America feels like it's in mortal danger.
Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
631–640 of 1001 posts
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#632I watched a few clips of Kirk on college campuses leading up to the election.
On campuses today, there’s no shortage of professors, student activists, and guest speakers beating the drum of modern liberalism, but very few brave enough to take an alternative view.
So I respected him for getting students to question and defend their beliefs.
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#633Call me crazy, and maybe I'm just out of touch, but something seems... off with the reaction to this. The amount of people on reddit that I'm seeing gloating, openly celebrating this, it's really just something I have never seen before. Not even the Trump assassination attempt had this kind of reaction. All I'm saying, is that if I was a US adversary, I would absolutely be spinning up a million LLMs to post the most…
do you know the name Luigi Mangione?
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#634I was just at a conference today where one of the presenters referenced the "Trust barometer": https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds. Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0..…
This week in Nepal, before all the other news hit the fan, GenZ did exactly that, and overthrew the current leadership. 30 lives were lost along the way. The military took over for security purposes, and asked the leadership of the movement whom they wanted for an interim government. It was not the happy, peaceful democracy we all long for. It was a costly victory. But I feel happy the legitimate grievances the prote…
Nepal isn't a good comparison to the US. Nepal has been extremely politically unstable now for years and was wracked by a giant earthquake too. Nepal doesn't have stable governing institutions. In 2001 a disgruntled member of the royal family massacred the rest of the family, kicking off 20 years of instability.
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#635History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels. I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity. ==== Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
One thing that history shows again and again is people being killed for their beliefs. Charlie always spoke from his heart, from his deeply held intellectual and spiritual beliefs. He died, literally on a stage defending those beliefs.
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Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#636In light of the top post by "dang", I'd like to apologize for my own comments. Forgive me brothers and sisters, I was obviously on edge. In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait. To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.
Good on you for owning that.
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#637Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow
Why do so many school shootings happen in the US? Often its simply that people who should never have access to lethal firearms are able to get them easily.
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#638History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels. I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity. ==== Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
Something I like to remind myself of is that all past wars, even ones thousands of years ago, took place in as vibrant colors and fluid detail as we experience today, not in grainy black and white photos or paintings. Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
> Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.
As someone whose parents, grandparents, and entire family lived in Italy through WWII (and one grandfather who lost an eye in WWI), nobody liked talking about it.
If they did talk about it, it was usually brief and imbued with a feeling of "thank God it's over. what a tragedy that we were all used as pawns by the political class for nothing more than selfish ambitions."
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#639It's not a gun problem that we have in this country. Iryna Zarutska was murdered with a pocket knife. What we have is a spiritual sickness, which cannot be legislated... The only thing I can think of that the government can do is to clamp down hard on violence, including speech which advocates for violence (e.g. glorifying Luigi Mangione, calling everyone a Nazi/fascist, etc.). Freedom of speech ends where it actuall…
I'm not sure we have a "the government" with all the federation involved; and a treacherous administration.
Reducing rights to speech that advocates for violence makes some sense, but what I'd like to see is reducing the lies and disinformation. Install a duty of candor to everyone who speaks in greatly public ways
Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
#640History books can tell you facts that happened, but they can never truly tell you how it feels. I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity. ==== Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.
> You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc. Not sure what the comparison with COVID is supposed to be. Spanish flu was not created in a lab. There was no vaccine for the Spanish flu. The only real similarity is social distancing, quarantines, and masks -- we did that back then too.
> Spanish flu was not created in a lab.
Neither was covid-19: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715