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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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How are you comparing this to Charlie Kirk? Charlie Kirk was talking at a college campus and was murdered in cold blood, a "bad shoot" by any definition. You've seen plenty of other comments giving a heck of a lot of reasons that this wasn't cold blooded murder. I'm not in many right wing spaces, but I have only seen one person actually celebrate her death online. Saying that the shoot was fine morally or legally or that they'd shoot in the same scenario is not celebrating. This is not a black-and-white scenario being presented.

Clear cut cases of self defense getting charged in court anyway is always intended as a chilling effect, because there's always a chance that the jury pulls an OJ Simpson and gives a terrible verdict, against all odds. Take a look at @stoatherd's post: what behavior are you trying to change, specifically?

Sorry, I guess that was unclear. I was referring to the whole conversations about some liberals being happy Kirk was dead, or even celebrating. So that example was more about "cheering for death" rather than "claiming immunity". A second, perhaps better example, was how many people seemed to be sad that Trump's assassination didn't work.

However there have been several comments here highly upvoted along the lines of 'that nasty protestor got what's coming to her and agitators are evil for putting her in that situation too' and 'the case is so clear-cut self-defense that we don't need the judicial process'. The behavior I'd like to see changed is less cheering on for one side and less 'revenge makes rules irrelevant'.

More broadly I'm seeing a worrying slide towards a pro-revenge society. You see it on reddit, instagram, tiktok, facebook, everywhere, and on non-political topics too. And I see intellectual apologists here saying with a straight face stuff like this comment.

Your moral compass seems broken.

Charlie Kirk by all accounts was a good man and father. He was murdered sitting on a college campus engaging in debate. His murder was fundamentally an attack on free speech and democracy itself. Better to silence your opponents with murder as opposed to best their arguments.

In contrast, Good wasn’t just some protestor who was shot. She was patently illegally barricading the road to prevent lawful exercise of the police power. She then attempted to flee arrest with reckless disregard for the life of LEO. Indeed, if the car didn’t spin out she almost certainly seriously injured the officer who killed her. She did in fact strike an officer with her car.

She was, in one sense, a low level insurrectionist. She could be compared to Babbit.

Comparing her to Charlie is an insult to Kirk and principles of free speech.

I'll note that @oats_son asked you:

Take a look at @stoatherd's post: what behavior are you trying to change, specifically?

Your answer:

the behavior I'd like to see changed is less cheering on for one side and less 'revenge makes rules irrelevant'.

... you know that's not what my posts contain, right?

Or were you ignoring his question so you could answer a more convenient one? (with the bonus of being able to implicitly micharacterise my posts, so you could later go "sigh, I never explicitly said I was talking about your posts")