site banner
PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   29133 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead

Some people have already put the Charlie Kirk assassination into the memory box. For others it still feel terrifyingly relavent. The initial shock at the cheers and jubulant celebration at his gruesome public execution has faded slightly. The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash. And honestly, the compulsive conspiracy theorist on the right hasn't helped maintain moral clarity in the wake of his murder either.

You may remember, I've talked before about the casual genocidal bloodlust the average Northern VA Democrat has based on the time I lived there. And while Democrats, for now, seem to have enough message discipline to not get on CNN and openly say "Yes, Republicans deserve to be murdered", their line is just shy of that incredibly low bar. Enter Jay Jones.

He's been caught essentially laying out the case that Republicans should be shot and killed, and their children murdered in front of them, so that they change their politics. A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.

As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican. His brazen assertion that you should kill even the children too, because "they are breeding little fascist" is probably a huge hit in Northern VA. Finally someone who openly talks and thinks like they do. I've seen those exact words on the NOVA subreddit every day. He's very likely to have top legal authority over me and my children, whom he believes deserve to die.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years. I fully expect my deep red rural county that's been electorally attached through gerrymandering to Fairfax will be aggressively "enriched" as punishment for voting wrong.

He's projected to win by more than 2%. To steelman, that's eight percentage points less than Spanberger, Virginia's early voting started before the scandal dropped, there's some questionably legal electioneering (which would be investigated by the state AG, lol), the federal government shutdown probably juiced his numbers a bit, and this did require the Democratic Party apparachinicks all the way up to Obama supporting him.

To be less naive, all of those things did in fact all happen. An eight percentage point difference means that just over one in seven Democratic voters thought it was unacceptable to call normie political opponents "breeding little fascists" and text a political opponent about how nice the death of children would be, and that's assuming that none of the many other hilariously corrupt issues weren't motivations for any of them instead. Not half bad, I guess. I could repeat this again, but between owing DrManhattan16 a relitigation of the Obama and Biden administrations and absolutely hating every single non-Schism organization I reviewed then, I'm not sure it'd be helpful or just more radicalizing.

Yes. I am in a dark, dark place right now.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years.

Czarist Russia did not have something like the "Big Sort". The US, on the other hand, does.

The problem is that normie progressives are increasingly becoming like moderate Muslims.

Meaning...? They secretly support the violent fringe?

Essentially, yes. There are layers.

The violent fringe of the left has always enjoyed more support. More often than not, the media doesn't so much cover left wing violence as cover for it. Left-wing agitators get a lot more institutional leniency and are often treated with kid gloves. They're good kids, with their heart in the right place, but they're just a little too zealous. Moderate left-wingers have a difficult time opposing the radical fringe intellectually, because they don't really oppose the endgoals. It becomes a debate about strategy and how to achieve those goals, and the radicals can rightly accuse the moderates of hypocrisy.

EDIT: Jordan Peterson oft-repeats his observation that even moderate leftists have a very difficult time articulating what it would look like for the left to go too far, but moderate conservatives have little trouble identifying when the either right or the left goes too far.

The radical left is a snake, and the moderate left is the grass that the snake hides in.

Of course, there are layers. There are radical leftists who actively support and commit violence, then there are others who don't act but support and cover for the violence, and then there are a whole bunch of people who are either ambivalent or intimidated by the radicals. They will mumble disapproval but they rarely make full-throated condemnations nor argue back on points of doctrine, mostly because they would lose. The radicals have been able to increase their influence further by controlling institutions.

Of course all large groups and movements have something like this dynamic going on to some degree, but it's becoming more and more a prominent on the left, and it's similar to the problem with moderate Muslims.

Hey, no time like the present to fix the right’s headstart!

EDIT: Since I figure this’ll probably get caught in the filter like most of my other comments, might as well just leave it there. I stand by what I said, but it’s admittedly glib and not particularly productive, so no point in approving it.

Let me first say what he did was wrong and I support him exiting the race and resigning from any public office he currently holds. I hate politicians like him.

But I don't really care that partisans on the motte are pearl clutching. If Trump said similar things in a leaked private chat, like calling Kamala's kids little communists or whatever, or he'd shoot Hilary twice, you think that would move the needle at all? Nope. We are far beyond that point.

Nah, Trump has his true believers, but he catches shit from the right all the time. If he talked about killing Kamala's husband's kids, there would be a large blowback, and it would be a national media firestorm for a week.

The Michael Scott line he actually probably could get away with, because he would tell it as an actual joke, not the "haha only serious I fucking hatehatehate that fucker" "joke" which is the actual genesis of that line that was old long before Michael Scott said it.

Also, I hate The Office and I'm very glad that it seems to be mostly fading as a cultural touchstone. It was the worst of the NBC big sitcoms by a huge margin.

Also, I hate The Office and I'm very glad that it seems to be mostly fading as a cultural touchstone

Please say more - because I vigorously agree with you.

Jim Halpert is responsible for more actual work place sexual harassment than Don Draper.

Democrats don't want you dead, because the democrats asking for your head don't have any understanding of violence.

I live in the bluest of blue America, and I've heard a few people express glee at the idea of Trump's death. It comes from the oddest of places. The nicest boomer white ladies, the tiniest granola girlies, men so feminine they couldn't hurt a bee. (Literally. I recently happened to be a +1 for a friends event where they tried to resuscitate a bee. Safe to say, I held my tongue the entire afternoon. Wonderful people and not an ounce of violence in their body). Look at Jay Jones, he's the lowest testosterone black man I've seen in my life. What a woman dressed as a man would look like.

My point is, they shout about killing Trump because they are unable to imagine the act of killing, punching or drawing blood. Even when they express this emotion, it's usually with a glint of mischief rather than anger. They're not just angry at him. They are also indulging the kid inside of them that never got to say the word 'fuck'. It's no surprise that many of the left-wing terrorists have grown up in dysfunctional conservative families or are gamers. These communities have a clearer relationship with violence as children, having coopted vanilla progressivism at a later age.

They are angry at Trump. But not in a "bullied kids shoots up a school" way. But in a, "I cry in every therapy session" way.

I like to believe I am well adjusted. But, I had my fair share of fighting violent bullies in school. Once in a while you push someone too hard and they fall on their head or you misplace a punch and you see a man in true pain. In a "my actions could have caused real harm and I'm lucky I missed" sort of way. Life flashes in front of your face. It snaps you out of anger, and leaves you with a pit in your stomach. The slightest glimpse into real violence leaves a lasting negative taste in one's mouth (unless you're a psychopath). That's why well adjusted men don't make violent threats easily. The mental return damage of living with hurting someone is not worth it. It isn't a good feeling.

You need not be worried about the ones making threats. Not this group. Now, if demographics with a relationship with violence start saying the same things.......then, call in the national guard.

They are angry at Trump. But not in a "bullied kids shoots up a school" way. But in a, "I cry in every therapy session" way.

I like this framing. For goofy effect, I'll boost it by linking this nails-on-chalkboard level of unwatchable Satanic Grotto Podcast.

Timestamps at 22:00, a direct quote:

"When you see is walking down the sidewalk, and we're dressed in all black, you know that we fuckin' mean business.

I'm sorry that Chad McBro was mean to you in the 10th grade, but it seems like you've been holding onto this for too long. No one gets intimidated by people wearing all black. In fact, we kind of think it's sexy. But this is deeply layered performative emotionality; the constant refrain of "hail Satan", the goofy pit-of-fire green screen backdrop.

And I do believe that's what Jay Jones is all about as well. He types out those moronic texts as a way to hyper up his inner bullying victim self. He's never been in a real fight, but he can rhetorically decapitate Trump over and over. Do I think Jay Jones would actually take the opportunity to kill my family the way @WhiningCoil does? Not directly, no, but he might do what a lot of cowards in the past have done; use the state to make my family's life meaningfully worse.

And that's where, although I like @DirtyWaterHotDog 's framing, I disagree with the "harmlessness" of these kind of swamp creatures. The ones that really commit to it can really fuck things up. "Oh, come on, what are they really gonna do?" stopped being easy to say when, in 2020, they started to coerce everyone into getting mystery juice injected into our arms.

Democrats don't want you dead, because the democrats asking for your head don't have any understanding of violence.

Most of them may not have a practical knowledge of how the violence is done, but they will wholeheartedly support, enable and defend those 10% who do. And another 10% who want to and will play the meat shield for the previous ones should it prove necessary (like it's happening in Portland right now) and commit as much of haphazard and ineffective violence as they can, fully taking advantage of the fact that nobody would fight them like the real enemy (while they would, as much as they could). And those 20% are enough to deliver a lot of damage, especially given that there's no organized opposition to them so far (every attempt to do what they are doing on the right had been forcefully squashed by the law enforcement, and likely many of those were the fake from the start, clearly created to weed out the active 10% on the right and put them out before they can do anything).

Grunts are cheap though. Cheap and replaceable. If you have tens or hundreds of thousands of people who think murder of political opponents is A-OK, and all their peers think the same, and all their reference circle thinks the same, and literally everybody they know think the same - it won't be hard to find one or two to commit the action when necessary. Gavrilo Princip wasn't some kind of superhuman terminator, he was a poor student. Most assassins are totally unremarkable. The candidate pool of them is inexhaustible once the proper mindset is entrenched.

My point is, they shout about killing Trump because they are unable to imagine the act of killing, punching or drawing blood.

I am not sure how the person with knowledge of the events event for the last year can say something like that. I mean, they literally shot him in the head. And tried to do it again. They very well can imagine it, and that's exactly what they imagine in their wet dreams (when those aren't occupied by trans furry porn, of course). Many of them may not know the technical details of how to effectively do it, but as we are being proven repeatedly, it doesn't take a superhuman, just a random joe with the demonic idea possessing him harder than most of his peers.

The slightest glimpse into real violence leaves a lasting negative taste in one's mouth (unless you're a psychopath).

Their ideological drivers are smart. They know humans don't like violence. That's why the decades-long campaign of dehumanization of the right is (was, has been) necessary. Violence against Nazis is not real violence. That's why this word is being used. It's a marker. Once you are marked a "Nazi", you are excluded from the human empathy mechanism, and the left by now is very well trained to do this. It may have taken a long time, but now it is done. The code is written, uploaded and running. The barrier is down. There's no pit in anyone's stomach about killing the Nazis, only the righteous rage towards the enemies of humanity.

then, call in the national guard.

Haven't you heard yet? National Guard is now owned by a certain Portland judge, and she in the Supreme Commander. Nothing can be called anywhere unless all Antifa-loving judges agree with it. So, you have nobody to call.

The slightest glimpse into real violence leaves a lasting negative taste in one's mouth (unless you're a psychopath). That's why well adjusted men don't make violent threats easily.

I think it is most likely those that have engaged in violence are most likely to make threats and follow through to engage in more violence, I’m basically talking about the low IQ criminal underclass. I don’t think experiencing violence turns them into prudent philosophers on the subject. And of course I’m as effete and faggy as they come, but am horrified by the prospect of political violence in any direction.

Anyone care to explain why he switched bin Laden with Pol Pot of all people in his texts from the original?

I genuinely wonder if that’s more common on modern social media. A lot of the userbase is too young to ascribe special significance to 9/11?

As opposed to ascribing it to Democratic Kampuchea?

Once you free yourself from pernicious America-centrism, Osama just doesn’t rate. These dictators have to compete on fundamentals.

I'd guess he feels Dems are more comfortable supporting Pol Pot rather than Bin Laden. Assuming the 3 bullets are going Hitler/Gilbert/Gilbert at least.

He said two bullets, not three (and said he'd assign them Gilbert/Gilbert).

I'd guess he feels Dems are more comfortable supporting Pol Pot rather than Bin Laden.

...indeed; which is precisely the reason for my question.

There's a saying, more of a cliche, about being the change you want to see. Given that Donald Trump basically is the Republican Party at this point, and has been for some time, I don't see any evidence of anyone desiring any change or even indicating that they want a change, provided it isn't just that the other side has to do the changing. Name one instance where someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation. Name one. I'm not interested in which side has more total incidents or who started it or any of that, because it honestly doesn't matter at this point. We can go all the way back to Trump's entry into politics in 2015 and see nothing but excuses, equivocation, or using tragic events as an opportunity to dunk on his political opponents. Let's take a look at some of the biggies that have transpired in that time:

  • Dylann Roof: Trump wasn't really in a position where he'd be required to say anything at the time of the incident, as it preceded his entry into politics, but he later criticized the media for not blaming Obama for the shooting. The context of that remark was somewhat complicated, but it's nonetheless impossible to believe any context where Obama could have credibly been blamed for the Roof incident.

  • Cesar Sayok: See above. A pro-Trump militant mails pipe bombs to various Democratic leaders. Trump's immediate concern is that the media is unfairly blaming him for inspiring the incident. Whether or not that was fair, there didn't seem to be much concern from Trump or any other Republican that somebody was mailing pipe bombs for political reasons.

  • The Whitmer Kidnapping Plot: Immediately following the arrests, Trump's response was to suggest that she should be in jail anyway due to her COVID policies. In the course of the prosecution it would later come to light that the perpetrators had an entrapment defense that wasn't entirely ridiculous, though it was ultimately unsuccessful, and various people on the right latched on to this to make them look like political prisoners. This ignores the fact that Trump made his comments long before anyone knew all the details.

  • Paul Pelosi Attack: Trump wasn't in office then, but his response was to make jokes about it on the campaign trail. Then a completely baseless theory developed among conservatives who were sure that the guy was a male prostitute in a relationship with Pelosi. Charlie Kirk said that a true patriot needed to come along and bail the guy out. Even the Republicans who offered support to the Pelosis did nothing to attempt to diffuse the rumors.

  • Charlottesville: The most famous of Trump's equivocations, endlessly defended among his supporters. The point wasn't whether he was technically correct when he implied that all sides engage in political violence. It was that unequivocally condemning a white supremacist who committed murder should be the easiest thing a president does. Had he simply disavowed white supremacy and violence that would have been the end of it, but he had to use the tragedy as an opportunity to take a dig at his political opponents.

  • Minnesota Lawmaker Shootings: This is probably the most he ever did in that his office issued a written statement condemning the attacks. But when he actually got in front of a microphone he couldn't resist the opportunity to dunk on Tim Walz.

  • Shapiro Arson: Probably his best response so far, in that he was completely silent about it, except for a private call with Shapiro several days after the incident.

  • January 6: The Biggie. This topic has been litigated to death on here and I'm not about to relitigate it. Hundreds of people break into the Capitol building, threatening the vice president and various other politicians, in order to overturn the results of a presidential election. Even while they're still in the building, Trump can't address the nation without telling them he loves them. Initial Republican condemnation turns to justification and excuse making: Most of them just trespassed, they weren't carrying guns, the Democrats didn't do a good job of stopping the 2020 protests (never mind Trump was president), Clinton pardoned Puerto Rican nationalists 30-years later, the election really was stolen and they were all patriots, etc.

If that's where things ended then I could just lump this in with the above, but it went further. As the years past the plight of the poor insurrectionists became a cause celebre on the right, culminating in the pardons of everyone involve. Doesn't matter if they actually caused property damage. Doesn't matter if they assaulted cops. Doesn't matter if they planned things in advance. It was all a big liberal hoax to take political prisoners. It was at this point that the GOP completely abandoned any pretext of being a law and order party insofar as the law applies equally to everyone. Instead they used the perceived bad behavior of their political opponents as a license to condone violence that supports their own political ends.

All of the above is why I find it hard to take the crocodile tears and phony-baloney moralizing following the Kirk shooting seriously. Even when Fox News tried to give Trump an opportunity to turn down the temperature, he rebuked them, insinuating that the ends justified the means; right-wing extremists were okay because they at least wanted the same things he did, while it's the left that's the real problem. When asked about mending the political divide he said he wasn't interested. He said at Kirk's funeral that he disagreed with Kirk in that he hated his opponents and wanted them destroyed.

So when someone says that Jay Jones's private text messages from three years ago should be politically disqualifying I can agree in an abstract sense that they probably should be. But how many things has Trump said that would have traditionally disqualified a presidential candidate? I'm not even going to list them, because on the one hand it would take forever, but more importantly, I'm sure I'd get a bunch of people arguing how it really isn't that bad. Hell, two thirds of Trump's appeal is that he "tells it like it is" without any regard for political correctness. Let's be honest, if text messages had come out wherein Trump said something similar about a Democratic politician in the weeks preceding the election, approximately five people nationwide would change their votes to Harris on that basis. I don't believe for a second that this is some kind of red line that you simply won't allow any politician to cross.

see nothing but excuses, equivocation, or using tragic events as an opportunity to dunk on his political opponents

This is fairly uncharitable given nearly all of these events Trump does have words of condemnation to say of the violence, so "nothing but" is inaccurate.

Dylann Roof

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/07/02/donald-trump-presidential-candidate-charleston-south-carolina-shooting-obama-don-lemon.cnn

Cesar Sayok

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-hails-quick-arrest-pipe-bomb-suspect-vows-swift-certain-n924871

Trump, speaking at the 2018 Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House, called the sending of the bombs a “despicable” act that has “no place in our country” and vowed that “swift and certain justice” would be delivered.

“We must never allow political violence to take root in America. We cannot let it happen. I am committed to do everything in my power as president to stop it and stop it now,” he said.

According to Wikipedia's summary of the events trump says this first:

My highest duty, as you know, as President, is to keep America safe. That's what we talk about. That's what we do. The federal government is conducting an aggressive investigation and we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice. Hopefully very quickly. Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy, itself. No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, coercion, or control. We all know that. Such conduct must be fiercely opposed and firmly prosecuted. We want all sides to come together in peace and harmony. We can do it. We can do it. We can do it. It will happen.

He starts attacking the media the day after. So I think your summary is uncharitable, unless the Wikipedia summary missed something Trump said before.

The Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence,” Trump said. “Defending ALL Americans, even those who oppose and attack me, is what I will always do as your President!

He does dunk on Whitmer. He also said he condemns violence and that he defends all Americans, even his opponents.

I'm going to stop going down the list here, but I'm sure I could find an example of Trump condemning the attack and disavowing political violence for each one of these. Yes, I realize this doesn't fit your extremely narrow criteria you defined, which I will question below, but it does provide some context for your summary of the events.

Name one instance where someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation. Name one.

Why is this the requirement? The issue a lot of people had with rhetoric from the left is there were a lot of people who wouldn't even condemn the killing of Kirk or of any political violence at all. At least Trump had the sense to condemn the events before he starts dunking on his political opponents. Is there one instance where someone on the left engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and the left or the media offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation? I'd also like to note trump dunking on his political opponents is not an endorsement or excuse for political violence.

I'm not interested in which side has more total incidents or who started it or any of that, because it honestly doesn't matter at this point.

Why does it not matter? None of these events are equivalent to the Kirk assassination. Nor are they equivalent to a literal expression of wanting to murder the other side. Nor are the reactions to these events equivalent. Has Trump been calling for the literal deaths of his opponents, especially by shooting them? It seems unfair to demand the absolute best behavior from Trump while simultaneously waiving off any bad behavior from his opponents by saying you're not interested. Can we at least demand the left match Trump's behavior of condemning political violence before dunking on their political opponents?

turn down the temperature

I'm not sure this type of messaging will resonate with the right at all. One side watched one of their own get murdered in cold blood and in the aftermath watch a pretty significant portion of the left actively cheer for it. Why is it up to the side being attacked to try to "turn down the temperature"? If one side has people calling for the literal death and murder of their opponents and the other side has Trump making jokes about his political opponents, which side has more heat?

There definitely is truth to the notion that many on the right seems not willing to want to reconcile with the left anymore. Most of this rhetoric was in response to the response to the left of Kirk's assassination. I do think long term if no solution is found this will only continue to divide America. That being said, willingness to reconcile has to come from both sides, with both sides being willing to addresses bad actors on their party.

insinuating that the ends justified the means; right-wing extremists were okay because they at least wanted the same things he did

Could I get a source for this? It does seem alarming for Trump to have said Right wing extremists are okay (assuming he's talking about violent actions from the far right are okay).

the Democrats didn't do a good job of stopping the 2020 protests (never mind Trump was president)

So when democrat states and cities were allowed to do what they want, was it a failure on Trump? What are your thoughts on Trump now using federal troops to enforce laws that these places refused to do? Was there anything Trump should've done to minimize the damages caused by the 2020 protests?

Can we at least demand the left match Trump's behavior of condemning political violence before dunking on their political opponents?

I will note for the record that the Democratic Party's best equivalents to Trump did, in fact, match his behaviour in the Charlie Kirk instance.

Top-ranking Democrats also expressed their sadness and comdemnation for political violence.

Before the announcement of Kirk's death, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on X that she was "deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah."

"Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence," Harris posted.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the former House speaker, wrote on X: "The horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote: "Political violence has no place in America. This shooting is horrifying."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., posted on social media: "Political violence is NEVER acceptable."

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted: “The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”

So that's their last presidential candidate, their ranking Congressmen, their probable next presidential candidate, and WP says Biden (their last President) condemned it too though I haven't found the source. Oh, and I remember seeing Bernie Sanders condemn it in the stream that got Destiny demonetised.

There are lots of people on "the left" who did not match this behaviour, of course (including the aforementioned Destiny), but the Democratic top brass did. A cynic would, of course, note that the top brass has a very personal motivation to want less political assassinations (i.e. they are very high on the target list and don't want to be assassinated). But, hey, that argument does apply to Trump as well.

The Whitmer Kidnapping Plot

The one FBI has constructed pretty much out of the whole cloth? There was not ever any danger, and Trump is completely free to condemn any Democrat politician - especially given as they actually tried to put him personally in jail on ridiculous charges, and did the same to many of his followers.

Paul Pelosi Attack

The whole story is beyond ridiculous, the guy is a full blown nutter, but somehow is made to be an ideological crusader for the right.

It was that unequivocally condemning a white supremacist who committed murder should be the easiest thing a president does

And he did it. And the Left still continues to lie for years that he called Nazis "fine people". Still lies about it. Because it doesn't matter what he does, he will always be accused of something, even if it's a complete fabrication.

This is probably the most he ever did in that his office issued a written statement condemning the attacks

And that's still not enough for you, somehow.

But when he actually got in front of a microphone he couldn't resist the opportunity to dunk on Tim Walz.

What, he should have made a solemn vow never to criticize Walz again? Did Walz made the same vow when Trump had been shot? Did any of the Dems do anything like that, or did they keep calling him Hitler and threat for democracy that must be removed by any means necessary?

As the years past the plight of the poor insurrectionists became a cause celebre on the right,

Because the whole "insurrectionist" thing was a total bullshit - unlike, for example, the kind people of Portland and Chicago right now, even the most unhinged of them never strayed beyond what has been seen many, many times in many, many leftist protests. Of course the right pushed back on this bullshit - which did not prevent the FBI from unleashing absolutely horryfiying suppression campaign, where every last grandma who stepped for a minute into the Capitol was prosecuted harsher than if she were a Mexican drug cartel boss. If anything was demonstrated by this very well, it's the fact the FBI actually can squash any group or organization they want like a tiny insect, and the fact that the violent left had been performing their activities largely unhindered, starting with 2017 inauguration riots, through Covid/Floyd violence wave and now to the massive insurrections in major Dem cities - is not happening because they lack the capacity to make it stop.

But how many things has Trump said that would have traditionally disqualified a presidential candidate?

Did he ever told anybody he would like to murder his opponent's kids? No? Well, bye.

It was that unequivocally condemning a white supremacist who committed murder should be the easiest thing a president does.

I mean, I'm not a Charlottesville expert, but isn't this a completely fabricated narrative that the courts made stick to signal that they hate white supremacists? My recollection is that the fatality there was only slightly less justifiable than the incident with Rittenhouse; a bunch of counterprotesters surrounded a white supremacist's car and threatened him to signal the strength of their political convictions, and eventually he panicked, tried to drive away, and struck and killed one of them. This seems less like a case of going out to murder one's political opponents and more like a demonstration of why blocking cars is not a nonviolent form of protest.

I've begun to actively loathe twitter, because so many good source of information are now trapped in twisted, labyrinthian multi-threaded posts that are a bitch and a half to store offline.

Anyways, here's a good thread that breaks down the entire charlottesville debacle. Take away from that what you want, but I personally feel this was yet another case of a political lynching.

Oh, and one of the protesters blatantly admitted to brandishing rifle at the guy earlier.

I started a wiki, Memory Whole (https://memorywhole.tv/), inspired by the idea that a lot of the analysis and events on twitter is useful to know, but too fleeting and drowned in noise.

I currently have signups enabled, but I have to manually add people to the editors group. I'm planning to do a big announcement soon

You can watch the video on Wikipedia for yourself. He was driving into the crowd at speed well before he was surrounded. Also you're, uhh, not allowed to kill people who happen to be part of a crowd because different people who are part of the same crowd surrounded your car. It is in fact extremely key to Rittenhouse's case that the people he shot were people attacking him.

"at speed"

approx. 25mph down a street, he brakes before the crowd, his car is then hit with a bat or pole at :03 and he accelerates into the crowd

this isn't a person who intended to ram a crowd or planned to do it; James Fields is likely guilty of a crime, but what he was actually charged with and convicted of at both the state and federal level is entirely political persecution and his sentence is completely ridiculous

the trial was a clownshow, the judge's decision like disqualifying Field's attorney for a "conflict of interest" was ridiculous, and many of his other decisions throughout the trial were agenda-driven to get the result he wanted from a hanging jury picked for that purpose

He was driving into the crowd at speed well before he was surrounded.

the claim about being surrounded and having a gun pointed at him was that it happened further up the street before the car is first caught on camera in the video you linked by a different group of people

sadly unsurprising this is entirely unmentioned on the wikipedia

It is in fact extremely key to Rittenhouse's case that the people he shot were people attacking him.

the fact the entire ordeal was caught on camera in HD and the charges were even brought let alone taken to trial is a miscarriage of justice and happened because of a political agenda

It was basically a Reginald Denny situation.

It was not. I encourage you to watch the video. At the point Field's car goes down the street passed the camera man he could simply have stopped, put it in reverse, and backed away from the crowd. You can tell this is possible because it's exactly what he does seconds later, after he has driven into the crowd.

He charged toward the crowd at 25 miles per hour.

Name one instance where someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation. Name one.

How much research did you do before you made this comment?

"I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally."

"As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America."

How much research did you do? On Saturday he makes his famous "many sides" comment. On Monday he releases the prepared statement you linked to. On Tuesday he doubles down on what he said Saturday:

What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?

You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists; the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

You also had some very fine people on both sides

Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. This week, it is Robert E. Lee. And I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

As @Rosencrantz2 points out, you can cherry pick a few sentences out of each incident to make it sound like he's offering nothing but condemnation, but I specifically said that he can't help using these events as opportunities to dunk on his opponents. His Tuesday remarks made it sound like the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were a small minority of people who just happened to be at the protest and not the organizing force behind it. He says the left is just as bad, if not worse. And then he goes on to put Confederate generals in the same league as the founding fathers, just so you know whose side he's really on.

It seems that people are interpreting "someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation" to mean "nothing-but-condemnation of the violence", in which case your request was a reasonable one, but it has been answered. But it seems to me that you meant "nothing but condemnation-of-the-violence", in which case your request might not be answered, but it was an unreasonable one.

Recently I brought up Obama as an example of a very high-profile Blue Triber who was neither cheering nor minimizing the murder of Charlie Kirk ... but should I have been criticizing him instead? He was quick to point out that he thought some of Kirk's ideas were wrong, and to bring up left-wing victims too; he definitely failed the "nothing but condemnation-of-the-violence" standard despite passing "nothing-but-condemnation of the violence".

So, which standard are we looking for here? If "The point wasn't whether he was technically correct when he implied that all sides engage in political violence." then we have no choice but to criticize Obama too!

For that matter, could you clarify what standard Trump was failing with his slippery slope argument? The slope was indeed slippery, including with regards to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in particular. The only "league" in those statements is the class of people whose statues were in jeopardy, and it turned out that he was correct that they were all in that same class. I mostly like your reasoning better, personally! The idea that the Founding Fathers should have been in a league of their own beyond anachronistic condemnation was defensible, until we discovered it was wrong. It's only the part where you get upset at him for being right in foresight where you were wrong despite hindsight that you went off the rails.

Some of these may be "stopped clock is correct twice a day" situations for Trump, but then just stick with the incorrect things to criticize instead! The trick to criticizing people for merely being "technically correct" is that you have to remember that our goal is to be morally correct in addition to being technically correct; you can't be morally correct instead. I get that it's infuriating to have to hold yourself to a higher standard than the President of the United States, but in a virtue and deontological sense that's the right thing to do for its own sake; and in a consequentialist sense, the worse the target of your argument is, the more important it is to not just throw mud at the wall to see what sticks.

You know, one can gain a lot of wiggle space by alluding to secret thoughts of Trump and imagining what he really thinks based on tortured interpretations of some words (like, if he thinks destroying a monument to some person might be bad idea, that means he actually embraces the single worst thing they ever thought and those of everyone they ever associated with, because that's totally how people work). But when you go out and say Trump did not condemn white supremacists while he did, I personally heard him do that, and there's a lot of recordings of him doing it - the game is over. There's no longer any pretense that you are interested in finding any kind of truth or revealing anything in the vicinity of it. It's pure partisan manipulation, and can be only seen as such.

And then he goes on to put Confederate generals in the same league as the founding fathers, just so you know whose side he's really on.

That of his supporters?

All these quotes seem unequivocably fair and true to me.

His Tuesday remarks made it sound like the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were a small minority of people who just happened to be at the protest and not the organizing force behind it.

I think probably true, yes. There really aren't enough neo-Nazis to meet popular demand. Nor enough white supremacists unless you use the Left's very expansive definitions.

He says the left is just as bad, if not worse.

I think definitely true. Antifa is both far more organised and unbelievably violent. They are also much more expert in turning powder-keg protests into violent riots.

And then he goes on to put Confederate generals in the same league as the founding fathers, just so you know whose side he's really on.

Almost certainly the side of people worried about the Left's eagerness to knock down statues of everyone who doesn't meet their approval, including those of the Founding Fathers who were slave owners. Certainly Churchill in the UK was not spared.

As far as I'm concerned Trump clearly condemned the actual bad guys and then commented about the broader situation in terms that were far more balanced than the rabid press. He never said that the man who was killed deserved to die, he never said that 'being a neo-Nazi is good, actually'. In contrast, the left never says, 'fine people on both sides', they say, 'okay, some of our people are violent rioters but most of them are peaceful protesters, and by the way anyone who gets in the way is a bigot who deserves what they get'.

If the left could reliably meet Trump's standard I would be much more satisfied.

nothing but

Yes, of course. Condemnation in the "strongest possible terms" is no match for the "nothing but" barrier. I'm finding no evidence, video or otherwise, of Trump performing seppuku either. I stand corrected.

That didn't long to find. Kudos for keeping it to the point.

See my above response.

  • -12

I will be fine with rearresting all of the Jan 6 people once about 100,000 BLM rioters have been arrested, tried, and sat in jail for as long as the median J6 rioter did before being pardoned. Until then every time someone on the left brings it up all I hear is "rules for thee, but not for me."

And I really do mean it, I will be fine with that. I do not support the J6 people and do want them punished, all rioters should be. But while the feds under Biden spend years making sure every one of them was punished other dems have turned an intentional blind eye to their own thugs, a pattern that persists in DAs refusing to charge lefties who punch pro-lifers on camera. I want rioters punished, but I will not accept ONLY right wing protestors being punished. Pardoning them was wrong, accepting second class status is worse.

So I agree, be the change you want to see. You guys put 10,000 heads on spikes is a good first step.

Exactly.

I am not virulently against the norm of shooting people and incarcerations in a situation like the Jan 6 riot. I am against what I perceive to be a massive double standard. For many on the left it’s super clear that Kyle Rittenhouse is a mass murderer, that all these police shootings are racist, and that it’s lives over property. But shooting Ashli Babbitt crawling through a window is a good shoot.

Norms need to be consistent, or they aren’t norms: Ashli Babbitt saw the left violently rioting, looting, committing arson, and occupying government buildings for months without getting shot. If we’re gonna play the game this way, fine, as long as everyone knows the rule: it’s legitimate to shoot you - even if you’re protesting - when you start breaking stuff that’s not yours or try to go places you’re not supposed to go. If you think Kyle Rittenhouse should have been convicted I don't care about your J6 opinion.

Alright, which specific people would you arrest. I'm serious. The crucial mistake of the J6 protestors is that they were all incredibly stupid. The BLM rioters at least had the sense to operate primarily at night, conceal their identities, and choose locations that weren't guaranteed to be under God-level surveillance. Not that it mattered since they took videos of themselves and posted them to social media. The reason there weren't as many arrests during 2020 as you think there should have been is because Priority #1 is ending the riot, not investigating and making arrests for individual crimes. The same priorities prevailed on January 6, with very few people being arrested at the scene and the vast majority being identified and arrested later. Unless the evidence exists that allows you to identify criminals, you can't arrest them. You act as though there are tens of thousands of people out there who the police know committed crimes but who aren't being arrested for political reasons.

I will grant that a lot of people who were arrested for more minor crimes like failure to disperse had the charges dropped without incident. However, you have to consider the context of what was going on in 2020: The courts were operating under severe restrictions due to COVID. The normal criminal dockets were backed up; it wasn't feasible to prosecute hundreds of people on charges that would result in small fines when they were already having trouble moving felonies through. But the people who caused damage and were caught generally were prosecuted.

  • -14

I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it. But Biden had the FBI spend a shit ton of man hours combing through every source possible for every minor rioter who could be charged with anything at all.

I would prefer we use at least a minor portion of that effort arresting arsonists and burying them under the jail. As it stands, the effect is "rioters who are pro-dem causes get to have authorities look the other way, right wingers get the Eye of Sauron for 4 years straight", with the added bonus of lefties bringing J6 up every time they want to say their enemies are worse than them, and the dem friendly media reported on every single arrest and trial for a J6er, keeping it in the mind of the public.

Again, I don't care about the J6ers, they are morons let them hang. But selective punishment on this scale, and where what I think is the far worse crime gets the pass while the lesser gets the book thrown at them, is worse. If you guys wanted me to care about J6 so much you had a whole summer to exact some kind of punishment on rioters, you didn't, and now here we are.

I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it.

But is it? The idea that the 2020 riot crimes were under-prosecuted is an article of faith on the right, but I haven't seen any real evidence that this is the case. The Major Cities Chiefs Association compiled a comprehensive report about the law enforcement response to civil unrest in 68 major cities between May 25 and July 31, 2020. During that time period, they recorded 2,385 looting incidents, 624 arsons, 97 burned police cars, and 2,037 police officers injured. They also recorded 2,735 felony arrests. The report isn't detailed enough to break down the number of individual felonies reported, but the 5,143 incidents named above is as good a guide as any (it goes without saying that looting incidents could have had more than one perpetrator, but this is balanced by the fact that the same people may have been involved in multiple incidents, and that some of the police injuries weren't due to assault by protestors). With that caveat, we get a rough estimate of a 53% clearance rate for riot-related felonies.

To put that in the proper context, nationwide in 2019 arson had a clearance rate of 23.9%, and burglary had a clearance rate of 14.1%. Even if my estimate is inflated, and I admit that it probably is, it's still a long ways away from suggesting that these crimes were significantly under-investigated; if that were the case, I would expect the totals to be substantially lower than the averages. Again, I admit that this data isn't ideal but... do you have any other data? With how much this has been repeated I'd expect something, at some point, coming out to back this up, but there's nothing. No studies, no disgruntled chiefs of police saying they were hamstrung by liberal prosecutors, no pardons from governors, nothing. On the other hand, it doesn't take long to find contemporaneous quotes from mayors affirming the right to peaceful protest while reminding people that lawbreakers will be prosecuted, or imposing curfews that they didn't have to impose, or bulletins from local police asking for the public's help in identifying rioters.

The source of this myth seems to come from media reports showing that 90% of the protestors were arrested had the charges dismissed. But this is accepted as a blanket fact without any context: These dismissals weren't for felonies or serious misdemeanors, but for summary offenses like disorderly conduct, loitering, and failure to disperse. The arrests themselves weren't made in response to any investigation, but as crowd-control techniques for when they felt things were getting a bit too rowdy. But crimes have elements that prosecutors must meet, and when police aren't making arrests with an eye towards prosecution, their cases aren't prosecutable. If you haven't personally witnessed a protest like this, the process generally goes as follows: The police declare a gathering illegal. A dispersal order is given. Whoever doesn't disperse is arrested by officers on the scene and loaded into paddy wagons. The officers who made the arrest stay behind, and the arrestees are booked by yet another officer. They're charged and released.

If you want to actually prosecute a case like this, you run into problems at the preliminary hearing. There's no police report. You can't produce the arresting officer as a witness; hell, you probably can't even identify the arresting officer for a given defendant. People arrested in different locations might be comingled at the precinct, so you can't even say where the guy was arrested. And even if by some grace of God you do have this, while the case gets easier, it doesn't get easier by much. First you have to establish that the protest was illegal, which may be the case if a road is being blocked, but is a tough row to hoe if it was a permitted protest that the police got uneasy about and hadn't yet seen any violence. Then you have to prove that a dispersal order was given in a manner such that the individual defendant would have heard it, which is tougher than it seems in a loud area with people moving around. But the real problem comes when you have to show that the defendant was given a reasonable opportunity to leave. The typical tactic used to facilitate mass arrests was to form police cordons around the perimeter to prevent the crowd from fanning out, then closing in to make arrests. A lawful protestor is thus presented with the dilemma of being told to disperse by police while simultaneously being prevented from leaving the area. And that's if you're lucky enough to have a real crime to charge. Most of these arrests were for charges like disorderly conduct and loitering whose elements are vague and are dependent on detailed police testimony showing that the defendant actually met some reasonable definition of disorderly and wasn't just arrested because the cop didn't like him.

But it rarely ever gets that far, because the cases have almost zero evidence, the prosecutors know this, and they dismiss the cases before they ever get in front of a judge. The one exception was Detroit, where the mayor, a former prosecutor, decided to charge all of the minor offenses that amounted to being in the wrong place. The poor assistant sent to present the cases to the judge had to suffer the humiliation of having dozens of them dismissed immediately after he admitted that he couldn't produce any evidence whatsoever. The DA's office dropped the remaining cases shortly thereafter.

Compare that to the Capitol riot, where everyone who merely entered that building and wasn't on a short list of people was guilty of unauthorized entry of a government facility, a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail. There were thousands of hours of video posted to the internet within the next few days, enough in total that investigators could more or less track everyone's entire route through the building. People were bragging about their crimes on social media, posting selfies of themselves inside. And there was no shortage of people calling in to provide identification of people they recognized. Prosecutors had more evidence than they could dream of, and there was broad bipartisan consensus that the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Remember, this investigation started immediately after the incident, while Trump was still president, and it wasn't until months later until Republicans gradually came to the conclusion that it wasn't a big deal. Trump had weeks to issue pardons to anyone involved but he didn't. Was Biden supposed to call of his dogs in the middle of the investigation because Republicans suddenly decided it was better politics to let the people off?

One final thing—when people try to compare cases and show that person x got so much time for a felony while person y got so much time for "just entering a building" with the implication that the two sentences are disproportionate, they often don't take an important factor into account: Plea bargains. The people in the Capitol riot who merely entered and did nothing but walk around generally were able to enter pleas that avoided jail, and the ones facing felony obstruction charges got away with minimal jail time. But the Capitol riot had a disproportionate number of defendants who refused to take plea deals when the evidence against them was overwhelming, and went on to put forth horrible defenses that did nothing but piss off the judge. The argument can be made that this is unfair, and there shouldn't be a penalty for making the state prove their case. I can agree to a certain extent, but this misframes what is going on. They aren't getting penalized for going to trial, they're getting a light sentence for not going to trial. The alternative is that no one would be offered a reduced sentence.

Furthermore, the law grants a degree of lenience to people who appear to be remorseful for their crimes and take responsibility for their actions. Is this something we want to encourage or discourage? Should a first-time offender who admits he made a mistake, apologizes to the victim, and appears to have a genuine desire for self-improvement get a similar sentence to a defendant who continues to insist he did nothing wrong even after the jury says otherwise? These are things we can disagree about, or discuss, but wherever you land, that's the system that we have now. It doesn't matter whether you're in a Democratic area or a Republican area, people who take deals and show remorse will get lighter sentences than those who don't.

What irritates me the most about these arguments regarding January 6 is that they're almost without exception put forth by the kind of people who don't think that the criminal justice system is harsh enough. They talk about how police are hamstrung by liberal city governments, about how liberal prosecutors aren't aggressive enough, about how bleeding heart prison reformers don't understand that jail isn't supposed to be fun. But the minute they're on the receiving end of the system as it normally operates, injustice is everywhere. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is suddenly concerned about prison conditions. The minutia of overcharging becomes an issue. They seem to forget that in these liberal cities police make arrests every day and courts hand down sentences every day and that prosecutors don't just let minorities off the hook because they feel sorry for black people. One would have thought that when their own side fucked up it would have maybe given them some perspective. But no, they make excuses for why they shouldn't be punished before going back to whinging about how the cops aren't harsh enough.

This is an excellent explanation for how the law works and why prosecuting attendees of one event was much easier than charging those at others. But it's also exactly why this controversy keeps finding new legs. Most people don't see 'Rioters wore masks, operated under the cover of darkness, and overwhelmed the ability of local police to gather evidence about who committed what crimes' as a reason they should get off. Guys who think the BLM riots were under-prosecuted don't usually have a specific theory of current law under which they should have been punished. They just think that if masked people burn down a local auto-zone, someone needs to be punished, and every failure to do so undermines the legitimacy of the legal system. You cannot legally reason someone out of a morally reasoned position.

Thank you. I read the same thing, and it read like a long litany of reasons why death row inmates get decades of appeal. Sure, there might be reasons for that, but that doesn't matter to me. I want people like Decarlos Brown tried and hanged in an afternoon, not deferred for months before even standing trial. I want people like Anthony Boyd dead and gone, not lingering for decades of appeals. Every roadblock and hurdle is the way is suspect, and I want them gone.

And I want the people who rioted and burned and looted to be jailed, and I'm not particularly interested in excuses about why that doesn't happen. Every explanation is an admission of an ineffective and unreliable justice system that does not deserve my trust or support, especially when protestors staying inside the velvet ropes of the capital get charged with crimes and then get piled on for having the nerve to reject a plea deal.

I really do appreciate your willingness to get into the weeds regarding the basic articles of faith that make up the basis of the average American Conservative™’s bespoke reality.

Cynically, I think it’s a lost cause, but the effort is admirable.

Alright, which specific people would you arrest.

All the rioters. The FBI was able to find every last person who walked around Capitol on Jan 6 - using the phone data, bank records, informants, whatever it takes. They spared absolutely no expense or effort. I want the same for leftist riots. I want all of them, but at least ONE of them. For literally NONE of them I have seen this level of zeal to get to the people who did it. The people who get prosecuted are some that were as stupid as set the actual police car on fire and be identified while doing it. If they did something lesser, or weren't identified immediately, nothing happened. I want the law enforcement to do their fricking jobs. That include finding the specific people. It's not my job, it's theirs. And these people aren't exactly hard to find, I think. They are probably trying to burn down the ICE building right this night.

You act as though there are tens of thousands of people out there who the police know committed crimes but who aren't being arrested for political reasons.

Yes. There are tens of thousands of people out there who we all know committed crimes - we have seen these crimes committed, sometimes in live stream by their own comrades - and they are not being arrested. Moreover, they are being supported, protected, financed and encouraged. By all their party from the Presidential candidate down. I want it to stop. This is not what happens in a healthy society. Some criminals may get away, sure. But having widespread violence for 10 years now and substantially nobody being prosecuted for them is s symptom demonstrating that the whole system is deeply sick. If I see the level of zeal, effort and results that we have seen on Jan 6 protestors deployed against the violent left, then I will believe it is starting to be fixed. And yes, I am acting as if I want this fixed. Because I do.

The crucial mistake of the J6 protestors is that they were all incredibly stupid. The BLM rioters at least had the sense to operate primarily at night, conceal their identities, and choose locations that weren't guaranteed to be under God-level surveillance.

Organized, premeditated crime that takes active countermeasures against police actions is worse than unplanned or spontaneous crime, and yet I've seen it trotted out again and again as a defense of leftwing riots. It's not like you can cancel out a murder by also obstructing police, tampering with the crime scene, and conspiring to hide the shooters. That's just three extra crimes.

Do you know what functional states do when faced with (effective, organized) criminal opposition? They take it down. If regular policework isn't enough, then start creating specialized departments for it. Maybe it shouldn't be called the "Organized Crime" department since that name's already taken, but where are the police organizations dedicated to deliberate, organized criminal leftwing riots?

You act as though there are tens of thousands of people out there who the police know committed crimes but who aren't being arrested for political reasons.

Absolutely there are

I will grant that a lot of people who were arrested for more minor crimes like failure to disperse had the charges dropped without incident.

re-arrest every single one of them on new charges and throw the book at them. Get a warrant and crawl through every device and account they they have, and search all their belongings for any antifa-related items.

J6ers got felonies simply for walking through an open door.

But the people who caused damage and were caught generally were prosecuted.

Who?

Margaret Aislinn Channon, a 26-year-old Tacoma resident was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2022. She was charged with five counts of arson after setting five Seattle police cars on fire during a protest on May 30, 2020. Upon her sentencing, then U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said that the right to protest and call out injustice is one of the dearest and most important rights we enjoy in the United States: "But Ms. Channon’s conduct was itself an attack on democracy. She used the cover of lawful protests to carry out dangerous and destructive acts, risking the safety of everyone around her and undermining the important messages voiced by others.”

Devinare Antwan Parker, 31, was sentenced to two years in prison in June 2023 for bringing a homemade firearm to a protest in Seattle on May 31, 2020. The charge was “unlawful possession of a destructive device.” Parker threatened to kill police at the time, and was arrested after he threw a can of beer at a police officer's face.

Isaiah Thomas Willoughby was arrested for attempting to set fire to a wall of the East Precinct in June 2020. Willoughby reportedly piled up debris next to the police station, soaked it in gasoline, and set it on fire. People nearby put it out. Willoughby was sentenced to two years in prison.

The last defendant facing federal charges for crimes committed during the racial justice protests of 2020 in Seattle was sentenced on Wednesday to just over three years in prison. Justin Moore, 35 of Renton, previously pleaded guilty to possessing destructive devices. On Sept. 7, 2020, Moore brought 12 Molotov cocktails made from beer bottles and gasoline to the Seattle Police Officers Guild headquarters during a protest. Surveillance video shows a hooded and masked Moore lugging the explosives outside the headquarters, which was the target of numerous attacks during the 2020 protests.

Jacob Greenburg, 19, the stepson of former Kirkland State Rep. Laura Ruderman, was sentenced to five years in prison, in line with what prosecutors recommended. Greenburg was charged with first-degree assault, first-degree attempted arson and first-degree reckless burning.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced Samuel Elliott Frey, 20, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., to more than two years in federal prison for setting fire to a health food store during the riots that followed the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting a fire inside Target headquarters during a riot in August 2020, U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger announced Wednesday. Leroy Lemonte Perry Williams, 37, was convicted on one count of arson for the incident in October last year.

Just this month, a man was sentenced to four years behind bars and ordered to pay what his attorney said is likely to exceed $1.5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to inciting a riot last spring in Champaign, Illinois. Shamar Betts, who was 19 at the time, posted a flyer on Facebook on May 31, 2020, that said “RIOT @ MarketPlace Mall” at 3 p.m. and instructed people to bring “friends & family, posters, bricks, bookbags etc.” He participated in the looting, went live on Facebook during the riot and bragged about starting it, authorities said. More than 70 stores were looted, and the riot caused $1.8 million in damage, prosecutors said.

Victor Devon Edwards, 32, was given his sentence of over eight years in prison followed by two years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz, after Edwards was convicted by a jury in August on one count each of rioting and arson.

I can keep going if you really want me to—there were over 100 felony convictions in Minneapolis alone—but I think you get the point. Hell, Los Angeles had a special task force set up to identify people who committed crimes in the riots.

J6ers got felonies simply for walking through an open door.

You make it sound like this is some unusual gross injustice. But if you look at the Pennsylvania laws for Criminal Trespass:

(a) Buildings and occupied structures.--

(1) A person commits an offense if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he:

(i) enters, gains entry by subterfuge or surreptitiously remains in any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof; or

(ii) breaks into any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof.

(2) An offense under paragraph (1)(i) is a felony of the third degree, and an offense under paragraph (1)(ii) is a felony of the second degree.

Of course, DC is not Pennsylvania, and their comparable statute is only a misdemeanor, but that's what the people who merely entered were charged with. The ones who were charged with felony Obstructing counts had some kind of aggravating circumstances going against them, like remaining in the building after specifically being told to leave or engaging in behavior that delayed the police attempts to get everyone out. And even then, I don't see how it's relevant to the point that it justifies pardons, since those convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court. And I still don't see how that justifies pardoning people who committed more serious crimes. If this is really just a tit for tat response to partisan pressures, then Trump should also pardon those I listed above who were convicted of Federal crimes, no?

re-arrest every single one of them on new charges and throw the book at them. Get a warrant and crawl through every device and account they they have, and search all their belongings for any antifa-related items.

And charge them with what, exactly? Having antifa-related items? In the case of Jan 6, entering an open door in that case was clearly a crime, and the people charged clearly committed it. The perpetrators were arrested on the basis of actual evidence, and the investigators were willing to present that evidence in court They had them dead to rights, and the smart ones took pleas. A lot of them were incredibly stupid, though, making inane arguments that they seriously thought the building was open to the public, or sovereign citizen bullshit. The George Floyd protestors who were arrested and charged with misdemeanor or summary disorderly conduct, failure to disperse, loitering, or similar offenses were arrested in public areas where it isn't illegal to be. Prosecutors would have to show, for instance, that the assembly was illegal (which requires them to prove a risk of unlawful conduct), that a dispersal order was issued, that the person charged would have heard the dispersal order, and that the person was given a reasonable opportunity to leave.

The problem with the 2020 arrests was that most of them weren't made in strict accordance with the law, but were mass arrests used as a crowd control tactic. If you've never been involved in a protest and seen this before, and officer or officers will make the arrests and load everyone into a paddy wagon, staying behind to continue to work crowd control. Once everyone arrives at the station they are all charged with some low-level misdemeanor and released after a few hours. Police generally didn't prosecute these cases because they weren't prosecutable. The once exception was Detroit, whose mayor, Mike Duggan, was a former prosecutor dedicated to making an example (though it should be noted that the rioting in Detroit was limited to a couple broken windows on police cruisers and some objects being thrown). I pity the poor ADA who had to tell the judge that he couldn't produce bodycam footage, or a police report, or even the name of the arresting officer. He had to endure this humiliation dozens of times in a row and watch the cases get dismissed for lack of evidence until the DA got the point and dismissed the remaining cases.

You make it sound like this is some unusual gross injustice. But if you look at the Pennsylvania laws for Criminal Trespass:

For which walking through an open door does not qualify.

Margaret Aislinn Channon, a 26-year-old Tacoma resident was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2022. She was charged with five counts of arson after setting five Seattle police cars on fire during a protest on May 30, 2020.

5 counts of arson and got a lighter sentence than people who just walked through a door.

The charge was “unlawful possession of a destructive device.”

This is an ATF/NFA charge, not related to rioting.

I don't know what gives you the idea that an open door would not qualify. The statute makes no mention of doors, and only requires that you know that you're not supposed to be in there. If I walk down the street and see a house with an open door and I just walk in I'd be guilty of criminal trespass. If I opened a closed door a breaking would have occurred and the offense would be upgraded. The statute is specifically written to cover cases involving open doors.

Alright, which specific people would you arrest.

J6 investigation was the largest investigation in DOJ history, I expect quite a bit from the warranted 10x larger investigation into BLM riots.

They were hunting down and putting J6 people in jail YEARS later.

Meanwhile seems to have been no particular effort at all to hunt down BLM rioters except for some of the worst in a few states.

Absolutely crazy gap in effort.

I don't think the imbalance for leftists in the justice system should be all the surprising. It's been decades of leftist having literal terrorists with tenure. Marxist and Communists with tenure outnumber Nazis and Fascists by about... what? 100x? 1,000x? 100,000x? All while calling the most milk toast Republicans like Romney fascists.

It's not surprising, it's appalling. The asymmetry is worth pointing out for that reason. And if it causes people to lose trust in the system? Tough shit, become trustworthy if you want to be trusted.

Name one instance where someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation. Name one.

Looking forward to this, great post.

  • -13

They will hate you because you tell them the truth. Is this and the recent Kirk reactions an escalation by the Democrats in that it goes further than anything I can name from Republicans? Yes. But that’s how these endless tit-for-tat escalations work. Each new unprecedented devilry becomes justifications for a new hitherto unprecedented norm violation by the other side, and back and forth.

These new escalations are in fact escalations, and should be recognized and denounced as such, but we shouldn’t use them to excuse further norm violations by our side and we should acknowledge our side’s role in the escalation chain

Democrats don't want you dead. Their faction with bad case of the TDS probably do though. But in the most un-charitable reading - I don't think that they are more than 20% of their electorate - ultra progressives are 7-8 percent of dems (and TDS cases increase the more you get there), so even if we double them we get to 16 percent. But probably the real percentage is even below 2.

Sure, most "normie" democrats don't directly want you dead. They don't really think about it that way. But somehow they always vote for people who want you dead and say so on national television. And they wouldn't be caught dead voting for anyone who doesn't want you dead.

It’s the same as the problem with Jihadists. Sure only 10% want to kill people, but it’s not like the other 90% are willing to do anything about it. The TDS faction is certainly bad, but im not seeing anything that suggests that the rest of the liberals are opposed to political violence in anything other than the fig-leaf sense. They just don’t want the blame, they don’t want to be tarnished by association with those TDS factions. But they also can’t muster the energy to stop it, or even to say this is wrong, full stop..

Oh, so it's only 2-16% of half the country? So, like, 6-52 million people? Yeah that's no biggie.

Of course it's not all about the numbers. It's also about seeing people you personally know posting that they would want you dead if they knew how you voted. I don't think people in blue bubbles realize that there is no coming back from this.

The 'breeding little fascists' comment is what takes it from merely heated political rhetoric to over the line. Children should be insulated from politics, ideally. Unless you want partisanship to creep down to the elementary schools and kindergardens and have people bully each other over how their parents voted. There is no defense for that comment and he should resign.

In practice, that kind of partisanship results in ultra-pillarized societies like eg Lebanon. Red children would go to red elementary schools and blue children to blue ones. This is basically a law of nature about ultra-pillarized societies and not something subject to negotiation based on the structure of that society's schooling.

I think that what Mr. Jones said was disgusting and should torpedo his chances of election. You’re still overreacting.

No, Democrats Don’t Really Want You Dead.

A Democrat joked expressed support for someone shooting one of his coworkers. He did not say he’d do it. He did not speak for his colleagues. He did not mention you and yours. He has not stood by his statements, or otherwise indicated that he actually wants anyone dead.

Now, you can assume the worst for some of those things. But for all of them? People say stupid shit all the time. What makes you say that this time is the one where he really means it?

I think that what Mr. Jones said was disgusting and should torpedo his chances of election. You’re still overreacting.

And yet when I say something perfectly innocuous and reasonable like “blow it out your ass Janny Hotpockets, you DO IT FOR FREE”, suddenly that’s a three day ban. Not this time though, I’m sure you’ll extend me the same charity you extend to Mr. Jones.

Weird flex, but okay.

A Democrat joked

Respectfully, I think you might be extending so much charity here that it's obscuring the rest of the story.

Allegedly (per the national review), the legislator was so off-put by the texts that she called Jones for clarification. Once on a voice call, Jones doubled down, with a source reporting that Jones "wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views", prompting Coyner to hang up the phone in disgust.

If that's a joke, then I respect the man for his dedication to the bit.

I wasn’t trying to say his initial texts were acceptable. More that they didn’t reflect a specific belief. Like how “I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire” doesn’t actually mean “I wish you’d burn to death.”

His remarks on the call are much closer to the latter, and I’ll edit my comment accordingly.

Him saying he really fucking means it. https://postimg.cc/nXMNVw2N

Edit: reading further down I see the dance, so in case someone pretends they think by that I mean when he says the office joke, I mean when he says

Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy

And

I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascists? Yes

Thank you. Is there something missing though? I really wish we could see the overlap between those separate screenshots.

I stand by my position. None of these things constitute

essentially laying out the case that Republicans should be shot and killed, and their children murdered in front of them, so that they change their politics.

Maybe that was said in the undocumented phone call?

  • -10

Are you really splitting hairs on "he only said that he hoped her children would die so she would change her mind on policy, that's different from saying that her children should be murdered"?

No, I was saying that wasn’t contained in any of the screenshots, which made me wonder if I was missing something.

It seems pretty clear that he said something like that in the phone call.

  • -10

This is a verbatim quote from one of the screenshots:

“You were talking about hopping jennifer Gilbert’s children would die”

JAY JONES: “Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy”

The meaning could not be more clear. This is all from one screenshot, so these messages were not presented out of order, unless you think the screenshot was fabricated.

As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican.

WP:

The comments were made public by National Review in October 2025 during Jones' campaign for Attorney General, and received bipartisan condemnation, including by fellow Democratic nominees Abigail Spanberger and Ghazala Hashmi.

In particular, Spanberger said:

I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. While Hashmi said: Jay must take accountability for the pain that his words have caused. We must demand better of our leaders and of each other.

Someone should probably double check my math, but it seems to me that these are two democrats who seem to have diplomatically suggested that he drops out of the race.

While I agree that his messages are beyond the pale, this also seems like a fuck-up on so many different levels.

Someone who has such ideation should not be elected to any office, but AG seems like a particularly bad fit.

Someone who thinks it is wise to text their Republican colleague these ideations should not have any job where any amount of personal judgement is required. Even a fucking unsolicited dick pick would have been less of a lapse.

Someone who knows that these messages exist and still decides to run for office has proven beyond any doubt that he cares nothing for his party.

the casual genocidal bloodlust the average Northern VA Democrat has

In your link, you mostly talk about people wanting to kill Trump, with the exception of "his supporters really don't deserve any sympathy either" and "rant about how great it is that the unvaxed are all going to die".

This is not genocidal by any definition, because Trump is not an ethnicity. Saying that your outgroup does not deserve sympathy is unfortunately normal (MAGA is very much without sympathy wrt illegal immigrants, for example). Celebrating the anticipated death of the unvaccinated seems in poor taste, but is also very different from calls for murdering them.

I will not pretend that I do not think that our world would be better if Trump had died of natural causes halfway through his first term. I also think that getting murdered would be a much greater contribution to his movement than anything he could possibly do with his remaining lifespan, and also do not think that Trump is succeeding in dismantling the constitutional order (which would justify killing him), so I am very much opposed to killing him or his henchmen.

While the lefty celebrations or Kirk's death were disgusting, I think most of the initial reactions were deluded about the political motive. Basically, the left heard "oh, he was shot by a gun nut raised in a Mormon family".

I think that if Greta Thunberg was fatally stabbed by a MS-13 illegal immigrant for whose prison release she had campaigned, parts of right-wing twitter would probably celebrate. "Seems like the woke college student problem is starting to solve itself", "FAFO" or something. If it then later emerges that it was not outgroup-on-outgroup violence, but that the culprit was acting on behalf of the ingroup, this would be at least awkward.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work.

Frankly, it is not. The example from Russia you cite is different because these were random Jews who were killed for being Jewish.

Even if that fuckwit Jones had personally killed that speaker and his kids, that would be political violence, which is a different beast.

From Rome to Weimar, we had a lot of societies where internal political violence was a thing, often employed by different actors. It is bad (also because it makes totalitarianism look like a good option), but it is different from genocide.

I think it’s over-charitable at this point to take “he must take full responsibility” statements as proof of contrition. If you really think this is far beyond the pale, then why beat around the bush with non-statements? “Take responsibility” can mean almost anything. It can mean issuing tge standard non-apology statements often used in politics “if my statements were misunderstood to be meant to cause pain, im sorry,” to stronger apologies to dropping out of the race.

And now that we’re officially getting to the “shooting and terrorism” stage, it’s absolutely not good enough anymore to not say it plainly: calls for and celebration of political violence have no place in the public sphere. If you are doing that, you should resign from public office or be fired from any public media positions you hold. If a political organization cannot forthrightly say: anyone on our side engaging in, promoting, or celebrating violent extremism must apologize and leave. This includes using the accusation of authoritarian regime against the other party. Zero tolerance. That’s what getting serious about political violence and advocacy thereof looks like: no excuses, no weasel worded statements, just actual action.

I think that if Greta Thunberg was fatally stabbed by a MS-13 illegal immigrant for whose prison release she had campaigned, parts of right-wing twitter would probably celebrate.

Unless you are equivocating over "parts of" meaning "a couple of people with no political influence and who are not representative", this amounts to making up something that the right would do and criticizing them for it, in comparison to something that a Democratic politician actually did.

I was making an analogy to the online left celebrating Kirk's murder (which was not committed by someone I would call a Democratic politician), not Jones statements about shooting some speaker.

That Brooklyn lefty campaigner guy who was killed on CCTV with his girlfriend nearby, conservatives were very much "welp, hoisted by his own..." as in this is the result of his own views on crime. A smug schadenfreude was palpable, but I didn't see overt celebration myself.

Yeah vibe was far more around the tragic irony of it than 'thank god the oppressor is dead'

As of now, no Democrat has pulled their endorsement of him, I saw one single local Democrat say he would stop campaigning with him, several groups have actively reaffirmed his endorsement still saying he's somehow better than your generic Republican.

WP:

The comments were made public by National Review in October 2025 during Jones' campaign for Attorney General, and received bipartisan condemnation, including by fellow Democratic nominees Abigail Spanberger and Ghazala Hashmi.

In particular, Spanberger said:

I made clear to Jay that he must fully take responsibility for his words. While Hashmi said: Jay must take accountability for the pain that his words have caused. We must demand better of our leaders and of each other.

There is a slight of hand here I want to address. I said no Democrat (minus one) has pulled their endorsement. This remains true, even with Democrats saying he really shouldn't have said those things. Despite the condemnation of his words, they still endorse the person for the position he's running for.

Is it lost on everybody that he was basically quoting the office? As in: the most normie of normie network tv shows from the early 2000s?

The quote “if I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Toby, and I only had two bullets, I would shoot Toby twice.”

These were private text messages. He was trying to be funny. I don’t think this is in any way an indication of some secret desire to kill anybody, the jokes just weren’t landing.

I really hate this trend of taking conversations from one context, putting them into another context, and pretending that the person meant something they didn’t.

It was the same two weeks ago with libs hyperventilating over Trump saying “I hate my enemies”, just clearly him trying to be funny, and not the major escalation people seemed to want it to be.

Just absolutely stupid rage searching. This is nothing. There are plenty of examples of libs engaging in legitimately dangerous speech, like publicly calling Trump and his supporters “fascists” and “Nazis”, for instance. This was a guy having a private conversation that should have stayed private.

Also: it shouldn’t be lost on the people here that none of us are posting with our full names. The point of a place like this is to be able to pick up an idea and argue it even if you don’t agree with it. If somebody doxxed everybody here, and implied this was their true beliefs that they keep hidden, would they be right? (I don’t think so). The same is true of a private text message chain.

  • -12

Once again, I guess I have to post plaintext of what he said to verify that you are comprehending what everyone is trying to convey. I have no idea if you're just not reading carefully and reacting to a headline, or if you're saying that what he actually said was just a The Office joke. It's really weird to me that more than one person here honestly came away thinking it was just a The Office joke?

I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascists? Yes

In response to "You were talking about hopping that jennifer Gilbert's children would die":

Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy

If those guys die before me

I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves

Send them out awash in something

And yes, then The Office joke, which has a bit of a different context if you've just established you actually want to do it.

Three people, two bullets

Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot

Gilbert gets two bullets to the head

Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time

The more important point to me is the privacy part. How many of us would really come out unscathed if all our private convos were unearthed? (In general too many people want to chalk up to extra horrible malice what is better explained by the new information environment.)

I mean, sure, but also, how retarded were we when it happened?

This was a conversation he had when he was already a sitting state representative, with another sitting state representative for the opposite political party.

There are private conversations... and then there are conversations that are conceivably FOIA'able, and this, if not the latter, is really fucking close to it. To say nothing of it just being fucking stupid. In a world where "private conversation" summons up the image of signal chats being leaked, or pre-political career SMS messages or group chats, this is about as far away from that as possible, while still, maybe, and only maybe, being covered by the umbrella of "private conversation".

It's really weird to me that more than one person here honestly came away thinking it was just a The Office joke?

Now that I'm seeing more news networks pick up this story, if they aren't going full "Republicans pounce after Jay Jones 'alleged' comments", they are leading with the joke, omitting everything else, and then including his apology. I imagine people who still trust the media are reading their trusted sources that lie by omission, charge into this thread thinking they are informed, skim my top post, and then blast out the ignorant rebuttal they've been primed to make.

I can't believe the news networks could stoop so low, seriously. They are playing an extremely dangerous game here, and for what?

I want to see the full thing. Every site I could find was interleaving the two screenshots with partial quotes and “according to a source…” nonsense.

I don’t think this is the right order.

If it had JUST been the office joke I would be 95% of the way there with you (not 100 though, because jokes like that are often the outer tendrils of real belief), but the full context of saying his opponent should be shot, their kids should be shot in front of them, and then doubling down on that when called out means that no, this is not OK. Focusing on the office joke is obfuscation.

Norm Macdonald Voice Note to self: When I write my manifesto, open with a joke.

As I said, these are not folks I want to share a country with.

I want the temperature lowered and I want there to be pretty swift consequences for those engaging in and fomenting political violence.

I do not think that is possible, I do not think that is going to happen, while Trump is in office.

Nor do I think it would happen if literally any Republican is President and the GOP grasps Congress.

Because the source of the problem appears to entirely be due to the behavioral tendencies of lefties when they're out of power.

And I've observed 'normal' people gin up justifications for enacting violence on random bystanders for, e.g. Wearing a MAGA hat, saying the N word (esp. within earshot of a black person), or expressing an anti-abortion position. (The righty version of this tends to be ginning up justifications for why someone's behavior warranted police brutality or being victimized by a criminal. "Your policies created this" is a common theme there).

We have some amount of evidence that Democrats in power at least tacitly approve of randos taking potshots at their political opponents. And a little evidence that they desire it.

And this isn't really limited to the States as far as I can tell.

I'm barely old enough to remember when Margaret Thatcher died and her opponents made Ding Dong the Witch is Dead a top-playing song on the radio in the U.K.

Regardless of how distasteful it was, I can commend at least waiting for someone's natural death of old age to celebrate it.

All the reliable-seeming sources I look at has it clear that political violence aimed at advancing one's agenda is more accepted the more left/liberal the respondent, generally. Variations by age and sex, but a clear contrast remains.

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll

https://research.skeptic.com/support-for-political-violence-agreement-by-political-orientation/

https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1449mho/oc_american_adults_attitudes_towards_political/

This one was revealing, support for political violence is higher among the most educated class. Which we know skews liberal, but these are also the people who are probably least able to carry out such violence. Maybe its merely an artifact. https://research.skeptic.com/support-for-political-violence-agreement-by-educational-attainment/

Note: I think this actually makes the lefties fairly consistent. If you actually maintain the belief that your ideological opponents are authoritarian genocidal maniacs who will create the Fourth Reich the very instant they acquire full power, then yes, you kinda have to approve of any and all methods of stopping them.

And while I do not accuse ALL liberals of wanting me dead, by a long shot, the evidence is also showing that they're far too milquetoast in restraining the ones who do, so they're not very useful allies for the decreasing the temperature. It reads like they are getting bullied by their own extremists and are folding due to Taleb's Dictatorship of the small Minority. To the extent liberals are ambivalent towards political violence by their side, they will continue to permit it.

I really do want those who are actively ginning up violence and the relatively small category of crazies who are most likely to act out violently to be removed from the country. Ideally, voluntarily. I don't want them dead, although I approve of acting in self-defense against those who attempt to kill others. And the fact that BOTH those variables seem to correlate with Democrat voters is very much coincidence to my desire here. I live mostly around righties, and if I thought they were likely to support outbursts of the old ultraviolence, I wouldn't live around them and would want them removed too.

Caveat that I'm pretty sure the strongest mediator on support for violence is whether your 'side' has political power. It is also hard to find as much good data prior to 2020, and I'm also guessing that most of this is downstream of the deepening overall political divide, so its not that this can't be repaired... its just been more tolerated recently.

I don't like that I'm basically holding my breath as I wait for the next incident of targeted political assassination to occur, and hoping that its not a bomb this time. I might be overreacting in general, but I feel pretty detached as I remain confident I am not a target of any kind.

Maybe its merely an artifact. https://research.skeptic.com/support-for-political-violence-agreement-by-educational-attainment/

It is not an artifact. This is the class that is least likely to have been engaged in violence at all during their lifetime. So they have the most romantic and hollywoodic view of it.

That and they're in the most radical bubble with the most sophisticated justifications for doing violence.

(The righty version of this tends to be ginning up justifications for why someone's behavior warranted police brutality or being victimized by a criminal. "Your policies created this" is a common theme there).

Like "well, the right supports violence when they say Biden should be put on trial", the difference is that these are not types of violence that the audience is being encouraged to do. The audience is not made up of criminals, and most are not police either. Nobody's going to go assassinate someone after hearing that someone's policies created criminals.

Agreeing in general.

I just note that these are both sort of outlets for "enjoying" pain inflicted on the outgroup that allow them to conclude the recipient 'deserved' it.

I generally don't think any bystander deserves to be victimized by criminals or that suspects deserve to be excessively brutalized by cops. There is a more straightforward relationship between light-on-crime policies and victimization by criminals, and resisting arrest and being beaten by cops, of course.

For bonus points, Jones specifically demanded that a police officer be booted after donating to Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund. To be fair, this dropped on a Friday, and perhaps the other VA Democratic party is just working up to slapping him down. To be less charitable, the Dem governor candidate's released a statement demanding 'responsibility' rather than 'resignation' or, to drop the alliteration, leaving the race, and some local Dems and orgs are just more full-throated in support; it doesn't take a Cassandra to know where this is going.

Both Jones and Spanberger has more than a fair share of past scandals (Jones also dealt with a ludicrous speeding ticket by getting 500 hours of community service... which he served with his own PAC), they 'only' had a significant but not insurmountable lead in the last polls (for whatever giant grain of salt you want to take those with), and their opponents are pretty boring milquetoast conservatives. It's possible they'll have put forward their best efforts toward losing, and will somehow manage it for Jones.

But I'm not optimistic, and perhaps more damning, very few people on the Dem side of the branch is treating this like even a purely-political five-alarm fire. Just like Omhar avoiding censure where Gosar ate one, we have past examples of how politicians react to truly disqualifying acts by one of their compatriots being dropped too late in the race to replace them. This ain't it, bub.

One could argue attorneys general don't 'really' matter. But we have examples of elected Democratic officials dropping charges in cases with literal video evidence; there are recent situations where Virginia specifically needed and didn't have a chief law enforcement officer willing to cauterize out endemic tolerance of serious crimes.

But, yeah, the pattern's continuing, falcon gyre yada yada. It's not just The Algorithm when it shows up in random who's who of this very community and gets directly sent from one politician to another, it's not nutpicking when it walks up to you at work, it's not just some rando on the internet when it's a big part of the communities you wanted to spend your time in or the big names in industries you wanted to get involved with.

Jones also dealt with a ludicrous speeding ticket

A reckless driving charge, specifically. 116mph isn't the level at which you get a fine; it's jail time.

I will register for the record, as a principled libertarian, that I am not sure whether his driving was, in actual fact, "reckless". It is possible to drive safely at that speed, if you are in an appropriate car, are driving in appropriate conditions, and are an appropriately-skilled driver highly familiar with your car.

Of course, I don't have enough information to judge if this guy was the right person with the right equipment under the right conditions, and if he wasn't then that's indeed pretty reckless.

He was cited for driving at that speed on Interstate 64 in New Kent County. From my travels there, I don't think that anyone could safely drive that stretch of road at that speed, regardless of their skill level. There are a lot of questionable sightlines.

Normally, recklessness involves danger to other people, not just to oneself. Quote from a court opinion that I posted recently:

Recklessness is distinguishable from negligence on the basis that recklessness requires conscious action or inaction which creates a substantial risk of harm to others, whereas negligence suggest unconscious inadvertence.

If nobody else was on the road at that time (on an Interstate highway, unlikely but not impossible), driving at extremely high speeds would be negligent but not reckless (under normal laws, not under this particular unusual law).

How does that work in situations where you believe the road would be empty, but a broken down car is right around the corner? Is there a test of reasonableness there, or is it a situation where the default assumption for a driver is that a broken down car is around every blind turn?

I can't find Virginia's definitions, but here are Pennsylvania's.

A person acts recklessly with respect to a material element of an offense when he consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that, considering the nature and intent of the actor's conduct and the circumstances known to him, its disregard involves a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.

A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the actor's failure to perceive it, considering the nature and intent of his conduct and the circumstances known to him, involves a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the actor's situation.

This Pennsylvania case seems highly relevant to the situation under discussion.

  • A motorist is driving at 55 mi/h on a road whose posted speed limit is 35 mi/h. At a sharp curve, he loses control and hits an oncoming car. He is convicted of reckless driving.
  • The appeals panel reverses.

    There is no evidence Appellant had any difficulties negotiating the road or came close to colliding with other vehicles prior to encountering the curve that caused him to lose control here. As such, and given that Appellant's speed was not so excessive as to itself create a high risk of accident, which could be imputed to Appellant by default, the evidence of conscious disregard, a key component of the willful and wanton [i. e., reckless] standard, is lacking.

    • Even when there are other cars on the road, driving at high speed can be merely negligent rather than reckless.

It's an Interstate highway. There aren't "blind corners" of the type you might find on a surface street. There are a few places Interstates do violate Interstate standards (e.g. I-70 and I-76 in Pennsylvania), but I-64 through New Kent County appears to be quite straight if a bit hilly.

Those hills catch you by surprise. I definitely went into a barely-controlled skid to avoid smacking into a small herd of deer cresting one of those hills once.

I'll agree with that in theory. In practice, note that "in appropriate conditions" requires "when the highway designers kept sight lines clear enough for that speed, including to any intersections or on ramps where someone might be trying to enter the highway after checking for traffic expected to be near the speed limit". Since highway designers never actually design for 115mph on purpose, you're pretty much stuck with places where it happened by accident, where the land was so flat and empty that you can't not see the road ahead of you for miles. I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.

My friends mostly enjoyed those stretches, I mean. One of them totaled his first car when a deer ran out into the road in front of him. In my experience most people who love driving that fast give other cars roughly the same consideration that he gave that deer, an implicit unexamined assumption that the highway ahead will be either clear or occupied by drivers doing the speed limit, that nobody will suddenly appear in front of them at surprisingly low or no speed. That assumption is usually correct, but it only has to be incorrect once.

I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.

Yeah, I guess this is where me being Australian starts to show up as relevant to my intuitions about this, because once you get a couple of hundred kilometres inland in eastern Australia (haven't been to the west) the highways start to look like "straight road for 50 kilometres, dead-flat wheat field for 100m on either side, no trees, mostly no large animals".

116mph is fast, but there's nothing magical about three digits in MPH. One of my cars had that as about its top speed and while driving that fast was LOUD, it doesn't cause you to lose control or anything. It's just that Virginia makes anything over 85 mph statutory reckless driving.

I added the caveats because, well, you can't do this safely in urban streets, or on a winding cliffside road in heavy fog. It also helps to know how your car actually handles at those speeds; stopping distance for 180 km/h is just a wee bit longer than for 110 km/h, and AIUI you also can't turn as rapidly without skidding. And I mean, I think some cars still exist that generate positive lift?

I hesitate to post this because I do think that those comments are the kind of background, "I hate the outgroup" signaling that you can find everywhere every day among every group. This man isn't going to commit violence against anyone. Give him a gun, a bag of candy, and unfettered access to those kids and the worst you'll get are some tummy aches.

Are the background vibes concerning? Is it perhaps bad to forget the humanity of your political opponents and openly hope for their death? Sure, yeah, but that's been the reality of our political vibes off and on since 1776.

But that's only one shoe, now the other. I live in a deep blue state, deep enough that some variation on "Trump is bad / kill the fascists" has become an almost ritualized part of conversation. Yesterday, I suddenly discovered myself in the middle of a tiff with my mid 30s lady friend. The cause? Your normal his and hers problems: she wants to start stockpiling bombs to use against the fascist menace, I do not.

Now, I don't think she would really be in the vanguard of revolutionary resistance or otherwise commit illegal violence. She is also only a single point of data, floating freely on the breeze of the zeitgeist. But our discussion has obviously been on my mind and gelled with the comments from Jones even though his were from 2022.

Committing violence, harming people - actually doing these kinds of things are, or seem to me, to still be outside the Overton Window. When done they are done by crazies. Verbally supporting violence or hurting people in the abstract are very much inside the Overton Window. Very normal, average people will talk like they're members of the Jacobin Club. It's just a status game. There's a schlubby, 60 year old white guy I know whose face will light up when he can turn even the most unrelated topic to Trump's latest outrage because people like bashing Trump and there's very little otherwise he says or does that people like. It's that simple.

And, to be fair, I can recall similar-ish death wishes and curses upon their heads from my right wing family members.

Anyway, the last day has increased my belief that we'll see an increase in 70s style petty political violence fueled by combining low status, violent men who have not much to lose and a lot of getting laid to gain with ideologically mindkilled women. But that's as far as it'll go.

First of all, why aren't you at your post?

Second, you're getting reasonable responses to what I'd consider an overgenerous appraisal of Jones, but let me back up a bit and ask about your lady friend who wants to stockpile bombs. What the fuck? Obviously you may have been using hyperbole or making a joke ot whatever, but if you're serious, what gives here? She knows something about bombs, does she?

  1. Because the trio of a criminal, violent illegal alien, and teenaged religious extremist murdered me and used me as a skinsuit.

  2. Yeah, this was the real shocker. No jokes, no exaggeration, this is where the rhetoric has led. As best as I can tell, this is the very edge of the verbal Overton window in deep blue spaces. I have zero concern that she has actually begun to do so, could or would in the near future, and I'd definitely be aware before things got to that point. This is the very front line in the shit testing AOR.

It's possible I've been unclear in some post but that doesn't mean I condone these statements or the general atmosphere of acceptability of wishing for harm, I'm merely a traveler reporting my experiences. Data mines are different from other types of mines because you have to fill them up first, all I've got are a couple pebbles.

The male perpetrators of "petty" political violence during the '70s were anything but "low status, violent men who have not much to lose".

I hesitate to post this because I do think that those comments are the kind of background, "I hate the outgroup" signaling that you can find everywhere every day among every group. This man isn't going to commit violence against anyone. Give him a gun, a bag of candy, and unfettered access to those kids and the worst you'll get are some tummy aches.

Except that such rhetoric is being normalized and people are beginning to act on it. You are even reacting as if “I want to kill him, his wife and his kids” as just normal. I contend that it isn’t normal for people to be constantly saying they want people to die, and making it normal enough to show up in casual conversation is honestly scary. I say this as a fairly centrist democrat— the rhetoric of killing opponents has absolutely no place in a civil and civilized society, and unless it ratchets back, the cold civil war will eventually go hot.

This man isn't going to commit violence against anyone. Give him a gun, a bag of candy, and unfettered access to those kids and the worst you'll get are some tummy aches.

I will push back on this and suggest that if you give him a gun, access to a high-value political opponent, and approximately zero chance of being caught and punished for it, he is somewhat likely to pull the trigger.

That's closer to how I measure the virtue of a person. What they will do when given an opportunity to inflict harm under the belief they will not suffer consequences themselves. That is, how strong are your personal principles, and can you hold yourself accountable for following them.

I think we end up arguing over how much the person has the personal capacity to inflict violence vs. whether they find violence actually reprehensible. The former is a bit of a misdirect from the latter. That is, just because someone lacks the fortitude to pull the trigger themselves doesn't mean they don't want to see that trigger pulled.

Now the scenario I proposed up there is far from realistic, and will not come to pass, so I accept all the various objections and caveats to my argument. My position is best articulated as "in my experience only people who have a stated commitment to avoiding violence are serious about not wanting it. In contrast, people who can excuse violent acts easily are usually just in want of an opportunity commit it themselves."

So I don't think this guys 'private' texts reflect well on him at all.

Oh, no objection that it reflects poorly on him and I'm very against this kind of violent rhetoric generally. We agree completely that low-level background support of violence is a bad thing and should be actively discouraged, regardless of the side.

I will push back on this and suggest that if you give him a gun, access to a high-value political opponent, and approximately zero chance of being caught and punished for it, he is somewhat likely to pull the trigger.

I think you're well aware of this but just to state it for the record: impossible for any of us to know the heart of another. But I will gently rotate out of your pushback and note that you had to change the scenario significantly to even get to "somewhat likely" to pull the trigger. Assassinating a high-value political opponent is nowhere near the same thing as shooting a child.

I'm comfortable saying that if someone IS comfortable shooting a child, I would rather they be launched into a volcano by trebuchet than continue co-existing with them. Much less they have political power over me.

Sure I can think of justifications for possibly shooting a kid, but a person who does should be pretty repentant and broken up about it, probably to the point of having PTSD. Incidentally the apparent callous disregard for children as casualties is why I'm not really rooting for a "side" in the Israel Palestine conflict.

So I do NOT want to accuse this guy of being okay with kids getting shot, lest I also have to suggest he get launched into a volcano.

But the casual ability to joke about a specific person's children that way is definitely irksome. Its fair to demand much, much better of public servants.

I don't think it's a good idea to chuck people into volcanoes because they didn't have PTSD when you thought it appropriate.

Certainly, a serial killer who targets children, he gets loaded into the trebuchet. But there are multiple ways to the same outcome of "not an unjustified killer of children", and "can do correct ethical reasoning when it matters" works as well as "has an innate aversion".

(I get nervous about this kind of thinking, because I've seen people call for me to get loaded into the metaphorical trebuchet over certain psychological blocks I don't have.)

I don't think it's a good idea to chuck people into volcanoes because they didn't have PTSD when you thought it appropriate.

Not quite what I mean.

More that if someone doesn't have the requisite cognitive wiring to consider children a particularly 'special' class in terms of moral weight (that is, they are genuinely 'innocent' and have a heightened need for protection) it ups the odds, in my eyes, that they have other sociopathic traits that make them an overall undesirable neighbor, whatever their other values. Wouldn't want them around my kids, for sure.

What other types of vulnerable individuals would they feel comfortable exploiting? What moral code, if any, DO they follow, if 'killing kids' is easily permissible?

But as we've established, one can't really know another's heart or their true feelings so I accept that we have to make do with the circumstances we're given.

To make my position 100% clear, I do have a very particularized wariness of abortion doctors and the docs who push gender transition surgeries and puberty blockers on kids.

More that if someone doesn't have the requisite cognitive wiring to consider children a particularly 'special' class in terms of moral weight (that is, they are genuinely 'innocent' and have a heightened need for protection) it ups the odds, in my eyes, that they have other sociopathic traits that make them an overall undesirable neighbor, whatever their other values. Wouldn't want them around my kids, for sure.

Okay, I'll elaborate.

Like 10 years ago, I was living rurally, and as sometimes happens rurally, a wild mouse snuck into the house and started eating our food (in particular, my Weet-Bix). My aunt put out poison for it, as she'd done many times before. However, I didn't much relish the idea of having to find the corpse by the horrible stench of putrefying mouse. So, when I spotted it one night, I got a pair of tongs, grabbed it (I think it was slowing down from the poison), crushed it to death, and then chucked it in our wood heater to be incinerated. Perfectly logical and justifiable action.

But lots of the urban West has grown up... shall we say, sheltered. They're not up to the job of killing an animal in that kind of personal fashion, even when there's good reason to do it. I grew up sheltered too, but for whatever reason that psychological block didn't take root. Probably something to do with me being high-functioning autistic and/or borderline.

So the instant half the Blue Tribe hears this story, of course, they start doing the Body Snatchers scream. I don't think like them, so I'm not one of them, so I'm dangerous, so I'm to be destroyed or at least contained. Xenophobia. It doesn't matter that there's nothing ethically wrong with what I did (unless you're Ziz, I suppose); the thought process wasn't the same, so the hardware's not the same, so I'm pattern-matched to a serial killer.

I really, really don't want to legitimise the Body Snatchers scream. I know my face looks exceptionally tasty, so I'm not going to vote for the Leopards Eating Faces Party.

(Admittedly, I'm willing to make the "no, being sapient doesn't mean having anything remotely like human morality" argument with regard to AI. Combination of being essential to understanding the danger and the bright line of "not human".)

I think a lot of people fail that standard, even if they have a “stated commitment.” Talk is cheap.

Yes, but at least you can be held to account for failing your commitments.

If you never commit at all, then best we can do is punish what we view as misbehavior and hope it changes your behavior.

Justice lets us align virtue with self-interest. That’s good because the latter is much easier to measure. I think most positions of trust work this way, and I find it unfair to apply a different standard just to this one.

I say this despite thinking the guy should lose his election. He should lose because his competition is more agreeable, less impulsive, less hateful. But not because he failed a hypothetical test.

and approximately zero chance of being caught and punished for it

Well I mean, given that he's running for AG, he gets to decide by a large degree who gets caught and faces punishment for what. And we've seen AG's use a lot of "discretion" in this regard. And so the question is, after statements like these, is there even a fig leaf of equal protection under the law?

Oh yeah.

Lets leave aside how he's in a central 'position of trust' for the State.

I feel vaguely hypocritical on this point because I generally support the idea of using political power to make your ideological opponents uncomfortable enough to leave (I mean implement policies they don't like and would want to get away from, rather than policies specifically targeting them for their political associations) but having your state's executive branch have an unstated policy of leniency on violence against political opponents is a genuinely terrifying thought to me. Doubly so if your state's self defense laws are weak. Virginia is Stand Your Ground, at least.

Thankfully one that IS pretty handily solved by moving away and/or organizing a campaign to oust the problem candidates. But it does harken back to my Skin in the Game rant. If you want to support the idea of political violence against opponents, in the abstract, I would prefer if you, personally, or people you care a lot about, are at risk of getting targeted by it. Instead, what always happens is the political class circles the wagons and ups their levels of security and leaves everyone else to fend for themselves.

Would it be wrong to suggest that a Gentlemanly duel between the parties in question here might be a way to resolve the grievances?

Would it be wrong to suggest that a Gentlemanly duel between the parties in question here might be a way to resolve the grievances?

Who would challenge whom to a duel and why?

Mr. Todd Gilbert is the subject of the "Two in the Head" comment, isn't he?

Maybe he challenges Mr. Jones to pistols at dawn. Two bullets each. Or Mr. Jones can drop out.

No I don't think our elected officials have the fortitude for this these days. But its more to the point there should be actual consequences on the line for making such comments.

I'm old fashioned in many ways, but this reasoning seems so weird to me.

A: Threatens to kill B and his family.

B: Right. Tomorrow, at dawn, I'm going to give you the opportunity to kill me.

Very manly, yes, but not very helpful unless you're sure A is an abject coward. Hire somebody who knows how to use a telescopic sight or put a horse's head in his bed or something.

Very manly, yes, but not very helpful unless you're sure A is an abject coward.

I am DEAD CERTAIN that A is a coward in this case.

If they don't want to kill or die over words then they can simply recant. Most people do not want to kill or die over words.

Of course, we can make the duel less than lethal if needed.

More comments

Corvos is in the right here. We’ve managed to re-derive the desirability of one legitimate bearer of force in society at a time in just a couple posts - excellent work speedrunning the rise of civilization team.

Circle of equals! All the legislators form a circle, and the two have to fight it out bare handed until one submits.

More comments

If there is one thing I fault Trump for most, more than any specific governing actions, it is erosion of norms. I'm not trying to excuse this latest development of mainstream Democrats on Reddit openly proclaiming their support for murder, but in my estimation this is just the latest in a long series of escalations and norms being discarded.

I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but I think Trump's general style in 2016 was a big part of this, penis size jokes in the primary, comments about imprisoning Hillary, insulting nicknames for his opponents, a general crassness and lack of concern over scandals. I think the Democrats have been a long time learning the lessons from 2016 Trump, that any norm can be discarded if you have popular support to do so. Accusations of sexism are not actually magic spells and can simply be laughed off if enough of the populace is willing to laugh along with you. Trump's quote about shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue seems more and more prescient daily.

Of course you can trace back the norm violations further than Trump, I'm not trying to say he started this, but I believe any fair assessment would regard Trump as a massive demonstration of the powerlessness of norms in the face of voters that no longer care about them. And to be fair, we still haven't really seen a Democrat Trump, meaning a President-level Democrat that absolutely revels in upsetting the other side and breaking norms left and right. It troubles me to think what that would look like, maybe Ilhan Omar if she were the President.

the powerlessness of norms in the face of voters that no longer care about them.

Who is supposed to care about them, if not voters? Why should voters care about norms held by, non-voters? Some subset of extra-special-super-equal voters? Who exactly gets to set norms, then?

we still haven't really seen a Democrat Trump, meaning a President-level Democrat that absolutely revels in upsetting the other side and breaking norms left and right.

A Democrat Trump would have to run roughshod through his own party, goring their oxen, while overwhelming any party resistance.

People still don't recognize the #1 attribute of Trump, and it isn't norms or vulgarity. Trump was the man who had the guts to break with the bipartisan consensus on trade and immigration. That's what Trump is, that's why he won, that's why he's hated, and that's his eigenvalue. That's why you get Bernie-bros voting for Trump. That's why the private sector unions are republican now.

Immigration. Trade. That's Trump. Not norms, not vulgarity, not shooting someone on 5th avenue or grabbing anyone by the pussy. It's trade and immigration.

A Democrat Trump would have to run roughshod through his own party, goring their oxen, while overwhelming any party resistance.

Yeah, that sure does look like the likely outcome of a Democrat Trump equivalent. I expect a nominally Democrat Trump would be at least as bad for the country as the nominally Republican one we have now, I'd guess even worse.

It was mostly immigration; at least in his first campaign "Build The Wall" took priority and "Drain The Swamp" was behind that and "unfair trade deals" were mentioned but definitely a bronze medal campaign issue at best. As late as this spring there was still a vocal contingent of the right wing arguing that his tariffs were really just for negotiating leverage so that we could end up with free trade unencumbered by other countries' restrictions.

But that's just an aside. More critically, and I hate to say this: I think the norm-breaking and the vulgarity were an inseparable part of the immigration issue for Trump. The Republican M.O. at the time was to talk an anti-illegal-immigration game, look for bipartisan support once in office, and then let Lucy yank away the football again. The only way to convince Republican voters that a candidate (especially one with a fairly non-partisan history) wasn't just in the "talk an anti-illegal-immigration game" phase preceding the "the Democrats convinced us to trade yet another amnesty for getting Really Serious This Time" phase was to be so boorish towards Democrats and illegal immigrants that nobody could picture him ever negotiating with the former on behalf of the latter.

There's no shortage of Democrats competing to show that they can "stand up to Trump" by being assholes too, but I'm not sure what it accomplishes from their side. They seem to perceive it as an aesthetic signal of strength they need to adopt too, but for Trump his attitude actually was meaningful as a signal of intransigence. For a Democrat to get the same benefit in a primary election they'd have to also tie it to some issue (anti-capitalism? pro-gun-bans?) where their base is afraid of them selling out, and for that not to backfire in the general election it would have to also be an issue that wouldn't necessarily backfire with independents or backfire too badly across the aisle.

I can't think of any issues like that currently, but perhaps one could be whipped up. The median American wasn't a fan of illegal immigration, but also didn't think of it as a huge issue until Trump himself increased its salience. On the other hand, maybe polarizing the country is a trick that can only be pulled off once. In 2016 it might have been plausible to think that America had too much bipartisan cooperation and not enough bridge-burning heated rhetoric, but in 2028 that will probably be a tougher sell.

I'll grant you that. The vulgarity and norm breaking were appealing not in themselves but because they were demonstrations of commitment. Commitment to what? Well, something I'm interested in, let's leave it at that.

I like my politicians to bite bullets. It's the only way to actually demonstrate conviction.

For a Democrat to get the same benefit in a primary election they'd have to also tie it to some issue (anti-capitalism? pro-gun-bans?) where their base is afraid of them selling out

Off the top of my head, medicare for all, releasing the Epstein files, and student loan forgiveness are "traitor" issues to the left. Medicare for all especially, and to this day Jimmy Dore can't let go how much he got smeared by "sell outs" for his force the vote initiative. Epstein files I can't tell how deep or sincere the sentiment goes. Student Loan forgiveness being a traitor issue revolves around this theory that the Biden admin purposely chose the weakest legal theory to argue in favor of it, and lost on purpose in the Supreme Court. Once again, I don't know how widespread or sincere this sentiment is.

Those are pretty good. Really good for being off the top of your head. I could argue about the other two, but Medicare For All at least would be a perfect fit for that sense of self-righteousness in a grand cause thwarted by betrayal. It distills left-pleasing anti-capitalism down to its most popular core in the same way anti-illegal-immigration does for right-pleasing anti-immigration. It might have even worked well a decade ago, and it'd be hard to mount any principled opposition to it today. Trump has really undermined the free marketeer wing of the Republicans, and I don't think I've heard from the fiscal-prudence wing of either party since the Great Recession.

"erosion of norms" is just DNC speak for "refusing to play the loveable loser to our obviously more virtuous candidate."

I freely admit I was part of it in my stupid college days, but frankly the DNC has been demonizing conservatives for a lot longer than Trump has been relevant, he was just the first one to fling the shit back in any effective manner.

If you want to point to a specific moment the norms really started to collapse, I would suggest the Johnson administration for the most recent cycle.

I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but I think Trump's general style in 2016 was a big part of this, penis size jokes in the primary,

IIRC, his only dick-related joke went something along the lines of "There was also a comment about if my hands are small, something else must be; I assure you, there's no problem" which I actually think was a pretty witty and non-offensive way of addressing that insinuation.

It's not uncommon for people around me to fail to notice that I'm less left wing than they are. Even if they do notice, they adopt a mindset that I'm "one of the good ones", like I'm some sort of vaguely civilized savage who won't cause any problems.

As a result, I've heard a lot about how me, my family, and people like me should all die. Usually it's in the context of COVID, but there are quite a few other reasons as well.

The part that really seems to turn their crank is the idea that Us Dumb, Ignorant, Cousin-Fucking, Science Denying Rednecks will have a moment of clarity at the Apex of our suffering and cry out to them for help in the moments before our agonizing demise. Something about the idea of self-inflicted suffering seems to absolve them of any sin associated with finding pleasure in the suffering of others.

What's interesting to me about this fellow from Virginia is twofold: first, he's a professional politician. I expect professional politicians to be sociopaths, but acting skills and a carefully cultivated persona are basic job qualifications. Did he not think this was going to leak? Did he not think it was a bad look? Or did he simply not think at all. I'm pretty sure I'd be fired if I wrote this and I'm not even a public figure.

The second part of this that's interesting is that it appears to be a much more active kind of desire than the desires of the University Set around me. They want to enjoy watching the life leak from my eyes as I plead for mercy from an unforgiving world, but they don't want to actually do it. Mr. Jones is a much more active kind of desire. Does it represent an escalation, or a difference in mindset between and adjunct professor and a prosecutor?

The part that really seems to turn their crank is the idea that Us Dumb, Ignorant, Cousin-Fucking, Science Denying Rednecks will have a moment of clarity at the Apex of our suffering and cry out to them for help in the moments before our agonizing demise. Something about the idea of self-inflicted suffering seems to absolve them of any sin associated with finding pleasure in the suffering of others.

Made me think of

The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no."

Of course, Rorschach is a left-wing comic book writer's idea of a right-wing nut, so who's to say whether the fantasy comes from Alan Moore's brain or something he heard, or both.

so who's to say whether the fantasy comes from Alan Moore's brain or something he heard, or both.

Interesting - I'd never considered the comparison even though it's blatantly obvious in hindsight.

In a way, it's not too far from Lot surviving the scourging of Sodom and Gomorrah. I guess it's just something deeply embedded in the human psyche.

Sure, and Fox News hosts have recently suggested things like bombing the UN or giving homeless people involuntary lethal injections. You can nut-pick all day long and both sides do it. Both hosts still have their jobs, by the way.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/un-says-fox-news-host-apologized-after-calling-world-body-be-bombed-2025-09-26/

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-fox-news-brian-130000750.html

Meanwhile in Canada giving lethal injection to homeless mentally ill people is not only a mainstream political opinion, but the official policy of the government.

They finally implemented @2rafa’s “heroin too cheap to meter” policy?

Can you elaborate please?

I think that a lone nut assassinating someone is a much more plausible scenario than a lone nut bombing the UN or giving the homeless lethal injections.

For clarification, Brian Kilmeade suggested killing the mentally ill homeless.

JONES: Billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population. A lot of them don't want to take the programs. A lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary. You can't give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going to give you, or you decide that you're going to be locked up in jail. That's the way it has to be now.

KILMEADE: Or, uh, involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill them.

And it is fucked up and he should have been fired, at the very least for being so fucking stupid about it. As for the Watters comment, his 'leave it, bomb it, or gas it' remark clearly falls into the category of non-literal, shock jock hyperbole. It's in the same rhetorical family as 'Eat the rich' and other classic leftist slogans - it uses violent imagery to attack a symbolic institution, but no reasonable person interprets it as a literal plan to commit violence. So there is a major difference between these two statements that you are eliding - and that's before we get to the whataboutism with Jones - Watters expressed the desire to do violence against an institution, whereas Kilmeade expressed the desire to kill millions of people.

But the real kicker is neither of them are politicians. Neither of them are running for attorney general, a position that puts them in charge of determining justice for the millions of people in their jurisdiction, and neither of them expressed an explicit desire to see their direct political opponents dead and then doubled down on it afterwards. I really hope this doesn't count as consensus building when I say that everyone knows internally the difference between wishing for the death of faceless enemies and thinking of a person, a specific person, and wanting them dead.

Also, are the mentally ill homeless and every other country in the world core constituents of the Democrat party? Because I thought that was just a snarky joke.

For clarification, Brian Kilmeade suggested killing the mentally ill homeless.

According to the article linked to by the OP, very specifically mentally ill (implicitly criminal and socially dangerous) homeless who refuse help from social services.

The public square dominated by Democratic figures and Never Trumpers invoking some fraudulent both sidesism has, like it or not, dulled some of the public backlash.

Whether we like it or not, the both sidesism deployed by the left is an effective rhetorical tactic that needs to be contended with. It'd be best to accept that popular people on the right have in fact made veiled calls for violence, or at least has given passive endorsements.

Marjorie Taylor Greene liked a facebook post in reference to Nancy Pelosi that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker” in order to remove her.

Charlie Kirk said "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."

The primary difference between left and right calls for violence right now seem to be state sanctioned capital punishment versus revolutionary type assassinations or terrorist acts. At scale, this becomes relevant because the left still largely controls the moral landscape of this country, and it is more likely to give the common man the moral license to kill than the right wing is. It's optically a "grassroots" thing and it appeals to young empathetic people or indoctrinated college grads. They're seen as acts of justified destabilization, and they give the impression that it's just the common man fighting against an immoral oppressor. It's why the left can riot for months at a time (2020 and now), or kill a CEO or conservative commentator and left-leaning mainstream outlets and Democrats can make generalized statements about toning down the violence without ever really having to take any accountability.

I'd like to put together a bigger effort post on this but I have to work.

Personally I feel like the Right is more consistent on their level of Macho posturing whilst the Left seemingly divides the world into 'above all reproach, words are violence' and 'MURDER THE NON-MASKER' kinds of rhetoric.

I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.

MTG though, she's something else. I have no qualms with wishing she were out of office and disavowing most of what she says. Marjorie Taylor Greene had an average 24% Approval Rating among Republicans. Most Republicans didn't recognize her name in the poll:

Most who were asked about Greene said that they had no opinion of the congresswoman. Republicans were less likely to be aware of or have an opinion about Greene than Democrats, with 64 percent of Democrats weighing in compared to only 44 percent of Republicans.

Greene is more important to Democrats to show how crazy Republicans are, than she is to Republicans who largely don't think about her at all and when they do agree she is pretty crazy.

I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.

With regard to the Kirk quote, this seems splitting hairs. When Kirk or the MAGA base are fantasizing about locking Clinton up or executing Biden, I do not believe that they are thinking of a totally impartial judge and jury coming to the conclusion that their opponent has indeed committed the crime they are accusing them of beyond any reasonable doubt.

The presidential action which came closest to treason in recent memory was J6 (Trump inciting his mob to impede the certification of the election), and his pet SCOTUS decided that he had actually immunity for that. Last time I checked, Biden had not order Seal Team Six to kill Trump, if he had, that would excuse Kirk's statement.

For Trump, the DoJ is a political instrument to wield against his enemies, he is rather open about that. In that context, saying "no, I am not advocating for political violence, I am advocating for harsh penalties imposed by a kangaroo court for political crimes" does not seem very convincing.

And the stochastic terrorism is present in that just the same. Kirk's statement would strongly suggest to his most deranged 10% of listeners that morally speaking, Biden should be killed or imprisoned for his crimes. Add more context, like the justice system being characterized as corrupt and woke, and it sounds like an incitement to do outside the law that which the law would do if it was enforced fairly, in the minds of the deranged.

--

Relatedly, there is a reason why MAGA is more leaning towards violence which is state-sanctioned and the left is more leaning towards extrajudicial violence. The MAGA motivation for violence is basically "DC is a swamp which opposes the will of the people, and should be punished for its corruption".

With the left, Trump might be seen as a Tiberius Gracchus figure: a populist breaker of norms who has ambitions of tyranny. So it is less "Trump must be punished for his past misdeeds" and more "Trump must be stopped before he dismantles the republic".

I happen to know better - that even if he could be taken to trial, which already might not be possible, Joe would not be convicted under current jurisprudence and laws of the land. But on the other hand, I do believe that Joe earnestly tried to subvert and destroy the country. An act that under the colloquial definition of treason, as well as the historical definition of treason accepted by many societies, would clearly qualify. Undoubtedly countless fair and just executions have been carried out throughout history for offenses far less than what Joe has done.

I'm assuming the average boomer has no idea how the legal system works, or how treason is defined under United States law, or how current jurisprudence interprets that law. I'm sure the average boomer sees Joe's actions as treasonous and assumes that the law would agree.

Interestingly, trying to overthrow or destroy the United States doesn't actually count as treason under the law.

There are some interesting parallels here to the run-up to the election, when the common talking point was that the Democrats using the legal system to go after Trump, or removing Trump from the ballot for treason were massive norm violations.

If we were talking jail maybe, but personally I don't see how adding "...by the government, after a trial (in which my desired outcome is the just one)" to "I hope my political opponent is executed" makes it not support of violence.

but personally I don't see how adding "...by the government, after a trial (in which my desired outcome is the just one)" to "I hope my political opponent is executed" makes it not support of violence.

Do you oppose capital punishment in all cases?

If not, where do you draw the line?

Generally yes, more so because in today's day and age we can indefinitely keep someone in jail for the off chance that they are later exonerated (and given the amount of red tape to go for the death penalty I think life in prison is cheaper).

But I said this more because of the motivation of the situation. If the context is along the lines of wishing a politician that is not even on trial gets a trial with the specific outcome of the death penalty, I think you've cast your thinking far enough ahead that you want to see the person dead.

I do believe that Joe earnestly tried to subvert and destroy the country.

The same thing we do every night, Kamala: trying to destroy America.

I think it highly implausible that Biden was trying to destroy the USA. If his goal was to turn the US into a failed state, he did a rather terrible job. And why would he want that?

Different people have different visions for their country. Some want a capitalist heaven, or a commie utopia. Some want to support Israel, some want to support Israel a lot. Some want universal healthcare, some want Roe overturned. Some want do get rid of background checks, some want the 2A reinterpreted so it does not apply to any firearm innovations made after it came into force. Some want to turn a blind eye to illegal migration, some want to deport every last illegal (except for the ones which keep the economy running). Some want to bomb country A, others want to bomb country B.

From where I stand, the general course of US politics has been pretty consistent from Clinton to Biden. There were always big donors whose interests got special consideration beyond the interests of the American people, mud-slinging during campaign season, use of office to get a political advantage over the opposition, from photo ops to politically motivated investigations, bombing of random places. Both Trump 1 and Biden were particularly uninspired, but for the most part it was just business as usual.

He did a great job at intentionally letting in tens of millions of people from the worst parts of the world. If left unchecked it would certainly result in the replacement and subversion of the previous people of the country.

Fact: Joe deliberately and successfully caused the largest wave of migration into the United States in history, and possibly even the largest wave of migration in all of human history.

Wasn't long ago that conservatives were lambasting the notion of stochastic terrorism. Do they buy it now?

Direct advocacy of violence goes well beyond what "stochastic terrorism" was supposed to be. The idea of stochastic terrorism is basically that saying bad things about people -- not advocacy of violence, just that the people were terrible in some way -- might make crazies kill them.

I do not believe that they are thinking of a totally impartial judge and jury coming to the conclusion that their opponent has indeed committed the crime they are accusing them of beyond any reasonable doubt.

I have never considered it to be taken any other way? The truth is, the MAGA masses honestly, earnestly believe that these people have committed high crimes and treason, which a fair and unbiased trial would reveal the full details of, resulting in an inevitable and just execution that even the Blue Tribe would agree is just. Are they right? Likely not. But I have never doubted that this is what they earnestly believe.

Some among them, surely. The Qanon true believers who think he is fighting a secret war against the adrenochrome-addicted establishment.

Still, my model of the median Trump voter is that they know that Trump is bullshitting all day long and corrupt AF. But the establishment hating him so much makes it all worth it.

In particular, I would argue that outside your odd lizardman, none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative. I think it highly unlikely that Charlie Kirk thought, in his heart of hearts, that Biden was committing treason for which his countrymen would sent him to the gallows if they knew about it. But the narrative played really well with the idiots, so he spread it.

In particular, I would argue that outside your odd lizardman, none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative. I think it highly unlikely that Charlie Kirk thought, in his heart of hearts, that Biden was committing treason for which his countrymen would sent him to the gallows if they knew about it. But the narrative played really well with the idiots, so he spread it.

As much as I’d personally like to believe that, but I doubt it. I’m on record several times advocating for people to actually assume that the “other side” probably believes what they say they do, and I think that’s the case here as well- while, as an admitted partisan, I think right-wing influencers are full of shit, I’m sure they genuinely believe that shit; after all, after decades of the conservative media ecosystem being increasingly divorced from reality (at an alarmingly accelerated rate in the last few years), it’s probably never been easier to buy into ‘your side’s’ narrative than it’s ever been before.

The ‘smart’ people on the right don’t necessarily have to be any better-informed than ‘the idiots’ that make up the rank-and-file. Possibly even the opposite; greater reasoning can easily turn into greater capacity for rationalization.

none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative.

What's "the narrative"? I certainly think that Biden had been absolutely horrible. I don't have legal education enough to see if he could be plausible charged with treason (probably not successfully), but I think he certainly did not have mine or The People's interests in mind even in those rare moments he was able to keep anything in mind. And certainly whoever was running the autopen in his stead - which must be some kind of serious crime, though I again don't know how to properly call it - did not. Do I want Biden on the gallows? Shit no, what would it give me? I don't even really want him in jail, he probably wouldn't be able to even understand what's going on. But I wouldn't mind seeing in jail some of the people who were running the clown show. But much more important is to do everything possible to undo at least some of the harm that they inflicted on the country and the society. If believing all that makes me an "idiot" in your eyes, so be it, it's not my problem.

In particular, I would argue that outside your odd lizardman, none of the smarter MAGA people believe the narrative. I think it highly unlikely that Charlie Kirk thought, in his heart of hearts, that Biden was committing treason for which his countrymen would sent him to the gallows if they knew about it. But the narrative played really well with the idiots, so he spread it.

...How closely have you been following the revelations about Russiagate/Crossfire Hurricane/Hillary's email server/Biden's Corruption/Hunter's Laptop over the last year? My working understanding of that mess (and it seems to me there's a fair amount of evidence that it is a coherent, single mess) is that we now have solid evidence that Obama, Hillary and Biden worked together to suborn the national security apparatus and turn it into both a partisan weapon against their political enemies, as well as a shield to their own serious malfeasance. As with, say, Watergate, but amusingly never ever with any Democrat scandal, the initial crimes seem vastly overshadowed by the institutional corruption used to cover them, which at this point appear to have run so deep and for so long that they put the viability of our political system itself into question.

More generally, there's this amusing pattern I see, where people are very willing to discuss things under a frame where Trump and MAGA are fascistic white supremacists who must be stopped by any means necessary, as we did here for years, and are also willing to discuss things under a frame where actually there's no difference between the parties, everyone's corrupt so none of the details really matter, but certainly are not willing to discuss under the frame where, no, actually it's the democrats who are uniquely, intolerably bad. Maybe it's just bias speaking, but it seems to me that this excluded third option is going to get harder and harder to exclude the more evidence accumulates. And while within the context of debate and one's own mind denial might be an invincible shield, it's less effective in the real world if sufficient numbers of the public simply stop being willing to cooperate with your tribe in any way ever again.

With regard to the Kirk quote, this seems splitting hairs.

No, it isn't. There's a reason that it's the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and not the Unfair Trial and Biased Jury and Execution of Charlie Kirk. Assassination is something that members of the public are physically capable of doing, and supporting assassination supports things that can and at some point will actually be done by vigilantes. Nobody's going to vigilante put-on-trial and execute Biden, unless you think that's really a demand that Biden be lynched, which 1) I find unlikely to have been intended and 2) isn't possible anyway.

Kirk was going on record that Biden might deserve death for his actions. He made that statement knowing that the general narrative of MAGA is that the justice system is corrupt and protects the DC swamp. To a base to which Trump had already (jokingly?) implied in 2016 that the '2nd amendment people' might want to interfere with the appointment of SC justices through assassination. A base which has plenty of people with the firearms training to pull of assassinations.

Of course, if he had connected the dots, a la "Biden deserves death, but our corrupt justice system will never convict him. Someone should just shoot him", that would have been 10x worse.

I don't think that Kirk was intentionally trying to incite stochastic terrorism, he was simply spinning his MAGA lies (e.g. about Biden being especially treasonous) for political gain, and not giving a damn if that would increase the relative risk of Biden getting gunned down or not.

Kirk was going on record that Biden might deserve death for his actions.

You are making a six degrees of Kevin Bacon argument. Saying that Biden should be tried and executed is technically violence, but it's not the kind of violence that someone could listen to him and then do. When you connect that to something Trump said, you're connecting it to something he said seven years apart, and not even about Biden. You're also trying to frame a single statement from Trump as a gotcha. It isn't a single statement that does it, it's a lot of statements from a lot of people.

He made that statement knowing that the general narrative of MAGA is that the justice system is corrupt and protects the DC swamp.

Obviously the statement means "if we get in charge of the government, then we...." He was under no illusion that Biden could be tried and executed under the justice system as it existed in 2023. That still isn't encouraging vigilante justice, unles you think people are going to do a vigilante takeover of the justice system first.

For Trump, the DoJ is a political instrument to wield against his enemies, he is rather open about that. In that context, saying "no, I am not advocating for political violence, I am advocating for harsh penalties imposed by a kangaroo court for political crimes" does not seem very convincing.

This argument cuts both ways; if that discussion is tantamount to advocating for political violence, then anyone else who's "advocated for harsh penalties imposed by a kangaroo court for political crimes" is just "splitting hairs" about the gap between that and just outright saying "x gets the bullet". And it's not like we have a shortage of people who said -- and in many cases did, and did often, and did to far less prominent people -- those same scope of things.

And no one treated them the same as someone talking about how he'd shoot a motherfucker.

For what it is worth, I can not recall any prominent Democrat calling for Trump to be executed for his role in J6.

Were the sentences for the J6 crowd harsh, especially compared to the sentences for the BLM riots? Sure, they totally threw the book at them for clear political reasons.

But unlike a Biden treason trial ending in a death verdict which Kirk was fantasizing about, they were still recognizable as a legal system working, somehow. Not well (the US legal system generally does not work well), and not as impartial as one might hope, perhaps, but not a kangaroo court.

Is life in prison due to a kangaroo court much better? As that is something Dem actually attempted to do to Trump. And certainly I don't remember if any Dems were vocally against it.

Is life in prison due to a kangaroo court much better? As that is something Dem actually attempted to do to Trump. And certainly I don't remember if any Dems were vocally against it.

The bolded is your subjective assessment, and rather the pivotal element which changes the situation from fair to unfair. If the Democrats don't think it was a kangaroo court, would you still expect them to be against it?

The peaceful transfer of power is one of the greatest selling points of democracy. Trump trying to mess with that was by far the worst thing he did in his first term.

Crucially, he did not get convicted because the court system (the SC in particular) stopped it, despite the wishes of the Biden administration. Trump getting convicted would in my mind not conclusively prove a kangaroo court, but him getting immunity proves reasonably well that the courts (or at least the SC) are independent of the political Zeitgeist.

He did get convicted (I'm talking about the NY trial here.) He just got lightly sentenced after winning the election instead of the possible 100+ years he could have gotten. The main point is that "kangaroo court" is mostly subjective, but only one side did actually bring a ridiculous case in front of an incredibly partisan area and get a favorable judgement against their partisan enemy. So while we can muse on what Kirk might have meant in his heart of hearts (and I wouldn't even say I really disagree with you there), Dems are actually putting it into practice.

I don't think saying, "This person is guilty of a capital crime, in my opinion," is the same thing as calling for political violence. It's calling for the rule of law, and if the law says, "Sorry, this person isn't actually guilty of a capital crime," then there you go. Violence stops there.

I don't think it is either. There is a clear distinction. My problem with it is that we could probably comb through a lot of powerful American politicians' pasts or political decisions and establish a norm of executing them. That is a terrible precedent to establish in my opinion. I hate what Kamala Harris represents, but I would prefer even she not be executed after a shit presidency. I think something should probably be done about the Ilhan Omars of the Democrat party, but even martyring someone like her is bad long term strategy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Candace Owens, Laura Loomer, etc. are all net negatives, but Republican strategists probably see them as tumors that have grown around an artery. You can't extract them without massive blood loss and death. I'm sure there's a similar sentiment for some Democrats about members of The Squad.

After this Trump presidency, I wonder what would happen if top leaders from both parties secretly met and agreed to expel some of their own members. I don't think the average American would cry themselves to sleep if The Squad was axed from the Democrat party and MTG, Lauren Boebert, Anna Paulina Luna, and Mary Miller were axed from the Republican party.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work.

I'm somewhat distressed by your distress over what, Twitter and Reddit comments? I hope you find peace.

Your link to your previous comment is about people wishing Trump would die. I am sure we could find an infinite number of comments wishing death on Hillary (or Biden, or Obama) if that would make you feel better.

Similarly, the reddit thread linked below is really boring? I did not see any calls for violence, although there was a TON of "whattaboutism".

It's also such a nothing burger, it's about a Democrat saying:

" Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"

Which isn't tasteful, but a common joke template.

Comparing this to a Pogrom is somewhat hysterical, I genuinely hope you find some peace.

EDIT FOR FAIRNESS: After re-reading his comments, he made other gross insinuations as well. He is clearly not fit to be a public figure. He may have wished ill upon Gilbert's children, which is really bad, although given the leak doesn't involve what would otherwise be a profound smoking gun, it is not clear he did in fact do that.

  • -12

I do think Trump would have been at greater risk of personal harm if he were dropped into the middle of a George Floyd riot than if Biden were actually caught by the Jan 6ers, though. Maybe since it's hard to be like... actively mad at Biden since he's on his final hitpoint.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this.

Be honest and admit that these kind of "just joking" comments come from all sides. I don't like it, I think it's probably more insidious than people think, and at its core is corrosive to an open society. But if you think this is solely a "left-wing" or "Democrat" phenomenon and one couldn't trivially produce examples of Republicans doing the exact same thing, you're lying to yourself. Hell, it's not uncommon to see this kind of sentiment on this forum, albeit typically worded more fancily.

Be honest and admit that these kind of "just joking" comments come from all sides.

I think we usually expect more from people running to be elected officials? Do you have evidence of republican politicians going unpunished for saying they'd like to murder their opponents' children?

Why does everyone keep saying he’d like to murder them?

Even the phone call, which we somehow only got secondhand, says he was hoping her children would die.

Again, awful, but a different vibe.

Do you have evidence of republican politicians caught saying they'd like to murder their opponents' children?

There was that failed Republican candidate in NM who was convicted of doing drive-by shootings of several opponents' houses (which included children in the houses).

Fair enough, that's pretty bad. He was arrested and sentenced though. I'll amend my original post to specify republicans that went unpunished for making these comments.

it could just be 'bants'. maybe he is just venting to a friend and there is some context that is snipped from the conversation that we see that makes it less bad. cancelling him has parallels to cancelling people for having misogynistic/sexist/racist comments in a whatsapp group with friends. there is an expectation of a privacy and lot of it is just people venting or memeing and not being serious.

it could just be 'bants'. maybe he is just venting to a friend and there is some context that is snipped from the conversation that we see that makes it less bad.

It could be, but it's not.

A DM conversation "leaked" where in he has this conversation with a Republican colleage in the Virginia House I believe. So this wasn't even exactly an "in house" conversation. Just straight up telling the opposition, "Hey, I think you deserve to die" like it would never or could never come back to haunt him.

Believe it or not, you are not the first person grasping at this straw.

We don’t have the context. We don’t know why Jay Jones thinks Todd and Jennifer Gilbert are “evil” and “breeding little fascists”. Going on priors, it’s probably not a very good reason, but we don’t actually know that.

Okay, this is it. Can we officially throw out the principle of charity?

Truth social is over thataway if you would like somewhere you can post without worrying about discourse norms.

"Let's not be charitable to someone who thinks the children are little fascists" strikes me as a pretty fair norm.

Are you proposing being uncharitable to Jay Jones or to other people on this forum? I don't think principle of charity ever said you had to be charitable about statements made by public figures, just about the person you are currently arguing with.

More comments

No, we cannot officially throw out the principle of charity.

"You were talking about hopping jennifer Gilbert's children would die"

"Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy."

But to be fair, not only do we don't know why Jay Jones thought their 5 year old and 2 year old were "little fascists", we also don't know why their policies were bad enough that the children should die, and we don't know how he thinks the children's deaths should transpire. He should definitely publish every bit of missing context for his pro-dead-children stance so that we judge it as fairly as possible.

You were talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die.

Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.

I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascist? Yes.

Such a punchline. Much LOL.

He's stone cold serious when he says these things. He's doing political calculus that dead Republicans help his policy goals because they oppose him.

My God, you're right. Look at these comments. What the fuck? We've really been living in a country like this for this long? There's nothing that can't be sanewashed, can't be whatabout'd? There is no evil so bad that you can't blame it on Trump? I just can't believe what I'm seeing this year. I swear, the culture war is gonna go hot in a way we have never seen before.

I skimmed this and it's really boring. Literally the lamest thread on /pol/ is 300x as unhinged and you're not freaking out about that.

Even the whole thing is such a meltdown over a guy saying

"Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"

Which is inappropriate as a public figure, but an incredibly common joke.

  • -16

Comparing Reddit to some 4chan offshoot is played out at this point. I am bothered that toxicity from the Left gets a nice mainstream pasture to jerk themselves off day and night with tacit mainstream approval while milquetoast Right wingers get left with condemned self-hosted shitholes or bust.

We've seen how the Left reacts to 'bad speak' where no slurs or threats are even deployed. And the entire neurotic hammer-dropping process has been completely absent here as it was with Kirk.

You want to compare this to a chan schizoid going off on gassing the Jews? Okay. I'll grant that an apples to apples comparison leaves the virulent antisemite looking worse. But this phenomenon where Reddit discourse gets pass after pass? Yeah, I think thats more concerning and even dangerous.

Is Reddit representative of the Left? Not entirely, but it represents a mindset that is quite alive and well over there. And its one I've detected enough IRL that I no longer consider this 'a random internet opinion'. Meanwhile, I know zero people that express chan bile unless they have the good sense to leave that on the net.

/pol/ isn't a self hosted 4chan offshoot, it's just 4chan. And the correct comparator to reddit isn't even 4chan, it's twitter, where people are happy to issue calls for the death of whoever you'd like, unabated.

Right-wingers from milquetoast to genocidal currently have Twitter to jerk themselves off day and night.

So do left wingers. There’s still progressive Twitter, the lolcows just left for blue sky.

Along with eveybody else from any political corner. And that is solely due the intervention of one eccentric manchild billionaire. I guess I'm fortunate that things progressed that way given the way the stars were aligning.

I don't really care if toxic sentiment is spilling out in some free-for-all arena - or at least don't care as much. I do care when spaces (often de facto Left-ruled) make a big song and dance about rules and decorum, deploy them maliciously against their opponents, and spare themselves. This is sanewashing what got many other subs monitored and eventually banned, and allows users to acclimate to a norm.

Find me the mainstream right-wing Reddit easily downloadable and accessible from the IOS store and I'll take these comparisons seriously.

Sure, it's open for everyone (though I suspect that right-wing content gets boosted by the algorithm), it's just bit rich at this point to say that right-wingers (let alone milquetoast right-wingers) have to do with "condemned self-hosted shitholes or bust".

IIRC at least Parler and Gab were kicked out of both the Apple and Google app stores for what is demonstrably less "violent rhetoric" than is frequently seen posted on Bluesky (by public figures, no less) about Jesse Singal, plus whatever you can find about Charlie Kirk.

Some losers posting on an anonymous thread from their mother’s basement is a very different thing from elected officials telling each other they’d commit murder if they had more balls.

I suppose this is a reason I feel so… uneasy with gun control. I know for a fact that theres lots of people who shouldn’t have guns. Lots of them my cotribals. I know that, factually, I don’t really need all my guns. But golly this attitude- I mean I don’t see it up close and personal, I suppose this is the first really solid evidence I have that it isn’t just unhinged screeching online, but we all knew it was there- just makes me go, yeah, F you, I need them.

elected officials telling each other they’d commit murder if they had more balls

"Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head" this is literally a common joke used to humorously compare people to Hitler et al. It was incredibly inappropriate for someone running for public office to say, but otherwise is profoundly meaningless as far as calls for violence go.

I suppose this is a reason I feel so… uneasy with gun control.

I go back and forth on this a lot myself. I strongly believe gun control is needed to keep governments/institutions scared of the masses, but at the same time the masses end up rather dangerous to one another in the interim.

  • -14

First, we usually expect our elected officials to be above such things. Usually. Second, he didn’t just call for the murder of his opponent. That’s not good, but it isn’t terribly unprecedented. He called for killing his toddlers.

He called for killing his toddlers.

It's implied, but never explicitly proven he did. The people who leaked this were deliberate with what they showed us. If he said that explicitly, wouldn't they have leaked that too?

  • -12

Isn't the reporting that he said it in a phone call, and not by text?

Keep. Reading.

You don't get to read the first thing he says, go "Sounds benign to me", and then ignore the rest of the truly horrific and sober thoughts he put down.

In an effort to be a good mottizen, I gave it a re-read because I had skimmed just his side of the conversation when I first looked.

It does seem like he agrees with the other person saying "you were talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die" but I would imagine if he said that in text, it would have been part of the leak? That would be so much more damning and would totally fuck him (because fuck him for saying that), but it's absence from these screenshots is weird if he did in fact say that.

I don't know who this guy is but I really don't like him. And given I hold elected officials to high standards, I would never vote for him, but I also can't take the "3 people 2 bullets" joke all that seriously given its historical precedent as a common joke.

If he was actually wishing harm on his political enemy's kids though, that's extremely concerning.

That would be so much more damning and would totally fuck him

Why do you think that would fuck him?

If there is a threshold that causes a party to lose political interest over words then the words have different targets-- or, the act of withdrawal has lesser consequences. I can only speculate where the threshold is, but it requires certain political conditions to be lowered. All else being equal, if this was a three year old text of the candidate writing, 'March the whole family against a wall and shoot them all, yes including the evil fascist breeding babies,' then this receives roughly the same response. This is not so different as to what was was provided. Obviously he's not serious, context, Trump and whatabout, says NarwhalRedditor along with the state party apparatchik having a bad day.

There's little this guy could have written of his enemy that would disqualify him via October Surprise. If we found a much older text from 10 years ago where he referred to his constituents/neighbors as 'greedy kikes' and 'dumb niggers' that might not be recoverable. He becomes a much greater liability then, but a text the opposition sat on about them? Fat chance. If evidence arose he was soliciting prostitutes and severely beat one of them this past Summer that might disqualify him, but then we're beyond the realm of words. If there were other opportunities or further damage to party interests these could be considered. Here, where withdrawal is simply losing, much can be justified.*

I forget who, but in one of the past couple threads someone wrote about war footing language. Groups of people speaking themselves into a position where they should and must prepare for war. Politics found this neat little hack with most important election ever, End of Democracy, and many internalized it. I don't know why we should be surprised that people would be willing to forgive their allies who merely say they want to to punish their enemy with their fascist bred babies.

March the whole family against a wall and shoot them all, yes including the evil fascist breeding babies

Everyone in this thread is acting like that is indeed what he said.

You, personally, have an assuredly principled line in the sand -- or a consideration of factors -- that allows you to move abacus beads on the appropriate exchange-pogrom language scale. I agree that this is not pogrom language. I don't think the gap is as wide on this reportedly accidental, unprompted exchanged, but my point was the accurate placement on the pogrom scale is not so important to the politics.

We The People transcended opprobrium. The Motte is not supposed to partake in the enlightenment, so in that regard you deserve kudos for working on the details. There is a lot of grievance bleeding in. Voters, not party, will get the chance to decide how much such things matter anyway. That's probably for the best or worst.

To 'steelman', it's 'just' wishing that his opponent would feel the pain of a horrific loss to change their political positions, rather than an explicit threat.

I don't think that's any better, but I'm also aware that it's been a thing for over a decade now.

it's absence from these screenshots is weird if he did in fact say that.

"Coyner’s alarm at her former colleague’s violent rhetoric toward Gilbert prompted Jones to call her and explain his reasoning over the phone, a source familiar with the exchange told NR.

According to the source, the Democratic former legislator doubled down on the call, saying the only way public policy changes is when policymakers feel pain themselves, like the pain that parents feel when they watch their children die from gun violence. He asked her to provide counterexamples to disprove his claim.

Then at one point, the source said, he suggested he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views, prompting Coyner to hang up the phone in disgust."

Look, /pol/ is /pol/. Unhinged stuff gets posted there, too. But seeing something normie coded like reddit erupt into whataboutism over something as grisly as saying that little kids need to die along with their parents? Yeah, that's bad. And again, just like with Charlie Kirk, I already see a couple people in this thread downplaying it right in front of me and telling me I'm worrying over nothing. Why? What do you get out of it? Like, this is the kind of behavior I expect from revisionists when there's a thread on anything that took place in the 1940s. Did you click on WhiningCoil's Twitter link and read what Jay Jones actually said? If you did, and you are still insisting it's just over a The Office joke edit, why?

normie coded like reddit

People who comment on Reddit are not a representative sample of normies. The vast majority of internet users lurk.

just like with Charlie Kirk, I already see a couple people in this thread downplaying it right in front of me and telling me I'm worrying over nothing. Why? What do you get out of it?

I'm pretty upset he was murdered. I really don't want political violence in the USA to escalatee. I like pax Americana just the way it was, thank you.

Did you click on WhiningCoil's Twitter link and read what Jay Jones actually said?

Yes, he said "Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"

I don't think he should have said this as someone who wants public office, and I also don't find it very concerning given it's a common joke template. I have made that joke many times and I have no wish for anyone to actually die. Those texts would make me not want to vote for him, and also don't remind me of Jewish pogroms lol.

  • -10

reddit's tagline is literally the front page of the internet.

It's as normie as you can get, while still being on the internet.

Reddit =/= Reddit commentators amusingly, given the stats on commenting vs lurking

The commentators are the result of consuming the kinds of content that the admins and moderators allow.

Without directly encouraging it here, a concerted campaign by the right could probably severely undermine the (left) cultural cachet of Reddit and Bluesky purely by constantly juxtaposing the brand names with things the users endorse in words or (in)actions on such content from the moderators.

I'm still not sure if you're actually being genuine here or not. Did you just click the first thing you saw and said "well, that's all there was to the exchange"? I asked you if you read them, and you said yes just now, and you wrote the least offensive thing in a collection of texts. I guess I have to post plaintext of what he said to verify that you are comprehending what I am trying to convey.

I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they're breeding little fascists? Yes

In response to "You were talking about hopping that jennifer Gilbert's children would die":

Yes, I've told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy

If those guys die before me

I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves

Send them out awash in something

And yes, then The Office joke, which has a bit of a different context if you've just established you actually want to do it.

Three people, two bullets

Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot

Gilbert gets two bullets to the head

Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time

That last quote especially tells you that he hates Gilbert.

Sorry I was looking for / focusing on calls for violence specifically, I got rather anchored on the "Yes, Democrats Really Do Want You Dead" and "This is how Pogroms work."

I think the rest of his comments are in extremely poor taste, but I don't think saying gross things is comparable to inciting basically genocide. I wouldn't vote for someone who says these things, but saying "I'd piss on someone's grave" =/= "we should organize mob attacks on Republican communities".

The fact he mentioned their kids is heinous though, it's weird that if he was wishing harm/death on those children it wasn't included in the screenshots as that would be a much more salacious leak. If he was threatening children I hope he is sued, potentially disbarred(??) etc.

  • -11

is comparable to inciting basically genocide.

The claim is not that he was inciting genocide, but that a genuine desire to harm people merely for having a different political opinion is not compatible with a position of power. Especially being an Attorney General, where he would be required to serve the legal interests of all Virginians, not just those that agree with him politically.

Aside from that, there is also the issue that these statements make him a risk to the safety of government employees and politicians that he would encounter in his job. If he sees lethal violence as a solution to conflicts, then a workplace conflict could logically lead to a workplace shooting.

Yes, he said "Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head"

You really are committed to just ignoring all the rest that he said, huh? Just constantly repeating for the people who won't read for themselves this lie by omission that all he said was a joke.

Responded to you in a different comment but fair enough. In my first read I was just looking for direct calls to violence in his texts, so gross quips about "pissing on their graves" didn't really meet the bar for "inciting violence" in my opinion.

I am concerned about his references to their children though. That is too far. Although weird that it's not included in the leak if he did say thing about them, because that would be way better leak than this is currently.

  • -11

/pol/ is not a representative sample, they are exiled and are as marginalized as can be. I am honestly tired of the attitude that internet posters are not real people. This stuff being normal to them is not meaningless. Tyler Robinson was a product of reddit mind rot after all

The internet comments you see are also not a representative sample.

Anyone who comments on the internet at all is by definition an outlier, as the vast majority of people are lurkers.

Much of what you see on Twitter is algorithmically selected to cause you to engage more, and unfortunately shit you hate and makes you upset makes you engage, so that is what you'll see.

Redditors are.... Redditors. Every single geographic (city, country, whatever) subreddit is a wildly mis-representative sample of the people in whatever geography it is nominally about.

  • -12

What on earth could possibly convince you that there is a problem? An attorney general nominee (merely implicitly, I suppose) says we should kill children, to which thousands of real people shrug and say well what about the letter next to his name. That's pretty crazy. We should not frame it as if internet commenters are not real people. They may not be the most well-balanced individuals but they contribute to a prevailing narrative. Your insistence that this is not something to worry about only makes me more skeptical.

I would never vote for him after these comments. They are gross and inappropriate, but in my opinion do not meet the standard of "inciting genocide (what a pogrom is)" or "wanting all republicans dead".

If he did in fact say those children should die, he should be punished by either legal ethics standards boards, the Democratic party, the law, or all of the above.

I am suspicious about what exactly he said regarding children, given that if he said something spicy, you'd think it would have been leaked like these other texts? I am assuming whoever leaked this selected only the snippets that made him look the worst. So I am weary of conjecture here.

I respect you for conceding some points here. I am a little dissatisfied with your implication that he probably didn't say anything bad about her kids, but I understand that sometimes it takes some time to come to a conclusion.

We don't know what he didn't say, only what he did say, and since he agreed with her when she said what she did about kids, that's a pretty good indication that he said something pretty bad. The pretty bad something could have been farther in the text history and couldn't be found easily. The pretty bad something could have been something spoken vocally and not recorded. Regardless, I think there is enough to say this person should be canceled out of the political system entirely, but the condemnations I'm seeing are not particularly strong, and the comments sections are justifying him, saying that he's far better than the opposing side.

I am a little dissatisfied with your implication that he probably didn't say anything bad about her kids

My assumption is that if he did, it would have leaked. As whoever leaked obviously wanted to damage his reputation, and that would me maximally reputation damaging. Therefore, if it existed, we'd be seeing it right now. The photos in that tweet are cropped and presented without timestamps, which is a deliberate choice. So if they're narrative shaping, why wouldn't they include it?

Fair points that it may be a follow up from a verbal conversation, but given the limited context presented to us I don't think I can jump to "he wants to hurt their kids".

I think there is enough to say this person should be canceled out of the political system entirely

Yes

the condemnations I'm seeing are not particularly strong

This is bad and embarrassing for Dems

the comments sections are justifying him, saying that he's far better than the opposing side

I've said my piece on the usefulness of internet comments. That said, republican politicians do have a shitty track record about saying fucked up shit about their out-groups, so to borrow a reddit phrase, "everyone here is the asshole".

As a concerned onlooker, I wish your country would stop flicking each other's nipples and wake the fuck up to the real issues, which are China, the coming wave of climate refuges, and the existing tidal wave of unstainable old people pensions.

"inciting genocide (what a pogrom is)"

Perhaps you should read the previous comment of mine I posted about how pogroms are not the same as genocide. Not ever, not once, not in any historical context. Pogroms have very low fatality counts compared to genocide. They are not organized. They are a roiling low level amount of violence against an ethnic group that the state alternates between turning a blind eye to, giving slaps on the wrist over, and occasionally inflaming with their rhetoric and permissiveness. The goal is to get the ethnic group to be demoralized, be too fearful to participate in public life, and at best straight up leave.

Democrats are absolutely capable of that. Arguably you see it already in many Democrat run cities.

and at best straight up leave.

I guess I should have said "ethnic cleansing" instead of "genocide". Although frankly I kind of find the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to be a cop-out term governments use when they don't want to put boots on the ground somewhere that's looking real genocidal.

It kind of feels similar to the stupid word games of "its not racism against white people, it's just racial prejudice". Like congratulations, you (not you Whining Coil) made up a new word, you're still a massive asshole for being racially prejudiced/not intervening in the ethnic cleansing where children are being murdered.

Anyway, on pogroms, if my government was tacitly allowing low level violence against me and my people I'd feel rather genocided and would be absolutely attempting to leave immediately far away lest it get worse. Which then kind of makes it ethnic cleansing if I get the hell out of the area.

Arguably you see it already in many Democrat run cities.

What?

You know very well that reddit is not some vacuum where the opinions are totally meaningless. It's within the top 10 visited sites in the world. The lurkers upvote things. The lurkers don't care enough to comment, but they silently agree or disagree with things. If they really disagreed, they might post a comment themselves, like what I'm doing right now.

Are politicians representative samples? Very few people run for office, so they're outliers, right? Surely that means they don't represent anyone's real attitudes?

I'm not saying it's meaningless, I am just saying that internet commentators are not a representative sample.

In my experience as a Canadian living in Toronto, the Toronto/Ontario/Canada subreddits are all wildly out of touch with the median citizen who lives in any of those three areas. This is most evident in the sentiment towards elected officials versus their electoral results.

By some quick math I did a few years ago, /r/Toronto actually has one of the highest "# of subreddit subscribers"/"city population" ratios in the Western world, and yet literally any comment section in /r/Toronto is laughably out of touch with the views held by the median human who lives in Toronto.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I have a friend that complains that /r/AirForce is incredibly unrepresentative of the Air Force as a whole, and yet, everyone looking at reddit sees it and thinks that's what the Air Force is like. But those people coalesce from somewhere. The progressives have a pretty astounding stranglehold on the culture in a lot of places, and it's pretty scary if the sites where they're dominant start to turn violent.

The progressives have a pretty astounding stranglehold on the culture in a lot of places

I hate it, that's why I am here!

it's pretty scary if the sites where they're dominant start to turn violent.

I am worried about this, just not "they're going to start rounding up red-tribers any day now" worried.

More comments

This type of "hypocrisy gotcha" you see as a go-to defence mechanism is very frustrating to me. "OH, so YOU EXPECT ME to be BETTER than [my political outgroup]? Why don't you hold them to the same standard?!?!?!"

Well firstly, often people are. Not everyone is locked into a rigidly partisan mindset. Secondly if you proclaim you are better, loudly and repeatedly at all times, you have to walk the walk.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats