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...