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So we just had an emergency lab meeting about the Charlie Kirk situation. Someone screenshotted an instagram story from one of my fellow lab members and sent in anonymous email to my PI (professor/supervisor). The instagram story said basically that Charlie Kirk's death was a good thing, actually. PI didn't name names, and it was also unclear what exactly the anonymous emailer wanted, but did caution us that this is a dangerous environment to be posting this kind of thing. EDIT: He also said that he STRONGLY disagrees with this position, but he's very in favor of free speech and would defend unnamed individual from the university/public if push came to shove, despite disagreeing with their politics.
I have a couple thoughts about this. Firstly, it's legitimately pretty scary that internet posting is now important enough to warrant an emergency lab meeting. It feels like we rapidly are descending into an authoritarian anti-free speech environment (not that universities were bastions of this to begin with). My own social media and blog are extremely clean, but it's trivially easy to link this account with my real name, and I've posted some not kosher things here before.
Secondly, universities/leftists have kind of done this to themselves. This is the old Cory Doctrow/ Freddie DeBoer stick. Trigger warnings, anti-racism and cancel culture have all led to this kind of environment where speech can be policed in this way by the state and doesn't look hypocritical.
Thirdly, and I hate to say this, but whichever one of my colleagues posted this is a fucking idiot, along with most of the left in my generation. I still think of myself as a socialist, perhaps less so recently, and I want to shake this person and ask what good this kind of statement actually does for our cause. Do you want more vigilante killings? The right is going to come up on top with that one, as most lefties in this country are strangely anti-gun. Do you want to win elections? Advocating for murder isn't very popular with most of the electorate. Do you want continued science funding so you can have a job and accomplish the things that you think are so important you dedicated 8-12 hours of your day to, every day? Then stop tarnishing the reputation of universities and science in general with your crazy politics: our stipends come from taxpayer money. As I've written on earlier, scientists are woefully naive about politics. This is not how you win political victories, which makes me think that the goal isn't actually political victory, but some kind of LARP/ in-group signaling game.
Despite my dislike of the man, I am staunch enough in my opposition to death in general and murder in particular that Kirk's death brings me no joy. A human being has died, and that's never a joyful thing, even when it's necessary to save more lives - and here I don't think there's a plausible argument that it was. Never mind the question of his family, who have all my condolences.
But with that said, I have significantly more sympathy for people who celebrate his death than seems to be common among people who don't share that celebratory mood. It doesn't feel outrageous to me that people are enjoying this. Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy? And if someone tried to argue that this made you just as bad as if you were advocating for that guy's murder, wouldn't that seem pretty unfair? Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard of Oz is the canonical anthem for celebrating this sort of "such-and-such celebrity you hate has randomly died" breaking news, and you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings. Whether out of cowardice or morality, none of them would have been willing to drop a house on the Wicked Witch - that's why it took a freak tornado before they were freed from her tyranny. It just happened. But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I contend that for the average left-wing rando, "some nutjob has shot Charlie Kirk" has about the same valence as "Charlie Kirk has been struck by lightning". It's completely outside their control, it doesn't scan as something they or their tribe did. They don't own a gun, no one they know owns a gun - gun ownership itself is an outgroup marker. The killer may as well have been a storm cloud or a Kansas farmhouse. "Charlie Kirk has randomly died" is a Thing That Just Happened, and they're celebrating it as a turn of events, and they're genuinely caught off-guard when the Right perceives this as them supporting assassinations in a proactive sense.
I have spent some time thinking about this, and I think I see some very obvious distinctions aside from the "murdered vs. accident" issue.
The Wicked Witch of the East had actual power over the Munchkins. She was a tyrant who ruled them and (if remotely comparable to the Wicked Witch of the West) killed and tortured them on a whim. Charlie Kirk had no actual power. He wasn't a government official, let alone a ruler.
The Wicked Witch of the East's power could only be removed by killing her. There's no political procedure for "getting rid of the witch who fireballs people who disagree with her". Hell, even her ruby slippers specifically only come off once she's dead.
So if Donald Trump pulled a Palpatine and declared himself Emperor, and somehow this didn't result in him simply getting arrested but the US straight-up becoming an empire... then, yes, it would be wholesome to celebrate if he got shot dead. Sic semper tyrannis, and all that. But that's separated by bright lines from the Kirk assassination.
This seems like an argument that it would in fact have been ethical to assassinate the Wicked Witch. This is fair enough regarding the plot of the movie, but I don't think it really challenges my underlying point that there are circumstances where it is commonly understood that you can rejoice in someone's death without implying that you would have supported murdering them.
To get away from rulers, political actors, and indeed, any hatred being involved, I think a good illustration of this principle can be found in people with a religious objection to euthanasia. If some old person in terrible pain happens to pass away in the night, it would be perfectly natural for a staunchly anti-euthanasia Catholic relative of theirs to thank God for this merciful turn of events. Yet here, the whole point is that they wouldn't have found it acceptable to take action to speed it along. That's why it's such a relief to them when it happens anyway, through no 'fault' of their own. In the same way, I think it is coherent for someone who hated Charlie Kirk and felt his existence was net-negative for the world to say "although I obviously don't support actually murdering people who I wish were dead, the fact is that I wished he'd drop dead, so as a passive observer I'm glad it happened".
(Naturally other concerns apply in the case of cheering on an assassination - ie it might encourage more assassins, whereas expressing relief that a terminally ill senior citizen passed away in their sleep is not going to alter the rate at which it happens. But my point was narrower than "it's okay to cheer on Kirk's death", which in any case I don't actually believe myself; my point was "celebrating Kirk's death post facto should not be equated with support for actively assassinating people like him".)
Having rewatched the whole scene:
Glinda says that Dorothy is the Munchkins' "national heroine" before Dorothy gets around to explaining that she didn't mean to drop a house on the WWotE, and then there are the lines "we thank you very sweetly for doing it so neatly; you've killed her so completely that we thank you very sweetly". So yes, they were, in fact, signalling their support of assassinating* the WWotE. The WWotE is one of the few circumstances in which that is (presumably) Fine Actually because she was a
witchtyrant. I think this is just a complete non-example of the point you were trying to make, which doesn't in and of itself mean the point is wrong but does make it not especially useful to bring up.I do think I'd be mostly behind the "don't celebrate deaths unless you'd have supported bringing them about" principle of etiquette. The case you mention is really a non-central case born out of highly non-consequential edicts, and even then it's considered pretty gauche to publically celebrate.
*I'm not using the term "vigilante" because we don't generally consider killing monarchs to be "vigilantism"; the monarch is the state, not a criminal, so killing her is war or rebellion (and, of course, assassination).
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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.
I'm not a conservative and I'm not clutching my pearls. I am horrified and disgusted because "less-than-decorous" is an understatement. I do not recall seeing this kind of reaction on this scale, ever. I don't disagree that MAGAs have cultivated an anti-empathy, pro-cruelty attitude towards their enemies, but I haven't seen a major outbreak of tribal celebration over an ideological opponent being murdered in cold blood like this in my lifetime.
I'm old enough to remember when John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, and there was conservative pearl-clutching over reports of cheering at a few schools. Those were isolated incidents. This is different. I fortunately do not have any personal friends or family members who are literally celebrating, but they are posting lots of "reminders" about how horrible and harmful Charlie Kirk was. It's impossible not to read the subtext that they think he kind of deserved it even if they don't approve of murder on principle.
I see conservatives seeing this and realizing that even normie liberals think they kind of deserve to die, or at least if they did die, you shouldn't feel sorry for them. That's you, taking that position.
I don't doubt if someone shoots Rachel Maddow or Hassan Piker or whoever the fuck is the leftie counterpart to Charlie Kirk now, rightists will go into full grave-dancing mode, because that's the new norm.
Thanks a lot.
I've also been fortunate that the people I've spoken with in person have been horrified by what happened. But my friends are generally conservatives or moderates. My mother, who really liked Kirk and occasionally tried to show me some of his videos, cried. The moderates are in shock and are terrified we've created a culture of violence.
I know a few people who are progressives of some description, but overwhelmingly they're straight-laced people who abhor violence. I'm sure there are some people I've been friends with at some point in my life who are being terrible right now (I can think of names), but outside of work I don't know any hardcore progressives right now. And people at work haven't brought it up.
What has scared me is that I've had the usual suspects be the usual suspects. Because of my location and profession that is a lot, but it isn't new.
I've also heard a bunch of people I've never seen make political statements come out "in support of the murder of Charlie Kirk" (sometimes loosely, sometimes literally that).
It's not the just the right being radicalized by this, some of the left is doubling down or moving more extreme.
That is....not good.
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Pretty much sums up my own position.
I’m certainly not going to cheer over Kirk’s death, and it’s not exactly ideal to see people cross the line from ‘ambivalence’ to outright ‘saying Kirk deserved it’…
But at the same time, I understand a lot of the frustration currently gnawing at my fellow disgruntled left-wingers. None of us are under the impression that if the situation had been reversed, and some left-wing influencer had been killed, that there would be tears shed by MAGA conservatives over it, nor any conciliatory hagiographies published by center-right publications.
Trump-era conservatism is loudly and proudly founded on naked tribalism and an explicit “fuck you” to the left, so the right demanding contrition from the left while simultaneously talking about how we need to be punished, rooted out, and generally crushed is pretty rich.
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I should clarify that I meant that by "it is perfectly wholesome" I meant that in the context of the film it is treated as perfectly wholesome, and that no one questions this when talking about The Wizard of Oz. I didn't mean that I thought celebrating someone's death in real life was "perfectly wholesome". As I started by stating, I personally disapprove of it, just as you do. My point is that it is commonplace and benign - that it is in the vast majority of cases disconnected from any genuine desire to encourage vigilante killings - with the uncontroversial Wizard of Oz scene being an example of this sentiment and its broad harmlessness.
But yes, unrelatedly, absolutely agreed with your second paragraph.
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No, I have no sympathy for those people and no sympathy for the concept of celebrating a death. Publicly. Like some soulless amoral ghoul.
There are people I hate, politicians and intellectuals that I think are strongly net-negative for the world. To be clear, I would not mourn them, were they struck by lightning or fed to sharks. But neither would I celebrate, it wouldn’t cross my mind. Especially not publicly. At most, a passing thought that thank goodness such tragedy didn’t happen to a decent person, but I’ve got enough of a heart to keep that to myself.
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No, because I am not an extra slow child. If someone I loathed from the other tribe, say AOC, was shot like Kirk was, my gut reaction would be "Oh, no! She's going to be insufferable after this. She's going to ride the sympathy and milk it for the next 50 years. She might get to be president now. This is a disaster."
You make left-wingers sound like retarded children who can't grasp the basics of cause and effect.
That's the mistake theory explanation, yes. People think this because the conflict theory explanation- where when pressed, they pretend it's a game, then pretend they weren't serious, then attempt to remind you their inherent moral worth deserves your leniency, then make it clear they know exactly what they're doing and proceed with the destructive thing anyway- is just not something humans have evolved to deal with.
We don't accept explanations of
just following orders"actually, I'm just retarded" from the right[0] for deep-seated biological reasons. That we accept them from the left[1] (also for deep-seated biological reasons) is actually a big deal.Not that "involuntarily attending a school shooting" isn't a viable way to political power (David Hogg), but I very much doubt that if you get shot like Kirk was, you'll be enjoying anything after that (much less political power).
[0, 1] For rightists, being retarded is never believed because, as human doings [or in modern times, people more aligned with human doings], it's strictly an evolutionary malus (stupidity is a detriment to executing your will) so any assertions you were retarded accidentally are naturally looked upon with extreme skepticism. For leftists it's always believed because, as human beings [or in modern times, people more aligned with human beings], being able to convince human doings to take pity on you while manipulating them when their back is turned is an evolutionary bonus (feigning childishness is an enhancement).
I find that I still have a presumption that when the news says "shot", that means "still alive". I guess things might break too fast anymore for that intuition to hold, but it's still part of my immediate thought process ("If he were dead, then they'd say that!")
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An interpretation that leftists are responding to a freak accident as a bystander is somewhat accurate. Rather than an act of God, like a hurricane, this is more like civilians watching an enemy bomber fall from the sky over their city. The civilians look up to the sky and cheer. The civilians aren't killing anyone themselves, no, and the fact they are bystanders -- victims, even -- relieves any responsibility for cheering on death. It could even be considered imperative to cheer. This is their city, their neighbors, and friends suffering under the bombardment. Who wouldn't cheer as the enemy is made to pay?
Leftists don't take this behavior seriously, are having a good time, and don't consider themselves responsible. I suspect that is usually true. Individuals enjoy becoming partners in crime by crossing a taboo, signal allegiance, or justify celebration with a commitment to conflict. The performative intent is also there when leftists decide to dance on the grave of a dead healthcare CEO then decide to worship his dreamy murderer.
Don't get me wrong I am glad that most expressions of celebration are made by bystanders having a good time rather than by hardened killers. This doesn't ease concerns or my condemnation. Don't celebrate murders is a good norm and weakening it among a significant, visible category of people raises the risk we see predictably bad outcomes. That leftists do not consider or respect this risk is of no comfort. In darker times, should they become apparent, It wasn't my fault isn't going to cut it.
Plus, it's not as if leftists are detached from the events. Rather than a comedian looking for a punch-line to tragedy they care as much any other group. They jump in the trenches when its their turn to spin the Guess the Perp wheel and argue about this policy or another. They have a good time celebrating the death of their enemy, then they have another kind of time of as they commiserate with each other on a perceived state of crisis. They have a third, additional kind of time declaring fascism of yesterday eclipsed by the fascism of tomorrow. They are no more or less accidental bystanders to these social phenomena as any other part of the lefty egregore.
What is the polar opposite case? I'd expect there to be plenty of right-wing anons dancing on the grave of, say, Hasan Piker. It's not a 1:1 comparison. Kirk, unlike Piker, was legitimized inside mainstream political power, whereas Piker is still primarily a shitposter millionaire who streams to teenagers and gets NYT profiles. Right wing anons aren't usually professors comfortable with expressing support for political murders. But, yeah, I wouldn't say that the right-wing is impervious to breaking this norm, or even faithful followers of this norm. The political class still mutters the words, but it doesn't take.
In the future, if we aren't living it, we may all have permission to cheer on one person or another bleeding out on a stage. We may even take turns. It's a darn shame.
I agree, but the two different cases call for two very different responses. I think accusing everyone who cheers of actively encouraging assassinations is ineffective. First, because it's correctly perceived by the cheerers as inaccurately modeling their mental state, and therefore as wrong-headed criticism that can be written off altogether. Second, because it has a significant risk of Streisanding the idea of actively supporting assassinations among people who currently don't support them, but might conceivably come round to doing so if critics accidentally create spurious "common knowledge" that everyone on the left supports them.
It sounds sort of like you want to slot this into something like trolling or outrage bait? I don't think I agree with that if so. Yes I don't care that he's dead. I love that he's dead. He was evil! That my enemies are incorrectly modeling my behavior and, were they only to change how they treated me, sounds like something that I would want to believe if I knew my participation in an activity was irresponsible or unjustified. Passing this responsibility onto others, especially onto my enemy, sounds ideal. You made me do it is tried and true.
Personally, I think this is already out of the bag, among all manner of other things that make one a leftist, fascist, good, or bad. The left-coding isn't for the benefit of or in response to the right. The left-coding is and -- rather than something new -- we should consider this a resurgence of an old meme the left has relied on and used to great effect before. I suppose the right could try a 4D play and reclaim calls to violence (doesn't go well for them) or attempt its own social media-gov't speech restriction on behalf of conservatives which also doesn't go well.
I agree nobody should want to will something like this into existence or exacerbate it. A vicious, more violent left benefits some. What appropriate response do you have in mind?
As corny as it sounds, appealing to people's better nature, taking the moral high ground. Don't go on the attack trying to look for ulterior motives and ideology behind the cheering - just call out the cheering as unkind and inhuman at the rawest level. The approach should be to shame people into self-reflection within their own consciences. "This? This is what you want? This is righteous? Are you sure? I don't believe that. I don't believe that deep down, you or anyone decent can believe that. We wouldn't wish it on you or anyone on your side. Truly we wouldn't. Please don't darken your own hearts by going down that road." Above all else keep the clip in circulation, with all its visceral, disquieting pathos. The idea that Charlie Kirk Is Dead can be thoughtlessly celebrated, but the actual sight of it - no, not unless you're a sociopath.
Charlie Kirk video? Hah! Have you seen what's happening in Gaza? He supported genocide by the way.
This is an okay way to make a good life and suss out potential friends. Decent folk-like. That you suggest it means I suspect we would get along fine. It is not, however, a solution that we can deploy at scale with any expectation of change.
Technically we need not lose our decency as a side effect of value differences, but if you were to go on reddit and deploy your pathos attacks and appeals to empathy I'll wager you'll be disappointed. I have been! Most people who think better of themselves won't defend a video that they can't. Some can find cause, but far more can blink twice, move along, and get back into the groove after a moment. That's the domain that needs to change. If we can do that then, hell, what're we doing here? We can 10x improve politics in no time.
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I suspect you are near-completely missing the extremely common human talent for Dehumanizing the Enemy. Why wouyld you not cheer when a carnifex gets destroyed. You a genestealer cultist?
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[...]
Right-wingers perceive left-wingers to be approving of and encouraging the murder of people like them. This is because a lot of leftists objectively, unquestionably are doing so, and a lot of other leftists are doing things that are arguably doing that, or in some cases flirting with it, or in some cases might be perceived as flirting with it, etc. down the chain of increasing abstraction.
I think you are probably correct that in at least some cases, celebratory leftists perceive Kirk's death as some crazy random happenstance like a lightning strike; I have not yet observed the limits of human self-delusion. I am not sure what can be done for such people, any more than I have a solution to the tide pod challenge. Some people apparently need to learn the hard way.
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That's the thing though. No, I only really hate people who do things like murder people. I hate the Charlottesville guy e.g.. Otherwise it's just words. Not that I can't see a breaking point even there, if he's going around advocating for pedophilia or instructing terrorists in bomb-making (which of course has a more material component).
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I essentially agree with your explanation and I think that people need to hear it, but I'm not nearly as sympathetic to it as you are. Although the worst elements of the left are celebrating this political violence as political violence, I think that the slippery slope towards this mindset mostly takes the form of leftists being so conceptually sheltered from violence that they are not even processing it as violence, but simply as an act of God; when they celebrate it, they do not see themselves as supporting political violence, but simply as taking joy in a random event at their enemies' expense. I do not particularly want the country to go through the kind of turmoil it would need to to shake them out of this naive worldview.
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Probably not. Celebrating when bad things happen to someone is evil, plain and simple. I'm not going to claim I've never done that (I have, I'm not a perfect person), but I regard those occasions as personal failings which I tried very hard to rectify. I would like to think in the future I would be more successful in avoiding it.
But he wasn't struck by lightning. He was murdered. And that makes all the difference here. You're constructing this argument that we should have more sympathy for those who feel happy that someone they hate got killed by a freak accident, but the simple fact of the matter is that even if they perceive it as that, their perception is false, and they are in fact celebrating a murder.
Yeaaah.
The subtext of all the celebrations is they want it to happen again. And again. And again.
If it were a lighting strike, well, they have no way to influence that. Its wishful thinking at worst. Though still repugnant.
When its a targeted murder, then yeah, condoning, celebrating, and encouraging it IS influencing it to happen again. Its inviting another of their number to step up and do it for glory, for the cause, for their tribe.
Whatever you want to call it, it is the opposite of telling people to stand down.
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I absolutely agree! But even if it's wrong, I think the internal experience of this kind of Schadenfreude makes it clear that it's not at all the same subjective experience as supporting vigilante murder at the political level. One is much more common, much more human, than the other, even if it isn't good. And I don't think it's fair to accuse people who are only guilty of that lesser sin of secretly harboring the explicit pro-assassination view. When I say that we should "have more sympathy" for them I don't mean infinite amounts of indulgence, I just mean affording them the intellectual charity of not treating them as covert assassination-supporters. That's not where they're at. Where they're at isn't good, but it's not that.
Sure, I can agree with that. If one is to engage with people who are cheering upon the news of this murder, it is more accurate (and more productive!) to respond along the lines of "hey, it's not really ok to be happy someone got killed" than "hey, it's not ok to support assassination".
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Imagine now that half of Oz supports the witch and her policies. Imagine the Munchkins know this. Doesn't that cast their celebration in a different light?
No. The Munchkins were literally the Witch's slaves, and treated quite badly. They had legitimate cause to celebrate her death, and if half of Oz supported the witch, well, the Munchkins kinda fucked but they shouldn't consider the feelings of those people.
Charlie Kirk had no slaves.
Yep my comment makes no sense in the light of the Oz universe. But as analogy to the Charlie Kirk situation, I think it still fits. The democrats aren't "slaves" to Charlie Kirk (maybe you could make this argument about Trump).
Frank Baum has the Wicked Witch of the East rule over the enslaved Munchkins, while the Wicked Witch of the West rules over the Winkies (who I think are made of porcelain?). Macquire the author of Wicked has a much more positive view and sympathetic backstory of the 'Wicked' Witches (but I haven't read and have only seen the first film of Wicked).
The porcelain people are in the south, in Glenda’s domain. The Winkies are their own thing.
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It's more accurate to say that your comment shows how the Oz comparison makes no sense.
(Though it is a useful heuristic for the ITT.)
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Well he did own a lot of college democrats…
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I understand what you are trying to say here, but an instant critique anyone on the right is going to feel is "hold on, aren't you guys supposed to be party of sympathy, empathy, being an adult? Don't you say you do this and criticize us for not having those attributes..." Followed by a slide into pure angry vitriol.
People unhappy with where the left is going have been calling out inconsistency, hypocrisy and dangerousness for more than a decade at this point and really won't accept anything than profound apologies and acceptance of blame and culpability.
I don't think anybody is really interested in doing that, so we are going to see some bad stuff as a result.
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There's people where this sort of thing is understandable - Trump is obviously the avatar of Evil for a lot of people, so this would be expected - and cases where I think the humane reaction is to take a step back, and if you can't do that, it's time for a "are we the baddies" check.
Maybe I'd get annoyed if someone wanted to make a statue for Hasan Piker or something, but honestly, if we got through the beatifiction of St. Floyd, St.Kirk should be no skin off anyone's nose.
"if we got through the beatifiction of St. Floyd, St.Kirk should be no skin off anyone's nose."
Yes. And if you're on the right you've gotten so used to having a thick skin on this - being asked to worship people you find pretty repellant, and the favor never going the other way - it becomes more difficult to bemoan OR celebrate anyone. It can make cynical and indifferent as much as it can make you hate the left passionately enough to posture and discourse like they do.
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That's largely my feeling, particularly if the Kirk hagiography is going to focus on genuinely praiseworthy virtues he allegedly embodied, eg commitment to free speech and open debate.
But to steelman an obvious counter, Floyd was a nobody who stood for nothing in particular. His sins were of an entirely personal nature. In contrast, Kirk stood for a range of political and social values, and if you think those values are Evil, then it's obviously a bad thing for his memory to be idolized, even if his personal impact on the world in life was ultimately negligible.
That’s an absurd steel man. Floyd gets sainted because he wasn’t evil enough? Celebrating violent idiots makes the world a worse place. No excuses for that.
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There's a huge difference between preposterous happenstance and enemy action, and that difference cannot simply be excluded from this situation like you've done.
Because she wasn't assassinated, she somehow died in a freak accident. Furthermore, the Wicked Witch is EVIL, which Charlie Kirk wasn't. Finally, The Wizard of Oz is fiction, not reality. It's obvious, but always bears repeating. Fiction is not reality. It never will be.
This is their fault for lacking the theory of mind of their opponents and awareness of the terrain. Of course it was something their tribe did, that's blatantly obvious to everyone who's not delusional, and I feel no need to nurture those delusions when vicious people express glee over the assassination of their enemies.
Trying to rationalize the assassination of your enemies as some sort of freak accident is the problem as it demonstrates your delusions. There can be no accident here, and there's a direct line from "punch a nazi" to "fascist, catch."
Your explanation, if true, has somehow lowered my respect for the people you're trying to defend.
Well, that's rather the crux of the issue. I am obviously talking about the perspective of people who believe that Kirk was, at the very least, aiding and abetting evil, and most probably significantly evil himself. Granted that someone believes Kirk was evil - as is their right - then is it acceptable for them to publicly display relief that he's dead, without thereby coming across as supporting assassinations? I don't think this is a trivial question. I think people who fall afoul of it are at least sympathetic.
I mean, allocating group responsibility within huge, poorly-coordinated populations is a tough problem, and one with potentially different answers depending on whether you're talking about it as an ethics problem of a game theory problem. I don't think anything about it is "blatantly obvious". It seems as understandable for normie non-murderous Dems to say "we aren't responsible for the Kirk assassination" as it is fair for Second Amendment activists to disclaim any responsibility for the latest school shooting. Certainly it's pretty dumb of them not to anticipate that the Red Tribe would blame them, but it doesn't follow that the Red Tribe is trivially right to do so.
Yes, people mistake fiction for reality, they think that Kirk is evil like the characters from their books and movies, and open their minds and pour their brains out on the ground in response.
Yeah, but I'm not going to be a stooge and claim that Anders Brevik was really a leftist, because that's absurd. We know what these people want by watching what they work to accomplish, and those ends serve one side or the other.
Nobody is inciting school shootings the way that Democrats are inciting violence on their political opponents. Your comparisons continue to miss the point by a mile.
Are you arguing that there's no such thing as evil people in real life? "Evil" is obviously a tough thing to define rigorously, certainly I doubt there's anyone who's monomaniacally wicked in the way cartoon witches are "evil" without a single trace of benevolence anywhere in their hearts. But for sanity's sake, understand it here as meaning the semi-tautological "sharing whatever qualities the Wicked Witch has that make celebrating her death acceptable" for the purposes of this question. ie, are you arguing that there's no one in real life close enough to the archetypal fictional depictions of "evil" that a Ding Dong The Witch is Dead parade would be an understandable and unconcerning emotional response upon their demise? Genuine question; I initially understood you as simply saying that a normie family man with conservative opinions was "obviously" not an example of that class, not as decrying the very concept as unrealistic/incoherent.
"It's an understandable emotional response" isn't an excuse. You need to be acting and reasoning in good faith, and I don't believe that the people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death are. I'm not demanding that they be correct; good faith doesn't require correctness. But there comes a point where people are so blinded by hatred and so careless about their reasoning that good faith is no longer present.
If anything, when you're trying to decide if someone needs to die, that's when you need to take the greatest care, not the least.
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Good and Evil aren't really useful concepts to me. They are fiction, and belong in fictional stories. For my part, "deserves to die," and, "doesn't deserve to die," pretty much covers it, and the former is reserved for people who victimize others through violence. Especially those who victimize strangers. It's one thing if you have beef with someone and therefore there is violence between you. It's completely different if you are minding your own business and then someone visits violence on you, or steals your property.
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.
I agree, but again I see a great deal of difference between "deserves to be killed" and "fair dos if other people are relieved when they happen to die". For a trivial analogy, if someone buys the lot opposite mine, and builds a huge concrete eyesore that ruins the view from my patio, then my neighbor in no real sense deserves to have their home destroyed, but it would be perfectly fine for me to drink a toast the day the house collapses by happenstance. Those are very different things in my book.
Does the analogy still hold if it’s your son who dynamites the house because he is seeking your approval?
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