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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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A detail worth noting in the monologue he's being fired over, which I have no idea how much it mattered in the official machinery behind the scenes in this and which I'm reasonably certain will not matter in its narrative fallout, but which was the primary outrage animating the cancellation campaign:

"We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them"

This was on Monday (Sept 15th), which was after the bullet engravings were public ("hey fascist! CATCH!", public on Sept 12th) but before the chat transcripts in the indictment were public ("I had enough of his hatred", public on Sept 16th).

In that interval (and perhaps still?), there was a very active and successful misinformation shitstorm on lib social media to frame the available evidence (including, remarkably, "hey fascist! CATCH!") as smoking gun proof that Tyler Robinson was right wing and in particular a groyper, which it's extremely likely that Jimmy Kimmel's writers (and perhaps Kimmel himself) were stewing in.

There were people here desperately trying to spin it away from the obvious (prioritizing indeterminate evidence while ignoring damning evidence). I hope they reflect on their failures.

There were people here desperately trying to spin it away from the obvious (prioritizing indeterminate evidence while ignoring damning evidence).

This appears like another typical instance of the "CAN I believe [my side did something good/their side did something bad]? Then I will," and "MUST I believe [my side did something good/their side did something bad]? Otherwise, I won't" phenomenon.

What's really galling about this is that this phenomenon is quite well known. Not common sense to the layman, but it should be common knowledge enough to people paying attention to western culture wars over the past decade or so, since active participant/observer Jonathan Haidt publicized this phenomenon quite a bit in that time. Which means that anyone who wants to make an accurate assessment about reality will actively counter this bias in themselves by choosing to hold evidence that proves [my side did something bad/their side did something good] to an almost unreasonably low standard and vice versa.

As such, those who don't do this are openly signalling a commitment to partisanship over a commitment to truth. Which is fine when that's honest, but when one's side identifies as the side of truth, science, and progress, then anyone on that side who falls into this bias without credibly attempting to counter it is perfectly comfortable with actively discrediting their own side, just for temporary tribal benefits.

I think Kimmel was just throwing red meat to his followers and critically failed at reading the current political climate. I can understand why; he got away with highlighting Trump's inflammatory statements in low key victim blaming after the two Trump assassination attempts.

I think part of this though is that its the final straw in Kimmel's repeated stances on these kind of events (eg political violence is bad, but he kinda deserved it wink wink) and it had drawn the Eye of Sauron FCC attention. Whether Trump had a quiet chat to the FCC chairman about this is a seperate issue.

I think that the misinformation made a difference to how events are unfolding. I think that this in particular would not have happened without it.

Just as an autistic matter of documenting events as I have witnessed them occurring.

Of course it's all just a forgettable skirmish in a much larger war that's still in its preludes, in which a whole lot will be lost in the foam.

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