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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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It's untrue in the same way that saying the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor is untrue.

For this argument to hold water, you'd of course have to prove that the hit was ordered by the unambiguous leader of "The Left", not merely that the hit was performed by someone who subscribed to the left ideology.

Because if "the hit was performed by someone who shared some ideological traits with" is the same thing as "the hit was performed by", then Pearl Harbour was bombed by the Germans.

No, I merely have to show that it wasn't performed by MAGA.

no, those were formal armies involved. not shifting vague weird internet politics combined with political inference from a romantic partner

  • -18

When the shooter said that Kirk needed to be killed because of Kirk's "hate", what do you think he meant by that?

Well, he seems to have meant that he supported using privately-owned firearms, which a proper Blue would consider utterly unthinkable. Therefore he is an ideological hybrid at most.

This is not an entirely sincere argument, but something of that shape seems to be a genuinely viable steelman for the claim that the "the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them". From a certain point of view, you only get someone like Robinson by layering leftist beliefs on top of a Red Tribe substrate which has access to, and the ability to use, guns; had he not been raised in a Red Tribe milieu Robinson would have been unable to kill, even if he was willing; therefore his being Red by birth is ultimately more relevant to why he wound up a murderer than his being Blue by indoctrination.

  • -15

You do realize exactly how persuasive this attempt to wash your alliance's hands of even the possibility of responsibility looks, right?

Even I have to push back on this one. While anti-gun people are almost exclusively on the left, the left contains people who like guns, people who think gun ownership should be possible but harder, and people who want to ban all guns.

From what I can find on Robinson, all I've found on his political leanings is that didn't really vote one way or the other and that he bickered with his conservative family on trans issues but didn't really talk about much else politically. Which seems directionally left but the limited info we have suggests he was largely single-issue trans rights.

This hasn't actually answered the question:

When the shooter said that Kirk needed to be killed because of Kirk's "hate", what do you think he meant by that?

Wouldn't it be more like saying England bombed Pearl Harbor? And Germany's the one that's saying it, making fun of USA for being dishonest enough to insist that the attack could have come from Japan.