Charlie Kirk shot at (shot?) in Utah

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I don't think that social media in and of itself is at issue. Even mainstream media plays a role in creating divisiveness. Why do both these platforms create divisiveness and extremism? The bottom line on social media is likes but the most frequent likes are gotten by "influencers" who make money from Big Tech and sponsors and The Algorithm feeds into magnifying the echo chambers. Within mainstream media, there isn't too much difference as the news media itself claims to be infotainment and tries to capture niche markets (i.e. Democrat or Republican) and cater to them. To add--even non-mainstream parties have a vested interest in making both parties look bad and then get a following increasing their own echo chamber and extremism, but this last one is more frequent on the Internet than in mainstream media, though they will use media sources from whichever side they want to criticize.

I don't have an easy answer to this, but at least critical thinking and skepticism could be somewhat helpful. These do not seem to be things that are promoted as values within the architectures of msm or social media. All I can say is that the very entities that are pushing extremism are now telling people "you idiots. political violence is bad."

 

[southernhybrid]

A bunch of quotes from this miserable fuck, including that black women lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously and that if his 10-year-old daughter were raped and became pregnant, the baby would be delivered.

Also, he’s against retirement because “it’s not biblical.”

Considering he said he hates the idea of empathy, it sounds like he's a psychopath. Psychopaths are incapable of experiencing empathy, and apparently there are a lot of them in the current Republican Party, along with their Orange clown master.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If Kirk was the intended target, that’s pretty good shooting - a kill at 200 yards.

Not an unusual skill in still air, depending on the weapon. The way it blew his neck open looked like a high velocity round. 200 yards with a .scoped .223 isn’t exactly a gimme, but close to it for a good shooter.

The longest confirmed sniper kill was reportedly by an anonymous Ukrainian sniper on August 14, 2025, at a distance of over 4,000 meters (approximately 2.5 miles), using a Snipex Alligator rifle to eliminate two Russian soldiers.

I really wish they would get rid of that category. Various snipers, mostly Ukranian, have racked up some very impressive distances--but at those ranges you need both a lot of skill and a whole lot of luck. (Which is why Ukraine is racking up the records--they're taking so many such shots. If you can even get the round close you disrupt whatever they were doing and make them go about future activities cautiously, thus interfering with them doing whatever they were supposed to be doing. Take enough such shots, sometimes you hit.)

And I would hate to think of what the recoil is like with that big a round!

 

[pood]

A bunch of quotes from this miserable fuck, including that black women lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously and that if his 10-year-old daughter were raped and became pregnant, the baby would be delivered.

Also, he’s against retirement because “it’s not biblical.”

Considering he said he hates the idea of empathy, it sounds like he's a psychopath. Psychopaths are incapable of experiencing empathy, and apparently there are a lot of them in the current Republican Party, along with their Orange clown master.

I do believe he was a psychopath, like the president. Either that, or a very clever con artist who glommed on to a scam to make money off the rubes.

 

[Politesse]

A bunch of quotes from this miserable fuck, including that black women lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously and that if his 10-year-old daughter were raped and became pregnant, the baby would be delivered.

Also, he’s against retirement because “it’s not biblical.”

Considering he said he hates the idea of empathy, it sounds like he's a psychopath. Psychopaths are incapable of experiencing empathy, and apparently there are a lot of them in the current Republican Party, along with their Orange clown master.

What he said was that he believes in sympathy but not empathy. While I do not find this to be an admirable position in any way, I would not say that espousing it necessarily makes one a psychopath. It's a common enough sentiment, especially among those who have never really studied empathy from an academic standpoint and thus only know it through its rhetorical uses as a corrective on supposedly antisocial behavior.

The casualness with which he proposed the deaths of many innocents to secure minor privileges and comforts for himself, on the other hand...

Mr Kirk could not have been less like his Starfleet namesake if he tried.

 

[pood]

I tend to think that Kirk may have been a guy like James Howard Kuntsler, who ages ago wrote for The Rolling Stone. He seemed a humanist liberal who wrote several books on how fucked up America’s architecture and use of space was. He made a number of good points. Then he glommed on to the Y2K scam, preaching in the late 90s how civilization was on the verge of collapse because of it. When that didn’t pan out, he sifted to Peak Oil panic, and wrote a whole book on how we were about to run out of economically recoverable oil, and that would be the cause of civilizational collapse. Then that did not pan out. What did he do? He shifted over to full-on MAGA-ism, and today calls anyone who disagrees with Trump about anything at all “treasonous.” He has a huge and lucrative following he constantly milks for money. Curiously, he plays down global warming (no doubt because Trump does) but warning about something actually real like that would seem to be much more in line with his previous fear-mongering about Y2K and Peak Oil.

I know damn well Kunstler does not believe a word he is now saying (I even interviewed him once). He is in it for the money. Maybe Kirk was like that, gulling the rubes, But unlike Kunstler he has no background of common sense and liberal values, so who knows? Maybe Kirk was actually stupid enough to believe that blacks are inferior to whites and women to men.

 

[Politesse]

I tend to think that Kirk may have been a guy like James Howard Kuntsler, who ages ago wrote for The Rolling Stone. He seemed a humanist liberal who wrote several books on how fucked up America’s architecture and use of space was. He made a number of good points. Then he glommed on to the Y2K scam, preaching in the late 90s how civilization was on the verge of collapse because of it. When that didn’t pan out, he sifted to Peak Oil panic, and wrote a whole book on how we were about to run out of economically recoverable oil, and that would be the cause of civilizational collapse. Then that did not pan out. What did he do? He shifted over to full-on MAGA-ism, and today calls anyone who disagrees with Trump about anything at all “treasonous.” He has a huge and lucrative following he constantly milks for money. Curiously, he plays down global warming (no doubt because Trump does) but warning about something actually real like that would seem to be much more in line with his previous fear-mongering about Y2K and Peak Oil.

I know damn well Kunstler does not believe a word he is now saying (I even interviewed him once). He is in it for the money. Maybe Kirk was like that, gulling the rubes, But unlike Kunstler he has no background of common sense and liberal values, so who knows? Maybe Kirk was actually stupid enough to believe that blacks are inferior to whites and women to men.

J.D. Vance is MAGA's real Kunstler Jr, if you ask me, and worryingly we are still stick with him.

 

[pood]

I tend to think that Kirk may have been a guy like James Howard Kuntsler, who ages ago wrote for The Rolling Stone. He seemed a humanist liberal who wrote several books on how fucked up America’s architecture and use of space was. He made a number of good points. Then he glommed on to the Y2K scam, preaching in the late 90s how civilization was on the verge of collapse because of it. When that didn’t pan out, he sifted to Peak Oil panic, and wrote a whole book on how we were about to run out of economically recoverable oil, and that would be the cause of civilizational collapse. Then that did not pan out. What did he do? He shifted over to full-on MAGA-ism, and today calls anyone who disagrees with Trump about anything at all “treasonous.” He has a huge and lucrative following he constantly milks for money. Curiously, he plays down global warming (no doubt because Trump does) but warning about something actually real like that would seem to be much more in line with his previous fear-mongering about Y2K and Peak Oil.

I know damn well Kunstler does not believe a word he is now saying (I even interviewed him once). He is in it for the money. Maybe Kirk was like that, gulling the rubes, But unlike Kunstler he has no background of common sense and liberal values, so who knows? Maybe Kirk was actually stupid enough to believe that blacks are inferior to whites and women to men.

J.D. Vance is MAGA's real Kunstler Jr, if you ask me, and worryingly we are still stick with him.

Yeah, Vance is a good comparison to Kunstler.

 

[pood]

I misspelled his name as Kunt-sler. Freudian slip?

 

[pood]

Read here how depraved Kunstler has become. I couldn’t even finish reading this sickening psychopathic twaddle. Does he really believe it, or is he just in it for MAGGOT money? I think the latter, because I occasionally check in on his degenerate posts and in one of them he was upbraiding his MAGGOT followers for not sending him enough money.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Never quite understood these types of comparisons to guns. If guns had the same level of regulations and controls that these other examples require then this argument might hold some water.

I am all for better regulation. I am, however, against banning certain categories of firearms based on things like how they look, or based on them having a similar name as a heavy gun firing big bullets that an idiot legislator once held.

Exactly. Whatever the issue is, the first step is to demonstrate that you understand the issue. The second step is to explain why the proposed action will produce the desired result. The third is to address objections.

And if "sending a message" shows up in step 2 throw the idea in the trash can. Likewise, if "we have to do something" shows up, throw the idea in the trash can.

Most gun control proposals do not pass the first test. And very few have passed the second test--but failed in reality. (For example, locally, DV conviction takes your guns. It's not doing much to disarm offenders, but rather ending up with charges plea-bargained down to avoid triggering this because the system can't handle that many cases.)

 

[pood]

The left has its martyr, the degenerate George Floyd, and now the right has its martyr, the righteous Charlie Kirk. Choose your hero.

Barf bag, please.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The discourse gets even dumber. I have no heroes and I worship no one.

 

[pood]

The sad thing is that there doesn't seem to be any way out of this deep divide.

Invasion from outer space.

I don't know if that would be enough. A long time ago I used to think that if e.g. we were to discover life swimming beneath Europa's ice that that anti-evolution religious folks would have to admit they were wrong.

They wouldn't. It would be The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here or God Created Them For [name any reason].

Aliens would be demons.

Or they would simply deny they existed and call it fake news. That is how far we have fallen.

 

[bilby]

A person his age may very well have had access throughout his childhood to all the world's ugliness.

Maybe; But so did most (or at least many) people his age.

If your hypothesis, that "access throughout ... childhood to all the world's ugliness" causes people to become assassins, is correct, then how do you explain the fact that assassination remains such a rarity? Where is the spike in such assassinations, tracking the spike in Internet access in the last thirty years or so, that your hypothesis predicts?

My point is that he lived a childhood very very different from mine or even my 33 year old daughter's.

My point is that so did everyone else his age, but they are not all out there assassinating people.

More speculation than a "hypothesis".

Well, yes; That's my point. And I am asking why we should accept or care about your speculation.

Speculation from reading the Reuters article about him; his opportunities, college if he wanted and if the reports of his testing scores are accurate, he likely would have breezed through, then voctech school and a seemingly responsible home life.

Or about speculation by Reuters, for that matter.

But then what happened?

Re-stating the question isn't an approach to an answer; I don't know what happened, and nor do you, or anyone else.

Yet you want your mere speculation to be acted upon, which seems rash.

I wonder about the influences on people his age and younger as we are just coming in to a generation immersed in not just everything on the internet but social media, if I use the rise of facebook as a benchmark.

Wonder away. Call us if you have anything more than speculation to report.

Facebook rose - and then fell. Young people don't much use it these days; It is mostly a generation X phenomenon, and its current membership is fifty-somethings who stay because it lets them keep in touch with their old friends from thirty plus years ago.

This is wholly a part of their social development and goes far beyond anything previous generations may have had to deal with.

Does it? How?

No "they are not all out assassinating people" as they do not all think with one mind. But based of reports on how social media affects the mental health of children, I don't think minors should have access to social media at all.

"Based on speculation by reporters" isn't a good reason to have an opinion, much less a good reason to limit the freedoms of others.

I see no disadvantage to their having to interact with peers the old fashion way.

I see no evidence that they don't.

I can only think of a handful of people who would be disadvantaged.

By a ban on something almost everyone does, and clearly wants to do? I suspect your nostalgia is clouding your view of what constitutes a 'disadvantage'.

I'm just not inclined to wait for a body of evidence.

That is apparent. You want to eliminate other people's freedom, based on an evidence-less hunch that feels right to you.

This very common attitude is, I contend, FAR more of a contributor to division and violence than any social media could ever be.

The mental health reports are enough.
At least now we have mental health apps. A solution to a problem that need not exist.

Mental health problems are as old as humanity. Understanding them and seeking to mitigate their effects is fairly new, but that doesn't mean that those mitigation attempts need not exist. Like antibiotics, we needed them centuries ago, but had to muddle through without, because they hadn't been invented yet.

 

[bilby]

Why stop at "social media", if technological advancement is the problem? Shouldn't all media be censored for the young, in that case? Surely television and radio are just as dangerous, given the reach and influence of Fox and Friends and extremist right-wing radio programs.

Certainly there were plenty of people arguing that TV was destroying our youth back in the middle of the C20th; I don't know if there was a similar outcry over radio in the 1920s and '30s*, but given the result of radio propaganda, there probably should have been



* I suspect that the equipment was too complex and expensive to be operated by unsupervised children, so maybe not.

 

[bilby]

The point is that the public convicting someone prior to due process has always been with us.

The problem is, that unlike in the civilised world, the US news media are allowed to prejudice any trial by saturating the public with such injustice.

Who now can be a fair juror in the case? Nobody.

So much for justice.

Come on, man. The U.S. is not the only place this happens. Sensationalism sells to all human beings. I'd go over a list but it'd be like posting a list of dog breeds if someone said there's only one breed of dogs.

Most countries limit media coverage of crime, until after a conviction has been secured, in order to prevent prejudice that might lead to an unfair outcome.

The US has no such limits.

 

[bilby]

A person his age may very well have had access throughout his childhood to all the world's ugliness.

Maybe; But so did most (or at least many) people his age.

If your hypothesis, that "access throughout ... childhood to all the world's ugliness" causes people to become assassins, is correct, then how do you explain the fact that assassination remains such a rarity? Where is the spike in such assassinations, tracking the spike in Internet access in the last thirty years or so, that your hypothesis predicts?

My point is that he lived a childhood very very different from mine or even my 33 year old daughter's.

My point is that so did everyone else his age, but they are not all out there assassinating people.

More speculation than a "hypothesis". Speculation from reading the Reuters article about him; his opportunities, college if he wanted and if the reports of his testing scores are accurate, he likely would have breezed through, then voctech school and a seemingly responsible home life.
But then what happened?
I wonder about the influences on people his age and younger as we are just coming in to a generation immersed in not just everything on the internet but social media, if I use the rise of facebook as a benchmark. This is wholly a part of their social development and goes far beyond anything previous generations may have had to deal with.

No "they are not all out assassinating people" as they do not all think with one mind. But based of reports on how social media affects the mental health of children, I don't think minors should have access to social media at all. I see no disadvantage to their having to interact with peers the old fashion way. I can only think of a handful of people who would be disadvantaged.
I'm just not inclined to wait for a body of evidence. The mental health reports are enough.
At least now we have mental health apps. A solution to a problem that need not exist.

Why stop at "social media", if technological advancement is the problem? Shouldn't all media be censored for the young, in that case? Surely television and radio are just as dangerous, given the reach and influence of Fox and Friends and extremist right-wing radio programs. Electricity is the real problem here. Children should all be confined to the library and gardens until they reach reproductive age. What they don't know, can't hurt them.

Its mostly social media. I refer you to the following quote regarding the internet:

"Who's bright idea was it to put every idiot in the world in touch with every other idiot...it's working!" ​

P.J. O'Rourke.​

A hundred years ago, he could have said the exact same thing about the telephone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Well, I'm glad the Trump Admin is trying to ease off on the radicalism.

Trump invoked Kirk’s memory to urge supporters to refrain from retaliatory violence. But he also indicated a desire to not just punish the killer, whose identity and motivations remain unknown to the public, but also to tackle what the president and his staff described as a movement bent on the destruction of the American way of life.

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy,” Trump said Friday morning on Fox News, where he also announced that authorities had detained a suspect in the case.

At least we seem to be getting confirmation on the shooter and possible motive. Where as it was just presumed earlier. But this whole idea of blowing out that one person being killed for their partisan positions seems a bit blind into a witch hunt, when we are seeing broader partisan level violence is just typical of the alt-right. Some transgender speaks for Bud Light, and they are posting videos online of them shooting cases of Bud Light. Someone murdered a Democrat lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota. A Sanders supporter shot up a GOP softball gathering. Someone tried to kill Nancy Pelosi and nearly killed her husband.

This is broad, and Trump and the AM Radio / Cables news folks are making it a war cry about how in danger they all are from the "radicals on the left".

They've been stirring up hate for a long time. But the crazies can't be carefully aimed, some bite the hand that created them.

 

[bilby]

I do believe he was a psychopath, like the president. Either that, or a very clever con artist who glommed on to a scam to make money off the rubes.

There is no reason I can see why this need be an either/or; Both could well be the case (of both men).