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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.
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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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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