banned
until we get total numbers at year's end) has had fewer visitors in 2025 than 2023, an astonishing fact when you consider the earth's population has grown hundreds of millions over that time period.
There's a reason I selected average of 2021 to 2023 as the criteria. We skip 2020 because the Biden admin was not in charge then, so we include the remaining 3 years where pandemic-excused policies were relevant to tourists, though by 2023 they were pretty weak but not entirely absent.
You're welcome to provide data for the average of 2021 to 2023 against 2025 for Vegas.
Regardless, I specified "Visitors to the US" because the initial discussion was about international tourism, and "Visitors to Vegas" is a poor proxy for this because of domestic tourism. Most numbers I could find on the percentage of visitors to Vegas that are domestic tourists puts it somewhere between 70% and 80%.
To decouple the chilling effect from the desire not to travel during a pandemic is quite simple, just compare the total decline to the specific decline in places with legal restrictions, the difference will tell you approximately how many people didn't travel because they were banned, and how many didn't travel because they were afraid of the deadly global pandemic.
"Afraid of the deadly global pandemic" is not something independent of government policy, but instead the product of government policy. If a government makes people afraid to travel by telling them covid will kill them if they do, that's still the government's fault.
This is something we could agree on, but probably won't: The chilling effect of both covid restrictions and ICE deportations is the direct result of government policy, not something that happens without. Yet for some reason you think the chilling effect of covid restrictions is merely an organic "desire not to travel".
A good example seems to be Egypt, a country that is a tourist destination, centrally located, and had very light corona virus requirements (Between August 15th 2021 and June 16th 2022 you just had to show a negative test within the 3 days before arrival).
Not a comprehensive account of tourism restrictions, you need to also consider domestic restrictions that would affect the activities that tourists can do once in the country.
But regardless, we can use your method, with the actual source Wikipedia is using for these graphs.
Egypt's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 28% 2021: 62% 2022: 90%
Mexico's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 55% 2021: 71% 2022: 85%
Australia will be an example of an extreme restriction country. Numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors via this dataset as OWID is incomplete: 2020: 19% 2021: 3% 2022: 39%
That some countries had returned to 90% of 2019 tourism numbers by 2022, while Australia remains down at 39%, strongly suggests that the overwhelming majority of the decline in tourism can be attributed to government policy. If the decline in tourism was instead mainly due to fear of covid, then tourists would have no reason to continue visiting Egypt while refusing to visit Australia.
Shrike
1d ago
What is the clear evidence that an afterlife belief is instrumental? Afghanistan of the 90s and before was possibly the most theistic country in the world, and all Muslims believe in an afterlife. Bacha Bazi is an Afghan costume that coexisted alongside Islamic belief for a millennia until the Taliban banned it.
What I am suggesting is that without the belief in the afterlife, that Taliban would never have done what they did, which makes it instrumental. The fact that other people believed in the afterlife is immaterial to the question of whether or not belief in the afterlife was instrumental for the Taliban.
But if you like, we can take another angle: we've already discussed (and agreed) that religious people give more to charity. Surely belief in an afterlife is at play in at least some individual cases?
This argument falls short because the Christians who do not have dependents also don’t give all superfluous possessions to the poor, neither do the wealthy Christians with dependents usually live austerely after providing for their relatives.
"Give all superfluous possessions to the poor" as such isn't really a clear Christian teaching (which the exception of some sects, I think) so, again, if we are judging Christians by their own standards I don't really see the issue here. (Might be different for the specific sects).
I think criticizing Christians who do no charitable works at all (and I am sure such Christians do exist) is fair. But also they are (arguably) not supposed to be ostentatious about donating, so it can be tricky.
we see condemnation in the Church Fathers about nearly every conspicuous expression of wealth, even rings.
Sure, but setting aside the fact that the Church Fathers said a lot of things, many of which many Christians do not hold to today (unless they are in Scripture, they are not considered canonical, although they are often considered helpful) criticizing displays of wealth is not the same thing as saying wealthy people will go to hell (as you seem to suggest above).
then it should follow that those who believe in the greatest reward imaginable for all of eternity should be able to put up with a few decades of poverty. I’m at a loss for why this wouldn’t happen unless the belief is not quite fully believed.
Well, first off, this does happen. There are nuns and monks and religious orders and missionaries. Those all exist. There are still people being persecuted and even executed for their faith. That actually happens. But secondly you seem to think that Scripture says "be poor and you get into heaven" which isn't the case. Really, your soteriology isn't in line with what most major Christian congregations teach.
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus...Luke 12:33...Acts 4-5
In all of these cases I think you are stripping out some context. Your gloss of Acts 5 is misleading; it's very clear from the text that Ananias died after Paul's rebuke because of dishonesty – here's Acts 5, versus 1 - 10:
But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession, And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things. And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him. And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.
There's probably a good argument that Luke 12:33 ("Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.") applies to Christians broadly, particularly viewed in light of 12:15 (" Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.") and it's often viewed this way. But we should also consider the context of Luke 12 is that Christ is preparing the apostles for persecution (see e.g. Luke 12:11 "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.")
In my experience Protestants do take Luke 12:33 seriously, but not literally – that is, they do believe (and act as if they believe) that giving alms is good, and giving possessions to charity is good, and stores up rewards in heaven, but they also don't try to liquidate everything that they have immediately to give alms – perhaps because they often have or aspire to have families, perhaps for the same reason they don't expect to be taken into the synagogues and questioned, perhaps in some cases as you suggest because they don't really believe, perhaps because they have reasoned their way out of the application of the verse through various means. (The standard line in Protestant denominations, I think, is that "you should tithe.") And certainly it's quite arguable that while the principle of giving alms is good, the context of the passage suggests the specific instruction was meant to be acted on by the Apostles. Now, maybe you don't find this persuasive! And maybe Christians who would argue that are wrong and you are correct! But contextualizing it like that is not crazy.
As for the story of Lazarus, I think the closest suggestion to rich = hell is this line:
Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
A full reading of the parable might lead one to wonder if his sin was being insanely wealthy, or not doing alms to the beggars outside of his gate. Considering that the moral of the parable seems to be as follows – "And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." – it seems likely that the actual thrust of the parable was aimed at the Pharisees (see Luke 16:14 - 18) who would not hear Christ's message even after His resurrection. That doesn't mean that there's no theological information about wealth here, of course, but again the context needs to be kept in mind.
To step back for a moment, I think what's happening here writ large is that you're taking a (not necessarily incoherent) reading of Scripture – which I do think some Christians share – and then insisting that all Christians are hypocrites for not sharing it. (Notably absent from your collection of verses: the many verses in Scripture that celebrate accumulating wealth and offer concrete advice on how to do so.) Setting aside the fact that your methodology here is unmistakably Protestant (and thus your root assumptions are not shared by many Christians!) it's just true that Christians' reading of Scripture and what it means varies considerably and that it might be more parsimonious to assume that most Christians simply do not share your interpretation of Scripture, rather than insisting that most Christians are hypocrites. Certainly (although a great many Christians are hypocrites) it's a bit more charitable, I think.
I want to circle up on this entire thing by saying, firstly, apologies for the late reply (I've been busy, but I found our conversation thought-provoking and I appreciate that!)
Secondly, to circle back on the broader point – you've been arguing that nobody is convinced by Scripture in the Year of Our Lord 2025. But the reasoning you offer suggests at best that few people believe this. (Which some Christians would agree with emphatically, citing Matthew 7:14!) Moreover, your original point was that it's harder today to believe than it was in the past. But all of your arguments (that Christians don't truly believe in the teachings of their religion because they engage in conspicuous displays of wealth) were true throughout most of the history of the Church. The problem of hypocrites and pretend believers was real even in the 1st century, and the accumulation of wealth and power by the Church over the course of history – which you seem to suggest is downstream of a lack of conviction on the part of Christians due to modernity – happened long before modernity and the scientific method as we currently would identify them posed an ideological threat to Christianity as such.
At one point, it seemed like Destiny was making good faith effort to engage in discussion with the other side. He went into debates with people on the right like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Actual Justice Warrior, etc. Talking with high profile right-leaning individuals is in a sense more courageous than talking to random students. I haven't seen Destiny go viral for debating random students. Does he even do live open mic events? I've only seen him in on like discord calls.
As it turned out, it was not done in good faith and it was just an attempt to get more people over to his side. It seems Destiny is no longer interested in maintaining decorum with members from the opposite side. Destiny literally mocked the firefighter killed at Trump's rally. Kirk didn't mock anyone dying on the other side. I don't think Destiny has made any attempt to reach out to the right in a long while.
EDIT: See @eee solid criticism's below on my take on Destiny. I have crossed out my previous statement and updated with clearer statement.
KMC
1d ago
Bluesky is the official twitter replacement for people who hate Musk (aka, Democrat voters). Reddit, one of the biggest websites on the internet, has essentially banned twitter in favor of bluesky via moderator coordination, and so now theoretically apolitical places like /r/nfl and /r/mlb will only link to bluesky.
It's the representation of Democrat voters online. Maybe not as a whole, but absolutely their online presence.
NullHypothesis
1d ago
A willingness to talk to the other side might be a low bar, but it seems to be a bar that so many have difficulty meeting. How many people in the realm of politics are making the effort to reach out to everyday people of the other side and have a discussion? Even if one were to think he's an intellectual hack creating viral moments by dunking on uninformed college students, do not regular everyday college students have the right to talk to someone with a different political perspective? What conservative voices exist in college and universities, which is populated by professors of increasing left-leaning ideologies? Universities invite left leaning speakers all the time without having to constantly worry about protestors against said speaker. Kirk died talking to students on campuses.
I don't know how I feel about flip-flopping criticisms. On the one hand, yes, a certain type of flip-flopping can be evidence of a lack of pillar of values shaping a world view. On the other hand, that's an uncharitable way of describing people that update their views and change their mind based on new information or changing circumstances. There's flip-flopping your core values, and then there's flip-flopping the results of applying your core values.
On Epstein:
Here is a video of Kirk saying all the Epstein files should be released. This was just a few days ago. https://instagram.com/reel/DOda98IEjzx/
Does this shift the needle in any way? Is he a flip flopper or someone that just kowtows to party lines? I guess this could be considered more evidence to the flip-flopping allegation.
Foreign Policy:
The Iran situation was not in the public consciousness when Kirk made his comment in April. His comment about a war in the Middle East is applied to a different set of circumstances than to that in June. If I recall, in the end the US did not deploy a large number of ground troops in Iran and the whole thing wrapped up relatively quickly compared to something like Afghanistan. I imagine when people say US involvement in a war in the Middle East, we're trying to avoid another Afghanistan or Iraq. It's hard to say the situation with Iran is similar in the reasons that might have motivated Kirk to say we should avoid another war in the Middle East.
TikTok:
This does seem like a valid example of flip-flopping. To play some defense though, Kirk's demand for banning TikTok is preceded by fan accounts being banned for hate speech, so I suppose he might have had a TikTok is not a free speech platform angle here. By the time he changes his mind, he acknowledges TikTok can be used to reach out to millions of zoomers. I think a more thorough examination into the reasons why Kirk may have wanted to ban TikTok can make this a better example of flip-flopping.
De Santis:
After a certain point you rally behind the candidate that has the greatest chance of wining. This is politics 101. I don't think this is a great example of flip-flopping. It's a stupid move to continue to support a weaker candidate in an attempt to be more principled, which would result in an increased likelihood a candidate from the opposite party who holds even less values you agree with becomes president instead.
Mail-in Ballots:
The article you linked does not strongly support your claim. Kirk made a post that he thought was evidence of mail-in voting shenanigans. I think a more valid criticism would be that he didn't do his due diligence to fully vet the source. It's absurdly stupid to make up something false because it can be so easily proven false, so it's more likely he jumped the gun on spreading a story that he thought was real.
I don't really know about Chase the Vote. Did they get people to do mail-in ballots? I checked Arizona and that state has early in person ballots. I guess if they ended up getting early votes via mail-voting this could be considered a strong example of flip-flopping considering how much of a role distrust of mail-in voting had for the republican side. That being said, nowhere in the article you linked does Kirk say should only vote in person.
Political Violence/Pelosi
Here's more of the Paul Pelosi quote
I'm looking at Politico.com, I looking at the New York times, I'm looking at all these places, and there's a little bit of mention here. For example, Politico says, ‘top Republicans reject any link between GOP rhetoric and Paul Pelosi assault.’ Of course, you should reject any link!
Why is the Republican party — why is the conservative movement to blame for gay, schizophrenic, nudists that are hemp jewelry makers, breaking into somebody’s home or maybe not breaking into somebody’s home? Why are we to blame for that exactly?
And why is he still in jail? Why has he not been bailed out? By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out. I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks. Bail him out and then go ask him some questions. I wonder what his bail is? They’re going after him with attempted murder, political assassination, all this sort of stuff.
I’m not qualifying it. I think it’s awful, it’s not right. But why is it that in Chicago you’re able to commit murder and be out the next day? Why is it that you're able to trespass, 2nd degree murder, arson, threat a public official, cashless bail, this happens all over San Francisco. But if you go after the Pelosis, oh you're [???] immediately
Note the last line. Actual murderers and other high stake criminals go out on bail all the time. You're trying to spin this as evidence is his endorsement of political violence, but Kirk is making his statement in context of a city that literally bails out criminals all the time. I didn't see anything in here that endorses political violence.
4doorsmorewhores
1d ago
Just to update you on this bet, Las Vegas (the city that it's easiest to get tourist data for, until we get total numbers at year's end) has had fewer visitors in 2025 than 2023, an astonishing fact when you consider the earth's population has grown hundreds of millions over that time period.
Here's the source for the numbers
3.5 mil in 2023: https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-hits-highest-july-tourism-number-since-pre-pandemic-with-35m-visitors
3.1 mil in 2025: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/vegas-tourism-is-down-some-blame-trumps-tariffs-and-immigration-crackdown
My understanding is that a drop in Canadian tourism has hit northern cities the most, unlike relatively isolated Las Vegas.
To decouple the chilling effect from the desire not to travel during a pandemic is quite simple, just compare the total decline to the specific decline in places with legal restrictions, the difference will tell you approximately how many people didn't travel because they were banned, and how many didn't travel because they were afraid of the deadly global pandemic. A good example seems to be Egypt, a country that is a tourist destination, centrally located, and had very light corona virus requirements (Between August 15th 2021 and June 16th 2022 you just had to show a negative test within the 3 days before arrival). You can see the numbers drop off a fucking cliff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Egypt#Statistics
The same is true in Mexico, a country that apparently (correct me if I'm wrong) had zero corona virus travel rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Mexico#Statistics
Based on this data it seems virtually impossible that you can attribute the massive drop off of tourism to a chilling effect, but we know that since last year the Trump border stuff is leading to a 10-20% decline.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Why not just let them come back?
He's been told, privately and publicly, that we'd probably let him come back if he did so honestly, and promised he'd make some effort not to behave in the same way that got him banned last time. And this is not some special offer for Hlynka: almost any permabanned member, if they came to us and asked to be reinstated and promised to follow the rules, would at least be considered for amnesty. In case @The_Nybbler decides to lie again about what I just said, let me clear: that doesn't mean "if they grovel enough" or kiss our asses or whatever. It means convince us you want to participate in good faith, you understand why you were banned, and whether you agree with the rules or not, you are willing to abide by them. Someone last time I mentioned this got very upset that this implies "permaban" is not really permanent. Like we are not allowed to say "permanent" if we are willing to consider undoing it. I don't understand autists and anklebiters sometimes.
Anyway, Hylnka knows this, and his response has been to say (in various ways) "Fuck you and your rules."
There's another person active in the thread today who's so blatantly a banned user that I'm shocked nobody else has said anything, but they haven't been banned yet.
Generally speaking, we don't ban people we suspect of being banned users without a very high degree of certainty. This is mostly per @ZorbaTHut's guidance (if it were up to me, I'd be quicker to ban newly-rolled alts that are obviously just a troll recycling.) When I see someone beating a very familiar drum I may or may not ban them, depending on how well they are behaving, but mostly we'll let an obvious alt have enough rope to hang themselves with. This of course means we have many alts and returned permabanned users here right now, some of which I am very much aware of and some of which I haven't noticed or who've managed to fly under the radar thus far. No doubt they think they are very clever and have totally fooled us, but mostly we just don't find it worth our time to spend too much effort playing whack-a-mole. But we will whack them when they make themselves too obvious.
I remember an unofficial policy that if someone came back under a new pseudonym and changed their behavior sufficiently to plausibly avoid detection, that was a win too?
Yes, but you also have to not be determined to flip off the mods because you really want to let us know it's you and you're back neener fucking neener. Which is something Hlynka so far has been unable to do.
Not to mention if most people don't realize it's hlynka he can shed all the baggage of people who hated him for his mod decisions.
That would be credible, again, if he asked us. But I suspect Hlynka would never be able to stop being Hlynka. He'd be pretty obvious to most people quickly enough.
And I know you're reading this, Hlynka, and I'll say again what I've said before: I regret you had to be banned, I wish you hadn't forced us to do it, and I wish you would try to come back under honorable circumstances. But it's never going to happen while you're determined to show us how much contempt you have for us. It doesn't hurt my feelings, but I see no reason why we should consider amnesty for someone who very intentionally keeps trying to stick thumbs in our eyes.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1d ago
ugh, not that Austin Powers guy again
Making a note that if I ever get banned, I'll come back saying "groovy" and "shagadelic" in every post.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1d ago
Why not just let them come back? There's another person active in the thread today who's so blatantly a banned user that I'm shocked nobody else has said anything, but they haven't been banned yet. I remember an unofficial policy that if someone came back under a new pseudonym and changed their behavior sufficiently to plausibly avoid detection, that was a win too?
Not to mention if most people don't realize it's hlynka he can shed all the baggage of people who hated him for his mod decisions.
Charlie Kirk believed it was part of God's perfect moral law that people who are my friends, my family, my coworkers should be stoned to death.
I don't know the guy or any of his beliefs, and there's a lot of this sort of "he was a violent transphobe" etc. rhetoric online. So can you direct me to where he said that (like the quotes about gun deaths and the 2nd amendment rights) or is it just "well he was a Christian, therefore he believed in the Bible, therefore he accepted what the Bible says about X/Y/Z, therefore he wanted me stoned to death" chain of inference?
EDIT: I ask this because I remember the fighting over gay rights where people on all sides were quoting Leviticus, and it was considered a killer put-down to ask those against gay rights "so do you wear poly-cotton mix clothing? do you eat shrimp? because those are banned too, you know!" and to say 'if you don't keep all the laws and taboos, you are being a hypocrite and don't have religious objections'.
However, those on the liberal side (generally liberal Christians) also liked to quote, in the context of illegal immigrants, the parts about "Do not ill-treat foreigners who are living in your land. Treat them as you would a fellow-Israelite, and love them as you love yourselves. Remember that you were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God", except you know - that's in the same list as the mixed materials and anti-witchcraft, so are they stoning witches to death? no? then they're hypocrites and not acting out of religious belief!
People cherrypick parts of Scripture all the time; it would be entirely possible for Kirk to be anti-gay marriage but not want gays stoned to death.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Though it must be frustrating for you mods, I have to admit I find it kind of fun that there's a sort of game of subterfuge going on with old banned posters re-emerging under aliases. Like a classic spy novel.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
Here is where I suppose the American public at large has not yet noticed the extent to which things have come full circle.
WW1 (yes) and WW2 propaganda clarified that resistance to and the ultimate defeat of the Nazis was a moral imperative. Post-war Germany adopted this, at the Allies' command, and went full hog - youths were indeed taught that nazism was the ultimate evil, and that even the most minute form of it was a germ from which the Third Reich could rise again. And with no narrative to actually counter this, since any opinions to the contrary were banned either in law or in practice, this view grew ever more extreme over the generations, and ever more wide-spread, and could take uncontested hold of many public institutions. You may have heard of the Frankfurt School and the philosophical underpinnings of modern American leftism coming from Germany. But please understand - the practice of modern leftism, its modes of operation and expression, its lines of thinking and of everyday argumentation, its symbols and axioms, have also been grown here, in our youth clubs and universities and cultural centers. And then, though I know not how exactly, they made their way back across to America. It's no coincidence that you now have "Antifa".
What you have now is a synthesis of all this; American propaganda filtered through generations of German self-hatred and nationally enforced anti-nazism, and all the weight of WW2 and the Holocaust behind it. And the spearpoint of it is this - that it is better to burn down the entire country and everyone in it than to permit even the smallest expression of nazism, than to risk a repeat of the greatest atrocity that ever was.
You don't need any more strong evidence to prove that violence is justified to stop nazis, because there's the 20th century to prove it. Are you ignorant of history to deny it? Do you secretly hate the jews to downplay the unique horror of the holocaust? Are you just unworried because you aren't a minority? Are you uneducated, or unintelligent, not to see what all good people agree is the case? Such is the dominant discourse in Germany, as imposed by the victors of WW2, and you're getting a taste of it now.
... But the liberal system and norms that we enjoy in the US, which the First Amendment is part of, is why you largely don't have to worry about sitting in jail for your political opinions...
Eugene Debs would've disagreed.
To what extent are people allowed to leverage their political opinions to evoke meaningful political change in their country? Even China doesn't go around commonly jailing people for their privately held convictions and beliefs, even when they express said views openly, absent those opinions forming a real call to action among other people. The US is largely a place where you're free to act out your privately held beliefs whether personal or political to yourself or behind closed doors so long as you aren't effectuating real change. If most political protests had the impact of something like the January 6th riots, protesting would be significantly curbed or outright banned overnight.
This liberal system in all it's glory also leads the world with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Even within the most progressive pockets of the country.
FistfullOfCrows
2d ago
This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.
You know, I guess I'm fine with anti-liberal. People shouldn't have freedom of association with a gang.
And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?
Infinite jail time. Yakuza tats? Forced to have them removed or stay in jail, same for the random MS-whatever tats or tears on the face tats. The tats are a costly belonging symbol, tune the cost to infinity. They've already banned the confederate flag and decided it's open season on people wearing trump hats.
FtttG
2d ago
I cannot express an opinion on whether or not anyone has been acquitted using the "gay panic" defense, as I have simply haven't investigated it. I have investigated the question of whether anyone accused of murder has been acquitted after using the "trans panic" defense, and have been unable to find even a single example of a case meeting this description. In all of the examples cited on the Wikipedia page, all of the people who used the "trans panic" defense were still convicted. I have searched high and low, and I'm open to correction, but until someone can show me a specific case in which
- a trans person was murdered
- the perpetrator admitted to having killed the victim, but defended themselves by claiming it was a panicked reaction upon learning that the victim was trans
- a jury accepted this defense and acquitted the perpetrator
then I think the only reasonable response is to assume that this is just a myth ginned up from whole cloth.
It's also interesting that the Wikipedia article includes paragraph after paragraph about the various jurisdictions in which the gay and/or trans panic defense is formally banned. How strange to put so much legislative legwork into banning a criminal defense which seems to have a 0% success rate.
Tribes pick stories that suite their narrative all the time. This is not particularly insightful commentary. Furthermore, the comparison to the Democratic senators in Minnesota has key differences that need to be considered.
How popular was Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman? You didn't even mention their names. I couldn't recall it either. I had to look it them up. Are they effective targets for assassination to advance your cause? Suppose you're a radical planning to assassinate someone. Why would you target a non name senator over someone more high profile? There is some evidence indicating Vance Boelter's reason was due to a call from Tim Walz which to me sounds like he was just an insane person. Melissa Hortman has 14K followers on Twitter. Also, Hoffman who was the senator survived, Hortman who died was a legislator.
In contrast, Charlie Kirk was extremely popular. He has 5.5 million followers on Twitter. He was popular enough to be parodied on South Park. His appearance on Jubilee "debating 25 liberal college students" has 31 million views, making it one of their most popular videos. I'd argue Charlie Kirk was extremely effective in getting people behind the agenda he supported, and killing him is a huge blow to that movement. The guy was 31 and had decades ahead of him to accomplish whatever he wanted to accomplish in the political space. Even if you think he's just a mouthpiece for a machine pushing an agenda, killing serves the purpose of warning anyone else who wants to spread ideas through popular open dialogue. If you're a political-motivated assassin, he seems like a good target. I bet if some random Republican senator got killed, there also wouldn't as big of an uproar.
Actually, there is a case similar to that of the democratic senator and legislator being attacked. The closest equivalent would be Steve Scalise a Republican politician, who like Hoffman, also survived an assassination attempt in 2017. I'm gonna do some lazy research here so bear with me, but I don't think the Scalise shooting even got half as much traction as the Hortman shooting. Looking at the most viewed videos from a news channel on YouTube, the most popular news channel video on Scalise is around 330k, while John Hoffman is at 771K views.
Where did the assassination attempt take place? Charlie Kirk was shot in a public event with hundreds of university students attending. Hortman and Hoffman were attacked in their homes at night. The context of their assassinations are vastly different. The irony of the situation is that Charlie Kirk was actually discussing mass shootings right before getting shot. Some people are trying to spin this as evidence that the assassination was staged or a psyop, personally I think it was just a coincidence considering how many violent stories this week have gone viral but what a darkly poetic scenario to be killed literally as you are talking about political violence.
How did the "other" side react to their deaths? Are there endless examples of people celebrating their deaths? Even in fairly nonpolitical spaces and discords I'm in, there are people celebrating and making fun of the death of Charlie Kirk. These are people I play games with and outside of politics I would consider fairly normal people. You don't need to search hard on Twitter or TikTok to found people gleefully posting themselves expressing enthusiasm of Charlie Kirk. Who was celebrating the death of Hortman? Do you have friends and know people celebrating the deaths of people on the other side of the political spectrum?
What was the general political and cultural climate where these assassinations took place? People on the extreme left openly call for violence all the time with little chastise and repercussion. I dare you to openly call for the death and killing of all leftists on reddit or X or Facebook and see how long it takes before your post gets deleted and you get banned. One side consistently says speech is violence and that the other side are nazi fascists. Extreme leftism is openly supported or at the very least quietly ignored by the moderate left. The demand to be a victim is so high that time and time again people have to make up fake racist hoaxes to create the supply that simply doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, extreme rightists have little place to call home. Even a place like 4chan, which is considered the cesspool of the internet, has plenty of people on both sides now. Last time I went to pol there were just as many pols supporting extreme left wing views as there were right. Simply holding a moderate right wing view makes you an extreme rightist white Christian nationalist in many circles.
We're at a point where people are afraid to openly state their beliefs. From 2023 to 2025 88% of the 1452 interviewed students pretended to hold more progressive views than they believe to succeed social and academically. 78% said they self censor about gender identity, and 72% of students stated they self censor politics. People are self censoring because they are afraid of the repercussions of stating what was once normal, everyday beliefs. The majority is afraid to speak up because a loud minority keeps attacking and harassing people with little repercussion. And I can speak from experience, because it hasn't even been 10 years since I graduated from university and I too self-censored most of my views and beliefs. I engaged in dialogue with my peers who got angry and passionate about women's rights and trans rights. I doubt they were self censoring. Charlie Kirk was a driving force giving university students a place and a chance to not pretend to be more progressive than they actually are.
I actually think a better comparison is George Floyd, on grounds of what event creates "hysteria" as you call it. Police were defunded, cities burned and looted, statues and murals and paintings created to martyr a guy who could be argued to have died to fentanyl. Floyd was also by no accounts a good person. He had been jailed eight times for numerous crimes including armed robbery. So many modern martyrs of the left consistently happen to be individuals with extreme criminal history. The left also reacted in "hysteria" around the Rittenhouse case, which was decided to have been done in self-defense. And here, again, is an example where the victims are people with a history of child molestation and other criminal behavior. The misinformation was so bad, people thought Rittenhouse killed an unarmed black man. Or what about the shooting of Michael Brown, known for "hands up don't shoot". Except that was a lie. That didn't stop the left from engaging in "hysteria". So far the red tribe "hysteria" is just a lot of words; granted it hasn't been a day so we shall see what the future holds but something tells me we won't be seeing mass riots and burning and looting from the red tribe.
I keep thinking back to idea of a scissor statement, a statement so divisive it tears people apart. But I don't think you can provide example of stories that server as scissor statements that only occur if one side willfully ignores relevant facts in the case. When both sides agree something is bad the story doesn't go viral because there is no anger to fuel the algorithmic machine. You can't keep arguing with someone that agrees with you. But if you're engaging in dialogue with someone that has no intention of good faith discussion, who openly dismisses facts and pushes what you believe are outright lies, your only options are to eventually walk away or get mad. You cannot reason with someone that does not use reasoning. If this was just a debate on the internet then whatever, you can walk away easily. But when these stories are used to push policy changes, make excuses for bad behavior, and make people feel guilty of things they should have no guilt for, it's hard to not be filled with rage.
(As a side note, perhaps I too am blind of the facts of the cases of outrage of events from the right, and maybe trying to use the concept of a scissor statement here is inappropriate. If I had to pick something that could be considered a scissor statement where I might biased or the right is the side that deliberately ignores facts, it might be in the area of gun control and the 2nd amendment, abortion, or climate change.)
Even if one were to think Charlie Kirk as a faggot, nazi facist, (terms I have heard people refer to him very recently) who only debates unprepared college students and an intellectual hack, he wasn't a wife beater, thief, murderer, or a felon. He also wasn't a politician, or a CEO, or a billionaire, anyone in position of real power. He didn't hold any radical extremist ideas that so many on the left think he did. He engaged in open discussion and wanted to pursue change through dialogue. And now he's dead.
You're right that we don't know who the killer is or what the motive is. But you have to deliberately ignorant to not think an assassination at an open political event is not political motivated. This is not a passion killing. This is pre-meditated and cold and deliberate. If it was something like a personal grudge, wouldn't you rather shoot someone in a quiet place, such as at night? Why would you choose to assassinate someone in a place where there are thousands of people that could potentially spot you and stop you, unless there was some kind of goal in making a statement?
This event is tragic because now it serves as yet another example of how trying to engage in open dialogue with people who have no willingness and desire to do so is a bad idea. I'm here in the motte because I want to believe in the pursuit of truth through open dialogue and debate. But what do you do when people refuse to engage in open honest dialogue? Is it even worth holding a principled stance with people that spit all over it and only use it against you? Enough stories like this and you start to get people wondering if they should become the monsters they keep being accused of. We take so many of the concepts that hold up our modern society for granted, ideas about human rights, human decency, free speech, democracy, equality, these are all espoused as univeral truths and moral goods (at least in America)... and in doing so allowed a poison to come into the public consciousness that continues to threaten and erode all of these values.
Also, is there any event or series of event that could convince you we've passed some sort of threshold? We've already had multiple public assassination attempts on the president with one nearly succeeding. Now a public figure who isn't even a politician is assassinated in daylight. Touching grass doesn't change that, and trying to normalize assassinations as things that always just happened that we are only just now noticing due to the algorithm doesn't make things better. It doesn't matter if political assassinations had been a part of human history, or if they are common in other places. They had become rarer in the USA in recent times and we ought to try to keep it that way.
Jiro
3d ago
I immediately went out and bought an AR, thinking I might not be able to next week.
Does this ever work? If the gun actually was banned as a result, wouldn't you also need to turn in your already purchased ones?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
3d ago
And all of that might not piss me off, if it weren't for lefty media running constant cover, tacitly agreeing that the violence was justifiable and refusing to actually lower the temperature for these events.
Because people are going to ask for examples, they aren't hard to find.
https://x.com/Banned_Bill/status/1965860260368822399
MSNBC
“[He is] constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech, aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which often then to hateful actions.”
If you've seen the guy they arrested, he looks like he has terminal MSNBC brain. Old white boomer who's brain has probably been soaked in MSM propaganda about Kirk for years.
There's some funny nutpicking, and then there's some not-so-funny nuts someone else picked.
I'm... hard-pressed to comment more, here. I'd like to 24-hour-rule this, because early reporting is so often so bad for these type of incidents, but there's almost zero chance it's some nutty right-winger who thought Kirk Didn't Stalin Hitler Enough, and at most it's a question of whether early reports that it's trans-related-stuff are right, and my gut makes it pretty hard to think they're not or that it'd even matter much if they weren't. It's a little nice to see some lefties or 'centrist' liberal saying this is bad (woo, Kelseytuoc retweeted aghamilton28), but when that's not even close to universal, and when those who don't or who find it worth other forms of comment don't get at least a shush, it's hard to take too much solace from the exceptions.
But it's soon, and maybe in a week there'll be some mirror to the culture war WMDs of the past and I'll eat crow and be very happy about it. Or maybe some manager will steamroll through MSNBC and The View. But I'm not optimistic, and I dunno if we'll even get Home Depot Lady v2, and I don't think anyone on the conservative side of aisle will or can be persuaded to care about that.
I've been trying to write a followup on the Paul Kessler thing (trial: supposedly next month, but also supposedly two months ago, maybe early next year?), a contrast on a lot of other public violence cases in the aftermath of various public protests, and on a bunch of recent gun cases, and there's some increasingly obvious answers for a lot of it. Four years ago I worried about things going hot in a crime-of-passion sense, where plausibly-reasonable decisions run into foreseeable consequences, and the ramifications spiral and reinforce each other as 'our' definitions of reasonable decisions increasingly disagree, with a standard example being where CPS and trans kids and the horrors of the foster system run face-first into each other. The answer seems, increasingly, that those crimes of passion will happen, and the people charged with enforcing the law against them will decide to bring the hammer down or not based on their current wins, and those whims have unsurprisingly kept pots from boiling over, and that's a solution of a sort, but only until you think about what comes next.
There's a lot of discussion around this topic that I just aren't willing to publish publicly, because at some point, someone that isn't a garbage person is going to take ten hours and seriously think about what the results and ramifications and incentives are, and how they can maximize their impact. And it's going to result in hundreds of deaths, if not thousand+, in the first incident, and we won't find them, and people won't even wonder why so much as who they can blame.
I had a whole post, but I don't want to get banned, so I'll let Norm say it for me.
I'll expand. There are at least four other people in the frame that he could have attacked, all of them are black. He said, twice, I got that white girl.
Given these two pieces of information, the obvious assumption is that he saw a white girl he could prey on, and did. If you dispute this, you need some affirmative evidence, because without it you're just grasping at straws.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
3d ago
What is the clear evidence that an afterlife belief is instrumental? Afghanistan of the 90s and before was possibly the most theistic country in the world, and all Muslims believe in an afterlife. Bacha Bazi is an Afghan costume that coexisted alongside Islamic belief for a millennia until the Taliban banned it.
If Christianity specifically teaches that one's first duty is to one's family and dependents it is silly to criticize Christians with family and dependents for not impoverishing them to give to charity (see perhaps most notably 1 Timothy 5:8, which compares failing to provide for one's own house with apostasy!)
This argument falls short because the Christians who do not have dependents also don’t give all superfluous possessions to the poor, neither do the wealthy Christians with dependents usually live austerely after providing for their relatives.
One need only read the writings of first century Christians
I grant this point to a degree, but I don’t think we really know how many Christians sincerely gave all their surplus to the poor, as we lack records here. But if you believe Acts then the Apostles shared everything in common, and we see condemnation in the Church Fathers about nearly every conspicuous expression of wealth, even rings.
The fact that people today, or in the first century, act contrary to their own professed belief and knowledge has little bearing on the belief itself (alcohol IS bad for you even if you act as if it isn't!)
Alcohol is a physiological addiction. If students can live in poverty for four years with the hope that they will later receive a great reward, then it should follow that those who believe in the greatest reward imaginable for all of eternity should be able to put up with a few decades of poverty. I’m at a loss for why this wouldn’t happen unless the belief is not quite fully believed. If this life is a light and momentary affliction, a simple trial for the real important joy of heaven, why is almost no one pursuing the full reward? Or, if a greater reward for saints is no longer believed, why aren’t they at least super-securing their salvation with fear and trembling? As again, if we really had the Mr Beast contract offering 10 billion dollars for a year in poverty, I think most people would do it. The natural explanation here is that this isn’t really believed, not that in the sense that a belief is normally believed; it hasn’t actually convinced us, and we required something more to cajole us morally. I think we can feel that we hold beliefs without truly holding them, especially if the belief is as socially reinforced as the dogmas of a religion.
Not stated in the text here (even as a riddle or hyperbole): "rich people go to hell." Nor is that a teaching of Catholic doctrine as I understand it.
We also see this warning in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and Luke 12:33.
Acts 5:1 - 4 that even in the early church described in Acts 4 liquidation of wealth to give to those in need was entirely voluntary.)
Well, in Acts 4-5 we find: “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common […] there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need”. Then we read the story of Ananias, who didn’t give the church all of his profit, and he died after Paul’s rebuke. Then the wife died after Paul’s rebuke.
anon_
4d ago
You can go further than merely psychoactive drugs. Robin Hanson & Bryan Caplan had a thought experiment about letting people buy (in his reification, at an unmarked physical store) anything that would otherwise have banned: poison, snake oil, chainsaws with no safeties, electronics that frequently shock the user or catch fire. One could even imagine a requirement that each customer recites on video (before being allowed entry) "I understand that everything in here would have been banned and is dangerous".
I bring this up particularly because psychoactive drugs are just one example of dangerous good. People have weirdly specific intuition about those drugs that often doesn't really track how they feel about the larger class. It also seems to track the culture war: legalization is a darling of the left, which is otherwise gung-ho to regulate everything else.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
4d ago
then drop the baby in the ocean or jungle.
Reminds me of a poem.
While I am morally pro-life, I am just enough of a squishy lib at heart to think that abortion shouldn't be banned entirely (at this stage of technology). But I find pro-abortion people viscerally disturbed and pro-choice wildly inconsistent. They really shouldn't have given up on "safe, legal, and rare."
Is the joke that the 10 million refugees is the defection
Yes, the several million illegal immigrants was the original defection, and sending a couple dozen to self-proclaimed sanctuary cities that immediately shipped them back was the tiniest possible tat in reply.
Korean war can't have been universally popular,
MASH was! (Yes, I'm joking and aware the actual war was not nearly as popular, and also years shorter)
continuing racial segregation
Talk about a failed opportunity.
setting your norm as the high-water mark the decade after winning a world war and emerging as one of two superpowers does not seem like a solid foundation for a nation.
Well yeah, that's kind of the point, and that it was already declining into the 70s (your 50 years ago mark). I think the post-war years were unusually good (though you're absolutely right, not perfect) times, and they set a cultural memory bar that's basically impossible to achieve without that set of circumstances.
We either have to redefine down what a good life and good country is, or we have to find a different route to get there.
You really don't think the 90s were another high-water mark?
Well, absolutely! I'd give my left nut to crank the clock back to late 90s cultural détente, colorblindness, warts and all. Hell, I'd be tempted just for Utopian Scholastic and Frutiger Aero to make a comeback.
But I also think it's cliché for a Millennial to say that the late 90s/early 00s minus the terrorism response were a golden age.
cjet79
5d ago
This is mostly an attack on various people. Such things aren't explicitly banned, but they are heavily treading into waging the culture war. I was going to make this just a warning. But looking through your history its basically the only thing we warn/temp ban you about.
5 day ban. It will escalate quickly if see this again, we shouldn't have to ask you a half dozen times to follow a specific rule.
Some people are confusing my argument. It’s much more practical than me playing the morality police. Celebrating and praising political assassins is a step on the path to ending a liberal democratic society. You gotta have some degree of sanction against it for the same reason LKY banned the communist party in Singapore.
If you want to craft a maximally free society, don’t start with an absolutely free society and look on in a stupor as people find the exploits that will bring it crashing to the ground
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