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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6400 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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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.

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.

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