I
(Note that Popehat does this in the OP.)
If you don’t do this, if you wander into arguing that has death was wrong because he had some redeeming qualities, then you’re basically implying that political violence •would• be OK against •someone• out there — just not against an outright fascist.
This does not seem like much of a noble principle to me.
A/3
If you want to make the case against political violence, start by saying clearly that Charlie Kirk was a miserable sack of shit who promoted bigotry and religious hatred and helped organized a violent coup attempt whose goal was to end democracy in the US in order to establish a white supremacist ethnostate. Say that the world is better without him in it.
•Then• make your argument that even in his case — even a person whose death improves the world — even •then• political violence is a bad strategy.
A/2
Adding on to the thread to say this:
If you want to argue that political violence is bad, please don’t go driveling out some “here’s why we should respect Charlie Kirk” fartfest (looking at you, Ezra Klein). That •completely undermines• your argument.
A/1
And when all these mechanisms — the “more just, more human systems” I’m talking about — fail to do their job, what can we do? Go to war, I guess? But I’m not happy about that. I don’t like war.
I am quite willing to celebrate a world without Kirk if in fact that’s what we get. (Last I heard was “critical condition.”) But I can’t get •that• happy about it. Whether we celebrate his death or denounce gun violence — both are important, both are appropriate! — we must above all notice the failure of everything that should have prevented us from even getting here. •That• is the real crisis.
/end
When social opprobrium fails to stuff a turd like Charlie Kirk into some powerless far corner of society where he can’t hurt people, that’s when a turd like Kirk gets shot.
When democracy and the law fail to reign in corporate greed and harm and cruelty, that’s when you get a Luigi.
When the press and civil society fail to stop a rising authoritarian, that’s when you get WWII.
6/
The pearl-clutching centrist crowd likes to imagine that shaming and shunning are the slippery slope that leads to political violence.
They have it backwards.
Shaming and shunning are the •alternative• to political violence. So is meaningful democracy. So is a free press that remains steadfastly grounded in reality. So is a judiciary that applies the law, however flawed, with actual judgement and justice.
5/
The first tragedy here is that we’ve all even heard of Charlie Kirk in the first place.
That dude should have spent his long useless life holed up in his basement ostracized by his neighbors, shunned, shamed, legally constrained, and anonymous to almost everyone.
4/
The assassination of a vile person indicates a failure of all the more just, more humane sorts of systems that should have stopped such a person from ever being in a position of power in the first place. Popehat compares celebrating political violence to celebrating war, and I think he has a point: both war and political violence are an indication of failure.
3/
Charlie Kirk is/was a vile person whose presence in this world made it worse. A world without him is a better world. If he dies, just as with, say, Osama Bin Laden, my feeling will be “good riddance.” I’d celebrate his death, but…not so much his assassination.
2/
I have complicated feelings that are not entirely dissimilar to Popehat’s thread here, but are…well…more complicated.
1/ https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p/post/3lyiwvin3g22n
This computer science professor agrees with @dnsprincess. The humanities are crucial.
I mean, it cuts the other way too: a lot of the credulous nonsense about AI would melt away if people had a better idea how to think about software systems and mathematical models, what they really do and don’t do, how to look at them critically.
The key in my view is people having multiple ways of seeing and not narrowing themselves.
https://infosec.exchange/@dnsprincess/115140939294365490
Going all-in on AI is going just great over at GitHub / Microsoft.
Top three community discussions for the year:
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions?discussions_q=is%3Aopen+sort%3Atop+created%3A%3E%3D2024-09-04
If it’s true that left-leaning people are cutting right-wingers out of their lives, he asks, is it because folks on the left are less tolerant — or because people people on the right are less tolerable? Which could it be?
Well, gosh, who knows…let’s see here, could it be that “social dominance orientation,” “authoritarianism,” “psychopathic propensities,” “malevolent disposition,” and “reduced empathy” make a person less tolerable? Do ya think? (spoken in dripping rhetorical question voice)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656625000704?via%3Dihub
One of those cases where it’s both trolling •and• a serious argument that deserves more consideration:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2xzjzuyrgz6dmjy2xdhlawgl/post/3lxuhopj6522j