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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.
When we saw the most recent amp in Nazi rhetoric with "It's okay to punch a Nazi" I tried explaining to my leftist friends, as this was a point when I still could without risking pattern-matching to wrongthink, that the moral order of politics is specifically on violence not being an acceptable tool. Violence changes the moral equation, when a leftist punches who they call a Nazi in belief of preemptive violence being acceptable, what they are saying is the Nazis weren't wrong because of what they did, but who they did it to. No, the crime of Nazi Germany had nothing to do with who they targeted.
A trans-identified man murdered Catholic schoolchildren because he was conditioned in an environment that treats violence as acceptable. I plea to the trans, the backlash they face for sports, for changing rooms, for grooming children, this was a warning of stepping too far. If the trans phenomenon weren't in schools, if to this day it were restricted solely to 18 year olds, the trans movement would be in a much stronger position. Gays in the 80s and especially the 90s in following the agenda as outlined in After the Ball, knew the success of the movement was wholly dependent on peaceful, quiet coexistence and leaving children alone. When, and I'll happily call this fringe, when fringe members of the trans community advocate violence, when they say "What do you expect?" with their words explicitly conveying "Accept us or we'll kill more of your children" it doesn't end in their tolerance, it ends in the response being "Okay, we won't give any of you the chance."
Because this is might makes right, this is consequentialism, this is the Nazis were bad because they didn't target someone who deserved it.
And now Charlie Kirk has been shot.
Years ago on /pol/ I would go into slide threads with a simple point. I live in a very blue part of a very red city. I'm surrounded by trans flags and yes even BLM signs still and various other displays of leftist conforming. Such neighbors talk to me, they think I'm one of them. This is the story of this country. The leftists, for no fear (truly the greatest display of subconscious awareness of how they are the establishment) signal themselves everywhere, even among mixed company, who they believe agrees with them. Leftists don't understand they are surrounded by their ideological adversaries, leftists don't understand that they can't see their adversaries, but their adversaries see them. Their adversaries know where they work, they know where they shop, they know where they live, they know where they sleep.
If violence, if the American Troubles and Years of Lead happens, it will involve one side who wear their allegiance sometimes literally on their faces, and one side who is invisible and everywhere. I'd end my explanation, in those slide threads, by saying I'm trying to save your life. I am, I don't want violence, I know most people don't want violence, it's why we haven't become violent. We know it is the last resort, and even now we aren't there, but each senseless act convinces people violence is the only option.
Iryna Zarutska moved it some, Charlie Kirk moves it much, much farther.
As I've been composing this, constantly refreshing X, I see now Trump posted that Kirk has died. If the left is to continue existing, now is the time for its pivot. Admit you're wrong, your voters will forget, everyone will forget. Lord knows there's enough to advocate purely on improving conditions for American labor while attacking the abuses of wealth. There is no longer a win condition for the American left as it exists in this moment.
At the end of the day thé two tribes absolutely dominate different fields, so sustained civil conflict should have a tempering factor.
I would ask that you think, for about ten minutes, about what those dominated fields will look like in a sustained conflict where a) many of the foot soldiers will have trained themselves to enjoy their 'enemies' pain, b) where the 'management' tier is primarily interested in farming those foot soldiers by making alternatives to violence unimaginable, c) where a man who killed someone in a protest over a year ago is walking the streets on bail, today, d) those 'management' personnel will optimize for the survivability onion.
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