Charlie Kirk shot at (shot?) in Utah

[Shadowy Man]

I have yet to see any evidence, other than him turning himself in for the crime, that he did the crime. But presumably they will do a thorough investigation now…

 

[TV and credit cards]

This from the Grownups News Network:
Who is Tyler Robinson, the suspect in Charlie Kirk's murder?
Given his age, did he have time to form much of an ideology, one so strong it would lead him to this? He looks to be an otherwise decent kid up until. Perhaps this is more of what can happen to a 22 year old brain born in to a world of social media and god knows what on the internet. Is his reality so far removed from one of an older generation, of people who did not have all this shit invading what should have been a simple childhood? How is access to everything everywhere all at once, good and bad shaping the cognitive and emotional development of children?

Uh, how old do you think pretty much every soldier ever has been? Just because you're old as shit now doesn't mean twenty year olds aren't adults anymore. If anything, young people are far more likely to take radical political actions. They have a lot of energy, a relatively simplistic view of the world, and less to lose.

What do soldiers have to do with anything I posted or his being an adult for that matter?
My point is that he lived a childhood very very different from mine or even my 33 year old daughter's. A person his age may very well have had access throughout his childhood to all the world's ugliness. This accounts for nothing?
And I'm not "old as shit" yet.

 

[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.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

I am incredibly impressed by the speed of the US court system; I was under the impression that this Tyler Robinson had only just been arrested as a suspect, and yet to read the discussion about him, it is obvious that he has already been found guilty in a properly constituted court by a jury of his peers, and we have moved on from "Did he do it?" to "Why did he do it?".

Only a couple of days ago this thread was full of "The FBI are incompetent" and "They will just round up the usual suspects". Why do we think that this person actually did it? Sure, he says he did; But false confessions (particularly to high profile crimes) are not exactly unheard of.

High profile cases always collapse into speculative bullshit and unsupported certainty after a couple of days of media frenzy. The 'newsertainment' machine abhors complexity, nuance, and uncertainty.

It's very popular to assume that arrest implies guilt, but that's not how rule of law works.

Of all the things that are different now than they've always been, this isn't one of them. I recall a certain someone supporting the prosecution of five young men in the Central Park Jogging/Rape case. Turns out years and years later that none of them were guilty. The point is that the public convicting someone prior to due process has always been with us.

I'm glad they caught him alive, but that doesn't mean we'll ever hear anything about his reasons. If he is guilty, he could cop a relatively quick plea deal, agree to STFU about his motivations, and then spend X amount of years in jail. Hinkley shot Reagan and eventually got out, so it's not impossible in this case.

 

[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.