about democracy.
Concerns about this country are not overblown.
Agree. It's unfortunate that violence often becomes the settlement when folks let norms dissolve.
> 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 should people say when someone is advocating against democracy?
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.
Elon Musk just got on his billionaire dollar social media X megaphone and said "The left is the party of murder".
Billionaires are literally trying to rally an army of right wing gun toting lunatics and get people killed. It isn't hyperbole, it's really happening.
> 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.
I couldn't imagine celebrating the murder of another person, no matter how bad. And I consider that to be the hallmark of being a civilized person.
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.
Now do Gadaffi.
MSNBC commentators today said some things today that were so horrendous.
What if it is true that someone is a threat to democracy?
A guy who gathers large groups of people to talk with them and persuade them on political topics is the _essence_ of democracy.
Someone who calls for violence or does violence against people wishing to have open debate is the essence of fascism.
real question:
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.
That’s a strawman. They didn’t say the answer is violence, but that calling someone a threat to democracy can be justified.
Then I guess you become a monarchist, like Curtis Yarvin.
But of all things Charlie Kirk was not, first among them: He was not "a threat to democracy".
The guy that was just advocating for military occupation of US cities was not a threat to democracy?
Then you answer that with more discourse. This is basic.
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.
Maybe you are a threat to democracy. Hmm, not nice, right? Please let us all apply the golden rule. Violence should be limited to stopping violence.
if somebody is a threat to democracy just by talking, your democracy is probably already dead
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.
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.
The golden rule is always in effect.
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.
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.
>> this person is a threat to democracy
I would say it is true. Such killer is a threat to democracy.
Yes, assassinations (and the people who do them and/or pay for them) are in fact a threat to civil society.
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.
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.
> What if that person is a threat to democracy though?
What does that even mean?
Denying election results, for example.
Democrats and Republicans both have done this routinely. It happens in every election.
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.
What Trump has done is unprecedented. He still doesn’t accept the results.
That depends on the basis on which they deny them.
Not if they file dozens of lawsuits challenging the election results and loses all of them.
Lawsuits are not a threat to democracy.
If it doesn't mean anything then surely it's not dangerous to say it.
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.
In common parlance, it means overly right wing.
Adolf Hitler to the Weimar Republic. Hugo Chavez to Venezuela. Vladimir Putin to the Russian Federation. Etc.
A person that wishes to remove democracy from the country? I don’t really understand how the term would be confusing.
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.
If people democratically decide to reduce democracy, is that not the will of the people and thus democratic?
If you actually believe in democracy, nobody can ever be a “danger to democracy” for expressing their opinions…since that is the point of a democracy.
Labeling someone a “danger” an emotional ad hominem argument devoid of meaning used by people who can’t rationally argue their positions with logic.
> If people democratically decide to reduce democracy, is that not the will of the people and thus democratic?
If someone decides of their own volition to become a slave, is that not their free will?
Most of us believe that certain rights should be inalienable.
> Labeling someone a “danger” an emotional ad hominem argument
Sometimes, perhaps, but not always.
> If people democratically decide to reduce democracy, is that not the will of the people and thus democratic?
I'd say the democratic minority might disagree but since you defined it as being democratic it's impossible to argue.
> If people democratically decide to reduce democracy, is that not the will of the people and thus democratic?
Sure. When did that vote happen?
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.
Translation: If you keep drawing the prophet at some point someone who really believes will act on it, right?
Sorry. We in the west don’t live like that.
> Sorry. We in the west don’t live like that.
Sort of, even South Park self censored when it came to drawing an animated Muhammad.
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."
That's the joke.
> 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.
You think it is better to peacefully endure fascism than violently oppose it?
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.
If we wait as long as you are suggesting, then it's already too late
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.
the entire situation is dripping in macabre irony
the question about gun rights, the "prove me wrong" tent, the "constitutional carry" state the event is held in
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."<
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-qu...
Mr "A few murders are the right price to pay for protecting our beautiful right to bear guns" got paid in his own currency.
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.
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 wonder about the Jan 6 pipe bomber
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?
Already been apprehended according to Kash Patel (FBI director)
Kash Patel (podcast host) says the second suspect has now been released and the shooter is still at large. [0]
[0] https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1965928054712316363
If you’re talking about the old white guy apprehended at the scene, he was released.
It appears to be someone else: https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1965903392934633587
A suspect had been apprehended. Let’s see if it’s actually the person who did it.
Second suspect has been released.
Source for those curious: https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/fbi-director-patel-says-ch...
It's been a few hours since the shooting and no suspect is in custody.
I wonder if he/she/they will ever be caught?
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.
Note: it was an assassination, not a mass shooting. There was only one shot.
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.
Assassinations usually target public figures for political or ideological motives and public impact. So a subcategory of murders if you want.
Forgot about this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PO9yyS367p4
One shot so far. One possible outcome is the shooter has a target list, or is emboldened by success.
Some years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
Technically even that wouldn't be a "mass shooter". It would instead be a spree shooter or serial killer. But it's kind of beside the point.
I wouldn't expect behaviors from mass shooters to carry over to serial killers.
It sounds similar to the plot of The F*ck it List.
Vance Boelter...
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.
At a public event like this there are hundreds of cameras. He will definitely be caught.
There's already videos being released showing the shooter on a roof.
I have a feeling he'll get caught.
This is crazy. Healthy debate and disagreement should be free in a democratic country, without any fear of violence, let alone death.
Do you think Kirk showed healthy debates ans disagreement?
Do you think the people they attacked with their speeches were without any fear of violence, let alone death?
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
That's not possible when political parties and the media keep calling those they disagree with Nazis, fascist, and calling for their death. Go look at blue sky right now, it's like it's like it's New Year's Eve
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
Hasan Piker, FTFY.
How can there be healthy debate with someone who argues few gun deaths are necessary in order to have 2nd amendment, or bombing children is justified?
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.
A healthy debate about genocide ? ?
How about him handing the mic to children killed in school shootings and bombing?
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.
Because his abhorrent ideas have already been rejected by civil society.
At that point, you're not having a useful debate, you're platforming them and lending their ideas legitimacy.
For neo-nazis, appearing on the debate stage is itself a win, and a chance to spread their ideas to the crowd, even if they "lose" the debate.
The Paradox of Tolerance requires neo-nazis be told to go back under the rock they crawled out from, not given platforms.
> 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?
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.
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.
Just my two cents
this is a sad day for America, violence is not an answer to extreme voices on both ends, praying for peace and space for true free speech.
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.
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.
Lmao. You’re still blaming the left. Lmao
[delayed]
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.
This is nuts. I am deeply worried we are headed towards open armed conflict. The violence against political opponents must stop, no matter who it is.
That is the natural consequence of a police state.
Ruling out nation state actors that have a vested interest in political divide and chaos and distraction is not the best starting point.
My starting point is:
> extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
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).
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.
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/18/would-be-assassin-may-have-...
I recommend the movie "Civil War" very original. Not saying that will happen but the movie is great.
I found the movie to be hollow and contradictory to the point that I couldn’t suspend disbelief.
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.
I wish they'd try again and do better.
I really liked it. Beautifully made film. But it just rides on shock value. It doesn't have anything interesting to say about the topic.
The best prevention is deterrence.
Political violence is apparently on the decline in America. At least that’s what a study concluded late last year
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/22/us/politics/political-vio...
If that video is real, the shooter had incredibly accurate aim.
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.
> I do IDPA matches
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.
I think the two would be Trump assassins being closer and failing back up your argument though one was scared off before he could even take a shot.
The corollary is Oswald and his crummy surplus carbine making headshots on a moving target.
Training.
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.
Especially when you can zero the scope to 200yds and make it basically point and shoot.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmteh_NChOQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrackingPoint
Between that and cheap quadcopter drones, I expect political assassinations to skyrocket in the future.
Given the distance, unless well trained it was probably luck more than anything.
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
If a bullet hits, it has to hit somewhere.
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.
We can be sure that the shooter was not aiming for the neck. Chest is more likely, but head is possible.
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.
How can it possibly be crappy aim?
The shooter had 1 target, and he delivered a 100% kill shot.
You could say "it wasn't impressive", but you can't say it was crap...
People can deliver crap and still get their task accomplished.
It was crap. I highly doubt the neck was the target. If the head was the target, then the same distance but in another direction, would have missed.
Regardless, it's still sad that someone died, especially in this manner (regardless of politics).
His target was probably higher.
Things like this are normal for a sh*thole country like America. This is just a normal Wednesday for 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.
What do you think the definition of fascist is? Is it ever appropriate to apply that label to someone?
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.
I generally agree with you, but wouldn’t lump Canada into this rhetoric. Its hate speech laws are fairly balanced, if I’ll be honest.
It’s going to sound absurd, but right now, USA’s global image is a very good counter-ad towards “complete” freedom of speech.
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.
what moral anchor do you think we need?
Classical liberalism
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.
Calling people nazis and fascists nilly willy doesn't even count as hate speech...
"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.
>Being a nazi isn't an inherent characteristic of a person, it's an affiliation or ideology that they consciously choose.
Sure.
But the overwhelming majority of people called "nazis" by their political opponents have objectively not chosen anything remotely of the sort.
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.
> autocratic authoritarian with a track record of hating American liberties and institutions
It's that level of hysteria what causes moderates to shift to the right.
> causes moderates to shift to the right.
As far as i can tell, moderates turn right because they dont like women running for office, and they like that trump has been on TV. they maybe also dont like brown people running, but thats only the one case.
who cares what moderates think though? elections are won by motivated your diehards to vote, and discouraging your opponents from voting
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) That's just your impression of him.
2) Enforcement of the law requires force. Who would have thought?
3) If an institution is corrupt it should be reformed or destroyed. What's wrong with that? Nothing.
(1) is a postmodern relativist platitude. If you have a specific argument that I've judged something incorrectly, make it.
I can't tell what point (2) is supposed to apply to. In general authoritarians are eager to use force to enforce top-down prescriptive laws, yes.
(3) I didn't say it's wrong to destroy or gut institutions perceived as corrupt. What I said is that it's not conservative.
1) You didn't even present an argument, just your personal impression of him.
2) Law enforcement. It's in the name.
3) Are you under the impression that "conservative" just means to keep things as they are no matter what?
(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.
I'm old enough to remember Fox News hosts playing B-roll of Nazi footage while discussing Obama back in 2008.
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.
“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.
this country is literally building concentration camps, masked gangs are kidnapping people off the streets with no due process and the executive branch is threatening business leaders into public humiliation rituals of loyalty. What exactly should we be allowed to describe this style of politics as? Please frame your answer like I'm the dumbest guy who's ever lived and have never read a book
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.
Nothing you’re describing is happening.
So all those videos of masked men with no ID grabbing people off of the street are just AI I guess?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Can people just upvote a post instead of repeating exactly what another person has said?
Yeah we all know violence has no place in our society and gun's are controversial and politics should be more civil.
The rush of compassion for someone who had zero is so jarring.
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.
Economic conditions create political violence, because politics can no longer be used to fix economic conditions.
those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolutions inevitable. pretty sure a us president said something like that.
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
Remember to turn off autoplay on Twitter.
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.
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'd say we _can_ be violent / brutal / unfair. I'm e.g. not violent / brutal when putting my clean dishes away.
This may have been an offensive reply to the original comment:
It's important for Me to play Devil's Advocate, here, because the original statement overlooks the amazingly constructive qualities humanity offers.
Overlooking == under-capitalizing. Which is an error. And judgement is important to hang onto in a crisis.
This is a crisis.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-qu...
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.
This is so intellectually dishonest and not the same same at all. Kirk was a devout Christian and extolled peace and forgiveness. But, this is what I expect from the so-called tolerant left.
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.
> - Charlie Kirk [0]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-empathy-quote...
> Christian Bible says [1]https://biblehub.com/topical/e/empathy_as_a_christian_virtue...
> transgender people should be "dealt with the way we did in the 1950s and 60s"
> - Charlie Kirk
Really extols peace and forgiveness eh?
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.
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.
The NSFW video is haunting, don’t watch it. I feel literally sick.
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).
I agree, r/combatfootage has more gruesome videos than this one.
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.
Wow this is a great tip, thank you!
Any evidence it really works though?
Yes. There is better than anecdotal, though not rock solid conclusive, evidence that it works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect#Applications_in_...
Interesting. The actually functioning eye bleach thru clobbering your memory with task at hand, I'll legit keep this in mind
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.
Anecdotally, it worked for me, but I'm not really in the mood to look up the literature right now.
Worked for me. Played some chess online.
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?
People are a lot more supportive of war when it’s so far removed.
People hear of kids dying in “bombings” but ignore the reality that it means they were: crushed, burned to death, dismembered, etc etc.
tldw; he takes a hit to a major blood vessel in his neck. It is quite shocking. You won't gain much by watching it.
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.
> No clue, how normal people deal with being forced to see stuff like this over and over again.
Excessive exposure to shock images from forum trolls back in the '90s.
Agreed. I’ve seen some stuff over the years, and it made me gasp. I am not remotely a fan of the victim, but that was horrific.
Yep, sick to my stomach. Added a bunch of new mute words on x.
Yes. Don't.
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.
You feel sick because you cannot process reality.
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.
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”.
A good lesson to be learned here: If your life is dedicated to divisive, boil-over controversy filled gotchas in the name of making more money... That is what you will be remembered for.
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.
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.
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
- stop exaggerating moles into mountains.
May we actually do this.
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.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45191517
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.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ap-poll-democracy-rights-freedoms...
There are sides because there are people that want to take away my family’s rights and my rights.
These are not boogeymen, these are real people that want to and are succeeding at tearing down my country and its institutions.
So obviously they are on a different side.
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.
A sad day for America.
Very few will like where this leads.
I hope cooler heads prevail and pray for him and his family.
It's just some random guy
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.
* * *
Well, he did die. Horrific. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/10/us/charlie-kirk-shot...
WPD post with a whole bunch of camera angles https://watchpeopledie.tv/h/shooting/post/379641/just-now-ch...
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.
The other indicators are pretty clearly a spinal shot. Extremely likely he is dead.
I'm going to hug my family a little tighter tonight. 46th school shooting of the year, and the 47th also happening in Colorado.
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.
You can live with single carotid [1]. But maybe the change is too fast. It is exremely difficult to say without knowing more.
1: https://biologyinsights.com/can-you-live-with-one-carotid-ar...
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.
I was trying to frame it differently - like - it must have hit some harder tissue before it can cause the shockwaves, right?
The air itself would be concussive.
But regardless, the specific mechanism of his death is clear. He died by gunshot.
Note: the police do not have the suspect in custody. The comments about, "here's the assassin being arrested," are libel.
Here's a mirror as that one has gotten moderated,
(Very, very graphic death) https://x.com/_geopolitic_/status/1965851790714482943 (not safe for life / NSFL)
[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.
> Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).
Could you expand on this? What does neurological "fencing" response mean, and what in the video indicates this is it?
It's a neurological sign associated with traumatic brain injury. That unnatural reflex of the arms you can see in that video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response ("Fencing response")
Thank you. So haunting.
It's useful to recognize that pose! It's often people who could benefit from quick medical attention, if someone notices the symptom.
Decorticate posturing of the hands
> What kind of gun could that have been?
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 assault rifle round will do this.
Also: smaller assault rounds like 5.56 can in fact do more damage than larger ones in some case because of its tendency to bounce around in the body.
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.
Anything coming out of a rifle will fuck your shit up, even small rounds like 223/5.56: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x72JOi74Xwk&pp=ygUZNTU2IHNsb3c...
https://files.catbox.moe/nfffye.mp4
Wow! I should've heeded your NSFW warning. That was very disturbing.
Should these even be shared?
I mean, people are watching (I haven't) and wishing they hadn't.
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).
He kicked back hard, so the shooter was using a powerful rifle, I suppose a sniper rifle. Wound is huge, not a pistol wound.
He was shot in the neck because the shooter is amateur and didn't account for the bullet drop on this distance.
This isn't call of duty, a basic hunting rifle will do the same holes as a "sniper rifle"
I did not say it was something like an m82. I just wanted to say I believe it wasn't a pistol.
As of 3:39PM ET, CNN is reporting shot and Wikipedia has already a death date.
I strongly disagree with Charlie Kirk, but doctors pronounce him dead, not the media or Wikipedia.
Edit: it's official, he's dead (it wasn't confirmed when I originally posted this). Condolences to his wife and small kids.
Their source is Donald Trump: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1151819349918...
Trump "tweeted" that Kirk is dead on truth social
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.
Kirk's wikipedia page is currently abuzz with edits and reversions of those edits, many of which are pronouncing him dead.
I'm convinced there are people whose first thought when someone dies is to race to update Wikipedia for some definition of clout.
I find it weird, at best.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiJackal
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.
Makes sense!
>I'm not seeing that death date.
Browsers don't show the page updating, easy to imagine that it's flickering on and off several times a minute at this point.
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.
If we cracked down on speech calling for violence, the president would be in jail instead of the white house. I don't see that happening.
there still is a gun problem.
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
We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it.
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.
Like every other country and ethnic group on earth. I don't understand what's so notable about American history in this regard.
The point was not to say USA was special, only to refute the claim that it was all flowers and sunshine at the founding of this country.
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.
Slavery in the USA was but a tiny fraction of contemporary slavery not to mention historical slavery.
Per capita you are wrong. The Atlantic slave trade enslaved 12 million people. An astounding volume of unique and unnecessary misery and evil.
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].
[1] https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2025/8/7/widesprea...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
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.
The Constitution doesn’t mention slavery once. That’s intentional.
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.
Do you think Charlie Kirk was pushing society's morals forward?
I don't think dismissing chattel slavery or it's ramifications on the modern day will improve the morals of society either.
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.
It wasn't just black people being lynched. The largest single mass lynching in American history was of Italians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
Louisiana has a dark history.
> An estimated 62–153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre
Jamelle Bouie wrote a piece about this, published this morning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-t...
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.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/visit/events/americas-scienti...
https://www.usahistorytimeline.com/pages/the-impact-of-the-r...
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.
most nations were not in fact founded by exterminating the native population and settling on their land
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).
This reads as if you've literally never consumed anything about Western history
Values don't make stonks go up
Quite the opposite
There would be no functional stock market without strong values and trust in them
>We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it.
What society are you referring to? And what values? I’m trying to gauge if you’ve looked in a history book ever.
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.
Unconfirmed, but I've seen repeated a lot that his wife and kids were in attendance. Awful.
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?
what is stochastic terrorism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
So did bin laden. So did Wissam al-Saadi (Abu Bakr). I dont suspect you are in their political camp either, but do you feel for them also?
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?
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.
So violence is sometimes justified. Ok. Let's get more precise. Did bin laden ever directly kill someone?
Why is this post flag worthy? I'm just asking questions. I thought we should be able to do that????
I've unflagged it now. It's often hard to tell whether someone is using the site as intended when they post like this (especially when you also posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45202782 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45205659, plus even worse ones you've been posting and deleting), but I'll take your word that you meant to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
Are we going to have a discussion about whether extra-judicial killings are justified? I vote no.
Are you trying to argue that killing Charlie Kirk was justified?
I can't say I was affected by Abu Bakr death since it happened 1300 years before my birth. But if it brings you pain, I am sorry for you.
I personally feel bad for their kids and wives, too. I honestly don't understand who wouldn't, and why?
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.
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c...
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.
Also an album cover from a few months prior depicted them blowing up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Music
> 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.”
Wow!
A broken clock is right twice a day.
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.
Historically, yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_witchcraft
I’m sure the original first season of 24 had a plot similar to 9/11 too.
Was the first season of 24 pre-9/11? I am truly shocked.
It premiered right after (Nov 6) so it's probably safe to say it was at least written, filmed, and produced mostly pre-9/11.
So I think I'm, at best, only partly right.
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.
Not really.
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.
Cursed on August 22 2025, per the article.
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!
[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-20550...
Leftists have had complete freedom to call and celebrate the murder of people they hate for decades.
Check out Blue sky right now for examples of this.
On college campuses and in the media, non-left wing opinions are censored. Now that we are starting to have true freedom, People can't handle even moderate opinions that go against their personal beliefs.
sorry, how long has charlie kirk been on college campuses? or is the true freedom that hes dead now?
If anyone is wondering "who?" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk
I assure you that anyone who is wondering "who?" also has access to search engines and Wikipedia.
If anyone is wondering "what is a wikipedia?" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
For those lost by the parent comment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_(emotion)
Thank you everyone in this subthread for providing a much needed chuckle in this difficult time.
Earlier this year, he was also the guest on the first full episode of the "This Is Gavin Newsom" podcast.
This man died promoting non-violence.
I don't think that does his memory justice. He would not like to be described that way.
Remember his accomplishments, like fighting for the freedom of the man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
To say he promoted nonviolence is an insult to the things he stood for and the vision he had for America.
America feels like it's in mortal danger.
That means it must be finally feeling.
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.
It feels like the two extremes in this country are not partisan, but rather "extremely angry" and "we can't do anything". A very bad combination.
It feels, to me, like "democratic decline".
We see increasing authoritarianism and decreasingly functional institutions, including the electoral system.
Identifying the problem is key.
It’s also an easy situation to manipulate. I see a lot of people eager to make assumptions about things that are not known.
That is also a very predictable response if you live in this country.
Summary of Independent.com article:
Kirk was lecturing a Utah campus on the hazard of mass shootings by trans people when a single shot was heard and he collapsed.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
//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.
Thoughts and prayers etc
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!
Truly an unenviable job today.
Oooooh boy there are a lot of dead comments in this thread.
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...
Whichever side of whatever fence you're on, it's universally a bad thing when politicians, political activists and political representatives get assassinated.
And as far as I can tell, he engaged primarily in peaceful verbal and written debate. That should be our political ideal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#Election_fraud_cl...
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.
Platforms like Reddit and BlueSky need to be held accountable for promoting violent rhetoric, as well as the users that openly call for violence.
A child could write an LLM backed script that filters out calls for violence.
An adult could work around the script
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.
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.
both of your disqualifications are orthogonal to "actually govern"
that might be where youre running into problems?
The one that is better at governing is worse at politics. The system sort of assumes that will be the other way around.
> 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 don't think most people are on either extreme, but the media does make it seem that way, along with reddit/twitter/bluesky etc.
Dont pretend like HN is much better, judging by the sheer magnitude of Flagged comments here.
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.
You could see them get flagged in real time lol.
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.
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.
> In 2025, most Americans are untethered to any moral framework, do not require that their leaders even appear to act in a civilized way
Strongly disagree with "most".
Margins on many recent elections have been so low they'd be too close to measure a generation ago.
I think that's relevant, a hard check on the idea that an overwhelming majority of Americans are getting what they voted for. No.
(FWIW I agree with your other points. I miss the era of Walter Cronkite consensus. Not clear that it was better. But less terrifying.)
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.
It could also just evolve ?
My sense is this: one side is utterly unhinged, the other seems desperate to outdo them.
I’ve left out which side is which, because I think it works both ways.
It's not like this in the day to day of 99% of us. It's the 1% amplified by 100% online by all parties.
I agree, politics has become a blood sport.
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.
There are plenty of places to buy food from if you do t have a xenophobic anti-trade president running your country.
Blue population centers have a lot of money, and though expensive, importing food from other countries is always an option.
You may not know this, but you can buy food. You don't have to grow it yourself.
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”
The natural breakaway candidates would be.. California, Bigger NY (including other Yankee states and DC), Texas, and the Confederacy.
Leaving a Midwest rump state run from.. Chicago?
California other then LA, SF, and SD is as Red as it comes. If stuff starts getting cut up 80% of California is going to the "red" side.
Blue states and welfare states maybe?
Welfare like cost-plus aerospace and defense contracts? Farm subsidies? Tax credits?
Assuming welfare as in healthcare and food subsidies, money to low-income individuals.
Most red states receive more federal money than they pay in.
That’s like the absolutely highest conflict separation.
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.
I think we can expect to see debaters behind inches of bulletproof glass
Or maybe they should double down to say "this will not stand".
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.
Please appreciate that this might well be the assasination of Franz Ferdinand of our generation, the event that set the wheels in motion for World War 1.
I urge everyone to lower the temperature. Not just in the comment section, but in real life and in your minds.
If you're on HN reading this, then you have above average influence. If you're working at Google, Meta, Tiktok, X, etc, today's the day you for you to act in service of humanity. Lower the temperature.
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.
Correct, nobody around me, including me, knows who he is.
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.
I've only learned about this man's existence because I've returned to watching South Park when I've heard they are targeting Trump and his politics.
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.
It makes sense when you realize that the US has a similar scope and a larger number of states in it than Europe did at the time.
Analogies between the United States and specific states in Europe often done work as well as US <-> Europe do.
He's probably drawing a comparison to a civil war, not WW3.
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.
The world goes where US goes
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.
R.I.P.
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).
He was extremely, intentionally divisive.
1. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-has-h...
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.
This is a sad, sad day.
Reply to dead comment below: (by nmz)
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.
Was he involved in any mutual defense pacts I am not aware of?
I seriously doubt this will have any kind of implications beyond a few tweets and headlines for a day or two.
I can't really see the parallel there?
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.
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.
do you know the name Luigi Mangione?
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.
Pronounced dead by the president:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115181934991844419
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.
edit: be
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.
Why is your sample size 75% of US history? 30 presidents is a huge number to start with.
I mean the sitting president was shot on the campaign trail.
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".
4 people were killed after being shot in Japan in 2022. More people were killed by gunshots in the US today.
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.
> Same story as seatbelts and stoplights
I don't believe this is the same thing.
One is an adversarial problem where a living thinking being is evil and trying to attack you.
In traffic, most people are just trying to get somewhere, and then accidents happen.
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.
You focused on the word "accident" but the emphasis is on the concept of being "adversarial".
Do you think traffic lights help if someone goes out with the explicit intent to kill others via their car?
It's kinda nice to live in a country where that the evil being doesn't have easy access to guns.
> Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.
This is so tiring. No shit, sherlock. Medicine doesn't prevent death or sickness either so maybe just give up.
Why does a law have to be 100% to be considered worth having?
It doesn't need to be 100% effective, but it needs to be effective enough to make up for the downsides.
How many gun deaths per capita does Japan have compared to the USA?
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.
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.
Anyone see whats happening in Nepal?
Honest question -- when was there a politically non-violent time? I'm hard pressed to think of a decade without a notable political killing.
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.
Some others from this year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Capital_Jewish_Museum_sho...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Boulder_fire_attack
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"
See also: Israel’s numerous assassinations globally that are supported by the US.
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.
I haven't noticed a fundamental change.
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.
> This _did not_ happen during his first term.
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.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-trump-officials...
> 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.
To be fair global entry is the greased skids of US customs. It's meant to be more efficient.
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.
Has nothing to do with trump being shot as project2025 has been planned for many years.
If you say it is political violence, I feel it is important to note, it was by a recently registered Republican.
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.
Crookes basically handed the election to Trump.
> There was just no way for an opponent to top that photo op.
Rising up with your fist clenched right after you were shot isn't something you train for either. That's a natural reaction from instinct.
It's morbid curiosity to analyze it, but I don't think it would have had the same net effect if it was Harris.
Trump has spent decades in practical training to be media savvy.
“Photo op”.
A man was killed that day.
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.
I'm referring to the man sitting behind Trump who was killed in front of his wife and kid you abject fool.
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.
He didn't seem fundamentally changed though. In fact he used it as a political prop.
> 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.
They still get through and do damage. Salman Rushdie and Jair Bolsonaro come to mind on recent-ish high profile knife stabbings.
I wonder about the statistics of gun assassinations vs non-gun assasinations.
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.
Could start with high profile assassination attempts by non-state actors. Trump - gun x2, Kirk - gun, Reagan - gun, Kennedy - gun, Kennedy - gun, Abe (Japan) - gun, Abe (Union) - gun, Bush - shoe.
> Once it starts and everyone joins, it will very, very hard to stop
More directly, when violence becomes a normalized means of politics, it doesn’t benefit the bourgeoisie.
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.
> not even the "bourgeoisie" can completely shield themselves from it
The bourgeoisie can't. The aristocracy can. That's the point.
> "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.
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.)
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.
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.
> Haitian Revolution comes to mind of "the bourgeoisie" that were actually in country
Yes. The bourgeoisie don’t get away. The aristocracy do.
If you work in tech, you’re part of the American bourgeoisie. If you have a college degree, you’re bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the middle class.
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.
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<< 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 you are mistaken in thinking that 'left' [...] somehow their violence is lower in percentage
I don't know about the US, but I've certainly seen stats from mostly center sources support that claim for my country
>Despite the constant braying of right-leaning people, left-wing violence is a tiny fraction of domestic terrorism compared to the right.
Only if you buy into the various biased studies that are conducted by those who sympathize with the left.
this has everything to do with guns. the more guns in society the more gun violence there is. is not rocket science
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.
Access to guns makes suicide attempts much more likely to succeed. You're describing a related aspect of the same problem.
https://www.kff.org/mental-health/do-states-with-easier-acce...
"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."
Why should this negate my rights?
Every right we have is balanced against the rights of others. The First Amendment doesn’t mean you can found a murder cult.
The debate is largely over where to draw the lines. Virtually everyone is fine with limiting access to certain weapons, for example.
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 can buy a gun and use it in a matter of hours. Less - potentially seconds - if I already own one.
I cannot give myself chronic fatty liver disease or lung cancer that quickly. I think you know this.
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).
To put it in perspective, California (a state with notoriously strict gun control) has experienced the highest rate of increase of opioid overdose deaths (see https://www.shadac.org/opioid-epidemic-united-states). More generally, deaths to firearm suicide and deaths of despair occur together in rural communities (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...).
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.
> Suicides are deaths of despair.
Sure. And my very clear point is that guns help make temporary - even momentary! - despair turn into a permanent end.
I don’t find the pro-gun crowd all that interested in improving social services outside of distracting from the gun issue.
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.
Canada and Finland both have a lot of civilian firearms per capita but not a lot of gun violence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
... a lot isn't even close though.
The US is at 120.5 guns per 100 civilians, and Canada is at 34.5
I think being ~4x the ratio of guns per capita, (and 30x the total!) has to do something, right?
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.
Most weapons in the US don't require registration.
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.
It could be a combination of guns and something else. While I hate this type of argument, what else explains the high rate of gun violence in the US?
easy access to guns plus a culture glorifying access to guns.
Australia has a lot of violence as well - it's simply not gun violence. I believe your conclusion is incorrect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Australia: 0.854/100k
USA: 5.763/100k
i.e. about 1/7th the amount of intentional homicides.
how does the Australian murder rate compare to American?
Ross Ulbricht on Kirk: https://x.com/realrossu/status/1965875168573903245
Why was a post about Melissa Hortman being killed flagged and removed but this post is allowed to stay up? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44279203 See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44276916
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.
* * *
> HN is a techno right wing site
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 just didn't expect it to be so obvious.
this place does a very good of portraying it's self as neutral, rational and logical, but it's definitely not any of that.
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.
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In bad taste only because what you’re questioning may have little to do with which side they were on.
The better question to ask is, how many subscribers did the Democratic state representative from Minnesota and the other have?
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?)
Just sad.
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.
We already have a TV personality for president. I'm not sure it would be much different.
Well, how do you think things are going so far?
This is not totally true. One Democratic representative was killed with her husband. The other representative was shot but survived.
Thanks, you're totally right. Corrected my comment.
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.
Doesn't help when Trump simply responded to Minnesota assassinations with:
"you know, I could be nice and call him [Governor Walz], but why waste time?"
https://www.startribune.com/trump-says-he-will-not-call-walz...
It was an attempt to quell the No Kings protests scheduled to happen the same day.
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.
> A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered
...and her husband and dog. The killer also had a long list of other targets.
> 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.
Melissa Hortman wasn’t a niche local politician - she was the speaker of the Minnesota House.
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.
Would you care to estimate the number of Americans who even knew her name?
She had power in MN, but had not become a "national" politician (yet).
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 was not intentionally trying to diminish her.
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.
They hold meaningful office within their states. That is neither niche nor local even if they lack a national profile.
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.
MN Democrats were not random “niche” “Democrats” but US CONGRESSMEN
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.
Minnesota is part of Canada now? Must have missed that… :)
> MN Democrats were not random “niche” “Democrats” but US CONGRESSMEN reply
> 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.
You missed the part of your education that taught you the difference between a state representative and a US representative.
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.
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.
Those were my thoughts exactly.
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.
> 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
Man, 80, run over for putting Trump sign in yard, say police - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1rw4xdjql4o
Alabama Antifa Sympathizer Pleads Guilty to Detonating Bomb outside State AG’s Office - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alabama-antifa-sympathiz...
a man armed with a pistol and a crossbow showed up at Fuentes' home - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes#Alleged_murder_at...
Attempted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Assassin Identifies As Transgender; Hoped To Kill “Nazis” - https://wsau.com/2025/01/30/doj-filing-attempted-treasury-se...
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.
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.
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.
We have entire 100% Democratic-run states that use regressive consumption taxing to fund the State government.
Prayers for Charlie and his family, violence against people you disagree with is never the answer
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.
Are you saying he was a violent person or that was just the image pushed by the opposition?
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
In Savannah, Georgia, there stand historic cannon with an inscription in French (translated here): The final argument of kings.
“…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?
And the Virginia flag has a graphically depicted murder with an inscription in Latin (translated here): Thus always to tyrants.
one of the rare latin phrases more famous untranslated: sic semper tyrannis (said by John Wilkes Booth as he shot Lincoln)
> Anyone who says violence is _never_ the answer is frankly, naive to history and power
Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.
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.
And who knows what retribution measures his death will be the justification for.
> 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.
Actually few conflicts are peacefully resolved purely by violence.
And the American civil war.
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?
Yet most countries were able to eliminate slavery without a war killing a significant portion of their citizens.
Yes, congrats to them and all of the freed slaves. We could not do that, but we did the next best thing.
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.
reconstruction was sabotaged by the south.
The confederates should have been punished, publicly.
> 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.
Yet here we are, and the civil right act passed. On the other hand, The allies humiliating the Germans with the Versailles Treaty led to World War II.
The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.
“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 think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage" - Charlie Kirk
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.
While what you say is true; you don't know anything about the shooter or the motive.
I think that this is pinned to the front page says a lot about the user base and moderation here. Disappointing.
You cannot have peace without justice.
Justice is in the eye of the beholder. There has to come a time of acceptance
Liberalism only works if it has moral social currency. This assassination just made a martyr out of Charlie Kirk. Now think about his wife and child.
The assumptions implicit in this comment are not especially reasonable.
Turning Point says he’s alive and in the hospital.
https://x.com/tpointuk/status/1965864882731102215?s=46
Would be incredible if he pulled through. Looked fatal. Who knows if his spinal system was damaged as well.
He has 2 young kids.
Confirmed he’s dead.
Well then, here come a bunch of new, authoritarian laws.
Give one example of a law you think would come out of this?
Gun bans for groups the Right doesn't like?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
I got one, I got one: national guard on college campuses
Is it likely the Republicans will ignore this? I have no idea what specific legislation they will come up with.
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.
How about: tech companies must implement mandatory screenings of users' messages and posts to look for violent intent.
oh man… it’ll be targeted towards complete loss of any little privacy us citizens have left (if there is any).
How solid is the first amendment protection for calls for violence?
It's all gone a a bit tits up, hasn't it?
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.
Who was the one person in recent memory to go after a puppeteer??
I took it as a reference to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare's CEO.
Gawker Magazine
I have no background context on this topic. Can someone more knowledgeable fill in the details?
The nbcnews website is filled with ad stuff and my blockers basically render the page unreadable.
Worth listening to Charlie's mentor; he said he was divisive and very provocative, so he parted ways with him.
Rhetoric does no good to anybody.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/us/video/the-lead-joe-walsh-c...
nothing to do with kirk, but rhetoric is like strength---it can be used for good or bad.
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
Chronic illness is horrible. And times are tough.
It's a scary day.
You can still build something, teach something, help those who love you.
The despair is real but it goes away.
you shouldnt drop out. you should instead get the degree, and work to remake the world they way you want it to be.
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.
Most jobs are boring jobs, like being a software engineer dont provide much benefit to society, so I dont get why you should drop out?
Don't do anything drastic.