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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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Hey, I thought the point of ice bullets was that they didn’t leave evidence!

Maybe I shouldn’t joke about this. It’s tragic, and disturbing, and speaks to an increased temperature in the lunatic fringe. Nothing good can come of it. As such, I’m not going to make excuses for the fucker.

Instead, I want to ask y’all what “the left” should be doing. What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation? Does it involve public disavowals by the leadership? Cancelling any streamer stupid enough to say something edgy? The DNC taking responsibility for a terrorist act like it’s al-Qaeda? Maybe some time in the stockades, or a few televised executions? What would it take for you to feel like “the left” was making a good-faith effort?

Because this isn’t it. Whatever detente you have in mind, I cannot imagine that it involves writing bitter essays about the inhumanity of conservative scum, their unwillingness to admit that there is a problem, the inevitability of consequences when they continue to overstep. That wouldn’t be healthy. It wouldn’t feel like you were winning at all.

You are eager to treat “the left” as one organism, one will, a mouth speaking platitudes while its hand fumbles for the knife. How dare they create this situation? How could they normalize the idea that their political opponents were isomorphic to subhuman monsters?

Don’t you see the symmetry?

You recognize that “the right” is barely a coherent category, but you fail to apply that knowledge to the outgroup. How does this double standard possibly improve the situation? How can you equivocate between the normies who disagree with you and the psychopath who pulls a trigger?

If—when—the roles are reversed, “the left” is going to write pieces just like yours. They’ll try to hold you responsible for whatever fuckwit decided to bomb a clinic or shoot a Democrat. You’ll rightly protest that you never had any control over the kind of person who would snap like that. And we’ll move one step closer to chaos.

What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation?

Ever see the movie Fail Safe? The book is good too but then you don't get the recommended dose of Walter Matthau. If you haven't...the US government bombs New York City as a costly signal for accidentally bombing Moscow to prevent further conflict.

One massive tragedy is traded for another to prevent an even bigger conflict. The negotiations are direct, between high-ranking individuals; the consequences immediate. How do you make such a trade when you're talking about distributed social phenomena across classes, across government and private sector and in-between, across generations?

You’ll rightly protest that you never had any control over the kind of person who would snap like that.

Decades ago, some terrorists and murderers did as terrorists and murderers do. They spent a little time in jail, then they got professorships, they got sinecures, they mentored a future president, they still get honorary degrees from one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. No right wing terrorist or murderer has gotten a sinecure. Not one of them is lauded by polite society or treated as anything less than what they are.

You may want to say "but that's only two... or three... or anyways, it's not that many people!" But that's kind of beside the point; not that many versus zero is an infinite ratio. "The left" may be big and diverse, but some portion of that big diverse tent is far more vertically integrated than the right. To be clear, I don't want the right to start rewarding terrorists! I don't want the right to be better at protecting its scum. But the problem of "the left" treating their terrorists somewhere between tolerable and laudable instead of scum worthy of, at best, a life rotted away in prison, has existed a long time. On the somewhat less evil end of the bias problem: if you riot on the left, you get kid gloves; if you riot on the right, you get the book thrown at you (to be fair: unless your guy wins and you get a pardon).

I don't know what it looks like to undo that. I don't know how the leadership of today undoes terrible decisions and stupid social trends started 60 years ago or more.

Would jailing Angela Davis for her golden years make a difference? Unfair in some ways, a costly signal in some ways, but would it matter? Denouncing and cancelling Destiny in some bizarre post-modern Sister Soulja moment? It's something, I guess.

I don't know, man. I don't want to take another step towards The Troubles. All I know is that boilerplate denouncements aren't enough, and no one seems to be trying anything else.

Edit:

Maybe some time in the stockades

Tell you what, let's put Biden out and throw some tomatoes at him, January 21 2029 we'll do the same with Trump, everybody has a good laugh and we have a Political Jubilee Year.

Decades ago, some terrorists and murderers did as terrorists and murderers do. They spent a little time in jail, then they got professorships, they got sinecures, they mentored a future president, they still get honorary degrees from one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world. No right wing terrorist or murderer has gotten a sinecure. Not one of them is lauded by polite society or treated as anything less than what they are

This was almost sixty years ago dude.

they still get honorary degrees from one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world.

It was June 2025. And the fact California has been a joke state with a fake justice system for 60 years is the reason she didn't spend 50 years rotting in jail instead of being feted as some sort of heroic philosopher.

But I should've been more explicit that I'm using the most famous examples as a sort of synecdoche for the larger associative problem. Too many liberals treat leftists as somewhere between misguided but admirably enthusiastic, and actually laudable. "No enemies to the left" was the wrong lesson to learn from the Civil Rights movement but it's the one that seems to have stuck out the long run. The right does not do this, the right should not do this in my opinion, but it's at the root of the problem Netstack is asking about- a particular kind of rot goes very deep.

So, when someone asks how does the left make a display of sincerity that they're really, really not associated with the psychos? I dunno, because history shows they're really fond of a subset of the psychos.

Many of them are still alive and it wouldn't be difficult for the universities to disclaim them or revoke their honorary degrees. And 60 years ago is when they committed their crimes; being accepted by the establishment is more recent.

revoke their honorary degrees

The honorary degree I had in mind was all the way back in... June 2025. The acceptance is strong and there's no movement to disclaim them.

Don’t you see the symmetry?

Even if I grant such symmetry (and I don't), why should I care? I mean, sure, the other tribe has a lot of the same attitudes to mine as I have toward them, and they can make arguments about my side comparable to the arguments we make about them. But there's one key difference that no amount of "symmetry" or "both sides" or "meta-level" argument can erase: one tribe is mine, and the other is my enemy.

I love my family not because they're "the best" on some abstract objective metric, but because they're my family. "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her," said G. K. Chesterton.

I want my side to win, and the other side to lose. It's just that simple.

Even if I grant such symmetry (and I don't)

Why?

I want to ask y’all what “the left” should be doing.

Exactly what they are doing. They've overextended with wokeness and demographic engineering and lockdowns, which eroded a significant part of their ability to exercise power with seeming legitimacy. Galvanizing their supporters and sympathizers by escalating the conflict allows them to solidify what power they have while increasing their apparant legitimacy. They can choose between doubling down on the narrative that currently has traction or folding entirely and admitting fault, which is a fake choice because only one of those options actually offers them prospects of future success. Especially since the Right has also been going that exact way - sticking to their guns, attempting to match or exceed the other side's escalations, defecting in the face of prior defection by the other side.

It's a conflict, it does conflict things. The left will continue conflict-ing in this, because that's the only way for it to go.

Instead, I want to ask y’all what “the left” should be doing.

Nothing directly in your power, but since you phrased it collectively, is it really so much to ask that the same kind of pressure that made us move offsite (and purged countless bland inoffensive communities, creators, etc) be applied to people who are actually calling for, and praising political violence?

Many on the left seem to think so.

What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation? Does it involve public disavowals by the leadership? Cancelling any streamer stupid enough to say something edgy?

Those are pretty much the most basic level of standards the Blue Tribe routinely expects of its opponents.

Yes. I sorted that list in order of descending agreeability. I expect most people would find the first reasonable, which is probably why Democrats are actually doing it. Same for the second, except for the free-speech maximalists.

I probably should have made it a smoother gradient, but the question was genuine. What would “the left” have to do, in your mind, to show good faith?

Instead, I want to ask y’all what “the left” should be doing. What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation? Does it involve public disavowals by the leadership? Cancelling any streamer stupid enough to say something edgy? The DNC taking responsibility for a terrorist act like it’s al-Qaeda? Maybe some time in the stockades, or a few televised executions? What would it take for you to feel like “the left” was making a good-faith effort?

Pure premium gaslighting bullshit. We all know what it looks like when the left is actually upset about something, and what we're seeing ain't it. Get back to me when the 24/7 torrent of calls to violence on Reddit get taken half as seriously as a sticky note with "It's okay to be white" written on it.

I think this is an unreasonable standard. Cleaning house is never going to involve the same enthusiasm as fighting the outgroup, even if it's a sincere effort.

the same enthusiasm

Half? A quarter? For the sake of ten normal people? How low do we have to go, here?

Hard disagree. Cleaning house with half as much enthusiasm as fighting the outgroup is an eminently reasonable standard for any movement to hold itself to (I'd argue that it's too low by at least 50%, but it's in the right order of magnitude), at least if they want to be considered meaningfully better than the outgroup; it's this very ability to credibly signal that one is cleaning house at least as much as they're cleaning things outside the house that justifies believing that we're better than the outgroup. Otherwise, we're just arguing about how chocolate is just such a better flavor than vanilla.

If treating the nonstop barrage of really overtly violent rhetoric coming from very mainstream public blue tribe platforms like it's actually a problem you're obligated to address in any way is too much to ask, then at least spare me the farce of rolling up in the first place and asking what I expect the left to do.

I very much did not say that addressing the problem "in any way" is "too much to ask". I was replying to your first comment, where you claimed that because the Left isn't reacting as violently as when they're tilting at racist windmills, they may as well not be doing anything at all. My point is that "address the problem as violently as they address supposed racism" (or even half as violently as that!) is a much higher bar than "address the problem in any way at all", and just because they aren't doing the former, doesn't prove they aren't doing the latter.

But also,

then at least spare me the farce of rolling up in the first place and asking what I expect the left to do.

that wasn't actually me. Different users altogether. Check the usernames.

Who the hell cares? They aren't doing shit about the violent rhetoric or trying to calm their base down at all, netstack's comment is fairly ludicrous in that light, and this entire "well ackshually you should expect a level of concern lower than 50 units" is a complete meaningless waste of pixels. Please, don't bother responding, there's nothing else to do here.

Be less antagonistic.

Discover time travel and warn Google and the New York Times not to put nutters in charge of their hire/fire policies? Alternatively, they're welcome to "make bigots afraid again."

Cancel Culture has being going on for over a decade; we know that the Left is perfectly capable and willing of coming down hard on things it actually disapproves of.

This is actually a great point that didn't even occur to me. We've seen what leftists can do to punish people who say things they don't like. I am personally against all cancel culture everywhere for any reason, and I would fight this tooth and nail. But I would admit that a pro-cancel culture leftist who proved that they were willing to direct the cancel culture apparatus towards leftists glorifying anti-rightist violence - or even not maximally disapproving of it - is someone who has proven a commitment to reducing political violence. It'd be a deranged sort of commitment, but a true commitment nonetheless.

What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation? Does it involve public disavowals by the leadership? Cancelling any streamer stupid enough to say something edgy? The DNC taking responsibility for a terrorist act like it’s al-Qaeda? Maybe some time in the stockades, or a few televised executions? What would it take for you to feel like “the left” was making a good-faith effort?

... we kinda have examples, here.

To go to the Charcoal Briquettes Rant, the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing had a wide variety of 'compromises' lean heavily to the progressive, specific legislation to make that form of murder or its advocacy more difficult, and while the execution of the bomber (under Bush!) wasn't televised, it's one of the very few times that the Left and Right agreed on just straight up killing a dude. The aftermath of anti-abortion murderers resulted in near-total ostracization of anyone promoting violence as a means to end or reduce abortion, long serenades from both political and spiritual leaders, the 'compromise' of the FACE Act, and several executions (at least one under a different Bush). Even minimally-violent disruptive protests that are wildly tolerated in other contexts are given a long standoff from mainstream Republicans and antiabortion advocates, today. Only two out of three people in the Flores murderers got a life sentence, but it also lead to widespread delegitimization of even unrelated border groups, in some cases treating them like terrorist organizations.

I'm not going to demand anything that strong, but I made a long list of things that would have surprised me had they happened, and of them, the closest to a 'success' story also has someone saying "But I will not reflect on our shared humanity, nor will I mourn his passing."

Your argument ab adsurduem has been table stakes.

It might work for the ICE attacks, where we have a clear policy, perpetrators in custody, and alignment with other groups. I’ll say that Democrats could and probably should do that. Make it clear that what the President is doing is legal and will be enforced, even if it’s challenged in Congress and court.

Not so much for the assassins. No surviving perpetrators. No conspirators at all. No comparable groups to discredit, no social networks to ban, no pet issues to excise from the party planks. Maybe not even an appetite for restricting the means.

The shortage of obvious targets is what moves it from table stakes to absurdity. You’ve either got to double down on the most similar cases—Luigi?—or widen your criteria. And widening them enough to punish all of antifa, the Democratic Party, or “the left”…that’s going too far. I understand that it feels natural for an average Republican to make that equivalence, but I believe it’s wrong.

antifa

What exactly is the redeeming value in not coming down on antifa like a pile of bricks? Like, fine, "antifa's just an idea" and all that nonsense, but Rose City Antifa, anybody that showed up like a jackbooted thug wearing all black and started violence at any number of locations over the last several years.

They volunteered for violence, they put themselves out there. Why exactly do you need to care more about their wellbeing than they clearly do? Why not give Antifa up as the sacrificial goat they so clearly want to be?

Presumably, it’s the same thing which kept Trump I from sending the FBI after them in 2020, when they were actually doing stuff. While I don’t take Trump as a principled Bill of Rights enthusiast, he doesn’t seem to have thought he could make it stick.

Lone-wolf assassins are a pretty stupid reason to change that legal strategy. Guilt by association requires, you know, association. Our best chance on that front is the July 4 ambush, where at least one of the perpetrators “met someone online” who encouraged them.

If it turns out that Rose City or whoever was funding these psychos, even talking to them—there’s your justification. Throw the book at them. But if not, you’re just making an excuse for something you already wanted to do. That’s unjust.

Why not give Antifa up as the sacrificial goat they so clearly want to be?

...why would any authoritarian political party turn over its brownshirts? Their violence can swing elections, you know.

That said, it's only been 8 months and solid links to Blue's organized militia with the recent spate of Blue political violence are still kind of sparse. Perhaps the current administration doesn't think they have enough to go to RICO, given that the previous administration and a great deal of state and local law enforcement were aiding and abetting them.

It might work for the ICE attacks, where we have a clear policy, perpetrators in custody, and alignment with other groups. I’ll say that Democrats could and probably should do that.

I think Democrats should do that. I don't think they can, and I'm pretty willing to bet that they won't.

Trivially, there's not been an outpouring of support for ICE being attacked by a literal roving mob. Bringing in the national guard to fix the problem resulted in a minor constitutional standoff rather than an embarassed looking-the-other-way. Newsom, widely suspected as the frontrunner for the next Dem presidential primary season, is in the middle of fighting ICE on several fronts, a good number of them ranging from mildly to hilariously unlawful, nearly all of them bad ideas, along with his more general accelerationist behaviors. A judge is on trial for concealing an illegal immigrant, and the state governor opposes it. The new Texas candidate for AG is on news today talking about how ICE invited this attack.

There's been no willingness to budge on sanctuary cities, even in the most egregious cases that everyone with the slightest clue knows is going to blow up in pro-immigration faces. There's no triangulation, no Sister Souljah from a Dem going onto ABC and smacking someone for saying gestapo. On this very forum, we have dishonest partisans who can't go further than promoting the Lankford bill, even this week, without ever confronting the serious flaws in their claims.

Not so much for the assassins. No surviving perpetrators.

Of the 'successful' ones, we have Kirk's killer sitting in a jail today. Utah's asking for the death penalty; tell me if you can find a Dem partisan who wants the murderer to fry and doesn't call the shooter a groyper.

One attempted assassin was on trial literally yesterday, tried (poorly) to kill himself with a pen after being found guilty. Another went trans and has sentencing coming up soon. Supposedly well-respected people aren't sure if the Zizian attacks 'count' as left-wing (later deciding no!). How has the coverage on the left side of that aisle looked, to you?

And, yes, if we include Luigi fandom, he just got murder one dropped down to murder two for his trial, and even if you think that's a necessary conclusion from NY's esoteric statutes, we have wide evidence of what happens in other legal cases where prosecutors or the Democratic party don't agree with a specific statutory interpretation, and this ain't it.

No comparable groups to discredit,

Several anti-immigration and anti-abortion groups were discredited for merely having similar-sounding names.. I don't think that's healthy, but we have Options, here. People in the 80s and 90s who were too happy to bring down the hammer on organizations that merely echoed the language or defended killers or violent protesters on the right, and we now have a surfeit of test cases. We'll see how it looks in a week!

no social networks to ban,

Funny to mention that!. ARFCOM had its registrar boot them based on rhetoric that merely looked like that of violent protesters; YouTube booted gun owners for things that they merely thought might ever look illegal. We'll see how this looks in a week.

no pet issues to excise from the party planks.

I mean, 90s Republicans didn't abandon anti-abortion or anti-immigration or pro-guns positions entirely. They just made massive and often-painful compromises until they could rebuild political capital. Do you think that's going to happen, here?

And widening them enough to punish all of antifa, the Democratic Party, or “the left”…that’s going too far. I understand that it feels natural for an average Republican to make that equivalence, but I believe it’s wrong.

I'd love to agree with you. The trouble is that I can absolutely agree with you, and also have nothing incompatible with :

It seems to me that not only does the left have a very serious violence problem, but that there is no one on the left capable of engaging with that problem in anything approaching a constructive way. Simply put, the American left has invested too much and too broadly into creating this problem to ever seriously attempt to resolve it. There is no way for them to disengage from the one-two punch of "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary"; too much of what they have built over the last decade is predicated on this syllogism for their movement to survive even attempting to walk it back. The vast majority on the left cannot even bring themselves to admit the nature of the problem. But at the same time, at least some of them do seem to recognize that this is getting out of hand in a way that may not be survivable.

A judge is on trial for concealing an illegal immigrant, and the state governor opposes it.

He said that the judge was innocent until found guilty and that he respects law enforcement's efforts to hold criminals accountable. He just also took potshots at Trump over unrelated matters.

The new Texas candidate for AG is on news today talking about how ICE invited this attack.

That's not true - not in that video, at least (I have no idea what else he said that day). Let me quote:

And I wanna emphasise too, that nothing, nothing justifies this homicidal attitude towards ICE; nothing justifies pulling a trigger. But I, I do think that we have a problem when we take our law enforcement, and dehumanise them, and turn them into, um, instruments of fear, because law enforcement must have a positive relationship with the community in order to be effective. And when, when we have ICE being directed to behave as they are, I think we undermine public safety.

He was saying that ICE would be less effective by turning up the fear, because it would make people less likely to inform and co-operate with ICE. Factually accurate? Maybe not. Distasteful to divert onto his talking point at this time? Absolutely. But no, he didn't talk "about how ICE invited this attack".

The new Texas candidate for AG is on news today talking about how ICE invited this attack.

Uh, you know Texas democrats are ridiculous progressive fanatics in a contest to see how expensive losing elections can be, right? Just off priors this guy is too far to the left for his own base and an electoral irrelevancy.

He's already a State Senator, but fair. On the other hand, we also know exactly what sort of demands get thrown out -- and sometimes half-hearted apologies still offered -- when random no-name chucklefucks that are too far to the right for their own base and electorally irrelevant get.

he just got murder one dropped down to murder two for his trial

I suspect this is a result of overcharging, since they tried to charge him with terrorism, while in his case he was aiming at exacting revenge for his beef against health insurance industry, not as a general political statement. So the terrorism part was kinda iffy, and at least from casual reading of the statute, murder two is your regular murder, while murder one is super-super-bad murder where the specific reasons for super-badness are enumerated, so if it doesn't match any of them, it can't me murder one. So it's not necessarily a reflection of any opinion about the case itself.

It seems to me that not only does the left have a very serious violence problem

The Left doesn't have a violence problem. The Right has the problem of the Left being violent, but it's not a problem for the Left - for them, it's a desirable feature. They do not "realize" it because it's not a problem for them, so there's nothing for them to realize. Of course, they would condemn violence from both sides any time it's convenient, but having violent storm troops that would attack their enemies on cue - while being completely free from any legal consequences for it - is not a problem in the least for them. Expecting them to do something about it out of kindness of their hearts and compassion for people who they have been calling Nazis for decades now is plain stupid, and if the Right wants it to stop, it needs to realize the only way to do it is to use all the force they can bring in to handle it. The Left did not hesitate for a second to do it in Covid times, and when suppressing people who investigated 2020 elections, and when stomping Jan 6 protesters into the ground. What would be the Right's answer to much more violent and massive attacks from the Left? So far it's prosecuting immediate perpetrators in a handful of high-profile cases and short raids into the enemy territory. One can't hope to win a campaign this way.

Yes, the problem isn't that the Left is violent, it's that we on the Right aren't.

and if the Right wants it to stop, it needs to realize the only way to do it is to use all the force they can bring in to handle it.

Yes. And by "all the force," I, for one, mean all the force.

It would have been murder one in a lot of states, just not NY which has an unusual definition of murder 1 under which "premeditated intentional killing" is not necessarily murder one.

I imagine different states have different definitions of what kinds of murder they prosecute. The point is nobody is (so far) arguing it's not a murder or shouldn't be prosecuted, the question is just some technical points which aren't hard defined one way or another.

Supposedly well-respected people aren't sure if the Zizian attacks 'count' as left-wing (later deciding no!). How has the coverage on the left side of that aisle looked, to you?

The Zizian attacks are weirder than "left wing" - Ziz did some bad theorizing about decision theory and came to the conclusion that it was always correct to retaliate with maximal intensity against all threats, with a very broad definition of the word "threat", under the worldview that nobody would "threaten" you if you so precommitted. Moderating the general left wing wouldn't have helped with that particular flavor of insanity.

"People who disagree with trans ideology are a dangerous threat to trans people" appears to be a mainstream, possibly a supermajority-support Blue Tribe position. Trans themselves appear to be overwhelmingly Blue Tribe/leftist, like 99%+, and I've seen no indication in Ziz's writings that they were an exception in any way; their moral model seemed to be founded on Blue Tribe Progressive morals, only diverging where it came to how and when to take action, where they were a more extreme variant of Rationalist ideas. Who the Zizians consider to be threatening to them pretty clearly followed a leftist model.

More generally, what makes Dylan Roof or Tarrant or Breivek not "weirder than right wing"? Red Tribe actually went to quite considerable lengths to purge racism and even the resemblance of racism; to the extent that it is more of an issue than it used to be, it's coming from internet culture, which was a Blue Tribe phenomenon, and from aggressive redefinition of racism to cover the purged behavior set.

...It seems to me that the above is a non-trivial problem. I don't have a solution for it, and I don't expect you to have a solution for it, but I'm certainly not going to pretend that there's some system in place to handle this. Roof and Tarrant and Breivek were absolutely treated as Red problems, and still are. This latest shooter used an app Blues wrote explicitly to make finding and tracking federal agents easier, and left a note that "Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror," while the left is still playing "what even is leftism" games. The John Brown Gun Club, a group that I myself have argued in favor of in the past, is posting up flyers explicitly celebrating Kirk's murder on the campus of Georgetown university. Antifa has been beating Reds for showing their faces in public in Blue strongholds for a decade, and the police let them do it, and they are still doing it to this day.

We had a full decade of Blue Tribe crusading against "right wing" radicalization with everything from ceaseless propaganda to explicit government censorship to organized lawless violence. Jordan Peterson was treated as a dangerous radical*. We have examples beyond counting of what it looks like when Blue Tribe takes a problem seriously. They evidently and undeniably do not consider murder committed by their partisans to be a problem worth taking seriously. Maybe you think that's a reasonable response, given the givens. I do not think it is going to work out well for Blue Tribe generally.

Do you have a list of the Zizian murders and the motives?

Killing the landlord: seems to have been a mix of Marxist-adjacent "seize the means of production" and normal criminal "didn't want to pay for things"/"didn't want to be testified against".

Killing the cop: normal criminal "I don't want to go to jail today".

Killing one of the members' parents: is this the one you're accusing of being anti-anti-trans?

There were others, right?

I do not think it is going to work out well for Blue Tribe generally.

Why not? It's not like Red Tribe is going to do much more than whine about it, "vote harder," and hope that somehow, this time Left-captured enforcement agencies will start obeying orders from elected Republicans.

what makes Dylan Roof or Tarrant or Breivek not "weirder than right wing"

They... are? I don't expect general pushback against right wing ideas would have particularly helped in those cases.

"People who disagree with trans ideology are a dangerous threat to trans people" appears to be a mainstream, possibly a supermajority-support Blue Tribe position.

Within the Blue Tribe enclave in which I reside, it doesn't appear that way to me. I'd say that it's a mainstream opinion, but certainly a minority one, and not a big minority. That said, a supermajority would support the statement "People who disagree with trans ideology are being unjust or oppressive towards trans people," certainly publicly and likely privately as well.

Now, I could see a way in which your apparent observation makes sense; a supermajority of Blue Tribers, when surrounded by other Blue Tribers and interrogated in a leading way, would eventually be pressured to appearing as if they genuinely support (which, let's be clear, makes one exactly as responsible for genuinely supporting it as actually genuinely supporting it) "People who disagree with trans ideology are a dangerous threat to trans people," where "dangerous threat" implies literal physical violence. To be completely fair, from the outside, this would appear almost indistinguishable from a supermajority of Blue Tribers supporting the statement.

There are a lot of Blue Tribers who equate "oppression" with "dangerous threat," but because of how loose the definition of "oppression" has become (in 2025, arguably, it means nothing more than "something that is currently being applied to a [person that I like or that is an opponent to someone that I dislike]"), most Blue Tribers tend to grok that it's just not a big deal. The notion that "We're all racists/misogynists/White Supremacists/homophobes - and that's OK" (of course, just because we're all equal doesn't mean some of us aren't more equal than others) has become close to the water that we swim in in the Blue Tribe.

Trans themselves appear to be overwhelmingly Blue Tribe/leftist, like 99%+

I'd suggest this is a selection effect in terms of which trans people are most likely to make lots of noise or be otherwise noticeable. I'd guess a majority is Blue Tribe/leftist, certainly, but 99%? I'd want to see the actual stats and methodology.

Red tribe trans people- especially FtM's- aren't even that uncommon. They're just low status enough that no one cares about them, like literal trailer trash level. Not so for blue transgenders, who seem to come from higher class backgrounds more often and be a bit more likely to be MtF.

It also helped that feds seemingly cut back on killing right wing women and children.

Instead, I want to ask y’all what “the left” should be doing. What constitutes a “serious attempt to resolve” this situation? Does it involve public disavowals by the leadership?

I think it would need public disavowals not only of the use of violence, but all threatening and dehumanizing language towards law enforcement officers. I would like a prominent Democratic leader to say something like, "We do not agree with the enforcement policy being executed by the administration, and are working to change that policy. But ICE agents are normal, decent people, federal employees doing an important and difficult job. You are not required to assist them, but please do not interfere with their duties."

Something like that? https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/1943443522058883549

Yes! I wish he had more influence on his party.

They campaigned on “saving democracy” but can’t bring themselves to defend the democratically enacted laws being enforced by Trump.

Something like “we may not like these laws, we may not like how the administration speaks about them, but that’s why we need to work to elect more Democrats and change the laws. But for now we need to respect the individuals tasked with enforcing these laws.”

That would be legitimizing something Trump does, and that’s not possible to do.

The problem with that is that "ICE agents are doing an important job" is itself a political statement. "ICE should be abolished" is a legitimate political opinion, and it entails that ICE agents are not in fact doing an important job but actively doing harm in the world. Believing this is not incompatible with acknowledging that they are, individually, human beings with rights and dignity, or that a civil society requires letting them act as the law permits them to do; but leftists are understandably wary of endorsing the kind of statement you propose, because it's very easy for them to smuggle in a surrender on the underlying political disagreements that define Left vs Right in the first place.

A closer analogy, perhaps, would be the bitter pill that pro-lifers have to swallow viz. abortion doctors. It should by all rights be incumbent upon Democrats to be as gracious regarding ICE agents as pro-lifers are regarding abortion providers. But notably this still allows pro-lifers to call abortion doctors murderers, and that is as it should be; you really, really shouldn't outlaw calling abortion murder on the grounds that it might incite acts of violence. Yet, increasingly, it seems that the Right wants the Left to do just that for ICE agents, and that's just not going to fly. That's just asking your political opponents to stop disagreeing with you about the actual politics.

Okay, but anything short of saying “federal agents doing their job” is tacitly enabling the narrative they’re Gestapo goose stepping into Home Depot to arrest anyone who looks Mexican. At some point, leadership has to say “I don’t like it, but it’s more important to protect officers doing their job” or they bare some responsibility for acts committed against them.

It is a legitimate political opinion, but I can't help but notice most people with that position are saying that only now despite ICE having done deportations in mass under Obama and Biden. At least in terms of the raw numbers, Trump is not deporting in rates surpassing the previous administrations.

There certainly are differences in how ICE is operating, like how the time frame for expedited removal increased to 2 years from a previous 14 days. The number of border encounters is also down significantly, so the fact that the deportation rates have remained to similar levels does support the notion that ICE is targeting a larger population than they previously had. However, the call for the complete abolition of ICE versus a reversal to the previous status and mode of operation (which had comparatively very little calls to abolish the agency) to me suggests the position is not derived from principled values but rather an anti-trump position.

I recently talked to someone that very much had a "fuck ICE it should be abolished they contribute nothing of value" attitude and when I pressed him on the issues I think his issue was more on Trump's rhetoric and framing rather than what ICE was actually doing. He even acknowledged that he wasn't necessarily against immigration restrictions or post-migration enforcement! But even when I asked about the numbers, his first response was to question if comparing the number of deportations even accomplishes anything. I don't think I changed his mind much, but I think I at least brought down the temperature from his initial anger towards ICE.

I can understand why leftists would make that distinction, but Democrats largely disclaim that kind of far left ideology, so they should be able to say that. I suppose their unwillingness to do so could be taken as implicit support of the leftist interpretation, but it could also be cowardice or just ineptitude.

I think what the left should be doing is taking full-throated ownership of these murders pre-emptively, in a way that shocks the right with how quickly we're jumping to conclusions that we caused this murder, sans evidence of such. This sends a costly signal that we take the potential for violence to be caused by our violent rhetoric seriously, that we consider it more important than our reputation or pride.

And then take steps to implement policies that are supported by the attacked or rejected by the attacker. I've said similarly before; we need to send a signal to the other side that we take political violence as seriously as they do, that we consider it unacceptable to engage in it, irrespective of the political beliefs involved. So the signal must be costly for our political preferences, in favor of liberal democracy. Committing to an incentive gradient that discourages political murder, even if it means some of our political preferences don't get met seems like one of the most obvious costly signals for something like this.

EDIT: It also occurred to me later that a presentation of a certain attitude to actively seek out costly and effective signals I think would also be almost necessary. Most CW arguments involve someone nitpicking some suggested fix, finding problems here and there for why it wouldn't work, and such. And any specific fix can be nitpicked to death by someone who's motivated to appear as if they're goodwilled - this is the grain of truth in the whole "tone policing" complaints that became en vogue in SocJus spaces around 15 years ago. A full rejection of that attitude and embracing the attitude that, "If this particular costly action wouldn't properly send the signals in a way as to accomplish our goals, then we'll spend twice as much, work twice as hard and long to find some other costly action that would signal what we want in such a way as to accomplish our goals." I consider it a sort of "first derivative" commitment. We're not committing to a particular action, we're committing to a particular way of choosing our action, based on a commitment to do what it takes to figure out a way to reduce political violence, in a way that is costly to our political desires.

I think what the left should be doing is taking full-throated ownership of these murders pre-emptively, in a way that shocks the right with how quickly we're jumping to conclusions that we caused this murder, sans evidence of such. This sends a costly signal that we take the potential for violence to be caused by our violent rhetoric seriously, that we consider it more important than our reputation or pride.

This is a hard sell when the right doesn't do this.

"The left" has quite clearly thought of them as The Good People for a long time. Doing things the right doesn't is a big part of that.

I know you can't get everywhere with arguments from hypocrisy and need to stand on your own values. But the level of indignation everywhere in this thread is kind of breathtaking. People are in the same breath declaring that they've been prepared for things to turn to violence and really the whole OP here could have a couple of nouns swapped and read like the leftists calling for oppressed trans women and bipocs to rise to violence that some here seem to fear.

The problem, of course, is that he is fundamentally correct. The Left is not particularly scared at the moment. We have had a long time to acclimate to the idea of fascist violence targeting us, and wile we are very angry about our members of our community being murdered byFascist scum, with their actions cheered on by the Alt right media sphere as a whole, many of us have long accepted the idea that this was going to come down to an actual fight in the end. We do not believe we created this situation; certainly, we did not Create the right wing echo system to normalizing the idea that our political opponents Are pedophiles and satanic cultists sneakily concealing themselves among the general population, whose violent deaths should always be enthusiastically celebrated.

There's a reason the cancel mobs here are going after relatives nobodies and their standard for cancelation is like a school teacher who said Charlie was a bad guy but didn't deserve to die. Kimmel, as unfunny as he was, didn't try to justify kirk's death, only did the same thing that happens on this forum every time there is an act of political violence and try to imply the shooter was on the other side. It's frankly really pathetic. It seems somehow even more hysterical than the awokening.

When talking with a lefty about how they were annoyed that the right fought hard to disown the pelosi hammer guy I pointed out that disowning is a kind of disavowal. It's saying "we don't own this guy, we so don't endorse his actions that we think he couldn't actually be one of us". The fact that "the left" don't want to own the dirtbag that killed Charlie is a pretty normal reaction. They don't think an honest understanding of their beliefs or speech could have led someone to do what he did. You might argue that their fiery rhetoric was indeed too hot and could have led to this but then what leg do the people in this thread have to stand on? You think it's hard to justify rightwing violence from the borderline fed posting going on here?

They don't think an honest understanding of their beliefs or speech could have led someone to do what he did.

Did this person spend 2020 in a coma and blissfully unaware?

On further reflection I think what I have in my craw about this is isn't really the hypocrisy in the demands across the aisle. It's a kind of disgust at the feigned femininity of the whining while also trying to play all big dog masculine revolutionary warrior. If the right was all Mrs. Kirk about forgiving their enemies this whole time and then complained about needing the left to turn down the temperature then fine, that's fair. But then they can't do the whole "I hate my enemies" and "you're going to be sorry because you killed the one of us who was trying to do politics peacefully" bit. Pick a lane, are you the feminine aggrieved martyr, an extremely powerful role especially in our liberal framework, or the brave warrior because you can't be both. It's unseemly. The big bad truth telling warriors parsing the words of a school teacher and arguing over whether what she said was sufficiently deferent to not hurt their fragile little emotions. In a sense a knew many right wingers weren't properly my allies in free speech, that the time might come when I would find myself defending a different class of scoundrels, but I never expected it to be this hysterical this fast.

Well, The Motte has hit a new low with aquota desperately trying to pretend that the violence, hypocrisy and patheticness problems belong to anyone other than himself.

Don't make personal attacks.

ETA: Warning rescinded, I am not sufficiently Kimmel-versed.

To be clear I think this was and took it as a joke about the Kimmel speech.

Oh man, do I have to actually go watch that chucklehead's monologue? I couldn't stand him even before the Kirkening.

Fine, warning rescinded.

aquota

That guy sounds like a jerk, doesn't he know it's O before U except after Q except before TA?

That guy sounds like a jerk

I can't believe that my post was misconstrued to be protrayed as some sort of definitive statement or personal attack. This is so unfair to me, personally, and no one else.

To take this to its logical conclusion I advocate you get a one day ban and then make a highlighted post.

I find that rather perverse. Our commitment to lack of political violence in favor over our own pride or reputation ought not be contingent upon the behavior of people we have determined as being politically inferior to us, because that commitment is a good in itself. Otherwise, that commitment becomes merely a tool to cynically use to help one's tribe win instead of a principle of how no amount of opinions in politics ought to rise to violence.

The left, as far as the democratic establishment goes, has a good record on condemning violence. It just seems totally out of all proportion to be this critical of the exact angle of their kowtowing when most of the people complaining have not minded the log in their own eye. The big figures being critiqued for failing to condemn the violence are like random twitter accounts or streamers while the republican president and undisputed leader of the party goes on about how he hates his opponents and doesn't want the best for them and ratchets things up by claiming every republican is under threat. When the MN democratic state representatives were murdered Trump refused to lower flags to half mast or reach out to governer Walz. The framing is all wrong here.

They have a good record of condemning violence in such a non-descript manner that leaves much ambiguity. Or the final note betrays their real concerns.

"I condemn ALL violence, and especially the Proud Boys and other groups emboldened by Trump's rhetoric" and/or "what is Antifa even?" has never cleared my threshold of acceptability.

That doesn’t speak to your main point of hypocrisy regarding Republicans, which I won't argue against. But this track record you gesture at is superficially thin.

The left, as far as the democratic establishment goes, has a good record on condemning violence.

Less believably than when Republicans condemn racism, and I've never seen the other side offer an ounce of grace on that score. Have any prominent Democrats acknowledged that Robinson looks a lot like a radicalized leftist?

The right has successfully tamed violent fringes on multiple occasions, notably including in the pro-life movement.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks. The people to tame the pro-life bombings weren't the Trump camp and Trump would never in a million years do all the prostration people are calling for in this thread on behalf of a lunatic that did violence against his enemies. Plenty of lefty terror groups that disappeared and went inactive over the years too.

The Right tends to throw off more fringe interest groups for violence. Main catalysts for recent Leftwing stuff seems to be Israel/Palestine, Trans issues and Immigration issues. I don't think there's a ton of room in even the mainstream left to dissent on any of those issues.

This really depends on what you mean by maintream left. I'll remind you the more fringe left was rebuffed by the mainstream left party on their demands for I/P. You're really often comparing what you know to be your fringe with what you think is more mainstream on the other side. Yes, the average dem is to your left on trans stuff and immigration but the violence is coming from people who are often as far or further left of them than they are of you.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks.

This seems like a great opportunity for a mass collaboration.

Ok but from sources I believe the right vs left political violence tally is like 50/50 after you take out the obvious nonsense picks.

Could you post these sources? That is not my assessment, and it seems like the sort of thing we ought to be able to debate.

Plenty of lefty terror groups that disappeared and went inactive over the years too.

Speaking historically, they received financial, legal and moral support from the broader left, and many of them were given comfortable sinecures in high-status institutions. That history does not seem very de-escalatory to me.

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