urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
21hr ago
You thought the week was boring? We had NATO jets shooting down Russian drones last night and you thought it was a boring week?
Chill. I was referencing the comment down below about how people were saying the culture war thread was boring.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
As with most shootings, the "crazy guy with a gun" frame is probably accurate. It's pretty definitional that someone who does something like this is crazy, likely to harm their cause and accomplish little while giving up their freedom, possibly their life, and certainly every element of their reputation.
That said, white boomers are the one group that shifted towards Harris in 2024, and progressive/liberal boomers seem to be the most intensely focused on norm-violations by the right and have a particular contempt for Trump. Younger progressives are more in the camp of "yes of course conservatives are fascists," older ones show this kind of feeling of betrayal that perhaps can form into a stronger grievance.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
Well, when you thought the week was boring...
Charlie Kirk was just shot at an event, shooter in custody. There's apparently a video going around of the attack, but 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. That makes this the second time that a shooter targeted a conservative political figure at a political event in two years. If Trump hadn't moved his head at the last second, it would've been him, too.
I've never followed the young conservative influencers much, but 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.
I fear this is what happens when the culture war is at a fever pitch. Political violence in the US is at heights not seen since the 1970s, from riots in the 2010s and especially 2020 over police-involved shootings, to the capitol riot in 2021, to the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, to the United Healthcare killing, to finally this murder of a political influencer. I fear for my country when I look at how divided we are, and how immanently we seem to be sliding into violence.
I guess I just find politics tiring nowadays. I vote for a Democrat and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. I vote for a Republican and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. Whether J.D. Vance or Gavin Newsom wins in 28, there will be no future in which Americans look each other eye to eye.
I actually believe things are much better in this country than people think: our economy is surprisingly resilient, we've never suffered under the kind of austerity that's defined post-colonial European governance, our infrastructure, while declining, actually functions in a way that most of the world isn't blessed with, our medical system is mired in governmental and insurance red tape yet the standard of care and state of medical research is world-class, our capacity to innovate technologically is still real and still compelling, and one of our most pressing political issues, illegal immigration, exists solely because people are willing to climb over rocks and drift on rafts simply to try and live here.
We have real problems. And intense escalations on the part of our political tribes are absolutely in the top five. We also have a severe problem with social atomization -- and these two things are related -- which has led to our intimate relationship and loneliness crisis, the rapid decline in social capital, and the technological solitary confinement of the smartphone screen which dehumanizes people like real solitary confinement while confining them to the most intense narrative possible. "If it bleeds, it leads" means that many will be led into bleeding.
I don't know how we rebuild the world, or come to a point where Americans of different views can view each other as well-intentioned. But Kirk is just the latest victim of a crisis that I don't know if there's any way to solve.
You’re reacting to his comment as though he asked specifically about ideas for violence, but the way gattsuru worded his original comment I had no clue the specific things he was talking about not speaking on publicly were in that category until he clarified.
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