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If you applied the same lack of charity to Donald Trump's poasting that you need to get to "half of the left wing said it was a good thing", then he would be at the business end of a noose. Trump repeatedly shitposts about beating up demonstraters, molesting teenage girls in locker rooms, suspending the Constitution, celebrating political violence against the Pelosis, deporting US citizens, invading NATO countries, and running for a third term. Fundamental to the case for Trump is that this is just shitposting, and Trump's opponents who take it seriously are either dishonest or mentally ill.
"Every premature death is a tragedy, that of Charlie Kirk less than most" is not a belief I hold (I feel more commonality with people doing the work of politics on the other side of the aisle than I do with my own allies who stick to shitposting) but it is one that is entirely compatible with a commitment to democracy, free speech, the rule of law etc. Unlike the Cult of Luigi, I do not see any comparable sympathy for Tyler Robinson, which is what you would expect to see if large numbers of normies did in fact think the murder was a good thing. Essentially everyone on both sides of the aisle's attitude to Robinson is "please let him not be one of ours." What I saw was a lot of shitposting in violation of de mortuiis nil nisi bonum, which is a rule of etiquette and not of law or custom.
Is the claim here that the President of the United States should be held to a lower standard of public decorum than a classroom assistant in Minneapolis, or is it that it is different when it is our guy doing it?
Even more so as I constantly have to point out, there's a difference between professional conduct and private citizen conduct. A government employee shitposting in their private time is way different than shitposting on their official government accounts.
Political leadership, especially the president, is a 24/7 jobs. It's a job so important that it's even in some sense lifelong and we expect (or at least expected) even the former presidents to have some form of decorum about them. Bush takes it ultra seriously, beyond what I even think is necessary, and won't even comment about ongoing issues.
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