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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   24315 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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'His legacy is cringe': how Charlie Kirk became a meme among the young – even his supporters

Audio of the gunshot that killed him has become a TikTok meme, as have ironic reposts of the apparent AI-slop song We Are Charlie Kirk, which was originally created as a posthumous tribute. He was the butt of a crude joke during the Netflix roast of the Hollywood star Kevin Hart in May. The next month, a viral tweet encouraged people to take “a shot” in his honor on Juneteenth. And a trend known as “Kirkification” has emerged, in which internet pranksters superimpose his face on to unlikely images, such as the Mona Lisa, a woman in a bikini, or Jeffrey Epstein.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

“For the first few weeks, the only safe thing to say was praise,” he said. “When you mandate reverence on a medium built for irony [the internet], you don’t freeze the image, you load the spring. A lot of the mockery was that pressure releasing.” Previously, it used to take years for tragedies to become fodder for cynical internet humor (9/11 being one example). With the power of generative artificial intelligence and image-doctoring, however, Kirk was meme-ified in a matter of weeks.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted. Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death. Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted. But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message. Turning Point was always aimed at zoomers, and their verdict is in. There are probably a bunch of them who don't realize Kirk was a real person. And the less said about Erika the better.

As a side note, there are a whole bunch of retarded conspiracy theories around his death, because we can't accept that a guy could just be shot by a lone nut despite multiple videos. Even JD Vance isn't immune.

I wasn't entirely sure Charlie Kirk was a real person or what he really looked like before he died. I was vaguely aware of someone named Charlie Kirk and something called Turning Points, but I had knew nothing about him and had no real opinions on him or his organization.

Then he got shot, and suddenly he was everywhere. Conservatives were passing around hadiths of things Charlie had told them before he died as authoritative statements on any given topic. His name and his face were all over. He was the leader of the future. People were on here saying that his assassination was an effective strike against the Red Tribe because he was irreplaceable.

The whole phenomenon reminds me of nothing so much as when a singer with three top-40 hits in the 80s dies, and suddenly everyone is telling us how they were "the voice of a generation" and "meant so much to so many people." And every radio station is playing her two hits over and over. And it's like, nah bro she was pretty good, but there were a dozen other singers in the 80s on her level, and she was mogged by Madonna throughout her career.

The result of the Charlie mythos being so rapidly built and so thoroughly overshot was that the gap between the myth and the reality created opportunities for humor. This can occur even with a really serious tragedy (9/11, the Holocaust, the Soviet purges), but it's even easier when the gap between the publicity and the tragedy is bigger.

Cyndi Lauper's dead??

j/k

I was actually thinking of Whitney Houston when she died like fifteen years ago, and I remember going to an Abercrombie and Fitch and hearing an A&F techno-dance remix of I Will Always Love You in the dressing room trying on a pair of chinos, and thinking to myself: Jeez suddenly she's everywhere. And joking about with my gf, now Mrs. FiveHour, that you just can't get away from her since her death while I hadn't thought about her at all beforehand, and neither had anyone else in an Abercrombie, teenage customers or teenage staff.

Which is probably a good example of the dynamic in that, on reading her wikipedia, my assessment of Whitney was kinda incorrect, she was a Big Deal when she was big. It just happens that she wasn't big for me, and as such the whole situation struck me as humorous and over-cooked, even though it made perfect sense to the people doing it. For me at 19, it seemed like they were way overdoing their tribute to a mid-tier diva, to boomers who knew her from her peak, it seemed just and fair for The Voice to be so honored. And both things can be true for each of us in our own perspective.

I’d argue Kirk was the most well-known politically-active non-politician for Americans for under-25. If you typed “politics” into tik tok you would see either Kirk, someone trying to dunk on Kirk, or someone criticizing Kirk. All of the other contenders (Hasan, Withers, Nick Fuentes) were responding to something Kirk-related on a weekly or monthly basis. His videos were everywhere.

All I can tell you is that I read two newspapers a day, see probably three or four hours of varied cable news a week thanks to boomer parents, I'm politically active in the local R party, and I'm active on Twitter and here, and I barely knew he existed. It's possible he was this niche icon in my blind spot. But that would still create that contrast I'm pointing to.

I was aware of him as the head of TPUSA and occasional guest on various programs, but ignorant of his popularity and wider body of work.

I remember finding out he had been shot via a text message from a family member, and my immediate reaction after "Oh Fuck" was being surprised that this family member (who has never been particularly political) even knew who he was.

You weren't Kirk's target audience.

A poll of 1030 college students found 94% of college students were aware of Charlie Kirk and that 30% of them engaged with his content at least a few times per month. The guy was popular enough to get a parody of him made in South Park. Why would there be so many people that was absolutely gleeful at his assassination, if he was some nobody?

With the singer comparison, I think it would be relatively easy to point to another artist who is currently more popular with young people. Which politician/activist other than Donald Trump is more popular amongst right leaning young people? Maybe Asmongold, but he's not really a politician or even an activist, more of a streamer/commentator who occasionally says things left leaning people don't like.

I think this is indicative of the gap between young people on the right and the older generation. Kirk may not have been a thought leader creating new ideas for republicans to rally around, but he was certainly very effective at getting their message out to the younger people. Who are the young people listening to now? Kirk's death is clearly a big loss for the Republicans.

Kirk having niche popularity with a subset of the population, but not mainstream notoriety of the type I would be aware of, still creates the cognitive dissonance and room for a punchline I'm talking about, among the subset of the population that wasn't really familiar with him.

If Jalyx Hunt were suddenly in every Gatorade advertisement on TV, and "who the hell is Jalyx Hunt?" became a punchline online, that every serious Eagles fan knows who he is (a beloved local event planner for the city) or that he's actually a pretty underrated edge rusher doesn't alter the situation for people who have no idea who he is beforehand.

Lol. The satire is how you know it's working.

Humour is a coping mechanism. The medievals had an entire holiday dedicated to making fun of the church(it's evolved into mardi gras). Even the schizoid Candace Owens acid trips about Egypt and a french hit squad wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a recognition of the cultus of Charlie Kirk. His faction won and that's why people make fun of it. The Byzantine emperors developed a tradition of accepting mockery of themselves to show they were too important to be bothered. That's what we're seeing.

"His faction won"?

I wouldn't say that Kirk's faction has "won" but I do believe they have the momentum

Zoomer humor might have done it eventually anyway, but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst. The ridiculous over the top cringeposting (such as people going like "this means war!") was not serious behavior. It was the behavior of people more obsessed with signaling how Cool and Brave they were to their audiences and like-minded peers. Throw in the conspiracy theories claiming that some trans witch coven, or Israel, or whatever other nonsense besides the literal guy who is on camera in the area who used his own family's gun and admitted to it to people in his life shortly afterwards, and how was it not going to become a joke?

If you act like a fool, people treat you like one. The reaction was ridiculously over the top, and that engineered its own mockery. They tried to force a martyr but that doesn't work easily when you're in a personal responsibility country and the lone wolf culprit is quickly caught and brought to justice. You can't form a meaningful protest or statement against anything, the killer was arrested the second he was found! There's no ongoing injustice to sustain anger against, unless of course you make shit up.

The only reason George Floyd worked even a little is because police are a government organization so blaming it on "policing" as a whole is reasonable in the minds of ordinary idiot citizens who don't actually understand how government works and that police departments in the US are highly compartmentalized from each other. And even that response was so large because COVID, people were bored and wanted something to do. You can't do a COVID era campaign in a non COVID time.

And as history has shown us, this was cringe. Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens, and even as you pointed out Vance himself) couldn't help themselves from being cringe. That's why we got incredible jokes like this.

Just to add finally, this was pretty much unpreventable. The right wing media atmosphere now is tuned to making outrage slop, and pivoting on a dime to being serious is just not happening. Internet pundits can't take his death seriously, because the slop machine is on full throttle.

  • -15

"Aura" might be my favourite word in zoomer lingo, I can't think of a non or pre-zoomer equivalent. Aura dramatically shapes hagiographies.

When a high profile target is killed by an underdog striking against overwhelming power, the killer earns significant aura bonus for themselves and their cause. David striking down Goliath was a heroic act of resistance. The power asymmetry makes the killer look righteous.

On the flip side, when the assassin is understood to be the more powerful or unprincipled actor - like blood soaked royals murdering dissidents - that creates a martyr narrative for the victim's side and makes the killer look like a coward. Maybe blaming Israel raises his martyr standing, the insinuation being that he was especially threatening to ZOG world order. And painting George Floyd as an example of systemic oppression harkens back to civil rights era resistance narratives.

But the resistance narratives don't work in either case. Charlie Kirk's killing is pattern-matched to his final act of defending 2A at a college campus, add to the fact his killer seems to be a schizo with murky motives. Tragic, certainly. But heroic? Not really. Re Floyd, the resistance narrative cannot hold up when it was your (not YOUR "your") side rioting and burning small businesses for an entire summer, and cancelling people left and right with the entire media ecosystem defending your behaviour. I do agree that the memeing was organic in both cases though.

Incredibly cringe. His death is a meme because even his fans and allies (looking especially at those like Tucker Carlson claiming Israel killed him at the funeral, Candace Owens...

This maybe one of the most egregious examples of outgroup homogeneity bias I've seen in a while.

Yes, Candace Owens joined TPUSA claiming to have renounced her woke ways in 2017, but then she attempted a hostile take-over of the organization in 2024, got kicked out as a result, and seems to have been nursing a personal vendetta against Kirk's wife Erika ever since.

Meanwhile, Carlson and Hanania were only ever "allies" of Kirk in the sense that they were all ostensibly Republicans, A a party that both have been working to distance themselves from for some time now.

Your standards seem ridiculously high if "former employee of 7 years with such a clear crush that people gossip about it" and "guy who literally spoke at Kirk's own funeral alongside the president" somehow don't count.

At that point who does?

If a scorned woman nursing a personal vendetta against the man and his family is your idea of an "ally", you have no standards at all.

If a scorned woman nursing a personal vendetta against the man and his family is your idea of an "ally", you have no standards at all.

They were close before he died, she literally worked at his company for 7 years and only left a year before his death. They frequently appeared together. They were so close that again, people gossiped about whether or not they had an affair.

And I'd also like to point out once more that Tucker Carlson, the other example, spoke at Kirk's funeral. He was considered especially important, near par to the president given that they were both guest speakers. So even if you want to say Owens should not count because blah blah blah, Carlson definitely does. If he wasn't considered an ally, why was he there?

she literally worked at his company for 7 years and only left a year before his death

Yes I know, I adressed that in my prior comment.

Sigh. Look man, modhat off.

You're getting reported a lot, of course, but none of your posts are really rule-breaking, they are just... obnoxious. Because you're doing this schtick where "no one actually celebrated Charlie Kirk's death" (yes they fucking did) and the left wing media atmosphere is definitely as tuned to outrage slop as the right wing one. I don't think you are a troll or a Darwin alt, but you generally do not post good or interesting thoughts, just very weak equivocations. As someone who's been accused of that myself because of my squishy liberal sensibilities (now decaying like a gangrenous sore), what offends me about your posturing it that it often seems fundamentally disingenuous and I don't trust that you are being entirely sincere and not just trying to farm outraged responses yourself.

I am aware a lot of the celebratory posts about Charlie Kirk getting shot were obtained by skimming the worst people on X and reddit, which is always a goldmine of really bad takes if you're trying to assemble a wall of Chinese Robber mugshots, LibsOfTikTok style. But in my own social media orbit (i.e., people I know), I saw a lot of takes along the lines of "Well, murder is bad, but he did cause harm to marginalized people..." Or a smirking repost of his quote about how the 2A was worth a few dead children.

Do I personally know people who would outright celebrate an assassination? Noo... but a whole lot who would "read the news with pleasure."

I think this is bad and cause for worry and it's why I tend to put a boot on "fedposting," even if @gattsuru thinks I am overzealous about it. People who celebrate death, who advocate murder, who think it's funny when someone on the "other side" dies, who want violence, are bad people.

Being happy that someone ended up dead is fundamentally different than supporting their death. Everyone here must understand that distinction, else Trump's comments on Mueller would be more than enough evidence to condemn "the right wing" on this.

Someone I want dead would be like, Putin. I've said before I hope Ukraine wins enough they can drone strike him or give him death sentence or something. Someone I would not care if they died and maybe even be a little cheerful for but don't support their death for would be like, Logan Paul.

  • -10

You believe that Putin is some sort of magical villain that killing him solves everything? There is some chance that that would give result like you want, but there also is the chance that Russia will get more competent leader, or the chance that it will eventually lead to nukes flying, that would damage your well-being.

It's just a matter of Russell conjugation.

There are many people I dislike and would not be sorry to see go. I personally consider it gauche to celebrate death, even someone like Putin or the Ayatollah, though I certainly wouldn't be sad about them. But first of all, wartime deaths are fundamentally different. Second, I'm talking about people who are happy to say they think someone deserves to die for being on the "wrong" side politically. Or even openly advocating for violence.

but the right wing reaction to his death was definitely a major catalyst

I think this is just cope -- the left would have taken any reaction from conservatives as justification to mock Kirk's death. There really isn't some noble pro-modesty faction that would have been nice and respectful, if only the reaction hadn't been so bad. Conservatives pounce! We can just admit that a lot of leftists are glad Charlie died, because they said so, that was what started this thing in the first place.

Your argument in fact falls down by simply noting that a lot of liberals were cheering Charlie's death or going even further and cheering for more deaths of more conservatives. Come on, we all remember it.

This would be far more convincing of an argument if the only people making Kirk jokes were the left. But I know and have seen many people who aren't particularly political who have made jokes about him, in the same way I know plenty of people who aren't particularly political that talk about "goyslop". NYT even wrote an article on how it's just become zoomer slang. It's not just the anti Israel people making that joke, it's tons of normies who find it funny.

Unless all the kids these days are hardened antifa supersoldiers, there's gotta be another explanation for why so many normies have made and shared silly Kirk memes and that explanation is that they're shitposters who make fun of cringe and take on funny memes. And when you act cringy and don't behave seriously, you invite the shitposting.

  • -11

There's a big difference between post-ironic edgelord jokes about Kirkenator and lowkirkenuinely (which even the right enjoys) and leftists saying that they're glad Charlie died he deserved it. Conflating the two is part of the gaslighting.

Honestly Agartha Charlie Kirk is more entertaining and a better argument than anything else I could say here.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DBjL9xOuHyY

I grew up in Arizona. It upset a lot of people and was really, really gruesome. Edgy hasan orbiters were outright gleeful about it right after. I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass, but a lot of the ‘martyrdom’ was coming from ‘why exactly was a somewhat edgy college debater murdered?’ and ‘why are people snidely saying he deserved to be murdered?’

I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view. I don’t get seeing a public figure get murdered and thinking it’s odd people try to find good things to say about them.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes. This is part of why Kirk cringe snowballed, because getting upset at the youth's memes just make them meme harder.

It also makes 0 difference whether it was a lone wolf. You seem to forget that this was less than a year after the attempted assassination of Trump. There was a real feeling that a cycle of violence was beginning. Thankfully that did not come to pass,

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

  • -18

People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap.

No, not all sorts. What you're describing hasn't been believable for over a decade.

Enlightened centrist hat on: Leftists are hypocrites about this, but so are pearl clutching rightists when the dark humor is about Kirk and not minorities. Everyone has their sacred cows.

Ok, but don't tell me then it's just "le edgy zoomer humor" when you know an analogous joke from the other side will get you banned from any mainstream platform that is not Twitter in, like, 5 seconds.

George Droyd and such are still freely available on tiktok/youtube/insta.

People are literally spamming the N-word all over Instagram Reels. I think the userbase of The Motte is just too old, and their feeds aren't serving them all the edgy vertical videos that Gen Z and Alpha are consuming. Naturally, they end up with their pearls clutched and panties in a twist over fucking memes.

It's so believable that dark humor jokes exist that this video is from even more than a decade ago. The internet making fun of your sacred cows is not some new phenomenon and wanting to be immune to it is again, just another form of cringe.

I'm saying dark humor, at least a certain political flavor of it, has become haram somewhere in the 2010's, so you finding an old video of an instance of dark humor that is not offensive to the side that declares things haram proves... what exactly?

Anyway, FFC pretty much proved your "tee he, it's just edgy jokes" facade is just an act.

Oh if you're saying the opposite and that dark humor isn't allowed anymore, then you're even more wrong. I see plenty of 9/11 jokes to this day, I see people constantly joking about suicide and self harm, and remember this whole thread is about how kids are joking about Kirk.

Or let's say, Epstein! Endless jokes about him, and he raped a bunch of children. I simply can't take the claim that dark humor isn't allowed anymore when Five Nights at Epstein's is a real game.

Oh if you're saying the opposite and that dark humor isn't allowed anymore, then you're even more wrong. I see plenty of 9/11 jokes

Or let's say, Epstein!

Like I said: "no, not all sorts". There used to be period on the internet where you could run wild with all sorts of offensive humor, but it's long gone, and I don't know who you think you're fooling by saying we're still in it.

More comments

Plus making fun of sacred topics like Trans Suicides gets a totally different reaction from the Left

There's a pretty big difference between joking about something dark to be edgy, and joking about something dark because you well and truly celebrate it.

Part of what made people joke about 9/11 is the fact that there is such a widespread consensus that the speaker knows the listener will probably not interpret them as actually feeling good about the tragedy. Comedy is about breaking expectations, not reinforcing them. If you interrogated the average 9/11 joke-sayer about how they feel about the gruesome details, they would most certainly admit that it was awful. That's why it's funny when such a person will spin a bit of dark comedy out of the situation.

What makes Charlie Kirk's assassination incomparable is that the reaction was open celebration. Leftists joking about Charlie Kirk is less like Americans making a 9/11 joke, and more like if an Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist did so. Such a person is clearly not advancing black comedy, it's just somebody who dehumanizes his opposition celebrating bloodshed. That's the same as what you're effectively defending.

Or do you think chuds joking about "41% of trannies commit suicide" as they celebrate a bridge where a specific 14 year old transgender girl jumped off are exactly the same as random black comedy too?

You come off like you're running cover more than anything else, denying that such ugliness can possibly exist, driving a false equivalence narrative to argue that it's silly to call it out. Comparing this to generic dark humor is convenient to mask the actual, very real hatred.

None of the jokes or memes I’ve seen have been from perspective of ‘Charlie deserved it’, just usual bizarre post ironic references, so I don’t really get what you’re saying. The whole problem people had was with the initial jubilant reaction towards the actual act of violence and people earnestly saying he deserved it.

The only stuff I’ve ever seen people get mad about is mean spirited stuff where people do a finger gun to their neck and intimate that some person deserves what happened to him.

Yeah and that's old fart behavior. People joke about 9/11, and suicides, and all sorts of other dark crap. Wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe and invites even more jokes.

An interesting position.

Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity....

Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat.

Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day[.] Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this[.] “I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,” In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.

Damn, check that out, a whole additional post and extensive comment thread where you very much seem to be attempting to frame this as a really serious, chronic problem that demands action! Can you point out any place in either of these posts or the subsequent threads where your critique of "old fart behavior" or "wanting to be immune to it is another form of cringe" impinges on your analysis?

Let us speak plainly. I don't think you actually believe anything you write here. You are a committed Blue Tribe partisan, and in each post you say whatever you think will advance your short-term partisan interests in the immediate context, with zero concern for any sort of long-term principle or consistency. You will (and have!) argued in favor of free speech when you perceived free speech to be of benefit to you, and you will (and have!) argued for censorship when censorship is of benefit to you. If you have anything recognizable as actual principles, I do not believe you have ever shared them here; certainly I do not believe that I have seen them.

Now to be very clear, I do not think you are breaking the rules by behaving this way, and as far as I am concerned you are perfectly free to continue as long as it pleases you. This place is for arguments, and you certainly bring arguments. To the extent that your pattern of argumentation is viewed as obnoxious by others, I encourage them to simply remember the things you have said, and repeat them back to you, and those who agree with you, when the moment becomes opportune. As an example, I think it is pretty likely that Blue Tribe is going to, at some point in the next few years, start experiencing what it's like to be on the receiving end of actual, motivated, grassroots political murder. And when that happens, and when Blues here discuss how prominent members of their tribe being publicly murdered worries them, I am going to quote them this line right here:

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

...along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?

I think accusing Magicalkittycat of having beliefs in an overreach. Fairly high confidence it's just a work of contrarian performance art moreso than actually occupying any particular part of the political spectrum

Fairly high confidence it's just a work of contrarian performance art moreso than actually occupying any particular part of the political spectrum

If anything that seems like more of a reason to cast him into to the shadow realm rather than less.

Send me a few links to where he did that to liberals or progressives, and I might buy that. Niche independent online fora are weird place to do "contrarianism".

Shit, that doesn't seem very consistent. Reading this thread, it seems like you think people "joking" about "dark shit" is a very serious problem, sufficient to make a long and highly-uncharitably framed post about it, provided it's your outgroup in the hotseat

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

I would never accept this sort of dark humor from an employee, regardless of their age, while at work and in work related groups. They can do what they want in their own time, but they're getting talked to if they joked about 9/11 or Kirk on a work email. That is unacceptable. Kids making humorous Nazi memes is one thing vs professionals in a work related chat, they are different categories and I suspect you must work at a very low level position where no one takes your business communications seriously if you don't grasp this concept. If I had a 30 year old just start talking about their love for Hitler at work, no matter how levels of irony shitposting they want to claim they're being, they're gonna be written up if not fired.

Correct, the feeling was bullshit. It was a real feeling but that's because people are paranoid idiots.

along with a bouquet of similar quotes from your previous posts. And why shouldn't I? These are the arguments you choose to make, and the other Blues here choose to accept, are they not?

Oh no, you're going to correctly respond that worries over random lone wolf nutjob violence are hyperbolic, I'm so scared.

  • -16

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

Which of these are people getting "canceled" over in regards to Charlie Kirk?

Do you not understand the difference between teenagers shitposting on casual discord chats and on tiktok vs professionals posting in work related chats?

There were lots of professionals posting under their real names that they were glad Charlie Kirk was killed. And Young Republicans signal group is not a work-related chat.

There were lots of professionals posting under their real names

"Under their real name" is not the distinction unless you're like mid level management or more typically, above really. I personally wouldn't care if a fry cook is posting edgy memes on their own Facebook, just don't do it at work and don't share it on slack.

But some people do, and lots of them got fired as was their employer's right (if they were private sector).

And Young Republicans signal group is not a work-related chat.

Sure seems like it was given the number of higher up officials in the organization (and even including some politicians from my understanding?) in the group chat. It doesn't seem to be like fry cook John and night shift Henry share shit posts with each other on discord tier chatting, it seems to be something for the organization proper. That's the sort of thing I would fire many employees for, if they were sharing their edgy memes in "the company I work for" group chat that included the CEO and clients.

  • -16

I think it’s a lot more ‘cringy’ to make memes about a widow trying to carry on in public life after her husband gets murdered in plain view.

I'd also mention that in other similar situations the normie woke-adjacent line of thought is usually that people mourn in all sorts of different ways, you don't know what they're going through, it's petty and cruel to openly mock and criticize their attitude etc.

If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him. Right-wing George Floyd 'I can't breathe' memes are scrubbed off the internet, while Kirkist mockery stays online because of leftist bloodthirstiness.

Tu quoque?

If the BLM riots didn't discredit George Floyd, then it's farcical to say that the circus of Kirk's death discredits him.

"Discredit" is the wrong word entirely. Kirk has not been discredited by being turned into a meme, people still widely think it was wrong to kill him (as you can see by the fact his alleged killer is on trial and likely to be sentenced).

BLM was a largely serious reaction by people who mostly took themselves seriously. The Kirk aftermath was silly and hyperbolic by people who didn't even believe in their own words. People like LOTT or Steve Bannon saying "this is war" are not serious. They did not and have not picked up arms or done serious protests (of what exactly anyway? Robinson was caught). They claim war, and yet do nothing. They do not mean what they say.

This goes up to the highest levels even. When we have JD Vance searching for conspiracies to believe in, and guests at Kirk's own funeral making it into a joke, how is anyone else supposed to treat it seriously?

  • -17

BLM was a largely serious reaction

lol it was a scam artist buffet and a free for all for violent morons.

they definitely took themselves too seriously, though.

Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it. (The other says its a bad thing, but also deplores what he said, thus negating the virtue of the first.) Virtuous centrists are a rounding error.

Maybe you are sincere. But there are certainly players that are not, and I am tired of listening to the snide and back-biting commentary of the partisans of the other side. You take it seriously because a man is dead because he was killed for speech, a right that he had every freedom to exercise. Nothing can diminish that, although you've certainly tried.

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.

Anyone who seriously thinks low level small town government employee posting on their private accounts should be held to higher standards of etiquette than the president on his official accounts used for serious announcements has the world flipped on its head.

Wildly? Half of the left wing said it was a good thing, and that he deserves it.

Comments celebrating his death were actually quite uncommon. They were so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that was being passed around had to cast a web so wide for a decently sized list that it includes people saying things like I hope there isn't more violence in response, dark humor jokes, and comments literally saying it was awful he got shot. That's how far the digging had to go, it includes people who literally said it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk and think it's hypocritical to care about him but not dead children. Outside of the generic internet edgelords who say edgy things about everything, there wasn't really much actual pro violence talk, and we can't take the edgy shitposters seriously given that they're edgy shitposters.

Of course if you choose to cast a ridiculously wide net of nonsense, you get a lot of fish. But most of them were not what was actually looked for. If you actually look at what political leaders were saying, anti violence was the general rhetoric from the left.

  • -17

There wasn't much "more please", although there's some nuance there because most of the fully-mindkilled ones were in full denial and claiming the murderer was a fascist (also, most people aren't risk-tolerant enough to endorse terrorism in public, though Destiny arguably was). There was a fair amount of celebration, though, including that newsroom whose backstage got caught cheering in a broadcast. I would count some of the jokes (though not all) as celebration (including e.g. this) - I mean, telling jokes is one of the main ways you celebrate in a text format where you can't organically cheer/clap/laugh/hug/fist-pump.

"Half" is an exaggeration, though, and I agree the actual Democratic Party leadership condemned the shooting.

Come on. You're doing the thing that every edgy leftist is doing, and pretending that their not-so-subtle mockery wasn't concealing their glee at getting him. It does not convince, no more than 'in minecraft' is a defense against conspiracy. No comedian ever went on television and said that George Floyd was probably killed by a commie, and certainly no con was going around saying he deserved to die because he punched a pregnant woman (which is something he actually did.)

And yet, Kirk's assassination is deemed his own fault because of some amorphous harm to leftist causes, or something.

I'm not stupid. I can see the winks and the smiles. Your argument is unconvincing and insults the intelligence of anyone credulous enough to extend you the benefit of the doubt. The people who called him a Nazi have blood on their hands. People who use that word to rile up extremists to kill their political opposition have blood on their hands. If this isn't stoastic terrorism, it is at the very least 'turbulent priest' levels of wishcasting.

It is not too far to suggest that you have some infinitesimal part of his blood on your hands.

Come on. You're doing the thing that every edgy leftist is doing, and pretending that their not-so-subtle mockery wasn't concealing their glee at getting him

"If I substitute what you're saying with this imaginary thing you didn't say, it's just like you said the imaginary thing"

Yeah I guess so.

The people who called him a Nazi have blood on their hands.

Damn, not only are words dangerous they can kill too?

If this isn't stoastic terrorism, it is at the very least 'turbulent priest' levels of wishcasting.

Not a thing. It's never been a thing. You can tell because it's a modern invention for something that if it was real, should have been an established concept already. It's what gets said when people can't claim incitement (a legal term with actual standards) but still wanna whine about name calling or insults.

  • -18

Damn, not only are words dangerous they can kill too?

You say this sarcastically, but there are contexts where yes, the full moral responsibility of murder attaches for words. Ordering a minion (or, I suppose, a machine that takes text/voice input) to kill is generally considered murder or something that amounts to it (absent the usual affirmative defences).

I don't think that calling Kirk a Nazi is one of those contexts - though one can argue whether it's culpable to a lesser degree, as e.g. slander/libel - but you're overreaching here.

More comments

If you can't see that the memes about Kirk postmortem come from the desire to rile up the genuinely aggrieved right - that you stubbornly insist that the fig leaf is an burka - then there's no point to arguing with you. We simply don't share the same reality. You may skirt the rules of the Motte in doing what you're doing, but I refuse to let you bait me any further. Even if I did write a well-written, precisely worded argument, you'd just duck out and say that you didn't have time in your busy life to respond.

I'll merely reiterate what FCfromSSC said already, and add on: it's easy to win arguments when you run around the field with the goalposts. Or, in other words, you have already contradicted your past positions, and it's hard to see if you have any principles whatsover.

More comments

Even George Droyd has been banned off most major platforms, including X. It's less about bloodthirstiness and more about who controls the censorship apparatus. Some left-wing employee at YouTube or Meta is the one deciding which accounts get pulled for "harmful content" and which are allowed to continue existing as permitted political expression.

What's the last update you heard in the news about Goode or Pretti? Or is the slop diagnosis something that's only goes on direction, or only means something one direction?

The white sheet set made a lot of dank may-mays about Dr. King’s untimely passing too. Twenty years later they were bankrupt, universally hated even in their home towns, and their leader was popping and sizzling in the electric chair.

There were also people who thought there was more to King's murder than it seems, even still to this day.

Including most of the King family themselves. They even visited James Earl Ray in prison and tried to help him get a new trial because they believe he was innocent.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

Not only random shitposters, but even the most serious esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist who at the time correctly disavowed all conspiracy theories and called it what it was, act of self radicalized lone wolf, predicted this event to be the turning point, end of debate.

America will not have a Years of Lead moment as the age of armed ideological cells is over. Contrary to popular opinion, organizations like Ordine Nuovo and Le Brigate Rosse were not wholly created by intelligence services but were ALLOWED to operate by intelligence services and/or political backers at the vertices of state power. It is the blind eye that facilitates groups like this, even more so in the age of mass surveillance. Kash Patel is not going to allow armed right-wing extremist groups to operate with impunity; nobody in the GOP is ballsy enough to allow an American NAR. Antifa is allowed to operate when the DNC is in power because Democrats ALLOW them to. Having Lumpenproletariat foot soldiers deployed to punish your enemies is rational. Killing Charlie Kirk while they are not even in power is not.

Instead, the age of American political violence will be lone gunmen blowing someone’s head off on camera every couple of weeks.

Well, 10 months after, even this did not happened, no copycats so far on any side.

There just aren't so many people willing to sacrifice their lives who are so functional they can track single even moderately protected target (instead of random indiscriminate massacre).

It all turned out to be one big nothingburger. Is current situation still far from revolutionary conditions, or modern culture of circus and spectacle just lacks the seriousness necessary to create martyrs?

even the most serious esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist

I'ma let you finish, but E. Michael Jones is the greatest esoteric Catholic fascist conspiracy theorist OF ALL TIME.

or modern culture of circus and spectacle just lacks the seriousness necessary to create martyrs?

What about George Floyd though?

Only existed as a martyr for a few months (and what months!) of astroturfing and now the butt of a recurring joke about how absurd it is to see world events through the prism of a lowlife fent addict.

He got a literal golden casket, but nobody actually looks up to Floyd in any way, nor did any lasting social change occur in his name. BLM took the money and ran, people clamored back for the police once it was gone, and all that remains is a landmark of peak woke.

Kirk is, ironically, the butt of a similar joke despite his death being inherently political (as opposed to an instrumented banality) which is why I think OP is right and martyrdom cannot survive in the postironic memetic condition. If Primo de Rivera died today, people would be making sneed edits within minutes.

He got a literal golden casket, but nobody actually looks up to Floyd in any way, nor did any lasting social change occur in his name. BLM took the money and ran, people clamored back for the police once it was gone, and all that remains is a landmark of peak woke.

Nah, peak woke is this.

Far more inspiring than St. Floyd festivities and with universal worldwide appeal.

And it is still open whether it is really over, or if it will return after Trump with vengeance.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

After the 2020 election, it became crystal clear to me that 99% of the grumblings about civil war are not serious. Something like half of Republicans claim to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Republicans are a heavily armed demographic. Yet there were almost no violent incidents in response to the supposed election theft.

The violence-promoting subset of the left is equally unserious. Hence the famous Twitter post: "People on twitter will really be like 'you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart' and then not firebomb a Walmart."" Yes, there are occasional incidents of left-wing violence, but given how many people there are in the US and how easy it is to get guns in the US, these incidents are actually extremely uncommon.

Which is not to say that civil war or uprising is impossible, but it gives one a sense for how away we probably are from it that even a widespread belief or professed belief that the election was literally stolen from millions of people's preferred Presidential candidate led to almost no violence.

The Right does not know how to do martyrdom culture. It’s sad because Kirk could have been a great conservative martyr. But we just don’t know how, apparently. We lost the technology. The, the spirit of a martyr should be carried through reverent rituals and heart-moving music. They tried to carry it with pyrotechnic displays, a colorful widow in too much makeup, really silly events, etc. Just terrible. Tasteless and senseless. You needed a song like Horst Wessel Lied that could be sung in a mass gathering under reddish hued lighting. You needed dedicated photographers to only present the experiences in the most powerful frame. You needed to associate his death with weeping women. George Floyd was effectively martyrized because the Public consumed his image intermediated by emotional actors (TV anchors), saddened women replaying his death, and cool people telling you to join them in a march. But the Left immediately de-martyred him through a face-swapping meme and the intentionally humorous “we are Charlie Kirk” anthem. Just plain social engineering that the right can’t compete with.

Horst Wessel was killed by members of an organised Communist paramilitary. That is an easy martyrdom story (although Christianity doesn't count soldiers who die due to enemy action as martyrs, so by the Christian rules he wasn't one).

The Republicans failed to make the martyrdom thing work because they didn't convince anyone outside their own filter bubble that Kirk was a victim of organised left-wing political violence. It isn't clear to me whether this is because he obviously wasn't, or if it is because they overreached in the aftermath of his death by trying to claim that school librarians and HR ladies shitposting was political violence.

Robinson was part of a leftist community online, which is why his bullet had the words “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao” on it. I’m sure more information on this will come out after or during the trial. Christians do consider soldiers martyrs, depending on the cause. Also denomination dependent. There are many cases of American martyrs whose stories are just completely made up, like Matthew Shepherd who died from a meth-related incident.

There are many cases of American martyrs whose stories are just completely made up, like Matthew Shepherd who died from a meth-related incident.

I think made-up martyr stories are a lot older than that...

It's undoubtedly more accurate to say that he was a victim of a self-radicalizing cultural milieu that normalizes leftist political executions.

Are you specifically talking about the current American (Republican) Right?

The Right of the entire West, it seems.

You needed to associate his death with weeping women.

Okay, I know what you mean there, but that was the

colorful widow in too much makeup,

it's just that the other side proceeded to vice-signal it away by reveling in it and vilifying her, what you're calling "de-martyring" him.

Widows should wear black and take on the role of a victim, but she wore a white girlboss suit and presented herself as a new leader. This is not the liberal’s doing, it was just a tasteless and irresponsible choice. Also, the addition of conscious artifice to mourning is old. Like ancient Babylon and Old Testament old, where the family of the deceased would hire ritual female weepers. The problem is not so much that Erika was artificial as that her artifice was tasteless. Not to blame someone going through the worst event of her life, but her team should have stepped in and commanded her what to do.

I think this is part of a wider pattern. In a world where political violence is not, in fact, acceptable (very much including the one we live in), a ghoulish but rational response to your own ally being assassinated is "Excellent - this is a huge pile of free political capital. Let's celebrate." Letting on in public that this is how you feel means you lose the free political capital you were hoping to celebrate. Erika Kirk's behaviour makes perfect sense if she is rushing to capitalise on the political capital of her husband's death while it is still fresh, which she was. And she wasn't the only Republican who very visibly saw the assassination of Kirk as more of an opportunity than a tragedy.

I have to wonder if they were looking at the numbers in the background and felt they had to find a new anchor ASAP to keep people in their jobs.

I don't think it would have mattered. More than one appearance sobbing would have gotten a similar reaction. Kirk's murder was just too much. And, in a partisan environment, that actually means people are less likely to back down. Backing down on the dehumanizing rhetoric and mockery implies you have something to be guilty for and nobody wants to pull on that thread, especially if it means rounds of right wing cancel culture.

  • The Guardian is a leftist/progressive word-product-extruder. They have a credible claim neither to pop-culture insight nor to journalistic credibility. Like many nozzles studding the meta-Blue-Tribe superstructure, they say what they feel will be convenient to be seen saying at this moment in time. They arrived at simulacrum-4 many years ago, and are unlikely to ever leave.

  • It is not in the perceived interest of anyone involved in the extrusion of this particular word-product that Charlie Kirk be perceived as anything but a joke. It is not in their interest for people to take Progressive political murders seriously. It is not in their interest for people to take broad-based, grass-roots support for political murders of sympathetic victims seriously. Thus, it is important to them that the victim not be perceived as sympathetic. Unfortunately, a lot of people took both Kirk's murder and the obvious, undeniable and very widespread support for his murder quite seriously, and so this is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

  • The memeing of Kirk is the desired outcome of those managing this particular extrusion. They are not impartially reporting a fact of interest, they are selectively reporting whatever facts or slogans seem to make their desired end-state more probable.

The above three points cover the large majority of what it seems to me is useful to say about the article itself.

It is gratifying, though unsurprising, that Kirk's death did not kick off a wave of revenge killings and mass violence, as fedposters fervently predicted.

Yet! Growth mindset. On the other hand, his death did, I think, have a permanent and in my view highly salutory effect on intra-right wing discourse, creating large amounts of useful common knowledge within Red Tribe that move the conversation forward in a useful way.

Regardless of what the Guardian's experts say, it was reasonable to deploy cancel culture against the most gleeful celebrators of Kirk's death.

Agreed. And yet, consensus on this point could not be achieved within our society, and common knowledge on that point likewise was generated within Blue Tribe. When the shoe is on the other foot, you are going to see large portions of Red Tribe responding to mirrored demands for unity against hate responding with quotes from prominent Blues from the Kirk aftermath, and flat rejection of the "unity" frame. If you would like an example of this process in action, check the discourse over the recent anti-immigrant riots in Ireland. Social cohesion is not an unlimited resource, and things like this are how it goes away.

Killing people you disagree with in a democracy is bad, and celebrating it shouldn't be accepted.

It kind of was though, wasn't it?

But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy and now his legacy is incomprehensible memes that have nothing to do with his life or message.

Another way to frame this is that the right called on the ancient bonds of brotherhood and unity, and the reply was a brief period of initial, halfhearted opprobrium quickly transitioning into complaints about how these appeals to bedrock principles of social comity were all just "going too far".

Blue Tribe had no interest in allowing Charlie Kirk a legacy before his death, and they certainly have no interest in allowing him one after his death. Obviously, it is in their interest if Charlie Kirk's legacy is as a ridiculous meme, and to the extent that anyone anywhere is treating him this way, they will report it, and to the extent anyone anywhere takes him and his death seriously, they will either mock them or ignore them as seems most immediately advantageous. That is not my understanding of Kirk's legacy, nor the understanding of other Reds I encounter. I have no reason to prefer your interpretation to mine, nor to believe their interpretation is more accurate than mine. As for the youtube-slop video... I do not think your or the Guardian's read on such portents is accurate.

On the other hand, his death did, I think, have a permanent and in my view highly salutory effect on intra-right wing discourse, creating large amounts of useful common knowledge within Red Tribe that move the conversation forward in a useful way.

Can you please make this more explicit? Specifically, what common knowledge was established and how things have moved forward? Because from where I stood, it seemed like the Right squandered a generational opportunity to actually root out the violence-promoters on the left, instead deciding to flounder and squabble thanks in part to conspiratorial nonsense peddled by people like Candace Owens.

I'm guessing...

  1. normal and sane people on the left will celebrate assassinations of right-wingers, and are mainly just too cowardly to do it themselves
  2. normal and sane people (like Robinson) can sometimes assassinate right-wingers

There might be some arguments about #2 but I imagine they come down to question-begging: defining assassination as abnormal and insane.

Can you please make this more explicit?

Blue Tribe is incapable of coordinating meaningful control over their partisans' support for lawless political murder of the outgroup, and as a consequence popular support for lawless political murders against perceived Reds will continue to grow within the Blue Tribe grassroots and leadership for the foreseeable future. This has obvious consequences for Red Tribe strategy for cooperation/conflict with Blue Tribe: cooperation is foolish, serious conflict is likely, and those who wish to avoid it must provide a plan that actually solves this general class of problem.

Sam Hyde's description of the basic situation:

"When we win, do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it's funny."

...is more strongly supported by the available evidence than it was prior to Kirk's death. By contrast, normie and grill-pilled assessments generally have a much harder time maintaining credibility because the flow of evidence is so strongly against them, not least because normie and grill-pill arguments had already ceded so much moral authority to the liberal establishment. It's much harder to argue that it's just people saying stuff and none of it matters when so much of our collective political capital has been so obsessively invested into things people saying really, really mattering. This is a manifestation of the wrench, and I perceive the wrench to be very much to Red Tribe's advantage.

Because from where I stood, it seemed like the Right squandered a generational opportunity to actually root out the violence-promoters on the left, instead deciding to flounder and squabble thanks in part to conspiratorial nonsense peddled by people like Candace Owens.

What would this "generational opportunity" actually look like, in terms of policy? What should the Right have done, specifically? Regarding Candace Owens specifically, what should have been done?

Why do you think such a generational opportunity existed? It's not like a local version of Pinochet or Franco is in power.

Because the republican party controlled the presidency, congress, and senate.

EDIT: And because while Kirk was a bit of a "debate me" and a bit of a meme, he was also apparently quite an important node in the right's network and much more relatable to normies than someone like Fuentes. The fact that he was a node should have led to a vigorous prosecution of not only the shooter, but the environment that radicalized him; and the fact that he was so relatable to nromies would have given them much broader license to do so.

Is your argument that violence-promoters on the Right are successfully rooted out by strictly enforcing laws against them, so if the same is done with the violence-promoters on the Left then the same result can be achieved?

I don't have a complete answer, but something like that. One alternative example, because I've been too busy to give this the thorough thought your question warrants (sorry): the attack on Kirk, and the failed attempts on Trump's life, seemed to me to come from individuals radicalized by constant fever-pitch online rhetoric, exactly the sort of "stochastic terrorism" the left has been complaining about for several years. So either we agree to call stochastic terrorism terrorism and say that nobody's allowed to use it (a view that's probably incompatible with the First Amendment) or get both sides to put that particular club away (instead of only allowing left to use it against the right). And, regardless of that, having feds in the Discord groups etc where these people are radicalized into action is probably worth doing.

Your "verdict" link is broken because you forgot to include the "https://" part at the beginning.

Given that I have spent the last hour or so reading the trial coverage and have also been quite public about how Charlie Kirk's murder, or more accurately some of the reactions I observed on this forum motivated me to spin up this account after over a year of mostly lurking, I suppose I should weigh in.

I didn't know Charlie, but I know people who did, and by all accounts he was a stand up guy if a bit of a dweeb. I suppose being seen as a dweeb is just the price of being earnest in this day and age. I regret to say that i had largely written him off as just another talking head and TPUSA as just another PAC didn't really become aware of how popular he was until after his death

As for the idea that "His legacy is cringe". What does "cringe" even mean in this context? That he's a meme? As @OliveTapenade observes, Charlie spent the better portion of a decade being a meme before he was killed. When people say that "his legacy is cringe" are they saying that they find his legacy overly servile? (Somehow I think that he may have found that amusing) Or are they saying that they find his legacy disgusting, something to be recoiled from, denigrated, and disposed of. If so, I don't care. Thier boos mean nothing to me, because I have seen what makes them cheer.

What does "cringe" even mean in this context?

That "ew kill it kill it kill it" feeling some people get when they see a bug in the bathroom.

So the third option.

With the caveat that it's more "why would we boo you when we can 'Pop. Goes. The Kirkoid!'"

(One doesn't usually "boo" vermin.)

But I quibble.

(I do wish downvoters would remember that quote marks are for quoting other people... I heard that one quite recently too.)

Charlie Kirk was a meme prior to his death, though, surely? Those edits with the TPUSA slogan, and the tiny-faced Kirk? After Kirk's death I remember a wave of articles explaining that, contrary to what many on the left thought, he was not just a meme, but rather a significant and influential political organiser. As the immediate aftermath of his death fades, I am unsurprised that he is a meme again.

KYM has a page on TPUSA going back at least to 2017, thank you Internet Archive, and it includes pictures of Charlie Kirk used for meme purposes. Part of it, I suspect, is just that Kirk had a kind of silly-looking face, and when he tries to look serious, it always comes off slightly askew. I've since seen videos and he was a lot more natural-looking and sounding in person, but the goofy pictures of him made him easy prey for meming, and that hasn't changed.

Those memes had a message though. They were anti-Turning Point. They existed in the first place because Kirk was an influential political organizer. There is no message behind "put Kirk's face on everything and create new slang (lowkirkenuinely)", it's just irony poisoning.

Kirk was both a minor celebrity (because of his "I will debate anyone" college speaker tours) and an important political organiser (because of the work TPUSA did recruiting, training, and placing the next generation of GOP staffers). The work as an organiser was more important, but was not visible outside the organised GOP, so most people think of him as the "debate me" meme guy.

Kirk's opponents hated him because he was a "debate me" bro who expected members of oppressed groups to do the work of countering his hateful message. Kirk's dumb supporters loved him because he was willing to take the core movement-conservative message to a hostile audience. His smart supporters feared and respected him because there were already enough young GOP operatives who owed their career to Kirk to staff a future Kirk for President campaign.

For some reason your comment reminded me of my own complicated relationship with Charlie Kirk. As a libertarian who graduated from Conservative, Inc. finishing school around the time TPUSA was founded, I was not a fan. I viewed Charlie Kirk as the guy whose organization absorbed the beautiful little counter-cultural college Republicans club I had worked so hard to build and turned it into an arm of the MAGA movement/Trump political machine. So it's always been weird talking to younger conservatives who hold him in such high regard. He's such an important figure to them, but to my generation of activists, he's that dweeb who degraded the intellectual quality of our interns. I recognize the success he had spreading conservative ideas on college campuses, but resent the low quality of that conservatism.

Eh, I'm more than happy to make fun of anything - 9/11, rape, my own crippling need for validation from strangers (especially women).

But frankly I'm still pissed that he got killed and that the bloodthirsty circlejerk online and IRL went largely unpunished. The double-standard for violence between the right and left is untenable. I was, perhaps, even more furious with this than Trump's first assassination attempt, and I considered Kirk a bit of an edgelord previous to his murder.

than Trump's first assassination attempt

I doubt you mean the first one.

No, I do, I think the shooting was more real than the golf course stalking and the storming of the correspondent's dinner. It also had a lot of "I wish he'd aimed better".

Unless you're saying there's another I'm missing? I count 3.

Of course it was a much more serious event - he actually got shot - but the golf course stalking and the storming of the correspondent's dinner (both of which happened later) also go in the category "assassination attempts". But yes, I'm saying there are others you're missing; there've been Trump assassination attempts going back to at least 2016.

Is there really that much of a double standard? If Hasan Piker was shot to death by a lone gunman tomorrow, I would expect the same thing that happened with Charlie Kirk, just with the tribes flipped: many people on the right would cheer and make memes, many people on the left would act outraged and try to cancel the right-wingers, people would murmur darkly about civil war, etc.

In short, I believe there is a significant double standard right now. The left is very comfortable advocating for celebrating violence. Poll after poll confirms this among the rank and file, and then this is filtered again through the media apparatus.

There's been a minor news story recently after a teacher got well over a million bucks in settlement money, and there's a strong argument she shouldn't have gotten fired originally... and then you think about everyone who got fired and didn't get anywhere near the compensation or an order of magnitude under that, didn't get their jobs back, and didn't get the fawning political coverage, for something far less charged than saying the target of a political assassination (and his family!) deserved it.

But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk. Trace is back from his internship and has a lot to say, and can't quite get his dander up about the forum he built because TheMotte didn't respect the humanity of spree criminals and arsonists can't reflect on the humanity of a guy who talked. There's no serious investigation of all those Tesla arsons, nor are we getting lawsuits by people fired for supporting the Tesla arsons. Damore isn't independently wealthy; he got judges informing people the law required his speech be infringed. William Kelly probably got his job back, and if he got anything else it was a rounding error, for 25 USD in Rittenhouse donations.

We know what happens when people do things that progressive leadership oppose. It's not a surprise when it didn't happen here.

I'm a bit confused regarding the mentions of involuntary commitment and involuntary medication, although this might possibly be because I can't follow your old.reddit links anymore (Reddit recently blocked old.reddit without a login, and I don't have a Reddit account). Would you mind explaining what you're referring to as the counterexample?

I don't want to rest my position on that, specifically, since involuntary commitment and medication are rare (and a little unprincipled), while TheSchism or anti-arson or anti-discrimination laws were all supposed to be consistent and universalist by their own terms. But Nicholas Decker and Ken White's posts are within the bounds of stuff that has historically gotten a lot of negative attention, including warrants or arrests on their own, and when paired with other behavior or insufficient deference, escalated to commitments or medication.

Unfortunately, that sorta stuff usually doesn't get much attention (tbf, probably because it's not a great thing to publicize for either the nutjob's sake post-medication / calm down time, or for the general populace given contagion risks, in the cases it does turn out to be serious), so examples tend to be jank. So if you want a clear-cut example where it's clearly defensible speech, I'm not going to have one. All I've got are people about as crazy as Ken White.

I'll note that Decker did get investigated for that post, even if he seems to mostly have benefitted from it. And for all his hyperbole, the criterion of "revolt iff democracy abolished" is a popular one. Ken White (and thanks for being precise this time, as Clark Bianco was about median Mottizen before being kicked out) went a lot further.

and then you think about everyone who got fired and didn't get anywhere near the compensation or an order of magnitude under that, didn't get their jobs back, and didn't get the fawning political coverage, for something far less charged than saying the target of a political assassination (and his family!) deserved it.

Welcome to the difference between public sector jobs and private sector jobs. https://www.fire.org/research-learn/what-free-speech-rights-do-government-employees-have

But what really gets me is the dog that doesn't bark. Nicholas Decker's "When Must We Kill Them" (answer: when he wanted the substack revenue) wasn't accompanied by an involuntary commitment and a warrant; PopeHat's complaining about a Bluesky ban rather than the solitary confinement and involuntary medication after he called for people to kill Musk.

Because their speech is protected from the government under the 1st amendment. They did not make a True Threat. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/true-threats/ https://www.fire.org/research-learn/how-and-why-true-threats-are-unprotected-speech

Their speech would not be protected from private actors, such as a future (private sector) employer or their friends or whoever else.

  • -16

Welcome to the difference between public sector jobs and private sector jobs.

In case you missed the reference

Because their speech is protected from the government under the 1st amendment. They did not make a True Threat.

That stops a conviction (maybe). It does less than nothing against a warrant. Moderators here have been Very Concerned about warrants for speech that would easily avoid Brandenberg.

Moderators here, quite properly, have decided that they don't want fedposting on their forum. Even if it wasn't a legal risk to the mods, tolerating fedposting makes the forum less able to fulfil its stated purpose.

That doesn't mean that the mods receiving a warrant for a common or garden fedpost is particularly likely.

Amadan has specifically and repeatedly noted concerns about a possible warrant to Zorba as a major motivating factor. Whether it's "particularly likely" enough for you to let it count, it's clearly enough for an actual person who actually hosting a website to care -- but only for one political allegiance.

I don't get it. Is fedposting against the right allowed on this forum?

Nope.

But there's a lot of places it was tolerated, and not only did their management have no concerns about lawfare, more importantly, literally zero have shown up in the news having been hit by or having to resist that lawfare. There's no sequel to ARFCOM; there's no even a sequel to 'Discord Channel Shut Down for making fun of George Floyd'.

This isn't perfect information, just like there are limits to our ability to extrapolate from the lack of Brendan-Eich-facepunching aimed at modern day interleft-battles. It's still information.

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I'm fully on board with this - I wouldn't accept a small risk of attracting police attention for a fun online hobby either. But that remains a reasonable decision on the part of Zorba even if the risk is very small indeed.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision on Zorba's part. I even think it's a perfectly reasonable calculation on the part of progressive-leaning forum.

I'm critiquing the process, not the people reacting to the result.

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Maybe related: the "contact us" page has a warrant canary saying no warrants have yet been received in 2023.

Probably just forgetting to update, it, but you never know.

This isn't the first time it's been noted.

In case you missed the reference

They came to an agreement about it https://www.13newsnow.com/article/news/local/mycity/norfolk/norfolk-resolves-issue-police-officer-william-kelly-fired-donating-to-rittenhouse-fund/291-045c4a2f-444d-4d1f-9d13-0bb9619b4b90

In an email to 13News Now on Monday, Hogge said the "matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties," but he would not specify how that resolution had been reached.

13News Now reached out to Norfolk City Manager Chip Filer, as well as spokespeople for the City of Norfolk and Norfolk Police Department for clarification and comment. The city's reply was: "The matter has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both parties."

Clearly whatever the result is, Hogge is fine with it and did not wish to pursue further. I imagine it's probably something like a reinstatement (or promotion?) with a significant pay raise, but who knows. Still, if he wasn't happy with the result he could sue and would likely win so it must be considered good enough for him.

That stops a conviction (maybe).

In the US, it absolutely does.

It does less than nothing against a warrant.

It does a lot against warrants. Blatantly anti first amendment abuse like that is very rare in modern day America, and typically from lower level government officials in smaller towns and cities when they do happen.

Moderators here have been Very Concerned about warrants for speech that would easily avoid Brandenberg.

The moderators can decide whatever caution level they please, it doesn't mean this properly reflects US law. Also of course, not everyone here is an American and they would have to obey the laws of their own respective country.

  • -15

Clearly whatever the result is, Hogge is fine with it and did not wish to pursue further.

Hogge's the lawyer, giving lawyer-speak for 'I can't even say I won'. Kelly got his job back, so he's not complaining and definitely not doing it somewhere where the department could get him fired for doing it, but there's no evidence he's come out of things with a million or even a hundred thousand bucks.

In the US, it absolutely does.

Party presentation rule, anyone?

It does a lot against warrants.

I would be fascinated to see you explain what procedural protections are present in an ex parte warrant hearing in front of magistrate judges, where police and prosecutors don't even have a duty to present exculpatory evidence. The standard of probable cause means that even a warrant focusing on arguably protected speech is fair game for that 'arguably' result in a search warrant to be evaluated post-ante at trial, and that's before we get to the continuing effort by lower courts to water down Brandenburg.

Hogge's the lawyer, giving lawyer-speak for 'I can't even say I won'. Kelly got his job back, so he's not complaining and definitely not doing it somewhere where the department could get him fired for doing it, but there's no evidence he's come out of things with a million or even a hundred thousand bucks.

We don't know the circumstances, but obviously Kelly and his lawyer are fine with the outcome and didn't seek more. If they are fine with it, what's the complaint?

Party presentation rule, anyone?

The only real modern example I can think of where blatantly anti first amendment abuse of the criminal justice system happened would be James Comey, who wasn't convicted. It's an incredibly weak indictment that basically every legal expert expects to get thrown out.

  • -12

We don't know they're fine with it; we just know that they think it's the best strategic choice. Which is probably true, since they don't have a friendly administration on the other side of the lawsuit.

But there's another bit I'll highlight. The time from April 20, 2021 to February 27, 2023. Can you guess whether the college staff was fired for her speech longer, or shorter, than Kelly?

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I saw a post (I think on Substack) making the point that the way progressives talk about Kirk parallels Umberto Eco's observation that, in fascism, the enemy must be seen to be both strong and weak. When Trump wants to name a street after Charlie Kirk, progressives tend to roll their eyes and say that he's undeserving of the accolade because he was just some guy with a YouTube channel. But when people are saying that it was bad that Kirk was assassinated, progressives will turn around and say that it was justified, because he was a powerful and dangerous demagogue who used his platform to incite violence against [minority du jour].

Obviously, it cannot be the case that Kirk was both an insignificant YouTuber and an influential demagogue: only one of these things can be true.

But each can be true to different people. To a person who thinks Youtube is new fangled nonsense he can be a random Youtuber for example.

Is it the same exact people saying both? If not you're just running into the fact that the outgroup is not homogeneous and some of them hold different opinions from each other.

If its the same people then your point may stand.

The difference is moot to the person (or group, etc) under attack by different members of the coalition, and this argument sets a bar that makes addressing an enemy coalition impossible. It's asymmetric concern.

MitigatedChaos memorably described it as the distributed hypocrisy of von Wokenstein's Monster though acknowledges it can be performed by any ideology.

Policy is not experienced in isolation from other policy made by the ruling coalition. It’s experienced all at once. Different policies combined together have different effects than the same policies in isolation.

So too am I reminded of this chart. Are they literally the same people saying white flight and gentrification are bad, that cultural appropriation and being chauvinistic are bad?

Well, probably, but who wants to waste the time collecting receipts on hateful people? Let's assume for the sake of argument they are separate people in a big-tent coalition.

That they're separate people doesn't matter to me! What matters is that [coalition] has no acceptable state of being for outsiders.

The difference is moot to the person (or group, etc) under attack by different members of the coalition, and this argument sets a bar that makes addressing an enemy coalition impossible.

Not at all, it's treating it as a monolith that makes it unadressable. If you target the specific elements with specific arguments/actions that's a solid method of putting a fracture in the coalition.

A libertarian, a MAGA Rust belt Red Triber and a Blue Tribe Catholic conservative may all vote for Trump but the specific concerns they have are different and may in fact be at odds.

The libertarian might want no tariffs and low taxes, but the MAGA Rust belter wants tariffs and taxes to redistribute back to the Rust Belt that was harmed by laissez faire economics, the Catholic wants to target abortion but cares much less about 2A rights and so on and so forth. Which means who says what and spends political capital on what is extremely important information if you oppose them.

The coalition doesn't want anything at all, it's an emergent entity out of all the various groups and sub-groups. So if some progressives think Kirk was just a nobody Youtuber so it was no big deal, that is a very different action space than for progressives who think he was a huge dangerous threat to democracy. If you want to try and persuade people that maybe shooting Youtubers is wrong, that's a different argument than arguing Kirk was not a huge threat to democracy.

You're assuming your conclusion. Because they are a coalition with different opinions therefore there is no space to exist. But what if it is is "Because they are a coalition with different opinions therefore there is opportunity to put wedges in place so to create space to exist." We call this a culture war for a reason, if you want to create space for outsiders you have to make it so. That's what created the progressive project in the first place. And they did that by piecing together a coalition and peeling some of them away from prior coalitions.

Coalitions are not unassailable cosmic entities that exist beyond space and time. They shift and change and break. As we have in fact seen in recent memory.

That they are separate people SHOULD matter to you. If they are fundamentally a monolithic entity then that is much more of a problem.

Ok fine if I want to spend my life to try and change people that hate me, it matters that they are separate people that might be able to be changed.

As a griller, I don't want to do that, I want to live my life and have my family and not be bothered too much, so the coalition, whether or not the component parts change, matters more to me. "Progressive Democrats are bad for schools and my family" stays the same even if they're bad last year because of braindead "anti-racist" racism, and next year because of braindead knockoff communism.

Also, generally speaking, I'm the exact opposite in every dimension of the kinds of person those people will listen to. I'm not some arrogant piece of shit high on my own supply that's been coddled in the rich parts of big cities and attended Harvard; I'm a lower-middle straight-passing cis white guy that attended a mid-tier state school. I have not structured my life or been blessed with the privileges that will cause progressives or liberals to listen to me; if I tried to convince them of anything, most likely they don't listen at all and at worst I've negatively polarized them into being even stupider than they were before.

If you want to try and persuade people that maybe shooting Youtubers is wrong

I can't say I care much about Youtubers as an open season class, but I would be pretty bothered if people started taking shots at Alec Watson or Norm Nakamura.

Coalitions are not unassailable cosmic entities that exist beyond space and time.

Egregores are not unassailable, fair enough. Cosmic is questionable.

I'm a lower-middle straight-passing cis white guy that attended a mid-tier state school.

Me too. My grandfathers were a subsistence farmer and a cattle inspector respectively. I'm now teaching at a low tier school in the US. Though I did have a career in the Civil Service in between. It's fine. Progressives and liberals listen just fine to white guys. I chair several of our committees, Indeed, when I turn up to the Women's book club I get gushed over. "It's so brave, so nice to see a man taking an interest". Indeed I would say being a straight white male around liberals is extremely high status right now. We are in high demand!

Because ,spoiler alert, almost everyone is a "griller" on your side and the progressive side. Maybe not the elites, but there are not very many elites (though of course they have an outsize influence!). Most people just want to get on with their lives.

When I lived in a small Red town, I had my Blue academic colleagues over to mingle with my Red Tribe neighbors on a few occasions for BBQ's and there were no issues at all. Well an argument over whether turkey burgers could be as good as regular burgers notwithstanding. They even all agreed charcoal was superior to propane (Hank Hill would be unhappy!).

As an outsider in the US, things are simply not as divided as many people here seem to think, in my direct experience. And I am from Northern Ireland, so I know divided! My wife's family reunion was last week and I was the only white person out of 250 black Americans (and one Asian lady!) from all over the country, I had no problems at all. Their family shirt was even an American flag with a bald eagle superimposed over it and 50 out of 250 emblazoned on the back (It was their 50th family reunion and the 250th anniversary of America).

If people aren't persuaded by arguments it's not because you're a straight white man, it's because most people do not reason themselves into their positions and so can't be reasoned out of them I think, no matter who is doing the talking.

Well an argument over whether turkey burgers could be as good as regular burgers notwithstanding.

What kind of unforgiveable heathen thinks turkey burgers can even come close?

Ostrich makes for an interesting burger, but like bison (and turkey) it's too lean to be properly juicy.

Their family shirt was even an American flag with a bald eagle superimposed over it and 50 out of 250 emblazoned on the back (It was their 50th family reunion and the 250th anniversary of America).

That's awesome.

In my experience black Americans are way more 'normal' about most stuff than white progressives, my experience of whom comes from academia and nerd spaces.

When I lived in a small Red town

Yeah, that matters. I live in Raleigh, NC, and the city does not, in my opinion, have much of a personality of its own to withstand certain issues. In the white progressive milieu of mostly-newcomers, there's a distinct sense of embarrassment, that they live here but they're a bit ashamed of that, and feel a need to overcompensate for being in "the South."

What kind of unforgiveable heathen thinks turkey burgers can even come close?

Well my wife does make an amazing home made turkey burger, which is what fueled the debate.

There is a lot said on this site about how black Americans haven't assimilated but I think that's untrue. They just assimilated to a particular type of American culture which is descended from my own Ulster-Scots/Scots-Irish borderer culture, which is what was often around them, in the South. In many of my wife's family events the beats are very similar to being back home, even if the details are different. My wife was a hit with my rural working class uncles because she was raised in a similar environment culutrally even it it was thousands of miles apart. It's a rowdier, more overtly "masculine" culture than the WASPy American culture in the North East or even the more genteel Southern Cavalierish one in the South. Which is why comments here about how white people don't like noisy sports celebrations and rowdy behaviour always make me laugh. It's kind of totalizing the American experience to a very specific subset of American upper middle classish white people.

I would agree that white progressives can be much more performative (in my experience anyway), possibly driven by white guilt (and exacerbated if from the South). Having said that, when I first moved to the US I dated a scion of what used to be a pretty powerful Southern family (the type who still have debutant balls and the like) whose family did own plantations and slaves in the past, and that did appear to be something they truly were guilty about rather than a performance so its hard to tell sometimes. There is a particular kind of American who feels that America should have done better in holding up its founding ideals (all men created equal et al) and that this is a real and enduring fault.

Progressivism grew out of real issues and real problems which is how it was able to build a coalition so quickly, because there are a lot of true believers who had indeed witnessed/experienced actual injustices. My wife's grandmother was a locally prominent civil rights organizer and it's hard to judge a distrust for white people when reading her diaries. Having said that even she on her deathbed recanted her prohibition on my wife "dating out" so things can and do change.

I think it is a standard tactics of ideological defense in depth, where arguments are used as soldiers. You can have simultaneous and contradictionary propaganda aimed at different parts of the population. In modern information environment, you have simultaneous message for different audiences. Maybe you know the "narcissistic prayer" meme:

  1. That didn't happen
  2. And if it did, it wasn't that bad
  3. And if it was, that's not a big deal.
  4. And if it is, that's not my fault.
  5. And if it was, I didn't mean it.
  6. And if I did, you deserved it.

You have a message for everybody. Loyalist can be in denial in order to prevent infohazard and keep ideological purity - everything that was said by opponents is Conspiracy Theory, just focus on our message. Moderates and apologists can be equipped with minimization arguments, which can even be linked to one another, just to flood the infospace and make truth hard to discern. And the last message can be aimed at radicals and fanatics in order to generate more of the things that supposedly did not happen - with plausible deniability generated by moderates.

In a sense it is a brilliant information warfare strategy.

That's because "Everyone I don't like is extremely dangerous and must be destroyed. But they're also, like, a total loser, man." is a general feature of human psychology.

(Very effective tactic too. Great way to get your lynch on when that needs doing. Justice, consequences, accountability, you know the drill.)

Exactly. Let's not give Eco more respect than he deserves. He's an astrologist who doesn't even read your star chart. He just calls you a fascist and pushes you out of the tent.

There are certain varieties of loserdom which are compatible with being extremely dangerous. Riad Bouchaker was both a loser (his stated reason for his violent outburst was that his social welfare application was denied) and extremely dangerous to the young girls he permanently maimed. Likewise Vickrum Digwa, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. or any school shooter you care to mention. Just about any able-bodied person with a knife or a gun can pose a legitimate threat, no matter how ineffectual or pathetic they otherwise are.

However, being dangerous by virtue of being such a compelling and seductive public speaker that you can persuade an army of anonymous footsoldiers to do violence against your enemies through words alone is not compatible with being an insignificant loser. Anyone charismatic and persuasive enough to amass an army of thousands (whom they've never even met) willing and able to do violence on their behalf is definitionally not a worthless loser. It takes considerably more skill and intelligence to persuade someone you've never met to stab someone than to stab them yourself.

is not compatible with being an insignificant loser

"lol he's such a loser he totally deserved it" seems to be working well enough with the relevant people, empirically. How else?

The point is reasonable enough, but my observation is that Umberto Eco's writings on the nature of Fascism are straightforwardly bullshit. A supermajority of those engaged in conflict at any scale are going to see their opponent as a threat ("strong") and also both deeply flawed and weak enough to be defeated ("weak"). There is no contradiction here; "Strength" and "Weakness" are not objective criteria, but rather meta-poles in a fuzzy, highly-multidimensional space.

From what I've seen, the rest of his analysis is shot through with similar problems.

Yes, the definition is broad enough that just about everything is fascism if you don't like it.

This contemptuous, at times nihilistic humor marks a dramatic shift from the period immediately following Kirk’s death in September, in which conservatives sought to suppress criticism of the late Maga luminary. Hundreds of people were fired or otherwise disciplined for denouncing him (which has since resulted in several settlements over alleged first amendment violations). The attempted censorship actually intensified the satirization of Kirk online, said Alex Turvy, a media sociologist and author of an upcoming book about internet culture, Memes in the Machine.

It's always grating to read inaccurate descriptions of things I remember quite well, made worse in this case by the author trying to fit in a "just desserts" narrative. Charlie was murdered in cold blood and this prompted a wave of liberals cheering his death as justified for his basically-normal conservative opinions.

But the right clearly pushed their chips in too far trying to martyrize the guy

This is leftwing gaslighting -- Charlie was martyred! The gaslighting here is the idea that joking about his death is blowback to conservative overreach, we didn't want to be so disrespectful, it was simply necessary because the conservative reaction was even worse than Charlie's death! Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.

Even JD Vance isn't immune.

The claim in this article is extremely vague, all it seems to say is that Vance thought there might have been more to the murder than meets the eye, which is trivial really. I award bonus points for the laugh-out-loud tut-tutting when the New Republic scolds its readership with the line, "Vice Presidents should not have that much time on their hands".

made worse in this case by the author trying to fit in a "just desserts" narrative.

"Just deserts" (same root as "deserve"). "Desserts" are food, and the article author thankfully did not suggest that people eat his ideological enemies.

Even JD Vance isn't immune.

I would think less of him if he weren't at least a bit freaked out by the sectarian killing of a close friend

Maine Senate Candidate Graham Platner Outed as an Actual Rapist.

"Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

'I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. 'I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’'"

Platner officially denies the allegations, but you can tell from his statement that deep down he knows it's true. He can't admit to it because he would go to actual jail, but everyone knows his campaign is over.

The haters said he would crash and burn, and they were correct. Honestly great call by the haters.

The Maine Democratic Party has one week until the ballot deadline to pick a candidate while stepping on as few toes as possible. Let the games begin.

The claim seems like nonsense. From what I can find, the only verified evidence of the supposed assault is this 2023 Facebook conversation:

“I feel morally obligated to warn you if you were anything more than friends with Graham,” she wrote in a message reviewed by CNN. “He’s not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him and I will just very politely call him consensually careless at times.” When the other woman asked if “he forces himself on people?” Racicot replied “doesn’t listen when drunk…”

This is extremely strong evidence that he did not commit any assault. A raped woman is unlikely to convey her experiences like this. He’s not all bad??? Bad situation? Not providing a yes/no when asked directly if he committed assault? No woman since the end of the Ottoman Empire has characterized her rapist as “not all bad”

No woman since the end of the Ottoman Empire has characterized her rapist as “not all bad”

The counterpoint is a fairly common stereotype. "Girl tells her boyfriend she was raped/sexually assaulted, then he finds out it was a guy she still follows on Insta."

I think a fair number of women have, let's say, awkwardly complicated feelings about men who are sexually aggressive.

"Girl tells her boyfriend she was raped/sexually assaulted, then he finds out it was a guy she still follows on Insta."

There was even a recent Obsession meme on this theme that caused much maddening among online whiteknights and womenfolk: “how your gf looks at you when you ask her to block the guy who 'raped' her in 2019.”

Also featured in the above screenshot is a pesky wrongthinker confirming with a female replyer whether she indeed blocked her father on Instagram but not her rapist/“rapist.” Chicks preemptively blocking their fathers lest their Instathottery get exposed is already funny enough in and of itself.

ETA:

While I'll leave the link above in case anyone wants to continue using it for exploring what might be going on with attempted old.reddit auto-conversions, see here for an alternative that should work for everyone, courtesy of @erwgv3g34.

Reason #9854904 to just nuke Xitter, reddit, really all the big social medias altogether man. I don't see any other way to one-shot MeToo and its spinoffs and sequels. Becky says Brad raped her at a frat party 10 years ago, Brad says she initiated by putting her hand on his crotch, Becky says but she changed her mind and resisted yet Brad persisted anyway. Now you, dear reader from Florida (incident happened in Maine!), now that you've heard of this incident that you have no means of verifying, you don't have any excuse to NOT do your civic duty as a kind human being to support Becky and castrate Brad. What do you mean "evidence"? Obviously none exists a decade later, that doesn't mean it did NOT happen! What do you mean she's still following his Insta and blocked her dad? Don't you see the optics problem of questioning the victim? Do you not understand she was afraid, the convenient cheatcode to explain away all the critical queries? Stop GASLIGHTING her you privileged MAN!!

When something as vaporous as optics becomes more important than verifiable reality, we should just declare rule of the mob and be done with it. From approaching a girl all the way to her bed, think about the optics! And you're shocked that an entire generation of men would literally splatter at terminal velocity than ask a girl out?

As for the tweet, I'll grant that a rapist is scarier to potentially confront than a non-aggressive boomer dad but Jesus-tapdancing-Christ her grandkids will be repaying the generational aura debt from that one.

That appears to go to a deleted post from 14 years ago?

Turn off the Old Reddit redirect in your account settings.

Still looks deleted even in new reddit. Weird. And now I feel dirty.

Did you click the old reddit link, and then removed the prefix? That won't work, reddit does some stupid redirect pointing you to that deleted post. If you don't want to change your settings, try copying the link url from the comment, removing the old. prefix, and only then going that cursed site.

No. The link is outright broken. This is the correct link without the old.reddit.com part of the url that the link explicitly had in it.

The old Nice Hat post. It was deleted, tragically, by mods last year, but it had a 50's retro-futurist hat. Very sad to see it go.

Your link is broken

Yeah that might have been “meme of the year” for me. I saw the movie and loved it but immediately knew that feminist interpretation of it would be unbearably wrong and annoying.

It’s a horror movie about unwittingly getting exactly what you wished for in a throwaway moment with essentially no recourse to change it.

It’s a simple yet effective straightforward horror movie with minimal subtext, but of course online feminists have to find someway to make the male protagonist take all the blame for what is essentially unknown demon magic and extraordinary bad luck.

Seeing it thrown back at them is hilarious and never gets old.

My favorite tweet about it was in the same genre:

“Horror Movie ideas for 2026. Men: What if your girlfriend was insane? Women: What if you had to be kind to a man you weren’t attracted to?”

I don't think you need to be a feminist at all to see Bear as the villain of the movie and it's deeply disturbing to me how popular Bear-sympathetic interpretations have gotten. I want to say it's feminist-driven negative polarization.

I mean, basically once the bullshit magic trinket actually turned out to be real and he understood it to be the cause of everything, the only way bear could “do the right thing” was to kill himself or commit murder.

Casting him as the villain is an insane reach despite his personal failings or character flaws; he was 100% fucked no matter what.

The director basically just came out and said Nikki is probably going to prison for the rest of her life after the end of the film.

It’s a straight up tragedy, the need to cast either of the protagonists as “the villain” is indicative of how poisoned our gender discourse is and how abominally privileged women are in western society

I agree that he blundered his way into an extremely fucked situation and that (contra the director's statements) the One Wish Willow company bears more responsibility than he does. But he still basically impulsively asked the devil to help him rape his crush and then spent most of the movie feigning ignorance about it. Medieval peasants would have an easy time condemning him for witchcraft and I think they would actually be 100% justified in doing so. I don't think the line of thought "it is so absurd to think that the One Wish Willow is real that I have no responsibility to consider that any anomalous events might be the result of it working" can coherently coexist with Bear's decision to use it in a private emotional fit in the first place. If it's real enough to make a wish on it's real enough to keep a fucking eye on.

Ah, I see.

A couple things;

I don’t particularly like or empathize with bear, I think he’s a spineless twerp with lots of personality issues. That being said “Satan, please help me rape my crush” is the most uncharitable take on his actions possible.

He wanted her to love him more than anything in the world, without really taking the request seriously. It was in a fit of desperation he said this thing, there’s no evidence that he thought it was actually going to work otherwise even a loser like him might have worded it differently. He, unfortunately, got exactly what he asked for.

Unrequited love / lust is a pretty common, gender neutral phenomenon that just people will experience in their lifetime, we ha level just been culturally trained to find it toxic coming from a man, and really only recently.

Most people in this situation would experience extreme cognitive dissonance, man or woman. Coming to the conclusion that “I, through a magic item that I don’t and can’t understand, directly caused the torture and annihilation of someone’s else will through unknowingly careless action” is maybe one of the toughest pills anyone could ever swallow, both intellectually and emotionally, and 99% of people would only come to that conclusion until everything else was eliminated.

We know he’s in a movie and he doesn’t; if this thing worked on basically any of us it would take a long time for someone to come to the most painful and “logical” conclusion.

We see him go through every step of this process and by the time he’s finally figured it out and accepted it he’s basically forced to either kill himself or commit murder, both things most people straight up don’t have the balls to do.

He’s not a villain, he’s just a garden variety coward. There’s literally billions of people like that.

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Eh, I think it's wrong to think about anyone as "the villain" besides the evil possession magic. Bear is deeply flawed, most centrally he's chronically passive and indecisive. In TLP terms he wants the company to want to pay him more but not to have to ask for it. The only action he ever took to get what he wanted was something he calculated as being totally unable to help, making a throw away wish. Then he's in the relationship he knows something is wrong but chooses to basically ignore it and just go with it because he's cartoonishly incapable of acting. All of that and more is true of him, but after he made the wish that he had no way of knowing would be interpreted monkey's paw style in the worst possible way there was nothing he really could have done besides killing himself. I'm not quite willing to raise "if you don't kill yourself to right a wrong you didn't intentionally commit" to the level of villain. He's a coward, but that's a forgivable sin.

Horror Movie ideas for 2026. Men: What if your girlfriend was insane? Women: What if you had to be kind to a man you weren’t attracted to?

To be fair, the horror (for women) is not in being kind to an unattractive man, but in being mind-controlled by an unattractive man. Still a banger tweet, though

Yeah the joke is understated on both ends; “insane” doesn’t begin to cover the condition Nikki was subjected to.

Demonic possession more like.

Ehh, one is a difference in degree, the other a difference in kind.

She’s not being mind controlled by a man, she’s possessed by malign man-made sorcery.

If she was really under his control she wouldn’t do half the things that she did, he hated it too. He spent like half the movie utterly terrified of her.

Your link is broken

It works when I hit “edit” and copy the link out to paste it, but it doesn’t work for me either when I click the link from the posted comment.

It’s likely due to the old.reddit.com conversion we have under “Settings.” I don’t know if there’s a way to hardcode it so it opens the same way for everyone regardless of settings.

Just upload it to The Motte.

/images/17834438272360094.webp

Your link is broken

It's not. The site has an old .reddit.com redirect in it's settings, that's broken. Just switch it to reddit.com (without old.) and it will work.

This is the image url: https://preview.redd.it/i-hate-memes-that-use-this-image-v0-upg3gp8rln5h1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f41ffae8bfae3bf5e37ae67f398546f7a46cc158

Mirrored here: https://i.imgur.com/nKqIi9F.jpeg

I think people should start screenshotting/mirroring reddit considering how much they like to fuck with everything. (For example, reddit now blocks people from viewing old.reddit.com without an account.)

For example, reddit now blocks people from viewing old.reddit.com without an account.

My experience is the opposite. I can browse old Reddit all I want, but new Reddit throws up a sign-in screen about 20 seconds after the page loads.

A few days ago, the company made a post explicitly stating that access to old . reddit . com soon will be blocked for non-logged-in users.

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Yeah, the movie is about "love potions and love charms are bad and here's why: mind control is not a nice thing and if you call up demons, you get demons".

“Be careful what you wish for”, a tale as old as time. Well told, for sure, but very well trodden ground.

Wether or not you want to call this rape in a legal sense, it is beyond normal levels of shitty. (Assuming it's true, and it's messy and mundane enough to be true) On an interpersonal level, I'd not want to associate with this guy and I'd be particularly disgusted at any leftist or feminist that still did, or want to vote for him or fuck him.

it is beyond normal levels of shitty

I dunno, there's a lot of shitty in the world. Read her story and it's possible to take another angle on it. This was back when Platner was drinking. The pair of them hooked up and were on-again off-again. She's at home texting him and tells him "Don't come over tonight, not feeling it". Her door is unlocked. She hears him coming up the stairs. She does... nothing. Lies on her couch. He comes in. She does... nothing. He's groping and trying to get it on, she can tell he's drunk, he's so unco-ordinated he knocks knick-knacks off the table. She does... apparently nothing except tell him stop and no and go away.

She manages to get up and away from him and goes into her bedroom. Where he follows her, because apparently... she didn't lock the door or call a friend or call the cops or anything.

Is this sounding like "Oh no I'm scared he's gonna rape me" or more "Oh crap, I told him I wasn't in the mood"?

They have sex. He falls asleep. She... lets him stay there and sleep it off, because she wanted to wake him up but then changed her mind because she didn't want him driving drunk.

Again, is this the story of "I was just raped"?

Morning arrives, he wakes up, he tries to be friendly, she tells him "Do you remember last night?" but he doesn't because he was drunk. She... tells him go away and don't contact me again. He leaves, it would seem. She... does nothing, doesn't call cops, doesn't do anything so far as can be told.

Because, she says later, she didn't want to think of herself as a rape victim and didn't want to go to the cops. (What the hell would she have done if it hadn't been Platner coming in her unlocked door and walking up the stairs? Which now makes me think she had half an idea he might show up, and was maybe half inclined to be 'well if he does turn up and I'm kinda in the mood we might...' but then he was drunk not sober when he showed up).

Now that last, didn't want to call the cops because that would make her the victim of rape, okay maybe. That happens. But the rest of it? Sounds more like "ugh, it's easier to just let him have his drunken fuck and kick him out in the morning" than what could be called rape. Non-consensual, maybe. Not enthusiastic consent, definitely. But rape? Well, if we stretch the definitions, which seems to be what is going on here.

And I'm going off what her story is in the reports, I've seen nothing of what Platner himself has said.

This discourse gives a lot of "people talking about sex instead of having it" vibes. Even married couples have dry, unenthusiastic sex often. One person is interested, the other isn't. But they'd just do it and be done with it rather than say no and start an argument. Terminally online people who lack the life experience to understand that awkward, iffy, or straight up unsatisfying sexual encounters are a normal, common part of adult life for most people.

The last wave of allegations against Platner purported that he messaged women while being married and used the Kik app, dubbed the "predator paradise". The insinuation was that he may have traded or soilicited child pornography without directly saying something defamatory. It's interesting to see the MeToo language come crawling back and it's the same arguments we've heard before: "women don't lie about such things". Maybe true 20 years ago, but not in the digital age.

The story, what we've got so far, sounds much more like "ugh, go away okay just let him get off then he'll go away" than "help, help, I'm being raped, somebody help!"

That she left the front door unlocked after texting him "no, not tonight" is more like "well if he does come over and if he does convince me to do it" than "I'm done for the night, just gonna lie here and scroll on my phone".

Is there any sign Platner did chase underage women? All the ones mentioned so far seem to be adults, is this just more "any stick will do to beat the dog" in order to get rid of the undesirable?

Ok, but this isn't dry, unenthusiastic sex. This is just straight up rape. She told him no and he persisted anyway. That's the central example of rape. The only issue is whether she is telling the truth and I'm inclined to believe her absent any convincing argument otherwise.

I'll reply to you and @hydroacetylene here.

The "no" sounds more like reluctance and unenthusiasm leading to (as @HereAndGone2 puts it) "ugh, go away okay just let him get off then he'll go away". Yes, a sober enthusiastic "yes" (implied or explicitly stated) is the best marker for consent, and no-means-no is a reliable metric for SA. But it's fuzzy and not 100% perfect, awkward sexual encounters and "I said no/I was drunk but we fucked anyway" seemed to be the recurring theme of many MeToo stories. Technically could qualify as rape, but this depends entirely on what this person was feeling at the time.

I'm not such a stickler that I would reject a drunken unenthusiastic "sure", but the biggest deal-breaker for me is that she physically walked away from the living room when he touched her (or at least, that's what she claimed). Absent anything else, that's a clear indicator that she didn't want it. Up until that point I might be willing to forgive him for just having a drunken misunderstanding, but when he followed her and touched her again, that's pretty clearly rape. (Again, assuming she's telling the truth.)

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills- be entered her house uninvited and forced himself on her while she was saying no multiple times. In what universe is that ‘unenthusiasm’ rather than ‘actual rape’? Literally, what would qualify as rape to the people defending this behavior as ‘eh, hookup culture gets messy’?

It's so weird, why are people defending this.

Is it a j00 poster thing? I hate that that is my first thought.

It doesn’t seem to be the jewposters defending this. Or the misogynists. I can’t actually find the pattern.

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Well, we allegedly got "She texted him that she needed her ass massaged but we kept that out of the story", so yeah: "And it was a night where him and I were texting back and forth and he had taken something that I said as as an invitation and that's not how I meant it."

Before publication, a Politico reporter told the Platner campaign that Jenny Racicot, on the night in question, had been “texting [Platner] about needing her glute massaged.” The reporter added, “That detail didn’t make our story.”

Blurred lines, indeed.

Her: "Man, my lower half hurts after I did something strenuous. I could use a glute massage!"

Him: "Literal booty call, I'll be there in a jiffy!"

If she gave consent over text, then he drove there and she said no, it’s still rape. Acceptable recourse for being led on was to (for example) break up with her.

But she did say no. Literally, multiple times.

I feel like I’ve fallen into bizarro world. People are bending over backwards to defend this guy, and it’s not even our usual mysogynists.

I can’t believe we’re on the same page against here and gone on the definition of rape.

To be clear- I believe women, even sexually active women, are perfectly capable of refusing consent, and that verbal statements that they are doing so should be taken at face value.

Ctrl + F "sloot" and "erwgv3g34" getting zero results is the plot twist of the century for this one

I agree with @Skulldrinker that "beyond normal levels of shitty" seems like an accurate way to characterise Platner's behaviour based on this description.

Exactly. This is one of those things that warrants social consequences regardless of legal ones. Especially since this is the no-means-no, yes-means-yes-unless-i-change-my-mind-after-the-fact, [11 out of 9 women will be raped by bro at a frat party while making 70¢ on the dollar, I Respect Women (who are the future, and also The Force)] crowd.

Yes, yes, I know, my rules, your rules, >,<,=, enforced fairly/unfairly, who/whom, et cetera.

And, well, bluntly it seems completely in-character for everything else we've seen of Platner thus far.

Could you convict him of rape in a court of law? Probably not. It is a notoriously difficult accusation, after all. But as something to add to the pile of evidence that Platner is a lousy person. I'm inclined to agree with Josh Barro. He lacks conscientiousness. He has poor executive function. He fails the character test for office.

(And just because I feel defensive, yes, there are a great many people currently elected to office in the US who also fail the character test, including many on the right, and including the president. This is also bad. But one bad thing does not excuse another bad thing.)

but you can tell

How?

Tone and timing. Platner's video statement came out within minutes of the Politico article dropping, too soon for him to have calibrated his statement in response to public opinion about the article itself. Platner's tone is defeated and resigned, which would not be expected if Platner knew the allegations were false. He has shrugged off bad press before. If he believed in himself he could do it again. The simplest explaination is that he doesn't believe in himself, because he knows he's been caught.

Just because Ms. Racicot said that Platner had non-consensual sex with him doesn’t mean that he did, of course. Right now, it’s a “he said—she said” situation, and there’s no way a prosecutor could charge Platner with no more evidence than her testimony, [1] but since there is a leftist “believe all women” streak in the Democratic party, since she has made the claim, Platner’s career is ruined. If he were a Republican, there’s a good chance he would still be standing (Kavanaugh, Trump, etc.) since conservatives are more inclined to believe in due process and presumption of innocence w.r.t. rape accusations.

About that “believe all women” streak, it’s an open question what percent of rape accusations are false rape accusations. I will list two sources with different conclusions:

  • Source 1 claims 0.2% of rape accusations are false.
  • Source 2 claims 28.8% of rape accusations are false.

Both sources show their homework, so people can look at them and see which source is more reasonable in its methodology.

[1] If she made a complaint right away after the 2021 alleged rape, they could had used a rape kit to prove beyond a reasonable doubt they had sex. It would then be a discussion about whether the sex was consensual, but police could had looked for signs of force being applied in the crime scene when it was still fresh. Five years after the fact, proving it happened is nay to impossible.

If he were a Republican, there’s a good chance he would still be standing

I wonder if this will prompt Platner to jump ship.

He wouldn’t be a Republican. His whole schtick is being very progressive.

Funnily enough, while watching the video in which he denied the allegations, it occurred to me how little editing his political speech would require to make it sound like something a libertarian populist would say.

It's hard to imagine that working: Platner's "hype" is mostly around him being willing to speak up on a bunch of issues the extremely-online crowd cares about and be blunt and "manly" about it. "This is what a male feminist looks like, willing to beat up the fascists and protect trans rights".

But the Democrats aren't going to stomach an abrupt about-face in terms of values, even if Platner was mercenary enough to do it, and I think he's a true believer given the post history that's been dug up. They're supporting him despite his aesthetic because he's saying the right things, they're not going to stick around if he switches to the wrong things. Fetterman pulled it off because he's able to stick to his working-class focus and just making the case that the Republicans aren't that bad for that, and the working class to some extent buys it (remember when some major union was voting to endorse Trump?). Platner would have to drop a lot of the culture war stuff that made him popular in the first place.

And the Republicans have no reason to accept him: they already have a fairly unobjectionable centrist candidate, there's no point in risking splitting the vote, especially now when the Democrats are going to drop in whoever the committee approves without a lot of time to get the base excited, and it's just going to be "vote blue no matter who" really pushing for the new person, with potentially people who got excited about Platner staying home when he's sidelined and talking theories about how this was trumped up to cut him out. Republicans wouldn't want Platner even before the allegations: if they wanted to run a blunt ex-military guy with dubious tattoos and ideas about consent, there are probably a few of them available to the Republican party already.

But the Democrats aren't going to stomach an abrupt about-face in terms of values, even if Platner was mercenary enough to do it

Why not? They stomached Platner before now. He has a Nazi tattoo, he has already been accused of sexual impropriety towards women. The difference is that before the Democratic tastemakers decided Platner was in, now they've decided he's out.

Platner going over to the Republicans means that he's going to have to change position on culture war issues: he'd probably have to be positive towards Trump, be negative on immigration, maybe talk about LGBT stuff going too far. If he's not doing that, just changing the D next to his name to an R and changing nothing else, he has all the same problems with the added bonus of losing anyone who's voting blue no matter who. He'd need to actually adjust his platform to appeal to Republicans.

With Fetterman that kind of works: his thing has always been working class economy stuff, and that doesn't really force him to take a position on most of these things. The working class has at least some level of support for Trump, so he can just kind of sit on that, take centrist positions, not talk too much about the culture war stuff. I'm sure there are people in PA that voted in Fetterman as a Democrat and still support him now even when he's often taking Republican positions.

There are other politicians that have a following of their particular brand of politics that might be able to hold constituents crossing the aisle. Bernie could conceivably be very concerned about immigration (there's a quote from him about immigration oppressing the working class or something, from before 2016) and end up as a R: he'd lose a lot of voters but I bet he'd hold some number. Thomas Massie might make it as a D, certainly the Israel focus would go over well. As long as there's something that's orthogonal to the red/blue divide you might be able to be on either side of it.

I don't know what that orthogonal thing would be for Platner. My impression of him is that his unique edge is that he's a "military tough guy" that we'd expect to be a generic Republican, but instead holds generic Democrat positions: he's an unusual delivery vehicle for those positions that might attract voters that wouldn't normally be amenable to them. If he switched sides, that edge is gone: a military tough guy who holds Republican positions is not hard to find in the slightest.

I can't imagine who would be voting for a Republican Platner, over Collins or whatever generic candidate the Democrats end up putting up.

Fetterman also wasn't running for Senate as a political newcomer. He was more prominent as the mayor of Braddock than he had any right to be, and the biggest skeleton in his closet, the incident where he chased a guy with a shotgun, happened after he was already in the public eye. It was on the news at the time, but didn't affect any of his subsequent runs for mayor, or his failed 2016 Senate campaign, or his 2018 election for Lieutenant Governor. Platner's entire life prior to 2025 was a mystery as far as the public was concerned, and there were red flags from the very beginning that he might have a checkered past.

There was a credible accusation against Biden and no one cared.

My honest guess here is that the Collin's campaigns insinuations that they have "bury him" dirt to drop in the general have either been secretly verified, or just intimidated the Dem establishment into turning on him. Maybe someone has video of him killing civillians or something.

This is probably the least bad thing the Dem establishment could use to tank him, in a way that could theoretically recover some of the capital they spent getting him this far.

There was a credible accusation against Biden and no one cared.

Ms. Reade’s accusation was taken very seriously and thoroughly investigated. One deep investigation concluded the “rape”, as described by Ms. Reade, was not feasible.

Whether it was necessary to go to that depth to prove Biden’s innocence is another question for another day.

"Investigated". Is that what we're calling this PBS election year hagiography?

Ms. Reade’s accusation was taken very seriously and thoroughly investigated. One deep investigation concluded the “rape”, as described by Ms. Reade, was not feasible.

Do you agree with that investigation's conclusions? Could you quote the parts of the linked article that you consider authoritative?

Whether it was necessary to go to that depth to prove Biden’s innocence is another question for another day.

What standard of evidence do you believe an investigation of such accusations against someone of Biden's stature should have applied? What do you think of prominent proposals for other standards, or the people championing them?

I feel it was a through and honestly done investigation of what it was like at the time when Reade worked for Biden, and why her alleged sexual assault would had been just about impossible.

The layout of that route and building [where Reade alleged she was sexually assaulted by Biden] has not changed. A recent walk through that area showed the subway tunnel contains no out-of-view areas, like an alcove. The remaining portion of the route includes multiple stairwells as well as corridors lined with offices. It is a main thoroughfare for senators and staffers.

Some former staffers told the NewsHour that if Biden did assault Reade in any of these places, it would have been a brazen attack in an area with a high risk of being seen.

“When I worked in the Senate, it was always crowded [and] packed with lobbyists, staff and tourists,” said Sheila Nix, who was Biden’s chief of staff on the 2012 presidential campaign and previously worked as chief of staff to two other Democratic senators.

Asking a bunch of people who worked or work for Biden if they thought he was a rapist while he is running for president is not a deep or serious investigation.

Also that is not what the article even concluded, the article just ends. They just interviewed a bunch of staffers and a few psychologists, each gave their piece. Where was the conclusion? It ends with a paragraph that suggests biden was too touchy.

Asking a bunch of people who worked or work for Biden if they thought he was a rapist while he is running for president is not a deep or serious investigation.

What constitutes a “serious investigation” in your book?

Keep in mind, the accusation happened in 2019, the alleged event happened in 1993, so we’re looking at a 26-year gap. They interviewed a bunch of people who were there, they checked out the architecture of the place where the rape supposedly happened.

What else could they do to investigate an event that supposedly happened 26 years before?

Now, if you ask me, if someone said “he raped me 26 years ago”, I would be very skeptical unless the person making the accusation had solid evidence backing up their claims. But, today in the post-woke era, there’s the notion that a man needs to prove his innocence if accused of any kind of sexual misconduct.

Keep in mind, the accusation happened in 2019, the alleged event happened in 1993, so we’re looking at a 26-year gap. They interviewed a bunch of people who were there, they checked out the architecture of the place where the rape supposedly happened.

What else could they do to investigate an event that supposedly happened 26 years before?

There was a 36 year gap between Blasey Ford's allegation of sexual assault and her going public with it. They had a whole entire investigation about it.

In response to Mitchell's memo detailing her conclusions, several former prosecutors and legal analysts published rebuttals, arguing that Mitchell erred in questioning Ford without there having been an impartial and full investigation. Others noted that Mitchell's role was "akin to [that of] a defense attorney", and therefore she should not have submitted a prosecution report. Two MSNBC legal analysts characterized Mitchell's assertions that Ford had "no memory of key details" and that others had not corroborated her account as flawed arguments, even going so far as to describe Mitchell's conclusions as "reek[ing] of desperation" and "misleading at best and disingenuous at worst".

Thanks for brining up the allegation against Kavanaugh, who, yes, is a supreme court justice today—we didn’t have a bunch of right wing political colleagues asking Kavanaugh to withdrawal after the allegation was made the way Platner right now is having a bunch of his left wing colleagues asking him to step down.

I actually have already directly addressed the allegation against Kavanaugh, as well as the allegations against Trump in this thread:

If he were a Republican, there’s a good chance he would still be standing (Kavanaugh, Trump, etc.) since conservatives are more inclined to believe in due process and presumption of innocence w.r.t. rape accusations.

we didn’t have a bunch of right wing political colleagues asking Kavanaugh to withdrawal after the allegation was made the way Platner right now is

No, the Republicans all just spent months "very seriously" investigating an obvious farce that was obviously drummed up for obvious political reasons. As opposed to Platner, who already had allegations (lesser, yes, but also purported the current one) being swept under the rug by the NYT.

I think that all this means Collins will squeak home in the election. I realise why the party has to be seen to be Caesar's wife in this case, and I also think that it's not unwelcome for Platner to have to step aside and give a different Democratic candidate a chance, but I don't see this ending in a victory for the Democrats in Maine.

What constitutes a “serious investigation” in your book?

Do talk to the people who were actually there and worked with her, like Ben Savage in the article.

Do try and corroborate or disprove. Like what happened to Tara's contemporaneous sexual harassment complaint? That to me seems like a great way to evaluate her credibility, but they mention it but dont really come back to it.

Do not talk to dozens of people who were not there and stand to benefit very very much ideologicaly and professionally if their boss is not a rapist.

Do not involve a psychologist of violence

They interviewed a bunch of people who were there,

No, they interviewed a bunch of biden staffers, the overwhelming majority of which did not remember her and were not there. I know this becauase I read the article, you do not know this because you did not.

I dont find tara's rape credible. But asking a group of people (with a huge vested interest in joe biden not being rapey) "is joe biden a rapist" is not convincing.

what happened to Tara's contemporaneous sexual harassment complaint?

There was no complaint because, as per the PBS article, people who worked with Biden did not corroborate Reade’s claim in the alleged complaint that she was asked to serve drinks.

What makes you think I didn’t read the article?

What makes you think I didn’t read the article?

You draw conclusions that are not supported by the article.

E.g.:

In interviews, staffers have also raised doubts about Reade’s claim that she was asked to serve drinks at a fundraiser, an incident she said she included in an official complaint of sexual harassment submitted while she worked in the office. But more than 50 former staffers said they didn’t remember ever attending a fundraiser for Biden in Washington, D.C., when they were on his Senate staff. And some recalled an office policy banning most of Biden’s Senate staff from doing campaign work.

This does not support the position there was no complaint, but I almost don't blame you because they wrote it very bad. But I still blame you because even if these were more solid they would point to Tara's claim being not credible, not that it didn't exist at all.

Like they interview 74 staffers, and close to a third of them remember Biden attending fundraisers in DC, which would corroborate Tara's allegation. This is also an example of a problem with interviewing so many people who never met Tara. What use is it asking a Biden staffer from 2016 if Biden had ever fundraised in D.C.? They lump in a bunch of useless data points in with people who were there. Like if the third of staffers who had attended a D.C. fundraiser worked in the 90s with Tara that is obviously a much stronger piece indication than if that third worked with Biden under Obama.

They also apparently had a policy that allowed at least some Senate staff to do campaign work (most is not all), also somewhat corroborating Tara's allegation.

The text in your hyperlink which I am quoting above does not support the conclusion that there was no complaint, it supports the conclusion that her complaint is not credible. Likewise with your second link now quoted below:

I remember talking about him wanting me to serve drinks because he liked my legs and thought I was pretty

This is just an accusation. You should have highlighted this part:

Reade says she doesn’t have a copy of the report, and Biden said Friday that he is not aware that any complaint against him exists. He asked the Senate and the National Archives to search their records to try to locate a complaint from Reade.

This supports the conclusion that there was no complaint because no one actually has the complaint.

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One deep investigation concluded the “rape”, as described by Ms. Reade, was not feasible.

"Trump got me alone in a dressing room in a department store in the middle of the day and managed to get my tights down without tearing them and get his finger inside me and no I never screamed for help or fought him off and no there was nobody, including any sales assistants, around and no I never went to the cops and yes I have the very dress hanging on the back of my door for years and no I didn't say anything about any of this until years later when my career was winding down and I needed the publicity boost", "why yes this poor woman was raped, even if technically under NY law digital penetration is not rape, I'm the judge I can say that" worked for E. Jean Carroll. Reade just picked the wrong guy to accuse.

Carroll may have won a civil verdict, but it didn't seem to have much effect on Trump politically. It's only a good comparison if Platner gets elected and his accuser gets a payout.

I had a fight with a friend of mine who was accusing me of denying reality by dismissing him calling Trump a "rapist" because of this harebrained decision.

It affects people.

Was your friend previously a Trump supporter?

No, so it cannot be said to have changed anyone's mind.

Eh, there's plenty of social media and other commentary about "Trump is a rapist, it was proven in court" and "Trump is a paedophile, he raped twelve year olds with Epstein".

I don't think he helped himself with how he handled it, but if someone accuses you falsely and you say "they're a liar" and then get thumped for saying it's a lie, I do think the deck is stacked. Platner will probably have "he's a rapist" around his neck now, whatever happens, and his political career may be hindered or even stopped.

It could have happened. But "could have" is not the same as "did happen".

Isn't it important to distinguish between formal rape allegations (immediately went to the cops and got a kit, pressed charges) and "casual" ones?

We could take those two numbers at face value and assign the first one to the former and the second to the latter.

For a personal example, I once made out with someone (several times) of an evening, we talked about our childhoods, Fullmetal Alchemist lore, and Noir tropes. I offered her a ride back to her place, we walked arm-in-arm to my car, she said she was "tired" so I dropped her off without anything other than a final kiss and a hug.

The next day she was "So Tired of Straight guys assuming I'm not asexual" and a year later the incident had become Sexual Assault.

Yet I still haven't gotten a knock on the door from the cops.

I’m really sorry you had to go through that.

As someone posted in a sister post, Scott Alexander wrote an article about false rape rates over 12 years ago and I will quote the relevant parts of that article as they apply to your life:

While rape victims have some incentives to report their cases to the police – a desire for justice, a desire for safety, the belief that the evidence will support them – false accusers have very strong incentives not to – too much work, easier revenge through other means, knowledge that the evidence is unlikely to support them, fear of getting in trouble for perjury if their deception gets out. So I consider it a very conservative estimate to say that the ratio of unreported to reported false accusations is 4:1 – the same as it is with rapes. A more realistic estimate might be as high as double or triple that.

Some questionable methodologies claim that all false rape accusations are reported as real rapes to the police, but that kind of thinking comes off as motivated reasoning to me, and the false accusation you have had to endure shows that a lot of false accusations aren’t filed with police.

It really is reminding me of the Kavanaugh accusations (complete with Blasey Ford style "mentioned it to my therapist"). Will we get elevators full of screaming harpies and the rest of the circus?

I don't know if this happened at all, or if it happened the way she said. Platner is sleazy enough that yeah, it could have. But if E. Jean Carroll is uncritically believed, why not this woman? Tara Reade accused the wrong Democrat, but the Dems want rid of Platner, the previous scandals didn't shift him, now they can dump him with clean hands and have the progressive Democrat (as per the Silver Bulletin article on this) take his place and... lose against Collins, is my read on it.

This is a little more than the Kavanaugh accusations. Nobody could prove that Blasey Ford had ever even met Kavanaugh! The accusation was 30 years old and even Ford's friends couldn't remember it having happened. At least here the accuser is verifiably someone everyone knows knows him.

I have no dog in this particular fight, as I neither live in Maine nor have any plans to do so in the next six years. I am also going to leave aside the object-level concerns, as I don't think estimating general population false accusation rates clarifies much due to the numerous selection effects and atypical—at least in scale—incentives involved here. However, I do strongly object to the blithe implication of equivalent credibility you make:

About that “believe all women” streak, it’s an open question what percent of rape accusations are false rape accusations. I will list two sources with different conclusions:

  • Source 1 claims 0.2% of rape accusations are false.
  • Source 2 claims 28.8% of rape accusations are false.

Both sources show their homework, so people can look at them and see which source is more reasonable in its methodology.

Source 1 shows their homework for an infographic they made (and which doesn't render for me on the archived page—possibly a skill issue), not for any of the surveys or studies providing the numbers which are used in said homework. They arrive at a 0.2% rate by multiplying a 10% reporting rate by a 2% false accusation rate. Yes, it really is just "0.1*0.02 = 0.002 = 0.2%". Where did they get those two factors?

  • The 10% reporting rate is assumed based on two studies, one of which (UK, 2006) estimated a reporting rate between 5% and 25% and the other which covered two years in the US and estimated 49% (2010) and 27% (2011). I don't know how one bases an assumption of "Let's go with 10%" on those numbers, none of the linked studies are accessible via either the archive or copy-pasting the URL, and since the project which hosts the page is "a campaign to bring sexual violence out of the closet and lift survivors to their full potential", this has "just trust me bro" levels of credibility. Regardless, if God were to descend from the heavens and reveal exactly what percentage of rapes result in an accusation, it would be irrelevant to the false accusation rate, because a false accusation requires there to be an accusation in the first place.
  • The 2% false accusation rate is the lower bound of an estimate (2%–8%) from what I believe is a US study from 2009 (a different year and/or country than the studies which were mostly ignored to, charitably, "estimate" the 10% reporting rate figure) hosted here by a different, but aligned, activist organization.

This is certainly one of the methodologies of all time.

Source 2 shows their homework by skewering the very survey which Source 1 used for its 2% false accusation rate, in much the same way that Scott Alexander did in 2013. Both (correctly, as we claim to grant the presumption of innocence in the relevant jurisdictions) bother accounting for inconclusive claims in the numerator and denominator, but I recommend Scott's analysis since it also grapples with selection effects regarding the non-reporting factor.

Regardless of how believable you find the analyses (Source 2 or Scott's; I wouldn't dignify Source 1 with such a characterization), they are at least operating on the level of evidence relevant to assessing accusations, whereas Source 1 is not.

If I am being overwhelmingly charitable, I would say that taking claims made by activist organizations (of any stripe) at face value is unwise, and that if you want to use them in your reasoning, the fine people at Morton have a variety of products suited to this purpose.

If I am being less- but still far from un-charitable, I would say that I suspect you read neither of those sources (particularly Source 1) and just wanted to slap up a couple numbers to make a "but who could say, really" sort of point. One of the reasons I might suspect this is that multiple others still bother to read things as well. I can't imagine that throwing out links without reading them would improve one's credibility, and while I'm just some rando who broke a decade-long streak of lurking during a coffee break, more established members like @phosphorus2 and @FCfromSSC expressing parallel sentiments should motivate exercising more care and deliberation when posting—it certainly would in me.

Most of your post made some excellent points but I feel the final paragraph was not necessary, kind, nor true.

an infographic they made (and which doesn't render for me on the archived page—possibly a skill issue)

Yes, the infographic was removed from that page over the years. Here’s a picture of the infographic. As an aside, when Amanda Marcotte (a radical left-wing feminist, if you ask me) says the infographic is wrong, there probably are methodological issues with it.

Yes, I linked to that study, but since I linked to a contradicting study, I think it’s more fair and reasonable to conclude I don’t have an opinion either way than me making an “implication of equivalent credibility”. My general view is that I am not qualified to have a strong opinion on the issue, [1] although like you I think concluding only 0.2% of rape accusations are false is probably an emotional appeal which doesn’t survive cold logic (and even Amanda Marcotte feels that way, for the record). But I credit the Enliven project for at least showing their homework; most social media graphs like this are completely made up.

The only opinion I have is that there are enough false rape accusations out there that people accused of rape deserve due process and presumption of innocence, not this “believe all women” nonsense.

Something about that study, however, elicited a very intense emotional reaction from you, as evidenced by the bad faith accusations such as “throwing out links without reading them”.

When I read the entire PBS article, as I did when it first came out, my impression was that it discredited Reade’s accusation because, logistically, it just wasn’t possible for Biden to assault her that way in the place she claimed to have been assaulted.

The sense I get from other posters is a negative emotional reaction to PBS, since PBS is a “blue tribe” source of information, and some people here have a negative emotional reaction to any and all “blue tribe” sources. In the particular case of the Reade accusations, PBS had to present a strong case that Reade was full of it, but they had to, since their audience when they wrote that article had a large number of “believe all women” readers, do so in a way without directly contradicting the “believe all women” mantra, which is why the article presents a lot of evidence without making stronger conclusions.

Indeed, one thing I notice is that when I support the red tribe here, I get upvoted, but when I support the blue tribe, I get downvoted. I don’t think it’s helpful to be an echo chamber for either side, but since most places default to left-of-center opinions (where I often get downvoted and/or buried when I question blue tribe talking points), I also come here to try and get a balanced world view, ideally without excessive emotion.

[1] I do have strong opinions on other issues, such as the claim that 80% of the women sleep with 20% of the men, but that’s an issue I have researched deeply enough to have a strong opinion about.

My final paragraph was being kind. It was a description of my own (conditional) internal state, so I can verify it was true. Its necessity is left to the judgment of the reader—though I note that none of what anyone posts here is strictly necessary in the barest sense (and yet...). I do appreciate you linking the infographic, but I cannot help but point out that if it was taken down from its original source and you had to instead link the graphic as part of an article written by a radical feminist saying that it tripped her BS detector in the direction opposite her biases and is probably crap, then it's probably not worth including it at all.

Casually linking to two studies and inviting people (in this case, me) to look at them and see which source is more reasonable in its methodology doesn't engender any particular conclusion other than that you didn't seem to have read them particularly carefully. That I had to click through to find that one of the (as-described) studies isn't a study, but instead yet another innumerate, made-up social media graph which added negative value to the discussion was, in a nutshell, the point of my post. I know the graph was made up, because Enliven did show their homework. I award them no points, and may God have mercy on their souls.

Touching briefly on the object level: I think we are in agreement on due process and presumption of innocence.

I'm not sure what the back half of your response (PBS? Upvotes? Your GitHub?) has to do with anything I said, but after reading through, I think you might be misinterpreting others' disagreement and skepticism as emotional reactions. While I can't speak to others' feelings or lack thereof, you did impute an intense emotional response to me, and I invite you to not do that again.

Unlike the way you describe the link it is not "Platner outed as an actual rapist".

It is "women who dated him says it was rape, kinda, she didn't fight him off or stab him with the sewing needles or go to the cops or anything like that or even try to run out of the house after he was done".

Racicot told POLITICO she connected with Platner on the dating app Bumble in 2019 and had consensual relations with him prior to the night he allegedly assaulted her.

That night in late 2021, she said she had exchanged text messages with him and told him not to come over, saying she wasn’t in the mood for company. Later that evening, she said she realized when she heard a sound on the stairs that he had let himself into her house, which was unlocked.

Platner came up the stairs, Racicot said, to where she was on a couch. He got on top of her and kept grabbing her, she said, while she repeatedly told him to stop and that she wasn’t interested. Racicot said she smelled alcohol on his breath and believed he was “almost blackout drunk” because Platner ignored her protests and continued to grab her after knocking over an antique sewing kit, spilling small needles everywhere.

“And, the look on his face and realizing what was happening, I just realized that, like, I am in a situation where there’s no consent here,” she said.

Racicot said she tried to separate herself from Platner by telling him she couldn’t be in that room anymore, after which he followed her to her bedroom and had sex with her against her will. She said he also ejaculated inside of her despite her telling him not to, as she was not using birth control at the time.

She went to clean herself up, she said, and when she returned, Platner had fallen asleep. She contemplated waking him up to kick him out, but worried he could hurt someone driving in the state he was in.

The following morning, she said, Platner tried to put his arm around her and she pushed him away. She said she asked him whether he remembered what had happened the previous night; according to Racicot, Platner said he didn’t remember. Racicot said she told him to leave and never contact her again.

That's a whole lot of "it was non-consensual but I didn't do nothing about it" going on there. At this stage it's pure "he said/she said" and rests on "could it have happened like that? yes. did it happen like that? who knows?"

Is this the same here and gone?

This woman made a few bad choices(having a previous hookup with platner). Then afterwards he invited himself over and she told him not to come. She unwisely didnt lock the door so he just let himself in. Then she told him to stop while he grabbed her and tried to mount her. If that’s not rape, what is?

Oh, hydro, there are a lot of legal definitions of what exactly is and isn't rape, and judges make comments about it.

I'm now sufficiently burned on "oh wow hey just so happens that at precisely the right moment to help us get rid of this guy we hate, someone comes forward with an accusation of sexual assault that conveniently has no witnesses to support or, for our purposes, prove it never happened, gosh what are the chances, eh?" stories of this kind to be very dubious.

Lack of consent is not in itself rape. Suppose it hadn't been Platner walking in her front door. Would she have fought that guy off, called the cops, tried to get help? Because the story can be interpreted to be "she kinda would have gone along if he'd been sober, but because he wasn't, she just shrugged and let him get some so he'd go away in the morning". There's nothing there about "and I tried fighting him off, and when I got into my bedroom I locked the door but he broke in, and I tried calling for help but he grabbed my phone" etc. in the story.

Could have been rape. Could have been choice she later regretted. Could be "I don't want this guy in office, so here's my story". Could be a lot of things. I don't like Platner, but this isn't enough in the story to say "yep definitely rape rather than dubious consent". A lot of women (and men too, I guess) have sex out of a sense of duty or obligation, that doesn't make it rape.

A lot of women (and men too, I guess) have sex out of a sense of duty or obligation, that doesn't make it rape.

I don't think a lot of men really have much experience with this. Furthermore, I believe that according to human instinct[0] having to do this disqualifies you from being a man[1]. (Which is also why most human societies, bar the ones over the last 100 years, have this baked into their understanding of male homosexual activity, regardless of whether or not they actively prosecuted it.)

That knowledge gap creates some significant problems, though, since you have to guess as to how bad the problem actually is. So you can't tell nearly as well if the opposite side/sex is bullshitting you, and if you default to "just Believe Them" for a few generations, you get this situation, where normal relationship dynamics have effectively become rape (or can become rape arbitrarily), especially in the marginal case (like this one) where that duty/obligation is all that's left in the relationship.

It's understandable that, if this state of affairs is broken to the point it's getting in the way of other political goals, the "side" that gained a sociopolitical advantage from normal relationship dynamics being rape (whose candidate it ostensibly is) would start pulling away from the polemic and towards nuance/reality. The principled ones break first.

[0] Generalizes to 'being taken advantage of', but this is specifically why Samuel Jackson's character says those things in the first place. Bitches are by definition female (shorthand for "obligated/subordinate"- not a prescription), which is why calling a man one in this context can even be a bad thing in the first place.

[1] And is part of why men in that position don't usually like talking about it if and when it should happen to them. (And if it involves a woman, why the response is some variation of "nice" or "how'd you con her into it?", and in either case is followed by disbelief should the man complain about being turned into the obligated/subordinate partner. In conventional relationships other men will mock the complainant by making whip-cracking sounds.)

Lack of consent is not in itself rape.

I mean definitionally it is:

The revised UCR definition of rape is: penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.

That doesn't mean this story is true of course. But having sex with someone without their consent is rape. Whether they fight back or freeze or do nothing.

If she consents to having sex with Platner no matter how grudgingly then it isn't rape of course, you are correct there. But then there is consent. Lack of consent is exactly what turns sex into rape.

without the consent of the victim.

I think HereandGone is implying a sort of tacit consent. I don't consent to my cat laying me and clawing at my belly... but I don't do much more than call him an asshole and then scratch his ears. I've personally been on the receiving end of similar sexual behavior, and calling it rape feels like it seriously devalues the concept. I was not "forced against my will", I was "annoyed by a drunk wife until I decided that getting her off was the quickest path to getting back to sleep".

For the cat example, you have technically been assaulted no (assuming we held cats to human standards at least for the analogy to hold)? Someone else who likes cats less could throw your cat across the room in self defense. The fact you don't take it seriously is your prerogative, but in a human to human scenario that would be assault (or battery or whatever). If a man walks up to you and scratches your stomach with sharp fingernails, I assume you are not going to be as sanguine (though, hey what do I know, maybe that would float your boat!)

For the wife example, however grudgingly you did indeed consent. So that's not the same as "lack of consent"

Lack of consent is the literal difference between rape and not rape. If she does indeed grudgingly consent to Platner then it is not rape I agree. If she doesn't consent at all then it doesn't matter what other actions she takes, it is rape.

After 5 years and with presumably no evidence it might not be prosecutable or provable beyond a reasonable doubt of course, either way.

For the wife example, however grudgingly you did indeed consent. So that's not the same as "lack of consent"

I think this is the line being discussed. HereandGone is interpreting her actions as being closer to "begrudging consent". The problem with

Lack of consent is the literal difference between rape and not rape.

is that, particularly among people who have an existing, ongoing sexual relationship, that line can get blurry.

It can! But the statement wasn't about why he may have assumed he had consent or similar. Her statement was that lack of consent does not make rape. Not that the line was blurry, or that he may have assumed consent, or that it wasn't communicated well or anything of the sort.

The literal difference between rape and not rape is the lack of consent. The line might get blurry as to whether she did consent, I agree. But if she did not it is rape.

If she just meant the line is blurry then her choice of wording was poor indeed.

More comments

But in this case she was saying no multiple times and was physically forced into it- assuming her story is accurate. That’s a pretty textbook definition of lack of consent.

I think consent exists on a sliding scale. At a value of zero, escaping the situation is the whole of your utility function, and you would happily order a nuclear strike at your location if you could, evaporating the perpetrator, yourself and millions of bystanders in the process.

At a value of 1, you are enthusiastic about the sex (but likely not to the point where it dominates your utility function, because that rarely happens).

Between these two extremes there is a lot of road, and at some point we put up a road sign labeled "rape" -- which is perfectly reasonable.

In the absence of other complications like diminished ability to consent (e.g. due to age or drugs), obvious coercion or pre-arrangements (like CNC or agreeing to wake-up sex), the line we draw is typically verbal (though voluntary actions may reinforce or negate verbally stated preferences).

If the alleged victim is saying "no" (and not contradicting that by undressing himself or his partner) as the sex begins, that is rape. If his last words before sex begins are "okay, let's just get this over with", that is verbal consent (even if he had said "no" before), ergo not rape. If he says nothing, the person initiating the sex better have a convincing story how based on past encounters or nonverbal signals.

We generally do not require rape victims to make a credible attempt to kill the perp or themselves to escape the situation. "She did not even try to choke to death on her own tongue, so she was likely enjoying it" is not a defense which is very successful. OTOH, violently resisting will typically leave forensic evidence which can be helpful in situations where verbal consent is in dispute.

I will grant you that it is entirely possible that he was simply pleading with her until he got some reluctant consent, which would make this not rape. But the fact that she did not call the cops when he fell asleep is not sufficient.

Obviously there is a lot of road between "not rape" and "enthusiastic consent", and most of us have walked parts of that road at some point. Relationships take compromise, both with regard to what movies to watch and what sexual activities to engage in, and when. Monogamous relationships even more, because alternatives are constrained.

Still, showing up drunk at the home of a previous hookup when she told you not to do so and beg for sex is rather close to the "(barely) not rape" end of the spectrum.

This is a good breakdown. If the story is true, what he did isn't good or acceptable, and may well deserve to be called rape. But at the same time, it's qualitatively different from snatching a woman off a running trail and having his way with her while she cries and begs him to stop.

If this woman is telling the truth, then it was rape- she said no(in fact told him that before she showed up at her house) and never changed her mind. I would certainly be willing to believe that she's lying, but it seems a lot more likely that her story- she was agonizing about telling someone because she supports him politically(she does seem to legitimately be a progressive democrat), eventually told NYT, they tried to sit on it, but then it leaked- to be true.

She didn't fight him off because she couldn't, she was scared, etc. That does not equal consent. She straight up told him no.

That does not equal consent. She straight up told him no.

Yeah, but it's much more dubious consent than rape, if I go by the report. She got away from him but didn't run out the door or lock the bedroom door or phone someone to come get him/come get her. Now maybe there will be a fuller account and more details, but the preliminary story is he was drunk and there's no mention of "he broke down the door" or "he grabbed me before I could get away".

"oh wow hey just so happens that at precisely the right moment to help us get rid of this guy we hate,

My understanding is that the "right moment" for Platner's political enemies would have been after it was too late for him to drop out and a replacement candidate to run, right? In which case this is only the right moment for Platner's political allies (although you might fairly object that Platner may have enemies inside the Democratic party), and their interest in pushing the story would be to get him to drop out before the story surfaces at the "right" moment.

Or am I wrong on the timeline, or is there inside baseball that I am missing?

I was thinking enemies inside the party. Collins and the Republicans probably don't care so long as he goes, and the second choice is a squishier Dem they can beat.

I could buy this, but I don't know enough inside baseball to speculate on who would count as his co-party rivals. Do you?

My guess is "people who want to win". Knowing or plausibly worrying that there was worse yet to come makes this a rational call from the rest of the party if they want to take the Senate. It could be some kind of Establishment vs DSA war, but there are more extreme standard-bearers for the DSA side, and most of the Establishment seemed willing to support him four days ago. Maybe his white maleness meant that he was the only leftist candidate who was susceptible to shivving, which would be hilarious.

No, different articles claim different people might step up or be nominated (e.g. I've seen suggestions that Janet Mills, who previously withdrew from the race, might be persuaded back).

The thing is, can a different Democrat win? Who will they pick?

Traders at prediction markets think it is very likely that Platner will drop out. As of Monday evening, they give Platner just a 3 percent chance of being the next U.S. Senator from Maine. After Collins, at 37 percent, the next-most-likely election winner is Troy Jackson, at 34 percent. (Jackson, a progressive Democrat, came in third in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary.) Under Maine law, Platner has until next Monday (July 13) at 5 p.m. to withdraw from the race. The Maine Democratic Party would then have two weeks (until July 27) to replace him with a new nominee.

The comments section on the most recent post over at Silver Bulletin is interesting, because there's a range of people on there saying "I'm from Maine and I think they should pick Jackson/No, he's got baggage too! Pick Shah!/They need to pick someone from the left/No, they need to pick a moderate/Mills now has a great chance/Mills was hopeless, that's why she dropped out". I have no idea who they'll select out of all that.

I don’t think he’s saying if that’s what happened it isn’t rape - it’s that it’s all simply she said this happened 5 years ago.

It sounds completely believable.

But also, you know, what if it isn’t true or didn’t happen that way?

She contemplated waking him up to kick him out, but worried he could hurt someone driving in the state he was in.

Are we going to talk about the implication that he was driving a motor vehicle while drunk to her home?

Personally, I do not see a lot of light between "prone to rape when drunk" and "prone to reckless endangerment of others when drunk". Both should be disqualifying for public office in the eyes of the voters if they believe the allegations.

Especially if it is recent behavior, as in this case. If he had done his alleged crimes when he was 17, served his time and then decades later entered politics, things would be different.

Are we going to talk about the implication that he was driving a motor vehicle while drunk to her home?

Which indeed yes, I imagine he was drunk driving and yes, this is a serious claim.

I would be shocked if Platner hadn't been a habitual drunk driver for long stretches of time, given everything else we know about his character.

Is it consensual unless you stab him or call 911? I sympathize with not trying to escalate if you're in a room with a man who could easily overpower you and kill you and be an ongoing source of misery in your life.

That all said, I love how Democrats really badly need a normal salt of the earth white guy who codes blue collar that you could have a beer with, but it turns out those kind of guys don't attend enthusiastic affirmative consent workshops and "I got this Nazi-looking tattoo when I was drunk in the Marines, what's your fucking problem" doesn't travel well among people where symbols can have meanings.

I sympathize with not trying to escalate if you're in a room with a man who could easily overpower you and kill you and be an ongoing source of misery in your life.

Yeah, but there's no sign she tried getting away or locking doors or the rest of it. She heard him coming up the stairs after getting in her unlocked door, and didn't jump up and try and lock her living room door, or grab her phone and call a friend, or the likes of anything to protect herself. Fear of being overpowered, yes, but he was so drunk he was "knocking over an antique sewing kit, spilling small needles everywhere" and she managed to get him off her and then she went into her bedroom instead of running out the door. That is not sounding like "oh no he came over uninvited and I'm scared", that's "dammit I told him not tonight, ugh just humour him and maybe he'll go away".

Normal blue collar guys aren’t casually raping people.

Presuming her account is the fact of what happened, sure that's rape.

It's plausible it's closer to he forcefully advanced on her and she didn't clearly say no. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of men consider this hot consensual sex.

Affirmative consent workshops teach you to look for an explicit yes and it you don't get one assume the answer is no.

You could apply this same logic to the allegations made against Trump by Ivana Trump. It's about the same level of veracity, with one difference: Ivana retracted her statements after the fact. I don't believe that people who say this now wants to stick to just the facts - mostly because everyone who tried was sent to the social gulag a long time ago. If you dared make such a argument to those of progressive and liberal leanings, you would have been called a rape apologist. I was there. I lived through the MeToo period. Superficially this is a fair argument to make. But if you lived in the past ten years - if you have been exposed to public discourse at all - you know that this is the left not living up to its principles that it used to oppress men.

Because even feminism is subordinate to the cause, in certain conditions. You can make the most crunchy granola hippy defend a ex-blackwater totenkampf-toting sexual abuser if he says the right platitudes about Israel. People sneer at the right-populists all the time, but at least they have a movement. They get elected. Platner is a man that doesn't deserve any loyalty but every tankie and communist has torched their public reputations to defend him in the past few months. It would be funny, if it didn't make your heart ache.

Look, as unimpressive as I find the accusations…I’m really surprised to see this framing from you. We’ve got a lot of users who have said similar things in the past, and I could have sworn you’d blown up at them.

If the accuser is telling the truth, then it’s rape, plain and simple. That just happens to be a big “if.”

I think Platner is a louse. I think he probably did behave badly. But as I've said, I've been burned by all the political accusations that only show up when oopsies, looks like The Wrong Guy might get elected.

If she's telling the truth, she was an idiot as well. Unlocked front door, could have been anyone coming up the stairs and unless she knew or strongly suspected it was Platner and not a stranger, things might have gone a lot worse. Maybe the news media are just being careful, but they're all reporting it as "sexual assault" and not "rape". Here is an interview she did where she went into more detail. It's still a bit of a grey area, because (for example) how many posts have we had on here discussing how women put men through shit tests? "Don't come over" after texting with him where he thinks she's asking him over could be seen as "Bro, she was shit testing you. Women want dominant men, you backed off like a pussy? You were supposed to head over and convince her to sleep with you!"

I think rape is wrong. I also think, for example, that if you go out and get so drunk you can't remember who you went home with or if you had sex with them, then you too are contributing to the risk whatever might or might not have happened.

Nonconsensual sex? Yeah. Rape? Depends on exact legal definition in Maine or wherever this might be tried.

how many posts have we had on here discussing how women put men through shit tests?

I think most of those posts fall somewhere between uncharitable and unhinged. I was under the impression you usually thought the same, which is why I was surprised.

Again, I don’t disagree with your assessment of the credibility.

I suppose part of it (a large part) was because I was around for a similar story of "I was raped by X and Y" in my home town that went national, was tut-tutted over by All Right-Thinking People, the accused went to jail to the accompaniment of scorn and derision from everyone from the trial judge on down... and it was later revealed to be all invented for reasons of (a) mental disturbance and (b) revenge by the claimant and the witness she said she had.

Throw in the Kavanaugh case, where we went from Blasey Ford who at least had "it could indeed have happened like that" to the High School Drug Rape Gangbangs (which we were supposed to believe just as unquestioningly) plus at least one accuser who admitted to lying in order to get Kavanaugh off the court, and that put the kibosh on it for me and politically-charged accusations that conveniently come along years afterwards when the guy is on the brink of getting public office.

Jill Schmoe accuses Joe Schmoe of doing bad stuff where the accusation is recent, credible, has some corroboration, and isn't politically or otherwise motivated? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Jill Schmoe accuses Joe Bigname just when Joe is going for substantial public office and there are those who would love to see Joe fall on his face? I'm going to need a heck of a lot of proof backing that one up.

I dont find it that surpirsing. Limited patience with people has always been part of her brand, and the accuser sure is a "come on man" character here.

I think what gets me about this story isn't the rape allegation, but the fact that after everything else only a rape allegation matters. He made the right mouth sounds, so he got a pass on all sorts of other behavior.

It's a shame Democrats threw out their Christian upbringing. Otherwise Platner would be able to say he found God and it's all good now. Since it's a given that literally every single human being seeking public office is a monster in human looking flesh, they really need to come up with some sort of secular redemptive act. I'm not sure donating to the ADL is cutting it anymore.

What sort of redemption is there in secularism even?

More likely what mattered is his poll numbers looking bad.

I think you're correct that the poll numbers are the direct lever involved, but my understanding is that just kicks what gets @WhiningCoil about the story up one level, i.e., Platner got a pass (in the polls) on all sorts of other behavior, but what mattered (in the polls) was a rape allegation. It's still a worthwhile distinction, since the relevance and valence of some issue to political higher-ups and to the voting population can differ significantly (cf. immigration), but that might only magnify the frustration.

The closest analogue I recall was a lot of people up in arms that Andrew Cuomo was pushed to resign after a series of sexual harassment allegations rather than his disastrous decision to put a bunch of COVID patients into nursing homes.

Edit: grammar

Huh. I think the “found God” strategy would actually work, since his main appeal was always to bring in conservatives.

Not that I expect him to take it.

He didn't bring in conservatives, his appeal was that he would juice turnout among the grassroots working class left who are now politically homeless due to the DNC's increasing moderation.

Obviously, it's not based on an accurate worldview.

Otherwise Platner would be able to say he found God and it's all good now.

In Christianity genuine repentance means it's all good with God now, but one of the things the genuinely repentant want to do is to reduce future temptation to sin for themselves and others, which makes "and so there don't need to be any secular consequences for my actions either!" a huge red flag suggesting non-genuine repentance.

Secular decision theory isn't much different here. It might be possible to rewrite your own mental hardware to be more virtuous from that point onward, but it's rare enough that you can't expect others to trust it's not a fake unless you're putting out signals whose cost exceeds the benefit to you of that trust. Donations are particularly tricky, because donees who don't trust you might just make the signal backfire by returning your money; some of Harvey Weinstein's attempts come to mind.

Purportedly, the NYT had this story weeks ago when they ran the other one*, but excluded everything but that one woman so they could use the article to smear her and her allegations about Platner as motivated by sheer partisanship.

Democrats left and right are deleting all their fervent, avowed support for the man. He should brazen it out. Just refuse to drop out. What are they going to do? Take the L? His party would about face again in two weeks and slut-shame the accuser, just like the double-thought away the Nazi tattoo.

The haters said he would crash and burn, and they were correct. Honestly great call by the haters.

Never got that specific with the hater-ing, but it seems pretty on brand.

*Should be that one, but I don't subscribe to that rag.

Just refuse to drop out. What are they going to do? Take the L?

Rumors are that there is a second story about him visiting an underage brothel in the Middle East that will drop if he doesn't quit. Every other rumor about this guy has turned out to be true so who knows.

Democrats are quite content will people in their ranks visiting Epstein island.

That just sounds like an excuse to do another podcast with Hasan Piker. Talk about their common experience, maybe vlog a Devil's Tower.

Democrats left and right are deleting all their fervent, avowed support for the man. He should brazen it out. Just refuse to drop out. What are they going to do? Take the L? His party would about face again in two weeks and slut-shame the accuser, just like the double-thought away the Nazi tattoo.

I'm reminded of Jay Jones.

Big if true.

I’m not going to jump on the hate train, since it’s firmly “too good to check” for a lot of people. Plus, you know, completely unverifiable. But assuming it’s true, this guy ought to be unelectable.

For those suggesting a ratfuck: do they actually have time to pivot, or is this basically tanking the whole party’s chances for Maine? Would that really be worth keeping a center-left populist out of office?

If it’s not a ratfuck, they will let Platner pick a successor. He did win the primary after all.

What? If it’s genuine, why would they do that? He can only drag down his replacement.

And so long as he denies it, what incentive would he have to help out?

Because he won the primary. He creamed the establishment candidate. She didn’t even make it to Election Day.

Presumably his political opinions are genuine. If he’s forced to quit (which he will be) he should quit on his own terms.

Maybe I was unclear.

The accusation represents new information unavailable to primary voters.

If that’s not enough to lose the general, they don’t need to drop him like this.

If it is enough, then his endorsement is worth less than nothing.

Therefore, they have no reason to drop him but keep asking him for input.

Okay, let me break this down.

  • Maine voters like Graham Platner’s politics and affect.

  • Maine voters do not like that Graham Platner is “consensually careless”.

  • Graham Platner would choose his endorsement based on alignment with his politics but not alignment on date rape.

  • Therefore, Graham Platner should get to choose his replacement.

But what if Graham Platner would in fact choose his endorsement based on alignment with date rape but not alignment with his politics?

This accusation isn’t date rape- he entered a woman’s house after having been refused entry and then raped her. They weren’t on a date(although they had been in the past).

Well then he wouldn’t drop out. No one is better positioned to make date rape mainstream than Graham Platner.

I see where you’re coming from, and I guess I’m just not convinced that the average voter decouples those two things.

If he drops out of the race before July 13th, the Democrat Party of Maine gets to pick a replacement, which would almost certainly be the sitting governor that Platner beat for the nomination by default after she stopped campaigning.

That's why the Reps have been heavily hinting that they have killshot levels of dirt that only come out after it's too late to replace him.

If they're lying, and Collins just baited the Dem establishment, it would be a legendary act of dirty politics.

The true ratfucking would be to dump this the day after the filing deadline. This is the Democrats defending themselves from the upcoming Republican oppo research dump.

Nate Silver suggests it might be this guy:

Traders at prediction markets think it is very likely that Platner will drop out. As of Monday evening, they give Platner just a 3 percent chance of being the next U.S. Senator from Maine. After Collins, at 37 percent, the next-most-likely election winner is Troy Jackson, at 34 percent. (Jackson, a progressive Democrat, came in third in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary.) Under Maine law, Platner has until next Monday (July 13) at 5 p.m. to withdraw from the race. The Maine Democratic Party would then have two weeks (until July 27) to replace him with a new nominee.

I haven't followed this story closely enough to assess the facts or Platner as a person.

But I worry that a system of "Your ex-lover says bad things about you and now you are toxic waste" is basically a system that bans normal people from running for office.

The vast majority of exes have bad things to say about their former partners. Crazy, bipolar, abusive, violent, lying, cheating, scumbags all of them.

And the only way to be sure you never have a crazy ex is to never date. Crazy ex girlfriends might seem sane when you meet them, or they might be sane when you meet them and suffer a mental break later*.

Per a quick Grok, 90-95% of ever-married Americans have premarital sex. The median partner count is about six for a 42 year old man. That's six rolls of the dice, and if you roll under 5 on a d20 you can't ever run for office. And you can't really know how you rolled until you've already staked your whole life and fortune and reputation on the run.

That's not really any way for a country to function. Normal people have to be able to run for office. Otherwise our only politicians will be freaks, people who have lived their whole lives in a kind of asceticism designed to protect their future political careers.

Sex and romance are a full contact sport, and we want to issue lifetime bans to anyone who commits a foul.

*Growing up my father got letters from a woman he dated some time in the 70s before meeting my mother. She went through a mental health crisis after moving to a foreign country and marrying a man there, and sent FiveHour the elder hundreds of letters making up dozens of stories to...idk maybe get him back or something? She actually died at one point, at which time her "sister" started sending the letters, then she came back and sent the letters herself again. I suppose this experience informs my views.

I wouldn’t say that the rape(y) allegation was what did Platner in. It was a final straw on top of everything else. I’m okay if normies are brought down by a combination of being communism-curious, training antifa goons on how to use firearms, lying about nazi tattoos, getting nazi tattoos in the first place, sexting numerous women within his first year of marriage, hanging out on apps known for underage hookups, pretending to be working class, pretending to be oyster farmers, lying about why he went to a prep school, etc etc.

Just avoid doing, you know, some or all of the above and a lying crazy ex probably won’t be enough to derail your campaign. Swalwell got elected a few times and almost got the governor’s chair, after all.

Real weight bearing "almost" in that last sentence.

People voted for Platner despite/because of all of the above, and now he's being driven out by unresolvable accusations from his ex gf. That looks less like "straw that broke the camel's back" and more like "trap card activated."

And yet most politicians make it through the process without catching this kind of scandal.

The point about Platner is that he's not normal. He's spent his entire adult life as a barely functional basketcase. This story isn't actually what sunk him - the fact that it was published in Politico was a Schelling Point to let the Dems know that he was getting kicked out. He literally had a different ex-girlfriend story drop a few weeks ago in the NYT, but the take was "She's a conservative just doing politics, so we can ignore her allegations".

It's likely that no one who withdrew an endorsement did so based on the facts of the actual accusation, but rather for reasons of triangulating around his odds of beating Collins.

The normie candidates who once dated a Latina or emo chick are still safe.

different ex-girlfriend story drop a few weeks ago in the NYT, but the take was "She's a conservative just doing politics, so we can ignore her allegations".

Importantly - it seems like they knew about this and didn't publish so that they could spin that narrative.

Per a quick Grok, 90-95% of ever-married Americans have premarital sex. The median partner count is about six for a 42 year old man. That's six rolls of the dice, and if you roll under 5 on a d20 you can't ever run for office. And you can't really know how you rolled until you've already staked your whole life and fortune and reputation on the run.

Perhaps it's better that the electoral system filters out unlucky people. Then again, this is probably a very lossy and inefficient way of filtering such people out; a more direct approach would be to just make every candidate play one round of Russian Roulette together.

But also, it might not be better for you if your elected representative has better luck. Him having good luck could mean that him and everyone around him avoid the bullet, or it could also mean that he avoids the bullets while everyone else around him doesn't. So perhaps wed want him to be on the lucky end of the spectrum but not too much luckier than the people he's representing.

So select for people with exes with moderately bad things to say about him.

The pundit class has been pretty significantly telegraphing that the guy is incredibly radioactive and that the republicans are just waiting for the filing deadline, and the NYT knew about this and suppressed it.

Supposedly the big thing that's being sat on is sexual warcrimes, which sounds absurd but this is a guy who said he wants his house to be robbed so he can rape the robbers*.

*Per one of his sexual assault victims.

the republicans are just waiting for the filing deadline

...with what?

I mean I don't know for sure, it sounds like they may have additional sex crime allegations of various kinds. I was hearing from journalists months ago that "everyone" knew about these accusations and that some of them were being held onto or quashed (in the case of the NYT).

Most of the people who were saying that are saying more stuff is left in the tank.

The nuclear warfare option is something from his time on Kik. The platform has a bad reputation for underage users, and while I'd understand the argument that what's been shown so far is much worse than waving his dingaling at a 17-year-old, there's both political and philosophical reasons the latter might be more of a showstopper.

But on top of the question of whether that exists, the trouble is the old "Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across". Nothing from this point onward is more dangerous to a Senator than to a random loser; any further threat is just another layer of double-or-prison.

(maybe literally; the statute of limitations in Maine for rape is 20 years)

It's entirely possible they can release some conversations with a young lady considerably younger than seventeen.

sexual warcrimes

Is this metal band name taken?

Thank you for making me do this google search.

Also, apparently the PC approved term is "Conflict-related Sexual Violence."

I will put that next to "non-domiciled."

The applicable term is simply 'war rape', I think.

Unfortunately the euphemism treadmill does not allow that, see for example "IPV" (intimate partner violence).

Both of which sound more “math rock” to me.

I hate Platner and would not be surprised if he really did, but Democrats somehow manage to drum up convenient rape allegations against just about everyone the moment they become inconvenient. The allegation itself is just yet another he-said-she-said, and as far as I can see, the "she-said"-part is not even incompatible with both getting drunk and not communicating well.

The story is patchy. Front door unlocked? Hears someone coming up the stairs but doesn't even get off the couch? Doesn't mention trying to push him off or fight him off? Gets away from him into the bedroom but doesn't lock that door? Doesn't call anyone to come over and help her? Sticks around while he's passed out/asleep until the next morning, then tells him go home and don't call her again? Doesn't wake him up because she doesn't want him driving drunk but, y'know, doesn't call the cops after he forced himself on her?

It's not impossible, but that sounds less like rape and more like "hook-up I regret".

It's hard to call it a hookup after they've been dating for a while. There's also really complicated feelings when it comes to people you know and trusted up to the point where they did something terrible. Women stay in abusive relationships all the time, and people regularly allow themselves to be taken advantage of by family members. If she knew the guy for two years and he hadn't done anything similar prior to that time, it's probably easier for her to view him as a decent guy who had a bad night as opposed to someone who should go to jail. It's not that different than having a brother who stole $10,000 from you to feed his gambling habit. You may disown him and never want to talk to him again, but that doesn't mean you're going to report him to the police and participate in a criminal investigation.

I would call it a non-consensual hookup. Less bad than an average rape, but still kind of rape. If you've had sex with someone several times and like them, and aren't opposed to having sex with them in general but just don't want to at the moment, you're way less likely to get violent with them than if a stranger attacks and tries to rape you.

I don't know what your marriage/SO situation is, but consider a time when you weren't in the mood for sex (maybe you're trying to get to sleep because you have to get up early the next morning, maybe you literally just had sex, maybe you're over at someone's house going to the bathroom). If your SO corners you, drunk, and tries to have sex with you despite it not being the right time or place, you're not going to stab them with sewing needles to get them to stop. I expect you'd use significantly less violence to make them stop and be much less likely to call the police on them afterwards when they're sober even if you do give them a stern talking to.

Now, in terms of the reasons rape is bad, in particular the physical and psychological trauma, this is way way less bad than a normal rape. But it's still bad, and not the same as a "hookup I regret". The hookup I regret is when the man did nothing wrong and the woman retroactively tries to change the morality of the action. If it wasn't wrong when he did it because he followed all of the rules, then it's not wrong. But if he's not following the rules, if he is forcing himself on someone who does not want it and unambiguously makes it clear that they do not want it, then he is doing something wrong. He is a bad person. Less bad than a central example of a rapist, but somewhere in the same ballpark, regardless of what word you use to describe it.

I don't know what your marriage/SO situation is

To my understanding @HereAndGone2's knowledge of the dynamics of intimate relationships is entirely secondhand, but I'm open to correction.

I don't think it's patchy. From the article, they were in an on-again off-again relationship, so sexual encounters were normal, and maybe even showing up unannounced could have been normal. It's not difficult to imagine the "no" not being a particularly strongly felt "no", more like a "dude you just barged in here and immediately tried to have sex with me, get off" and then a realization "oh he's not taking 'no' for an answer...". Not taking 'no' for an answer is the dictionary definition of rape, but this case seems closer to marital rape than an actual tried-to-fight-him-off-and-cried-for-help type of rape. If that happened, it's very possible to not feel particularly unsafe while he drunkenly sleeps next to you satiated but get bad vibes that your boundaries were ignored and decide to cut him off the next day.

If anything, those details make the story more plausible. It isn't being played up, just plainly stated as basically a "consent accident", which she apparently sees it as, too. As for me, Graham Platner doesn't seem like the subdue-her-and-rape-her type, despite his rough personality. Well, unless he mistook her for a home intruder.

just plainly stated as basically a "consent accident"

"What? She tripped, fell, landed on his dick?"

"Consent accident" is kind of brilliant actually although I'm struggling to imagine many other use cases in which it would carry the same meaning you've given it here.

It's been a meme in certain circles for years.

Sounds like a Babylon Bee headline. "Entire nation in shock as politician who once said that rape victims should take some responsibility for their behaviour accused of sexual misconduct".

The actual Babylon bee headline is ‘Rape Allegations Mar Reputation of Local Nazi’.

The allegation is weak, but added to the others might be enough to sink Platner. I think it's a ratfuck by the Democrats, and so does Freddie DeBoer. Doesn't mean it isn't also true.

My hot take? The Dems have spent so much time equating masculinity with toxicity that when they had to pivot to appeal to men, this is what they came up with. "How do you do, fellow Nazi Rapists!"

In a purely political sense, this is one long series of unforced errors which is deconstructing the moral authority of the party/movement (such as it was). Platner still hasn't faced a Republican. This is all inter-Dem infighting, with popcorn on the right.

My hot take? The Dems have spent so much time equating masculinity with toxicity that when they had to pivot to appeal to men, this is what they came up with.

first_time.jpg?

There was also the humiliation ritual that was “white dudes for Harris,” of which had a wide-ranging AoE in cringe-induction among men across all races and across the political compass.

Wait, Freddie thinks it’s a screwjob?

Revising my estimates down a few points.

so does Freddie DeBoer.

Thank you for adding a moment of joy to my afternoon.

Reading DeBoer's article and comment section is wonderful. It's just so funny to watch the party of "If 9 people sit down at a table with 1 Nazi, you have 10 Nazis" morph seamlessly into, "Look, just because a man has a big Nazi tattoo on his chest doesn't mean he's a bad guy, you know?".

To be fair to the commenters, about a third to a half of commenters are saying variations of, 'screw the electoral dynamics, I'm not voting for a guy with a Nazi tattoo'.

I expect Platner and his supporters to try and blame this all on the Jews/Isreal before the month is out.

Confucius say if you wait by the river, the bodies of your ops float by eventually. Or something.

Platner officially denies the allegations, but you can tell from his statement that deep down he knows it's true.

What about this video gave you the impression he knows the allegations are true? He just recited a paragraph of legal boilerplate and a stump speech, in the exact same flat tone of voice.

I suspect the Kuleshov effect.


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