Political Roundtable Part XXXIV

[dobrojim]

Probably true that constant exposure to violence
is an unhealthy thing. I hope I never see the notorious
video.

[Kanyewest]

Probably true that constant exposure to violence
is an unhealthy thing. I hope I never see the notorious
video.

Avoid scrolling through comments on Twitter. People are posting it there.

[AFM]

Probably true that constant exposure to violence
is an unhealthy thing. I hope I never see the notorious
video.

Watching someone die in high definition is always bad, but this was a rifle round to the neck. Like a fire hydrant of blood. Some things you are not meant to see.

[dobrojim]

Probably true that constant exposure to violence
is an unhealthy thing. I hope I never see the notorious
video.

Avoid scrolling through comments on Twitter. People are posting it there.

I've managed to avoid getting a twitter account. I don't
go there. But thanks for the heads up.

Don't understand why so many people seek out that kind
of visual.

[TGW]

This is the America Charlie Kirk championed and defended. He just didn't realize he was going to be one of those "acceptable" gun deaths he talked about. It is what it is.

[The Consiglieri]

Such a difficult topic. 2 kids have lost their dad young, whenever something like that happens I think of my mom, who lost her dad at 6, and it basically ripped a giant hole through the family that lasted generations, impacting me, and to a lesser extent my son (the ways it traumatized my grandmother, and mother, impacted my development, personality, anxieties, which I try like mad not to influence my kiddo but it's impossible for none of it to reach across generations as studies have shown)...Just horrible.

Then you have the environment of the country itself, which is a tinderbox of hatred, and paranoia, some legit, some just crazy about one another.

Then you have the man himself, and his ideas, which are utterly antithetical to mine, and which indeed generally I view as monstrous (Gay Rights, Environment, Gun Rights, Womens rights, Maga etc) for instance having lived in the bay area through GRID, which evolved into a new name as AIDS as an elementary school student, seeing adults who worked their in admin, as teachers, as custodians, just disappear, w/o explanation, only realizing years and years later that they got sick, family and friends hiding their secret who caught it, and just seeing his and the far rights attitude? It was in many ways THE ONLY thing that's been in the US remotely analagous to obvious atrocities, like the holocaust, like the Civil Rights movement, where we had a clear, emphatic, collection of people, actively destroying the lives of others deliberately, simply for who they are and how they were born, who were already in the midst of fighting the most lethal plague since Spanish Flu. It was absolutely monstrous, and to have some jack--- rolling around born nearly 15 years later, spouting homophobic horse ----.....lets just say, those individuals? I remember wanting in '94 to go down to Randy Shiltz funeral with a baseball bat and just beat the ---- out of the westboro baptist church pieces of ---- protesting his funeral with god hates ---- signs. So to have someone like Kirk, who has no personal memory of any of that, and just swallowed whole, a cultural poison that continues to portray gay men and women as things (abominations) who need to be reprogrammed is just so beyond odious to me, especially for someone who couldn't be bothered to open their mind about it, and learn a little something....it's hard to have empathy beyond the family when I consider that experience from my childhood into adulthood growing up in the bay.

So yeah, the man's ideas I view as, as damaging as views that have lead to things as bad as that gay holocaust of the early eighties, and the total lack of any governmental response whatsoever (and indeed often, a celebration of it as God's justice), the desire to destroy the collection of rights women have been fighting for since the days of Abigail Adams, the desire to make the oncoming environmental catastrophe infinitely worse than it will already be.

The man is dead, I know, but I've had more than a half dozen students die before they were 30 in tragedies, coworkers who spent their lives trying to help kids in title 1 schools, and in impoverished communities, I'm sorry, but they are people who were trying to genuinely make a positive difference, or were just children or young adults at the times of their deaths. This guy is the part of the reason I had 2 false alarm code reds in 18 months where my students were panicked and I was parked behind a computer cart with the lights off, ready to rush the door if someone shot out the windows of the all glass walls on one side of my classroom.

For me, all of this is just a stream of consciousness in my head.

I'm not celebrating, 2 kids lives were destroyed, and I know enough about history that certain assassinations can lead to truly beyond horrific historical results (Princip and the Black Hand are indirectly responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the 20th century, the holocaust, the horrors of China's Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, the Purges and Genocide of Ukrainians, WW2, The Cold War and on and on, Robert Kennedy probably prevents the god awful ruination of American Government, maybe if he's not killed by Sirhan Sirhan-maybe a pipe dream, but there's little question the 70's are different w/o that assassination, and others too).....so needless to say, w/our country already skidding into the embankment, this will only make things more incendiary, more nightmarishly violent going forward, and yes, his kids, and wife....a family wrecked....

There's just so many awful things connected to it....

[montestewart]

Probably true that constant exposure to violence
is an unhealthy thing. I hope I never see the notorious
video.

Watching someone die in high definition is always bad, but this was a rifle round to the neck. Like a fire hydrant of blood. Some things you are not meant to see.

On the day Trump announced the DC police takeover, a man was murdered with a rifle right in front of my house, in daylight. The only reason I didn't see it was that I stayed down and away from windows until the shooting stopped, but the 911 operator asked questions that necessitated approaching the victim to describe his condition. That exposure to the immediate aftermath was quite sad. Sometimes you can't avoid it, but I have no desire to go out of my way to see such shocking and sad images.

[AFM]

Read on Twitter

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lE8.B1k1.f4X7Ialcm5Ht&smid=url-share

Spoiler:

The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence. To lose that is to risk losing everything. Charlie Kirk — and his family — just lost everything. As a country, we came a step closer to losing everything, too.

We’ve been edging closer for some time now. In 2020, a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, was foiled by the F.B.I. In 2021, a mob stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the result of the election and pipe bombs were found at the Democratic and the Republican National Committee headquarters. In 2022, a man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House at the time, intending to kidnap her. She was absent, but the intruder assaulted her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, fracturing his skull. In 2024, President Trump was nearly assassinated. That same year, Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was murdered.

In 2025, Molotov cocktails were thrown into the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania during Passover. Melissa Hortman, the former House speaker of Minnesota, and her husband were murdered, and State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were severely injured by a gunman. And on Wednesday, Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was gunned down during a speech at Utah Valley University.


You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.

That was not all Kirk’s doing, but he was central in laying the groundwork for it. I did not know Kirk, and I am not the right person to eulogize him. But I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness. In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project.

On social media, I’ve seen mostly decent reactions to Kirk’s murder. There is grief and shock from both the left and the right. But I’ve seen two forms of reaction that are misguided, however comprehensible the rage or horror that provoked them. One is a move on the left to wrap Kirk’s death around his views — after all, he defended the Second Amendment, even admitting it meant accepting innocent deaths. Another is on the right, to turn his murder into a justification for an all-out war, a Reichstag fire for our time.

But as the list above reveals, there is no world in which political violence escalates but is contained to just your foes. Even if that were possible, it would still be a world of horrors, a society that had collapsed into the most irreversible form of unfreedom.

Political violence is a virus. It is contagious. We have been through periods in this country when it was endemic. In the 1960s there were the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers. In the 1970s, Gov. George Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin but survived, and Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in one month. In 1981 Ronald Reagan survived after John Hinckley Jr.’s bullet ricocheted off his rib and punctured his lung. These assassins and would-be assassins had different motives, different politics and different levels of mental stability. When political violence becomes imaginable, either as a tool of politics or a ladder for fame, it begins to infect hosts heedlessly.

American politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t. But both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project — we are all, or most of us, anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment. We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election; we can live with losing an argument because we believe that there will be another argument. Political violence imperils that.

Editors’ Picks

Sally Mann, in Her Golden Hour, Faces Fresh Culture Wars

I Feel Bad for My Mother, but I’m Sick of Her Complaining. Help!

Marc Jacobs and Sofia Coppola’s Very Stylish Friendship
Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. The same is true for Shapiro, for Hoffman, for Hortman, for Thompson, for Trump, for Pelosi, for Whitmer. We are all safe, or none of us are.

I was no fan but RIP. Some of you need help.

[AFM]

That being said, a little humor never hurt anyone:

Read on Twitter

[The Consiglieri]

Nice of the guy to do a reverse "rock" eyebrow raise. They'll catch him, I think anyway, they've got enough stuff to at least eventually catch the guy they have on security cam footage. It just won't be anything the yokels above accomplished, it will be grinders who never frauded/bootlicked their way to the top.

[dobrojim]

I was just moving our car in the driveway and the
radio came on (NPR probably) and they were
interviewing someone with a very different view
than I had. He was struggling with the loss of someone
he felt great affection and respect for. I felt bad
for his loss but I was at a loss to understand how a
person who espoused the views that I've learned he
had could be admired as this person clearly did.
The caller had previously said something about how
losing school prayer decades ago was a horrible tragedy which
he really meant loss of organized group prayer.
Personal silent prayer has, to my knowledge, never
been prohibited. Many cons seem to have trouble with that.

[The Consiglieri]

Yep, you hear that stuff, it's just insane, for a group that picked up the "virtue signaling banner," to not understand that public displays of prayer are literally admonished against in Matthew. Just ridiculous.

There's an incredible delusion that forcing prayer on children is what makes for better behaved children. Absolutely ludicrous. Two parents, setting boundaries, demanding accountability, and always providing love and consistency, not that I've got the handbook lol, but forcing recitation of prayer is not going to suddenly make a wonderful society. We had lynchings, widespread support for the KKK, and apathy and outright support for Hitler when school prayer was still, quite stupidly, a thing. And when your own sacred text specifically admonishes against what you're so fervently demanding the supreme court support (which they idiotically did, against the facts of the case) you're just indulging abject stupidity as a raison d'etre.

[daoneandonly]

Zero shock regarding the responses here.

CCJ and Dob, yes, we probably disagree on most political issues, but thank you for saying what anyone with an empathetic heart would: no one deserved to be murdered like this.

But from the start, this thread has shown the nonexistent character and values of zonk, querdi, and the most overrated breakfast item in the world. This is a young man with two little babies, it makes you want to throw up seeing a pic of him being a father?

It makes me throw up seeing people attempting to humanize a cruel, irredeemable individual by posting family pictures.

As if having a family is somehow the distinguishing characteristic of being a good person, hence the Rudolf Höss reference.

Of course it does, he and his wife relished that gift and owned up to their responsibilities, not took the easy way out that you so "valiantly" support.

My son was conceived through in vitro fertilization.

Before giving birth to a healthy boy my partner suffered half a dozen miscarriages.

Despite that excruciating experience, we both support a woman's right to "take the easy way out".

Those little babies are probably looking for their daddy right now, wondering where he is. And you take joy in this.

Who is taking joy in this? I shared my grief for the bereaved.

That doesn't change the fact that Charlie Kirk was a piece of excrement, and that there are many others like him.

We surely had some rather contentious interactions, which admittedly went too far. I know you think I'm a turd or this may be disingenuous, but I do extend my condolences for the losses you and your partner have endured. I hope you can find peace in the midst of your current season, and congratulations on the joy/son you were blessed with.

[queridiculo]

Naw, I am sorry, I don’t care if makes me sound heartless and hateful, but I’m not with this posthumous sanitisation of Charlie Kirk‘s life.

It’s bull and an affront to people that dedicate their life to building for the communities they represent.

The idea that what he was doing was just politics is insane.

How can people advocate against political violence n this context when violent speech was front and center at everything this man was doing?

**** Charlie Kirk and everything he stood for.

He didn’t deserve to be killed, just like he doesn’t deserve to be absolved for his persistent hateful violent speech.

[AFM]

Weekly reminder

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

My heart breaks for Kirk's family, and everybody who loved that piece of ****, it really does.

Looking through my social feeds though I do wonder.

Where is that same energy for all of the people affected by the policies this **** stain pushed?

Where is that energy for all the people that lost family members to gun violence, which didn't elicit much more than a "aw shucks, that's the cost of freedom" from that cum stain?

Evergreen High School? Crickets.

I am sick of having to listen to all of these hypocrites justify their disdain for everybody that doesn't look, talk, think or behave like them, and then turn around claiming the moral high ground.

The world IS a better place without people that think like him.

If I have to see another picture of him holding a baby I am going to have to throw up.

I am sorry.

If I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like "Boy, I hope he's qualified".

Charlie Kirk was a 31-year-old college dropout who had a lot of opinions.

My father was a (black) pilot who won the Bronze Star and other medals. Many people came to me at his funeral at Arlington to tell me he was a very good pilot.

https://www.fairfaxmemorialfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Thomas-Edward-Holmes?obId=2417341

I wish he could have met my father.

I have so many thoughts about Charlie Kirk. I wish he had survived and later recanted many of his views. George Wallace changed after his near-death experience.

[Zonkerbl]

The alleged "transgender and antifascist ideology" on the bullet was... "a series of arrows"

[doclinkin]

The alleged "transgender and antifascist ideology" on the bullet was... "a series of arrows"

Here’s the other thing that doesn’t pass the sniff test.

Single shot from a professionally modified rifle. From significant distance. And the shooter gone like vapor.

This reads as a professional hit. Which does not tend to mesh with the usual ideologues and fanatics who commit these acts.

Until I saw the video of Charlie Kirk explaining how publicly and privately he’s been pushing for the full and total release of the files, and understand that until recently he was driving the crusade among the MAGAverse for the public shaming and imprisonment of anyone implicated.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dcy06lNH5xo

Edited. Looking for the full clip.

Given how thoroughly protected Epstein was from consequences of his actions for so long, and his ultimate end. And everything else associated with them. You have to assume there are incredibly powerful people who just want silence on the issue.

Does not have to be the resident of the White House. Hell the British royal family is implicated. It does drag you into the QAnon universe. But really given how much pressure there has been to drag it into the light for so long, and how thoroughly stonewalled those efforts are, you do get the impression that there is an array of powerful forces willing to stop at nothing to snuff the discourse. By any means possible.

Would not be shocked when years later it’s proven this was another false flag. A martyr. An excuse to inflame and distract the base. The removal of an influential voice that called for the release. Then how recently he backpedaled from that rhetoric. Here’s a way to prime the powder keg. Where now you read quotes from his followers stating “Charlie Kirk was our Malcom X”.

It’s not beyond belief that powerful sociopaths would try to start the race war to distract from public exposure and shame.

[doclinkin]

If so I expect they won’t catch the ‘shooter’ alive. But a ton of information will come out after the fact about their disturbed upset mindset etc. Likely yeah, trans or lefty leanings etc.

[Zonkerbl]

There's no such thing as professional hit men. It's a Hollywood invention.