Charlie Kirk shot at (shot?) in Utah

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Just in the USA alone over 8,000 people die every day. Charlie Kirk is just a name to me. His death is not a tragedy, but simply a statistic.
MAGA keep claiming "the left" is celebrating his death. Maybe some of them are. But most of the people celebrating his death are MAGA. Why? Because it gives them an opportunity to martyr him, to declare him a saint and an important person, when he was just a common scumbag who was murdered, as many people are. Also it gives them further opportunity to be divisive, play the big blame game, to be more delusional, and to achieve their unconscious aim to destroy the USA.

 

[Shadowy Man]

I am far more concerned about school shootings than political assassinations. School shootings are more numerous and exceedingly more likely to directly impact me and my family. Political assassinations are so few as to essentially be statistically disregarded in the whole gun violence argument. The main concern with them is the political responses and how those shape the country's future. Right now it's all talk, but we'll see how this guy's death actually affects policy changes.

 

[Elixir]

Take that away, and it crumbles

That’s why trump (whom you rarely if ever criticize) is taking it (free speech) away.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My point was you are saying that stating as such is condoning his murder.

No, you are incorrect. The reason is simple, Kirk’s own framing of the 2nd Amendment was that gun deaths are acceptable losses for freedom. By that logic, he had already condoned his own death. So yes, anyone repeating that logic now is joining him in agreement, and by extension, endorsing his death. That’s not me saying it, that’s what the logic of the “price of freedom” argument itself says.

I have noted that Kirk made statements implying his death by a firearm was "rational". Those are his words, not mine. The logic fail is explicit in his statement. That is the point.

I have also repeatedly stated his death was immoral. This is an easy differentiation to make.

 

[Gospel]

My point was you are saying that stating as such is condoning his murder.

No, you are incorrect. The reason is simple, Kirk’s own framing of the 2nd Amendment was that gun deaths are acceptable losses for freedom. By that logic, he had already condoned his own death. So yes, anyone repeating that logic now is joining him in agreement, and by extension, endorsing his death. That’s not me saying it, that’s what the logic of the “price of freedom” argument itself says.

I have noted that Kirk made statements implying his death by a firearm was "rational". Those are his words, not mine. The logic fail is explicit in his statement. That is the point.

I have also repeatedly stated his death was immoral. This is an easy differentiation to make.

I’m not saying you’re endorsing his death. What I’m saying is that when people use his “price of freedom” line in response to his killing without clarification, they’re effectively agreeing with that framing, and by extension, endorsing his death. Context still matters (at least to me). But when people in the general public just tweet or verbally repeat his statement and leave it there, it sends the wrong message IMHO.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My point was you are saying that stating as such is condoning his murder.

No, you are incorrect. The reason is simple, Kirk’s own framing of the 2nd Amendment was that gun deaths are acceptable losses for freedom. By that logic, he had already condoned his own death. So yes, anyone repeating that logic now is joining him in agreement, and by extension, endorsing his death. That’s not me saying it, that’s what the logic of the “price of freedom” argument itself says.

I have noted that Kirk made statements implying his death by a firearm was "rational". Those are his words, not mine. The logic fail is explicit in his statement. That is the point.

I have also repeatedly stated his death was immoral. This is an easy differentiation to make.

I’m not saying you’re endorsing his death. What I’m saying is that when people use his “price of freedom” line in response to his killing without clarification, they’re effectively agreeing with that framing, and by extension, endorsing his death.

Making an ambiguous statement is an indication of making an ambiguous statement. Much like flying a Palestinian flag is ambiguous and not possible to determine whether it is support for the Gazan people or support for Hamas and their 10/7 attack.

People should be clearer about what they mean, as being unclear means possibly being misunderstood. Certainly, some people may use Kirk's words to justify what happened to him where as some are using his words to denote the failing of his ideas on gun violence.

Context still matters (at least to me). But when people in the general public just tweet or verbally repeat his statement and leave it there, it sends the wrong message IMHO.

Certainly unclear messages are bad ones to communicate.

 

[TV and credit cards]

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.

There is some correlation between poor mental health and social media and it increases with the younger generation so it deserves to be considered.
Do you have anything on TV and radio to support your assertion?
View attachment 52095
Here's the KcKinsey report: Gen Z mental health: The impact of tech and social media

Here's another report: The Third Generation of Online Radicalization excerpts in this article: Memes and nihilistic in-jokes: the online world of Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer.
Scary closing quote of The Guardian article:

An aspiring influencer who was attending the event where Kirk was shot even attempted to immediately farm the killing for content, posting a video of himself promoting his social media channels during the chaos.
“Make sure you subscribe!” the TikToker, who later deleted the video, said while flashing a peace sign as attendees around him screamed and fled.

Yeah, let them live on line. Let's see what happens. Tyler Robinson lived online.
What I've read of it so far, The Third Generation report looks pretty interesting.

 

[ZiprHead]

I am far more concerned about school shootings than political assassinations. School shootings are more numerous and exceedingly more likely to directly impact me and my family. Political assassinations are so few as to essentially be statistically disregarded in the whole gun violence argument. The main concern with them is the political responses and how those shape the country's future. Right now it's all talk, but we'll see how this guy's death actually affects policy changes.

If Kirk had been a first grade child, this subject would have been spent days ago

 

[Elixir]

If Kirk had been a first grade child, this subject would have been spent days ago

Likewise if he was an elected Democrat.

 

[Gospel]

Making an ambiguous statement is an indication of making an ambiguous statement.

I don’t think Kirk’s “price of freedom” line is ambiguous at all. The logic is plain: if gun deaths are an acceptable cost, then any gun death, including his own, fits that category. That’s not me twisting his words; that’s the conclusion built into the statement itself. What is ambiguous is when people repeat that line after his assassination without clarifying what they mean. Do they see it as a tragic consequence of a flawed argument, or as something somehow justified? Without context, it comes across as endorsement, because the surface logic points directly there.

In my exchange with Elixir, the context only became clear once he explicitly said he opposed the kind of political violence that happened to Kirk. You’ve also added clarification in your own response. So I’m honestly not sure what you’re arguing against at this point, or maybe you’re agreeing with me in your own way. Hard to tell, since I’m no mind reader. And that’s exactly why context matters.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I choose not to vote for either side because I refuse to be party of any movement that demands insufferable adherence to constant white knighting while the nation falls into the sewer. Right now, a vote for a Democrat is support for incompetency. A vote for the GOP is support for a rotting shithouse. I don't have to engage in either.

Yeah, you actually do.

You can decide not to vote for either, but you will get one or the other whether you vote or not, and the only way not to "engage" would be to emigrate.

By refusing to pick the one you think is less awful, you just increase your chances of getting the one that you think is more awful.

If you think that not picking a president from the two candidates with a chance of winning will result in your not getting a president at all, you are a bloody idiot.

And it is sad to realise that not voting got more "votes" that either candidate did.

Actually, about 63 or 64% of those eligible to vote actually voted. That is pitiful, but it is a bit more than half.

If 64% voted, that means 36% didn't vote. The winner of the last three elections will be around 33% of the voting age populace (lower in 2016). It is a red herring though. ...

In the last election, in swing states, more than 70% voted. In so-called safe states, more than 59% voted. So at least in swing states, you'd expect about 35% (or higher for the winning candidate) for either candidate versus about 30% for not voting. So in swing states it is higher for people who voted versus not voting. What can we say about safe states? The difference in eligible voters voting is about 11% between safe versus swing (>70% - >59%) but out of the remaining voters (~41%), this means about ~25% make a decision to vote based on whether they think their vote will make an impact on the outcome.

That number could be even higher if one considers that some portion of those living in swing states also conclude their votes do not matter, or perhaps they live in gerrymandered districts of which there are many, let's call them "safe districts." Consider swing states such as Georgia or Michigan where urban areas are safe blue districts and rural areas are safe red districts.

The take-home message could be that our voting percentage might seem so low because much of it is an artifact of our electoral vote system and how the parties have split up the districts.

 

[Bomb#20]

A bunch of quotes from [Charlie Kirk], including that black women lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously

Um, no, Kirk didn't say that. I watched the clip and what he said was that four specific individuals he named lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously. He did not generalize about black women. I can't say the HuffPost was actually lying -- it looks like HuffPost just uncritically reposted BuzzFeed's lie without bothering to do even the most trivial fact-checking: watching the clip to see whether Kirk said what BuzzFeed claimed he said.

In the same clip, Mr Kirk referred to them “stealing a white person’s slot”. So, while he did not specifically generalize about black women, it is a reasonable conclusion that he was, given his blatant racist comment.

To quote someone, what a dirt bag.

Sorry, but in this case he's basically correct.

It is racist to assume there is a “white person’s slot”.

In the first place, what's your point? That it's okay to put words in someone's mouth if he's racist? That making up something and calling it a quote isn't lying if you have grounds to think it's a sentiment the guy you ascribed the words to would agree with?

In the second place, Kirk appears to have imagined the existence of white persons' slots was an implication of Rep. Lee's own statement. Accepting some of the other side's premises for the sake of argument and examining what else those premises imply is a perfectly legitimate debating tactic. It isn't grounds for imputing belief in the conclusion to the guy who tries to take his opponent's argument to its logical conclusion.

And in the third place, even if Kirk really was claiming on his own account that white persons' slots exist, the existence of white persons' slots in no way implies the words pood put in his mouth, "that black women lack the brain processing power to be taken seriously". It only implies that black women with that level of brain processing power aren't numerous enough to earn as many high-brain-power jobs as Ms. Lee et al. are advocating they get.

 

[Elixir]

In my exchange with Elixir, the context only became clear once he explicitly said he opposed the kind of political violence that happened to Kirk.

I apologize for being a sarcastic, facetious SOB. I thought my aversion to violence was clear. I don’t enjoy imposing my will on anyone, let alone by force.

 

[southernhybrid]

I just read that Europe is celebrating Kirk's movement and are mourning his death. The hard right is rising in many European countries, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, to name some. WTF is going on in the world? Racism and xenophobia are on the rise. A lot of Kirk's supporters around the world are Bible believers who....ok. I'm going to be sick if I keep thinking about this.

There are several articles in the NYTimes about it. Maybe I'll post one later, but it's in lots of other places so you all can do your own research. I even saw an article that mentioned there are a lot of people in some of the Asian countries supporting the Kirk movement. They are also saying that the left are murderers and Trump is great. WTF? How did this happen? Are we sliding back to the dark ages or what?

Is Kirk the new Jesus? It's hard to understand how such a deplorable person is being celebrated around the world. One could say it was a positive that he was willing to engage all kinds of people, including those who disagreed with him, but his racist, sexist, anti gay/trans remarks are no reason to praise him. This is one more reason why murder sometimes has consequences that aren't expected or understood. Such good Christians. /s Whatever happened to the concept of loving one another, turning the other cheek, and not judging others etc. that were part of the religious training I received as a child?

Let me clarify that I never support murder, but I also don't understand the idea that someone who was assassinated was some kind of martyr. Not even if it's someone who supported a good cause. I don't understand those who murder. Some are nuts. Some go off the deep end. Some want to go down in a blaze of glory. In the case of the shooter of Kirk, It seems as if he was just upset and angry by Kirk's hatred of the LBGTQ community. That doesn't justify what he did, and sadly, it's actually helping promote Kirk's movement.

 

[Derec]

But why should we think that Kamala Harris, for example, did not get where she was on her own merits?

Because she is as dumb as a rock.

I am a sharp critic of Kamala Harris, and she did not get where she was solely on her own, but this goes too far.
She is smart, and was by all means a capable prosecutor.

Her problem is her lack of judgment. As evidenced in how she prosecuted her 2020 campaign.
That's why I think it was a mistake for Biden to choose her as running mate, and that it was a mistake for her to be on the top of the ticket in 2024. With a proper primary, that election was very much winnable.

 

[bilby]

I just read that Europe is celebrating Kirk's movement and are mourning his death. The hard right is rising in many European countries, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, to name some. WTF is going on in the world?

The Internet is causing US propaganda to propagate far beyond its intended targets.

 

[Derec]

I just read that Europe is celebrating Kirk's movement and are mourning his death. The hard right is rising in many European countries, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, to name some. WTF is going on in the world? Racism and xenophobia are on the rise.

There are legitimate problems in Europe that the Right exploits. Economic stagnation yes, and that is always water on the mills of populists from the right and the left. But then you have the problem of mass migration and creeping islamization that the mainstream parties refuse to acknowledge. Often even the conservative ones. David Cameron, former Tory UK prime minister, said in 2007 that "it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian [in UK that means South Asian, and mostly Pakistani] way of life, not the other way around". Angela "Willkommenskultur" Merkel, the former German chancellor (CDU), opened the floodgates in 2015 and greatly exacerbated the mass Muslim migration crisis.
And many Europeans are sick of being called racist and xenophobic for opposing current mass migration where thousands of people keep coming in every day, and it is virtually impossible to deport them.
Parties like AfD, Reform UK and Rassemblement national offer wrong solutions, but they have the advantage of offering something, instead of glibly saying "wir schaffen das" while the country gets more and more islamicized.

 

[pood]

I just read that Europe is celebrating Kirk's movement and are mourning his death. The hard right is rising in many European countries, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, to name some. WTF is going on in the world? Racism and xenophobia are on the rise.

There are legitimate problems in Europe that the Right exploits. Economic stagnation yes, and that is always water on the mills of populists from the right and the left. But then you have the problem of mass migration and creeping islamization that the mainstream parties refuse to acknowledge. Often even the conservative ones. David Cameron, former Tory UK prime minister, said in 2007 that "it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian [in UK that means South Asian, and mostly Pakistani] way of life, not the other way around". Angela "Willkommenskultur" Merkel, the former German chancellor (CDU), opened the floodgates in 2015 and greatly exacerbated the mass Muslim migration crisis.
And many Europeans are sick of being called racist and xenophobic for opposing current mass migration where thousands of people keep coming in every day, and it is virtually impossible to deport them.
Parties like AfD, Reform UK and Rassemblement national offer wrong solutions, but they have the advantage of offering something, instead of glibly saying "wir schaffen das" while the country gets more and more islamicized.

The Muslim population of UK is 6.0 percent and of Germany 6.6 percent.

Then, what is not in evidence is what is wrong with being Muslim, unless one pushes the stupid argument that all Muslims are terrorists.

 

[pood]

If you are worried about immigration, just wait until climate change kicks in big time. The number of climate refugees will be far greater than what we see now.

 

[Derec]

In regard to Kamala Harris being a black woman, and Biden gave prior notice of his intention. What if he had said that he wanted an economist as his VP? That is an even narrower pool of possibilities, less than 1%, whereas Black woman as a category is about 10% of USA population.

No, less than that. Blacks are about 13% of the population, which would make black women ~6.5%.

But the pool of black women that he would consider actually choosing his VP from was very much less than 1%.

Yes, the actual pool was restricted to elected officials like Kamala Harris or Val Demings, as well as other prominent politicians like Susan Rice. There were maybe five black women that were seriously considered. That's ~0.0000015%.

She wasn't chosen because she was a black woman.

Of course she was, because Biden backed himself into a corner of only considering candidates with woke melanin content and politically correct plumbing.

She was chosen for her qualifications, and she also matched his desire for a black woman to be his VP. If he couldn't have found a qualified black woman he would have chosen someone else, but of course there were plenty of black women who could have qualified.

I do not think so. Let's get away from the issue of 'qualifications'. On paper, Harris was eminently qualified. That's why so many Hillary bundlers flocked to her in the early stages of the 2020 race (i.e. late 2018, early 2019). But her lack of good judgment led to her campaign fizzling out, despite all the advantages she had. On paper. But on tarmac, we all saw what happened as 2019 progressed.

Again, get away from qualifications. All the women on his short list were qualified , except Stacey Abrams (if she really was on that list). The question was, was any of them a good choice for running mate? Was any of them ready to take over, given his advanced age? As we have seen in 2024, Kamala Harris was not.
If he could not have found a suitable running mate, he still did not want to go back on his pledge and piss off the race and gender warriors. He picked somebody from the artificially restricted bunch. And thus, here we are, with Trump 2.0.

Incidentally, since none of them were chosen, maybe they should have whinged about being a black woman but not picked by Biden.

Barbara Lee did just that when she wasn't chosen by Goodhair, who made a similar pledge to fill US Senate seat from California.

You see in the final choosing, a person was chosen not because they were part of a particular category, but as an individual.

As long as that individual was part of the particular category and did not have the wrong skin color and/or wrong genitalia.

As regards the violence issue, well I hope may Americans are ready to apologize to the British for the violent American Revolution, so as to be consistent with their stance on violence in politics.

Are we really comparing a war of independence with some loser assassinating a political commentator because he did not agree with what he said?