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In a moment of heightened (and it feels like accelerating) political extremism and violence, is there an off-ramp?
Turning the other cheek is portrayed as capitulation to naziism or communism or whatever ism even for relatively minor insults.
How do we bring down the rhetorical temperature? Or perhaps some think the question is should we do so?
The exact same day (about an hour apart in time) that Kirk was assassinated by a young man radicalized by some hatred of Kirk so intense that it led him to plan and carry out the murder, a 16-year-old boy was so thoroughly radicalized that he went through reload after reload of ammo trying to kill his classmates before turning the gun on himself. The main thing that may have limited the casualties was that he only had access to a handgun instead of a more high powered firearm.
Whatever his political or other motivations, the guy who killed Kirk followed certain behaviors of other radicalized mass murderers, including etching symbols on his bullets.
And the head of the FBI offered a frankly odd sign-off to Kirk (“we have the watch and I’ll see you in Valhalla”), that was presumably unintentionally but nonetheless eerily similar to the suicide note of the Christchurch mass killer (“I will see you all in Valhalla”). I’m willing to assume that Kash was just engaging in cosplay based on Avengers movies or maybe cobbling together tough guy bro talk he hears from marines and he is too incompetent to be aware of the Christchurch killer’s sign off.
But a guy in that position ought to be a lot more circumspect about his rhetoric.
So, what can we do? What should we do?
Can we even have a constructive dialogue about this that won’t immediately devolve into some version of Trump’s [/paraphrasing] radicals on my side are justified and radicals in the other side are evil [/end] framing?
Turning the other cheek is portrayed as capitulation to naziism or communism or whatever ism even for relatively minor insults.
How do we bring down the rhetorical temperature? Or perhaps some think the question is should we do so?
The exact same day (about an hour apart in time) that Kirk was assassinated by a young man radicalized by some hatred of Kirk so intense that it led him to plan and carry out the murder, a 16-year-old boy was so thoroughly radicalized that he went through reload after reload of ammo trying to kill his classmates before turning the gun on himself. The main thing that may have limited the casualties was that he only had access to a handgun instead of a more high powered firearm.
Whatever his political or other motivations, the guy who killed Kirk followed certain behaviors of other radicalized mass murderers, including etching symbols on his bullets.
And the head of the FBI offered a frankly odd sign-off to Kirk (“we have the watch and I’ll see you in Valhalla”), that was presumably unintentionally but nonetheless eerily similar to the suicide note of the Christchurch mass killer (“I will see you all in Valhalla”). I’m willing to assume that Kash was just engaging in cosplay based on Avengers movies or maybe cobbling together tough guy bro talk he hears from marines and he is too incompetent to be aware of the Christchurch killer’s sign off.
But a guy in that position ought to be a lot more circumspect about his rhetoric.
So, what can we do? What should we do?
Can we even have a constructive dialogue about this that won’t immediately devolve into some version of Trump’s [/paraphrasing] radicals on my side are justified and radicals in the other side are evil [/end] framing?
