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