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Notes -
Do we want each other dead?
True, I may not want your idea or voice in the world.
I might be happy if it just went away.
If all those like you went away, think what my side could achieve unopposed!
But I would not support what would be needed for you to 'just go away'.
Moreover I know that there are countless other aspects to you (hypothetical asshole) that I might not find as tiresome as your online persona.
No doubt if I met you we could find something to bond over.
If I watched you with people you love, I might warm to you.
Even if I saw you, a stranger, being hurt, I would doubtless hate to see that (let's assume there is no slapstick element; admittedly that might change the equation).
But I can't see any of these things.
All I can see are the asshole-ish parts of you that peek at me through the distancing device that is my laptop.
And if those parts vanished, I might be able to convince myself to forget about all the other putative parts.
And perhaps depending on how my day and life were going, I might be glad of whatever must have happened to make your asshole-ish online parts disappear.
I perceive all this more or less symmetrically.
You'd be happy if my ideas and voice went away too. Be honest.
Your contempt for that which I share with you through our screens is evident.
Or maybe you're a supporter of someone who expresses contempt for me.
Someone who views everything as combat.
If I just went away, he'd be good with it.
You'd be good with it.
Hell, maybe people like me are an obstacle to your goals, and if we all went away, all your dreams would come true.
But still. You're like me.
You wouldn't want anything done to me really.
Actually, if you met me, you'd probably like and respect me.
It's true – even if you say you're done with the concept of empathy.
We'd probably disagree on a lot of things, but we'd make it work.
You'd probably even wince if you happened to see me fall over, unless it was an especially hilarious fall.
Nonetheless, in your weaker moments, you might be glad if something happened and the news reached you that my voice was to be no more.
So I don't think we're so different.
There's nothing more to solve than our respective asshole-ish parts clashing over distant, linked screens.
Sort that little issue out and we can be friends.
The only problem is, it's not just the two of us here.
There aren't any hardcore libs in my filter bubble. There's democrats, sure, but of moderate factions who have boring, coalition politics reasons for supporting democrats. No progressive activists, no one pro-trans, none of that.
I don't hate these people and want them dead, although I suppose there are some progressive-approved behaviors I think should be a crime. I don't believe they're any different- yes they want to take my guns away but they don't particularly want to hurt me, even if they might out of ignorance and stupidity. Oppressing people is a lot of work and it seems like not how people are.
You need to up your game, I know a hardcore lib and we occasionally swap jabs over discord about the latest shitstorm, it's very sportsman like.
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I don't want my enemies dead, but I do want them to think twice about expressing their ideas. Maybe I even want them to be afraid to express them. I want TPTB to run a propaganda campaign to associate people who express those opinions with foolishness, cowardliness, malice, perversion, and disloyalty. My enemies can go back into the closet and stop spreading their intellectual contagion. They will eventually dwindle in number and influence as they are no longer able to convert others.
Will this work? For a while at least, yes. I know because it worked on my side. But I think it will be more effective when we do it, because aristocracy is more stable and intuitive than bioleninism, and we have all the strong gods on our side (blood and soil, ancestral religion, family, unvarnished truth).
Then we can be friends and grill together in peace. No killing required.
I know you consider the woke to be your enemies, but who is not your enemy? Rather, what are the most leftist ideas that you consider tolerable?
I ask because you use the bioleninist framing to describe the woke. Under that frame, the woke cannot simply "go back in the closet", as their cause approximates a fight for survival. It is foolish to think that the entire lumpen-PMC will meekly accept the dismantling of their HR departments and the devaluation of their degrees, let alone to think that their foot-soldiers will go along with the revocation of their gibs and incarceration of their brethren; the spiteful mutants will not go quietly.
Of course, the above is only predictive insofar as the bioleninist framing is true. Perhaps the black bloc can be persuaded to police their own, perhaps the LGBT can be encouraged to shut down the bathhouses and keep to themselves. I just want to make the point that the desire for griller peace cannot co-exist with the dissident-right framings that you gesture at.
I don't think they will meekly accept it, no. But under the bioleninist framework, they are only strong because they are organized and their opponent is not. If the normie right begins to organize, it will successfully oppress the left. Probably not only via peaceful means.
I'm not sure how to define the "most leftist" ideas I accept. Probably some economic policies. I have some sympathy for protectionism, labor unions, and reducing income inequality.
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The way you're feeling is indicative of how I think a lot of conservatives feel. So many are being told that there isn't a problem, or that the statistics say "well right wingers are more badder," or that my side aggrieved them so I have no standing.
None of it is any assurance against this extremely palpable feeling that their neighbors would cheer if they died. I now know for a fact that if I were murdered - and my identity wasn't reported, only my politics, somehow - many people I consider "friends" would cheer. The feeling is not mutual! Even Charlie Kirk himself wouldn't have cheered if it happened to them.
I do not know how to reconcile this, and I understand even less why so many think they help their case when they try to deflect from this conversation. None of the ones I know seem to understand how this comes off to me, and it feels like it should be pretty obvious. Instead, we need to reframe the conversation. What about a mass shooting? What about FBI statistics? What about something a nazi did ten years ago that we both agreed was terrible the day of?
Okay, can we talk about that after we acknowledge that a bunch of people I trust are implicitly saying that they want me dead and even more are trying to minimize this issue by? I'm not alone in this, and it's not just my problem. What good they expect to come of this is beyond me.
Eh, I think it's easy to carry this too far.
If the Lefty version of Kirk was killed in similar fashion, a lot of rightwingers would also be gleefully dancing on the grave. (Especially right now, when the risk of leftwing cancellation is the lowest it has been in a very long time.)
It's very hard to estimate which "side" is "worse" on an issue like this (whereas on some issues, there is a clear asymmetry, like publicly expressed racism against whites and sexism against men).
Though I must say that, right now, as an "antiwoke" atheist classical liberal, many on the Left would certainly celebrate my death as a racist/sexist/fascist/transphobe and probably the Right wouldn't as a godless heathen, though I have only voted for Democrats for president and have harshly criticized the Progressive Left and the MAGA Right while holding social views roughly consistent with a typical 2012 Obama voter.
I doubt this. First of all, there is a reason there is no leftwing version of Kirk, which is because lefty influence is distributed. If someone kills all the presidents of the Ivy League + AOC + the NYT editorial board, that is a lot of killing to get to the kind of impact that one bullet achieved here.
Secondly, we've seem Republican reactions to violence, and they are not positive. At worst you can sometimes see things being joke-worthy and the right making some crude jokes, like the Paul Pelosi homosexual prostitute situation.
If Hasan Piker gets killed tomorrow you think it will be well-behaved reactions in general from the Right?
I just don't understand a model of today's right that isn't crass.
Yes. You will get nothing like the sadistic glee that came from the left. The most you'll get in terms of similarity will be "wait, seriously, we're doing it for this guy?" if the left chooses to go full national mourning over it, the way the right did for Kirk (and even then I'm not sure, because Hassan Piker is a way better choice for a saint than George Floyd was).
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No one knows or cares who that guy is. Maybe some frogs would be rude about it. Fox News certainly won't be platforming people who speculate he was killed by his own fan celebrating.
If he's executed at an "Appalachian outreach" event there'd be somber reaction from the right. Perhaps some jokes if he gets killed ironically. Like by a Palestinian
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Mostly "Who?"
More seriously, your model is not evidence.
Buddy why are you conflating a hypothetical with evidence? Obviously my model is not “evidence” and I never claimed it was.
My evidence that the American Right would not act with restraint were the tables turned is that it’s the kind of people who liked Rush Limbaugh and elected Donald Trump and mocked Paul Pelosi.
Propriety and restraint is certainly not a standard part of the MAGA package and it’s remarkable to me that such an obvious fact is being contested, as if the Left is full of hateful hooligans and the Right is just peaceful folk who mind their own business.
If you think it so self-evident, it should be trivial to point to the evidence. You mentioned the mockery of Paul Pelosi. In what ways was this comparable to what we've seen with Kirk's murder? Was it similarly widespread? Was it similarly vicious? Are the incidents themselves comparable? Where the people engaging in the mockery comparable?
I definately will argue that the left is full of hateful hooligans, because they have repeatedly engaged in widespread celebration of ideological murders and attempted murders committed by their percieved allies. Luigi's trial is going on right now in New York, and there are large numbers of people celebrating his tactical legal victories in court.
I have not seen the right do that. If you think you have seen the right do that, please point to what you're seeing and explain why you think it is equivalent.
Paul Pelosi was attacked and it was very common to propagate a false narrative about it being a relationship issue and jokes were rampant. Very bad taste. Seems suggestive of the Right’s attitude toward violence against its political opponents.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-11-01/editorial-gop-responds-to-pelosi-attack-with-cruel-baseless-jokes-its-shameful
You’re hilariously trying to establish a required level of evidence that must be equal, instead of being able to extrapolate from incomplete evidence. The counterpart of this would be for me to point out you can’t prove the negative if an exact case on the other side has not yet happened. I suggest you try reasoning from impartial evidence instead of trying to incorrectly try to win a logical argument.
Here’s an interesting fact that turned out to be a bit predictive:
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2022/03/the-rise-in-political-violence-in-the-united-states-and-damage-to-our-democracy
Also there’s the fun phenomenon of GOP officials fearing right wing violence.
https://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/video/2025/04/retaliation-is-real-why-republicans-in-congress-wont-stand-up-to-trump
https://apnews.com/article/house-speaker-jim-jordan-threats-54eeecef0188edfcb9903e45019f190f#
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/politics/threats-us-public-officials-democracy-invs
I don’t believe this is common among Democrats.
So yeah, I think it’s preposterous to pretend that the present American Right doesn’t have a political violence problem, even if it’s not exactly the same or as large as what we are seeing from the Left re: Kirk.
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Do note that as Ben Shapiro found out, that large number of working class right wingers are also pretty much on board with Luigi. It is not a right/left issue it's a working class issue. Ben's video (which he even had to change the title on) got 8.5K likes and some 45K dislikes, on his own channel. Very different than his usual ratios. I think Charlie Kirk had a similar thing with his comments but given all the noise about his murder I can't find that right now.
Check the comments about it if you don't believe me. That's why Luigi is getting so much support because struggling with health insurance is a bi-partisan activity.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uJC_2zh21YI
Some excerpts (and this after they start deleting negative comments, but obviously gave up as their were so many).
My dad has voted Republican in every local, state, and federal election since I was born in the 1980s. I was with him when this news came out and he said “about time”. Read the room, Ben.
Ben, you're rich. Enough. Stop. You do not experience the implications of what denial of healthcare means for poor Americans.
I have never seen the left and the right be so united since 9/11,
Bro’s getting roasted here for defending a scam health insurance CEO. Did Ben actually think we would take his side?
Voted trump 3 times in a row and laughed my ass off at the news This isnt a left or right thing, its a populism vs establishment thing. You can't complain about the government wasting the tax dollars we put in, and then turn a blind eye to insurance companies denying necessary care from a pool we pay into. It's the same thing, and it's been happening for too long
Ben you're waayyyy out of touch. "Just don't choose United healthcare" " just don't work for an employer that has United healthcare". is the same thing as saying. " Just don't be poor" "just don't struggle in life" its your choice.... It is not because the reality is I have to pay bills in order to survive!!! I cannot just pick my health insurance!
I'm MAGA, I guess I'm a leftist now
So odd when you say ''the left celebrates'' but i've seen legit everyone laugh at this CEOs death since we've all been fucked over by health insurance, It really shows how out of touch you are with blue collar workers who pay for insurance for years then don't get anything since even a minor health issue can get you denied.
Conservative California here, this is not a left or right issue but every varied political ideology coming together celebrating the victorious policy made from the people and not the ruling class.
It’s not only the left dude, all my coworkers voted for trump and reposted artwork of the shooter in their Twitter.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t feel bad for this guy and I’m as conservative as it gets. I get it’s not all him by any means and he didn’t create the system. But they’ve denied sooooo many claims for greed. While yours or my mother could have passed because of it. This was overdue. Sorry for his children and wife. But these insurance companies are the worst of the worst. If you feel pity you either haven’t researched the issue. Or you’re privileged and never had to worry about healthcare. Watch your mother die before your eyes because an insurance company deemed her dispensable to their bottom line. This is the result sorry not sorry
Not Left yet I Celebrate !
Ben, I’m an avid right winger and this is just a bad take. This is a working class issue! It’s not just the left.
Im a conservative and I completely agree with the Democrats on this one the healthcare system in our country is a disgrace and the fact that luigi killed a mass murderer is not a form of terrorism Just because the wealthy say so
The left? I'm a 3 time Trump voter and I'm celebrating
Idk, I’m a Trump voter and I’m not sad about him dying. Our health insurance in the U.S. is dangerously greedy, resulting in many deaths.
Im on the right and admire Luigi. Media wants us all separated. I just unsubscribed. My grandmother was tortured byUnited all the way as she died. She was Republican too.
Not Ben accidentally uniting us 💀
And so on and so forth.
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Please unfilter the post.
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I'm not rushing to condemn anyone left of Stalin to death, but the "What did you think we meant by revolution" crowd currently has the mic, and thr atmosphere I sense really does feel like libs in general find this to be a profoundly uninteresting point of discussion if they aren't joining in on it or trying to spin the story anothet way. I would say 60-70% of my lib friends have honestly been compassionate and met me in the middle, but the others have called for my death or tried to reassure me there is no problem. I think the latter is often because they don't want to contribute to a freakout but it comes off as dismissal sometimes.
I am not really trying to purity test anyone beyond a general notion of figuring out how dead we want each other, and when an alarming number of people come up short, the third group that starts trying to haggle with me comes off as worrisome
I agree that the mainstream left typically is blissfully unaware of the hard left and when it's forced to look at it usually makes excuses.
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Presumably a leftist similar in some way to Charlie Kirk has been killed at some point in the last ten years (and if not, is that an interesting datapoint in its own right?). Can you point to an example of "a lot of rightwingers" who were "gleefully dancing on the grave"? For the left, I can point to four examples of this phenomenon happening with murders and attempted murders within the last year and change: the attempted assassination of trump (with some of his supporters killed/wounded in the attempt), Luigi's assassination of the healthcare exec,
Anthony Karmelo's murder of a fellow student at a track meet[EDIT - Bad example, see discussion below], and now Kirk's assassination. I think you should point to an actual example if you are going to make this comparison.You might be right that if this happens in the future, right-wingers might respond in kind. But this pattern occurring
fourthree times in the last year-and-change one way, and zero times the other way since the invention of social media, is the sort of data from which it seems to me we ought to be able to begin drawing conclusions.The best counterexample I can think of is the death of Osama Bin Laden. A lot of right-wingers very publicly celebrated that death on social media. If your argument is that leftists view Charlie Kirk roughly the way rightists view Osama Bin Laden, you wouldn't get disagreement from me, but I'm not sure it would help your argument.
Is this really a remotely good example? Bin Laden was held directly responsible for the deaths of thousands. Kirk, to my knowledge, wasn't.
It's a great example of what Red Tribe enthusiastically celebrating a killing looks like, which we can use as a measure for the scale of Blue Tribe celebration of Kirk, and Red Tribe celebration of other killings.
If we can accurately say that Blues are celebrating the death of Kirk the way Reds celebrated the death of OBL, that's an interesting data point about how Blues as a tribe see the world.
If we're going to look at claims of Reds celebrating the deaths of other people, it should be reasonable to examine the scale and intensity of that celebration. Is it "a couple people made mean tweets", or is it "the entire internet lights up with celebration, which spills over into the real world in numerous cases"?
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A lot of left-wingers cheered the death of Osama bin Laden also. Especially in the NYC area. You can have a general rule against celebrating deaths and still make exceptions for mass murderers and other especially horrible people. But if you do, you have to start punching sophists who insist on blurring the line.
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If there's an asymmetry with views on death, it's a difference between right and left wing attitudes to groups vs individuals. The left is interested in systems and groups of people, so things like Studio Ghiblifying a crying immigrant or whatever read as incredibly callous to them. Such a post is read by them as 'I'm totally unaffected by migrant pain, even if hundreds of millions of them are suffering I don't care even slightly'. However when it's an individual they don't like or an individual member of a group they don't feel well disposed to, they are way less empathetic. The right conversely are sometimes quite proud of showing good manners in person but will say absolutely awful things about groups apparently without even having the inkling that another person might be upset on behalf of their group.
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There indeed was such an intentional hit-and-run in Portland in 2019, although it was supposedly not politically motivated.
The killer seems to have been a cipher -- aside from mention of an argument at a bar that happened beforehand, I can't find any claim of a motive, political or otherwise. Only other interesting thing is he may have been a rapist as well.
I found one pseudonymous right-winger dancing on this grave on X... in 2022.
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Has a prominent lefty social media star been murdered of late?
I'm not aware of any and so I was presenting a hypothetical. The way the right reacted to the Pelosi hammer attack seems to indicate things won't be all that responsible.
Please don't pretend that the party that elected Trump is all about decorum and dignity and not speaking ill of the dead when it's someone they detest. If Hasan Piker gets merked tomorrow there will be a lot of the same nonsense from the Right.
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It was definitely not just right wingers. The fear of another 9/11 hung over large urban areas for a long time and there was more than a little celebration in New York and Hollywood (Zero Dark Thirty). Especially since President Obama was the one that did it.
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How a Young Activist’s Murder Has Been Gleefully Distorted Online
To this day right wingers on Twitter still bring up the image of him trying to run and tripping on the bench right before he was stabbed as a sort of Always Sunny meme. A lot of them took a similar line that leftists took with Kirk - "I don't agree with this but he did".
It seemed like the Left as a whole just avoided this like the plague. It seemed to be a specifically black tribal thing.
The big difference is that Carson's killing was not politically motivated at all, was it?
There are two sort of related conversations going on at the same time.
One is that leftist violence is out of control because a leftists killed Charlie Kirk.
The other is that in general the left is blood thirsty, as evidenced by the way leftists responded to the killing of Charlie Kirk.
These two points can stand independent of each other, and several people explicitly said as much when the political motivations of Charlie Kirk's killer were more nebulous. That, even if it was a random crazy or a groyper, the real problem was how so many leftists responded to it.
It is this second conversation, the group response thing, that was the focus here, as such, what matters is how the right as a group responded to Carson's death, not the motivations or political associations of his killer.
These may have been nebulous political motivations but were almost certainly still political. I'm sure that can hardly be said about Carson's killer.
Also with Carson's Killer it's hard for anybody on the Leftwing side of the fence to poke that particular hornet's nest without immediately self-defeating so...
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Neither was the murder committed by Karmelo Anthony.
The difference from Kirk's murder, I mean.
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If Charlie Kirk was killed by a spray and pray tactic taken up by some switch modified AR-15 this might be a valid comparison along the lines of, "this was his stupid prize for playing the stupid game of supporting the 2nd Amendment," but this was nothing like that. None of the laws Kirk opposed would have saved his life even with perfect implementation.
This is a routine problem of people pretending non-like things are like, or like things are non-like. Its silly.
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There also is just a difference between someone being randomly murdered (or dying of natural causes) and politically assassinated - people spitting on Rush Limbaugh's grave did not have the same connotations as people spitting on Kirk's do.
Yes, fair point.
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I appreciate the example. In my experience, symmetry comparisons across the tribal divide are almost always fruitless, but it seems to me that this is the sort of thing that absolutely has to be possible if we're to have any hope of peace at all.
I have no memory of or experience with right-wing reactions to Ryan Carson's death. It sounds like you do. In your view, was the right-wing reaction then comparable to the left-wing reaction we saw with Kirk, in terms of scale or significance or whatever axes seemed relevant to you?
...I think that is a fair rebuttal. Even accounting for the close alliance between Black tribe and Blue Tribe, they really are not synonyms. Mayor Pete's poll results recently were another point of a similar divergence.
It's similar to the segment of left-wingers claiming that they wouldn't kill Kirk but his dead is an outcome of his policies and behavior and/or that a lack of respect are the norms he himself lived by when others were in trouble (e.g. wrt Nancy Pelosi's husband). As I said the line is usually "he agreed with this, not me"
Doesn't work for anyone who outright says he should be killed for opposing the Civil Rights Act but most have more deniability.
In terms of scale of course it isn't similar. But then, it's hard to think of a similarly prominent media figure on the Left being killed or even coming as close as Trump. Kirk is basically as high as it goes for RW influencers. Given the use of Karmelo Anthony (that news is significantly more avoidable than Kirk or Luigi I think) I figured scale wasn't the sina qua non
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I was not there, but here’s some examples of the reaction on the right to Ryan Carson: The Voice of Thy Brother’s Blood - REVEALED: Murdered leftist activist Ryan Carson has history of celebrating death, violence towards conservatives
I will leave it up to the reader whether this is comparable to the reaction on the left to Charlie Kirk’s death, such as this article: The World Is a Better Place Without Charlie Kirk In It
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I've seen rightwingers talk about Carson, as a volunteer for the Leopards Eating Faces Party. No real sympathy for him, and a great deal of contempt for his fellow volunteer girlfriend that veered into exaggerating her own sins (No, she did not call for the release of the murderer and instead cooperated with the police to prosecute him. OTOH, she is a Zohran supporters, so she kind of is with extra steps.)
The rhetoric from the right is vaguely comparable to the people just bashing Kirk for supporting the 2nd, but knowledge of the case is still pretty limited.
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Archive link to above article
Sharing emotionally manipulative and outright deceptive writing is not an ideal way to service your point. The criticism of Carson was because of his activity on X. I could link any one of his posts, I'll link this one. At the NYPD, to which he replied "Your cops are subhuman." He was such a kind man, he only cared about garbage.
As someone who keeps a close eye on those righty circles and who doesn't shy from graphic content, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw his murder shared, but this could be selection bias. What I have seen are plentiful criticisms of his girlfriend for her behavior continuing from that night.
But really, this is accepting framing, and I don't do that. The righties criticize Carson for his belief that socioeconomic conditions precipitate the willingness of an 18 year old to wander a city and murder a stranger by repeatedly stabbing him. His beliefs directly related with and contributed to the circumstances of his murder. That's not why lefties are criticizing Kirk. Had Kirk agitated for and supported violence against his opposition -- actual violence, not the child's "you said mean words" -- he would have lived and died by the sword. He didn't. He hurt their feelings, and they say that's a reason to say he deserved it as they dance on his grave. These are not comparable.
I don't really understand why we need to tear down Carson some more. He's not a saint but neither was Charlie Kirk. Kirk also has a mountain of quotes that the left can mine to justify celebrating his death, and I believe they are wrong to do so too.
Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer's corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.
Granted, not extra-judicial violence, so maybe not exactly "living and dying by the sword," but the following is not exactly that either:
That's like arguing Charlie Kirk argued for escalation and turning up the temperature, which produced a political environment that precipitated his assassination. The cause and effect between Carson's beliefs and his murder are just as far removed.
This is like the Monty Python sketch about non-illegal robbery. Granted, they're not actually doing the thing people are complaining about, but....
It's still advocating for violence.
Sure, "my political opposition should be tried for treason and then shot" may have a thin veneer of plausible deniability to chronic overthinkers like you or I, but most people from both sides are just going to hear "my political opposition should be shot".
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I looked into that yesterday and curiously enough most of the RW glee came from a guy being hoisted by his own defund petard, and after having celebrated the death of Rush Limbaugh (among others, iirc)
One thing that's come into STARK relief over the past week, is there's a pretty noticeable difference between making jokes at the expense of the deceased, which can be bad taste ("too soon!") but isn't a hard taboo, and making jokes that celebrate the person's death directly/condones the act of murder.
It's a noticeable difference, yes, but particularly troublingly I think that in cases like this there's a lot of grey area between the two. Very scissory, or as Adams would say "two movies one screen", in that for many offensive comments someone left-wing will say it isn't condoning the act of murder while someone right-wing will say it is, and I don't think either of them are lying per se.
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This is actually a solid counterpoint. I had forgotten about this guy, and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I was not exactly sad when he died. I can't remember posting anything about him online, and I definitely didn't take to Facebook, but it's quite possible I made some insensitive remark about him in one of my previous accounts.
It's a bad example because the right had nothing to do with his death at all. His death was ironically viewed precisely because the right's preferred policies might actually have saved him.
In terms of people celebrating political opponents' deaths, it does have something to do with it. I am moderately right leaning, and I remember how I felt when Carson was killed. The reaction on the right wasn't nearly as widespread as the Kirk shooting was on the left, but there undoubtedly was some thinly veiled rejoicing occurring on the right. The scale of it though was not the same as Kirk's death from what I remember. If you want to redirect the focus of his death to it being about policy and who killed him then ok, I'd probably agree, but that's not what my comment was talking about.
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No, we don't want each other dead. Most people are really peaceful, to the point that even in some of the most extreme times in history countries have to conscript and draft able bodied youth to fight for them because they won't do it willingly. Even in self defense like Ukraine, a country fighting for itself against an invading force is still something like 1 volunteer for every 3 drafted.
We have all sorts of phrases expressing a similar sentiment "bark is worse than their bite" "talk is cheap" "all talk and no action" "actions speak louder than words" "paper tiger" "keyboard warrior" etc. This sentiment is that people say things to sound tough and cool, but in reality the large large large majority won't ever actually do it.
It's basically all signaling, a person who says "Look at me support super controversial in-group aligned thing" signals how dedicated they are without ever actually having to do shit. It's just as believable as other bullshit like "I'd do anything for you" in a newly formed relationship. Also of course a great SSC piece on this type of thing
Publicizing how we're all basically the same and peaceful doesn't signal too much. Publicizing the hate you have for out-group and how you support the Thing Others Won't Support is lots of loyalty signal.
..
Also of course, a bit of Moloch
Callous indifference continues to be an underrated descriptor complicating perception and reality of how much one side hates the other.
Only a small fraction want each other dead. Of those that do, only a tiny fraction would do anything to achieve those deaths. But there's a much larger fraction who are at best indifferent to deaths among The Other. Fine, to some extent that's signaling (of an extremely sick culture), but that still matters!
The catch to this attitude being that ignoring how much someone hates you can have, relatively rarely but importantly non-zero times, quite disastrous results. I think there is very little to be lost following the adage "if someone says they hate you, believe them," and potentially a lot to be lost by ignoring clear signals of danger.
Most people not giving a shit is common, but also not particularly bad. Do you know anything about what is happening in Sudan or Myanmar or whatever else? I don't! The average American doesn't!
I don't even know what's happening in the next street over and frankly I don't really care that much if it doesn't impact me. I'm not gonna intervene if I overhear someone say "Oh did you know Joe on 123 next street over beats his wife sometimes?" I just want the police to show up and arrest Joe, but I ain't getting personally involved and I'm not blaming Joe's neighbors or coworkers for his actions.
Does that make me evil? If it does, it's an incredibly common very banal evil that basically everybody has about something.
That's the big catch. The likelihood of anything in Sudan affecting me is basically zero. The likelihood of, say, inappropriate police behavior caught on video going viral and affecting me for months or years is not high, but significantly non-zero.
We have a culture that prioritizes concern based on identity, and in some ways it's a banal evil (cueing Hannah Arendt?), and in some ways it's an encouragement for people to violate or otherwise ignore their stated principles.
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All this is true, and yet most people aren't all people.
The world is full of keyboard warriors. The real ones are in the military or prison.
Now you know why each political party wants to put their warriors in the streets.
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Um, this is lovely and all, but have you ever actually been in a serious conflict with another person or group of people? Especially with a militant Leftist?
I have, as it happens. I sent an email offering to meet up and find a compromise that worked for us, and got an email back that said, to the best of my recollection, "There is nowhere that we will compromise and discussing things with you would be a waste of time".
People in the real world, actual aggressive self-righteous goal-oriented people, don't compromise because they're nice and they want what's best for everyone. They compromise only if they have to in order to get what they want. (And often not even then, look how the trade unions caused the decline of British industry rather than compromise on ideology).
I don't do it anymore but for some of the earlier parts of this insanity I would speak up. At a party, at family dinner.
I'm large and I'm calm and I'm reasonably well spoken, and because I spend time here I'd seen the arguments for both sides.
Every time I'd try, every time! The leftist would storm out - no matter how calm I was, no matter how well I dodged some of the common pitfalls. When challenged and they realized they couldn't bully me into shutting up...they fled. And we are talking doctors, lawyers, and so on.
Eventually I decided that the risk to my social life and professional life was too much and stopped.
And that was over five years ago, the extremism has only been getting worse since.
I'm sure the militant right would do the same? But I have no access to them.
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This is approximately why I'm now ironclad in my belief that I do not want to share a country with anyone left of, say, Bill Clinton. I don't want them dead. I want them to leave. Preferably of their own accord. I don't even mind paying for the tickets, as long as they're one-way and they aren't coming back. And if they won't leave, I want them to generally be as miserable as possible until they wish they had left.
Lefties are just not suited for sharing a country with other citizens who have differing belief systems; they cannot be trusted to cooperate (or 'not defect') on core issues regarding the country's safety and security, and they will generally prefer foreigners over their own neighbors in any dispute, it seems.
Yes the famous 'heat map' study is very flawed, but the point made by said heat map has been confirmed in varying ways by different studies. Lefties try to sympathize with 'everyone' (and often entirely non-human things, or abstract concepts, like "the environment.") and as a result often end up sacrificing those that would 'actually matter' to them.
Lefties also have far, far less diversity of thought within their circles than righties. It is in fact safe to assume that whatever any given lefty says they believe reflects very precisely what all of the other lefties believe. And they'll henpeck their own into line as needed.
This crystalized for me when I watched everyone on the Dem side fall into line behind Kamala Harris as Biden's successor in one day, even ones who had, that very same day, said she was the wrong choice.
Lefties are far more likely to cut off family, friends, and other relationships over 'minor' political squabbles. So you can debate them in good faith, and still find that they come away hating your guts if you don't capitulate, and then cut you off so you have no hope of ever changing their mind. This concept is so absolutely backwards compared to how I try to manage my relationships that TO ME It reads as entirely alien and incomprehensible behavior.
Lefties have no good theory of mind for their political opponents. They believe they know what their opponents believe, but they tend to fail the ideological Turing test badly. So its that much easier for them to demonize opponents for things said opponents do not actually believe. See aforementioned point about intellectual diversity.
Lefties also have that distinct tendency to claim intellectual superiority and scientific backing for their views, but also tend to be completely wrong on some of the most important, core facts about reality. The most egregious one being blank-slatism as it pertains to human beings and their mental development. Their battle against reality on this point has done untold amounts of harm, and its impossible to even have a discussion on the degree of nature vs. nurture in their framework. I don't want to be forced into their framework, I want to have the actual debate. Which probably requires removing the people preventing it.
And of course as we have now seen, it is pretty much incontrovertible that more lefties than righties tend to support, or at least excuse violence as a means of settling political disputes, up to and including murder. Not all of them, but a significant amount, and these members are NOT policed by other lefties so they have an outsize effect. My first encounter with this was back when the Charlie Hebdo murders occurred, and I went on Reddit's /r/anarchism subreddit to find them twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why killing a bunch of cartoonists wasn't exactly the moral abomination it sounds like. You can still find some remnants of their discussion.
In my view, it shouldn't be so hard to say "murdering non-violent people is BAD" regardless of how offensive they are.
I can back up each of the above points with various studies, but I apologize I'm not taking the time to do that at this moment since I don't have them all immediately handy. I'm not trying to just 'boo-outgroup' here, I think that observable, reliable facts of the world are reflected in what I said, and this informs my own belief on why I don't want to be around them. Maybe I'm the one with the twisted morality and worldview.
Ding me for that if you must, mods. I'm not calling out any particular persons on the site with this, I swear.
And while I don't immediately give righties/red tribe a pass, by any means, I could throw together a comprehensive explanation of why I prefer to live around Red Tribers rather than Blue tribers, and maybe will throw that together at some point. Ultimately it comes down to Righties being more 'genuine' in how they comport and portray themselves, and more in touch with baseline 'reality' where it counts.
I consider myself red-tinged Grey tribe, and it has become clear to me that I cannot, over the long term, co-exist with blue tribe, for reasons I have no control over, and I'm leaning a bit more in favor of 'conflict' theory over 'mistake' theory these days.
Note, I am literally only stating my own personal beliefs on the issue, and I still inherently wish to treat any individual person, even if they identify as left-wing, as an individual who has worth and dignity in their own right, even if they're hopelessly compromised by their ideology and will never have their mind changed.
I'm not calling for any particular actions against any persons, and I've already arranged my life so I don't encounter many blue tribers as I go about my daily business, so I'm not going to take any different personal actions.
But if you're asking me to make policy recommendations, I can't very well carve out exceptions for the few that I personally like.
This is the most depressing part for me. I classify myself as a libertarian, and I disagree with the left way, way more than I do with the right, but I'd completely fine living aside them - including communists, despite my ancestors suffering a lot from the communist regime and me hating all that relates to that - I am willing to set that aside for the sake of having a pleasant, peaceful society. If only the Left agreed to play by a simple set of rules - no violence, no destroying the country, no destroying the culture. I am willing to only "destroy" them like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro did - by showing, with fact and argument, again and again, how utterly ridiculous their views are and how disastrous the consequences of them - including for them themselves - they are. But there's no way I can have this. Every time they feel they are losing the power, they become violent. I don't see how this violence can be dealt with in a peaceful framework.
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On charlie hebdo, I was a fedora tipping atheist back then and even I found the comics profane. I didn't like islam either, infact I had a burning passion of hatred for it. These days when I see those comics again I think to myself, good, fuck those guys. Should they have been killed? Probably not, but I would have been done for them getting their faces punched in.
Probably? That's how you know your moral compass is malfunctioning. When you ask yourself "how do I feel about brutally murdering a person that said something offensive to me?" and the answer is not "fuck no, not murder!" but "well, maybe no, maybe yes, he was really annoying so kinda murder sounds right but those people around me say murder is bad... so hard to figure this out... should I err on the safe side? Should I hedge more? It's really a tough conundrum!".
And, of course, you should only talk about punching other people's faces in if you're willing to have your own punched in for your opinions. Yes, I know yours doesn't smell. But that's how it works. I wouldn't accept this deal, I'd rather have a deal where nobody's face getting punched in, but maybe some people enjoy their faces being punched in?
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Probably not? Not no? Like maybe you could see an argument justifying their murders over cartoons? That's disgusting mate.
I'm hoping you were just caught up in couching because it's the motte, because 'they deserve to get their faces punched in' is a more respectable position than that by several orders of magnitude, and I assume anyone who disagrees has never had their face punched in.
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"Oh, I can know what he's referencing I can add some helpful links for this post. A little context, too." Oops. I guess I didn't not add helpful links or minor context. I have allowed myself to get lost in the textual sauce. An LLM, but worse.
This one is a trend that's been polled and surveyed for over a decade. It's bad. If we're pointing fingers I think this is one of many potential indicators of finger pointing direction.
The Heatmap is more interesting than the "ideological diversity" (ooo nodes) study. This one does not grab me like The Heatmap and instead I concluded, "Sure thing, social science. Run it back." For sake of brevity, this study asked 8 questions (n=400ish, 25%ish Republicans) and I'll share 3: (1) "Abortion should be illegal", (4) *"The federal budget for welfare programs should be increased", and (6) "The government should regulate business to protect the environment".
I don't think these are definitive type questions to accurately measure "diversity" -- a word the authors do not use -- of political temperament or ideology. The fun part is at the end where the authors remind us:
Ah
When academics invoke But, Trump, White, Christian in a context is important tone one must resist the temptation. Ah-ha! These inconvenient findings must be evidence for why the paper is correct. I, on the other hand, once again recall that science science is sham. Do it again, bozos, and do it better.
What other studies are you thinking of? This one got me good. What started as "helpful link":
This references the "heat map" study which you call flawed. For The Heatmap, or Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle, the study compares how liberals and conservatives express and/or extend "moral concern." The authors find liberals are prone to extend moral concern in a loose "universalist" fashion, whereas conservatives distributed moral concern a tighter "parochial" shape. They then mapped these response in concentric circles for our benefit. These circles start from the category of immediate family at the center, out to all of humanity, lifeforms in the universe, and finally everything that ever exists including space rocks.
People, like me, interpret "moral concern" as a synonym for units of caring. Which is not wholly accurate. This is a stated preference, but not a tested preference. A polite interpretation is that liberals are capable, or would like to be, of loving all of humanity and beyond to a greater extent than conservatives. From there, the "liberals love space rocks as much as their kids" dunks write themselves.
One of the exercises has the participants distribute their moral concern as a zero-sum resource. Liberals were more likely to apply concern to things far away from the center than conservatives, although they still applied concern to the center. That maps the same direction as the non-zero-sum, unlimited distribution which brings liberals and conservatives closer, but still distinct in pattern. Conservatives, even when told that moral concern is not finite, won't ascribe much moral value to space rocks. The gradient for conservatives shows they don't consider space rocks worthy of concern at all. In the study they stop giving moral concern points, regardless if they're finite, much sooner when extending outwards. They do so to the point where the outer circles are closer to non-existent.
If I can believe that these exercises can provide insight, then I would very much like to see the study repeated, then simplified, and finally standardized. I want to see this deployed across cultures and through time. What would populations in Somalia, South Africa, or Spain land if we replicated the study in those population? Does safety and prosperity change the disposition and by how much? Race/ethnicity? Climate?
A million questions. How does this interact with other parts we know to be (at least partly) hardwired like temperament and preferences? If the finding that liberals generally have a higher IQ is true, then might it be related? I know the findings are not so broad, but it's hard to not think there could be costs (and benefits) in processing the world in such a way. So long as we can consistently clamp down moral temperament as dimorphic across culture and time.
How exciting! Of course, because it's exciting, triggers my imagination, and was made into a meme then I assume it won't hold up. The limited/unlimited sample sizes for the exercises were 131 and 263 people respectively, however each only had about 35 conservatives. Maybe this should have been its own post, but I figure someone smarter and most handsome could do it better than I.
Dems are more conformist if we take the Do It Again, Bozo science at face value. This would suggest they're at least a little better about backing Their Guy. As a counter-point, the above quoted text sounds like an obviously bipartisan phenomena to me. It is normal for the average politically interested voter to vote for plainly partisan reasons.
What behavior should we expect from Dems when their election plans fall apart? "Yesterday I said it would be a mistake to let the Californian machine "brown and a woman" candidate takeover, but the party fucked it-- oh well we'll get you guys next time." Nobody wins elections by telling the opposition they are right on the tepid candidate. No way, that billion dollar campaign is gonna happen. It may as well be spent on a fun, joyful Brat! campaign.
This is exactly the kind of example where we -- you, me, everyone else -- are programmed to notice the enemy's transgressions, but forget our own. Your average MAGA voter was railing against TikTok a year ago. Now? All quiet on the big bad Chinuh! front. Difference in degree, not kind? Maybe. Team Trump can turn on a dime. I consider this as an uncontroversial statement without comparison to anything else. The D machine's effort in 2024 was absurd and, yes, it worked to an extent. It had to work. It was always going to work. You can't just give up at the end of democracy. [Which should put in perspective the monumental and historical fuck-up of Democrats in 2024.]
All the consensus backs the Republican candidate no matter what some writer at National Review said ten minutes ago. Trump has some in-house resistance, but how'd that work out? How many Republicans backed Trump after calling him some name or even disavowed him? Many, including Vance. Democrats have seen this and they've called it out! "People can change their minds, you know?" Yeah, yeah, some more than others.
The mainstream Dem machine is impressive and has some unique advantages. Concepts of optics, messaging, and narrative are more prominent in the minds of Blue voters and, to some extent, this has trained them. Maybe the Republicans don't get as close as Kamala did if the parties swapped position and infrastructure. Falling in line behind Kamala for the party -- or whoever it is -- can be your expectation next time. No surprise or condemnation or special accusation necessary.
Political disputes at the moment, but more righties than lefties tend to support violence as a means in other general settings. Is this the same? No, it's frequently not the same. There are many qualities of American leftism that are in not mirrored or symmetric to the right. That is another fundamental problem with the left-right paradigm not solved by another axis. There are qualities of leftism that I also find frustrating, abhorrent, or special. Nature nurture blank slateism is a huge fundamental contradiction in liberal and leftist ideology.I share many of the same grey tribe suspicion of lefty thinking, culture, and politics. I still* think you lean too far in your condemnation of people.
In terms of ideological conformity, you can also take a look at organizations and institution that have become more left wing over time (almost all of them) and those that have become more right wing (good luck finding ANY).
What happens with Righties when they notice they've been pushed out of a space they like is... they go build a new one, start a new foundation on which to build a new institution. Note this is how Charlie Kirk got his start.
Look at how the Ratio of Conservatives to Liberals as College Faculty has dropped off a cliff since the 60's.
Note, this was precisely the sort of thing Charlie Kirk was trying to combat.
Of course, the left will simply say "Conservatives aren't as smart/don't believe in science/are anti-intellectual" as an excuse for this, as part of that whole "intellectual superiority and scientific backing" shtick. But amazingly the place where Conservative presence is the strongest tends to be the math, physics, and engineering departments, WHERE BEING CORRECT IN THE REAL WORLD continues to matter the most.
It was NOT because the share of conservatives in the population dropped off sharply that they took over colleges. It was attributable to the intentional attrition of activists over a long period of time actively favoring their ideological peers for hiring, and actively making life unpleasant for righties, to ultimately cement control over the valuable institutions. They are very open about the strategy and tactics they were employing. Conservatives/righties generally don't use these strategies to co-opt functional institutions.
And believe me, I can get almost as critical of red tribe politics and belief if I choose. But the central point, borne out by decades of living around both sides... is that Red Tribe will actually leave you alone/accept you as you are much, much more readily than blue tribe, provided you don't start conflicts. Grey tribe is easily the most accepting of all, but tends to lose out to blue tribe operatives due to having no/poor antibodies to their entryist tactics.
Well, the place where the Republican-vs-Democrat ratio is highest is in Economics, but that's not so much because there's especially extensive high-stakes testing that Applied Economics gets. It's probably because our best theories, starting in literally the first Microecon 101 classes, have good, simple explanations for why many populist (and historically leftist-aligned) economic ideas end up worsening the very problems they were trying to solve. You can still say those explanations are too simple, and make an economics research career out of trying to justify that, but having to add and defend precisely the necessary epicycles can't be entirely comfortable.
I'd also point out that it's common for a math professor to take pride in how disconnected their research is from real-world applications. Maybe in the back of their mind they expect some applied math guys to snatch up their work and use it eventually, but the more decades that takes, the more ahead-of-its-time their work must have been! There may also be some counter-signalling, where the shakier your reputation is, the more your grant applications have to look like "this could advance cancer research, somehow, because graph theory I guess" rather than "this builds on my work that finally proved the long-open Guys-Youbarelyheardof Conjecture"? The trick with trying to subvert math is that even if it's not empirical, it's still objective. Other mathematicians may disagree over how important the Guys-Youbarelyheardof Conjecture is, but even if some of them dislike you that doesn't make it any easier for them to find flaws in your proof.
I don't think it's about real-world applications so much as in the sense of “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
It doesn't matter if you pass a law saying that pi should be 3, or write a very well-written and persuasive paper, or murder your co-worker and throw them off a boat.
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You are a martial arts instructor, right?
What do you do when a liberal comes to your dojo? It must happen, and while in my experience, most people try to avoid politics on the mat (for good reason!) you're often going to get clues about people's affiliations.
This isn't a gotcha question or anything. I just really want to know how you deal with people you literally don't think should coexist with you, when you are in a position of trust and authority and with responsibility for their safety. As a former instructor myself I'd be very concerned about someone who feels they can't teach people with the wrong politics. This sounds nearly as bad as all those psychologists and therapists reportedly distressed at the idea of having to provide help to Republicans.
Let me hijack this to relay an anecdote from last Saturday. I.e., about one day after Charlie Kirk's murder. It is a useless anecdote that goes nowhere, and I'd like to get rid of it because it serves no purpose.
Having spent far too much time on the motte, on Friday, I ended up dreaming in the night that people all around me would finally pick up whatever weapons or improvised weapons they could to go, meet up, and beat do death their political opponents. In my dream, that ended up subverted by my old instructor, who turned those violent impulses into a peaceful tournament. I awoke in the morning poorly rested, reminded myself not to dwell so much on American culture war issues, and packed my stuff to go to the day's actual real-world fully-awake HEMA tournament.
Where I met a gaggle of fighters from a "workers' sports club", who were fully decked out in gear sporting images of raised red fists, anarchist signs, "FCK AFD" and the usual far-left symbology. They were perfectly decent and civil people and nobody said a word about politics.
That is all.
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Teach them what they want to know, basically. Then decline to hang out with them much outside the gym.
Its not like there's a hard and fast rule against discussing politics in the gym. But the transaction is simple, they are paying to be a member of the gym, they attend classes, they get the instruction they paid for.
And let me say, I'd argue that I'm a tad left of the median for members' political affiliation. Like I said, I'm grey tribe. Some of these folks are full on Q-anon adjacent, giant-truck driving, gun-nut red tribers.
I walked into the gym on Wednesday and multiple people, including the owner of the gym, were asking me about the Charlie Kirk thing, unprompted. Some of them are extraordinarily livid.
It is good thing that one of our more open lefties (who doesn't confront people about it, to be clear) was on vacation in Texas this week.
Let me point out that I also used to work as a Public Defender, where my entire job was... defending people who were probably guilty. And I took my job very seriously in that respect, even if I found the people themselves distasteful, i.e. people I would not want to live around.
The way I solved that issue was:
A) never actually asking them if 'they did it.' I always just said "whatever story you tell, make damn sure it is consistent."
B) If it was clear and obvious that they did it, or they said they did it, I treat my main goal as making the state do their job properly. If the state screws up or lacks evidence to convict, my job is to point that out and try to create a valid defense. If the state fails to convict... that's on them.
From a sheer professionalism standpoint, I can set aside any feeling I have about an individual to provide them a service that they are 'entitled' to due to my contractual obligations. That is perfectly in keeping with my principles and social norms.
Separating my personal feelings out and teaching a lefty how to fight is easy, in that paradigm.
Also, getting buff and learning to fight is one of the things that can make a guy more right wing. SO I like to think I'm keeping the politically moderate guys from falling into Leftism, even if I'm not winning over lefties.
I have no intentions of confronting any individuals who do not confront me first.
Hence my point:
I would not join a gym where the majority of the members were lefties. Freedom of association. I don't think the lefties at my gym want me dead.
But I do not want such people to have political authority over me in any way.
And because I live in one of the reddest areas of a Red state, they simply do not have political authority over me, so no lefties I know personally read as a 'danger' to me. But as a whole, coherent group...
I can live with that arrangement, blue tribe completely politically neutered and fringe enough that they are unable to ever effect any outcomes. If any get violent, they get exiled instantly. That's tolerable to me. But we're a long way from that arrangement at a national level.
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I think you are greatly underestimating how centrist most people are. Harris' shortcomings, and Biden's/Clinton's before her, were well known and widely acknowledged, even though it is certainly the case that Dem commentators, as expected, fell in line.
I'm talking about stuff like Aaron Sorkin suggesting that the Dems should pick Mitt Romney as their nominee (an EXTREMELY Centrist proposal!), and then walking it back THE EXACT SAME DAY, with zero indication that this caused him any mental distress.
Tons of folks saying "we must have a convention, its the only way!" shut up the instant Kamala was 'announced' as the successor.
That's a level of group cohesion you NEVER, EVER see on the right.
I don't know about that. Do you seriously think that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Romney, etc., are ideologically or temperamentally down with Trump? I would say the Republican party has cohered around MAGA far more effectively than the Dems have managed to cohere around... anything. Republicans who have not come around have essentially been booted from the party, while a notable Dem example would be Manchin's more or less victorious showdown with Biden over BBB. (Manchin is no longer senator, but he lost from the right, not the left.)
On Sorkin, again, we are talking about someone so clearly dissatisfied with the putative nominee and VP in Harris that he writes an op-ed suggesting that Dems nominate a Republican, but you are somehow shocked that they later write a tweet endorsing Harris over Trump?? Do you want him to get mad and endorse a third party or something? Either a) he genuinely got caught up in the idea of Harris or b) he simply wants to convey enthusiasm in order for Trump to lose. His editiorial's thrust was very much that Trump's 2nd term would be very bad; once a nominee has been picked or settled upon, surely it would make no sense to be publicly milquetoast about that nominee.
This seems just patently incorrect to me.
In 2016-2020 there was zero penalty to defecting from Trump as a Republican, talking against him, voting against him (I still recall McCain casting the decisive vote to BLOCK the repeal of Obamacare. When he died he was still given full accolades by his fellow Republicans). They did work together long enough to not impeach and remove Trump, I guess.
In 2020-2024 you have the entire edifice of the federal Democratic party working together to ignore/cover up Biden's increasing cognitive decline. Although plenty of people noticed it, there were ZERO leaks until it was decided he needed to be replaced. And they've been working even harder since then to deflect and diffuse any responsibility now that they've had to admit what was going on. It is truly awe-inspiring.
Compared to how virtually every Trump appointee that quit or got booted immediately went and wrote a tell-all book about how inept and chaotic the administration was.
And now, post 2024, I still don't think the GOP has really conglomerated around MAGA. Its more like they've become content to just sit back and let him do things via the Executive order process and re-arrange deck chairs while he tries to steer the ship.
No, I'm "shocked" someone would spend such mental effort to try to create a persuasive essay in hopes of convincing others to take a particular course of action that... apparently, they themselves didn't find compelling.
Then literally say "whoops, I take it all back, ignore what I said earlier, I'm on the team again" without even a hint of mental distress.
Its like he didn't even believe his own words when he wrote them. So why should anyone else take him seriously on anything ever again?
HAVE THE COURAGE OF YOUR CONVICTIONS, MAN.
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