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Anybody who still doesn't see how extreme Trump is, please explain to me why Nikki Haley wasn't the better, more civil, more moral, more ethical, more humane choice for Republican voters. Just overall preferable. What exactly made Trump preferable instead?
I'll say it right away what I think the reason is: she wasn't radical enough. She ceded ideological ground to Democrats, such as not being radically anti-LGBT and not being radically anti-immigration and not being radically anti-Muslims. She seems like a fantastic pick for a moderate conservative. This is the reason why I'm arguing that Trump won precisely because he's extreme, not in spite of it. Not because Biden is too extreme. If Republican voters wanted a moderate and reasonable president, they would've voted for Haley. That's my opinion.
So what do ya'll think is the reason people preferred Trump over Haley? Don't say "because Biden". I simply won't accept that answer, you can repeat it until you're blue in the face, I won't accept it because it's nonsense. Why did Nikki Haley fail?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Nikki_Haley
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I was thinking about how how we got here and I couldn't help but think about this quote.“By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
This is what I think of when people say Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, that Republicans paved the way for this to happen.
We might not want to live in this world, but the path of how we got here is very clearly lit.
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On September 11 2025 18:32 Gorsameth wrote:I was thinking about how how we got here and I couldn't help but think about this quote. Show nested quote +“By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” This is what I think of when people say Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, that Republicans paved the way for this to happen. We might not want to live in this world, but the path of how we got here is very clearly lit.
That single quote about Clinton, no matter how you interpret it, didn't cause any assassination attempts on Clinton, because there weren't any.
Then it couldn't have paved the way for shooting a media figure who debates random people at university as a response or retribution, because it didn't happen. What it's a response to is 10 years of people calling their opponents Nazis and fascists, saying Nazis and fascists should be met with violence, and then half of them cowering hypocritically "oops we condemn violence actually" after it happens. And the other half enthusiastically celebrating still, as you can see, as people called Charlie Kirk, and still now continue to call him. Bringing up Clinton... that's incredible.
Or my favorite, that he deserved to get shot because he didn't believe in the magic pipe dream button that vacuums up 500 million guns and makes the USA the Garden of Eden, which the naive among gun control advocates are under the impression Republicans control but have secretly hidden away somewhere. Which is roughly analogous to saying someone who doesn't believe in banning cars, and thinks there will probably always be at least some amount of traffic deaths because there's no perfect world - it's analogous to saying therefore a random person is justified in specifically driving a tractor trailer into that guy's parked car and flattening him. Utter psychopathy on display from many, with exceptions like TYT. People who still want to finish the job from Butler, PA last July, can't accept that they don't get to kill Trump, and so celebrate "getting" somebody else as a kind of vicarious death of Trump because they're all just as bad anyway.
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Aren't a lot of shootings in the USA related to gang violence? Why do people assume at this point that this is not gang-related, too? Are people sure that Kirk did not have MS13 tattooed somewhere, or wear a hat with gang symbols? Those people on the boat that was blown up were deemed by the authorities as drug traffickers without any evidence. Thus, it is hard to see why Kirk could not be a drug dealer at this point, even without any evidence.
It is good to remember Vance's statement about the pet-eating story, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” The same making-up stories happened with Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others, which makes it weird when some are reluctant to call out Kirk's shitty behaviour that does not even require the use of MS Paint or making stories up like Vance admits. It seems like some are willing to give the stage to the right to make accusations without any resistance or counteractions. It is similar to warning people not to provoke Trump with protests. Do not interfere with the peaceful slide into fascism. Why shouldn't it be turned around and warn the government not to provoke the residents of the cities?
It is also clear that political violence is currently viewed way too narrowly. Mostly, political violence perpetrated by the government gets ignored. Threatening cities with the Department of War or arresting people protesting military deployments in their neighbourhoods are also forms of political violence, but they are not treated in the same way as assassinations. If protesters get beaten by law enforcement or the army, it is no different from them being beaten by armed thugs. Only the backer is different. Even ideas about keeping peace and order are heavily political.
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On September 11 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 18:32 Gorsameth wrote:I was thinking about how how we got here and I couldn't help but think about this quote. “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” This is what I think of when people say Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, that Republicans paved the way for this to happen. We might not want to live in this world, but the path of how we got here is very clearly lit. That single quote about Clinton, no matter how you interpret it, didn't cause any assassination attempts on Clinton, because there weren't any. Then it couldn't have paved the way for shooting a media figure who debates random people at university as a response or retribution, because it didn't happen. What it's a response to is 10 years of people calling their opponents Nazis and fascists, saying Nazis and fascists should be met with violence, and then half of them cowering hypocritically "oops we condemn violence actually" after it happens. And the other half enthusiastically celebrating still, as you can see, as people called Charlie Kirk, and still now continue to call him. Bringing up Clinton... that's incredible. Or my favorite, that he deserved to get shot because he didn't believe in the magic pipe dream button that vacuums up 500 million guns and makes the USA the Garden of Eden, which the naive among gun control advocates are under the impression Republicans control but have secretly hidden away somewhere. Which is roughly analogous to saying someone who doesn't believe in banning cars, and thinks there will probably always be at least some amount of traffic deaths because there's no perfect world - it's analogous to saying therefore a random person is justified in specifically driving a tractor trailer into that guy's parked car and flattening him. Utter psychopathy on display from many, with exceptions like TYT. People who still want to finish the job from Butler, PA last July, can't accept that they don't get to kill Trump, and so celebrate "getting" somebody else as a kind of vicarious death of Trump because they're all just as bad anyway.
Charlie Kirk was a far-right Christian nationalist. Ideologically speaking that's only minimally removed from Nazis. Practically it's a distinction without a difference. If you argue that he was killed because people called him a Nazi, then I'll ask: who forced him to cosplay as basically a Nazi?
Assuming he was killed because of his political activism (which we don't know yet), then he was killed because he was closely aligned with Nazism, not because he was called a Nazi.
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On September 11 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 18:32 Gorsameth wrote:I was thinking about how how we got here and I couldn't help but think about this quote. “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” This is what I think of when people say Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, that Republicans paved the way for this to happen. We might not want to live in this world, but the path of how we got here is very clearly lit. That single quote about Clinton, no matter how you interpret it, didn't cause any assassination attempts on Clinton, because there weren't any.
It wasn't just about Clinton.
It was also about lawmakers.
What happened in Minnesota again?
EDIT:
We also don't actually know what the motive for this murder was.
Trump tried to frame the health insurance CEO murder as being leftist, but it's clear from the evidence that it was largely a personal vendetta.
This could also be a personal vendetta.
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United States24756 Posts
We need to make the "Charlie Kirk" Gun Control Act which prevents horrible public murders like this one.
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On September 11 2025 19:15 Legan wrote:
Aren't a lot of shootings in the USA related to gang violence? Why do people assume at this point that this is not gang-related, too?
Gangs don't snipe each other from far away with one bullet. Gang violence looks like drive-bys, it's usually bunches of people blasting each other while one or both sides run away in the street, that's how it works in Chicago for example.
On September 11 2025 19:15 Legan wrote:
Are people sure that Kirk did not have MS13 tattooed somewhere, or wear a hat with gang symbols?
Yes, people are 100% sure. You mean you aren't?
On September 11 2025 19:15 Legan wrote:
Those people on the boat that was blown up were deemed by the authorities as drug traffickers without any evidence. Thus, it is hard to see why Kirk could not be a drug dealer at this point, even without any evidence.
The people on the boat that were blown up were not blown up without evidence. They were blown up without the evidence being shown to you. The same way Biden blew up Usamah Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Janabi without informing you. The government doesn't run everything it does by the mob first.
And only the government has a monopoly on violence, except self-defense. They can blow up a boat of terrorists. You and I can't. That's basic. And the cutesy "Oh what if someone shot Charlie Kirk because they were from an oppressed class and felt threatened by his (nonexistent) white supremacist fascism, that's justified too right" is bullshit from the same misunderstanding this thread often comes back to of "Oh I guess I can just shoot an ICE officer and say I felt threatened right isn't that how it works MAGATs?"
On September 11 2025 19:15 Legan wrote:
It is also clear that political violence is currently viewed way too narrowly. Mostly, political violence perpetrated by the government gets ignored. Threatening cities with the Department of War or arresting people protesting military deployments in their neighbourhoods are also forms of political violence, but they are not treated in the same way as assassinations. If protesters get beaten by law enforcement or the army, it is no different from them being beaten by armed thugs. Only the backer is different. Even ideas about keeping peace and order are heavily political.
Could there possibly be a differentiating feature of shooting someone in the neck, vs. posting an AI generated meme of yourself in a poster from a classic movie on the internet?
The question is, if someone's political position is they want to burn down citizens' property, attack citizens, cause mayhem, and destroy their own cities, because they're whiny and spoiled and didn't get their way, then is stopping them from doing that, or punishing them when they do, a form of political violence? The answer is no. That person has by their own decisions crossed the double yellow line of protected political speech/activities, and freedom of thought, to having removed themselves from civilized society. + Show Spoiler +For similar, but more easily illustrated reasons, even if your religion calls for burning down churches, when the government imprisons you for burning down churches you can't cry religious oppression.
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On September 11 2025 15:45 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 10:10 LightSpectra wrote:
FBI has released its second suspect after interrogation. Maybe putting a podcaster in charge wasn't the best idea. Should the FBI not release suspects once it clears them, or should law enforcement not be allowed to arrest people at all whatsoever in the course of investigations unless they're already 100% sure of everything that happened? Or perhaps the real blame lies on Congress for not passing a law mandating that the FBI teleport to the scene of any crime in the US, instantly know exactly what happened and who did what, and catch them all in a web like Spider-Man.
I'm not asking FBI agents to teleport, just to have the basic levels of competence they had under Obama, which was before Patel decided to purge everyone smarter than Chief Wiggums for being DEI.
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I mean I think I can now correctly interpret oBlade's/Introvert's reasoning. If we don't express sympathy when a far-right Christian nationalist gets shot to death in public, that means we're provoking the government to become the fascists that we've been accusing them of. One side not expressing sympathy results in extremism from the other side. It's fairly logical when you don't think about it.
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Norway28756 Posts
Killing people for their political opinions is obviously wrong as a general principle. Maybe you can argue self-defense in some highly specific 'this person is attempting to instigate the mass murder of x which I belong to' but from what I've seen of Charlie Kirk that would be way, way too far of a stretch. I'm just adding this sentence as a way of saying that murdering Hitler could've been okay even before the night of long knives.
I mean, like, pointing out the irony of it, whatever, I get that the timing is 'funny', but the action should be entirely condemned. Kirk was a guy who went around debating with people. I think he was mostly wrong about everything I've seen him opine on, but being a person with political opinions, I don't want to normalize the idea that if you think I'm dangerously wrong about the importance of redistributing wealth, murdering me is okay. I mean, killing people for stating their opinions is wrong even disregarding the consequences it might have - but the consequences are an added part of the reason why this is so obviously bad, not good. I'm not talking about Trump using this as some kind of excuse to further clamp down on anything, but I think some left-wing talking head being killed and this being used as a justification or 'at least an excuse or reason why it was predictable' is fairly likely to happen.
I absolutely don't think expressing sympathy is a requirement to pass the bar for human decency (I don't really see why I should care more about Charlie Kirk than the other people who were killed yesterday), but not expressing joy is.
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Northern Ireland26345 Posts
On September 11 2025 19:10 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 18:32 Gorsameth wrote:I was thinking about how how we got here and I couldn't help but think about this quote. “By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.” This is what I think of when people say Charlie Kirk got what he deserved, that Republicans paved the way for this to happen. We might not want to live in this world, but the path of how we got here is very clearly lit. That single quote about Clinton, no matter how you interpret it, didn't cause any assassination attempts on Clinton, because there weren't any. Then it couldn't have paved the way for shooting a media figure who debates random people at university as a response or retribution, because it didn't happen. What it's a response to is 10 years of people calling their opponents Nazis and fascists, saying Nazis and fascists should be met with violence, and then half of them cowering hypocritically "oops we condemn violence actually" after it happens. And the other half enthusiastically celebrating still, as you can see, as people called Charlie Kirk, and still now continue to call him. Bringing up Clinton... that's incredible. Or my favorite, that he deserved to get shot because he didn't believe in the magic pipe dream button that vacuums up 500 million guns and makes the USA the Garden of Eden, which the naive among gun control advocates are under the impression Republicans control but have secretly hidden away somewhere. Which is roughly analogous to saying someone who doesn't believe in banning cars, and thinks there will probably always be at least some amount of traffic deaths because there's no perfect world - it's analogous to saying therefore a random person is justified in specifically driving a tractor trailer into that guy's parked car and flattening him. Utter psychopathy on display from many, with exceptions like TYT. People who still want to finish the job from Butler, PA last July, can't accept that they don't get to kill Trump, and so celebrate "getting" somebody else as a kind of vicarious death of Trump because they're all just as bad anyway.
Charlie Kirk actively argued that guns being widespread amongst the civilian populace is a good thing and that the odd tragic shooting was just the cost of doing business. His argument(s) to my knowledge were never ‘yeah gun control is a good idea, it’s just too impractical’.
One doesn’t have to actively wish death on someone to see the irony when it happens. I mean sucks for the individual anti-vaxxer and their family when the person who swore blind that COVID didn’t exist, only to die from COVID.
On the bolded, have you considered perhaps that those are, maybe just maybe, different people?
For every ‘punch a Nazi’ there’s a Gavin Newsom who thinks the solution to an increasingly fractured society is civility to those who wield it as a shield to deflect from their proven mendacity and disingenuousness. Indeed, it’s not a 1:1 ratio there are still far more Newsoms out there.
That ratio is almost certainly gradually shifting towards the former, but for many I imagine it’s with a heavy heart and great reluctance. For most outside of folks who think they’re Che Guevara, violence being on the table is a matter of very last resort, in extremis.
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Northern Ireland26345 Posts
On September 11 2025 20:01 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 15:45 oBlade wrote:On September 11 2025 10:10 LightSpectra wrote:
FBI has released its second suspect after interrogation. Maybe putting a podcaster in charge wasn't the best idea. Should the FBI not release suspects once it clears them, or should law enforcement not be allowed to arrest people at all whatsoever in the course of investigations unless they're already 100% sure of everything that happened? Or perhaps the real blame lies on Congress for not passing a law mandating that the FBI teleport to the scene of any crime in the US, instantly know exactly what happened and who did what, and catch them all in a web like Spider-Man. I'm not asking FBI agents to teleport, just to have the basic levels of competence they had under Obama, which was before Patel decided to purge everyone smarter than Chief Wiggums for being DEI.
Hasn’t it been less than 24 hours?
I know the news cycle is much faster than it used to be, that doesn’t mean law enforcement can work commensurately quicker. Although all the extra material gathered by the public in the smartphone/social media age can sometimes speed up the process, it can also inhibit it just through sheer volume, as I believe happened in the case of the Boston Marathon bombing.
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Remember to never say anything extreme, or else the other side is gonna respond with extremism. So don't say something like, for example, "the only good Republican is a dead Republican"
Oh, wait. Someone did say that. Except for one minor difference.
https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1266388861724307458
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I think the distrust and seeming incompetence of Kash Patel comes from the rush to post that you have a suspect in custody on twitter instead of confirming if its truly a person of interest before jumping on the internet.
Separately, in addition to Nancy Mace i just heard on NPR some guy who ran in circles with Charlie Kirk go on about needing to tone down the rhetoric etc. The NPR reporter pointed out that yesterday the guy went on Newsmax and blamed the left alone for the rhetoric. She questioned him on weather he felt that right also needs to turn down the rhetoric since just recently there were the Killings in Minnesota, Penn Gov mansion burning down, other things years ago. He got all huffy and said his friend died yesterday and now is not the time to talk about that.
He wasnt even being grilled. Reporters are just pointing out the hypocrisy of these people. These republicans on TV rushing to blame the left are just trying to score political points off of Charlie Kirks death. Its pretty disgusting IMO.
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On September 11 2025 20:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:
......I absolutely don't think expressing sympathy is a requirement to pass the bar for human decency (I don't really see why I should care more about Charlie Kirk than the other people who were killed yesterday), but not expressing joy is.
“I can't stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics.” ― Charlie Kirk
“Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?” ― Charlie Kirk
"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." ― Charlie Kirk
That guy wasn't some random right wing podcaster... He had actual influence, you don't get bigger or more influencual than him in the space he had in the right wing echo chamber. He was one of the grade A pyromaniacs that helped set americas political system ablaze.
I'm happy he's gone, the world is now a little bit better.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/ gave me a good laugh.
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On September 11 2025 20:47 Sadist wrote:
I think the distrust and seeming incompetence of Kash Patel comes from the rush to post that you have a suspect in custody on twitter instead of conforming if its truly a person of interest before jumping on the internet.
Separately, in addition to Nancy Mace i just heard on NPR some guy who ran in circles with Charlie Kirk go on about needing to tone down the rhetoric etc. The NPR reporter pointed out that yesterday the guy went on Newsmax and blamed the left alone for the rhetoric. She questioned him on weather he felt that right also needs to turn down the rhetoric since just recently there were the Killings in Minnesota, Penn Gov mansion burning down, other things years ago. He got all huffy and said his friend died yesterday and now is not the time to talk about that.
He wasnt even being grilled. Reporters are just pointing out the hypocrisy of these people. These republicans on TV rushing to blame the left are just trying to score political points off of Charlie Kirks death. Its pretty disgusting IMO.
The funny thing is Kirk thought empathy is New Age bullshit. According to his own beliefs we should be memeing about how the incompetent assassin somehow missed the largest head the planet, not weeping.
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Northern Ireland26345 Posts
On September 11 2025 20:15 Magic Powers wrote:
I mean I think I can now correctly interpret oBlade's/Introvert's reasoning. If we don't express sympathy when a far-right Christian nationalist gets shot to death in public, that means we're provoking the government to become the fascists that we've been accusing them of. One side not expressing sympathy results in extremism from the other side. It's fairly logical when you don't think about it.
Remember that Kyle Rittenhouse fellow? I had a pretty big problem with this at the time, as I believe I voiced here, may have been elsewhere.
Share this episode with your friends. It humanizes Kyle in a way that we think has never been done before—it's a side that Kyle and his entire family deserve the chance to proudly put on display. He's a decent, intelligent, and genuine young man who's been baselessly smeared on all sides and it was an honor for the entire team to have the chance to get to know him better.
I know some were baying for his blood, but I had no problem with the idea the kid got out of his depth, in a charged scenario with tragic results, and was ultimately not guilty of the charge of murder.
Did the kid need to do a podcast tour? And it was not just Kirk’s either. I’d also argue no, that wasn’t particularly appropriate given the surrounding circumstances. While many did have concerns about trial by media, or a potential miscarriage of justice, for many others it was not that. The guy was a hero, he’d shot and killed some scumbag leftists.
With that in mind, is a whole publicity tour really in order? Is it healing the divides in the nation? I’d argue, no.
And it really was a tour. There was merch for fuck’s sake. I think a singular in-depth interview or something, the guy who, let’s be clear was kinda savaged by many in media or online, telling his side, yeah that’s OK by me.
But it went way beyond that. It’s difficult to reconcile the parading of someone who, even if not a murderer did kill 3 people in a politically charged environment, with rhetoric that violence is never the answer. The optics don’t mesh
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On September 11 2025 20:50 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2025 20:19 Liquid`Drone wrote:
......I absolutely don't think expressing sympathy is a requirement to pass the bar for human decency (I don't really see why I should care more about Charlie Kirk than the other people who were killed yesterday), but not expressing joy is. “I can't stand empathy. I think empathy is a made-up, New Age term that — it does a lot of damage, but it is very effective when it comes to politics.” ― Charlie Kirk “Death penalties should be public, should be quick, it should be televised. I think at a certain age, its an initiation...What age should you start to see public executions?” ― Charlie Kirk "I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." ― Charlie Kirk That guy wasn't some random right wing podcaster... He had actual influence, you don't get bigger or more influencual than him in the space he had in the right wing echo chamber. He was one of the grade A pyromaniacs that helped set americas political system ablaze. I'm happy he's gone, the world is now a little bit better. https://www.reddit.com/r/Music/ gave me a good laugh.
The world isn't better because public executions and positive feedback loops into radicalisation and tribalistic behaviors are only expediated with these actions. But sure, the world is now a little better.
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What a terrifying time to be an American. You have a public murder, in a public place and the person gets away. You have way more people then I ever thought possible celebrating you. I'm starting to see the start of a ground swell of retribution on the other side this morning.
How does one protect themselves? I would terrified if I was any sort of political figure, influencer, celebrity who has talked politics.
This is the opposite of a good thing, and with the fame Luigi got, and likely the same for this guy it is only going to get worse.
If you were worried about big police crack downs, and donald using the military before, yikes for now. As Micro mentioned, though tonge and cheek, gun control from this would be a step in the right direction. But I can't help but wonder if something about how radicalizing social media is, isn't want needs to be regulated first.
Don't celebrate this, it was bad and awful. Celebrate where he gets owned in a debate. This is bad for everyone.
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EPT
