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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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Sadly, We May Never Know His True Motives. Insert galaxy brain meme here.

The suspect is alive, but not talking. So unless he decides to explain why he did it (and probably right now the optimum strategy is to lawyer up and say nothing), everything else is just speculation. He's a gamer? He's right-wing? He's left-wing? Speculation.

We're reading the tealeaves with what is alleged to have been on the bullets etc. but still just speculation.

They did just release a few more details including a few more about his texts with his lover-roommate as well as a few bits from the parents. His mom thought he looked like the shooter and called him to see where he was! She was apparently the source for the quote about a previous expression of dislike for Kirk by name, and allegedly he had tussled with his dad over his Trumpism, plus there was a religious-cultural deal about gay and trans rights (sometimes that’s exclusively religious so I don’t want to read too much into it, but seems to line up) party spurred we assume by his confirmed-transitioning roommate. He’s absolutely left wing and I think that’s pretty clear. What kind of left wing? Very much still TBD. You’re right in the sense that we don’t know how much of a normie Dem he was, or if he was something way more niche.

After getting the guy, the next job of the cops is to determine if he was part of a conspiracy. That is going to involve going over his online and IRL networks with a fine-tooth comb, and a lot of the results of that investigation are going to hit the public record.

I expect we will learn a lot more over the coming weeks. Sometimes we learn enough that the only thing left to argue about is a line-drawing exercise about just how sane you need to be to count (as with Paul Depape or Ryan Routh). Sometimes we learn that there are no answers (as with Thomas Crooks) or what we learn raises more questions than it answers (as, most famously, with Lee Harvey Oswald). But there will be more information coming out.

I don't really have many questions about Oswald. Dysfunctional, bad-tempered, chronically underemployed loser with authority problems decides (quelle surprise) that communism is super rad. Tries to defect to Russia and Cuba in succession, finds out the real thing isn't all it's cracked up to be and he's just as much of a worthless loser in a communist country as he was in a capitalist one. Returns to the states, tries to make a name for himself as a political activist and ends up with nothing to show for it. Decides to go out in a blaze of glory by killing the most high-profile person he can.

I don't know what else needs explaining beyond that. Yeah, he also enlisted in the military and was a crack shot - so what?