Sure. I guess. In the same way that a schizo may 'support' stabbing his roommate because they're trying to steal his precious bodily fluids or put chips in his brain. Makes sense from his individual perspective. Of course, this perspective has consequences meted out by other parties (disconnection, imprisonment, execution).
They should support his murder based on their premises. I have my own premises as well, and some disorganized thoughts on what should be done to them in turn.
Gass could have said 'Boobies' and probably gotten the same effect. Instead he did the stupid thing.
I'm still carrying a charge over this after watching various leftist figures not only joke about the attempt on Trump's life, but also the other victims (1 dead, 2 critical). Last week I listened to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter on the former's podcast, and even straight-laced smarty linguistics expert John was saying he was only 'half-kidding' when he said he wanted Trump killed. Mind you, this was before the shooting, and I am intensely interested in their next episode together.
I had low tolerance for this kind of public talk before. It's nuked now.
EDIT: I have just now actually watched the video of Gass on stage making that joke. The most disturbing thing isn't the joke itself, but watching and hearing the crowd go fucking wild at it. And I'm reminded that we have a much larger problem than whatever stupid shit falls out of Gass' mouth. If the Right needs to claim scalps wherever they can get them and make examples of people (even down to lowly Home Depot workers), then so be it. Time to reach out and oh-so-gently touch them.
DTulpa
11mo ago
Indeed. My line has been that I don't mind (too much) the private expression of dark thoughts. I may not be interested in maintaining a relationship past a certain threshold, but if you wanna hang out over a few beers/joints and have a completely unrestrained conversation about this stuff, I'm game for it! The human mind is full of evil as well as good, and I am self-aware enough to know some of my beliefs are completely unproductive in the public sphere unless stated very carefully. I'm not intetested in scouring people's brains for wrongthink as long as their outward behavior is okey-dokey; because that's what actually matters.
If you literally can't stop yourself from gloating over this shit in public, then you have signed yourself up for the fucking war AFAIC.
DTulpa
11mo ago
They have made it crystal clear that their ire is not constrained to Trump. It regularly spills over to his base, Republicans in general, and even people that just are just not faithfully aligned with Blue Tribe values.
It is astounding reading and watching people act like this is some hot topic of the week that will blow over in a month. Maybe? What I don't see enough chatter about is how Trump voters received a loud and clear message that their deaths and misfortune (not just Trump's!) will be minimized at best and actively celebrated at worst (see also Babbit). As if it matters one bit to me if Crooks was a registered Republican when I subsequently saw how sizable chunks of the Left reacted to it.
This memory will not be going away any time soon.
DTulpa
11mo ago
In Basel, I remember when the downtown public restrooms got considerably upgraded! Automatic doors, light soundproofing, self-cleaning toilets, etc.
Not sure where they stand today, but I think this initiative would be completely wasted in most major US cities. I'm sure there were still junkies shooting up in them, but that activity was often traceless.
I dunno. This doesn't check out IME. I think a bit of masking is actually necessary. There was an appeal to getting more intimate with the minds of others when I thought "people are just fundamentally good". While it's not like I believe the opposite now, I can't sign on to that statement as-is.
I have been low-key horrified at many of the utterances good friends and peers have made over the last decade. These are decent, nonviolent, funny human beings who turned on a dime and started expressing every cruel, nasty thought they had in the name of authenticity and 'speaking their mind'. I have not cherished this. I wish they had actually shut the fuck up and kept it to themselves. Our bonds were not strengthened, but frayed. They still are to this day.
That's with actual people I'm familiar with in my life. You can probably imagine how much more insufferable this is with celebrities. More irritating is how that class is allowed to express their 'authentic selves' as much as they want while being completely shielded from the consequences of their expressions, while others get no such protections. Pedro Pascal should be C-tier after all the crap he's said, but instead he soaks up more love, more accolades, and more roles. I guess him and his legions of fans are okay with this, and who am I to complain. But I do not feel inclined towards kindness at this state of affairs.
Maybe society needs masks, and kayfabe, and to be just a little fake and gay. Maybe we are better off with some illusions regarding others. Because just like with the global adoption of the internet that was supposedly meant to help us better understand each other - well, it worked. And I am thoroughly displeased with the results.
See Destiny and his ongoing meltdown. I actually thought he was closer to being 'one of the good ones' worth listening to occasionally, and he seemed to make a concerted effort to drop some of the low-effort gotchas that marked thie beginning of his career as a political streamer. Now I think he's telling us what he really thinks. While I believe this is somewhat of a public good, because now I know I don't ever have to pay attention to him again, it is still depressing and unfortunate. And I also now have in mind several friends who are exhibiting this same behavior to a lesser degree, which makes it doubly so.
DTulpa
11mo ago
FWIW apparently that was a 2-part tweet, essentially saying he's sick of Elon trying to buy an election.
So not as bizarre as I initially thought.
DTulpa
11mo ago
I agree.
Despite everything that has occurred over the last month, reading that tweet in particular was the most potent in making me feel like I was being spun into another reality, for some reason. I couldn't quite believe I was seeing it. That it actually tied into something more fleshed out was a slight relief, but not by much.
This is so obvious a point that I wonder why it gets glossed over so much.
Yes, you have people on both sides of the aisle expressing violent fantasies and urges. The difference is that for a long time one side would lose their jobs, their status, their opportunities, and their protections. And not just them, but anybody who could be considered adjacent to those sentiments. Not even worth mentioning all the nonviolent expressions that got similar treatment. If you shoved some Sam Hyde quotes in front of an 'honorable Republican', they would reflexively denounce it, and maybe throw in a preemptive but unnecessary condemnation of white supremacy for good measure. There's /pol/, which isn't nothing, but it's also a bunch of faceless assholes who cant be held accountable and whose power level is overstated.
This is all before a POTUS candidate got shot. While I have some respect for the attempts to dissuade people against revenge, I have not been convinced that that said revenge isn't the smart, productive, and deserved play. Moreso, I don't know how you skip this step and go straight to Peace and Unity. There's a gap in this thinking that some expect to just sort out on its own, but I don't see the mechanism or the reciprocity required for it to work.
And when I compare the Left's body count to the Right's today... the suggestion to relent seems facially ridiculous? To my awareness, we have a Home Depot employee, an asshole streamer immolating himself and his surrounding bridges, and a member of a joke band pulling a Kathy Griffin (as in, largely punished by his peers, not external Rightoid forces). Not because of pronoun faux pas, or slips of the tongue, or statements that could be maliciously and dishonestly interpreted, but because they cheered on the death of Trump and/or Comperatore. These are the bridges too far? Really?
I don't believe in God or Heaven. More power to the folks with a strong Christian ethos or equivalent and the lines they wish to hold. I think holding these people over the piranha pit is ugly but necessary. And I'm prepared to accept that I likely won't see a quarter of the just desserts that would make this even remotely symmetrical. That's fine. I'm not greedy.
DTulpa
11mo ago
Oh yeah. I remember the needle bins in the public parks, and the permissive attitudes regarding the use sites. And yet, somehow I never encountered somebody shitting in the streets, passed out on a bench, or going schizo at a random passer-by. The mentality seemed to be "Fine, you can do those things. The moment this starts getting ugly or impinge on anybody else, you will get hauled off. Keep it invisible." I saw more social dysfunction from imported Turks and Albanians than from the junkies.
Not sure how well this model has survived. My experience was about 20 years ago. But I had the sense that this only possible as a result of 'Swiss Culture', if that's not too vague. Being a smaller country also helps. It seemed to work well enough for them, but if anybody pitched the idea needle bins in the nearby parks around me here in the US, I'd tell them they're crazy.
What occurred to me is that despite all the handwringing regarding a violent right-wing backlash to the event, I believe his fist-pump display actually curbed such an impulse in that very moment.
Imagine if Trump had been immediately dragged off the stage, and how ambiguous that image would have been. Is he dead? Is he alive? Is he wounded badly and will bleed out soon? Maybe physically impaired? What the fuck just happened? Is something going to be 'off' if and when he shows up again?
Trump gave 'proof of life' with that act. It wasn't enough to have him merely standing, or to provide a follow-up "I'm fine!" tweet that people may not trust. He snapped back into his usual shape and reassured everybody thay he was OK. And so it ends with cheers and jubilation instead of the wailing and gnashing of teeth. A lot could have happened in those few minutes, and the energy ultimately got redirected to Trump himself.
Anybody bitching about his fist-pump while also shaking in their boots about political violence can't see two feet in front of themselves.
CEO of Cloudflare had ears, and a sense of self-awareness to know he was opening pandora's box when he made his move against Stormfront. Apple and Amazon had ears when they were pulling Confederate and other RW imagery from their stores. ACLU could have maintained its usual tone instead of landsliding into progressive ideals. And am I to presume that heads of Google and Facebook were never availed of these concerns?
The rabble is hard to control, yes. And yet various captains of industry, historied organizations, and formerly libertanian-ish techbros either bent the knee, got fully on board, or played along out of fear of looking x-ist. A platform like Twitter can stuff its Trust & Safety Board with all stripes of feminist, POC, and LGBTQ advocates with nary a conservative in sight, and nobody on the inside recognizes how fucked up this is. It is impossible for me to believe that there was nobody in a position to listen to these concerns. They were indeed heard, and considered either naive, old-fashioned, or even dangerous.
These 'leaders' had every opportunity to stand athwart their mobs, wait them out, and go back to selling sneakers to Republicans. They passed it up. And I think it's worth remembering that a lot of this turn was occurring before Trump stepped off the golden escalator.
I already stated in my post that I don't expect to ever be symmetrical with the left. Nor do I particularly want to be.
I'll admit that 'vengeance' is on my mind, although I don't believe it to be petty. Nor am I acting on it, unless shrugging at LibsOfTiktok antics counts. Perhaps admitting that undercuts any further point point I try to make. But the most sober, serious take I can muster is this:
There will be no possibility of progress on this until the left gets a bit of this in their bloodstream, and their safe little clouds get punctured. They're gonna need to get sick a bit before they truly appreciate what a healthy body is. Because right now they're still in La La Land to my eyes. A blob that wants to go to the mattresses over Dead Trump jokes after a decade of pearl-clutching about so much weak shit is not a good partner for reform, and I expect them to resume maximum hostilities when they feel free enough to do so.
And if that doesn't work, so be it. I don't know what else comes next. We're not drowning in optimal choices here.
DTulpa
11mo ago
Fwiw, I would be interested in seeing codified protections for whatever is considered 'abhorrent speech' in any given year. Maybe I'd eventually be a little disgusted by the extent of the leeway in practice, but I can swallow that bitter pill if I think everybody is getting a reasonable share of the security blanket.
I just don't see how we get from here to there without reminding people across the board that they actually have skin in this game too. Something needs to actually force people to the table to avoid an exchange of WMDs, and the only path I see is to make people sweat a bit. And while you may not be able to claim a CEOs scalp this week, you can give them a light preview of where the winds will be blowing soon enough. Fortunately, there's Trump and his incoming admin to handle some of that.
I don't consider people like HD lady to be innocent civilians, although I do feel bad for her. I think these are people who volunteered for the fight, and are now having regrets that a mortar landed in their foxhole. In many a sense, this is ugly, unfair, and not quite hitting the target. But in what I see as a war between roughly two mass psychologies, the ultimate goal is to reprogram the opponent's consensus. That angle of attack can be opened from anywhere. Remember that the death of a fentanyl junkie sent a wide and powerful message that upended US society for years and brought forth new standards everybody had to live with.
DTulpa
11mo ago
I saw a lot of comments ranging from the boring "ugh, Trump needlessly showboating again" to "He's making the SS' jobs difficult" and finally to "that he was even allowed to do that means this was staged".
Ignoring the third one since you would have to be insane to keep up that line today, I'll have to admit that they may not even be wrong on the first two. In the fog of it, Trump was exposing himself to further danger for the sake of a visual display. And he was indeed holding up his protection while they did their thing. But in the end, it was absolutely worth it and the correct move to make.
The image is awesome, and I think most Dems are honest enough to admit that. They're just reluctant to give it any credit.
I'm not sure it's insufficient. Rolling over and playing nice certainly would be. Time will tell.
I stated my justifications and where I hope they end up, and you seem to think I actually don't believe them. Despite me having just written them out for you. Fine.
I said I wasn't getting people fired. I can still report hateful snots and find I'm getting a lot more traction than I did a few years ago. I am checking back in with people who peacocked the fact that they made whole wretched subreddits dedicated to 45 being dead just several weeks ago now squirm and go bipolar since they've gone under the microscope. And I am finding that a few of my Dem friends may have been caging their frustrations in the same way I used to, while the rest have conspicuously piped down their vitriol to their benefit and mine.
You say 'petty'. I say 'doesnt require that much effort'. Because the beauty of this is that you don't need to go hard when your opponent has so utterly beclowned themselves in this manner. When I say I am not looking for symmetry, that means I am not looking to cancel people for being pro-trans, pro-immigration, or holding any other stereotypical lefty belief. I am fine with profiling solely for people who publicly wish death on Trump and his supporters - who have decided this is leftist territory worth defending - and collaring every single one of them within arm's reach where possible, big and small. Just because I don't have the stomach or patience for this work doesn't mean I don't recognize the utility.
And if this can be accomplished by spooking them into doing this to themselves, all the better. That's decent power projection IMO. I think it's actually great that Kyle Gass is getting sanctioned by his own people instead of his opponents. That's some self-awareness starting to show. If they start to doubt the existence of an actual threat - well, Billionaire Tyrant Elon Musk has shown he's happy to make your life harder if he can half-cleverly justify it even if it breaks his touted his 'maximum free speech' line. The future cultural terrain is looking more and more up for grabs to me than it did in January. If nobody wants to wise up, we could very well make support for increasingly-discredited 'gender-affirming care' worthy of bans and demonetization by some time next year if trends continue.
You want me to talk about 'changing the law'? Okay, sure. "Social media posts cannot be considered as grounds for termination, and companies found doing this will be prosecuted to the full extent possible". While simple and broad, that seems like a good enough starting point for me, is actually close to my heart, and one I can be pragmatic about in regards to exceptions. And I'm just positive this is so widely uncontroversial and easy enough to coordinate consensus on that all I need to do is send an email to Mark Zuckerburg and ask him to lobby on behalf of this beautiful, pure ideal! Now that this wonderfully useful exercise has taken place, what's next, Hoss?
You want a change in law, make at least some people want it. This implied demand that I need to set forth a charter or a ten-point plan on 'How I Would Fix Free Speech On The Internet' is pointless when that opportunity is neither here nor there at this time. Especially when I am actually already telling you this a minimum Step One for such a process.
Force should be applied along a continuum until compliance (or 'persuasion' if you prefer!) is achieved. We can start with explicit Dead 45 comments made after July 13th. If nobody's feeling interested in setting down bipartisan protections after that, then the ratcheting should continue until it is desirable. And if that day never comes, then seeking complete dominance gets put on the table. Everybody here is familiar with the "your rules/my rules/fairly" orders of preference, and I'm trying to be clear about mine. Concerns regarding how successful this can be are valid, but don't dissuade me from thinking its worth attempting. "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs" is also a villain line in movies, but it has been more true through history than not if we're honest.
Previous intra-left cancelations have had more to do with failing to meet purity standards or not being up to speed with the most current lingo of the day. I think what's different after the Trump shooting is that they are now being visited by something outside of their wheelhouse, and it is making some of them crap themselves. Nobody in Dem-ville had to worry about lazily wishing for Trump to be assassinated (couched in cutesy Harry Potter metaphors, or trans-themed guillotine memes from the 'Love is Love' Facebook group) up until last week. My read isn't that Gass and HD lady are being punished because their peers or employers are truly offended by them, but because they are are afraid of what may be coming if they don't start heading this off now - especially since it looks like we will be getting an energized Trump admin with a popular mandate pretty soon. That fear should be exploited to get concessions or at least a table-meet.
You're right that some of this has already been churning in social media, but I think it's really only been on Twitter, and that is a direct result of one man being in the right place at the right time. Reddit got worse with each passing year, and only now may be internally wondering what their path beyond 2024 should be. It's incumbent upon conservatives to start flooding this space with their own heuristics and impacting the Overton window now, and that unfortunately is going to involve street scraps and some old ladies getting knocked over. I guess we could hold fire and wait on some high-minded technocratic solutions from Musk and his peers to shake out from top-down. Or he could be bankrupted or assasinated by next week, get replaced by somebody who's happy to revert to status quo circa 2020, and the opportunity to build some momentum on a grass-roots level will have been completely whiffed on.
DTulpa
11mo ago
You realize that Biden's decline by itself is only one part of this drama, right? The rest has been watching the Democrat party panic without direction and reveal themselves as dishonestly providing cover for a senile old man.
As long as the party running in November is the party that managed this embarrassing shitshow, you might want to reassess how 'over' this is.
DTulpa
11mo ago
This may be news to you, but society did not collapse overnight when the halls of power were threatened. There were no repeat attempts. Everybody eventually went home and retreated back to grumbling from their keyboards and patiently waited 4 more years for their next shot. You may argue that the consequent ill will towards Democrats was therefore misplaced and avoidable, but that sentiment was generalizable towards their entire party both before and after J6. It's baked in.
As bad as J6 was and could have been, watching various leftist riots and harassment campaigns treated with pillows while they spill their anger and hostility onto their fellow citizens did more to damage my trust in institutions than any march on the capitol. Your sacred system means fuck-all to me if it's not going to protect me and mine from street felons.
DTulpa
11mo ago
How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?
I respect the possibility that she may WOW me with a pivot to a smart, competent, and incisive campaign. If only these were qualities she had ever managed to exhibit or sustain beyond a 30-second edit. This meme you're pushing that "Repubs are scrambling to figure out an attack on Kamala" is one of the most fanciful things I've read in this last week, as if she hasn't been repeatedly trotted out as a pinata to playfully hit with a stick in between more serious concerns regarding Joe Biden and the Blob. She is known to her opponents, and they make hay out of her every day.
The Trump campaign should give her a cursory acknowledgment as the Dem nominee, and then go back to hammering the Biden admin while pretending she's not even in the room.
DTulpa
11mo ago
I was reading through the comments, found myself saying "This one guy sounds a lot like darwin", looked up at the name and lo-and-behold.
Points for consistency.
Many people here over the course of years or even decades were probably incubated in the idea that anger or hatred were not virtues, and should be avoided despite our occasional, personal lapses. Your parents, teachers, and media all probably echoed the same sentiments, and this was sold as non-negotiable bedrock. Over time, you realize this isn't actually how things work, and that many of your moral instructors have a hard time even bothering to keep up the act. And so you go from having a sincere belief, to an abstract ideal, to lip service, and it has now bottomed out entirely. A fairy tale has lost its spell, and we are all Spider-Man now.
I don't think this should be license for infinite rudeness or malice. But if we're going to talk about modern cancel culture dynamics and explore the idea of 'revenge' being compatible with 'justice' (for real, not snapping up the drawbridge at "eye for an eye" platitudes), then this ire is a very legitimate data point, and it is ignored at everybody's peril.
I see where Scott is coming from, and it is not even close to overcoming the war memorial I can visualize of victims shitcanned for transgressing progressive values in the most milquetoast ways. And I don't know why I should have to reflect in the mirror and assume I'm the one getting warped because I feel a bit cross.
DTulpa
11mo ago
Speaking as somebody who used to appeal to BLM'ers to include Tony Timpa in their press materials, I did so because I also don't like dickhead cops and argued that BLM's best path forward was to deracialize the issue and get broad buy-in with a patchwork of murder-by-cop horror stories. This was rejected near-totally. And in the years since, I think the ethos they represent is a larger threat to the country across multiple levels than what hotheads with badges occasionally do to people in the lower class.
I've also had a drop in sympathy for many (though not all) of these victims due to their sheer inability to 'act right' with law enforcement, based on some personal experiences. Let's just say that if I can keep calm, respectful, cooperative, and stationary with a cop while tripping balls on several psychedelic substances at once in the middle of a crime scene I am culpable in (a power I did not realize I had until that moment!), then I have less and less patience for the kind of low-level disdain and noncompliance I see in these stories that always increases the risk of LEO escalation.*
*This particular comment is not directly relevant to Massey's story. Just further explanation as to why any common cause with your stereotypical anti-cop activist was left to wither and die.
So you use 'they' until the person you're interacting with reveals themselves. Teams texts, a Skype call, or a company headshot usually takes care of this.
I work with a lot of fellow, foreign employees, and I swear that there has never been any enduring confusion over somebody's gender or sex. Yes, an odd-to-my-ears name occasionally stumps me, and this is often rectified within 24-48 hours just by inference, without anybody prompting for pronouns or confirming genitals. Furthermore, most of the people I'm interacting with do not have not have these models for novel gender theory born from the West. They work for a US company, so on some level they 'get' why it's being asked (because despite DEI and inclusions practices, everybody is bowing down to American corporate culture), but I have a hard time imagining them getting utility from this on a more fundamental level.
On paper, I get the argument you're making. In my reality, 99% of the company folk I see with pronouns in their signatures or profiles visibly match their birth sex. There is no confusion or ambiguity regarding who or what they are. And this generalizes across all the Americans, Indians, Koreans, Serbians, and more that I see listed in my recent Teams history.
The one time I have ever experienced a 'pronoun snag' was with a goateed male with a generic dude name like 'Doug', and even he preferred the ambiguous 'they'. I believe that this entire concotion of modern gender theory fused with HR nannying is for his benefit, not poor people across the pond struggling with language barriers.
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