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ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11m ago
Let's approach this in good faith, is it possible they shot it down because attempts for prayers don't happen with other victims of gun violence?
How is that approaching it in good faith? It's completely normal for legislative institutions around the entire world to occasionally honor somebody with a moment of silence or other ritual. Obviously this isn't done for everybody, and the demand for it to be seems to have been pulled out of thin air.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
13m ago
Maybe you disagree there's an implication like that made with such an exception, or heck maybe you believe that children who get shot or military who die aren't deserving of prayer in the same way, but I hope you can understand the point at least.
For what it's worth, I can. I think I have an understanding of why Reds are infuriated over it, but I think their fury is foolish and counterproductive.
DiscourseMagnus
18m ago
Wild speculation may be where the claim originated from, but I don't think it's how you wound up under the impression that it was the fact of the matter.
magicalkittycat
24m ago
You mean the same Dems who tried to shout down an attempt for prayer for Kirk in Congress?
Let's approach this in good faith, is it possible they shot it down because attempts for prayers don't happen with other victims of gun violence? There's an argument to be made about the implications there, that his life is more important than the life of a kid who doesn't get it when they die.
And hey, that's exactly the point they said
House Administration Committee ranking member Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) told Axios that saying a prayer on the House floor in response to a tragedy is something "we don't even do for fallen members."
"What about the kids in Colorado?" one Democrat was heard shouting, referencing the Colorado high school shooting that transpired in Boebert's state on the same day and left three people in critical condition.
Maybe you disagree there's an implication like that made with such an exception, or heck maybe you believe that children who get shot or military who die aren't deserving of prayer in the same way, but I hope you can understand the point at least.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
29m ago
I don’t care for Cenk Uyger, but if a 20 year old Republican killed him in front of a crowd at a college I would be just as terrified and just as horrified if people celebrated it. I don’t think bringing up a nonviolent activist’s views is even necessary in the first 24 hours after he was publicly assassinated. They’re irrelevant.
I guess I just don’t feel burning hatred for my political opponents, even if I accept conflict theory as necessary. The main reason I’m not a mistake theorist is I don’t believe most people make decisions based on reason; you can’t make a mistake based on reason if you didn’t use reason in the first place.
Sometimes politics has serious divisions that reflect competing interests, needs, and views of the good. But even if I had to use political power to restrain someone from opposing my interests in a zero-sum game, I wouldn’t feel glee, but sorrow that they forced me to do that, that we couldn’t come to an accommodation. I would much rather turn an enemy into an ally than defeat him, but I accept the need to win and the reality of defection and evil. (I’ve also never felt the urge to cheer at a sports game, so maybe I’m just missing an element of tribal psychology that most people have.)
I don’t know. I just hate that people feel psychological glee at the death of an activist. It’s not that they’re saying it, but that they’re feeling it that hurts. I’ve said a lot of vile things in the heat of the moment, things I deeply regret. But people are doubling and tripling down on their glee like death is a game. That’s some serious desensitization to suffering. I just happen to think that schedenfreude is sadism, and it corrupts the soul.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
30m ago
What is the purpose of this question? If he didn't post on these topics on reddit at the time, does that mean he's a hypocrite and his post is invalid?
Yes?
If so, state that directly rather than asking passive-aggressive "gotcha" questions.
Point taken.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
34m ago
What is the purpose of this question? If he didn't post on these topics on reddit at the time, does that mean he's a hypocrite and his post is invalid?
If so, state that directly rather than asking passive-aggressive "gotcha" questions.
KingOfTheBailey
42m ago
Do you have the URL or an archive link? Wondering if it's available on wayback or something.
Did you know there was a school shooting in Colorado yesterday? Did you hear about the Florida State University shooting back in April? The one in Tennessee in January? If you're like many Americans, you've maybe heard about one of them but it's not like school shootings are a major national conversation most of the time anymore. We just don't really pay much attention anymore and even the rare times we do even somewhat like at the Catholic school, it's still mostly ignored by the general populace and pundits and politicians.
Despite the fact that as many libertarian and gun advocacy groups point out, school shootings are actually really rare. So rare that there's been a growing pushback against the insane idea of shooter drills. And it's not just school shootings either, right as Charlie Kirk died yesterday, he was even making the point that mass shootings are not common, especially when excluding gang violence.
And yet despite them being really rare, we're all tuned out and no one even knows when a new one happens. It doesn't really take much for people to shrug and go "well, that's just another Tuesday isn't it?"
So you can tell something in the reaction to Charlie Kirk's death, people aren't treating it as just another Tuesday. Politicians, pundits, all sorts of internet forums were talking about it even internationally. It's a big shock. I think that says something about just how rare political violence must be, that even compared to the very rare school shootings people aren't just shrugging it off.
Of politicians and pundits killed in the last few years, it's just two. Melissa Hortman the Dem speaker of the Minnesota house, and Charlie Kirk yesterday. There's been a few attacks without killings but even those are of course still rare. And even of those, most attempts aren't even for political reasons! Many of them are personal grievances, someone trying to make a name for themselves, weird conspiracies, antisemitism, etc. This is true even historically in the US, many famous attacks on politicians are like Ronald Reagan (crazy fanatic who thought it would impress an actress) or Gerald Ford (delusional guy who thought he helped win the election and deserved a job). We don't know the Charlie Kirk motive yet, the tiny bit of evidence (the claims of engravings) that did exist has been retracted and likely isn't real so maybe this was an explicitly political targeting but even so, that's still quite rare.
There's a bunch of edgy internet comments and rhetoric like always, but real action basically never happens. Just like most internet Edgelord behavior, it's chest thumping by people who are too scared to even make a phone call. And even those are so rare that the "Charlie's Murderers" site that is being passed around has to a 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 has to go, it includes people who literally say it was bad the shooting happened but that they don't personally like Kirk.
The plain and simple reality is that the US just doesn't have much political violence, and the negativity algorithms and Chinese/Pakistani/Iranian/Russian/etc bots and trolls trying to convince you there's some sort of civil war going on are lying. They want to convince the people of a deeper chaos and to hate and fear our fellow citizens. They hate the US and want to see us fail.
It's not just another Tuesday, it's rare. We are a great country with peaceful citizens and letting the few crazies and nutjobs and accelerationists wash over that is exactly what those enemy governments want.
What makes you think than your employer would have no problem with you saying that even if the potential liability didn't exist?
I am not claiming that my employer and most potential employers would not discriminate against me; I am saying that I am in favor of the sorts of laws they have used to coordinate such discrimination should be used to coordinate discrimination against my enemies as well, and that I am entirely comfortable with the federal government forcing them to do so regardless of their personal wishes.
I am pointing out that we have been abridging free speech through the power of federal law for more than thirty years, and the core purpose and justification of these abridgements absolutely applies here. I understand that to a first approximation, no one ever actually meant all that horseshit about fair, meta-level principled opposition to discrimination against the Other; it is enough to make that fact abundantly clear.
To the extent that there was ever a justification for legal restrictions against "hate" and "prejudice" and "bigotry", it applies here. To the extent that it does not apply here, every instance of acceptance and cooperation with these laws for the last fifty fucking years has been a swindle.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
50m ago
For example if I give speech that: "Gay-ness is an abomination before the eyes of God and we should not allow it in our government or our society" Am I inflicting violence? By your definition I am not, nothing I say is legally able to be restricted as I am not directly threatening anyone. However, say I do get this law to pass, now some faceless bureaucrat is going to punish any gay person they find because they are illegal, and they are going to do so with the full might on the state. Its back to stoning, conversion torture, or throwing the gays off roof tops. By my definition I have advocated for those policies, I have advocated for violence.
You've taken a couple of logical leaps here which are not well founded, and your argument suffers greatly as a result. First, the assumption that to have the government effect policy is tantamount to using violence to effect that policy. I think that this is very much not the case. It's not exactly a new argument (libertarians have been arguing that taxation is theft on more or less the same basis since forever), but it's not a good argument either. There's a reason Scott Alexander calls this form of argument "the worst argument in the world" (and against which he argued much more eloquently than I can). When you invoke a rhetorical phrase for an extreme edge case, it unreasonably connects the edge case in people's minds to the severity of the central example. That is (at best) unintentionally misleading, and (more often) an attempt at rhetorical sleight of hand to try to get people to accept a point they never would if you made it straight out.
Second, all of this seems to be in service to your original question of whether someone has inflicted violence. Even if I was to grant for the sake of argument that such government action was violent (which I don't), advocating for this government policy still would not be inflicting violence. Words can never, ever, constitute violence. Violence only means inflicting actual physical harm upon people. Even a direct threat of violence, like telling someone you're going to hurt them, is not violence in itself. Perhaps you weren't trying to say that advocating for violence (the phrase you used towards the end) is the same as inflicting violence (the phrase you used towards the beginning). But as written, it kind of comes off like you are. And if you are indeed trying to say those things are equivalent, then you're using a completely nonstandard definition of "violence" and there can be no productive discussion until that changes.
JulianRota
52m ago
Okay that sounds like a reasonable take, I missed getting an update on that event sufficiently long after it happened for the truth to actually come out.
Though I might quibble a little about whether it was a "dirty lie", or wild speculation very soon after the event before any actual facts came out, which there tends to be an ample amount of after any high-profile event, including the Kirk assassination.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
54m ago
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. There's always a discussion that goes like this:
"50% of Group X think Group Y are partially responsible for Group X violence against Group Y. But, only 3% of Group X would be willing to actually commit violence against Group Y."
Group Xer: "See, that proves Group X is 97% peaceful."
Group Yer: "See, that proves that 50% of Group X is violent."
I have always tried to lean toward the former interpretation. Citizens of fascist or communist tyrannies who supported and participated in their regime are AFAIK never seen as completely blameless. And as the violence becomes more egregious, it gets harder and harder to believe it.
zeke5123a
58m ago
The most obscene version of the heckler veto was exercised and instead of being condemned it was rationalized.
Tretiak
59m ago
I'm torn when it comes to this discussion.
Take employers for instance. And take a look at this story I remember seeing years ago where a female mechanic was fired for her activity on an OnlyFan's account she had. Do employers not have a right to decide what kind of activities they want their business to be associated with? It's the same logic behind why a Catholic school can fire a gay teacher for their sexual orientation, despite having laws against discrimination. Each case has a unique set of circumstances attached to it I recognize, but this logic works both ways.
Gay people essentially made the argument for a long time that what two consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of their business. That's fine by me. And it was for most people, even before gay marriage was legalized. Nobody 'could've' stopped two consenting adults doing what they wanted behind closed doors anyway because it if was just between them, how would anybody even know about it? That argument would've had the same purchase a century ago as it did in recent years at the time it was made. So then what's the impetus for legalizing gay marriage then in that case? Was that simply an argument to get their foot in the door to advance a further expansion of privileges and rights? If it ended at two consenting adults, why the activism? Surely there shouldn't have been any. It's a private matter between consenting adults. Why is it in my face? Why is my Church prejudiced if it doesn't hang an LGBTQ flag outside it's doors? Seems like it was never about that in the first place.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I was shocked today when I saw a Republican Congressman announce a woke-era pressure campaign againt people who "belittled" the assasination. Apparently I have a much longer memory than many people. I still remember 2020. I still remember George Floyd.
Mine's a bit rusty. For example, I don't remember your username attached to a lot of commentary about woke-era pressure campaigns, or George Floyd, as they were happening. Care to refresh it?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
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.
The reason I don't have to worry about being jailed for my opinions is because I live among people who share them, and are willing to coordinate meanness to provide protection against those who disagree. Where the protections of a values-aligned community are absent, my next-best protection is OPSEC, pseudanonymity. Third place is guns and a willingness to use them. The "Liberal System" does not place, as it is a intellectually-masterbatory fiction.
Getting fired or canceled for your political opinions is bad, but sitting in jail or getting killed by government agents for them is much worse.
Is Charlie Kirk less dead because it wasn't a government agent who shot him? Government exists to coordinate action. There are other ways to coordinate action as well. I care about the actions being coordinated, not the method used to coordinate them.
By coordinating meanness against Blues through the government, I compromise their ability to coordinate meanness against me. Since I am advocating doing so in exactly the way they have been coordinating meanness against me for decades, I see no reason why moderates such as yourself should see my coordination as more objectionable than theirs. Moderate arguments failed to moderate them; why should they moderate me?
Punishing people for celebrating and endorsing political murders makes us all marginally safer. Refraining to do so makes us all worse off, and does not even protect free speech in any principled way in the bargain.
JulianRota
1hr ago
Disagree, look at the 60s and 70s.
By "this era" I did mean after the 60s and 70s era of political unrest. Not sure of an exact date actually, I guess after the relatively domestically peaceful 80s and 90s. Though I suppose you'd then have to overlook the OKC bombing, which is maybe reasonable, since it was more anti-government than anti either political party or tribal side.
That wasn't anymore fabricated than a typical sting operation. Maybe you're against police stings in general, but it's common. Happen with drugs, prostitution, money laundering, child pornography honeypots, fake assassination hiring sites etc.
I'm not against police stings in general, but there's most definitely a line they have crossed at times where it seems more like they're enabling or encouraging crime that wouldn't otherwise happen instead of thwarting people with serious intent to commit major crimes. I don't know about the case you cited in particular, but they have definitely done this with so-called Islamic terrorists too. In this case they "befriended" some developmentally disabled teenager and eventually cajoled him into sending pitifully small amounts of money to somebody he believed was associated with ISIS, then busted him and patted themselves on the back for "stopping ISIS". Do you think that's an appropriate use of police resources?
Exactly where the line is for this is a bit fuzzy. But I think a good indicator that you're way off on the wrong side of the line is when multiple defendants get acquitted after a successful entrapment defense.
pigeonburger
1hr ago
It is Okay to Think That Charlie Kirk was not Literally Jesus.
Ultimately, the best rampart against this kind of violence is making sure it's counter-productive. I don't care if that requires canonizing a man who didn't necessarily deserve it to make it clear that if you kill a peaceful activist, you risk permanently losing the normies and moderates from your side.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
1hr ago
Getting fired for opinions while your enemies operate with impunity is worst of all. Your rules fairly, and all that. As has been said many times here, liberal norms only work when a shared moral fabric is smuggled in as the bedrock of civic life, when certain fundamental questions about human existence are not up for debate. Once there arise factions who can no longer agree on these fundamental questions, it's only a matter of time until one faction purges the others and enforces a new consensus, after which liberalism can be restored in this new moral context.
Browser
1hr ago
Yeah and there's a substantial difference between bailing somebody and saying they're innocent.
pigeonburger
1hr ago
Oh my, I have choice "cultural phrases" to say about this new euphemism
Gay marriage, specifically, was about equal rights -- gay couples wanted to be able to, say, hold hands in the street without getting beaten up. Or visit each other in the hospital. Or file taxes jointly. Etc.
The whole point of gay rights was that they didn't want to have to keep in behind closed doors, the same way straight couples don't have to keep it behind closed doors.
They didn't want to have to keep a large chunk of their lives secret.
Pressuring churches to fly rainbow flags isn't really the same thing and I largely agree is overreach. On the other hand, a lot of chuches fly rainbow flags because their congragants actually think that gay rights are good, and that's their right as well.
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