domain:open.substack.com
thejdizzler
just now
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).
WandererintheWilderness
just now
"Absolutely" yes, "correctly" no. Again, what else would you expect a sincere Second-Amendment-opposing non-assassination-supporting person to say?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2m ago
No. The Munchkins were literally the Witch's slaves, and treated quite badly. They had legitimate cause to celebrate her death, and if half of Oz supported the witch, well, the Munchkins kinda fucked but they shouldn't consider the feelings of those people.
Charlie Kirk had no slaves.
WandererintheWilderness
3m ago
Furthermore, the Wicked Witch is EVIL, which Charlie Kirk wasn't
Well, that's rather the crux of the issue. I am obviously talking about the perspective of people who believe that Kirk was, at the very least, aiding and abetting evil, and most probably significantly evil himself. Granted that someone believes Kirk was evil - as is their right - then is it acceptable for them to publicly display relief that he's dead, without thereby coming across as supporting assassinations? I don't think this is a trivial question. I think people who fall afoul of it are at least sympathetic.
Of course it was something their tribe did, that's blatantly obvious to everyone who's not delusional,
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. I don't think anything about it is "blatantly obvious". 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. Certainly it's pretty dumb of them not to anticipate that the Red Tribe would blame them, but it doesn't follow that the Red Tribe is trivially right to do so.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
5m ago
Politicians are fairer game for political violence, getting shot at by nuts is a small if regrettable part of their jobs. It's already getting seriously dangerous if the shots come from sane people. But this is worse.
Shooting Kirk is like shooting your republican Grandpa, he was effectively just a dude with milquetoast normie republican beliefs with no office or power beyond talking to people and organizing events to talk to people.
Anybody to his right, and that's half or more of the United States population at this point, can only take supporting his assassination as an existential true threat.
KMC
5m ago
It's the purest, most concentrated and distilled Democrat space on the internet. It's the essence of the Democrat party, its beating heart.
Sure, the whole party is dilute with normies, but it's the people on bluesky that determine the flavor of the party.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
5m ago
Several young local school employees have been fired in my area, and I think they should have just got a stern talking to.
I disagree inasmuch as I think teachers, being placed in a special position of public trust to, as part of their official duties, partake in the moral instruction of their students, have a special duty of moral care.
EDIT: Though I think the comma phrases are grammatically correct, I don't like how that sentence scans. Let me try again: I disagree because I think that teachers have a special moral duty. They have this because they are entrusted in their official capacity with the moral education of our society's children.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
6m ago
What? Make your point clear please.
zoink
7m ago
In one case it was a private tok that a contact released. She was in a school shirt which I would say is a big no no, but still I believe warrants a conversation and being put on notice.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
8m ago
I think everyone here recognizes that the George Floyd sanctification was extraordinarily pathetic and even humiliating for the US. It will be very hard to beat, frankly impossible in this case, not least because Kirk was a normal and respected person (no matter how little worth I personally see to his political work) and Floyd was scum of the society. But this is not a good reason to try.
I'd say broadly so; I often have different axioms and life experiences but your ideas are largely coherent and reasonably argued. I'd add that the past five years or so (especially post-Musk takeover of Twitter) have given the Right enough of a voice to make it clearer where the Motte and Bailey is for both sides - fewer left-wingers now come into debate fora completely unaware of the existence of right-wing arguments and assuming that they will obviously win just by their obvious correctness. It's more common now for left-wingers to optimise their arguments at least a little more for persuasiveness and defensibility, which I would say is very positive and what the Motte is intended to encourage on both sides.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
9m ago
For what it's worth, I believe the attempted hagiography around Floyd was just as silly, if not more so, than what's happening now with Kirk.
Throwaway05
10m ago
I want to toss out a little bit of a call to action everyone (wait wait not that kind of call to action).
Something I found tremendously helpful in the last few days was viewing and readings things I don't usually do.
Admittedly I was doing this because I was freaking out like many and desperate for information and content - but I found Bernie's quick speech, which was phenomenal. I've never been a Young Turks guy but I thought what Cenk was saying was great. Yeah it may not be perfect but that's fine.
We should look for things that just add new information yes, but the calming and temperature dialing down stuff is out there, even if you are in favor for turning on the gas.
Diversify.
I think that's especially important because this place has some huge intellectual/knowledge blind spots. At times we definitely are speculating on things which every normie on /r/television knows and has sorted out for instance (I forget the specific thing that made me think of this, I think it was something on HBO).
Of relevance now, many of us had heard the name but didn't really know who Charlie Kirk was before this. I'd hazard a higher percentage of normie boomer conservatives knew who he was than people here.
That leads to an underemphasized portion of the discussion I've seen here which is that the inside baseball people knew him and many of them were friends with or respected him or whatever - they are all shook. Maybe that's a good thing because it can generate some calm and change if we are lucky.
It's also important when it comes to all of the contrarian "actually he's a..." type discussion.
He was closely connected to people in the media class on both sides and the people currently in power and that will mold what is coming for good and for ill.
As a recommendation I started listening to 2Way Morning Meeting. The most recent two episodes are obviously not representative of the overall content but are still great.
Helps remind me that the adults are still out there and may in fact manage to keep things other control.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
10m ago
We're you debating in favor of any right-leaning policies?
Sure, every once in a while. But I, like Kirk, was in an environment where I was never going to run a serious risk of being ostracized. In my case it was because we all knew debate was a silly game, while in Kirk's case it was because his conservative audience wanted him to say edgy right-wing stuff.
Catsnakes_
11m ago
"Kirk supported the Second Amendment, he was wrong, and his murder is a great example of why he was wrong" is absolutely a "he (with his preferred policies) brought this on himself" argument, which is about a hair's breadth away from a "he deserved it" argument. An ally could maybe make that statement, or an opponent after a respectful time had passed, but coming from a political opponent in the immediate wake of his brutal assassination it will absolutely and correctly be interpreted as "he deserved it" by the wider right.
WandererintheWilderness
11m ago
honestly, if we got through the beatifiction of St. Floyd, St.Kirk should be no skin off anyone's nose
That's largely my feeling, particularly if the Kirk hagiography is going to focus on genuinely praiseworthy virtues he allegedly embodied, eg commitment to free speech and open debate.
But to steelman an obvious counter, Floyd was a nobody who stood for nothing in particular. His sins were of an entirely personal nature. In contrast, Kirk stood for a range of political and social values, and if you think those values are Evil, then it's obviously a bad thing for his memory to be idolized, even if his personal impact on the world in life was ultimately negligible.
yofuckreddit
12m ago
Stop, I can only get so erect right all the fucking time
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12m ago
What does “clearly devoted Christian” mean here? Did he advocate for everyone to give their surplus to the poor? Did he sell his guns and pledge non-violence? Did he apply pressure to safeguard civilian casualties in the wars we fund? With his 12 million net worth and four homes, including a 6 million dollar mansion, I can find no evidence that he ever made a personal donation of any kind. I just searched his 70k tweet account and he never once made any comment about the suffering of civilians or children in Gaza, though just recently he had a rabbi come on his show to claim there is definitely no one starving.
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
13m ago
State-sanctioned killing is just vigilante killing by proxy, much like how elections are wars by proxy.
HereAndGone
13m ago
Okay, thank you for the link.
"Self-Defense" is actually quite simple. "I will not use violence against any person... UNLESS they use it against me first." Both defense and offense are 'using violence.' But generally speaking, offense is the one who initiated, and defense is the person responding to it.
But the issue is that you are not allowed to have a "special exemption".
If a "special exemption" is something that includes another person but excludes you, then adding the clause "unless they use it against me first" is adding a special exemption. It gives you permission to use violence against another person, while it excludes other people from being permitted to use violence against you (assuming you don't plan to use it first).
Rephrasing it as "unless defense" doesn't help either, for exactly the same reason. You've said that there are two categories, one of which doesn't apply to you ("people who use violence offensively") and another of which does apply to you ("people who use violence defensively") and allowing only the people in the first category to be valid targets of violence. That's a special exemption that excludes you as a target. It may be a special exemption that you like, but it still is one.
Just because you can otherwise justify self-defense doesn't keep it from being a special exemption under that definition. (And if there's some other definition of "special exemption", I'd like to see it.)
HereAndGone
15m ago
There's a rapidly congealing hagiography surrounding Charlie Kirk in the wake of his shooting.
When we get the practically a state funeral, gold-plated coffin, and mayor kneeling and weeping while touching the coffin as if venerating a relic, come back to me on this. If it does happen, feel free to call me an idiot.
thejdizzler
16m ago
Another great comment! Academia is supposed to be this place where these ideas can be debated, which I think is the appeal of it to me. It would be one thing if professors/scientists said: "I don't care what the science says about xyz policy, I believe abc for ideological reasons". That's basically what the right does most of the time, which I find annoying, but not objectionable. It's this twisting of objective truth finding that really grinds my gears. Things like racism is a bigger public health crisis than COVID, denial of a genetic basis for racial differences, and excessive focus on grifting redistributive policies that don't work do a lot to undermine public trust in sense making as a way to tackle problems. Now I don't think right-leaning academia would necessarily be much better (look at all the crap that people come up with about seed oils), but that's not the world we live in.
And maybe it's never really been free from bias (which many posters here will certainly be happy to claim), but I think it's also crazy to deny that science is objectively more corrupt and less effective at changing society (for the better) than 100 years 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. This is the same bad line of argumentation you were making against me down thread that you bailed out on.
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