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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30587 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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Use the following helpful heuristic to determine the partisan leanings of political shooters in the future.

Shooter hits their target, coherent manifesto, unadorned weaponry, captured alive (or surrenders themselves?) Right-winger.

Shooter misses their target, nonsensical manifesto, gun covered in stickers, kills themselves (or is killed by law enforcement)? Left-winger.

Thank you for your attention on this matter.

Or more helpfully- indiscriminate fire at Trump coded target: left winger. Indiscriminate fire at someone the far-right hates: right winger.

This doesn't seem to work on Mangione.

Because he’s the only violent centrist in history. A class of his own.

Insert your own radical centrist joke:

I am centrist when it comes to the topic of abortion. On one hand I am thrilled with the idea of killing unborn babies, but on the other hand I am not willing to let women decide anything.

Parenthood should be treated like the military: an all-volunteer raising force where the living outrank the unborn (and rank has its privileges).

Clearly the shooter is a radical centrist when they're shooting people left and right.

ETA: although given my flair, I should probably explicitly condemn violence.

unadorned weaponry

Wasn't it arguably the very right-wing Christchurch shooter who started the trend of plastering political messages all over your gun?

I admit that the heuristic still needs some work, and am open to critique and modification.

I'll give you the following simplification:

  • Target is right-wing: Shooter is left-wing.
  • Target is left-wing: Shooter is right-wing.

Minority Report:

Target is left-wing: Shooter has a chance of being even more left wing than target.

Unusual, but I can’t see a counter example where right wing target was killed for not being sufficiently right wing, at least not in the last 50 years.

Understanding this asymmetry is key; it explains the power dynamics and is a source of massive projection.

Also random reassignment of people.

If say JK Rowling got attacked by a trans activist tomorrow certain people would try portray her as a fascist when she's annoyingly left on 98% of issues

If? Tomorrow?

But regarding Kirk:

[x] Shooter hits their target
[ ] coherent manifesto
[ ] unadorned weaponry (the ammo counts too?)
[x] captured alive

An even tie implies nonpolitical motivations that are messing up the heuristic.

I think.

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