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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.
The amount of handwringing in this thread as if this is the moment that we've passed some sort of threshold as a society makes me really believe that a lot of people here are quite desperate to witness an event that allows them to declare that a threshold has been passed. Accelerationism and extremism. We know nothing of the shooter, or their motivations. Where was the uproar when Democratic senators were assassinated in Minnesota? The red tribe does not have the moral high ground, and some sort of grim moral imperative, simply because a red tribe figure was assassinated. Hysteria.
Also, I mentioned it elsewhere in the thread. Don't rely on the algorithms to feed you the opinion of those who you believe are your outgroup. The algorithms have two focuses: (1) create a bubble for the ingroup to feel comfortable, and (2) create ragebait for the outgroup to feel enraged. Reflect on how you've interacted with social media in the past 24 hours with this in mind. Touch grass and talk to a human - because I definitely know you haven't had the chance to talk to more than a few people since this event happened.
If you keep in eye on the e-influencer sphere, they are all shellshocked. Even those who are political adversaries of Kirk, like Ethan Klein, were brought to tears- obviously not due to love for the man himself but realization that their profession and status as C-list political celebrities makes them the highest ratio of political value / target hardness for anyone who would want to do something like that. And Pandora's box has been opened.
There's definitely a threshold had has been crossed and it wouldn't surprise me if these sort of events completely disappear as a result. Is Crowder going to keep doing his campus debate thing after this?
Asking you because you're the poster here I'd trust the most to be aware of this particular issue, but I've seen rumours on social media that Charlie was actually concerned about assassination recently because he'd been pissing off the Israelis. Do you think or have any evidence that this particular aspect is potentially a factor?
The motive doesn't really make sense, despite Kirk's recent mild criticisms he was probably the most pro-Israel Gen-Z influencer. Kirk's audience being set adrift, and it being likely Fuentes will posture to capture some of that market share, doesn't seem to provide a clear benefit in relation to the risks. So my prior is low and there's no evidence. The only evidence I'm aware of is Fox News mentioning foreign Intelligence being somehow related to the manhunt, but that can mean a lot of things.... and apparently some old guy falsely confessed to the crime in police custody which is strange.
Nick Fuentes though has talked pretty soberly recently (even before this) about his life being in danger, if he gets killed the priors are much different. But now political commentators from all sides of the aisle are considering the possibility of this happening to them.
Edit: I didn't really follow Kirk's content, but apparently he got closer to very substantive criticism of Jews than I had realized. Doesn't really change my analysis, and I do think it's significant that Kirk reportedly associated criticism of Israel with personal risk but it remains far more likely to have been some amateur. It's really not hard to accurately shoot a rifle.
Yeah. He'd wandered a little bit off the company line but it's top-tier JOOS posting to suggest that he'd be assassinated for that. The Palestine-Israel nonsense has just broken so many brains in the political discourse sphere.
Someone connected to him claimed that Charlie had personally been worrying about his life being in danger over this specific topic - I agree that it has broken a lot of brains, but there's a difference between someone just arbitrarily blaming the jews for everything and being curious about a murder victim's recent thoughts about who wants to murder him.
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