Crazy American Politics

[manc_don]

Out of interest, because I’ve had a mental week with work and not paid any attention to the news this week: 

1) who the fuck is this cunt Charlie kirk?

2) Why should I or anyone care?

3) as far as I can see, he loved guns, said people are sacrificial and got shot by one, poetic no? 
 

These are genuine questions, I know very little about this person.

[OrlandoDon]

2 hours ago, manc_don said:

Out of interest, because I’ve had a mental week with work and not paid any attention to the news this week: 

1) who the fuck is this cunt Charlie kirk?

2) Why should I or anyone care?

3) as far as I can see, he loved guns, said people are sacrificial and got shot by one, poetic no? 
 

These are genuine questions, I know very little about this person.

The republican party’s Ben doak. Hugely popular, 31 yr old. Many felt a future president. Family man, Christian, founded turning point USA about 12 years ago. Spent a ton of time on college campuses promoting free speech and openly encouraged debate between differing viewpoints. He felt college campuses were very left leaning so was committed to help dialog between differing viewpoints and parties. There’s a ton of stuff about him online but, as is the case with politics today, depending who you read you’ll get very differing viewpoints.

[tlg1903]

I'd never heard of him until 3 weeks ago when south park took the piss out him.  Fair play to him, he saw the funny side and didn't spit the dummy.  The past few days I've seen plenty of quotes and videos of him.  Most of his opinions I likely disagree with but I admire his attitude of trying to get people talking even if they don't agree.  The reactions from so many have been utterly rancid though.  I don't understand how anyone can cheer a 31 yo getting gunned down in front of his wife and kids just because they disagreed with him politically. Defo fear for America right now, one of my American pals was saying yesterday this could be americas Archduke Ferdinand moment and civil war may not be far away.  I don't know how accurate that is but my pal is no fool and not one for hyperbole. 

[OrlandoDon]

1 hour ago, tlg1903 said:

I'd never heard of him until 3 weeks ago when south park took the piss out him.  Fair play to him, he saw the funny side and didn't spit the dummy.  The past few days I've seen plenty of quotes and videos of him.  Most of his opinions I likely disagree with but I admire his attitude of trying to get people talking even if they don't agree.  The reactions from so many have been utterly rancid though.  I don't understand how anyone can cheer a 31 yo getting gunned down in front of his wife and kids just because they disagreed with him politically. Defo fear for America right now, one of my American pals was saying yesterday this could be americas Archduke Ferdinand moment and civil war may not be far away.  I don't know how accurate that is but my pal is no fool and not one for hyperbole. 

Definitely crazy times and my wife and I talk about it quite a lot. As many of you know, we were forced out of California, lost jobs, and kids kicked out of school, all because of California politics. It’s a very divided country with very differing beliefs. However, I don’t know how a civil war would play out, most of the major cities are democratic and outside everyone else is republican, it’s not quite the north south divide.

the conspiracy theory is that Charlie Kirk was such an up and comer that he was becoming too popular and influential. The dems had a stronghold on the young vote until recently when Kirk, Ben Shapiro etc started their college tours and talk about the other side of what students learn in college. The dems are losing the young vote.

immigration is such a key issue at present too and I am sure you hear about the ICE raids. Population decides the number of govt seats each state gets, and that includes illegal aliens. Remove illegals and places like California, democratic, lose seats while places like Florida, republican, could gain. That decides an election.

Little here is done for the good of the people, it’s all left or right and who must win. This is the perfect time for both parties to make a clear effort to tone it down and get along but they won’t do it.

[tlg1903]

15 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

Definitely crazy times and my wife and I talk about it quite a lot. As many of you know, we were forced out of California, lost jobs, and kids kicked out of school, all because of California politics. It’s a very divided country with very differing beliefs. However, I don’t know how a civil war would play out, most of the major cities are democratic and outside everyone else is republican, it’s not quite the north south divide.

the conspiracy theory is that Charlie Kirk was such an up and comer that he was becoming too popular and influential. The dems had a stronghold on the young vote until recently when Kirk, Ben Shapiro etc started their college tours and talk about the other side of what students learn in college. The dems are losing the young vote.

immigration is such a key issue at present too and I am sure you hear about the ICE raids. Population decides the number of govt seats each state gets, and that includes illegal aliens. Remove illegals and places like California, democratic, lose seats while places like Florida, republican, could gain. That decides an election.

Little here is done for the good of the people, it’s all left or right and who must win. This is the perfect time for both parties to make a clear effort to tone it down and get along but they won’t do it.

It's always about power isn't it, never the people. 

Re conspiracies I did ponder yesterday that the biggest beneficiary of Kirks murder is actually Trump.  Why?  Well, we ain't heard Jeffrey Epstien mentioned much since it happened.......... 

[OrlandoDon]

34 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

It's always about power isn't it, never the people. 

Re conspiracies I did ponder yesterday that the biggest beneficiary of Kirks murder is actually Trump.  Why?  Well, we ain't heard Jeffrey Epstien mentioned much since it happened.......... 

Ha, Epstein isn’t going away. Although, I said this before, there’s too many big and powerful people who have been to the island for significant and overly revealing info to come out.

trump and Kirk we’re good friends and from what I’ve heard trump was on the phone with his wife for significant time on Wednesday when this all went down. I don’t see him creating this mess and he seems quite affected by it.

[RicoS321]

3 hours ago, tlg1903 said:

The reactions from so many have been utterly rancid though.  I don't understand how anyone can cheer a 31 yo getting gunned down in front of his wife and kids just because they disagreed with him politically.

I can understand it. If I had known who the lad was, I'm sure I'd make jokes and have a dark sense of humour about it. There is certainly a large element of schadenfreude about a Christian who claimed that the right to have a gun was a God given one, was then indirectly a victim of that attitude. It made me smirk when I read about it. Although I guess that that is a long way away from cheering. I saw a couple of clips of his "debates", where he came across as an insincere nasty (troll) shite, lacking in empathy and love, so I can see why some might have cheered (of course, those would have been curated for sharing to show him in a bad light). Putting it down to "disagreeing with him politically", seems a bit simple. I might disagree with Nicola Sturgeon or Ruth Davidson politically, but wouldn't cheer their deaths. A sneering populist prick like Farage, I might, not because of political disagreement, but because of his insincerity and deliberate rabble rousing. I don't doubt that there was another side to this character that I'm not witness to, of course, so I'm only speaking hypothetically as far as this lad is concerned. The method of his death, too, is of little concern to most because of the disconnect of not being personally involved or intimate with the situation. I think empathy is quite difficult to maintain across internets and oceans, or states. I think there is a definite tit-for-tat element when it comes to empathy these days - you didn't show empathy for thousands of dead Palestinians, why should we show empathy for this guy - but there's probably also a ceiling to how much empathy people can hold onto too. I have little zero empathy or otherwise for the lad, his death just doesn't register - much like any other non-entity celebrity. An equivalent would be princess Diana - obviously a tragic death, but I don't feel that I need to muster feelings about it. I think it's healthy to be immune to such incidents. It has made me feel good about not being on social media though, and glad not to have ever heard of the lad. I'm obviously doing something right.

[OrlandoDon]

3 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

I can understand it. If I had known who the lad was, I'm sure I'd make jokes and have a dark sense of humour about it. There is certainly a large element of schadenfreude about a Christian who claimed that the right to have a gun was a God given one, was then indirectly a victim of that attitude. It made me smirk when I read about it. Although I guess that that is a long way away from cheering. I saw a couple of clips of his "debates", where he came across as an insincere nasty (troll) shite, lacking in empathy and love, so I can see why some might have cheered (of course, those would have been curated for sharing to show him in a bad light). Putting it down to "disagreeing with him politically", seems a bit simple. I might disagree with Nicola Sturgeon or Ruth Davidson politically, but wouldn't cheer their deaths. A sneering populist prick like Farage, I might, not because of political disagreement, but because of his insincerity and deliberate rabble rousing. I don't doubt that there was another side to this character that I'm not witness to, of course, so I'm only speaking hypothetically as far as this lad is concerned. The method of his death, too, is of little concern to most because of the disconnect of not being personally involved or intimate with the situation. I think empathy is quite difficult to maintain across internets and oceans, or states. I think there is a definite tit-for-tat element when it comes to empathy these days - you didn't show empathy for thousands of dead Palestinians, why should we show empathy for this guy - but there's probably also a ceiling to how much empathy people can hold onto too. I have little zero empathy or otherwise for the lad, his death just doesn't register - much like any other non-entity celebrity. An equivalent would be princess Diana - obviously a tragic death, but I don't feel that I need to muster feelings about it. I think it's healthy to be immune to such incidents. It has made me feel good about not being on social media though, and glad not to have ever heard of the lad. I'm obviously doing something right.

The world would be a better place if we all avoided social media!

[RicoS321]

2 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

The world would be a better place if we all avoided social media!

Aye, obviously not including football forums of course. 

[tlg1903]

6 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

I can understand it. If I had known who the lad was, I'm sure I'd make jokes and have a dark sense of humour about it. There is certainly a large element of schadenfreude about a Christian who claimed that the right to have a gun was a God given one, was then indirectly a victim of that attitude. It made me smirk when I read about it. Although I guess that that is a long way away from cheering. I saw a couple of clips of his "debates", where he came across as an insincere nasty (troll) shite, lacking in empathy and love, so I can see why some might have cheered (of course, those would have been curated for sharing to show him in a bad light). Putting it down to "disagreeing with him politically", seems a bit simple. I might disagree with Nicola Sturgeon or Ruth Davidson politically, but wouldn't cheer their deaths. A sneering populist prick like Farage, I might, not because of political disagreement, but because of his insincerity and deliberate rabble rousing. I don't doubt that there was another side to this character that I'm not witness to, of course, so I'm only speaking hypothetically as far as this lad is concerned. The method of his death, too, is of little concern to most because of the disconnect of not being personally involved or intimate with the situation. I think empathy is quite difficult to maintain across internets and oceans, or states. I think there is a definite tit-for-tat element when it comes to empathy these days - you didn't show empathy for thousands of dead Palestinians, why should we show empathy for this guy - but there's probably also a ceiling to how much empathy people can hold onto too. I have little zero empathy or otherwise for the lad, his death just doesn't register - much like any other non-entity celebrity. An equivalent would be princess Diana - obviously a tragic death, but I don't feel that I need to muster feelings about it. I think it's healthy to be immune to such incidents. It has made me feel good about not being on social media though, and glad not to have ever heard of the lad. I'm obviously doing something right.

Why schadenfruede?  I always understood it to be the taking pleasure in anothers suffering and, well, he's dead so he's not suffering.  There's certainly a ruthless symmetery to him dying this way though.  

I've seen bits here and there of what Kirk had to say for himself and I can understand why he pissed a lot of people off.   Equally though I've seen a few things where he's engaging very respectfully and compassionately with black single mums and trans people who some will tell you he hated.  Thing is it's all clips and very often important context can be missed and often deliberately too unft.   One thing that does seem clear is his main schtick was to try and get more conversation across the political divide which I can respect.  

It's not so much the method of death but the fact it was in front of his wife and kids that makes the reactions so distateful to me, I've read his wee girl ran to him for comfort scared by the shot though I can't say that for certain.   It's a horrible mental image regardless, and, truthfully, one I've struggled to shake..... you may be onto something with staying off social media.