Meanwhile, in Australia, it is a bipartisan policy. Read this article about what the centre-left Albanese government just did: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/04/labor... (that article technically isn’t about “illegal immigrants”, it is about a group of people who are predominantly legal immigrants who have had their visas cancelled due to criminal convictions-but they don’t treat the illegal immigrants any better)
The contentious issue is not whether the law is being enforced, but rather how it is enforced. Most first-world countries do it with a certain amount of decorum. We've been doing it since Trump regained office with a shock-and-awe approach that is highly disruptive, violent, and of questionable legality.
Democrats (or, at least, democrat leadership) support illegal immigration because they want a demographically-guaranteed majority in the US, just like they've got in California and New Mexico, and will shortly have in Texas.
Anyone who says they don't understand this is a liar or a naif.
Which part is the nonsense part of what I said?
> Biden actually apologized for deporting illegals
Where? I can find no such record. I do see him regretting using the word "illegals" instead of "undocumented". See e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-regrets-using-illegal...
> Democrats (or, at least, democrat leadership) support illegal immigration because they want a demographically-guaranteed majority in the US
1. This makes no sense. Only citizens can vote, and so no number of undocumented immigrants in the country can affect an election outcome.
2. Democrats don't support illegal immigration as such. However, they do recognize the complexities of the labor force and the practical reality that undocumented immigrants do a lot of unskilled labor from agriculture to janitorial services, and thus tough enforcement of the laws and removing them all would have serious adverse consequences to our economy. They have tried to boost legal immigration but have been stonewalled.
> Anyone who says they don't understand this is a liar or a naif.
Personal attacks aren't permitted here. People are entitled to have reasonable disagreements.
Democrats have been dreaming of “turning Texas blue” for years now, but I’m sceptical that will ever happen. The GOP-and Trump in particular-has been making big inroads with Hispanic Texans. The idea that a “minority-majority” US would result in permanent rule by the Democratic party relied on the assumption that Democrats have a permanent lock on ethnic/racial minority voters-an assumption which appears increasingly dubious
35% of americans are happy with how the current administration has been handling immigrants
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
approval of ICE is around 40%
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/27/republicans-...
edit: it's funny to see my post above offended(?) people who want to believe that americans are kind and loving, despite uh being on a post where everyone is arguing about how bad the political violence and polarization situation is in the US
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
So perhaps a better excerpt in light of recent events would be
>> And another reason that I'm happy to live in [the second half of the 20th century] is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
In the context of the 1960s, governments and nuclear weapons. But more broadly the same holds true for individuals.
Either we learn to live together despite our differences, or we use our newfound great power to annihilate each other.
By historical standards we’re living is a near paradise of non violence and that’s worth persevering at significant cost.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurra...
That isn't possible without bio-warfare. I sometimes hear people foolishly speak of a shooting "race war" in the USA but always remind them that the active phase of such an event would last about 15 minutes.
Unguarded. Scattered around the country. Any oil leaks potentially destroy them. Manufacturing backlogs of multiple years.
https://www.energy.gov/oe/addressing-security-and-reliabilit...
The only thing that's kept domestic terrorism to a minimum is that anyone smart enough to do it well has better economic opportunities.
It’s awful that anyone dies.
Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.
But current protests aren't revolts nor violence anyway. There is side/peripheral violence but that is not the point of the protests
the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever
When people are so pissed off that millions of people take to the streets governments fall.
Physical assault isn’t the only way to qualify as a “bad person”.
https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rig...
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-e...
I give it better than even odds that the Kirk shooter, if they have any coherent political views at all, is right of centre. That's where all the violent radicalization is happening right now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Matthew_Crooks#Politica...
The moderate right who was open to engaging in dialogue with you was killed today.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Kirk#LGBTQ_issues
Anyway, pointing out that the right is engages in political violence at astronomically higher rates than the left is hardly "deflection." I'm addressing and refuting your point directly.
Charlie was the moderate right, and how you speak about him after his death makes it clear what you think about me and my family.
You people have taken the moderate option off the table. The time for dialog is over.
…do you think stoning gay people is "God's perfect law"?
Obviously it's a tragedy that he was murdered, but he was a reprehensible person. I won't whitewash him.
A road to Weimar America has been paved by his death, the left's cynical and relentless vilification of the right, and its unwillingness to confront its own demons.
They'd vote for someone who would, though. I'm not being flippant; this is why contemporary American politics is so shockingly polarized.
Republican lawmakers will institute extreme and overtly cruel policies (such as the ongoing crackdown on immigrants, tourists, and permanent residents), and people who are upset by this blame Republican voters regardless of how kind or personable those voters are in person. On the flip side, conspiracism has become so mainstream in the Republican party that many Republicans genuinely believe the Democratic party is responsible for a QAnon-style conspiracy, and they blame Democratic voters for complicity in this.
We certainly don't need another Hitler, but we didn't need the first one either. He rose to power because he won an election: More Germans voted for the Nazis than for any other party. Most of those voters were generally decent people who would never lynch anyone, and yet they elected Hitler anyway. Decent people do terrible things. There's no easy way out of this.
In fact, the Nazi party electoral results were down from the previous election. Both the socialist and communist party were up however, and so the men in power chose Hitler to change that. All of those were killed or politically neutered within 6 months, and honestly, they made their bed.
Of course, then the Reichstag caught fire, and that was about it for Weimar democracy. But up until that point, his political success came off the back of genuine popularity at the ballot box. He only managed to became Chancellor because enough people voted for him.
It was a choice: Socialists, Nazis or communist, and as always "Plutot Hitler que le Front Populaire", the extreme center choose fascism. The more thing changes, the more they stay the same.
That's why both of them managed to get their message out to so many people. That might then convert to votes, but are the voters that believed the propaganda at fault as much as the people who paid for it, those who created it, and those that spread it?
Nevertheless, it's propaganda that many Americans have swallowed, and those people then go on to put Republicans in power year after year. I can't fault Democrats for their bitterness towards Republican voters.
If you’re aware of any more accurate modelling, I’d be super interested though!
1984 was supposed to be fiction, not a blueprint.
Well, they didn't say citizens.
> for participating in pro-Palestine protests
And you missed their main point.
Your reply doesn't really seem to be in good faith.
If you're intentionally responding to just any post to vent your anger at people who you disagree with (i.e. it wasn't a mistake) then feel free to ignore me.
?
what is that?
It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense, [...] But 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.
Charlie Kirk's assassin is still at-large and fired from a standoff distance, with a conventional long-barrel firearm.
Make of that what you will.
You said it yourself that the shooter is still at large... despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Is there something I'm missing here?
> despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Many such cases. We're still looking for D. B. Cooper, aren't we? Did the FBI ever dig up Hoffa's body? The feds are hardly a panacea with these things.
And you need more context and the training required to take such a shot and then evade the local cops and FBI, with a solid escape plan from a fuckton of witnesses and so forth. And I did not mention that most people would probably panic and mess up, let alone take the shot and escape. It is much more complex than that. When you look at the pattern fit, it no longer looks like a spur-of-the-moment act by a "typical gun owner".
They gave us some 22 years old kid as the person who pulled this whole operation, allegedly, and acted alone. Even if someone had been shooting since childhood, the rooftop selection, escape route, and casing inscriptions suggest deliberate operational planning and situational awareness, not just trigger skill. Shooting skill alone doesn't cover the logistics and environmental awareness. Plus a 22-year-old who "trained since childhood" might have technical skill, but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes, especially under the psychological pressure of killing a person in a public setting.
FWIW, some cases remain unsolved for decades because of scarce evidence, degraded scenes, or lack of witnesses, which does not come into play here at all. Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
...thus I remain skeptical.
> but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes
This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
I spent a lot of time at the range when I was a kid - hitting a 200yd shot from an elevated platform is not difficult with a M1903. A modern 63mm loading can easily push 3,000fps in a long-barrel rifle and if you reloaded the cartridge for a single-use assassination, I see no reason you couldn't push 5,000fps if the barrel doesn't explode from overpressure. With those kinds of ballistics its not a very tough shot unless you're shooting into a hurricane. All you need then is a hunting scope, and that can be bought for $170 in cash at Cabelas.
> Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
This I absolutely agree with. It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
Bit of a harrowing precedent for online privacy, but I presume that will fall on deaf ears.
> This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
Sure, it is, and I cannot back it up. He was operating alone, which is much different from doing it as a team, I believe.
> It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
I thought it was his dad that turned him in, but regardless, the Discord messages are suspicious, because he went to great lengths as to successfully complete the mission, but he would talk about it on an online platform? Something makes me skeptical about it, but who knows. It is just pure speculation from me at this point, but it does not align well with the rest of his behavior, IMO.
I get that criminals make mistakes, and perhaps it was just that. We will never truly know.
If you disagree, there are plenty of other countries you can immigrate to that don't practice democracy. But this is how America works, and I'll defend it to the last even if I disagree with the extremists.
There's not much else to add that isn't buffeted in the essay itself. Representative democracy sucks dick, and the fact that Americans engage in politics vicariously ensures that our Volksgeist is reduced to petty arguments about Michelle Obama's penis. Appeals to transgression are a threat to all political systems, not just democracy. See my other comment about the Red Guard.
No, they aren't.
It could be liberals, conservatives, moderates, expats from Europe, etc.
I cannot believe that people think that violence is a good answer to anything.
I don’t upvote these recent killing of political figures or C-levels at companies that destroy people’s lives.
I sympathize with those that fight injustice and want the world changed for the better. But, there are often non-violent ways to do this.
There is quite a bit of philosophical arguments and discussions backing violence as _a_ solution, albeit not the only solution and usually one reserved for when other measures fail.
Look to this treatise as a start[1]
If you think it’s never a solution then all you have done is unilaterally disarmed, and ceded decision making power to those who still keep violence in their toolbox
This is what amazes me about U.S. politics - there's power-seeking individuals that are clearly trying to hurt other people and are objectively not good people (e.g. convicted rapist, multiple felonies and a long history of not paying bills if they can possibly get away with it).
I mean, it's worrying when public figures can decry "empathy" as being a major problem with society (e.g. "I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage"). To my mind, persuading others to not be empathic is a clear sign of being evil.
Empathy means fully simulating the other person state of mind and world. Empathy is cognitive spend.
Love thy enemy is a short cut because human brains seem to be unable to think properly in anger. You need to simulate your enemy to understand their positions and seek deals.
If you think that encouraging empathy is a bad thing and discouraging empathy is good, then there's little hope for you. The lack of empathy can easily be shown to lead to the evils of Nazism and the desire to be cruel to people who are not "in our group" (e.g. their skin colour is different or were born elsewhere)
How do you feel about wealth seizures? Retrospective changes to tax deals and pensions? Laws retrospectively changing?
These are quite bad, even seditious. At some point when actors appear to working on behalf of enemies what are you supposed to feel?
On the other hand, there are people confounding powers with rights. Changing rules and laws going forward might be against ones wishes, but supposing you have freedom you can choose to opt out.
There is something terrible going on in the meta where words are being confused to the point where conversations can not even happen because of confusion and mental models that lead to interactive errors that turn simple statements into threats of violence where there was none.
It really feels like denialism and lack of caring about language is at the heart of it.
If some people can't think conditionally, do not know the difference between blame and causation, don't understand what trust means in terms of contributions and tracking things ... Where to start?
That are Charlie's words from 2023. He himself was claiming that some gun deaths are worth it so I am sure he'd be okay with this one as well.
Meanwhile, I've been reminded by your comment that people like you will celebrate the deaths of people they disagree with politically, which makes me less likely to support gun control. With neighbors like you, I'm going to hang onto them. The irony of people like you is your perceived moral superiority warps you into being a bad person.
"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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
The legacy Kirk leaves behind isn't incorrect or worth discarding; some violence is a part of any collective society. But at what point does the deal stop being prudent? How many politicians, schoolkids and religious groups have to be shot up before we reassess our laws? If we never stop, then the cycle is always waiting to start up again. The tinderbox can be lit for any reason, and give any administration just cause for martial law and "emergency powers" abuse.
In normal countries, which the US isn't, it's much harder to obtain a gun license, and some arms types are impossible to own for the general population, which translates to a smaller portion of the population owning guns.
Here are some statistics on gun ownership: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
And here is the list of mass shootings in the US (120 guns per 100 people): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
Vs mass shootings in country with normal gun laws and low percentage of gun ownership (2.7 per 100) like the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_in_the...
I mean if you can't see the correlation, that's absolutely fine. You stick to your guns. Pun very much intended.
> Meanwhile, I've been reminded by your comment that people like you will celebrate the deaths of people they disagree with politically
That's great! I am being reminded by the hypocrisy of the right who cry the one time one of their fascist friends gets killed but will happily cheer on when somebody who disagrees with them politically gets hurt. Let's look at Charlie Kirk himself:
- "Somebody should have taken care of it the way we used to do in the 1950 and 1960" on Trans people: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1626672034859163648/pu/...
- "He was a scumbag ... unworthy of the attention." on George Floyd. https://www.telegraphindia.com/world/five-things-charlie-kir... I happen to think the same about Charlie.
- "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s." White supremacy sure sounds fun. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-22340...
- "George Floyd didn't die because of the police officer. He died largely because of a drug overdose." https://www.distractify.com/p/what-did-charlie-kirk-say-abou...
- "Gay people should be stoned to death. Just saying." https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1800678317030564306
> The irony of people like you is your perceived moral superiority warps you into being a bad person.
I can say the same about Charlie and his Bible quoting shit. I don't see him and the political right crying about the madman attacking Pelosi's husband, nor for the senseless killings of Melissa Hortman and her husband. Which, following your logic, makes the political right bad people. And I agree with your logic.
Charlie himself was fine with some gun deaths, in his own words, which I quote again: "It’s worth it 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.". If the man, the legend himself, is fine with some gun deaths, and finds them worthy, who are we to disagree with him and his great legacy of trans-hate, pro-guns, white supremacy and unquestioning support for the genocidal state of Israel?
> Your comment is essentially saying he deserved it, and that you see some form of cosmic justice here.
I don't think he deserved it, nobody deserves to be shot. But considering Charlie's views on empathy, it'd be an insult to his memory for me to feel empathy for him, so by feeling 0 empathy for him I honor his legacy: "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage." https://x.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1580241307515383808
Do I find Charlie's death hilarious considering his stance on gun laws? Yes. In fact, I think maybe we should come up to something similar to the Herman Cain award, but for gun lovers.
Do I think he was a bad man who stoked hatred and division and himself multiple times advocated for violence? 100 times yes.
No one actively made fun of the deaths of school kids or anyone on the left - the Hortmanns or the injury to Paul Pelosi. No one actually celebrates those tragedies.
And yet here you are actively saying you find Charlie’s death hilarious. This is shameful and no sane person should feel happy that a person who advocated for free speech and nothing else has been assassinated.
Also please read the guidelines that @dang has posted at the very beginning of this thread.
May God help you find more peace and less hatred.
> No one actually celebrates those tragedies.
Yeah, some of the right wing figures outright questioned whether these things happened:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/09/alex-jones-asks-sup...
Walking human expired cheese Donald Trump Jr. shared a pic of Paul Pelosi Halloween costume which does count as making fun. But freedom of speech, right?
https://time.com/6226946/paul-pelosi-attack-gop-response-pol...
And Charlie himself on the Pelosi case wanted a patriot to "Bail out" the assailant: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/charlie-kirk-once-called...
> This is shameful and no sane person should feel happy that a person who advocated for free speech and nothing else has been assassinated.
I don't feel happy. Nobody should be shot. However, Charlie did advocate for white supremacy: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-22340... and did say that "Empathy is a made-up term" https://x.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1580241307515383808 so I feel 0 empathy for him, to honor his legacy of hating empathy and embracing gun deaths as worth it.
> And yet here you are actively saying you find Charlie’s death hilarious
I don't celebrate Charlie getting shot. Nobody deserves to get shot in the first place. Hell, nobody should own guns in the first place. But Charlie? He thought otherwise. He thought "some gun deaths are worth it" (Charlie's own words), and who am I to doubt him?
A guy saying gun deaths are "worth it" (Charlie's words) getting shot? Hilarious. It's like Herman Cain opposing masks and social distancing dying from covid. Also hilarious. It's just the truth.
> May God help you find more peace and less hatred.
God doesn't exist, but if he did, he/she/they made the world a better place. Thoughts and prayers.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemou...
GP is currently the highest comment, and on other sites I've visited, while too many people cheer this or call for violent retaliation, most of the highly-upvoted comments (both liberal and conservative) condemn it and argue for de-escalation.
Anger and fear are powerful emotions, but so is hope. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and became President, winning his first election with the highest %votes since 1988. Donald Trump also became President in part due to hope; his supporters expected him to improve their lives, while most of Hillary Clinton's and Kamala Harris's supporters just expected them to not make things worse. Now lots of people desperately need hope, and if things get worse more will.
Irrational hope can be dangerous: all the time, people make decisions that backfire horribly, and deep down they knew those decisions would backfire horribly, but they made them anyways out of desperation for an unlikely success. Perhaps this is another example, where the assassin delusionally hoped it would somehow promote and further their desires, but it will almost certainly do the opposite.
But hope can also be rational, and unlike anger and fear (which at best prevent bad things), hope can intrinsically be for causing good things. If a group or candidate that runs on hope for a better world gets enough attention and perceived status, it could turn public perception back to unity and optimism.
I am not claiming this is true. But merely that if I was employed to destabilize the US, I would claim to have been responsible for a number of recent events in order to please my boss.
I am hoping the possibility of a joint common enemy can perhaps unite people in America a bit.
The guy who shot Trump in the ear had (arguably) no particular ideology or goal, just an interest in assassinations and a possible depressive disorder.
In that light, does it really matter what tier party the assassin belonged to? The joint common enemy you allude to is already inside the white house, and as long as that is still up for debate, the country has no future.
When the elected democrat couple was shot, the murder had "no kings" printed out and left in his car. Most names on his kill list were democrats but a few ones were republican, so fox news could tell the sheeps that it wasnt them, the MAGAs. No stochastic terrorism, just a single lunatic.
Hitler burnt down the Reichstag to justify his power grab and now we have trump coming out with a fast AI produced/polished response. IMO, timing and quality make this video special, maybe it was part of the plan too. And ofc, he doesnt blame voilent extremisn but "the left" in general, as usual.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ty1aDcnf5as
I know most reasonable people have difficulties thinking about it. Many people "thought we are smarter" by now, but what if this is actually another fast paced playbook, to mobilize the violent sheep (which are obviously more concentrated and agitated on the right) to paralyze and take over the US. What if we are not smarter by now.
Exactly this, maybe slower, happened before and is happening right now not just in the US. You really should consider this possibility and how fair and balanced you can be, when the other side is not.
Your dehumanizing rhetoric is part of the problem. Please read Dang's post at the top of this thread.
it's not, poor parents can't feed their children with hope
The unfortunate history of the US is that violence tends to win.
Bobby Kennedy made that speech, was assassinated shortly afterwards, and Nixon won, prolonging the Vietnam War for another 6 years. Bobby Kennedy, made that historic speech in Indianapolis that quelled rioting after the MLK assassination. You might imagine a different history in the 1970's if he had been elected president.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0
Slavery was only ended by violence, and there were still people born in the civil war that saw MLK assassinated for promoting peace.
Meanwhile Charlie Kirk was on record saying, "Some deaths were worth it..."
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-qu...
Edited to add: My parents were alive, and it hurt them deeply to see MLK, JFK, RFK assassinated.
Charlie Kirk wasn't old enough to witness the assassinations of the 1960's. I wonder if he'd have a different view if he was.
I don't think this is quite true, it may have ended it faster, but I don't think it would still exist today if the civil war had not happened. Most other countries ended slavery without a violent civil war, especially if you think about the way technology vastly outweighed the usefulness of having slaves.
And then when Charlie Kirk says "Some deaths were worth it...", he is talking about accidents and abuses of guns by shooters. He doesn't mean that violence is the answer to politics, it would be great if nobody died from mass shootings. But he is saying that having the right to bear arms to defend yourself is preferable to the alternative where you have no right to do that.
Here's the full quote. He's fully aware of violence cause by mental illness and domestic terrorism.
>> You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am, I, I — 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
>> So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?
Audience member: "Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?"
Kirk: "Too many."
The same audience member went on say the number is five, and proceeded to ask if Kirk knows how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years.
Kirk: "Counting or not counting gang violence? The answer is 5700."
Maybe I'm missing some context, but it seems to me like Charlie might have had a few ideas about who should and shouldn't have guns.
uvalde called, it doesn't work. and the rest of the world looks on in shame at this exceptionally american and exceptionally cruel system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Scot_Peterson
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/parkland-shooting-verdi...
We assume that the police will come to the rescue for all situations, but the fact is, they're human too.
This is typically different than the pro-gun mantra of "The best defense from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
He was clearly a good guy. But he didn't want to die.
However, if these are not helpful, I would hope we would not attempt to use these moments that we should be united in attempting to claim that slavery in the United States would have simply stopped. Historians today reject this, and historians like Eric Foner, Gavin Wright, James Oakes have all written books that provide evidence that slavery was expanding and evolving, and that a major cornerstone for nearly half of the country's economy was not going to disappear in 10, 20, or 100 years.
IRC was invented before the end of the South African apartheid - the United States was lucky to avoid such a terrible fate.
As an aside, it's not pleasant to see speculative conjecture about the inevitable end of slavery side-by-side with quotations from RFK, and feels counter to the goal of the pinned comment.
Thanks to the mod team for generally keeping this comment section civil.
> I don't think this is quite true
Slavery could have been ended peacefully if the slavers allowed it.
You are talking about the same speech. It was a great speech
In the end there is no going forward in the current context; there are no solutions there. It requires renewed vigor to move to a higher, better frame where growth is possible.
For us americans: political identity (libs v. Trump) has no solutions. Better: the political parties need to serve us. Dead kids or abused kids by adults (Epstein) cannot stand. What can 3.5 std deviations of center left and right get together over? Kids surely. And the knowledge (as Aeschylus narrates well elsewhere with the furies) that violence begets violence surely.
"Videos circulating on social media shows an attender asking Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” In response, Kirk says, “Too many,” as the crowd clapped."
Hate, hate, hate.
Why are white men so mentally unstable?
Does that help you to see how ridiculous your comment is?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
That too says something about our times. Maybe a few things. From being unable to trust things without verifying, to people’s willingness to alter the truth to make a point, to how people fear discussing race and gender loud even in passing.
Frankly I find creating an analogue between the death of MLK and Kirk in bad taste only magnified by scrubbing race from an MLK tribute.
Kirk would have celebrated MLK's death as he did the Pelosi hammer attack. Kirk called MLK "awful" and "not a good person" and the Civil Rights Movement "a huge mistake.".
https://www.wired.com/story/charlie-kirk-tpusa-mlk-civil-rig...
The whole idea of intersectionality makes it hard to build coalitions and turns everything into a problem that’s impossibly complex to solve and difficult to build a coalition around.
It’s the basic reason many leaders who the majority of a country dislike rise to power. Because that majority can’t put their differences aside.
He didn't advocate for but against. He advocated against people who weren't his version of correct. He advocated for suppression, not liberation.
I don't think you're saying he advocated for the struggles of any marginalized group, but your comment could be read as such.
Charlie Kirk was a bigot who wanted his political "enemies" to suffer.
He never suppressed or oppressed anyone like what DEI has been doing by openly discriminating against people based on their skin color (and therefore presumed financial status).
He had no version of correct and he didn’t want anyone to suffer. He merely spoke and wrote his opinion and for that “crime” and that alone, someone decided to hate him so much that they decided to silence him forever.
This is sad and shameful (as have been the attacks and assassinations of any elected official or public figure in the past many months).
Really?
"Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge." [1]
"...he didn’t want anyone to suffer."
Really?
"We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately." [1]
"He had no version of correct..."
Really?
"The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white." [1]
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
Given his comments on the Pelosi attack, it's clear that he didn't believe that people should be safe from violence for their political beliefs. Given his comments on trans people[1], it's clear that he didn't believe that they should be safe from violence for... Being trans.
He would fail to meet the standards of civility set for this thread.
---
[1] Charlie Kirk has called for "men to handle" trans people "the way they did in the 50s and 60s."
Is this how someone just harmlessly opening up a dialogue behaves?
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/this-must-stop-tpusas-cha...
What is sad is that his views were degenerate, reprehensible and abhorrent, yet that seems to get ignored.
Hey all you Kirk fans - LGBTQ+ are humans. Trans are humans. Black people are humans. Palestine exists. Jews are humans. Muslims are humans. Women can do more than make babies, cook, and clean. Democrats aren't anti-america, don't hate the country, and by and large don't call for violence or celebrate those that do. Not everyone is some crazed extremist. Nobody is a second class citizen and nobody deserves to suffer because of what they look like or how they were born or who they pray to or anything. Get over it.
While I don't condone violence at all, if you advocate for gun violence, you reap what you sow.
If you preach extremism, don't be surprised if you're met with extremists.
You can't claim to have given your life to Christ when you openly preach hate. This man was a devout preacher of the gospel of Supply-Side Jesus. Kirk and his ilk are the types that if the actual Jesus of Nazareth appeared in middle America, they'd call him a commie sand n-word and call ICE.
Kirk was the epitome of a bully albeit one who bullied others under the guise of "debate".
I have a ton of sympathy for the children shot at a school yesterday. If I want to really feel bad, I feel for those who were shot with assault weaponry at Sandy Hook and likely died and bled out in the same way Kirk did.
Just because he was a rich white "christian" dude with a blonde wife, doesn't mean he wasn't a reprehensible piece of shit.
You seem to be nonplussed about his suffering, you're criticizing the way a dead man expressed his religious beliefs to the audience, and are implying that his beliefs on gun control somehow balanced his death.
Doesn't that help fuel the narratives about his political opposition that he tried to drive while living?
>Not everyone is some crazed extremist.
...maybe so, but the death of this dude sure did pull some out of thin air.
It does outline the various ways in which Kirk worked to make the world a worse place, but an accounting of it is not a celebration of a public killing.
"Religious beliefs" is not a weapon or a shield that you can just raise to deflect all criticism of a man's actions. It rings especially hollow for one whose behavior was so highly un-Christ-like.
I'm not celebrating anything. I'm pointing out irony. You call for gun violence, thinking you're untouchable (because of your skin color and political ties), but you're not.
>you're criticizing the way a dead man expressed his religious beliefs to the audience
Hang on here. Let's unpack this. This is actually pretty humorous.
Let's take the story of Jesus of Nazareth. A poor, brown skinned Jewish guy from Israel born out of wedlock who worked as a carpenter and preached love, compassion, and understanding, whose supposed miracles included healing the sick and disfigured. He worked to feed the needy, clothe the naked, advocated for paying taxes, and treating one's enemies with compassion as if they were their own kin. This person was executed by being nailed to a cross and in his final moments, still asked his followers to forgive his executioners.
We have a rich white dude, raised in a wealthy first world major city suburb using the above gentleman's message to preach hate, racial superiority, phobia, and outright bigotry, all under the guise of "asking tough questions". This dude would go around and "debate" young adults (and children) half his age and use "gotcha" tactics and quick speaking to overwhelm and gish gallop his opposition into giving up. He would then selectively edit the "debates" and post them online to create a strawman for his political allies to punch.
Religious beliefs, eh? Come on.
Neither part of this is true. Being willing to accept that guns kill people is not the same thing as calling for gun violence. And this happened in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt.
> A poor, brown skinned Jewish guy from Israel born out of wedlock
It's abundantly clear from any translation that Joseph and Mary were at least engaged. Here's a detailed argument that they were in fact married per the customs of their people: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bi... Regardless, the entire point of the story is that Jesus did not result from extramarital sex.
The quotes that people are using now to try to paint Kirk as "anti-Semitic" are clearly criticisms of current-day Israeli government, not of Judaism as a religion.
> who worked as a carpenter and preached love, compassion, and understanding, whose supposed miracles included healing the sick and disfigured. He worked to feed the needy, clothe the naked, advocated for paying taxes
Yes, and Kirk would have said all of those things are virtuous.
> and treating one's enemies with compassion as if they were their own kin. This person was executed by being nailed to a cross and in his final moments, still asked his followers to forgive his executioners.
Kirk clearly had compassion for the people he disagreed with. This is abundantly clear from any of the video footage. Disapproving of someone else's life choices does not represent a lack of compassion.
Jesus, per the Bible, went through days of ceremony and was well aware that he would be executed as part of a religious persecution. He made this petition because he knew who would kill him and supposed they were misinformed and could still be redeemed. Kirk had no such opportunity (it's still amazing to me that there were people proposing that we should hold off on declaring his "last words" in case it later came out that he somehow said more, after having been shot in the neck). But he did commonly say that he (and TPUSA) would "pray for" people whom he thought misguided.
> We have a rich white dude, raised in a wealthy first world major city suburb... "asking tough questions"
This is the true part of that sentence.
> This dude would go around and "debate" young adults (and children) half his age
The most popular video on Kirk's channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk4Nkmfgxzk) directly addresses this, at the beginning. In short: there is obviously and clearly nothing wrong with an adult speaking to adults at a college campus (college age people cannot reasonably be called "children") to espouse his beliefs, encourage and respond to critique etc. This is in fact the purpose of an institute of higher education.
Kirk died age 31; this is much younger than most college professors, younger than most leftists invited to speak on campus, younger than Hasan Piker, and younger than Cenk Ugyur was when he started The Young Turks. People "half his age" do not generally attend college. And this is at the end. When he started — when he co-founded TPUSA — he was one of these "kids", aged 18.
> and use "gotcha" tactics and quick speaking to overwhelm and gish gallop his opposition into giving up.
Watching any of the video footage available makes it abundantly clear that this is not true. The only "gotcha" here is supposing that there's something wrong with Kirk being older than his interlocutors.
Another common part of this narrative (which is mentioned by the student in that video) is that Kirk somehow exploited students being "unprepared". This is entirely their own fault. The footage makes it clear that people (including that student) would come to the mic with very little idea what they wanted to say beyond a general topic, and no idea of how to defend their position even to a neutral party. They all had ample time to prepare. These debate events are announced in advance; and modern technology allows people to access unfathomable amounts of information via the "Internet", even while walking around in a crowd of people outdoors.
> He would then selectively edit the "debates" and post them online to create a strawman for his political allies to punch.
Curiously enough, the most popular video on the channel also directly addresses this. The only selection that went on was choosing which students to showcase. The only editing is to mute words that would potentially cause problems on YouTube. Any of these videos of individual students clearly illustrates that.
> Religious beliefs, eh? Come on.
Proselytism is in fact completely consistent with Christian faith.
But still: murder is murder.
I for one read this and assumed RFK was just discussing gun control in general, only weeks before he was killed. Adding in the context the speech was regarding MLK gives it a whole different meaning. Still powerful, but different.
Attributing “The only thing we [experience] is fear itself” to FDR suggests he said something a little different. That FDR needs to see a therapist for his anxiety.
What saddens me is people take different political views as hatred, and medias run with it. I can't remember how many times a person is labeled fascist or communist just because their views are different.
Some political views are hatred, and ignoring that doesn’t serve any useful purpose.
Charlie Kirk speaking about a trans athlete: "Someone should've just took care of it the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s or 60s[0].
And [1]:
> America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
And [1]:
> The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
0. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/this-must-stop-tpusas-cha...
1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk...
There's a side that is genuinely, factually, deliberately misled by their politicians on a routine basis and it plugs into Fox News. This isn't a political statement. It's documented up and down.
It is funny that every side believes that the other side is genuinely, factually and deliberately misled by their politicians on a routine basis.
RFK probably studied Aeschylus in the original Greek, and did an on-the-fly translation. A more literal translation is:
"Zeus, who guided men to think, who has laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our will temperance comes. From the gods who sit in grandeur grace is somehow violent."
There's no "turning the other cheek here." It claims violence does indeed beget violence, and there's no human way around that.
To be clear, I'm not advocating violence, or even criticizing RFK. I'm simply defending the purity of Aeschylus.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0