domain:putanumonit.com
Throwaway05
just now
Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy?
I understand what you are trying to say here, but an instant critique anyone on the right is going to feel is "hold on, aren't you guys supposed to be party of sympathy, empathy, being an adult? Don't you say you do this and criticize us for not having those attributes..." Followed by a slide into pure angry vitriol.
People unhappy with where the left is going have been calling out inconsistency, hypocrisy and dangerousness for more than a decade at this point and really won't accept anything than profound apologies and acceptance of blame and culpability.
I don't think anybody is really interested in doing that, so we are going to see some bad stuff as a result.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2m ago
Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning.
There's people where this sort of thing is understandable - Trump is obviously the avatar of Evil for a lot of people, so this would be expected - and cases where I think the humane reaction is to take a step back, and if you can't do that, it's time for a "are we thr baddies" check.
Maybe I'd get annoyed if someone wanted to make a statue for Hasan Piker or something, but honestly, if we got through the beatifiction of St. Floyd, St.Kirk should be no skin off anyone's nose.
Corvos
2m ago
It can take a lot of courage when there are real stakes. Have you ever made an unpopular argument in front of a committee of your 'peers' with all of them glaring at you, knowing that there's a small but serious chance you're going to get into actual real trouble but nevertheless feeling that something has to be said? It remains perhaps the most frightening thing I've done. It's been ten years but I still remember hiding my hands under the table so nobody could see they were shaking.
Now, perhaps I'm more sensitive about such things than you are, but perhaps also the venue was a bit heavier than yours. It was only university politics but equally to some extent the welfare of two hundred people were involved. Likewise, Kirk was involved in real politics and knew that he was at serious risk of being cancelled and blacklisted, even if he didn't expect to die for it.
jkf
3m ago
How many people have actually emigrated from the US following the elections of President Trump, for both of which I remember widespread threats of emigration?
I know one family quite well that has just done so (at significant cost), explicitly for the reason of trans stuff vis a vis Trump. (sad story around the son/daughter)
I question their judgement in that regard, but it might turn out to be a good decision for other reasons.
Tiber727
3m ago
I don't think most sane forms of this argument are "We should aim for 0 crime" vs. "We should aim for some crime." Rather, it's over whether the current amount of crime is optimal or how much we should be willing to change to aim for some lower number.
I'm sure plenty of left-leaning people don't think Kirk had literally 0 empathy for dead people, rather that it was on the level of thoughts and prayers. The downsides of policy are not evenly felt by the population, so it was, "Guy who had never suffered the bad effects of his policy tells us that the problems with his policy are tolerable."
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
5m ago
Sure you can list off individual incidents, but again they pale in comparison to all the public figures that have ever done public events in the past decade+.
And yes, as I said there have always been crazy people, but it hasn't been an undo concern for politicians relative to other public figures. Sure, they have security details, but Taylor Swift also has a security detail and it's not like she's running for office, or even regularly giving political hot-takes.
WandererintheWilderness
6m ago
Well, the most obvious analogy here would be Kirk's support for the Second Amendment. "Kirk supported the Second Amendment, he was wrong, and his murder is a great example of why he was wrong" is a pretty straightforward argument and it's hard to twist into a claim that Kirk deserved to die.
Though there's many kinds of "bought it on himself". If you grant the premise that Kirk's public persona was particularly loathsome/evil/outrageous, then you might very well think: I don't think he deserved to die, but he brought it on himself by advocating for such horrible things, someone rasher and more hot-headed than me was bound to snap sooner or later.
KMC
6m ago
If you demonstrate murderous contempt for me, or those like me, or those holding the same opinions I hold, I don't want you involved in any level of the executive or judicial branches.
I will excuse the legislature as the madness of the demos, but teachers are members of the executive branch, at either federal or state level, and they should act like it.
KMC
8m ago
Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy?
There's a huge difference between preposterous happenstance and enemy action, and that difference cannot simply be excluded from this situation like you've done.
you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings
Because she wasn't assassinated, she somehow died in a freak accident. Furthermore, the Wicked Witch is EVIL, which Charlie Kirk wasn't. Finally, The Wizard of Oz is fiction, not reality. It's obvious, but always bears repeating. Fiction is not reality. It never will be.
It's completely outside their control, it doesn't scan as something they or their tribe did.
This is their fault for lacking the theory of mind of their opponents and awareness of the terrain. Of course it was something their tribe did, that's blatantly obvious to everyone who's not delusional, and I feel no need to nurture those delusions when vicious people express glee over the assassination of their enemies.
Trying to rationalize the assassination of your enemies as some sort of freak accident is the problem as it demonstrates your delusions. There can be no accident here, and there's a direct line from "punch a nazi" to "fascist, catch."
Your explanation, if true, has somehow lowered my respect for the people you're trying to defend.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
10m ago
You're probably right but I simply refuse to believe Joan Baez has less cultural footprint than Alex Pina.
Imaginary_Knowledge
11m ago
It took 200 years of misbehavior from both the Protestant and Catholic camps to convince everyone to stop the pointless destruction and establish the norms we call freedom of religion and the Peace of Westphalia. Imagine one side or the other stopping early and not fighting back after wringing their hands over abstract principles! The abstract principles come out of peace negotiations. First, you have to either win or fight to a stalemate. We're not even out of the opening phases of what will be a long, brutal war.
yofuckreddit
13m ago
You're effectively demanding unilateral disarmament.
This is in no way too much to ask for after such visceral political violence. If someone blew AOC's head off there's a zero percent chance I'd post some sneering crap about how I'm "not mourning" her death.
NullHypothesis
14m ago
Considering protestors routinely show up at Kirk and other conservative speaker's events, there's bound to be people on the other side who could come prepared to debate. For the everyday college student that shows up with no knowledge ahead of time, entering the conversation with some humility and open mindedness would do wonders. I thought college and universities were supposed to be a place that helps students hone their critical thinking skills.
I've seen students with leftist point of views come in and because they don't show up being aggressive, there's an actual conversation and dialogue between Kirk and those students. The ones that go viral with the gotcha moments tend to be aggressive, close minded students that come into the conversation with intent to win an argument.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
14m ago
We're you debating in favor of any right-leaning policies? You might be right, but I think the zeitgeist for the average conservative, even moderate ones, is heavily flavored by a decade of events like James Damore (pilloried for an IMO milquetoast view, definitely not violent, on STEM demographics) or Nick Sandmann (a literal kid with the audacity to get photographed standing awkwardly between two groups of vastly less polite protesters) getting dragged through the media, or no shortage of other such cases. Maybe forgive such folks for thinking it's unsafe to express such opinions in the public square.
Doubly so since Kirk seems to have just been literally shot and killed for doing so.
KMC
16m ago
"Thirty-three to be precise."
Yeah, I'm thinking something fucky went down.
yofuckreddit
17m ago
What you're saying here doesn't make much sense. The blue-haired kids just happened to ignorantly stumble into an assembly hosted on campus, after classes are over, watch their friends get demolished, and then step up to the mic and do the same thing?
The reality is that these were fervent believers, ready to be angry and combative, who probably did plenty of research beforehand. The clips that made it to TikTok were probably the lower performers, but they were performers nonetheless. Characterizing these discussions as an intellectual giant beating up on stupid children isn't accurate.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
18m ago
In your world the distinction is that when they bust down my door and take me to jail they are the only ones inflicting violence, the law is not violent even though it backed up its authority with the social-derived power to inflict violence as an enforcement mechanism. I obviously disagree. I can infer the causality of that law and directly hold the people who proposed, lobbied, agitated for, etc. responsible for attempting to use the state's power to enforce violence for their own ends.
This is literally the same logic as the libertarian "taxation is theft" argument, even though you call it farcical. The logic there is that the government's demand for money is backed up by threat of violence, so it is tantamount to theft under threat of violence. Your logic is that the demands of the law (to not say the president has no clothes, in this example) are backed up by threat of violence, so they are tantamount to violence. And incidentally the same exact counterargument you give would apply back to your thinking: by living in society you implicitly agree to the social contract (don't say the president has no clothes), but you're welcome to reject that social contract and go live on your own, if you can find land to do so. Note that I'm not saying the libertarian argument is correct. I'm saying that to be consistent one must either accept both, or reject both, because they follow the same logic.
idk what slight of hand you think I am doing. My explicit point is that governments are formed on the basis of a monopoly on violence and social consensus (for democratic systems) and their authority is derived from those basses. Thus any action by the government to enforce a law carries an implicit threat of violence against lawbreakers. I am open to you explaining to me how that is not the case but I have yet to see anything to the contrary
I'm not accusing you specifically of rhetorical sleight of hand, for what it's worth (because that would be pretty uncharitable). I am simply saying that this sort of argument is often used for that. The sleight of hand goes like this: "violence" has a certain rhetorical weight to it. When you say something is violence, people instinctively go "oh that's bad" and are primed against it. But that reaction is based on the typical example of violence (like a stabbing or whatever), not very atypical examples like a chain of argument which goes "government policy => putting people in jail if they don't comply => taking them by force if necessary => violence, therefore government policy is violence". Even if the logic holds up under close scrutiny, by using an example of "violence" so far removed from what your audience expects you to mean, there can be a kind of dishonesty there if one is trying to get people to apply their associations with the central examples of violence to the non-central one. This is how it relates to the Scott Alexander post, as well. He cites several examples of that kind of rhetorical trick where it's like... yeah, technically the thing is what you said, but as a non-central example of the thing it doesn't inherit the moral valence of the central examples.
I agree that words alone in a vacuum can never, ever, constitute violence. I disagree that advocating for policies that lead to violent action absolves the speaker of blame. How do you think laws and policies get made? Do people not speak words when doing so? When they proposed the "President has no clothes" law was there not someone using words? If the end result is violence is there not some causal chain we can draw to such Words + Actions that directly led to that violence?
Ah, but I never said anyone is absolved of blame for anything. I simply said that words do not qualify as inflicting violence. Just because something is not in (bad category), doesn't mean it's acceptable. For example if someone cheats on his wife and she kills herself out of grief, he didn't murder her... but he's still a scumbag. Similarly advocating for a government policy (even if the policy was violent) is not violence, but that doesn't mean it's morally acceptable to argue for that policy. For example, I think that it would be immoral (albeit legal) to try to argue for rounding up all left-handed people and shoot them into the sun. But even if I might think "man that's evil", it wouldn't constitute violence.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
19m ago
WandererintheWilderness
20m ago
Despite my dislike of the man, I am staunch enough in my opposition to death in general and murder in particular that Kirk's death brings me no joy. A human being has died, and that's never a joyful thing, even when it's necessary to save more lives - and here I don't think there's a plausible argument that it was. Never mind the question of his family, who have all my condolences.
But with that said, I significantly more sympathy for people who celebrate his death than seems to be common among people who don't share that celebratory mood. It doesn't feel outrageous to me that people are enjoying this. Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy? And if someone tried to argue that this made you just as bad as if you were advocating for that guy's murder, wouldn't that seem pretty unfair? Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead from The Wizard of Oz is the canonical anthem for celebrating this sort of "such-and-such celebrity you hate has randomly died" breaking news, and you'd have to have a pretty warped view of the plot to think that the Munchkins were signaling their support of random vigilante killings. Whether out of cowardice or morality, none of them would have been willing to drop a house on the Wicked Witch - that's why it took a freak tornado before they were freed from her tyranny. It just happened. But once it does happen, celebrating this happy turn of events is perfectly wholesome.
I contend that for the average left-wing rando, "some nutjob has shot Charlie Kirk" has about the same valence as "Charlie Kirk has been struck by lightning". It's completely outside their control, it doesn't scan as something they or their tribe did. They don't own a gun, no one they know owns a gun - gun ownership itself is an outgroup marker. The killer may as well have been a storm cloud or a Kansas farmhouse. "Charlie Kirk has randomly died" is a Thing That Just Happened, and they're celebrating it as a turn of events, and they're genuinely caught off-guard when the Right perceives this as them supporting assassinations in a proactive sense.
faceh
20m ago
I saw this one and I think my brain seized up a little.
faceh
21m ago
I'm curious, what did you think /speculation meant at the end of my comment there?
Now the right is committed to glazing Kirk and any concept of the "Truth" is out the window, and the right wants to silence you when you speak up.
By the way, here's a twitter post with over 100k likes claiming Charlie called someone a "Chink." The community note speaks for itself. The post is still up, of course, the right hasn't 'silenced' them.
The left isn't very committed to being the party of 'truth' right now, and seems damn happy with constructing an alternate reality for themselves.
I genuinely believe they can't help themselves. Maybe I'm wrong, but it fits my observations.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
22m ago
As I said, a little flip-flopping is not a bad thing. I've certainly changed my mind about some things over the past 10+ years. But the nature in which it occurs, and its frequency, are both very important as to whether it's genuine or cynical. In Kirk's case, his changes were both frequent and abrupt. Oh, he just got a call from Trump and suddenly decided that the whole Epstein affair was silly and not worth talking about right when Trump was trying to bury the whole thing? Uh huh. Sure.
This type of thing is fine if Kirk and people talking about him were honest that he was just a government mouthpiece, but they keep trying to build him up as a "martyr for truth" when he demonstrably wasn't.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
24m ago
Are "top Dem leaders" really more representative of the average leftist that actual average leftists posting on social media? I've been hearing variations on "just a few kids on college campuses" for 20 years now, and I stopped buying it years ago, sorry.
I did policy debate in college -- where's my statute?
Get a bruise doing it and we can consider a plaque.
Before this, public figures generally didn't worry that much about their personal safety.
This is nonsense, you're old enough to remember people like Milo, Shapiro and Peterson getting threatened off campus, the armed thugs running Evergreen, Carl Benjamin stealing a flag off antifa thugs coming to brawl him off stage, Andy Ngo getting concrete milkshaked and so on. We talked about it all at the old place.
The only difference is that ten years and a few attempted presidential assassinations later, we've graduated to people who can mount scope rings on their guns and actually aim them.
Murderous communists have been there the whole time, and that's why even Kirk had an extensive security detail. Just not one with counter snipers.
A while ago I figured out that the smallest permissible "type B" bathroom under ICC A117.1 seemed to be 5 ft × 9.5 ft, which I typically have rounded up to 5 ft × 10 ft. Here, I just rotated that by 90 degrees and expanded the 5 ft to 8 ft. I agree that those dimensions are a bit large, but I haven't yet tried to make a better design.
Whoops, I forgot that a queen bed is supposed to be accessible on two sides rather than just on one side. Just ignore that and use the twin XL dimensions, then.
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