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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.
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.
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.
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