domain:philippelemoine.com
HereAndGone
1m 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
1m 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.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1m ago
Now let's say the left was using this silence to make brazen claims about how AOC was one of the greatest people who ever lived on par with MLK or Jesus or Lincoln, and also that every right winger was complicit in her death. Would you maybe feel the slightest urge to respond?
I mean, you could just say "no" to win this specific argument, but I must say I never found the idea that we must wait X number of days before speaking about an event particularly convincing when either side makes it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4m ago
The argument is not that "Billions Must Die" because some brainrotted person shot Charlie Kirk. The argument is that society is a complex machine, and keeping it running requires a degree of base-level values-coherence. Kirk's murder, and the left's extremely public reaction to that murder, are demonstrations that the minimum level of values-coherence no longer exists.
I think you are wrong that this incident will be forgotten; for that matter, I think you are wrong that Luigi has been forgotten. But it scarcely matters. This murder was not a fluke, but rather a stochastically-predictable result of many millions of people trying to live together with many millions of other people whose values and worldview are mutually exclusive. Events like this are going to keep happening, and they are going to keep generating common knowledge, which will in turn drive further action.
It's fairly probable that at some point in the next few years, Blues are going to gain significant political power. When they do, they are going to exercise that power in predictable ways: they will escalate. Reds will react to that exercise in predictable ways: they will escalate back. This murder will shape the backlash to the backlash to the backlash, and it will shape it for the worse. Reds are by no means prepared to be ruled the way Trump is currently ruling Blues. Blues are not prepared to have murder of their champions treated the way they are treating Kirk's murder. Both are very likely to be forced to react to such treatment in the relatively-near future, and neither is likely to do so in a way that we might, from a detached and nonpartisan perspective, consider "pro-social".
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
7m ago
Imagine that someone you really hated was randomly struck down by a freak bolt of lightning. Wouldn't you be pretty giddy?
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.
And if someone tried to argue that this made you just as bad as if you were advocating for that guy's murder, wouldn't that seem pretty unfair? ... I contend that for the average left-wing rando, "some nutjob has shot Charlie Kirk" has about the same valence as "Charlie Kirk has been struck by lightning".
But he wasn't struck by lightning. He was murdered. And that makes all the difference here. You're constructing this argument that we should have more sympathy for those who feel happy that someone they hate got killed by a freak accident, but the simple fact of the matter is that even if they perceive it as that, their perception is false, and they are in fact celebrating a murder.
yofuckreddit
7m ago
Being cucked is the same sort of ideological consistency Kirk had being married with kids. His son hating him is understandable from my PoV but not a universal indictment of him, and I'm not a fan of playing the CP gotcha game when 17 year olds say they're 19 or whatever.
Your overall point - that the left has few-to-none Kirk equivalents - is correct overall. But I think Destiny counts as at least one dark mirror example.
Soteriologian
7m ago
I think this is a bit different, because left-wing ideology is, at least in all relevant practice, parasitic: the more radically conservative you are, the higher fertility you have; the more progressive you are, the less you have.
Conservatives can survive just fine without leftists; leftists cannot survive without conservatives.
In contrast, Protestants and Catholics can both survive just fine without either parasitizing off of the other.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
7m ago
It can take a lot of courage when there are real stakes.
Sure, I don't disagree with this. And the policy debate I did was fake. But the debates Kirk did were also fake. And almost all political debates of this sort are fake. It's a performative skill you can build like any other. There were no stakes. If Kirk has a bad performance, he could just cut that from the TikTok highlight real. At worst, he might run some risk of someone else filming him mess up and counter-dunking on him, but social media algorithms would be unlikely to serve that to Kirk's audience in any case.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
7m ago
Cars aren't dangerous, you can list off individuals accidents, but people drive to their destinations unharmed everyday.
Sure they have safety belts, but golf carts also have them, and it's not like they're going on the highway or even regularly breaking 20 mph.
thejdizzler
8m ago
Very good comment, and very true. The most sane graduate students and professors I know completely stay out of politics (or are some kind of milquetoast abundance liberals, which I find problematic for other reasons). Those slightly less sane think of people outside of academia as children to be reasoned with using patronizing arguments. The least sane think that they are shit that needs to be wiped off the floor. This would maybe be coherent (yet still abhorrent imo) if they were authoritarian ubermenschen who controlled all the levers of political and personal violence. But these people are usually terribly out of shape, gun-hating, "democracy" loving keyboard warriors. Say what you will about the revolutionaries of the 20th century, they actually had the cojones and physical abilities to enact and enforce their political ideas.
KMC
12m ago
the guy does essentially the exact kind of events Kirk was doing.
No he doesn't. He sits in a room, alone, in front of a camera. That is nothing like showing up in person in front of a hostile crowd after receiving death threats.
dem college campus debatelord universe
That's because there is no college campus universe, the dem debatelords do it from the safety and comfort of their couches.
i think you are putting too much emphasis on how uniquely brave his actions were.
They were, both unique, and brave.
Totalitarianit
12m ago
I think they should be fired for glorifying the death of someone on their public social media profiles. Firings produce a chilling effect. We learned this from the censorship propagated and performed by the left (that they either denied was happening or justified for being harmful). If censorship of this kind is unavoidable, which it has demonstrated itself to be as of late, then I'd prefer it be from the camp I support rather than the one I don't.
We know there is no absolute free speech. It is inherently bounded by our government and cultural norms. We are in a culture war that was started most noticeably because the dominant left culture cancelled, censored, and doxxed nearly every dissenting opinion they could.
NullHypothesis
12m ago
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, Jordpan 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. 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.
yofuckreddit
13m ago
We appreciate your presence!
oats_son
13m ago
I misinterpreted your endorsement to mean that I could make a separate thread discussing Charlie Kirk specifically. I did not notice that you thought I was talking about moderator policies until now. If you don't want that thread, then I will delete it and just post it as a top level comment here.
jkf
14m ago
Sometime after you have a revolution and win, usually -- I can't think of any offhand in the (quite murderey) history of American politics, at any rate.
Do you have any examples of actual assassins to whom history has been kind that you'd like to discuss? Even Brutus et al don't get very good P.R. these days.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
14m ago
It's the representation of Democrat voters online.
It is not. That's pure weakmanning. It's a representation of a specific faction of woke Democrats that like censorship, credentialism, and catastrophizing.
KMC
16m ago
"Going out in public" and debating people is hardly something that takes immense courage. I did policy debate in college -- where's my statute?
You have to actually demonstrate courage by confronting people who want you dead with nothing but your words.
birb_cromble
16m ago
Also I'll voice here that if you're not acting in an official role I don't think you should get fired for speech.
I think a lot of people here will agree with you, but that bell rang on Brendan Eich and it's never going to unring itself. This is the new, worse equilibrium. We're all stuck in it for now.
NullHypothesis
16m ago
Kirk didn't die for flip-flopping on policy positions, though. Kirk died talking to college students. Even if you think he was arguing for a wrong point, discussion is the pathway to truth. In that sense, I think there is an argument to made for that he is a martyr for truth.
I'm not in disagreement that there are flaws or things to criticize about Kirk. But I feel like this is like calling Martin Luther King a criminal and thus an awful, bad person (which is something Kirk did say).
That feels less like magic because it's done completely in the open. I guess most people can't put it together. What I think is more of a trick is sound engineering. I didn't watch enough of Kirk to know if it was happening at his events, but it happens on the radio all the time. The host has a big, strong, clear voice with everything tuned, while the caller is speaking through a shitty phone mic, speaking at half the volume with horrible sound quality and the host has a mute button if they don't want to just straight talk over the caller.
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, and if you are not planning to use violence first, then adding the clause "unless they use it against me first" is adding a special exemption.
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