duckdriver
I don’t defend those things he said, or those things hateful rightwing things you cited. The fact that you think of them as a response to “look at this bad thing on the left” is very telling. The existence of bad things on the right have no bearing on the observation that there are bad things on the left.
You should think more deeply about what to do about all those Americans who agree with Charlie Kirk. “Force them to change their minds” is not an option available to you.
I encourage you to read the thread you jumped in on, which begins with the example you asked for. The first comment you responded to, which perhaps you stopped reading partially through, explains my position, and it’s not “Charlie Kirk is the good guy here.” You don’t have to like him, you can disagree with everything he thinks, but he was doing politics the right way: through debate and discussion. Classifying that as somehow invalid is an attempt to insulate yourself from challenges to your worldview.
No, because he WAS reaching across an intellectual divide.
Would be curious to your reply to hnewsenjoyer's comment, as it captures my thoughts well. His willingness or lack of willingness to change his mind doesn't mean he wasn't facilitating the exchange of ideas or bridging intellectual gaps. He was doing politics the way it was supposed to be done in a liberal democracy.
> His "conversations" were not about exchanging ideas but "owning the libs".
There are many counterexamples to this. If you're arguing in such good faith, you should explore those.
> lots of good that has done!
Even this is a good example of what I'm talking about. It sounds like you're giving up on dialogue, which is precisely my point. Don't give up on it. Commend those who seek it.
> fact checking
Get out of your bubble. The many failures of anything-but-neutral fact checking are patently obvious, if you have the good faith to look.
> Charlie Kirk never planned to be swayed by a better opinion
You may be correct, but that doesn't even matter. The proposition that no one was swayed by his dialogue would be outrageous, and I doubt you would make such an argument. So even if he would never change his mind, he's still contributing to dialogue.
I asked you before -- What is it that you propose be done about the tens of millions of Americans that agree with Charlie Kirk?
Regardless of how offensive you may find the arguments he made, or the fact that he promoted them and was paid for them, there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with him. What do you propose to do about them? Delete them? Send them to re-education camps? Strip their voting rights? Of course not. Shaming and ostracizing them as “deplorable” has now reached its 10th year as a failed strategy.
There’s only 1 option — we have to talk to each other. Are the conversations imperfect? Yes. Are they often performative yelling where no one will change their mind? Sure. Does it allow people whose views are heinous to articulate those in front of an audience? You bet. Did Charlie Kirk build a business around it with clickbait titles about "owning the libs?" Yep. And does this country need more engagement and dialogue? Unquestionably. There is no alternative.
There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.). Given the segments of society that are armed to the teeth, you’d think the left would be the side that is eager for dialogue over violence, but instead many on the left are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even those who wouldn’t embrace the “violence > dialogue” rhetoric can often be influenced by it, as can be seen in the “He didn’t deserve murder, BUT…” statements.
You may have seen clips of Kirk answering the question of “why are you doing this?” I’m seeing it shared frequently in the aftermath of his death, because it was asked of him a lot. He says it quite plainly: “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.” He’s correct on this point, and I believe his legacy will be for being someone gunned down for and in the act of trying to address issues via dialogue. I encourage you to consider that, as I suspect my rant above about the importance of dialogue over violence is actually very much aligned with your own values.
They were your words, not mine. Run from them if you want. He was obviously involved in many real debates, and it shouldn't be hard for you to acknowledge that. I even drafted the language for you to clarify your argument to be about what you claim to want, but your ego seems to be standing in the way of embracing it.
I responded to what you asked me to, and then you tucked tail. Very disappointing. Nevertheless, I will add a final thought here.
Regardless of how offensive you may find the arguments he makes, there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with him. What do you propose to do about them? Delete them? Send them to re-education camps? Strip their voting rights? Of course not. Shaming and ostracizing them as “deplorable” has now reached its 10th year as a failed strategy.
There’s only 1 option — we have to talk to each other. Are the conversations imperfect? Yes. Are they often performative yelling where no one will change their mind? Sure. Does it allow people whose views are heinous to articulate those in front of an audience? You bet. And does this country need more engagement and dialogue? Unquestionably. There is no alternative.
There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.). Given the segments of society that are armed to the teeth, you’d think the left would be the side that is eager for dialogue over violence, but instead many on the left are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even those who wouldn’t embrace the “violence > dialogue” rhetoric can often be influenced by it, as can be seen in the “He didn’t deserve murder, BUT…” statements.
You may have seen clips of Kirk answering the question of “why are you doing this?” I’m seeing it shared frequently in the aftermath of his death, because it was asked of him a lot. He says it quite plainly: “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.” He’s correct on this point, and I believe his legacy will be for being someone gunned down for and in the act of trying to address issues via dialogue. I encourage you to consider that, as I suspect my rant above about the importance of dialogue over violence is actually very much aligned with your own values.
EDIT ADDENDUM That link doesn’t prove what you want it to. The first two bullets establish 2 people fired from TPUSA for being racist. Later there's a bullet there where an attendee of a conference said racist things. Like, really? That's the best you've got?
The whole “he knew bad people” style of rhetoric just doesn’t work anymore. I honestly expected to find much worse in that link — you convinced me that TPUSA and Kirk were less racist than I thought the record might show. The fact that you think that link is a slam dunk shows just how remarkably warping the tribal mentality is for clarity of thought.
I'll modify it to: No surprise you object to someone of opposing views going onto campuses for exchanges of ideas.
Where did I obligate myself to respond to your entire comment? I quoted specifically what I wanted to reply to. There is nothing invalid about that. Notice how I didn’t respond to those other comments you made along the way, because that was not the component of your statement that I engaged you on. Hence your need to list them all in your last comment. At no point did I infer anything about “what I thought you said” in your original comment because I stayed precisely on the topic that I intended to address.
You are demanding an increase in the scope of the discussion as if it’s something you’re owed. I will give it to you, but there is nothing illegitimate about rebutting a single component of your post. I cited the scope I wanted to address repeatedly and yet you are outraged that I wouldn’t implicitly expand the scope. I notice you have yet to retract this obviously false statement in the way that I recommended, shame on you. You are the one making stuff up about the victim.
> He was a performer that found a niche in race baiting and spreading conspiracy theories, which is what his legacy will be.
I largely disagree. Yes, there was a level of theatrics to his schtick, but in the scheme of what the theatrics might have been, it really did just boil down to a guy with a microphone having discussions/debates/arguments with whoever wanted to come along. Call it a performance if you want — anything public becomes a performance by this definition. This is also the nature of the media ecosystem we live in — views are important, so his titles and framing are spicy and oriented to firing up his base. It’s called marketing. Don’t clutch your pearls so hard — you seem like a person experienced in the ways of the world.
I’m not familiar with all his claims — perhaps I would disagree with many of them and I’m happy to condemn the ones that I think are irresponsible. People are rarely “all good” or “all bad.” This is a large part of what motivated me to dispute your extremely black-and-white statement about how he had never been in a real debate. It’s possible for much of your criticism to be true AND for him to have engaged in many serious debates and exchanges of ideas, and for his legacy to reflect that.
You seem to place a large emphasis on race baiting in the comments you listed, so I’ll take that on as an example. One of his most well known race related statements is “If I see a black pilot, boy I hope he’s qualified.”
If you can find a way to get past the performative title, in the video below he addresses a black student who challenges him on this. To call this discussion race baiting would be highly inaccurate. I understand throwing video links at people is not a great way to make an argument, but you’ve already invested significant time in this conversation and the discussion is about his content and statements, so I feel this is valid. This is another, separate example of him having a legitimate discussion and exchange of ideas that is not at all accurately summarized by your criticism of him, even if other statements and speeches from him may very well be correctly described that way. There are many other examples beyond just these 2 that I have now cited.
Quoting you and responding to you is not a cheap gotcha. You need to take responsibility for your words. You said those things, and you have not retracted them. To your point, this is what you seem to expect of Charlie Kirk. You were welcome at any point to say "Ok I exaggerated a bit with that sentence, fair enough -- he's been in some real debates. My main point was XYZ and I'd like to discuss that." You have not done this, even now. I welcome you to accept the draft language I was forced to write on your behalf.
You said that, not me. No one forced you to lie. Now you deploy the motte and bailey fallacy, retreating to "A large amount of his debating was race-baiting, etc." That's fine, you can make that argument. But it's not what you started with, and it's not what I was responding to you about.
Ezra Klein put it well. Charlie was doing politics the way you're supposed to. He challenged people's ideas, allowed them to challenge his. He did not live up to this in all, or perhaps even most, of his exchanges, but examples of this are everywhere. You only have to release your grip on your hatred of him for them to be obvious.
When you have to change the terms of the discussion, it's because your argument is weak.
So are we in agreement that you were wrong?
If you had said "Paul never played the drums" then the example of the song is pretty relevant, wouldn't you say?
I found the thing you said couldn't be found and you said "whatever, I'm still right."
The summarized exchange between you and me:
Y: "He was never involved in real debate" M: "Here's a real debate" Y: "ah, well, nevertheless"
I cited a video that supported my argument. You then make a complete straw man.
The comment I was responding to claimed that he did not engage in constructive conversations. This video is ABSOLUTELY an example of a constructive conversation.
I don't doubt he lost debates. I don't doubt that there were instances where he took cheap rhetorical shots. I've done that, you've done that, and he did that.
Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point
You may have seen one of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. Those exist, as do many examples like the below:
There are many examples of videos like the one below, and if you'd seen any of them, you would absolutely understand why people think this.
You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. There are many examples like the one below, which is absolutely a constructive discussion.
This is untrue. You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. But to say he never participated in real debate shows you haven't adequately found information outside your filter bubble. There are many examples like the one below