Charlie Kirk Killed at Event in Utah

The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s.

Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result.

(On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time.

And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet.

People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)

Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.

That pacifism was very much required though. The whole projection of India as this "mystic peaceful place full of peace-loving meditating sadhus that the Beatles and Steve jobs were so enamored by" was instrumental for the way we got independent with minimal balkanization[1], our ability to stay non-aligned in the cold war (which btw, is the original definition of a third world country!) and maintain strategic autonomy throughout the following decades - which we exercise quite well today. Of course, it was nothing but a political image, and we built nukes behind the scenes (by order of the very same politician nehru), but gandhis pacifist outlook and the heavy marketing of this in western countries (see Nehru's rallies in USA at the time), as well as in soviet Russia, was very necessary. People like to say we shouldn't have been socialist back then, but the Soviet help that arose out of that was really useful. In geopolitics there are no morals, so it is also completely OK that we took a U-turn from all that a while later. The only interest is self-interest.

My point is, a lot of these political positions are simply projections cast in order to achieve a certain goal, meaning to look at it from a moral standpoint is useless.

This is true for any political position held in any country anywhere in the world at any point in history.

[1] If you think the partitions were bad... the rest of india would have had a much worse fate had foreign interests gotten involved. Think: other cold war battlefields of the late 20th century. The number of secessionist states at the time in india...the cia and the kgb would have had a field day.

Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:

> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.

Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.

In my country Australia, there's a backlash on self-destructive "empathy" decisions in criminal courts. Violent repeat offenders are granted bail or short sentences for violent crime, why? Because the judge empathises with their traumatised upbringing, for example when they come from a war-torn country. This pattern of "justice" has spiked crime rates including violent home invasions and stabbings.

It sounds like more of a loaded question than a problematic answer.

> Mom, you don’t understand. I’m getting really good at this. I have my arguments down rock solid. These young college girls are totally unprepared, so I can just destroy them and also edit out all the ones that actually argue back well. It just feels so good.

To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.

In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" kind of way some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.

And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.

I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.

On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.

The shooter is also in custody already and captured thankfully.

Also, I would argue that it has more to do with mental framing than “being crazy”. Police and military leadership hire selectively and craft training to ensure that people aren’t mentally ill and still willing to kill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mvIktYig9Y

It seems to be a healthy debate for both sides.

See the “On Immigration” section.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...