I read his full statement. I believe he was dismissing gang violence because “it doesn’t matter”. He was very good at connotation.
I think he was also trying to draw a line between “us” and “them” in general.
A very small sampling of the wit and wisdom of Charlie Kirk:
“These doctors need to be put in prison quickly. We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
“If I see a black pilot I am going to be like “Boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
“We need armed militias to prevent the diminishing of White demographics.”
“LGBTQ is a social contagion.”
“I think empathy is a made-up new-age term that does a lot of damage”
“It is worth it to have the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
No, he called for a patriot to bail him out so they could talk to him.
But the context not being discussed is the conspiracy theory that this guy was Pelosi’s gay lover. That was why Kirk wanted him bailed out and answering questions.
Pretty dismissive, in my opinion.
More to the point, Kirk was being an asshole by implying that the number of mass shootings that the questioner was about to give would include gang violence.
The fact is, even if we grant the questioner some good faith and assume they’d have cited the number of spree shootings as we would think of them rather than any shooting of 3 or more victims, the number is way too damn high. And Kirk knows that, and he knows that he can’t defend that point, because any normal human being is going to hear what the number actually is and say that it’s way too fucking high. Certainly, it’s much higher than 5. And that mightale people ask why Kirk is so focused on trans shooters, when the vast majority of school shooters are straight white guys with incel tendencies.
But Kirk is a really really good debater, at least as long as his opponent is a college kid. Which is why he is pivoting away from answering the question by shifting to a topic where he feels that his position is more popular: gang violence.
Is it ruled out that the shooter was a right-wing nut that thought that a martyr was just what the right needed at this time?
I’d like to believe that since Trump is the major benefactor from the fall out. But it does sound like a nutty conspiracy theory until the shooter is identified.
Maybe less nutty than what Trump and others have said on the subject.
Personally I think a more likely hypothesis is that the shooter is a right-wing nut who’s all-in on the Epstein conspiracy, just like Kirk was until a few weeks ago, which is when Trump said “stop talking about it,” at which point Kirk obediently buttoned up, causing confusion and consternation among the true believers. The possibility that the killer is one of these lunatics feels more plausible to me than the prospect that he’s consciously trying to ignite things with some sort of false flag murder.
Bail isn’t given to insane, dangerous hammer attackers. Do you think that should change?
The FBI has released photos of a suspect, but I can’t make out the graphic on his tee shirt in the photo. I see the US flag. What else is on there?
Probably an eagle.
It’s been pretty positively identified as a disabled veterans shirt.
Czarcasm here is quoting Charlie Kirk)
In another discussion, some on the right are trying to still say that DEI or other ways to increase the number of minorities with merit into the workforce are “woke” or they should be illegal.
In reality it is prejudice hiding behind a fig leaf. The context at that point of the discussion was a paper that was used in the end to help justify discrimination of women and minorities in today’s environment. (this was not in the paper conclusions, but right wingers were told that it did).
So it was very ugly when the right wing still points at that 2018 issue and the variability hypotheses as if it only the paper had been vetted in its original form that then there would be scientific confirmation that DEI or other Equal Opportunity efforts were evil.
I said there: tell it to the Tuskegee Airmen!
(Short animated video about how the black aviators not only fought Nazis, but American prejudice. One should notice how the bigoted critics from the past tried to use bigoted “science” and military “study” reports, in an attempt at stopping the Airmen from kicking Nazi butt in WWII)
I have supported a local bail project. The people who would be lent that bail (a lot of it is returned) are in two groups:
- people i believe are likely innocent
- people who may have violated laws i don’t support. (Chiefly overly strict applications of immigration law, which may not hold up in court.)
The project doesn’t lend bail money to those who are probably violent ax murderers and rapists. If it did, i wouldn’t support it.
Looks like the guy who asked Kirk his last question was part of the Unfuck America Tour, which I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the forum. They’ve been trying to create an organization that matches the kind of mobilization Turning Point USA has had with young people, but for the liberal side.
In fact, they’re the reason I have been paying attention to Kirk recently. They both highlighted how incredibly impactful his approach has been to the rise of MAGA, and have been doing ng an admirable job of fighting him at his own game.
Zee, the lady who created and runs Unfuck America, had a very good response to the shooting, I think.
Playing devil’s advocate here: he might have been perfectly at peace with this happening to him, too. Did he ever say that other deaths were ok but not his own death?
I’m just not sure that he was hypocritical about this. Absolutist gun rights kooks might very well include themselves in with everyone else as possible contributors of blood to water the tree of freedom.
I guess that I doubt he’d be at peace with it happening to himself. I find it much more likely that he assumed that he wouldn’t be one of the many victims of gun violence that he dismissed.
Again, I must point out, he was killed the middle of minimizing the impact of gun violence. Right in the middle. It’s far more likely, to me, that he did not think it would’ve happened to him. In Kirk’s mind he was talking about other people and other children, not himself.
This is all theoretical now. We cannot ask Herman Cain what he thinks of the covid measures now that covid killed him, nor if Kirk still thinks that large scale gun violence is acceptable while basic gun regulation is unacceptable.
Yes. Spreading conspiracy theories is a bad thing, and as I said before, he seemed more bothered about people blaming Republicans for the attack than the attack itself. Nevertheless, he did condemn it in that same conversation. Here’s the next section:
So yeah, he seemed dismissive about the attack - suggesting bailing out the attacker implies a lack of sympathy for the victim. And he spread conspiracy theories - but he didn’t “love it and praise the assailant”. I can’t find any example of him endorsing political attacks or assassinations.
Certainly not. If anything, more violent criminals should be denied bail (and those who are allowed bail should not generally have to pay cash. It makes no sense to let someone out of jail or keep them inside based on wealth: it should be based on risk to the public and whether they are likely to return to court.)
I was curious about this yesterday, so I did some googling. Some bail projects do indeed bail out violent offenders:
Nine cases of murder is probably negligible, statistically, but that’s still 9 people who died unnecessarily. I’d assume judges have been setting high bail amounts as a way to effectively deny bail, and the charities have bypassed this safety measure. Time to reform the system so that dangerous criminals can be denied bail entirely, like Paul Pelosi’s attacker was?
A lot of people donated to these charities after George Floyd’s death, and the majority of people do not check how their money is used after they give to a good cause. I know I don’t.
Heh. I bet he was going to give the number of shootings with at least 4 victims, then. It’s a really fucking huge amount of people injured and killed.
Shame she never got a chance to debate him. That might have been interesting.
Meanwhile on Twitter, the US deputy secretary of state is asking users to inform on foreigners celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death, and replying to examples with a meme implying they will be deported:
Fascist, and embarrassingly unprofessional.
“Glorifying hatred and violence” is kind of the GOP’s brand.