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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.
I saw it and yeah he’s dead. Press F.
Frankly I doubt this will escalate into anything unless the shooter had very clearly stated political motives. If the pictures of the suspect are accurate then it was a white boomer. Very much could get swept away as a “crazy guy with a gun”.
No one in Red Tribe is going to accept that a famous Conservative activist being sniped on a college campus can be summarized as "crazy guy with a gun".
By next Monday, there will be no shortage of salient examples about how the shooting was his own fault, or a good thing actually, or understandable because he was such a scumbag. No one here is going to be willing to argue that a large plurality of Blue Tribe, and likely an outright majority of young politically-active blues outright don't support the shooting.
I am highly confident that the assassin here is not going to be "crazy" any more than Hodges was "crazy".
Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I doubt it, though.
[EDIT] - MSNBC is saying that nobody knows nothing: "we don't know if it's a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration."
If he turns out to be a boomer Trump voter who turned against the Trumpy Right because of Epstein for example. I usually expect Red tribe to use guns and Blue tribe to use riots and lawyers, though there have been exceptions.
It's possible. It's not the way I would bet, though.
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