Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
18d ago
I'm not sure what the lesson is there
Debate is a skill. Most people overestimate their ability to assemble an argument on the fly, overestimate their knowledge of a subject, and even when theoretically prepared overestimate their composure when an unfriendly interlocutor starts pushing on them.
You can loose an argument to someone who is obviously, comically wrong because they more prepared and more composed in the actual debate.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
18d ago
If you have certain values, and you express them, there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who would love to see you get decorated with your own blood, watch you exsanguinate, a chunk of mineral tearing through your vital structures, turning you into a pile of meat instead of a man.
Interesting.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to put this on you, specifically, but this is exactly how many of those people have felt for years or decades - Like conservatives want them (or their friends/family) to not exist, and would shrug and make excuses (if not cheer) if they were murdered. Looking at the rapidity with which many conservatives started calling for blood (and in particularly renewing already intense animosity against trans people), it's, uh, hard to blame them for thinking that.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
19d ago
There are people like @JeremiahDJohns or @ArmandDoma [1] [2] who are very critical of the far left, but also seem to not understand how Kirk isn't "far right".
TheMotte's idea of far-right and YIMBY twitter's idea of far-right are two non-overlapping circles.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
19d ago
But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I am personally of the view that celebrating someone's death is bad, even if the person was an asshole, because exercising sadism is bad for you. I understand why people aren't tearing their clothes and gnashing their teeth. I likewise understand (and basically agree with) why they push back on efforts to lionize Kirk. However, even with all that, to actively celebrate it is too much. Most of us have negative or inappropriate thoughts, but you should aim to tame them, not cultivate them. There are instances where I might cut you some slack (e.g. NYers cheering OBL's death), but it is not wholesome.
What sticks in my craw about pearl-clutching from conservatives over less-than-decorous reactions to Kirk's death is how one-sided it is. Trumpism is a movement literally founded on turfing out respectable conservatives in favor of tribal nastiness. A significant part of Trump's initial appeal was that he was a loud and proud asshole who didn't care about decorum, and that has carried forward through his entire movement. The aesthetic of cruelty, a gleeful willingness to offend ("facts don't care about your feelings") has been a central element post-Trump conservatism*. The reason you're not supposed to celebrate Kirk's death isn't a generalized principle of decency or respect for the dead. It's because Charlie Kirk is a Good Guy and you're not supposed to make fun of Good Guys. It's totally cool to celebrate death and misery as long the subject deserves it.
*It was always present (e.g. Rush Limbaugh), but under Trump it came to the forefront.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
19d ago
In addition to the Helldivers bit others mentioned, I'd note that nowadays the Three Arrows has been picked up (seeming without irony) by a number of far-left types.
Do you have evidence of this?
Jan 6 will continue to be the premier example. The conservative reaction basically split three ways between "it was a false flag", J6ers are heroes, and it was actually no big deal. Eventually this consolidated on a hybrid of the latter two positions (e.g. the lionization of Ashli Babbitt). You don't have to go dumpster diving for groypers to find this. It will come up relatively frequently on gun/hunting forums or other conservative-dominated space where they feel they are 'in private'. I mean, shit, it comes up here from time to time.
However, to your opening paragraph: half my point in this thread has been that American right-wingers don't process their support for political violence as support for political violence. When Tom Cotton calls for people to beat up pro-Palestinian protestors, or they laugh about a guy nearly beating Paul Pelosi to death, or they cheer for police brutality, they don't think of that as supporting political violence. When someone plows a truck into a crowd of protestors, they shrug and say "shouldn't have been standing there" (while laughing behind their hands). When it becomes unignorable (as in the Minnesota case), they shift the blame to mental health or somehow try to make it the fault of left-wingers.
You mention not disassociating from the 20%, but for American* right-wingers the 20% includes much of their senior leadership.
(I also want to note that this is not a new phenomenon; conservatives have been joking about murdering Democrats for decades)
*I have to specify American right-wingers because I don't think this is some timeless quality of conservatism; Americans in general seem a lot more comfortable with violence than their European counterparts
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
19d ago
But he did seem rather nice and kind in how he tried to persuade people of his evil opinions.
Did he? I get the general impetus to not speak ill of the dead, but unless he'd taken a turn very recently that I'm not aware of, Kirk was not doing good-faith outreach. He was generating content.
I think the reason this is getting this much attention is because it's on video
I don't think that hurts, but I think the main reason is that Kirk was a prominent right-wing figure and you already had a lot of people champing at the bit for an excuse to crack some heads. Similarly, Floyd's murder tapped into a pre-existing resentment of police brutality that we'd seen flare up in, e.g. Ferguson and NYC (and also you had hundreds of millions of people with cabin fever).
By contrast, there's no political factions around school shootings. There's no opposition to mobilize against, and to the extent that there's a national conversation to be had, we've already had it.
Your mileage may definitely vary. I've grown up listening to right-wingers not-as-coyly-as-they-think cheer for all manner of violence against their enemies. There's a lot of stuff I ignored when I was inside the tent that I reflect back on and realize how casual support for violence was. It certainly wasn't everybody, but it was quite common and encountered very little pushback.
And these were normies conservatives and that was before Trump came in the scene and started actively riling them up.
Certainly you can find people like that on the left. IME the biggest difference is that when there's left-wing political violence, normie liberals will usually say "that's terrible" and when there's right-wing political violence, normie conservatives will split into thirds along the lines of "it's good, actually", blaming the left, and just pretending it didn't happen.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
The guy also had a bunch of "no kings" anti-trump fliers
Which do you think is more likely: that this guy who was specifically targeting Democrats was also carrying fliers for a normie resist-lib protest because after he finished up murdering his way through the MN state legislature he was going to pass out some literature? Or that this guy with a history of right-wing views (pro-life, anti-trans, evangelical, etc...) was trying to throw people off the scent?
Boelter was not just an unhinged guy (he is also an unhinged guy, but that's just table stakes) who intended to pull the trigger and see what happened. Even if he didn't expect to get away with it, he clearly planned to.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
Well, we're already in hell. Now what?
We're not. We're barely above baseline. This is America. We shoot each other a lot. What we are is acting like we're in an apocalyptic struggle.
When a right-winger does it, they get denounced by everyone.
When a right-winger does it, everyone on the right acts all mystified as to how their constant violent fantasies could have led to violent action. They shift the blame to mental health while half of them snigger behind their hands.
This quote really sums up my experience with the asymmetry here:
My feed is filled with statements from elected democrats condemning the shooting which is obviously good but I have a sneaking suspicion it will all be forgotten when someone named like MyLittleCommunistPony got 100k Likes on TikTok for saying “Good” or whatever
Except that when the tables are turned, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony it's senior Republican leadership. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples would be Trump pardoning J6 insurrectionists. But also Mike Lee claiming the Minnesota assassin was a radical left-winger. Or, uh, Charlie Kirk.
(And all this is leaving aside the reality that right-wingers outsource most of their political violence to law enforcement and cheer from the sidelines)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
it's going to backfire on whatever political positions the perpetrator holds
I'm going to reiterate the bit where a right-wing nut murdered two Democratic politicians in July, planned to murder more, and the right just brassed it out and said he was secretly a leftist. Why moderate? What's the point? Who will be swayed by it? Their enemies won't care and won't respect it.
You misunderstand me. RWers never, ever own their violent extremists, no matter how blatant it is (I mean, seriously, the guy was going down a hit list of democratic legislators). The blame is always shifted onto mental health. This despite how much time the far right spend fantasizing about violence (shit, the most common far-right response I've seen to Kirk's murder is "this is our Reichstag fire, time to break out the jackboots")
I found this remark from Ben Dreyfuss illustrative:
My feed is filled with statements from elected democrats condemning the shooting which is obviously good but I have a sneaking suspicion it will all be forgotten when someone named like MyLittleCommunistPony got 100k Likes on TikTok for saying “Good” or whatever
Except when it's a right-wing extremist, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony saying 'good', it's, like, Mike Lee, and right-wing commentators invent cope about how the guy was really mentally ill and we can't really know what was in his heart.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
Oh, wait, I forgot. When a right-winger does it, it was actually a mental health issue.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
And the fact you have offered this alternative take makes it impossible for me to believe you believe your first claim
Willingness to consider alternative explanations makes me untrustworthy?
Nice talking to you.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
To be clear: I'm not positing the shooter was a professional. I am positing that this is not some crank who bought a gun last week. It is probably (again, assuming the above info is true and not more rumors) someone with significant experience/training shooting. That's not that rare in the US, but it's far from common.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
I'm gonna admit, I'm feeling some simmering rage.
I have to admit, I feel simmering rage whenever I see right-wingers completely memoryhole every instance of right-wing violence to build a one-sided persecution narrative meant to justify more right-wing violence. Oh, you're old enough to remember Scalise getting shot? Are you old enough to remember two fucking months ago? Or three years ago? Or or or.
Oh, wait, I forgot. When a right-winger does it, it was actually a mental health issue. At this point, I'm genuinely convinced there's a subset of American right-wingers that is dug so far into their siege mentality that they're incapable of grasping this. They crouch in the corner, fantasizing about violence until one of them does something, at which point they act shocked for ten seconds before flushing the whole thing down a mental toilet. The ability to flip between gleeful viciousness and 'have you no decency' pearl-clutching is incredible. Not a shred of self-awareness, just an impenetrable conviction that they are innocent victims.
Many of those also resulted in violence, or at least intense conflict, before reaching a measure of reconciliation. But no, it's not just about the existence of disagreement but the gap. This is part of why, e.g. there was so much violence during the Civil Rights Movement. Free speech debates don't become nearly as heated because the scope of disagreement is much narrower.
Meanwhile, right now we have a movement that simultaneously controls every branch of the federal government and thinks it is on the verge of extermination.
yet another "lone wolf with mixed political leanings and a history of mental illness" I'm going to have a really hard time suspending my disbelief.
Why? It would seem fairly plausible that schizos with incoherent political beliefs are disproportionately likely to try and shoot a politician.
Actually, let me offer an alternative take: most people have mixed political leanings and a lot of people have mental health issues. It is often desirable to play up mental health issues and downplay coherent ideological motivations. It is generally pro-social to maintain the idea that you'd have to be a deranged nut to resort to assassination, and if an assassin agrees with you it can be embarrassing. (I think my first statement is more correct, but it can be useful to think of alternative explanations).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
Define 'today'. If we walk backwards through notable assassinations and attempted assassinations, the assassins usually turn out to be massive weirdos.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
People who decide to try and shoot a politician tend to be fucking weird. Zangara and Oswald, for example, were bonkers, but they were pretty clearly also politically motivated.
I haven't a desire to see it. People who have seen it are suggesting he was shot center mass in the neck, and is likely dead.
I happened to see the video before I knew what I was watching and I would amazed if he survived.
Kirk always seemed like the moderate, respectable sort -- it's wild that he would be the victim of political violence and not someone like Fuentes.
Unlike Fuentes, Kirk did a lot of public appearances, so even if he's not nearly as provocative a figure he was simply more exposed. I personally never thought of Kirk as anything more a suited buffoon - a borderline caricature of a YR. Not a figure of any real note. The only reason I can think of to go after Kirk is pure availability on the part of a shooter who was determined to shoot somebody.
What is of moderate interest to me is that the report as of now is that a single shot was taken from a rooftop 200 yards away. That is not Zangara stepping out of the crowd. Assuming that detail is correct, that is someone who knew what they were doing.
And intense escalations on the part of our political tribes are absolutely in the top five.
I don't anticipate these cooling because we are talking about fundamental disagreements about the shape of society. There will presumably some reconciliation (in a thesis-antithesis sense, not in a everyone-hugs-it-out sense) eventually, but society can sustain quite a high level of civil violence between now and eventually.
But let me offer at the same time: this is (unfortunately) not that unusual in American politics. We had two state legislators assassinated in Minnesota in July. An attempt on Trump in July of last year. The attack on Paul Pelosi (was targeting Nancy Pelosi). The congressional baseball shooting. Giffords being shot in Arizona. And that's not getting into terrorism/politically motivated murders not targeted at prominent individuals or foiled plots that never got within striking distance. An attempt to present a one-sided narrative of violence is, itself, likely meant to rationalize more violence.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
21d ago
You develop thick skin
To be fair, this is also a negative outcome.
It is, but it is vastly less concerning and mostly a function of the nature of urban poverty. Beggars are ancient phenomenon.
Not only that - we've had several domestic incidents stemming from ideas that are fairly normal on the Motte (e.g. Great Replacement Theory).
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