v-charon posted...
So many people getting fired and/or having their work cancelled, when if the shoe is on the other foot people make their careers and entire beings off the same sort of things.
What are you even supposed to say when someone who spread awful messages gets killed?
My go to has been "Let me start by saying that I do not agree with political violence and murder in general. I don't want to live in a world where people get killed for expressing their opinions. With that said, I did not agree with many of Charlie Kirk's positions and in fact I believe he used his platform to do a lot of harm and was more responsible than most for the increasing polarization in american politics". He said so many hateful things and there is a reason that most of the coverage about what a wonderful person he was does not really show any of his content.
Meanwhile Paul Pelosi get bludgeoned nearly to death with a hammer and the prevailing messaging as we learned more details about that incident was "lmao it was probably just his gay lover, ha ha ha". Like so much of the reactions and coverage was exactly the kind of temperature raising rhetoric that leads to further violence and divisiveness.
There are 125 people killed by guns every day in the US which is a number that Kirk was on record as being fine with as long as americans get to keep their 2nd amendment freedoms. But heaven forbid you use an example of gun violence to initiate a conversation about controlling guns to limit the amount of death they cause.
It would be like if a bridge collapsed. That would very naturally lead into a broader conversation about infrastructure and taking steps to try and prevent similar calamities in the future. But what if instead I created a political party and one of my core tenants revolved around the right of companies to use sub-par materials as well as the rights of bridge inspectors to not have to do a thorough job. In that case how DARE you use a tragedy like a bridge collapse to try and shove your bridge-repair political agenda down everyone's throats. This is a time for thoughts and prayers, not a time for long-term
solutions
.