The Charlie Kirk Thread

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Ramrouser said:
I don't have FB so it's not my friends or group commenting.

I see lots of libs commenting on the death basically stating that Kirk had it coming, i.e. he deserved the bullet in his neck.

Others gleefully singing songs sending "thoughts and prayers" to Kirk. While social media may be amplifying this issue I disagree that it is isolated.

There's definitely an assassination culture developing on the left. A September 10, 2025 YouGov poll found that in the immediate aftermath of the Kirk shooting 72% of Americans said violence is never justified, while 11% said it can be sometimes justified. The question asked respondents was whether they think "it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals." Liberals more likely to say that violence is sometimes justified.

25% of respondents who identified as "very liberal" said violence can sometimes be justified to achieve political goals.

17% of those who identified as "liberal" agreed

9% of moderates agreed

6% of conservatives

3% of very conservative.

Younger Americans were also more likely to say political violence can be justified.

25% of liberals under 45 years agreed with this statement.
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None of those statistics you posted remotely support the idea that there is an "assassination culture" on the left.
 
TangledUpInBlue06 said:
You guys are gonna have to decide whether liberals are snowflake beta cucks or cold hard killing machines.
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"The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
 
I'm hoping for one more plot twist. He volunteered for Trump 2016, he was a Catholic choir boy and donated money to Ted Cruz' campaign....
 
rodoheel said:
I'm not sure what social epistemology has to do with anything. I'm simply saying that I do not think any words can be characterized as "violence." They can be abusive, they can be hurtful, they can be despicable, they can be vicious, but they are not the same thing as "violence." You cannot be convicted for assaulting someone with words. You can't kill someone with words. My point is not to say that speech can't be harmful or to excuse anything said by anybody, but I think it is dangerous to start equating words, of any kind, with violence, even if we recognize that words can have a profoundly negative effect on people.
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You can be convicted of domestic violence from words alone. But regardless, law is just that -- law. It is not truth. That the law distinguishes between certain types of actions doesn't mean that distinction is philosophically defensible.

You are relying on a narrow definition of violence that makes your argument more or less circular. Here's how the World Health Organization defines violence: "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." This definition has been widely adopted, including in American statutes.

Again, what is the meaningful distinction between punching someone in the face and calling him or her a slur, if you know they will be equally harmful? Why would you call one "violence" and other "not violence" unless you were establishing some sort of technicality.
 
One thing that has struck me about the MAGA framing of this has been the lengths they’ve gone to in order to claim the parents bear no responsibility. As a parent of a son about the same age, I think it would be wrong to immediately assign blame to parent for their (even young) adult kids, but the race to frame this as the great MAGA Mormon parents whose son went left and turned murderous leaves out something vital — who has been putting high powered firearms in his hands since childhood?

The gun culture angle has been completely eradicated from the conversation.

Now we know the claims that the shooter’s partner was trans came from the mom and the claim that her son’s politics shifted right also come from her, not from evidence from the shooter’s own communications.

Yes, in his own words he was focused on / driven by Kirk’s “hatred”. Why did this stranger’s hatred impact him so much to warp his perspective so totally? We may never really know. But that is characterized by his mom as leftist politics, when all the evidence seems to be that for the shooter this was about what he perceived as hatred of him and people like him for being gay. Is that really a leftist “political”motive or a personal emotional motive? Based on information we’ve seen today, it sounds like the latter and the shooter’s mom and law enforcement have transformed the personal/emotional to the directly political.

Being gay or straight or bi or transgender is not a political act — it’s mostly a matter of existence. There are quite a few openly gay men in high places in Trump 2.0 administration, for instance. There are innumerable right wing politicians who have been outed for seeking gay sex even as they publicly spout anti-gay political beliefs.
 
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Today's Ezra Klein podcast opening is pretty good. He interviews Ben Shapiro afterward. I haven't gotten through that yet.

 
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theonion.com

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

NEW YORK—Insisting your fate was sealed the moment you clicked the link, a report released Tuesday found that you will be fired for reading this headline about Charlie Kirk. “Shortly after you navigated to this article, your IP address was logged and your supervisor approved the decision to...
theonion.com theonion.com
 
superrific said:
You can be convicted of domestic violence from words alone. But regardless, law is just that -- law. It is not truth. That the law distinguishes between certain types of actions doesn't mean that distinction is philosophically defensible.

You are relying on a narrow definition of violence that makes your argument more or less circular. Here's how the World Health Organization defines violence: "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." This definition has been widely adopted, including in American statutes.

Again, what is the meaningful distinction between punching someone in the face and calling him or her a slur, if you know they will be equally harmful? Why would you call one "violence" and other "not violence" unless you were establishing some sort of technicality.
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I did not know that you could be convicted of domestic violence from words alone.

Maybe my perception of this is colored by the fact that the administration is currently trying to frame all opposing political speech as "violent" to justify repressing it. But personally I think hitting someone in the face (which is a crime) and calling them a slur (which is not) are two different bad things that cause harm in different ways and we should not try to group them under the same umbrella of "violence." What if a conservative person says that calling them a "racist" is violence? Who's to say they aren't right? It's all just too subjective on behalf of the listener, which the speaker doesn't necessarily have control of. Obviously sometimes people are saying things in an attempt to assert dominance or inflict pain, but that isn't always going to be an easy thing to determine.
 
rodoheel said:
I did not know that you could be convicted of domestic violence from words alone.

Maybe my perception of this is colored by the fact that the administration is currently trying to frame all opposing political speech as "violent" to justify repressing it. But personally I think hitting someone in the face (which is a crime) and calling them a slur (which is not) are two different bad things that cause harm in different ways and we should not try to group them under the same umbrella of "violence." What if a conservative person says that calling them a "racist" is violence? Who's to say they aren't right? It's all just too subjective on behalf of the listener, which the speaker doesn't necessarily have control of. Obviously sometimes people are saying things in an attempt to assert dominance or inflict pain, but that isn't always going to be an easy thing to determine.
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That was what I meant by social epistemology. It's of course ridiculous to think "racist" could be violent; you're suggesting that we wouldn't be able to come to an agreement because they will just insist on their position and we couldn't prove them wrong.

Causing pain isn't sufficient to meet the definition. There has to be "power" involved. And I think most of us -- at least the reasonable ones of us -- can intuitively understand that requirement. What the president says has way more effect, both in quantity and quality than some random tweeter.

I'm 100% sure that Michel Foucault would consider "trans people are mentally ill" a form of violence. He could write a whole book on the subject. He sort of did, lol. That's because it is the same type of power relationship that has characterized physically violent societies and not physically violent ones.
 
I thought there might be a guilty/not guilty plea, but I guess that comes later.

The Judge “invited” Tyler Robinson to attend the next virtual hearing September 29th.
 
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Icky Mettle said:
This may sound very tinfoil hattish, but holy shit that text exchange looks totally made up; like a poorly written script. First of all, how did he know that law enforcement first got an old man and then interrogated someone wearing similar clothes?

Second, that’s A LOT of detailed information to be putting into that text exchange. Having such detailed texts seems weird to begin with (people don’t typically provide that kind of serial in text exchanges), but also seems weird considering it appears that for much of that text exchange he’s talking about how he is trying not to get caught. If he’s trying not to get caught, why he is so detailed with everything he did?

Third, it seems very unnatural and contrived and does not have the appearance of a “normal” text exchange. There’s a lot more detail and complete sentences and context than what goes into “normal” text exchanges. For example: Roommate: “Why?” Robinson: “Why did I do it?” [Then goes into detailed explanation]. And it’s even more odd considering the circumstances. That is, Robinson is essentially on the run/hiding out. And he’s not just providing details about what he did; he’s going into his family history.

Fourth, the use of the term “my old man.” Who actually talks like that anymore? Referring to one’s dad as “my old man” is pretty much something that’s just done in the movies these days; not out in the real world, and certainly not a thing among the younger generations.

Fifth, referring to the roommate as “my love” and “love” at the end of sentences. Sounds very unnatural to begin with, but even more so in texts and among 20-somethings.

It all just comes across as a very weird, inauthentic-looking read.
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That’s the note that existed, didn’t exist, now exists again…lol.

So this kid who just gave his life away had a clear coherent calm conversation that game motive, confirmed how the weapon was found, a 22 year old called this dude “dear” in this situation and his dad “old man” , is concerned about the gun with everything else and his lover just has calm txt back gathering the story…doesn’t try to help or plead with him to turn himself in.

LOL Kash is a hilarious
 
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