domain:drrollergator.substack.com
SnapDragon
just now
There's not even a need to speculate: A rodeo clown in Texas lost his job for wearing an Obama mask. And the State Fair apologized profusely. One side of the aisle is considered out of bounds when it comes to mockery.
Mantergeistmann
1m ago
That's got nothing to do with religion, though. I think it's more the unfortunate word choice of "confession" (which can refer to the sealed sacrament, or just any generic declaration to anyone) in the context of a clergyman.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2m ago
I am not arguing that people should be able to watch porn at work, or that people should be able to use racial slurs. I am saying that some approximation of the respect people like me have been required to extend by federal law to those different from us must now be reciprocated toward us, and that this being enforced by the same federal law is perfectly acceptable to me.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3m ago
There was always some gotcha or rhetorical trick to dunk on his opponents and end the debate.
This is definitely not true. There were many conversations where he simply pointed out the crux that placed them at an impasse and wished them well. It was much more often the interlocutor that terminated the discussion.
Corvos
3m ago
I don't think you understand. Maybe our ages are different? Or just our environments. But eight/ten years ago we kept reading stories about people being fired and teenagers getting refused from university for saying the most anodyne things. It was very, very clear then that putting your face out there as a conservative meant exposing yourself to pain - giving up any hope of a good career in the usual areas, being SWATed. Remember all those people who rang Scott's work trying to get him fired? The debates Kirk weren't fake: doing them well vs badly had serious political consequences and they also outed him as a soldier and open to any retaliation. We've just found out how not-fake they were but even before he knew he was taking the hard road compared to going-along-to-get-along.
Mantergeistmann
4m ago
I, as someone who grew up so interested in WWII that my 10th birthday present was a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships, have never heard of it
yofuckreddit
5m ago
I can't speak for others, but RBGs passing is the closest analogy. She did untold damage to the country and was glazed for weeks by her fans. That wasn't even an assassination and I'm still uninterested in broadcasting how much I hated her on LinkedIn. It's psychotic behavior.
DiscourseMagnus
7m ago
I essentially agree with your explanation and I think that people need to hear it, but I'm not nearly as sympathetic to it as you are. Although the worst elements of the left are celebrating this political violence as political violence, I think that the slippery slope towards this mindset mostly takes the form of leftists being so conceptually sheltered from violence that they are not even processing it as violence, but simply as an act of God; when they celebrate it, they do not see themselves as supporting political violence, but simply as taking joy in a random event at their enemies' expense. I do not particularly want the country to go through the kind of turmoil it would need to to shake them out of this naive worldview.
WandererintheWilderness
12m ago
Yes, people mistake fiction for reality, they think that Kirk is evil like the characters from their books and movies
Are you arguing that there's no such thing as evil people in real life? "Evil" is obviously a tough thing to define rigorously, certainly I doubt there's anyone who's monomaniacally wicked in the way cartoon witches are "evil" without a single trace of benevolence anywhere in their hearts. But for sanity's sake, understand it here as meaning the semi-tautological "sharing whatever qualities the Wicked Witch has that make celebrating her death acceptable" for the purposes of this question. ie, are you arguing that there's no one in real life close enough to the archetypal fictional depictions of "evil" that a Ding Dong The Witch is Dead parade would be an understandable and unconcerning emotional response upon their demise? Genuine question; I initially understood you as simply saying that a normie family man with conservative opinions was "obviously" not an example of that class, not as decrying the very concept as unrealistic/incoherent.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
12m ago
It would be trivially easy to dispute the point about shared culpability without minimizing or relishing the gravity of the event. In fact, such a rebuttal would be far more credible in the absence of those comments.
Pongalh
14m ago
I don't know, people not waiting some minimum amount of time to be critical, and doling out "why can't we all get along?" platitudes, just can't be sustained in the attention economy. It's not the people are just so much meaner now.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
15m ago
Debate is mostly fake.
What is more real, other than raw violence?
Wave_Existence
16m ago
zoink
17m ago
I don't much care what the Courts has to say when it comes to what I believe. I think private businesses should be able to fire anyone for any reason. I personally would give people a lot of leeway when it comes to off the clock speech. I think government entities should have virtually no speech restriction.
WandererintheWilderness
18m ago
I'm not accusing you of deliberately moving the goalposts, but I will say, as far as I can see this is the first time in this thread you've brought up a question of time-frames, where some types of commentary are wrong now but will be fine later. And I don't think that makes a ton of sense, unless you're making these comments right to the face of Kirk's surviving family. Respect for the dead doesn't have an expiry date, or if it does, it isn't measured in weeks. And I don't see how "too soon" impacts on the main topic at hand, ie whether criticizing the victim would or should be perceived as signaling support for assassinations like his.
Wave_Existence
18m ago
good thing i wouldn't hold him up as one, but my point isnt that he his a virtuous person or even that he represents my views. That he is on the left and participating in the kind of live events you claimed that NOBODY on the left would DARE to even attempt makes the whole diatribe about how people like him don't exist seem kinda silly.
Throwaway05
23m ago
Personally I'd prefer to go the Jackson Lamb route and just fart repeatedly.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
23m ago
Volokh on the caselaw regarding firing government employees for speech
Generally speaking, the government may discipline an employee based on the employee's speech if:
(1) The speech is said by the employee as part of the employee's job duties (Garcetti v. Ceballos);
(2) The speech is not on a matter of public concern (Connick v. Myers); or
(3) The damage caused by the speech to the efficiency of the government agency's operation outweighs the value of the speech to the employee and the public (Pickering v. Bd. of Ed.).
When the government is administering the criminal law or civil liability, such a "heckler's veto" is generally not allowed: The government generally can't shut down a speaker, for instance, because his listeners are getting offended or even threatening violence because they're offended. But in the employment context the Pickering balance often allows government to fire employees because their speech sufficiently offends coworkers or members of the public. (The analysis may differ for public university professors, though it's not clear how much; see this post for more.)
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
23m ago
The 2a angle is so silly given he was shot by the fuddied gun to ever fudd on a university campus that probably doesn't allow people to carry.
KMC
23m ago
Kirk was, at the very least, aiding and abetting evil, and most probably significantly evil himself
Yes, people mistake fiction for reality, they think that Kirk is evil like the characters from their books and movies, and open their minds and pour their brains out on the ground in response.
I mean, allocating group responsibility within huge, poorly-coordinated populations is a tough problem, and one with potentially different answers depending on whether you're talking about it as an ethics problem of a game theory problem.
Yeah, but I'm not going to be a stooge and claim that Anders Brevik was really a leftist, because that's absurd. We know what these people want by watching what they work to accomplish, and those ends serve one side or the other.
It seems as understandable for normie non-murderous Dems to say "we aren't responsible for the Kirk assassination" as it is fair for Second Amendment activists to disclaim any responsibility for the latest school shooting.
Nobody is inciting school shootings the way that Democrats are inciting violence on their political opponents. Your comparisons continue to miss the point by a mile.
WandererintheWilderness
25m ago
Probably not. Celebrating when bad things happen to someone is evil, plain and simple. I'm not going to claim I've never done that (I have, I'm not a perfect person), but I regard those occasions as personal failings which I tried very hard to rectify. I would like to think in the future I would be more successful in avoiding it.
I absolutely agree! But even if it's wrong, I think the internal experience of this kind of Schadenfreude makes it clear that it's not at all the same subjective experience as supporting vigilante murder at the political level. One is much more common, much more human, than the other, even if it isn't good. And I don't think it's fair to accuse people who are only guilty of that lesser sin to secretly harbor the explicit pro-assassination view. When I say that we should "have more sympathy" for them I don't mean infinite amounts of indulgence, I just mean affording them the intellectual charity of not treating them as covert assassination-supporters. That's not where they're at. Where they're at isn't good, but it's not that.
"What a horrific tragedy". And then a week later go ahead and write your thinkpiece about how he had it coming.
(this was written before your edit, I'll update to your update when I have time)
Catsnakes_
30m ago
I could absolutely respond by acknowledging what a horrible tragedy this was for her loved ones and the country, and could even deny the involvement of the right, without having to criticize her at all.
thejdizzler
30m ago
Yep my comment makes no sense in the light of the Oz universe. But as analogy to the Charlie Kirk situation, I think it still fits. The democrats aren't "slaves" to Charlie Kirk (maybe you could make this argument about Trump).
Notably this is how conservatives were forced out of academia.
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