LogFAQs > #986434441

darkknight109 posted...

Fair points, so focus on the other thing I said - the people named in those examples were perpetrators of violence, rape, and murder; Kirk, despite his many flaws, did not cross those lines.

His ideology and political positions that he pushed did. One is not innocent purely because they didn't pull a trigger.

"Everyone"?

So were you OK with George Floyd's death being mocked? Or Trayvon Martin's? Were you OK with Trump mocking the attack on Paul Pelosi? Or Republicans making fun of Gabby Giffords's shooting? Do you think no one should have lost their jobs over that sort of rhetoric?

I think as with humour in general, one should consider their position and audience, along with the context of that joke. I've said stuff among my friends that would absolutely get me fired. For example, I actually find a lot of racist jokes quite funny on a personal level, even as I've been on the other side of them when they clearly weren't meant as jokes towards me. I wouldn't tell any of them to someone who has been traumatised by racial abuse.

I've said this several times, but I'll repeat it here: I have no qualms against people calling out Kirk for what he was. I have no problem with people having discussions on how hateful his rhetoric was, how he worked to make the US worse, and how he did his part to help poison political discourse in America and beyond. That's all entirely fair game, as far as I'm concerned.

What I'm against is crossing the line into mocking or celebrating murder. I would hope we can all agree that while Kirk was certainly a piece of shit, he did not deserve to be killed for it.

He didn't, but I'm certainly not gonna pretend that I'm sad that he was killed when he spent his life hating people like me.

darkknight109 posted...

Good - I agree with this position.

But square that with what you said in Post 62 - the "punch a Nazi" idea. How does that relate to the subject of Charlie Kirk's death? Because it seemed like you were saying it would be heroic and just for someone to physically accost Charlie Kirk and those like him. Maybe that's me misunderstanding your post, so feel free to clarify, but any call to violence is something that should be treated very, very carefully, because it's damn near impossible to get that genie back in the bottle and it historically has led us to some very dark places.

Why does it seem like I said it would be heroic for someone to physically attack people like Kirk when the part you're replying to is literally where I said I was against political violence? I assure you, I'd much prefer the world where Kirk was silenced by ostracising him from society for his bigotry than the one where he was just killed. Dead people cannot try to make amends.

Do you believe that Hortman "visibly actively harmed society" and "spread hate"? And was there no controversy or pushback against those who mocked her death? Because if not, she's not an example of what Alts was claiming.

Your criteria was "someone who did not break any laws, was murdered for political speech, and whose murder was uncontroversially mocked."

Counterpoint: The 2020 election. If the people want brash Trumpers, not polite people, how did Trump lose to Biden?

Again, you're not going to get me to believe that Trump and MAGA won solely for being assholes. There are plenty of explanations for why Harris lost, ranging from racism/misogyny to the pressures of inflation (which claimed more than a few other incumbent governments in the post-COVID era) to the chaos caused by Biden's late exit from the campaign, most of which I find more feasible than suggesting Harris lost because of her demeanour.

Correlation does not equal causation. Just because Harris lost and was the more polite candidate by far doesn't mean that she lost because she was the more polite candidate by far.

Trump barely lost after getting over a million Americans killed to the VP of one of the most popular presidents of the modern era. When the choice was between the deranged version of Trump and a pretty standard Democrat who happened to be a black woman, they gleefully jumped to the former.

If I tried to name them all I'd use up the character limit for this entire topic.

Hence why I said one dude does not move the needle on gun control. If Charlie Kirk advocated for stronger gun control, that would have done absolutely nothing to stop him from getting shot in the throat. It would take a movement much larger than him to have a hope at preventing that shooting.

By contrast, just about any anti-vaxxer who died of COVID could have easily prevented their own death by, y'know, getting vaccinated.

TPUSA is unfortunately a major platform. It absolutely moves the needle, that's why millions of dollars flow into it. It's a cog in a massive machine, but that doesn't diminish its value.