I think he's talking about comments like these:
"And the world would 100% be a far better place had Trump been assassinated."
"killing Clarence Thomas and/or Sam Alito would be tens of thousands of times more impactful than anything else you could do. Well, I don't frequently think about assassinations so maybe there's somebody else you could kill that would also be impactful, but the point is assassination is a far, far better option than anything else you could do."
I think characterizing assassination as a far, far better option than anything else you could do would indicate that he thinks violence is the best way to solve our problems.
Rock also specifically pointed this out:
"But we should expect more of this. I mean, think about young Mr. Precip, who killed Archduke Ferdinand. He actually did free Serbia from Austrian domination. He did what no other person in Europe ever could."
Looking past the minor spelling error and the pretty silly history error, that sort of thinking would tend to give someone a justification for murder.
There are likely people out there with a history of mental illness, whose life isn't going great because they can't find a job and maybe they're in a custody dispute with their ex. They might think assassinating political leaders is the right thing to do. Sounds like this murderer in Minnesota was having some of these issues and was able to justify it in his head. It's really terrible and I really think we should be pushing back against some of these opinions.
1. Try reading the beginning of the paragraph about a "far, far better option." Pro tip: The first sentence of a paragraph sets the stage for the remaining sentences, and none of the sentences in the paragraph (if it is well structured) are independent of that meaning. So the far better option language was referring to the dying man who wants to do one last thing for humanity -- as he sees it. It could be a dying right-winger killing Sotomayor, but I didn't go with that example because it rings false at the moment (given that SS has little power). But if you want to go back in time a little further to the late 1980s, the anti-abortion radical might see considerably value in killing O'Connor or Kennedy.
This is just a fact. I mean, you can take potshots at me and lob accusations but at the end of the day, in our system targeted assassinations are the best way for an individual to effect change. That's a problem with the system. It's not a problem that I point it out.
2. Stepping further back, targeted assassinations can be the right thing to do and we all know it. Someone mentioned the old thought experiment about baby Hitler, but you don't have to go that far back. What if someone, getting wind of Putin's war plans, shot him and his cabinet? That would be unambiguously a good act, if we ignore the dynamics of #3. Same with Kim Jong Un, etc. etc.
See, what I'm really doing is invoking the trolley problem. If you can kill one person and thereby spare a million . . . it's exactly the trolley problem and that was extensively discussed in a prime time network comedy show so I'm going with "not bad to talk or think about." I didn't invent the trolley problem. I am very far from the first person who has applied the trolley problem considerations to political violence. I mean, that application is far older and goes way back to Bentham.
3. The real problem with the targeted assassination model of social change isn't necessarily that the targets are a tragic loss of life. Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas (and throw in Roberts if you'd like) have thousands of deaths on their hands, maybe millions. Clarence Thomas has shown that he cares not a whit for the lives of other people; he doesn't deserve sympathy.
The problem is that a "targeted assassination model" pretty quickly becomes "civil war." The example of WWI, and the Serbian national who freed his region from Austro-Hungarian domination, was chosen for this reason. The man's goal was achieved in the end, and only about 50 million people had to die for it to happen. That's a good trade for someone who only cares about nationalism; it's a horrifyingly awful trade for the rest of us -- and that would be true even we cared about Serbian nationalism. Given that the vast majority of people who died in the war couldn't have given a fuck about Serbia or Bosnia if they knew of their existence, it wasn't even a trade at all.
4. There's a whole genre of criminal activity that fits into that pattern: suicide bombing. For the suicide bomber, who by definition only cares about the cause, the people he kills are a rounding error compared to the good that he thinks he is doing. The suicide bomber is using an assassination strategy . . . and last I checked, we had no issues talking about suicide bombing. The suicide bomber gets to dream of his good deed as he blows himself and others up, and after that nothing matters.
5. Given all this, it would seem that "resistance to disturbance by violence" is an important and much-underrated property of societies. Here are some of the things that make a society resist disturbance:
A. A well-ordered and accepted line of succession.
B. The continued ability to solve problems through a legislative process;
C. Mutual caring between all members of the society;
D. The primacy of speech and discussion as the touchstones of policy.
When people care about their neighbors; when people can vocalize their concerns and have them heard; when truth is valued more highly than power; when convincing people is possible; etc. -- these are the properties that would lead members of a society to think that political violence is terrible. We'd be throwing away the best thing we've got going. So if the violence were to occur (think McVeigh or Weather Underground), which is less likely, the society would be robust to it.
On the other hand, when people hate their neighbors or others in their community because they think of them as "illegals" or "deplorables"; when the ruling party completely disregards truth in favor of propaganda; when there is no convincing because there is no open-mindedness because of the consumption of so much propaganda; when the legislative processes are frozen (especially when they are frozen because one side wants to deny reality) -- these are the conditions in which violence thrives.
6. So what kind of society do we want to be? That's the question I pose. It's a question that Luigi and this dude and Thomas Crooks etc have made urgent. Do we want to be the kind of society where might makes right? Where everything is a numbers game? Where turnout alone instead of persuasion decides elections? When the most important thing about a judicial nominee, in terms of being selected and/or promoted, is whether s/he's a MAGA or not? When the worst Democrat is better than the best Republican (or one supposes vice versa for the right-wingers) because most power is held by the majority leader of the Senate . . .
This is the society in which we now live, and we're getting worse. So assassinations will become more and more prevalent, unless we reverse course.
7. Anyone who can read this and think I'm glorifying violence is a fucking moron.
