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This event has effected me in a way I didn't expect, which makes me feel vulnerable. I had no idea how sociopathic a substantial number of my close friends are. I also had no idea how simply dumb they are. One of the things I keep seeing them post is "well he said that some gun violence was an acceptable price to pay for the freedoms associated with the 2nd amendment, so fuck him! Haha reap what you sow" etc.
They say this while at the same time arguing that the small number of detrans people are a small price to pay for the benefit of trans procedures overall. Or that the small number of vaccine injuries are a small price to pay for the benefits of vaccines, etc.
They also seem unable to extrapolate what their ideas imply at all. "Charlie Kirk was a nazi, he had bad views, I'm happy he's dead" etc. But how can they honestly not see that this could also be applied to their bad views? Or imagine any higher order effects?
It's very perception-shifting to see people say this stuff. I don't like it.
I don't condone the celebration of it but is it really so far fetched to accept this as a "Sword of Damocles" situation? Kirk advocated and is directly on record for saying: "the few deaths is worth it for our second amendment rights". Live by the sword and die by the sword. If people want to advocate for positions then they need to personally be willing to pay for the consequences of those positions. Passing the cost onto other people if how we get in this mess. Note this 100% applies to all sorts of lefty positions that elite lefties want to be free of the consequences of.
Now we can't personally ask Kirk if he was willing to die for the second amendment rights but I think the charitable answer is yes. I think all the discussion about killing political opponents is worth having but all the wailing about lefties wanting to kill you rings hollow. They disagree with you and want you to pay for the cost of your beliefs just like you want them to pay the cost of their immigration or "anti-racism" beliefs.
Saying "the few deaths is worth it for our second amendment rights" is specifically living by the word and specifically not living by the sword. Living by the sword would be "watch me as I assassinate this politician who's pro gun-control." No argument that Kirk could ever state around gun control could ever rise to him "living by the sword." Words don't become violence just because they are about violence or condoning violence. Nor do they become equivalent to physical violence.
Campaigning to use the state's monopoly on violence to enforce your beliefs is violence by another name. Just because you can abstract it away doesn't be you are absolved. Trying to enforce your tribal beliefs on others is almost always the non-material reason for war.
One of the lessons in the fable about the Sword of Damocles is about living by the ramifications of your own positions. Kirk clearly had a position that the 2nd amendment is worth a certain amount of blood. Is he willing to pay that cost? Or does he want other people to pay it for him? One is the principled position, the other is a cur not worthy of anything.
There's often this kind of misunderstanding of risk at the heart of internet disagreements. He was obviously willing to live with the ramifications of his positions, some negligible risk of dying by gun violence. That is discharged already just by him going about day to day in a world with higher than counterfactual risk of gun violence. This doesn't at all mean him pulling the short straw and the risk coming due isn't tragic as he acknowledged in his comment.
Sure it is tragic, but it doesn't mean he is owed sympathy. And the lack of that sympathy doesn't make people sociopaths any more than a lack of sympathy for illegal immigrant mothers being pulled from their homes and deported, makes other people sociopaths.
I am completely unsympathetic to both appeals for sympathy and cries of sociopathy at ones outgroup.
The concept of being "owed" sympathy is just kind of incoherent to me. You should feel sympathy for someone who finds a bad and undeserved end, who leaves a wife and young daughter behind. Not because they're owed anything but because you are a human who should sympathize with such a person and situation. If you fail to sympathize with this then it's not really about him, it's about you. I think we must enforce the borders and acknowledge that there are sympathetic people that will be harmed because of that. Sympathy doesn't mean you drop everything and do whatever helps the person you're sympathetic to.
I mean the concept might be foreign to you but you just invoked it. The "Should" is saying you expect me to feel sympathetic. It is prescriptive. You believe I owe sympathy in this situation. You insist that if I don’t sympathize, that reveals a deficiency in me. That means you are treating sympathy as an obligation, just in moral rather than transactional terms. My emotional framework is different than yours, you and I feel sympathy for different things and different causes but you want me to work in your emotional framework, rather than accept my own. It's no different than what my lefty friends do, I reject it here as much as I reject it there.
I'm not implying to owe anyone anything. I'm simply pointing out that sympathy isn't something you owe someone, it's something you feel. So when we talk about whether you feel sympathy for some one we're talking about you and who you are as a person.
When the loud shot rang out across the court yard it scared Charlie's young daughter. She ran to her father for safety as the life drained rapidly from his body. You don't have to change your belief, proscriptions or politics for this reason, in fact I think it would be foolish to. But to not feel some sympathy here implies a blackened heart. I hope for your sake that you have just misunderstood what sympathy is because the alternative is so bleak.
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