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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34470 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Ideology is a sleight of hand. Look, I’m doing this for a reason, I’m committed… but the only commitment seems to have been to violence.

Kirk was both a significant funder and coordination point for social conservatives, along with his outreach and recruitment efforts. As much as progressives are joking about how he'll get replaced by the next Castro Clone, there's a bit of a problem given how far the nearest competitor was. It takes a very specific set of skills developed in a pretty specific environment to get where he was rather than where Crowder is (or, worse, where Milo ended up).

That's the reason. That's the entire reason. It's not hard to guess this; it's not hard to find people justifying the murder because of this. We already have very clear evidence, even if deBoer wants to imitate two out of the three monkeys when presented with it, that's why. It's not the only way deBoer's 'propaganda of the deed' framework is wrong -- the man's vastly moronic, he contains multitudes of stupid claims -- but especially given his background can't possibly be stupid enough to not know this, and he doesn't mention it in the slightest.

Historically, the counterargument has been that such assassinations were counterproductive, because no matter how influential a specific target would be, the backlash would outweigh that. MLK's death cemented the Civil Rights Act, Reagan's near-killing had everyone a Republican for a few days, even Gifford's-this-guy's-actually-just-bugnuts-crazy got the first gun control act in decades passed and was an albatross around the neck of the conservative movement for a decade.

Does anyone believe that's going to happen, here?

It takes a very specific set of skills developed in a pretty specific environment to get where he was rather than where Crowder is (or, worse, where Milo ended up).

The thing is, once one person threads that needle, it provides a map for everyone who follows. It's going to be a lot easier for the next person to develop those skills, since they don't have to cultivate them ex nihilo.

Totally possible this gets pinned on trans successfully and Rico takes out some lefty groups.

I'm very skeptical about re: RICO. The number of predicate offenses isn't that broad, either for the federal or Utah-specific one, it's hard to prove the other traits.

I'd expect the administration to do a scattershot attempt to undermine various pro-trans groups based on proximity, but I'm also skeptical that they actually get anything bigger than Armed Queers SLC, and most of the others will end up benefiting from the attempt.

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