Very well said! I'm slowly struggling through a similar article, about the only thing I can add is that this reminds me of the height of the covid madness, when "friends" would openly state the unvaxxed should be fired, or in camps, or lose their kids.
Basically nobody cares what Very Online Randoms are saying about Charlie Kirk, but they're reacting in horror to what the people they know IN REAL LIFE are saying about Charlie Kirk. That changes the perspective immensely. Instead of "those people over there wish bad things upon Charlie (and by extension me)," it's more like "the people I know in this room wish bad things upon Charlie (and by extension me)."
It's tough to realize that your friends and neighbors you considered "good people" would happily turn in Anne Frank.
I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating:
He wasn't assassinated because he spoke out, without fear of reprisal, rather because an entire generation LISTENED to him.
That is the real threat the Left can not abide.
The good news is they're losing the argument because they refuse to welcome debate. And, so, we win because only one sides voice is being heard by reasonable people, and those that are unreasonable (and full of hate) only hear the vacuous "voice" of the dying MSM echo-chamber.
On a lighter note, perhaps the good news is they'll burn all schools and universities in america down and then we can simply refuse to rebuild them. k-12 students aren’t learning anything but how to be useless anyway...;)
OK you convinced me to spoil a little bit of the article.....
Everybody knows Robinson could have simply walked into the event and debated Kirk on the issues. The problem is Robinson knew that Kirk would absolutely annihilate him in front of the whole audience. (He'd probably seen Kirk destroy the same arguments Robinson would have made.)
So because he can't win the battle of words, Robinson decides to be a fucking coward who needs to stop the words in another way.
But the words aren't going to stop, and in fact they will start being repeated by more and more people who realize what time it is.
The best quote I have heard about this subject comes from a Greek poet who died a few years ago. He said, "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds". I pray this is how Charlie's legacy moves forward.
That is so true. The lunatics unleashed some pretty awesome pent up energy! They have zero idea what’s coming.
I am a seed well past germination. My main stock was a bit wobbly, but I have received some healthy minerals and tender loving care these past few years.
My flower is about to populate and grow big gorgeous fruits.
It all begins in the public school classroom starting in Kindergarten and continues to fester all tge way onto the college campus.
No one is born a hateful person. Hate is taught.
No parent sends their children to school in order to mold them into a future young adult, so consumed with rage that they are willing to cause harm, injury and yes, even death to other people.
The rage which gato refers to is taught at a very early age, nurtured, coddled and fueled by those who hate America and very much want to see the country destroyed. Tge American public schools are simply churning out angry activists!
I respectfully submit we have two generations of Americans marinated in propaganda which dehumanizes others based on differing political opinions.
Deprogramming begins in the American public schools.
While we debate, the fascist left is motivated to act, propaganda is couched to bypass reason, and simply act for good or bad, and Obama brought forward since 20o8.
We have an entire generation inculcated into their propaganda.
I’m convinced that the only way to stop what is happening is to remove the incidious methodology which has allowed school teachers (and administrators) to exploit the youth they are entrusted to teach.
What Charlie did well was try to find a connection with that unsound mind and help it reorganize into sounder judgements.
This will work for many. Most we see is the result of conditioning, not genetics. The nurture v. nature debate. The number of genetically suspect minds is blessedly small. The number of environmentally polluted minds is tragically large.
We have some industrial polluters pumping filth into our most precious natural resource. It's the sources of pollution that we must clean up. Schools, media entertainment, the law profession, every perch of cultural and societal high ground is occupied by industrial mind polluters. How to clean up a toxic superfund site respecting disagreements over what is pollution is the challenge.
Yes. Its so obvious. Why would we want to continue to do the same thing that's been a complete failure coming on 5 decades?! People cling to our institutions, even though they are corrupt, venal, incompetent, and working against the mission of the institution.
Facts speak loud. You could plot the hate and ignorance taught at schools along the same path as our declining proficiency since the formation of tge DOE.
1978 - we had an educational system that was the envy of the world - students ranked number one in proficiency in the world.
1979 - Dept. Of Ed formed.
1980 - proficiency immediately declines.
2025 - ranked 36th
Government and centralized institutions are a SCAM. It's utterly shocking to me that people can't see it.
Ditto for most of the federal agencies. Look at the similar trajectory of health care, after the fascist government takeover... Highest costs and shortest life expectancies among developed countries, with second place in both categories not even close.
To think how many times I defended teachers and voted to increase my property taxes because the poor dears weren't paid enough. In all honesty, I truly paid attention all the way through high school to what my kids were learning. Reviewed homework, asked 3 things they learned that day at the dinner table and went to school functions/ meetings. I wasn't seeing this but my youngest graduated from a charter school 12 years ago.
When I think back about my own education, I was in AP courses and there was nothing overtly unAmerican or Marxist, we still said the flag salute but history and civics classes were being removed from the curriculum even then. But no one knew anything about their teachers' home life, spouse, political opinions or even personal viewpoints.
The only good thing that came from covid was that parents saw first hand the subversive teachers and content in a way that might otherwise still be obscured.
School choice and vouchers for every student will force public schools to deliver a worthwhile and competitive product and possibly destroy the school unions. And maybe a change in attitude that education is a privilege provided by the citizens of this country for the betterment of society and not your right and not a free daycare would help, too.
Charlie, you are the best of the best. I don't understand why God took you when we all needed you here, but I have faith that one day I will. 💔🙏🏻
The rot has emerged out of the Education Departments in universities indoctrinating all the young teachers who go on to destroy the minds (and bodies) of the kids in their classrooms. The collection of freakish teachers posting tiktok videos is like a horror show.
"No parent sends their children to school in order to mold them into a future young adult, so consumed with rage that they are willing to cause harm, injury and yes, even death to other people."
Erhm. Hamas, PLO, PFLP, Hezbollah, others like them do precisely that.
I know your point, but there are in fact people who do revel in hate. Real hate, the kind that must be experienced first-hand to be believed/understood how bone-marrow deep it runs.
You're better at freestyling than I think you give yourself credit for, Ryan.
I can see you using beernuts and other bar-top stuff to mark and underline your points while explaining how things are over a beer or three. The school of "a bloke at the pub said" is not to be underestimated.
An Israeli television personality I follow said that murdering Charlie is what “Globalizing the Intifada” means. It’s not just about the Jews and Israel; it is about destroying the West. The same people are celebrating murder, death, and death cults.
Yep. The overlap between Antifa-groups and pro-islamic/pro-Palestine and pro-hijrah-jihad activists is 100%.
Small wonder, given that the only real difference in the ideologies involved is that Antifa's brand of schizo-Marxism is atheistic, while islam is empathetically not so.
The homo/trans-stuff discrepancy between Antifa and moslems is rationalised as "a tool invented by right-wing extremists to try and divide the downtrodden minorites and cause strife within the movement".
I'll never forget how small children born and raised here in Sweden by "refugee" parents from MENA danced and sang with joy when the Twin Towers fell down. As did many Swedish feminists, for that matter.
The core of it all is, we are their enemy and they want us dead, because their entire being is based on having an enemy to fight and kill. That's why they can no more stop than a robot could.
The thing that I don’t think they quite expected is; Charlie’s murder has also globalized the resistance, woken many from their torpor and the reactions of people have definitely changed the perspective of many “normal” liberals.
The sheer number of vigils worldwide has been amazing and really made a point about dialogue being effective.
Some ideas are creative, they try to give room for things to grow.
And some are entropic.
The difference here is that the entropic ones cannot due to their very nature ever stop; there's no end-state that's achievable, and their method of striving for the impossible end-state is always a destructive one, in some manner or form.
The creative ones don't stop as such either, but since they create instead of destroy, choice and variety and differences can and will continue to exist on their own volition and ability.
If I was to be nitpicky about it - and I am- I'd also point out that it is possible for an idea to go from creative to entropic and vice versa, over time. Compare the original French communitards to the much later Russian communists for a real-life empirical example of creative -> destructive.
Yes, rip the scummy bandaid off these institutions. Stop funding our own demise. These higher education centers have been allowed to spew their hatred of America for far too long. Spreading lies, causing students to marinate in self hatred ( mostly the white students) because they’re taught their country is the evil empire. That’s tough to undo. Their mission is to destroy the country by destroying our children.
Defund the groomers. They are parasitic, produce nothing for which anyone would knowingly pay. Cut off the tax dollars for Marxism; and teach real communist history - there’s been plenty of it.
To debate Charlie (on normal stuff) would have taken at least a modicum of self confidence, intellect and intestinal fortitude which this young man failed to possess.
What passes for "the left" nowadays consists totally of cowards. Conformist cowards. Cowards who shoot people from a rooftop, or in the back. Cowards who mouth off online but in person don't have anything to say except to repeat cult slogans and call other people names. In addition to having no empathy and no morals, they don't know what courage is. Therefore they have no idea that they are cowards. If they knew, they wouldn't be provoking everybody, or abusing everybody, let alone killing people. They have no idea how fortunate they are that the rest of us are civilized people.
Courage of conviction - integrity - means that others’ perceptions change nothing of that conviction. If you are a creature of compliance, any variation will evaporate you.
Yes, I agree, the woke leftists have nothing except how they appear to others. They really do seem to be afraid of "annihilation," "erasure," "invalidation" and the like if someone has another perspective on anything of importance to them.
Ok SimCommander what do you really know and when did you know it? There's video of a previous TP event in Utah where a male brings a megaphone to the stage mic and is quite prepared but does get humiliated by CK. The guy could be Tyler but isn't. But surely Tyler could have attended that event and empathized with the disgraced debater and plotted his desperate revenge forthwith.
Sadly I don't know any more than the rest of us on this one, there's no trove of documents to read through or video to sift. It just stands to reason if you hate somebody enough to publicly execute them, you've probably spend some time watching them in order to build up that hate.
I don't think it's controversial to say that many people on the left repeat attacks they've heard and only very rarely come up with their own. If the killer watched Kirk in action, he almost certainly came across people making the same exact arguments he would make. He saw how Kirk would respond to those arguments and (presumably here) couldn't come up with a satisfactory response. Publicly humiliating Kirk by proving him wrong in front of huge crowd would earn Robinson endless praise, but Robinson was very smart -- smart enough to know he couldn't do that.
True. If asked how President Trump is a fascist, they have NO answer but blubber nonsense. I’ve asked—in sincerity. I have a sister basically on CNN all her waking hours. She has quit contacting me because she is sure where I stand. I have never closed the door on her. She slammed it shut. With family it’s very sad.
The Internet has moved us into uncharted territory. The "radicalization" of the Tyler Robinsons and Robert and Robin Westmans is a short step, because they live and gather in online fantasy land.
We'll learn more about Robinson, but here's a fact:
If he had never gone online, he would probably be a free man today, not facing a murder charge, and Charlie Kirk would still be alive.
But like the statistics of estimates predicated on models on all the lives "saved" by the experimental injection, we only live in this world.
I don't know about the online thing. How did people go wrong pre internet? Some other form of isolation or social awkwardness. Maybe as Gato suggests, he would have. Became a "theater kid" and was exposed to ideas there.
Maybe he could have run into a cult member while in front of a gas and sip on. Saturday night because the chicks laughed at his awkwardness.
He had a family who loved him and who was a conservative family. would it have made a difference had they limited his screen time?
Should a roommate or a concerned friend inform the authorities? Because it sounds like they knew how he felt about Kirk. Maybe at least the Grandma who claims he was conservative could have gotten to know her grandson better.
I certainly would not wear the full mantle of responsibility. I have felt real depression in the past, but for me logging in and speaking to you guys appears to be a boon rather than a bane. Just like radio, books, video game violence, movies, isn't it really the person's reaction and utilization of a tool that determines their outcome rather than the tool itself?
I can relate to your last paragraph. It's self control, it can be difficult at times but I've come up with so strategies to keep me focused. Keeping up with responsibilities, my cats first and foremost and paying rent/bills/roof over my head. If feeling really down I would take a walk, usually at night, to see where I don't want to be, homeless. Like you said logging in here helps a lot and the bonus is finding ways to improve my overall health and to not dependent on big pharma. I feel 100% better in all aspects because of Substack. I've only watched some of Charlie Kirk's debates but this is hitting hard. I think it maybe his faith in God and how things have played out with Trump. It really has me thinking.
Totally agree. The Internet simply accelerates and intensifies a process, and "de-isolates" some of those who would have remained isolated in years past.
I was depressed at times as a teen (stone-age), and it's conceivable that the Internet, had it been available, could have negatively corrupted me. But work soon consumed my time and attention. Work was evidently not enough for Robinson.
At the same time...this is a chicken and the egg thing. The Dark web isn't easily accessed. There has to be a motive to access it, and you have to burn some calories to do so.
Young men in traditional cultures face a traumatic coming of age ritual. It’s the way in which one comes to embrace the adult, gendered body & role. This is our ancient cycle, now muted. Our culture has left much behind that the primal mind will recall.
Everything the hippies did to take down a civilization that was special and working includes the delayed family and growing up. The unintended consequences of that.
Please do not ignore the strong influence of the last 20 years of Marxist ideology (including gender ideology, CRT, and transgenderism) in public schools. I have had heated discussions with my beloved young adult kids be ause they only read/listen to what they learned in school - legacy media. To this day, they tell me that I'm watching fake news because I tune in to FOX News. The plandemic was another pivotal issue. Thank God I saved them from the toxic jabs. But it has been an eye-opening experience to realize how much indoctrination happened during high school and college years.
Well said, Ryan! An entire generation not only listened to Charlie, they adopted some pretty fabulous critical thinking skills to tuck into their handy dandy toolbox 🧰
If there was any proof that free speech works...it is the sad result of assassination. One could almost call this hateful reaction to speech disagreed with as "speechophobia."
I am not so optimistic. How many grandmas were arrested for free speech on January 6th just for being in DC? What were the consequences for arresting Grandma?
The lines are being crossed all around us. Will the next regime continue the long march? Anyone says that the right has all the guns is missing the fact that the left has people willing to use them. Working with law enforcement and military for the last two decades I can assure you the ranks have been filled heavily for some time.
…in short, men aren’t generally “grown up” til 30 yrs. YES, I know there are exceptions! God don’t I know. But it certainly isn’t the “rule” with this generation. If “Dad never came to my games” + “Mom was always too busy to sign the form for the field trip “ = “I gotta shoot this motherfucker for saying this shit!” We are in serious deep shit people.
…in short, men aren’t generally “grown up” til 30 yrs. YES, I know there are exceptions! God don’t I know. But it certainly isn’t the “rule” with this generation. If “Dad never came to my games” + “Mom was always too busy to sign the form for the field trip “ = “I gotta shoot this motherfucker for saying this shit!” We are in serious deep shit people.
We are watching 1926 Europe unfold in front of our eyes.
Here is a picture of Communist Headquarters in Germany in 1926. Note the Antifa flag on the front and the words "antifaschistischenaktion gegen krieg hunger und faschismus" which means "the anti-fascist action against war, hunger and fascism."
Antifa is the militant arm of the Communist Party and calls all non-communists a Fascist. This is not the left. This is communists doing Commie things.
I think there's distinction of wings -- the Communists who are consciously subverting, and useful idiot Leftists. The latter are further subdivided into walking dead zombie ready to riot and/or kill, and those who in the proliferation of a subculture (massively nourished by the superculture of Leftist dominance in the Western mainstream) that includes various styles of behavior, rhetoric and activity, enable the zombies.
Wondering when it would get around to that…that’s The Post however…not “our lady of record”. Because everyone knows if it’s not in the NYT, it probably never happened, right?
OMG, that’s the best idea I’ve heard in years! Unfortunately, we’ve a couple of generations of genuinely functionally illiterate (now) adults…how to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Generations now have been deprived of something they have long (unconsciously) hungered for - LOGIC. Charlie argued from a grounded, logical place and students were amazed to hear a logical mind work after so many years in an educational system that starved them of what they really needed to function in the world - LOGICAL THINKING - HOW to THINK - not WHAT to THINK, but how to think logically, fairly, without hatred, anger and rancor - without resorting to physical violence. Let the Conservative Right model LOGICAL THINKING and SPEAKING, because it is what sets apart the emotional left and the logical right.
your argumwent is that tyler robinson was not "a lefty"?
he's antifa, posted on antifa discords, and was living with his "trans" partner. it's still not clear where he got the rifle, but it looks like someone "dropped it off" for him.
my money is on "same folks from discord" but remains to be seen.
this wild attempt to cast him as "right wing" seems like extreme cope and projection. (as well as outright falsification)
Do you have a source for the antifa claims (especially the discord)? I tried to run this down yesterday and sort of hit a brick wall. Looks like most of the confusion was the ATF misinterpreting the arrows on the casing.
If antifa IS involved, that unlocks a whole new world of possible action against them, which is important because the Portland police refuse to do their jobs and Tina Kotek won't allow Trump to bring in the Guard.
I can't link but see Dr. Robert Malone's substack on the Antifa link. Supposition? I can't tell because I'm paywalled.. I read part of an interview with the killers roommate where Discord was discussed, but cannot remember where. Sorry I can't help more.
I know the authorities mentioned a discord chat with his roommate, but IIRC they didn't say it was an Antifa chatroom. Malone (IMO) makes the same mistake that the ATF did yesterday, assuming the Helldivers memes were Antifa messages.
I'm sure antifa is a smaller deal in Utah than in Portland, but here we know the names of almost all the freaks who riot in the streets, the police just don't do anything about it. But so far, no footage of him at an event or anything as far as I can tell.
Edit - just rewatched yesterday's presser. The officials say he was on discord but never mention antifa or antifa chatrooms.
If I were a prosecutor, after making my case, I would just put that up on a prop in the courtroom (and nothing else) in my closing argument, and then walk back to my desk, and say "i rest my case"
The case in question is a Helldivers 2 meme (how to drop a huge bomb), not the antifa arrows as was reported by Andy Ngo and others. The furry casing is irrelevant to the antifa question.
I want to know where and how he got such good shooting skills that he was able to kill with precision with one shot from 200 yards away. I haven't seen any discussion or analysis anywhere about this. Something about this isn't adding up.
Apparently, a 200 yard shot is not that difficult and there are literally millions of regular Americans that could easily make that shot and have the necessary gear to make it. Kyle Seraphin outlined this with on Viva Frei this last week.
I asked someone I know that has a gun orientation, and they confirmed that.
The attempt I fear is due to various news/podcast comments that his parents were allegedly Rep. & dad was a big Trump supporter. What will they do when they find out he was LDS? But I don’t think (hope) media will let it get far.
I'd just like lefties to have the ideological coherence to try and claim the W for killing him. The fact that it would go poorly for them is beside the point.
The killer? The one whose father's Instagram had a picture of him wearing a Democratic Socialists of America shirt? The one whose high school classmates outed him this morning as "that weird leftist guy"? The one who it turns out was living with and dating a M to F trans person?
SC: when you quoted that "the unvaxxed should be fired, or in camps, or lose their kids." it was not just that, they called for our death, and in many instances, anti-vax doctors were "suicided". In Germany graffiti called for us to be gassed. So it's not just verbal hostility.
I am avoiding a few IRL casual friends and social spaces (like the local market) this weekend, because I'd rather it remain Schrodinger-esque for at least awhile. It's been bad enough to see how some acted during Covid and Trump, and I'm seeing how both of those topics are being used as apologetics in favor of excusing violence. I have a feeling that when this all shakes out, I'm going to have even fewer friends than I do now. You're right. It is tough to realize. I just hope it has a purpose in the end.
I saw a Facebook friend (also from college) who made a third party post, but then also stated her personal reasons for posting it. She feels afraid now as a democrat, a lesbian, and a wife of Hispanic woman that she is being threatened. She believes these are legitimate beliefs. I had no answer. Still trying to think through all this.
Are there a lot of deaths or democrats I am not hearing about aside from the Minnesota individuals?
Have there been any actual deportations of people, just because of their last name being Hispanic?
Any serial killings of lesbians?
This saddens me because these are friends from college.
But it also shines a light.
You see, they are expecting reprisals because it is something they would do, or at least it is in the realm of possibility. They think we are like some posse gathering to together, heading to certain parts of Atlanta, West Hollywood, or a variety of places and go on a "reckoning" of all those not our same color, gender, or alternate lifestyle.
Yes, a huge problem here is a narcissism problem.
Most of us just want to be left alone. We want to marry who we want, have kids, go on vacation, get as many exemptions from paying taxes as possible, and be free to "seek our bliss" which accordint to socialists are most likely frivolous activities that will not help those have equality of outcome.
I suspect she is being told by others on the left/ progressive spectrum that these threats exist. These include well known sources such as NYT and WaPo. I doubt she ever interacts with conservative media or podcasts to verify that the allegations are accurate. An echo chamber effect ramping up fear of opposing viewpoints. Histrionic thinking as a lifestyle. In her real life has any event occurred denying her or her Hispanic spouse any routine daily activities? This might be the starting point for a discussion. Acknowledge that she has fear, but try to identify the origin of these feelings and there connections (or not) to actual personal experiences.
Definitely, it's another tendril of the fear and panic narrative. The right does this as well. If you read something and the reaction to it is fear and panic, be skeptical. You don't need to read conservative media to know the truth; simply interact with reality.
Since the Mainstream has been dominated by Leftists for 2 or 3 decades (at least), if there were such crimes, they would be hyperventilated in panic-mode 24/7.
The problem is that many on both sides are captured by the Mainstream media. It's like an undertow that many just accept as a given. So even the best of us can still feel that undertow. And those who swim in it, are unaware they are in a riptide until it is too late.
And we all understand the double standard so much that many of us don't even question it. We saw the difference between "mostly peaceful protests" and "armed insurrection." We witnessed firsthand how Trump's deployment of troops in DC was considered "fascist" yet the erecting of fences around the Capitol following the trespassing of "unsolicited tourists" in the Capitol building was completely necessary.
Private groups should have the right to invite or expel people for any reason they deem necessary. If I celebrated, for example, anyone I disagree with's misfortune, that should be a reason to remove me.
Although if I hear about someone losing a job like Kimmel, Colbert, Stern, Schwanzenegger, Gene Simmons for their comments about those of us who did not comply with the covid restrictions, it won't be the worse thing in the world.
It shocked me how many of my coworkers; natives who were raised and schooled with what I thought was the lesson of Manzanar, would not merely have turned a blind eye had they lived then. No, they'd help to identify nissei to send to the camps, and one, a former marine, would have volunteered to staff the guard tower.
And that's without getting into the obvious lies they were willing to swallow. How can someone stand in front of someone on a frosty winter morning, both wearing one of those stupid t-shirt face muzzles, watching as their steaming breath fills the 6' space between them, and insist the fool things keep them from infection; were either of them carrying a virus in their lungs?
In both cases, the most sane people peel away from the party first, leaving the more fervent remaining.
But that snowball only goes one way. None of us are going to wake up tomorrow and decide to trust the media again. None of us are going to wake up and join the side of the people cheering assassination.
Jim Polito, AM radio host in New England, on Friday morning 9/12, on air, described that exact experience - where he saw on Thursday online comments by people he knew and had considered reasonable, and is unfortunately having to up his personal security measures as a consequence. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/419-the-jim-polito-show-27542469/
Apparently we continue to need ever more f’in crazy litmus tests because our society keeps giving oxygen to the non-viable Americans. Charlie’s Murderers may be a very good thing, if only to cause people to pause and check themselves, and ideally knock some sense into themselves - I know, may be a tall ask. The libs on my Saturday call avoided the topic entirely, which I found interesting.
Yep. Every time I think I’m done being bothered by respected friends saying something on the internet I’m proven wrong.
Thursday was a long time friend saying something to the effect of:
“if you are bothered about Charlie Kirk and are speaking up now, but didn’t speak up for ‘Palestinian children’ I’m embarrassed to know you… and most of you call yourselves Christians.”
I haven’t yet responded, my sister messaged her privately, maybe the kinder thing to do. I will be responding directly to her post. I have had to pray and ponder for days to think out how I want to say what needs said in a way she may actually consider.
A young lady in my church congregation organized the ill-fated Charlie Kirk event. Many in my congregation were present. Of course I am going to use my voice when those I love are directly impacted. It’s complete whataboutism to suggest I need to decry absolutely every evil act before I can mourn the ones closest to me.
These people have no idea what they have just done. I’m just praying we can turn the tide without more force than words and law.
It’s not just online randoms—the bugs are crawling out of schools (teachers), local governments (city councilmen), clinics & hospitals (medical professionals), etc.
I agree it does feel like cocid times. One becomes afraid to hear your family and friends perspective for fear of losing more people. I thought I had pegged most of the crazies in my life, I've now found a few more. So disappointed, again.
True-some men just do not grow up at all. And you own ALL of your choices, or they wouldn’t be called choices. I’m not sure what you’re calling the 1900’s, 20th century or the 19th century.
It has always been thus, please, 99% of people would turn in Anne Frank.
As for myself, sorry, I am pretty certain I am not a one percenter (Hells Angels parlance).
How about you? Please, lol!
You know what, if you want to get anywhere, this assertion of mine (which is absolutely correct) is quite simply the proper starting point.
This is the human condition. Understanding that this is our animal nature allows us to begin at the beginning and then maybe we can proceed to a resolution of this dominant contradiction that torments us. We are the rational animal, stuck in Shakespeare’s limbo, between ape and angel.
This is what happens when 2 generations are taught hate in schools.
Almost inevitably, the right will do something that is, in terms of society, “right,” but which outrages the Left. Using anti-hate speech policies and laws, faculty members who speak out without a care for the consequences will be sanctioned for what will be, accurately, hate speech.
Then the Left will go crazy - again almost always beginning on campus- with violent rioting justified as “protesting.” The media will inevitably call the bloody, fire-breathing riots “almost always peaceful,” and … we’re off to the races.
In the early 70s when I was living in Hawaii, Dr. Francis Schaeffer came and spoke at UH. In describing what happened during the 60s, he said something very similar. Professors were teaching at the time with no thought of the consequences, and the students rose up to carry out what they had learned. I’ll never forget Dr. Schaeffer saying, almost shouting, “And they [the students] did it! They did it!”
My family put on a luau for him and his wife. I’ll also never forget meeting him, feeling that in that moment he was giving me an absolute attention I had never experienced, and knowing that I was meeting an extraordinarily humble man.
I just found your post while searching if Charlie Kirk referenced Dr Francis Schaeffer. I too met Dr Schaeffer and his wife speaking at the University of Wisconsin maybe a year before he passed away. Both he and his wife took time to speak with me. Charlie Kirk’s beliefs and the way he engaged college students reminded me of Dr Schaffer. I have all of the Dr’s works, admired him all my adult life. Now I’m seeing that same Spirit was in Charlie Kirk. May God comfort and bless his family and continue his ministry and vision.
I just found your post while searching if Charlie Kirk referenced Dr Francis Schaeffer. I too met Dr Schaeffer and his wife speaking at the University of Wisconsin maybe a year before he passed away. Both he and his wife took time to speak with me. Charlie Kirk’s beliefs and the way he engaged college students reminded me of Dr Schaffer. I have all of the Dr’s works, admired him all my adult life. Now I’m seeing that same Spirit was in Charlie Kirk. May God comfort and bless his family and continue his ministry and vision.
Doesn’t even get that far….they’re on TicToc 24x7…they choose an opinion (which is usually mangled history) that they “like”…consider themselves erudite, repost it, repeat it as fact and we’re off to the races. How in THE hell do you fix, undue, that?
Step one is to compete. There are a fair number of non-lefties on TikTok already, but I would really love it if all of the free clips on RushLimbaugh.com would be re-posted on the sites the kids are on. There are some on YouTube, mostly posted 4 years ago when he passed, but they've started posting new ones again this year. That's positive as long as they keep going.
I thought we were supposed to ban TikTok? WTF? The CCP has to be peeing their pants from their laughter at yet another one of our debacles. Well, CAN’T ban it now cause of its “revenue stream” to whomever, not to mention both political parties. What year did TikTok take off exactly? Can’t remember.
I’ve heard they are going to start new regulations and possibly ID requirements soon, not sure if the specifics though. I can say I got on there around 2021 and although I’m not on a lot, I do go on a couple times a week. However, I have taken a lot of effort over time to curate my algorithm so it’s 99% conservative (they will throw in the oddball that’s not too see if they can get a click, generally I just ignore it).
There are quite a few conservative voices on TT, and they pop back up about as far as they are whacked down.
I’ve learned too that if I want to see a non-conservative take on TT, I try to do it from somebody’s link outside of TT. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best way to see something like that without getting my algo changed.
WHO is going to start new regs.? The Chinese co that owns it - Byte Dance? or the CCP? Our government may demand from, and attempt to regulate a privately held Chinese Co. but they really have us by the short hairs (all that personal revenue stream stuff). Unless, of course, Trump has purchased a major % of stock (if possible) like purchasing 10% of Intel, which is getting damn close to mercantilism. Besides all of which I thought we were supposed to be deregulating! I voted & supported Trump but sometimes he gives me fits!
Same for me. I started forming suspicions when my kids came home from high school talking about how their teacher told them it was okay to have an ounce of marijuana. (This was at the time Colorado had just passed their MJ legalization law, which of course contradicted the supreme federal law.) At the time I didn't realize the extent. Looking back I see that was an earlier sign. At my high school we had some liberal teachers and some not, but most tread the line of open (civil) discussion and everyone's right to have an opinion.
You're not genX; we break shit. We were the last generation to know (and we didn't know we would be the last) the basics. I think that's why c19 was such a shock to me.
Its up to genX to change the direction of this country by educating, in particular, genZ on what its meant to be an American.
I don't know if that's possible outside of what is taught within a family, and even that is spotty. My children are very "American" but the grandchildren have had many outside influences. Most are with us...but like this Robinson guy, there is some force that seems to be quite evil in a biblical sense that is infiltrating otherwise sensible brains.
I don't see the indoctrinated (and wussy) millennials doing much (and, lets face it, boomers don't have as much time), but there are a lot of GenX parents born in the 70's that have GenZ kids (mine are twins).
If not genX, who? GenZ and the youngest millennials need guidance because they really don't know what it means to be free.
The good news is that the indoctrination has gotten so clownish that it's actually turned a lot of kids away, or at least put them in a position where they look up Charlie Kirk or Thomas Sowell on YouTube and find out that they make a lot more sense than their gender-confused social studies teacher.
Strauss and Howe in their book Generations talk of this. The nomad generation (Gen X) lead the 2 younger generations through every crisis in history. A crisis tends to repeat every 4 generations (roughly every 80 years). They give examples like the WW2 generals and Truman, Washington, Adam's, Jefferson etc in the revolutionary War; are all of the nomad generation. They lead and make the hard choices like dropping the bomb on Japan to save allied lives. Nomads are pragmatic as a result of their unsheltered childhoods. I see Gen Z in my son and his friends rejecting wokeism and aligning more with Gen X values. They are very different than the " last place gets a trophy" generation that preceded them. Sadly, many Gen z have also been indoctrinated as we just witnessed. My generation have for the most part been silent and allowed weaker people (mainly academics) to influence the last 2 generations. I think for a lot of Gen X, that silence ends now.
I've been thinking the same thing. Charlie Kirk was engaged in exactly what needs to happen everywhere. Millennials (like some sort of sad disco-era interlude between rock n roll and drum machine garbage music of today) are the early crystalline sprinkles of the snowflake generation that grew into the Gen Z avalanche of victimization. Both gens are madly searching through the mess of snow and ice for their identities, latching onto anything that will meet with peer approval. We need to speak with them, listen to them, and provide another view of history that has been so perverted for them by their teachers.
Charlie got to move on up because he had this all figured out & he showed us the way. He finished his task. Now we must remake the world that remains to us.
Ryan, I am so glad that I am not teaching this quarter. Uni is going to be crazy. I just heard that my uni is under investigation for antisemitism. I better strap myself in for the wild ride.
I agree with you about GenX. Strauss and Howe say the same thing in The Fourth Turning is Here. I tell my students that I'm teaching them how to think for themselves, not what to think and giving them some basic life skills.
"I tell my students that I'm teaching them how to think for themselves, not what to think..."
That's the way it ought to be done.
Here, for the past 10-15 years now, it's part of the teacher's instruction to also teach what to think, and the teacher is supposed to share the ideas and values laid out in the "värdegrund"*, not just at work but also in private.
That stuff is a large part - apart from health reasons - why I'm a retired teacher (six years now, getting the "catheder-itch" something fierce some days).
*Code of ethics, but in practice it is a political straight-jacket and has nothing to do with professionalism or integrity. "Värde-" means value, "-grund" here means foundation.
Yes, it started on college campuse in the 1980s, then it moved to high school in the early 2000's, then middle school, and finally elementary schools prior to, during, and since Covid/BLM.
Charlie said, “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.”
The intellimafia is trying to start a civil war. Let's surprise them by resurrecting civil discourse, instead.
I will share a comment I have posted elsewhere and will continue sharing as long as it is necessary to expose the hand of the intellimafia in an effort to stem bloodshed:
We need to take all this news with an enormous grain of salt as the intellimafia works hand-in-hand with the media to concoct a narrative that will cover its tracks, and any presentation of this as a lone crazy gunman is the typical formula used to divert attention from the true perpetrators orchestrating public events to manufacture consent for tyranny.
What the killing of Charlie Kirk tells me is the intellimafia is desperate to kick off a violent culture war. They tried to instigate a race war during the 1960s and failed; I am confident they will fail in this effort, too, but it will not be without bloodshed, most if not all executed by the intellimafia and its hired agitators.
We can curtail that bloodshed, however, by identifying the Problem-Reaction-Solution pattern here as well as in all the other intellimafia’s handiwork over the past century:
1) Problem: Assassinate a controversial figure who engenders heated emotions on both sides ranging from admiration to revulsion.
2) Reaction: Violence, strife, exacerbated division, and civil war. This is the ingredient they want the public to supply, but they will seed it with their own agitators and blanket us with propaganda until people succumb (which I pray they won’t).
3) Solution: They will propose heightened totalitarian restrictions, data collection, Palantir-panopticon surveillance, and curtailments of our liberties.
If we repeatedly expose their trap instead of falling into it, they will not be able to justify #3. It is vital that we point our fingers at the puppetmasters rather than their puppets.
Please read the short introductory essay in my piece on the intellimafia and help me spread awareness that our greatest defense against the intellimafia’s attempts to sow violent discord is to instead enter into respectful dialogue with our perceived opponents, listening to one another’s concerns, and trying to understand their perspective as they try to understand ours:
In other words, we need to rehumanize one another so we experience each other face to face instead of as caricatured villains through screens.
To quote from my essay:
“The intellimafia wants you to think this is about left versus right, gender politics, immigration, race, Trump, and every other hot-button topic they’ve installed in people’s minds so they can mass-manipulate the populace at will.
“They want us to hate, feel outrage, blame the other, strike back, and dive head-last into uncivil war.…
“They want to toss out the ragebait and hide behind the curtain while we dogfight.
“We defeat their attempts to divide, dissipate, and decimate us by refusing to let them play our emotions, cognitive biases, and trauma like a well-worn record.
“We cancel their programming by remembering one another’s humanity, engaging in respectful dialogue, cutting the puppeteers’ strings, and alchemizing pain into love.”
Calling for civil discourse instead of civil war “seems … dubious”? Sounds like you have taken the bait and announced your willingness to supply the Reaction so they can implement the Solution.
I can feel both the tremendous sorrow and also the tremendous push to go towards a dark light. Hard to say what will happen but this I know; if they don’t succeed this time they will keep trying. I’m 60 and can recall when things first went downhill a bit slowly (pre-9/11 for me) and then a lot faster (post-9/11). At least more are waking up now. And for me shows that words are more important than ever. If that is enough for the public discourse, time will show us.
Thank you, Maureen. One of my readers just shared this video with me, and it talks about how darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can. Chase Hughes exposes what is occurring with such clarity and precision, it may be the most important video anyone can watch right now:
I agree, Hesperado, but consider that you have likely only experienced those caricatures through screens and that it is possible the intellimafia has curated (and AI-generated) many of those to paint a false perception of reality that foments rage against a figmentary Goldstein and all he is supposed to represent. In flesh-and-blood reality, instances of those people are so rare as to be negligible, and most drop their personas when they aren't behind a keyboard.
I would be curious to see what you think of the analysis presented in this video:
1) Chase Hughes is conflating the Mainstream with the Alt-Mainstream -- "If you turn on cable news today... maybe you scroll social media... what are you going to see? The absolute fringe. They're going to show you the loudest, dumbest, most cartoonish people from the 'other side' blasted in your face 24/7". The Mainstream is dominated by Leftists (and has been for many decades, only increasing with each passing decade), and they consistently downplay the violence of the Left and, related to that, the violence of the Left’s Black and Muslim Pets.
2) He’s trying to argue that the Left-Right distinction is not real and is only being fostered by some hidden powers to manipulate people. I disagree. The hidden powers or Conspiracy or Cabal or Deep State or Swamp or whatever term we use, has been using Leftism for over a hundred years. Leftism is the vehicle for the Communist project of subverting the West.
Either this Hughes guy is not thinking things through and has little grasp of history, or he’s deliberately creating a “dialectic” muddle of obfuscation.\
Just one example of thousands one could cite to show the subtle (often not so subtle) way the Mainstream downplays the problem of Muslims — the reports about the summer of 2023 shooting by a Muslim at an intersection in Fargo, North Dakota when the Muslim killed one policeman and wounded two others before being sent to Paradise by a fourth policeman. This was no minor incident, it could have been much worse. One has to go to a small localized webpage put out by the local police to get the disturbing facts:
After the shooting, police found numerous guns, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, a homemade grenade and explosives in the gunman’s vehicle. Investigators determined the gunman likely planned a larger attack due to the number of guns and explosives found.
Now notice how MSNBC says in their headline “the gunman” and avoid “Muslim” or his Arabic name.
Thank you so much for a) taking the time to watch the video and b) provide a thoughtful analysis, Hesperado. I wish I had the time give it the response it deserves, but I have waited until the last possible minute to do taxes and must now turn my attention to marathoning on that, regrettably. I just wanted to express my appreciation, though.
P.S. If you can spare the time, these excellent articles articulate my own position and what I might say if I did have the time to respond more specifically to the legitimate concerns you raised :-)
It took me a day or two to realize what I was feeling as I processed the assassination of Kirk. I was not a follower of Kirk, saw maybe a handful of videos of him, and was just generally aware of him. But for some reason, his assassination was bothering me quite a bit. I placed the feeling, it was the same way I felt around March 9th, 2020. Just before the lockdowns started, and shit changed.
I'm hoping there's reports of hundreds of young men sitting at tables on college campuses this weekend with a sign a video camera. I hope that the young men getting radicalized by this can keep the high ground.
I may have to buy a camera and head over to Oberlin some weekend.
If you do that prepare accordingly. I suggest you watch videos by Cam Higby, Nick Shirley and Nate Friedman. All of them are routinely assaulted by leftists who are enraged simply by their presence with a camera and a microphone.
I agree that these are dangerous times for us- we dont want to become the left. And we've been pushed so far. If we give in to our worse instincts, we risk becoming like the left, and we would not be using Charlies death as a opportunity to turn evil into good, but only into greater evil. Its all about persuasion to get the other to fix themselves. Also we can only do the best we can, but make sure your effort can be seen as worthy in the long run. Some of the most effective people were originally on the other side and were convinced to change sides, and you can only convince somebody if you appeal to their intellect, and not by fear or anger
Hollywood made silly films about the glory of killing Nazis.
Lefty lunatics made "punch a nazi!" a popular political slogan.
Labelling everyone who disagreed with them a nazi set in train the predictable consequences of this mania.
Charlie's dead because he wasn't an extremist, wasn't violent, wasn't radical.
He was, in point of fact, everything the tone-policing RINO posers of the GOP machinery say that we should all be. He was calm, rational, restrained, peaceful, and mostly far more respectful of his questioners than their questions deserved.
The real right can either fight back using the weapons of the enemies of civilization or we can fight back using the weapons of civilization, but we must fight back.
It's also worth noting that calling people nazis dates back a lot further than people expect. The first Republican to be called "literally Hitler" by Democrats was Thomas Dewey, pretty much while the actual Hitler was still decomposing. It's always fun to show those receipts to the younger lefty crowd who think that it's only ever been used against Trump because it's too serious of a charge to throw around lightly.
Well...we brought the Nazis over here and they infiltrated the fringe right. We also brought the worst of the Soviet commies here and they infiltrated the fringe left...that fringe has been growing longer and longer as they work to turn the US communist...they hide it by using the term "socialism" but that is a misnomer. The goal is communism.
I'm going to disagree slightly. The goal of the people in charge at the top is neo-feudalism. They sell it to the useful idiots as socialism/communism, but it's not. That's why the rich and powerful occasionally mention the need for a few billion peasants to die en route to utopia.
I heard a great line that is in the unedited version of, I believe, Godfather 2: In response to a young man’s pursuit of a fine arts degree and his reasoning - didn’t want to be a capitalist because that’s evil - Michael Corleone said something along the lines of “that’s a lie the rich want you to believe.” Actual film buffs will improve upon my telling.
Bad Cat, I sure do appreciate your perspectives. You are at least as courageous and honest with yourself as Charlie was.
Imma gonna resort to prayer. (A highly revered and respected Zen Buddhist teacher said she could feel the prayers being said over her as she dealt with what was ultimately a lethal cancer (long before C19). While my path is different, I was greatly encouraged by her report.)
I’m honestly not sure what the difference between neo-feudalism and socialism/communism actually is. Both rely on the absence of a middle class, a small cohort of extremely rich and powerful people controlling everything that matters (and human nature being what it is, that cohort will try to make their position hereditary, overtly or not), and a mass underclass that dependent on and thus dominated by the ruling cohort.
I don't actually disagree. In theory the Marxist versions aren't supposed to give unlimited rights to the ruling class and everyone is allegedly equal. In practice Marxist states have operated in an identical way to neo-feudalism minus the pageantry (although North Korea has made occasional attempts at that).
I mostly bring it up because it's pretty clear from what they say that the West's wannabe ruling class all fancies themselves royalty rather than just functionaries.
Charlie had no guile nor anything to be ashamed of. More than most, he lived out his beliefs.
His opponents were not like this, they were split. On the one hand, they wanted to justify amorality and license with a covering of false virtue that Charlie could handily puncture.
On the other hand, their own God-given consciences witnessed against them. Charlie exposed an unresolvable dilemma: that at root, we know what is right but are powerless to perform it.
Only Christ can bring peace. The book of Romans is quite pertinent just now!
"Charlie's dead because he wasn't an extremist, wasn't violent, wasn't radical"
Correct.
Charlie Kirk wasn't killed because he was a Nazi.
He was called a Nazi so that he could be killed.
Everyone with eyes sees that now, and realizes that "Charlie" could be them. This is driving consequences. Will drive consequences. Our job is to push consequences, intelligently and without flinching.
"He was called a Nazi so that he could be killed."
Yes. This is the ugly truth about leftists that the figleaf of their self-proclaimed compassion (but only for people who live far away from them) can no longer hide.
In case anybody thinks our cat has gone overboard a little in this one, take a look at www.charliesmurderers.com. They say they have upwards of 20,000 submissions at this point. Maybe that isn't a lot as a subset of the population; but can there be any doubt it is the tip of an iceberg?
This is what I think gato was warning could evolve into Hell. This sort of reaction seems justified in light of what’s happening. But it will be hijacked by sadistic puritans and it will be taken too far. I already see people posted on that site whose posts aren’t that bad.
I was assured by the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) that it wasn't cancellation, it was simply consequences for saying and doing things. So obviously it's still simple consequences when it's happening to them.
I think having a website for people to post (rat out) people’s reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk is disturbing. Not going there. Handle it locally and personally if you know someone speaking like this. I would guess skimming through the left social media platform bluesky would almost generate similar results.
It is extremely disturbing! Even more disturbing is what is being posted. In my opinion it is entirely appropriate for people to lose their employment over publicly (even if they suppose anonymously) celebrating murder, if their employers so choose. I would like to know if my doctor, or my (imaginary) children's teachers, or the people my husband employs, hold such views. There was a brewery owner who applauded this murder and posted that he pissed in the beers of persons whose views he found repugnant. I also do not like my tax dollars supporting public employees condoning any murder any time for any reason. Just skimming bluesky only raises awareness of what some people are saying. Absent consequences, it is normalized, and it metastasizes. Stephen King, at least, acknowledged that he was wrong and apologized. I am not opposed to second chances..."Sensitivity Training" used to be the way to go and maybe some employers will choose that route.
As an Idahoan, I am not pleased that the man on the scooter was attacked. This is exactly the opposite of what Charlie Kirk would have wanted. I have watched a lot of Charlie's work (mostly on campuses) during the past 2 years. He'd be horrified that someone got beat up for expressing free speech. I also don't like that woman on that Twitter thread in the comments who is obviously super angry and vindictive - I hope she doesn't believe that's Christian behavior, because it isn't. I do like that I see plenty of people who also decry the violence against scooter guy. People could have just ignored him. That beating is a HORRIBLE look.
My friend and I learned about the vigil too late otherwise we'd have been there. It's just a few minutes from my home.
I see these howls from demons on the left are just evil and I'm paying them no mind. I have mostly avoided social media for a few days. That's the best thing to do as many of these are indeed operatives or bots.
It is obvious to me that the Color Revolution continues, and they want us in a civil war. I won't do anything to assist in that bullshit.
If one of your friends cheers on this assassination and/or says Kirk was a bigot, racist, misogynist, etc. then they obviously never saw his work. I am not a conservative, MAGA or Republican but I loved what he was attempting to do - open up dialog. Like I said, I watched him for a good 2 years and not once did anything hateful ever come out of his mouth. The people saying that are lying or got their info from MSNBC, etc. Much like the ignorant girl in the video who lauded the assassination but couldn't even tell you what was so offensive about Kirk, these people have no shame - they literally don't even care if they know nothing. That in itself is scary.
Stephen King continues to be an absolute asshole. Nothing new there.
Well, you just have no self-control. That takes practice. It's not easy. You know, like when you're 2 years old you can throw a temper tantrum and react to everything and it's natural. As an adult, you should have moved on from that.
Setting and enforcing appropriate boundaries. It's also the nuance in the enforcement. A punch in the nose. Not a murder or a maiming. The person that provoked, in THIS environment - really really stupid because few understands nuance and how to wield it.
I'm ok with it. Poking at people that are already off balance and highly upset is retarded. If you want to wrap yourself in bacon and go into the lion's den, that's on you. People today have trouble with nuance. Don't murder should be the easiest. When that's gone, we are really in trouble, because anything more subtile is completely lost in the broader ability to reason. Our law is built on a foundation of "the reasonable man". There's been decades of too much coddling of bad behaviour of the left. Those survey results - the ability to reason is out the window in the broader culture. The non left, particularly libertarians, struggle with how to show tough love and how to draw and enforce appropriate boundaries, just as the left has trouble with recognizing that other people are entitled to boundaries. You want to go to a funeral and say ha ha he's dead, don't look to me for sympathy when someone decks you. I'm old enough to remember when society understood that you can't reason with some people, bullies in particular, and the need for a good punch in the nose. That's nuanced and the understanding of how and when is completely lost today. For the people incapable of nuance - we have a right to free speech. That boundary is worth defending and going to a campus to speak freely should never be wrapping in bacon and going into the lion's den and when it becomes that we all must act to enforce that appropriate boundary. If we want a society that debates freely, as we once had, we have to nurture and foster that.
As a Christian, I am taught to turn the other cheek for something as benign as some idiot yelling (in passing) a vile taunt. But then, I'm female, and I've had to deal with that all my life. If I decided to attack everyone who did that, I would probably be in jail by now, or dead.
I will reiterate that anyone who falls for the deep state psyops crafted for you is acting on emotion and not grounded in reality or critical thinking.
A bully to me is not someone who drive-by taunts. A bully is someone who actually threatens you psychologically and/or physically. If these weak men couldn't keep it together over a taunt then I really don't know what to say to you.
This is freedom of speech. You don't have to like it but you have to respect our laws, which includes the fact that assault is illegal and an arrestable offense, no matter what someone said to you.
You are going to get a war whether you want one or not. Prepare. And remember: There is no virtue in losing. As Patton is said to have said... No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
Such rage! It's quite sexy you know. Living in your parent's basement with nothing but a joystick and empty fastfood wrappers for company. You should get out more often and try meeting some people. Get involved in sports or something. Maybe go to a bar and practice talking like that out loud.
The mad-crowd disease that has infected the far left is truly something else. I believe social media may be partly to blame, but that is no excuse for what we are seeing & hearing. The last time I checked, humans still had free will. IMHO this is your best post. Thanks for sharing it. 🤘😎🤘
I think a good portion of blame falls on the teachers and professors spouting nonsense and anti-American values day in and day out. Another portion of blame falls on Dem leaders, mayors, DAs, and governors pushing cashless bail with criminals immediately back out on the streets attacking those who want to be left alone. Many see the criminals as victims and ignite the true victims. Excuses and soft crime peddling, as if they are virtuous, when they are guilty of destroying their cities. Criminals need to do time, not released back out to reoffend. People need to know there is justice. Right now we see little justice and fake virtue signaling.
Thank you for this essay. As a person who graduated from high school during the time of the Vietnam war I have seen a lot of violence associated with political issues. There were the riots about the war itself, race riots like the Rodney King thing, and the assassination attempt on President Reagan. The point is there have always been radical people or groups but the new radicals are different. I think firstly we have medicated a lot of the young people into a psychotic state for years and now the harm is becoming obvious. Add into the mix the transgender thing where we take a mentally ill person then pump them full of dangerous drugs to modify their appearance greatly decreasing the ability to see reality and you get the gasoline on a fire thing. Add more fuel with social media and biased news and you have a five alarm fire.
I grew up during the same period and one particular moment that stands out to me was when “Hate” became a crime. A federal crime. At the time I remarked to a friend that making an emotion a crime was an extremely slippery slope. An then came “hate speech” followed quickly by “your words are violence”. That is how they justify shutting down conversation and murdering someone for inciting debate.
Totally agree! I hate to sound like one of those back in my day people but back in my day we pretty much had to figure how to handle bullying in our own way. Some used humor, some punched them in the mouth, some avoided them, whatever worked. It definitely prepared us for adult life.
As is always the case with ‘hate crimes’, this definition requires the government to assess the mindset of the person who committed the crime. Does Jack hate all Latinos, or just the one who totaled his car? Does Jack hate all women, or the specific government employee who sucks at her job? Guess who gets to decide!
“Your honor, this can’t be a hate crime because I only dislike the defendant.”
But even this can’t be an actual defense, because it’s also illegal to spread content that FOMENTS hatred — meaning you don’t even have to do the hating yourself IF GOVERNMENT SAYS YOUR POST COULD GET OTHERS TO HATE.
Well said. Add to that explosive mix the available porn, addictive video games, snuff/horror films, and other things the youth get addicted to which destroy their minds and ability to relate to other humans.
We have heard the other side. To have productive dialogue both sides must be willing to engage. I’m all for debating ideas however, if the rebuttal is a bullet to the head we know dialogue is already dead and must plan and respond accordingly. Charlie Kirk’s assassination just killed the remaining middle ground. Scott Adams nailed it.
the time has come to pick sides for real and neutrality is no longer much of an option.
the key to this is making sure that the sorting hat runs well and accurately.
and that takes dialogue both to find those with whom we may share a social contract and to identify those with whom this is impossible.
fortunately, without actually getting them to paint themselves in fluorescent colors and stand under blacklights, it would be difficult to get the "baddies" to do a better job of identifying themselves.
I fear the sorting hat will be an increase in assassinations or assassination attempts. That glee that the Crazies on the left have shown at Charlie Kirk's murder, and their social media call for "who's next" are very ominous signs. This is their first shot of dopamine since Trump won the election and they are going to be wanting more.
We need a simple question that gets to the core crux of the issue regarding the balance of power between individual and state.
It is not perfect, but something like “who is the ultimate authority in someones life?” would get pretty close with response such as the individual, their family, their deity, etc that they recogonize individual ageny or at least submission to a moral code
Avoid or do not grant power to those with answers related to government, experts, credentialism, AI, social media etc.
Free speech on X and BSky worked like a charm to help thousands of awful leftists self-deport from normal, ethical life. In another era, on a different side of a bell curve, they would be Klansmen cheering the deaths of MLK and RFK. But they weren't yelling on a dusty streetcorner in SomethingBoro, Dixie, limiting their "reach." They were supercharged by digital cameraderie and network effects. The next trantifa shooter saw their reaction; the outcome, sadly, may depend on whether his dad took him shooting, or not.
I was hoping you'd write about Charlie Kirk's murder. Thank you for doing so with your usual thorough thoughtfulness. I think the way forward is to do what you said, what Charlie would have done had the bullet missed, and what his lioness of a widow is doing. Keep engaging others in the agora. Find the common ground with anyone regardless of other differences.
Those who shatter the social contract that requires us to exhibit basic decency when someone is murdered (if you can't say something nice, then just shut the hell up) deserve to be shunned. If they have positions of responsibility and power they should lose them because they have proven themselves untrustworthy and possibly even dangerous. We don't need to use violence, not even be verbally aggressive in most cases, we just need to be strong and resolute, the way Charlie was. He was one in a billion, God rest his soul, but we can still use his example.
Robert Malone wrote a substack today identifying a group called trans antifa. Who is organising such groups, who is funding them? Why are they even around? Do they feel that alienated from the rest of? By killing a man such as Charlie Kirk, what does that solve? So many questions, so few answers.
They've been around for a long time. I was writing about them in 2016! Transtifa seem to have gotten away with everything and anything for the past 10 years.
More: back in 2020 I watched antifa riots every single night for 3-4 months straight. I wasn’t comfortable uploading livestreams, but I watched as soon as videos were uploaded. Lara Logan in particular published a lot of information about this al-qaida-style group. Andy Ngo wrote a book about it. And today I see this very good summary published by Sam Faddis, reiterating much of what I learned years ago. At that time there was video of antifa training in Syria…
I will admit. I feel a bit of guilt about enjoying watching several people learn that they are no longer in charge. The two I enjoyed most were:
1) Guy on a scooter riding through a Kirk vigil shouting, "Fuck Charlie Kirk!" Getting pulled down and beat down. He was still shouting shit after someone dragged him to the cops for his own protection.
2) Guy sitting at a table with a sign saying "Charlie Kirk Deserved It" getting pushed into the fountain he was sitting in front of.
But if I were on a jury, I'd probably acquit the people involved.
I think stupid people physically doing stupidly provocative things in public win stupid prizes. Scooter dude was basically begging for an ass kicking, and he got one. Same with fountain boy. This is a different breaking of the social contract, summed up as “don’t be an ghoulish a-hole in public or there will be consequences.” It’s actually easier to deal with as a society because it’s localized and the consequences can be immediate.
Great analysis as always Gato. Your position on keeping your comments section open to all comers is critically important to me. I typically (not always, but mostly) stop reading Substackers who limit comments to paid subscribers - I presume they are afraid of wrong think and are therefore not serious. What would Charlie do?
FWIW, restricting comments to paid supporters almost certainly increases the ratio of paid to unpaid subs -- so there's a little bit of financial incentive there. However, people like gato and myself determined that gatekeeping the comments section isn't worth the cash.
No, I certainly get that. It’s a rule of thumb - to be honest, it’s usually triggered by reading a half-witted take I want to respond to but can’t. I read and enjoy your stuff, btw.
Haha! I have a remedy for that - if it is truly stupid I restack it with the comment I would've made. I know I have no engagement stats to speak of, but if I know human nature, the poster will take note of someone re-stacking their stuff and read the comment. Low calorie, but satisfying just the same!
As long as I can reply and share or repost, I am happy to oblige the person providing their time, talent, and skill. I appreciate their generosity to those of us in the peanut gallery.
On Stephen King: I've always been surprised that others never seemed able to smell his stink.
His entire body of work is torture porn, with the exception of "Salem's Lot" which was perhaps his final expression of comprehension of what it means to be human.
Exactly. Left and Right are political constructs to divide us into tribal factions so we war with each other, instead of fighting the real enemy who created those constructs.
fascism and communism are one and the same! They are both Big Daddy government will take care of you. Central Planning will make it all right. Except it won't! Why? Because concentration of power always and everywhere becomes corrupt! You give your government total power and you will have corrupt totalitarianism.
"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide."
The way I put it is that the fascists are just communists who are smart enough to realize they can't actually run big industry, so they co-opt it and "manage" it through political means instead.
Very well said! I'm slowly struggling through a similar article, about the only thing I can add is that this reminds me of the height of the covid madness, when "friends" would openly state the unvaxxed should be fired, or in camps, or lose their kids.
Basically nobody cares what Very Online Randoms are saying about Charlie Kirk, but they're reacting in horror to what the people they know IN REAL LIFE are saying about Charlie Kirk. That changes the perspective immensely. Instead of "those people over there wish bad things upon Charlie (and by extension me)," it's more like "the people I know in this room wish bad things upon Charlie (and by extension me)."
It's tough to realize that your friends and neighbors you considered "good people" would happily turn in Anne Frank.
I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating:
He wasn't assassinated because he spoke out, without fear of reprisal, rather because an entire generation LISTENED to him.
That is the real threat the Left can not abide.
The good news is they're losing the argument because they refuse to welcome debate. And, so, we win because only one sides voice is being heard by reasonable people, and those that are unreasonable (and full of hate) only hear the vacuous "voice" of the dying MSM echo-chamber.
On a lighter note, perhaps the good news is they'll burn all schools and universities in america down and then we can simply refuse to rebuild them. k-12 students aren’t learning anything but how to be useless anyway...;)
OK you convinced me to spoil a little bit of the article.....
Everybody knows Robinson could have simply walked into the event and debated Kirk on the issues. The problem is Robinson knew that Kirk would absolutely annihilate him in front of the whole audience. (He'd probably seen Kirk destroy the same arguments Robinson would have made.)
So because he can't win the battle of words, Robinson decides to be a fucking coward who needs to stop the words in another way.
But the words aren't going to stop, and in fact they will start being repeated by more and more people who realize what time it is.
The best quote I have heard about this subject comes from a Greek poet who died a few years ago. He said, "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds". I pray this is how Charlie's legacy moves forward.
Bam!💥 Love it! 😍
That is so true. The lunatics unleashed some pretty awesome pent up energy! They have zero idea what’s coming.
I am a seed well past germination. My main stock was a bit wobbly, but I have received some healthy minerals and tender loving care these past few years.
My flower is about to populate and grow big gorgeous fruits.
How about that!? 🙏❤️😆💯🐒
That quote is perfect.
love that.
💯‼️👏👏👍♥️
Exactly. Nailed it.
It all begins in the public school classroom starting in Kindergarten and continues to fester all tge way onto the college campus.
No one is born a hateful person. Hate is taught.
No parent sends their children to school in order to mold them into a future young adult, so consumed with rage that they are willing to cause harm, injury and yes, even death to other people.
The rage which gato refers to is taught at a very early age, nurtured, coddled and fueled by those who hate America and very much want to see the country destroyed. Tge American public schools are simply churning out angry activists!
I respectfully submit we have two generations of Americans marinated in propaganda which dehumanizes others based on differing political opinions.
Deprogramming begins in the American public schools.
While we debate, the fascist left is motivated to act, propaganda is couched to bypass reason, and simply act for good or bad, and Obama brought forward since 20o8.
We have an entire generation inculcated into their propaganda.
I’m convinced that the only way to stop what is happening is to remove the incidious methodology which has allowed school teachers (and administrators) to exploit the youth they are entrusted to teach.
Sorry that was long. Just freestyling.
What Charlie did well was try to find a connection with that unsound mind and help it reorganize into sounder judgements.
This will work for many. Most we see is the result of conditioning, not genetics. The nurture v. nature debate. The number of genetically suspect minds is blessedly small. The number of environmentally polluted minds is tragically large.
We have some industrial polluters pumping filth into our most precious natural resource. It's the sources of pollution that we must clean up. Schools, media entertainment, the law profession, every perch of cultural and societal high ground is occupied by industrial mind polluters. How to clean up a toxic superfund site respecting disagreements over what is pollution is the challenge.
Yes. Well stated, as usual.
Cut the public (& foreign / subversive) funding.
I think we would both agree that it's not coincidence this happened right about exactly the time the DoE took over education.
Yes. Its so obvious. Why would we want to continue to do the same thing that's been a complete failure coming on 5 decades?! People cling to our institutions, even though they are corrupt, venal, incompetent, and working against the mission of the institution.
Facts speak loud. You could plot the hate and ignorance taught at schools along the same path as our declining proficiency since the formation of tge DOE.
1978 - we had an educational system that was the envy of the world - students ranked number one in proficiency in the world.
1979 - Dept. Of Ed formed.
1980 - proficiency immediately declines.
2025 - ranked 36th
Government and centralized institutions are a SCAM. It's utterly shocking to me that people can't see it.
Nuff said.
Ditto for most of the federal agencies. Look at the similar trajectory of health care, after the fascist government takeover... Highest costs and shortest life expectancies among developed countries, with second place in both categories not even close.
To think how many times I defended teachers and voted to increase my property taxes because the poor dears weren't paid enough. In all honesty, I truly paid attention all the way through high school to what my kids were learning. Reviewed homework, asked 3 things they learned that day at the dinner table and went to school functions/ meetings. I wasn't seeing this but my youngest graduated from a charter school 12 years ago.
When I think back about my own education, I was in AP courses and there was nothing overtly unAmerican or Marxist, we still said the flag salute but history and civics classes were being removed from the curriculum even then. But no one knew anything about their teachers' home life, spouse, political opinions or even personal viewpoints.
The only good thing that came from covid was that parents saw first hand the subversive teachers and content in a way that might otherwise still be obscured.
School choice and vouchers for every student will force public schools to deliver a worthwhile and competitive product and possibly destroy the school unions. And maybe a change in attitude that education is a privilege provided by the citizens of this country for the betterment of society and not your right and not a free daycare would help, too.
Charlie, you are the best of the best. I don't understand why God took you when we all needed you here, but I have faith that one day I will. 💔🙏🏻
The rot has emerged out of the Education Departments in universities indoctrinating all the young teachers who go on to destroy the minds (and bodies) of the kids in their classrooms. The collection of freakish teachers posting tiktok videos is like a horror show.
"No parent sends their children to school in order to mold them into a future young adult, so consumed with rage that they are willing to cause harm, injury and yes, even death to other people."
Erhm. Hamas, PLO, PFLP, Hezbollah, others like them do precisely that.
I know your point, but there are in fact people who do revel in hate. Real hate, the kind that must be experienced first-hand to be believed/understood how bone-marrow deep it runs.
You're better at freestyling than I think you give yourself credit for, Ryan.
I can see you using beernuts and other bar-top stuff to mark and underline your points while explaining how things are over a beer or three. The school of "a bloke at the pub said" is not to be underestimated.
An Israeli television personality I follow said that murdering Charlie is what “Globalizing the Intifada” means. It’s not just about the Jews and Israel; it is about destroying the West. The same people are celebrating murder, death, and death cults.
Yep. The overlap between Antifa-groups and pro-islamic/pro-Palestine and pro-hijrah-jihad activists is 100%.
Small wonder, given that the only real difference in the ideologies involved is that Antifa's brand of schizo-Marxism is atheistic, while islam is empathetically not so.
The homo/trans-stuff discrepancy between Antifa and moslems is rationalised as "a tool invented by right-wing extremists to try and divide the downtrodden minorites and cause strife within the movement".
I'll never forget how small children born and raised here in Sweden by "refugee" parents from MENA danced and sang with joy when the Twin Towers fell down. As did many Swedish feminists, for that matter.
The core of it all is, we are their enemy and they want us dead, because their entire being is based on having an enemy to fight and kill. That's why they can no more stop than a robot could.
The thing that I don’t think they quite expected is; Charlie’s murder has also globalized the resistance, woken many from their torpor and the reactions of people have definitely changed the perspective of many “normal” liberals.
The sheer number of vigils worldwide has been amazing and really made a point about dialogue being effective.
Lolol. Yeah, I see what your saying, and how it applies to Theocratic collectivist societies.
But I hope that doesn't apply here...on balance.
But it could if we don't stop the "march" now.
Some ideas are creative, they try to give room for things to grow.
And some are entropic.
The difference here is that the entropic ones cannot due to their very nature ever stop; there's no end-state that's achievable, and their method of striving for the impossible end-state is always a destructive one, in some manner or form.
The creative ones don't stop as such either, but since they create instead of destroy, choice and variety and differences can and will continue to exist on their own volition and ability.
If I was to be nitpicky about it - and I am- I'd also point out that it is possible for an idea to go from creative to entropic and vice versa, over time. Compare the original French communitards to the much later Russian communists for a real-life empirical example of creative -> destructive.
Yes, rip the scummy bandaid off these institutions. Stop funding our own demise. These higher education centers have been allowed to spew their hatred of America for far too long. Spreading lies, causing students to marinate in self hatred ( mostly the white students) because they’re taught their country is the evil empire. That’s tough to undo. Their mission is to destroy the country by destroying our children.
Defund the groomers. They are parasitic, produce nothing for which anyone would knowingly pay. Cut off the tax dollars for Marxism; and teach real communist history - there’s been plenty of it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eewxo3oAw20
We can have a discussion about why "public" schools continue to exist and to be funded by our tax money.
Not just the schools. Online is every bit as toxic if not more.
Gato, one of your best posts ever!
Read it twice.
To debate Charlie (on normal stuff) would have taken at least a modicum of self confidence, intellect and intestinal fortitude which this young man failed to possess.
What passes for "the left" nowadays consists totally of cowards. Conformist cowards. Cowards who shoot people from a rooftop, or in the back. Cowards who mouth off online but in person don't have anything to say except to repeat cult slogans and call other people names. In addition to having no empathy and no morals, they don't know what courage is. Therefore they have no idea that they are cowards. If they knew, they wouldn't be provoking everybody, or abusing everybody, let alone killing people. They have no idea how fortunate they are that the rest of us are civilized people.
Courage of conviction - integrity - means that others’ perceptions change nothing of that conviction. If you are a creature of compliance, any variation will evaporate you.
Yes, I agree, the woke leftists have nothing except how they appear to others. They really do seem to be afraid of "annihilation," "erasure," "invalidation" and the like if someone has another perspective on anything of importance to them.
If you can’t control your internal state, you must control the thoughts & behaviors of others.
Ok SimCommander what do you really know and when did you know it? There's video of a previous TP event in Utah where a male brings a megaphone to the stage mic and is quite prepared but does get humiliated by CK. The guy could be Tyler but isn't. But surely Tyler could have attended that event and empathized with the disgraced debater and plotted his desperate revenge forthwith.
Sadly I don't know any more than the rest of us on this one, there's no trove of documents to read through or video to sift. It just stands to reason if you hate somebody enough to publicly execute them, you've probably spend some time watching them in order to build up that hate.
I don't think it's controversial to say that many people on the left repeat attacks they've heard and only very rarely come up with their own. If the killer watched Kirk in action, he almost certainly came across people making the same exact arguments he would make. He saw how Kirk would respond to those arguments and (presumably here) couldn't come up with a satisfactory response. Publicly humiliating Kirk by proving him wrong in front of huge crowd would earn Robinson endless praise, but Robinson was very smart -- smart enough to know he couldn't do that.
True. If asked how President Trump is a fascist, they have NO answer but blubber nonsense. I’ve asked—in sincerity. I have a sister basically on CNN all her waking hours. She has quit contacting me because she is sure where I stand. I have never closed the door on her. She slammed it shut. With family it’s very sad.
Agree 100% ... just also adding that maybe there are other parts to the picture that may(?) all fit together ... https://tierneyrealnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/dark-web
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/is-there-something-more-nefarious?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1225061&post_id=173489995&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3zl5l&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Tierny real news delves into everything and connects the important dots. She has a long history in the media and politics.
I believe he did engage Kirk in a verbal exchange, either that day or at another venue.
The perp was pro-trans ya’ll.
https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-tyler-robinson-lived-with-transgender-partner/
The Internet has moved us into uncharted territory. The "radicalization" of the Tyler Robinsons and Robert and Robin Westmans is a short step, because they live and gather in online fantasy land.
We'll learn more about Robinson, but here's a fact:
If he had never gone online, he would probably be a free man today, not facing a murder charge, and Charlie Kirk would still be alive.
But like the statistics of estimates predicated on models on all the lives "saved" by the experimental injection, we only live in this world.
I don't know about the online thing. How did people go wrong pre internet? Some other form of isolation or social awkwardness. Maybe as Gato suggests, he would have. Became a "theater kid" and was exposed to ideas there.
Maybe he could have run into a cult member while in front of a gas and sip on. Saturday night because the chicks laughed at his awkwardness.
He had a family who loved him and who was a conservative family. would it have made a difference had they limited his screen time?
Should a roommate or a concerned friend inform the authorities? Because it sounds like they knew how he felt about Kirk. Maybe at least the Grandma who claims he was conservative could have gotten to know her grandson better.
I certainly would not wear the full mantle of responsibility. I have felt real depression in the past, but for me logging in and speaking to you guys appears to be a boon rather than a bane. Just like radio, books, video game violence, movies, isn't it really the person's reaction and utilization of a tool that determines their outcome rather than the tool itself?
I can relate to your last paragraph. It's self control, it can be difficult at times but I've come up with so strategies to keep me focused. Keeping up with responsibilities, my cats first and foremost and paying rent/bills/roof over my head. If feeling really down I would take a walk, usually at night, to see where I don't want to be, homeless. Like you said logging in here helps a lot and the bonus is finding ways to improve my overall health and to not dependent on big pharma. I feel 100% better in all aspects because of Substack. I've only watched some of Charlie Kirk's debates but this is hitting hard. I think it maybe his faith in God and how things have played out with Trump. It really has me thinking.
I am glad to hear that. Without substack chances are we would be talking in comment feeds to Rumble videos.
Totally agree. The Internet simply accelerates and intensifies a process, and "de-isolates" some of those who would have remained isolated in years past.
I was depressed at times as a teen (stone-age), and it's conceivable that the Internet, had it been available, could have negatively corrupted me. But work soon consumed my time and attention. Work was evidently not enough for Robinson.
I believe shadowy, dubiously funded groomers stalk certain sites in search of the vulnerable. I hope this is unearthed.
The Dark web is a breeding ground for those that are easily convinced they must take action. It's a reality that needs to be confronted.
At the same time...this is a chicken and the egg thing. The Dark web isn't easily accessed. There has to be a motive to access it, and you have to burn some calories to do so.
Young men in traditional cultures face a traumatic coming of age ritual. It’s the way in which one comes to embrace the adult, gendered body & role. This is our ancient cycle, now muted. Our culture has left much behind that the primal mind will recall.
Everything the hippies did to take down a civilization that was special and working includes the delayed family and growing up. The unintended consequences of that.
Which was CIA, or so we find in Laurel Canyon and other works.
::Nods head::
How many thousands of people can we say that about tho? Has/is social media become “the gun you need a permit for”? I’m kinda thinking yeah..
Careful what you ask for. Social media laws restricting under 16's from ALL social media (including YouTube) coming before Parliament in Australia.
Please do not ignore the strong influence of the last 20 years of Marxist ideology (including gender ideology, CRT, and transgenderism) in public schools. I have had heated discussions with my beloved young adult kids be ause they only read/listen to what they learned in school - legacy media. To this day, they tell me that I'm watching fake news because I tune in to FOX News. The plandemic was another pivotal issue. Thank God I saved them from the toxic jabs. But it has been an eye-opening experience to realize how much indoctrination happened during high school and college years.
He might even be married with kids.
Well said, Ryan! An entire generation not only listened to Charlie, they adopted some pretty fabulous critical thinking skills to tuck into their handy dandy toolbox 🧰
Right!
Exactly what we need:
Critical thinking skills
You’re right, of course. I’m afraid my entire conversation has become somewhat despondent because I am. This hits too close to home.
If there was any proof that free speech works...it is the sad result of assassination. One could almost call this hateful reaction to speech disagreed with as "speechophobia."
Yes. Exactly. Gives me a heavy heart.
Maybe it's an inflection point?
He thought he was going to get away with it. And, in his narcissism, he figured if they caught him (or killed him at the scene), he would be a martyr.
What he didn't realize is he just made Charlie a martyr for free speech and a whole generation of kids.
Why? Because narcissist can not think beyond themselves
FUCKING COWARD
It is cowardly. Ultimately that is what violence is, they have now conceded that they are not able to debate in a civilized fashion.
I am not so optimistic. How many grandmas were arrested for free speech on January 6th just for being in DC? What were the consequences for arresting Grandma?
The lines are being crossed all around us. Will the next regime continue the long march? Anyone says that the right has all the guns is missing the fact that the left has people willing to use them. Working with law enforcement and military for the last two decades I can assure you the ranks have been filled heavily for some time.
So then…stock up on your ammo?
Stocked and can make my own. If you competitively shoot and hunt you need to just make your own.
Can I recommend Dillion to you?
https://www.dillonprecision.com/
He was a 22 yr old kid. A baby. Cowardly? Yeah, but doesn’t it take you guys learn
Im not sure i understand your last sentence .
He is a coward because he resorted to violence because he was too afraid to debate, for fear he'd look like a fool.
…in short, men aren’t generally “grown up” til 30 yrs. YES, I know there are exceptions! God don’t I know. But it certainly isn’t the “rule” with this generation. If “Dad never came to my games” + “Mom was always too busy to sign the form for the field trip “ = “I gotta shoot this motherfucker for saying this shit!” We are in serious deep shit people.
…in short, men aren’t generally “grown up” til 30 yrs. YES, I know there are exceptions! God don’t I know. But it certainly isn’t the “rule” with this generation. If “Dad never came to my games” + “Mom was always too busy to sign the form for the field trip “ = “I gotta shoot this motherfucker for saying this shit!” We are in serious deep shit people.
…or rather the lack thereof.
We are watching 1926 Europe unfold in front of our eyes.
Here is a picture of Communist Headquarters in Germany in 1926. Note the Antifa flag on the front and the words "antifaschistischenaktion gegen krieg hunger und faschismus" which means "the anti-fascist action against war, hunger and fascism."
Antifa is the militant arm of the Communist Party and calls all non-communists a Fascist. This is not the left. This is communists doing Commie things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-P046279,_Berlin,_Liebknecht-Haus_am_B%C3%BClowplatz.jpg
Yes. And its all so predictable.
They love to call us fascist, but assassinating people who think differently than you is peak fascism.
100% of them couldn't even define fascism.
Bunch of clowns and cowards.
and peak Commie. Lets talk about the other parties when the Communists are in power. Ever
They dont like to be called Commies. Had one tell me "I am not a Tankie". Look that one up for fun. Think Hungary and Soviet Tanks
I think there's distinction of wings -- the Communists who are consciously subverting, and useful idiot Leftists. The latter are further subdivided into walking dead zombie ready to riot and/or kill, and those who in the proliferation of a subculture (massively nourished by the superculture of Leftist dominance in the Western mainstream) that includes various styles of behavior, rhetoric and activity, enable the zombies.
FYI
https://nypost.com/2025/09/13/us-news/charlie-kirk-shooter-tyler-robinson-lived-with-transgender-partner/
Yeah i saw that. Shocker, right?!
Reading YT comments last night from the left proclaiming the shooter was MAGA. No doubt trying to get ahead of it.
Wondering when it would get around to that…that’s The Post however…not “our lady of record”. Because everyone knows if it’s not in the NYT, it probably never happened, right?
Maybe 100 years ago. Now they’re just a sorry lot.
This post matters more than most & is the underlying truth of most current "reality," imho-
https://x.com/Kevin_McKernan/status/1966877312378695733
I second that. Just watched it and it makes complete sense.
OMG, that’s the best idea I’ve heard in years! Unfortunately, we’ve a couple of generations of genuinely functionally illiterate (now) adults…how to separate the wheat from the chaff?
Maybe we shouldn't pick up the trash for once?...........;]
Yeah, point taken LMAO. But if we don’t pick it up, we have to be prepared to live in it…not sure I want to do that but I may have no choice.
Hey Ryan do they need matches, Bic lighters or fire starters like on Naked & Afraid?
Generations now have been deprived of something they have long (unconsciously) hungered for - LOGIC. Charlie argued from a grounded, logical place and students were amazed to hear a logical mind work after so many years in an educational system that starved them of what they really needed to function in the world - LOGICAL THINKING - HOW to THINK - not WHAT to THINK, but how to think logically, fairly, without hatred, anger and rancor - without resorting to physical violence. Let the Conservative Right model LOGICAL THINKING and SPEAKING, because it is what sets apart the emotional left and the logical right.
your argumwent is that tyler robinson was not "a lefty"?
he's antifa, posted on antifa discords, and was living with his "trans" partner. it's still not clear where he got the rifle, but it looks like someone "dropped it off" for him.
my money is on "same folks from discord" but remains to be seen.
this wild attempt to cast him as "right wing" seems like extreme cope and projection. (as well as outright falsification)
Don't waste your time. Hes the latest troll on eugyppius and Brays stack. Now he's trying to crash yours.
Exactly.
Its like calling the 3 million people protesting in London today as "far right".
This gives me hope:
https://x.com/EvaVlaar/status/1966861607251886220?s=19
They were finally pushed too far.
Do you have a source for the antifa claims (especially the discord)? I tried to run this down yesterday and sort of hit a brick wall. Looks like most of the confusion was the ATF misinterpreting the arrows on the casing.
If antifa IS involved, that unlocks a whole new world of possible action against them, which is important because the Portland police refuse to do their jobs and Tina Kotek won't allow Trump to bring in the Guard.
I can't link but see Dr. Robert Malone's substack on the Antifa link. Supposition? I can't tell because I'm paywalled.. I read part of an interview with the killers roommate where Discord was discussed, but cannot remember where. Sorry I can't help more.
I know the authorities mentioned a discord chat with his roommate, but IIRC they didn't say it was an Antifa chatroom. Malone (IMO) makes the same mistake that the ATF did yesterday, assuming the Helldivers memes were Antifa messages.
I'm sure antifa is a smaller deal in Utah than in Portland, but here we know the names of almost all the freaks who riot in the streets, the police just don't do anything about it. But so far, no footage of him at an event or anything as far as I can tell.
Edit - just rewatched yesterday's presser. The officials say he was on discord but never mention antifa or antifa chatrooms.
Isn't Antifa classified as a domestic terrorist-group in the USA or at least in some states?
Technically yes, but also maybe no.
https://www.newsweek.com/are-antifa-terrorists-658396
https://floridianpress.com/2025/09/anna-paulina-luna-reintroduces-bill-designating-antifa-a-terror-organization-in-wake-of-charlie-kirks-murder/
Anna Paulina Luna Reintroduces Bill Designating Antifa a Terror Organization in Wake of Charlie Kirk's Murder
Bullet casings were engraved with Antifa slogans and messages, as well as furry inuendo.
One of the bullets said "lmao".
If I were a prosecutor, after making my case, I would just put that up on a prop in the courtroom (and nothing else) in my closing argument, and then walk back to my desk, and say "i rest my case"
The case in question is a Helldivers 2 meme (how to drop a huge bomb), not the antifa arrows as was reported by Andy Ngo and others. The furry casing is irrelevant to the antifa question.
I want to know where and how he got such good shooting skills that he was able to kill with precision with one shot from 200 yards away. I haven't seen any discussion or analysis anywhere about this. Something about this isn't adding up.
Apparently, a 200 yard shot is not that difficult and there are literally millions of regular Americans that could easily make that shot and have the necessary gear to make it. Kyle Seraphin outlined this with on Viva Frei this last week.
I asked someone I know that has a gun orientation, and they confirmed that.
The attempt I fear is due to various news/podcast comments that his parents were allegedly Rep. & dad was a big Trump supporter. What will they do when they find out he was LDS? But I don’t think (hope) media will let it get far.
I'd just like lefties to have the ideological coherence to try and claim the W for killing him. The fact that it would go poorly for them is beside the point.
The killer? The one whose father's Instagram had a picture of him wearing a Democratic Socialists of America shirt? The one whose high school classmates outed him this morning as "that weird leftist guy"? The one who it turns out was living with and dating a M to F trans person?
What's your point?
SC: when you quoted that "the unvaxxed should be fired, or in camps, or lose their kids." it was not just that, they called for our death, and in many instances, anti-vax doctors were "suicided". In Germany graffiti called for us to be gassed. So it's not just verbal hostility.
I am avoiding a few IRL casual friends and social spaces (like the local market) this weekend, because I'd rather it remain Schrodinger-esque for at least awhile. It's been bad enough to see how some acted during Covid and Trump, and I'm seeing how both of those topics are being used as apologetics in favor of excusing violence. I have a feeling that when this all shakes out, I'm going to have even fewer friends than I do now. You're right. It is tough to realize. I just hope it has a purpose in the end.
But just like covid, when it shakes out you'll also have new friends, too. And those friends won't turn on you for wrongthink.
I saw a Facebook friend (also from college) who made a third party post, but then also stated her personal reasons for posting it. She feels afraid now as a democrat, a lesbian, and a wife of Hispanic woman that she is being threatened. She believes these are legitimate beliefs. I had no answer. Still trying to think through all this.
Are there a lot of deaths or democrats I am not hearing about aside from the Minnesota individuals?
Have there been any actual deportations of people, just because of their last name being Hispanic?
Any serial killings of lesbians?
This saddens me because these are friends from college.
But it also shines a light.
You see, they are expecting reprisals because it is something they would do, or at least it is in the realm of possibility. They think we are like some posse gathering to together, heading to certain parts of Atlanta, West Hollywood, or a variety of places and go on a "reckoning" of all those not our same color, gender, or alternate lifestyle.
Yes, a huge problem here is a narcissism problem.
Most of us just want to be left alone. We want to marry who we want, have kids, go on vacation, get as many exemptions from paying taxes as possible, and be free to "seek our bliss" which accordint to socialists are most likely frivolous activities that will not help those have equality of outcome.
I suspect she is being told by others on the left/ progressive spectrum that these threats exist. These include well known sources such as NYT and WaPo. I doubt she ever interacts with conservative media or podcasts to verify that the allegations are accurate. An echo chamber effect ramping up fear of opposing viewpoints. Histrionic thinking as a lifestyle. In her real life has any event occurred denying her or her Hispanic spouse any routine daily activities? This might be the starting point for a discussion. Acknowledge that she has fear, but try to identify the origin of these feelings and there connections (or not) to actual personal experiences.
Definitely, it's another tendril of the fear and panic narrative. The right does this as well. If you read something and the reaction to it is fear and panic, be skeptical. You don't need to read conservative media to know the truth; simply interact with reality.
Since the Mainstream has been dominated by Leftists for 2 or 3 decades (at least), if there were such crimes, they would be hyperventilated in panic-mode 24/7.
The problem is that many on both sides are captured by the Mainstream media. It's like an undertow that many just accept as a given. So even the best of us can still feel that undertow. And those who swim in it, are unaware they are in a riptide until it is too late.
And we all understand the double standard so much that many of us don't even question it. We saw the difference between "mostly peaceful protests" and "armed insurrection." We witnessed firsthand how Trump's deployment of troops in DC was considered "fascist" yet the erecting of fences around the Capitol following the trespassing of "unsolicited tourists" in the Capitol building was completely necessary.
Several other groups I'm a part of are using this to purge those who are lost enough to celebrate an assassination from their circles.
I'm not a social media user, so I'm not sure which path I would take.
Private groups should have the right to invite or expel people for any reason they deem necessary. If I celebrated, for example, anyone I disagree with's misfortune, that should be a reason to remove me.
Although if I hear about someone losing a job like Kimmel, Colbert, Stern, Schwanzenegger, Gene Simmons for their comments about those of us who did not comply with the covid restrictions, it won't be the worse thing in the world.
It shocked me how many of my coworkers; natives who were raised and schooled with what I thought was the lesson of Manzanar, would not merely have turned a blind eye had they lived then. No, they'd help to identify nissei to send to the camps, and one, a former marine, would have volunteered to staff the guard tower.
And that's without getting into the obvious lies they were willing to swallow. How can someone stand in front of someone on a frosty winter morning, both wearing one of those stupid t-shirt face muzzles, watching as their steaming breath fills the 6' space between them, and insist the fool things keep them from infection; were either of them carrying a virus in their lungs?
Creepy.
I look forward to your article.
This article made me think of Ayn Rand. They can only succeed through the sanction of the victim.
Exactly! I have withdrawn my sanction.
Saw that during "covid" though right? (on a lesser scale...but still the same people)
Yes, and the snowball effect is the same.
In both cases, the most sane people peel away from the party first, leaving the more fervent remaining.
But that snowball only goes one way. None of us are going to wake up tomorrow and decide to trust the media again. None of us are going to wake up and join the side of the people cheering assassination.
we can hope...!
Jim Polito, AM radio host in New England, on Friday morning 9/12, on air, described that exact experience - where he saw on Thursday online comments by people he knew and had considered reasonable, and is unfortunately having to up his personal security measures as a consequence. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/419-the-jim-polito-show-27542469/
Charlie Kirk is the litmus test for our time to discern viable Americans.
Which is fucking crazy because we just had one of those less than 5 years ago.
Apparently we continue to need ever more f’in crazy litmus tests because our society keeps giving oxygen to the non-viable Americans. Charlie’s Murderers may be a very good thing, if only to cause people to pause and check themselves, and ideally knock some sense into themselves - I know, may be a tall ask. The libs on my Saturday call avoided the topic entirely, which I found interesting.
Watch this- we are all being "played," imho.
https://x.com/Kevin_McKernan/status/1966877312378695733
please listen to Kevin's talk - all a psyop
Yep. Every time I think I’m done being bothered by respected friends saying something on the internet I’m proven wrong.
Thursday was a long time friend saying something to the effect of:
“if you are bothered about Charlie Kirk and are speaking up now, but didn’t speak up for ‘Palestinian children’ I’m embarrassed to know you… and most of you call yourselves Christians.”
I haven’t yet responded, my sister messaged her privately, maybe the kinder thing to do. I will be responding directly to her post. I have had to pray and ponder for days to think out how I want to say what needs said in a way she may actually consider.
A young lady in my church congregation organized the ill-fated Charlie Kirk event. Many in my congregation were present. Of course I am going to use my voice when those I love are directly impacted. It’s complete whataboutism to suggest I need to decry absolutely every evil act before I can mourn the ones closest to me.
These people have no idea what they have just done. I’m just praying we can turn the tide without more force than words and law.
Edits for spelling.
It’s not just online randoms—the bugs are crawling out of schools (teachers), local governments (city councilmen), clinics & hospitals (medical professionals), etc.
I agree it does feel like cocid times. One becomes afraid to hear your family and friends perspective for fear of losing more people. I thought I had pegged most of the crazies in my life, I've now found a few more. So disappointed, again.
Bingo, I can't think of anyone whom I can unconditionally trust since covid. But at least I know where I stand.
Well said, SimCom!
True-some men just do not grow up at all. And you own ALL of your choices, or they wouldn’t be called choices. I’m not sure what you’re calling the 1900’s, 20th century or the 19th century.
It has always been thus, please, 99% of people would turn in Anne Frank.
As for myself, sorry, I am pretty certain I am not a one percenter (Hells Angels parlance).
How about you? Please, lol!
You know what, if you want to get anywhere, this assertion of mine (which is absolutely correct) is quite simply the proper starting point.
This is the human condition. Understanding that this is our animal nature allows us to begin at the beginning and then maybe we can proceed to a resolution of this dominant contradiction that torments us. We are the rational animal, stuck in Shakespeare’s limbo, between ape and angel.
Grow up.
We already know who people are. We saw it with covid.
The Nazis would have shoot me before they got to Anne.
You’re a better man than me a one percenter.
You’re a better man than I: A one percenter.
This is what happens when 2 generations are taught hate in schools.
Almost inevitably, the right will do something that is, in terms of society, “right,” but which outrages the Left. Using anti-hate speech policies and laws, faculty members who speak out without a care for the consequences will be sanctioned for what will be, accurately, hate speech.
Then the Left will go crazy - again almost always beginning on campus- with violent rioting justified as “protesting.” The media will inevitably call the bloody, fire-breathing riots “almost always peaceful,” and … we’re off to the races.
...."Four Dead in Ohio"....
As Charlie would say:
"Prove me wrong."
In the early 70s when I was living in Hawaii, Dr. Francis Schaeffer came and spoke at UH. In describing what happened during the 60s, he said something very similar. Professors were teaching at the time with no thought of the consequences, and the students rose up to carry out what they had learned. I’ll never forget Dr. Schaeffer saying, almost shouting, “And they [the students] did it! They did it!”
My family put on a luau for him and his wife. I’ll also never forget meeting him, feeling that in that moment he was giving me an absolute attention I had never experienced, and knowing that I was meeting an extraordinarily humble man.
I just found your post while searching if Charlie Kirk referenced Dr Francis Schaeffer. I too met Dr Schaeffer and his wife speaking at the University of Wisconsin maybe a year before he passed away. Both he and his wife took time to speak with me. Charlie Kirk’s beliefs and the way he engaged college students reminded me of Dr Schaffer. I have all of the Dr’s works, admired him all my adult life. Now I’m seeing that same Spirit was in Charlie Kirk. May God comfort and bless his family and continue his ministry and vision.
I just found your post while searching if Charlie Kirk referenced Dr Francis Schaeffer. I too met Dr Schaeffer and his wife speaking at the University of Wisconsin maybe a year before he passed away. Both he and his wife took time to speak with me. Charlie Kirk’s beliefs and the way he engaged college students reminded me of Dr Schaffer. I have all of the Dr’s works, admired him all my adult life. Now I’m seeing that same Spirit was in Charlie Kirk. May God comfort and bless his family and continue his ministry and vision.
Doesn’t even get that far….they’re on TicToc 24x7…they choose an opinion (which is usually mangled history) that they “like”…consider themselves erudite, repost it, repeat it as fact and we’re off to the races. How in THE hell do you fix, undue, that?
Step one is to compete. There are a fair number of non-lefties on TikTok already, but I would really love it if all of the free clips on RushLimbaugh.com would be re-posted on the sites the kids are on. There are some on YouTube, mostly posted 4 years ago when he passed, but they've started posting new ones again this year. That's positive as long as they keep going.
I thought we were supposed to ban TikTok? WTF? The CCP has to be peeing their pants from their laughter at yet another one of our debacles. Well, CAN’T ban it now cause of its “revenue stream” to whomever, not to mention both political parties. What year did TikTok take off exactly? Can’t remember.
I’ve heard they are going to start new regulations and possibly ID requirements soon, not sure if the specifics though. I can say I got on there around 2021 and although I’m not on a lot, I do go on a couple times a week. However, I have taken a lot of effort over time to curate my algorithm so it’s 99% conservative (they will throw in the oddball that’s not too see if they can get a click, generally I just ignore it).
There are quite a few conservative voices on TT, and they pop back up about as far as they are whacked down.
I’ve learned too that if I want to see a non-conservative take on TT, I try to do it from somebody’s link outside of TT. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best way to see something like that without getting my algo changed.
WHO is going to start new regs.? The Chinese co that owns it - Byte Dance? or the CCP? Our government may demand from, and attempt to regulate a privately held Chinese Co. but they really have us by the short hairs (all that personal revenue stream stuff). Unless, of course, Trump has purchased a major % of stock (if possible) like purchasing 10% of Intel, which is getting damn close to mercantilism. Besides all of which I thought we were supposed to be deregulating! I voted & supported Trump but sometimes he gives me fits!
True. True
Didn't the real Yuri observe that it only takes a couple generations to complete the subversion? <obvious point follows>
Yes.
In fact, my 7th grade history teacher rolled out the TV during class and made us watch a recording of it. He warned us how fast it could happen.
Most of the class thought it was unfathomable, and assumed we'd always be free, and that that stuff could only happen under communism.
Im forever grateful to him because I listened. Changed my life, to be honest.
I just didn't really know it until the scamdemic.
Same for me. I started forming suspicions when my kids came home from high school talking about how their teacher told them it was okay to have an ounce of marijuana. (This was at the time Colorado had just passed their MJ legalization law, which of course contradicted the supreme federal law.) At the time I didn't realize the extent. Looking back I see that was an earlier sign. At my high school we had some liberal teachers and some not, but most tread the line of open (civil) discussion and everyone's right to have an opinion.
When the student is ready the teacher appears.
Yep.
It is more like three generations. It started in the 60s.
You're not genX; we break shit. We were the last generation to know (and we didn't know we would be the last) the basics. I think that's why c19 was such a shock to me.
Its up to genX to change the direction of this country by educating, in particular, genZ on what its meant to be an American.
I don't know if that's possible outside of what is taught within a family, and even that is spotty. My children are very "American" but the grandchildren have had many outside influences. Most are with us...but like this Robinson guy, there is some force that seems to be quite evil in a biblical sense that is infiltrating otherwise sensible brains.
Agree to an extent.
I don't see the indoctrinated (and wussy) millennials doing much (and, lets face it, boomers don't have as much time), but there are a lot of GenX parents born in the 70's that have GenZ kids (mine are twins).
If not genX, who? GenZ and the youngest millennials need guidance because they really don't know what it means to be free.
The good news is that the indoctrination has gotten so clownish that it's actually turned a lot of kids away, or at least put them in a position where they look up Charlie Kirk or Thomas Sowell on YouTube and find out that they make a lot more sense than their gender-confused social studies teacher.
Yes. I think you're right.
Denying reality doesn't abolish it
Team Reality will win...well...because reality bats 1000.
Strauss and Howe in their book Generations talk of this. The nomad generation (Gen X) lead the 2 younger generations through every crisis in history. A crisis tends to repeat every 4 generations (roughly every 80 years). They give examples like the WW2 generals and Truman, Washington, Adam's, Jefferson etc in the revolutionary War; are all of the nomad generation. They lead and make the hard choices like dropping the bomb on Japan to save allied lives. Nomads are pragmatic as a result of their unsheltered childhoods. I see Gen Z in my son and his friends rejecting wokeism and aligning more with Gen X values. They are very different than the " last place gets a trophy" generation that preceded them. Sadly, many Gen z have also been indoctrinated as we just witnessed. My generation have for the most part been silent and allowed weaker people (mainly academics) to influence the last 2 generations. I think for a lot of Gen X, that silence ends now.
I've been thinking the same thing. Charlie Kirk was engaged in exactly what needs to happen everywhere. Millennials (like some sort of sad disco-era interlude between rock n roll and drum machine garbage music of today) are the early crystalline sprinkles of the snowflake generation that grew into the Gen Z avalanche of victimization. Both gens are madly searching through the mess of snow and ice for their identities, latching onto anything that will meet with peer approval. We need to speak with them, listen to them, and provide another view of history that has been so perverted for them by their teachers.
Charlie got to move on up because he had this all figured out & he showed us the way. He finished his task. Now we must remake the world that remains to us.
Ryan, I am so glad that I am not teaching this quarter. Uni is going to be crazy. I just heard that my uni is under investigation for antisemitism. I better strap myself in for the wild ride.
I agree with you about GenX. Strauss and Howe say the same thing in The Fourth Turning is Here. I tell my students that I'm teaching them how to think for themselves, not what to think and giving them some basic life skills.
Well, Neris, we need more teachers like you.
Just read further down the thread, somebody else referenced Strauss and Howe too!
Thanks for the kudos, I'll work on doing my best.
Im actually not familiar with it. Looking it up now. Thx for mentioning
I had my students read a chapter from the Fourth Turning is Here last year. They need to know what's coming.
"I tell my students that I'm teaching them how to think for themselves, not what to think..."
That's the way it ought to be done.
Here, for the past 10-15 years now, it's part of the teacher's instruction to also teach what to think, and the teacher is supposed to share the ideas and values laid out in the "värdegrund"*, not just at work but also in private.
That stuff is a large part - apart from health reasons - why I'm a retired teacher (six years now, getting the "catheder-itch" something fierce some days).
*Code of ethics, but in practice it is a political straight-jacket and has nothing to do with professionalism or integrity. "Värde-" means value, "-grund" here means foundation.
The infection of hatred has spread much further than the last two generations.
Not directly related to education, but it may be relevant nonetheless to the overall battle were in: https://open.substack.com/pub/wagthattail/p/the-grey-war?r=25iz91&utm_medium=ios
Yes, it started on college campuse in the 1980s, then it moved to high school in the early 2000's, then middle school, and finally elementary schools prior to, during, and since Covid/BLM.
Yup. That was the sequence
Charlie said, “When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.”
The intellimafia is trying to start a civil war. Let's surprise them by resurrecting civil discourse, instead.
I will share a comment I have posted elsewhere and will continue sharing as long as it is necessary to expose the hand of the intellimafia in an effort to stem bloodshed:
We need to take all this news with an enormous grain of salt as the intellimafia works hand-in-hand with the media to concoct a narrative that will cover its tracks, and any presentation of this as a lone crazy gunman is the typical formula used to divert attention from the true perpetrators orchestrating public events to manufacture consent for tyranny.
What the killing of Charlie Kirk tells me is the intellimafia is desperate to kick off a violent culture war. They tried to instigate a race war during the 1960s and failed; I am confident they will fail in this effort, too, but it will not be without bloodshed, most if not all executed by the intellimafia and its hired agitators.
We can curtail that bloodshed, however, by identifying the Problem-Reaction-Solution pattern here as well as in all the other intellimafia’s handiwork over the past century:
1) Problem: Assassinate a controversial figure who engenders heated emotions on both sides ranging from admiration to revulsion.
2) Reaction: Violence, strife, exacerbated division, and civil war. This is the ingredient they want the public to supply, but they will seed it with their own agitators and blanket us with propaganda until people succumb (which I pray they won’t).
3) Solution: They will propose heightened totalitarian restrictions, data collection, Palantir-panopticon surveillance, and curtailments of our liberties.
If we repeatedly expose their trap instead of falling into it, they will not be able to justify #3. It is vital that we point our fingers at the puppetmasters rather than their puppets.
Please read the short introductory essay in my piece on the intellimafia and help me spread awareness that our greatest defense against the intellimafia’s attempts to sow violent discord is to instead enter into respectful dialogue with our perceived opponents, listening to one another’s concerns, and trying to understand their perspective as they try to understand ours:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/memes-by-themes-20-the-intellimafia
In other words, we need to rehumanize one another so we experience each other face to face instead of as caricatured villains through screens.
To quote from my essay:
“The intellimafia wants you to think this is about left versus right, gender politics, immigration, race, Trump, and every other hot-button topic they’ve installed in people’s minds so they can mass-manipulate the populace at will.
“They want us to hate, feel outrage, blame the other, strike back, and dive head-last into uncivil war.…
“They want to toss out the ragebait and hide behind the curtain while we dogfight.
“We defeat their attempts to divide, dissipate, and decimate us by refusing to let them play our emotions, cognitive biases, and trauma like a well-worn record.
“We cancel their programming by remembering one another’s humanity, engaging in respectful dialogue, cutting the puppeteers’ strings, and alchemizing pain into love.”
They're already proposing all the things you fear in their "Solution" and none are in any doubt that they want these things.
Counselling more of us dying to avoid what is already happening seems ... dubious.
Calling for civil discourse instead of civil war “seems … dubious”? Sounds like you have taken the bait and announced your willingness to supply the Reaction so they can implement the Solution.
I'm still talking politely to you.
I appreciate that.
I can feel both the tremendous sorrow and also the tremendous push to go towards a dark light. Hard to say what will happen but this I know; if they don’t succeed this time they will keep trying. I’m 60 and can recall when things first went downhill a bit slowly (pre-9/11 for me) and then a lot faster (post-9/11). At least more are waking up now. And for me shows that words are more important than ever. If that is enough for the public discourse, time will show us.
Thank you, Maureen. One of my readers just shared this video with me, and it talks about how darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can. Chase Hughes exposes what is occurring with such clarity and precision, it may be the most important video anyone can watch right now:
• https://x.com/aanon55/status/1966685718824001963
Civil discourse is fine, but not with murderous hateful fanatics and their co-dependent passive-aggressive enablers.
I agree, Hesperado, but consider that you have likely only experienced those caricatures through screens and that it is possible the intellimafia has curated (and AI-generated) many of those to paint a false perception of reality that foments rage against a figmentary Goldstein and all he is supposed to represent. In flesh-and-blood reality, instances of those people are so rare as to be negligible, and most drop their personas when they aren't behind a keyboard.
I would be curious to see what you think of the analysis presented in this video:
• https://x.com/aanon55/status/1966685718824001963
Two major problems with that video:
1) Chase Hughes is conflating the Mainstream with the Alt-Mainstream -- "If you turn on cable news today... maybe you scroll social media... what are you going to see? The absolute fringe. They're going to show you the loudest, dumbest, most cartoonish people from the 'other side' blasted in your face 24/7". The Mainstream is dominated by Leftists (and has been for many decades, only increasing with each passing decade), and they consistently downplay the violence of the Left and, related to that, the violence of the Left’s Black and Muslim Pets.
2) He’s trying to argue that the Left-Right distinction is not real and is only being fostered by some hidden powers to manipulate people. I disagree. The hidden powers or Conspiracy or Cabal or Deep State or Swamp or whatever term we use, has been using Leftism for over a hundred years. Leftism is the vehicle for the Communist project of subverting the West.
Either this Hughes guy is not thinking things through and has little grasp of history, or he’s deliberately creating a “dialectic” muddle of obfuscation.\
Just one example of thousands one could cite to show the subtle (often not so subtle) way the Mainstream downplays the problem of Muslims — the reports about the summer of 2023 shooting by a Muslim at an intersection in Fargo, North Dakota when the Muslim killed one policeman and wounded two others before being sent to Paradise by a fourth policeman. This was no minor incident, it could have been much worse. One has to go to a small localized webpage put out by the local police to get the disturbing facts:
After the shooting, police found numerous guns, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, a homemade grenade and explosives in the gunman’s vehicle. Investigators determined the gunman likely planned a larger attack due to the number of guns and explosives found.
Now notice how MSNBC says in their headline “the gunman” and avoid “Muslim” or his Arabic name.
Thank you so much for a) taking the time to watch the video and b) provide a thoughtful analysis, Hesperado. I wish I had the time give it the response it deserves, but I have waited until the last possible minute to do taxes and must now turn my attention to marathoning on that, regrettably. I just wanted to express my appreciation, though.
P.S. If you can spare the time, these excellent articles articulate my own position and what I might say if I did have the time to respond more specifically to the legitimate concerns you raised :-)
• https://maninamerica.substack.com/p/the-turning-point-how-charlie-kirks
• https://peterfallesen.substack.com/p/its-a-trap/
• https://geoffolson.substack.com/p/minute-particulars-and-immense-abstractions
But God. We are not abandoned by the Spirit of Truth!
It took me a day or two to realize what I was feeling as I processed the assassination of Kirk. I was not a follower of Kirk, saw maybe a handful of videos of him, and was just generally aware of him. But for some reason, his assassination was bothering me quite a bit. I placed the feeling, it was the same way I felt around March 9th, 2020. Just before the lockdowns started, and shit changed.
I'm hoping there's reports of hundreds of young men sitting at tables on college campuses this weekend with a sign a video camera. I hope that the young men getting radicalized by this can keep the high ground.
I may have to buy a camera and head over to Oberlin some weekend.
Me too.
And EVIL can not be tolerated. That's why most of us resisted during c19.
We recognized very early the potential for evil.
If you do that prepare accordingly. I suggest you watch videos by Cam Higby, Nick Shirley and Nate Friedman. All of them are routinely assaulted by leftists who are enraged simply by their presence with a camera and a microphone.
On what platform are those men?
YouTube. Also Caitlin Bennett’s “Liberty Hangout.”
I will definitely watch those videos.
I agree that these are dangerous times for us- we dont want to become the left. And we've been pushed so far. If we give in to our worse instincts, we risk becoming like the left, and we would not be using Charlies death as a opportunity to turn evil into good, but only into greater evil. Its all about persuasion to get the other to fix themselves. Also we can only do the best we can, but make sure your effort can be seen as worthy in the long run. Some of the most effective people were originally on the other side and were convinced to change sides, and you can only convince somebody if you appeal to their intellect, and not by fear or anger
Hollywood made silly films about the glory of killing Nazis.
Lefty lunatics made "punch a nazi!" a popular political slogan.
Labelling everyone who disagreed with them a nazi set in train the predictable consequences of this mania.
Charlie's dead because he wasn't an extremist, wasn't violent, wasn't radical.
He was, in point of fact, everything the tone-policing RINO posers of the GOP machinery say that we should all be. He was calm, rational, restrained, peaceful, and mostly far more respectful of his questioners than their questions deserved.
The real right can either fight back using the weapons of the enemies of civilization or we can fight back using the weapons of civilization, but we must fight back.
It's also worth noting that calling people nazis dates back a lot further than people expect. The first Republican to be called "literally Hitler" by Democrats was Thomas Dewey, pretty much while the actual Hitler was still decomposing. It's always fun to show those receipts to the younger lefty crowd who think that it's only ever been used against Trump because it's too serious of a charge to throw around lightly.
Well...we brought the Nazis over here and they infiltrated the fringe right. We also brought the worst of the Soviet commies here and they infiltrated the fringe left...that fringe has been growing longer and longer as they work to turn the US communist...they hide it by using the term "socialism" but that is a misnomer. The goal is communism.
I'm going to disagree slightly. The goal of the people in charge at the top is neo-feudalism. They sell it to the useful idiots as socialism/communism, but it's not. That's why the rich and powerful occasionally mention the need for a few billion peasants to die en route to utopia.
I heard a great line that is in the unedited version of, I believe, Godfather 2: In response to a young man’s pursuit of a fine arts degree and his reasoning - didn’t want to be a capitalist because that’s evil - Michael Corleone said something along the lines of “that’s a lie the rich want you to believe.” Actual film buffs will improve upon my telling.
Bad Cat, I sure do appreciate your perspectives. You are at least as courageous and honest with yourself as Charlie was.
Imma gonna resort to prayer. (A highly revered and respected Zen Buddhist teacher said she could feel the prayers being said over her as she dealt with what was ultimately a lethal cancer (long before C19). While my path is different, I was greatly encouraged by her report.)
I’m honestly not sure what the difference between neo-feudalism and socialism/communism actually is. Both rely on the absence of a middle class, a small cohort of extremely rich and powerful people controlling everything that matters (and human nature being what it is, that cohort will try to make their position hereditary, overtly or not), and a mass underclass that dependent on and thus dominated by the ruling cohort.
I don't actually disagree. In theory the Marxist versions aren't supposed to give unlimited rights to the ruling class and everyone is allegedly equal. In practice Marxist states have operated in an identical way to neo-feudalism minus the pageantry (although North Korea has made occasional attempts at that).
I mostly bring it up because it's pretty clear from what they say that the West's wannabe ruling class all fancies themselves royalty rather than just functionaries.
Totally agree
There are approximately 8 Nazis in the US, but far far more commies here
They infiltrated the fringe Left!
It’s like zapping fruit flies, so many to block/mute, then more keep appearing.
And our banks funded these movements originally.
Charlie had no guile nor anything to be ashamed of. More than most, he lived out his beliefs.
His opponents were not like this, they were split. On the one hand, they wanted to justify amorality and license with a covering of false virtue that Charlie could handily puncture.
On the other hand, their own God-given consciences witnessed against them. Charlie exposed an unresolvable dilemma: that at root, we know what is right but are powerless to perform it.
Only Christ can bring peace. The book of Romans is quite pertinent just now!
"Charlie's dead because he wasn't an extremist, wasn't violent, wasn't radical"
Correct.
Charlie Kirk wasn't killed because he was a Nazi.
He was called a Nazi so that he could be killed.
Everyone with eyes sees that now, and realizes that "Charlie" could be them. This is driving consequences. Will drive consequences. Our job is to push consequences, intelligently and without flinching.
"He was called a Nazi so that he could be killed."
Yes. This is the ugly truth about leftists that the figleaf of their self-proclaimed compassion (but only for people who live far away from them) can no longer hide.
Who are you pointing the gun at, tough guy?
Yes, plainly you are the elected spokesman for … nobody.
In case anybody thinks our cat has gone overboard a little in this one, take a look at www.charliesmurderers.com. They say they have upwards of 20,000 submissions at this point. Maybe that isn't a lot as a subset of the population; but can there be any doubt it is the tip of an iceberg?
This is what I think gato was warning could evolve into Hell. This sort of reaction seems justified in light of what’s happening. But it will be hijacked by sadistic puritans and it will be taken too far. I already see people posted on that site whose posts aren’t that bad.
It's an astounding tsunami of pent-up repression reflecting back and rearing up as retributive cancelation.
I was assured by the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) that it wasn't cancellation, it was simply consequences for saying and doing things. So obviously it's still simple consequences when it's happening to them.
Indeed !
I think having a website for people to post (rat out) people’s reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk is disturbing. Not going there. Handle it locally and personally if you know someone speaking like this. I would guess skimming through the left social media platform bluesky would almost generate similar results.
It is extremely disturbing! Even more disturbing is what is being posted. In my opinion it is entirely appropriate for people to lose their employment over publicly (even if they suppose anonymously) celebrating murder, if their employers so choose. I would like to know if my doctor, or my (imaginary) children's teachers, or the people my husband employs, hold such views. There was a brewery owner who applauded this murder and posted that he pissed in the beers of persons whose views he found repugnant. I also do not like my tax dollars supporting public employees condoning any murder any time for any reason. Just skimming bluesky only raises awareness of what some people are saying. Absent consequences, it is normalized, and it metastasizes. Stephen King, at least, acknowledged that he was wrong and apologized. I am not opposed to second chances..."Sensitivity Training" used to be the way to go and maybe some employers will choose that route.
I think the internet gives people a false bravado. Yikes on the beer, and he still has a business!!!
Yes that’s the worry. If anything happens to any of the posted….
As an Idahoan, I am not pleased that the man on the scooter was attacked. This is exactly the opposite of what Charlie Kirk would have wanted. I have watched a lot of Charlie's work (mostly on campuses) during the past 2 years. He'd be horrified that someone got beat up for expressing free speech. I also don't like that woman on that Twitter thread in the comments who is obviously super angry and vindictive - I hope she doesn't believe that's Christian behavior, because it isn't. I do like that I see plenty of people who also decry the violence against scooter guy. People could have just ignored him. That beating is a HORRIBLE look.
My friend and I learned about the vigil too late otherwise we'd have been there. It's just a few minutes from my home.
I see these howls from demons on the left are just evil and I'm paying them no mind. I have mostly avoided social media for a few days. That's the best thing to do as many of these are indeed operatives or bots.
It is obvious to me that the Color Revolution continues, and they want us in a civil war. I won't do anything to assist in that bullshit.
If one of your friends cheers on this assassination and/or says Kirk was a bigot, racist, misogynist, etc. then they obviously never saw his work. I am not a conservative, MAGA or Republican but I loved what he was attempting to do - open up dialog. Like I said, I watched him for a good 2 years and not once did anything hateful ever come out of his mouth. The people saying that are lying or got their info from MSNBC, etc. Much like the ignorant girl in the video who lauded the assassination but couldn't even tell you what was so offensive about Kirk, these people have no shame - they literally don't even care if they know nothing. That in itself is scary.
Stephen King continues to be an absolute asshole. Nothing new there.
I'm an old punk. I believe some words qualify as invitation to mutual combat. Insulting the subject of a vigil reaches that level.
I do feel guilt about enjoying it, but can't say I wouldn't have done the same if I were there.
Well, you just have no self-control. That takes practice. It's not easy. You know, like when you're 2 years old you can throw a temper tantrum and react to everything and it's natural. As an adult, you should have moved on from that.
I would prefer to say that some norms are worth defending. Respect for someone honoring their dead is high on that list for me.
Setting and enforcing appropriate boundaries. It's also the nuance in the enforcement. A punch in the nose. Not a murder or a maiming. The person that provoked, in THIS environment - really really stupid because few understands nuance and how to wield it.
I'm ok with it. Poking at people that are already off balance and highly upset is retarded. If you want to wrap yourself in bacon and go into the lion's den, that's on you. People today have trouble with nuance. Don't murder should be the easiest. When that's gone, we are really in trouble, because anything more subtile is completely lost in the broader ability to reason. Our law is built on a foundation of "the reasonable man". There's been decades of too much coddling of bad behaviour of the left. Those survey results - the ability to reason is out the window in the broader culture. The non left, particularly libertarians, struggle with how to show tough love and how to draw and enforce appropriate boundaries, just as the left has trouble with recognizing that other people are entitled to boundaries. You want to go to a funeral and say ha ha he's dead, don't look to me for sympathy when someone decks you. I'm old enough to remember when society understood that you can't reason with some people, bullies in particular, and the need for a good punch in the nose. That's nuanced and the understanding of how and when is completely lost today. For the people incapable of nuance - we have a right to free speech. That boundary is worth defending and going to a campus to speak freely should never be wrapping in bacon and going into the lion's den and when it becomes that we all must act to enforce that appropriate boundary. If we want a society that debates freely, as we once had, we have to nurture and foster that.
As a Christian, I am taught to turn the other cheek for something as benign as some idiot yelling (in passing) a vile taunt. But then, I'm female, and I've had to deal with that all my life. If I decided to attack everyone who did that, I would probably be in jail by now, or dead.
I will reiterate that anyone who falls for the deep state psyops crafted for you is acting on emotion and not grounded in reality or critical thinking.
A bully to me is not someone who drive-by taunts. A bully is someone who actually threatens you psychologically and/or physically. If these weak men couldn't keep it together over a taunt then I really don't know what to say to you.
This is freedom of speech. You don't have to like it but you have to respect our laws, which includes the fact that assault is illegal and an arrestable offense, no matter what someone said to you.
.
You are going to get a war whether you want one or not. Prepare. And remember: There is no virtue in losing. As Patton is said to have said... No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
Their deaths are preferable to ours.
Another tough guy! Do you think I haven't heard your exact comment for the past 25 years? Get new material.
Whatever you stupid cowardly cunt.
And no you haven't. I started posting very recently.
Take it some where else lefty. Like the other side of the trench.
BTW that is not shouting down. That is pointing out you are an idiot.
the ad hominem nature of your argument, such as it is, betrays your nature, such as it is.
Go fuck yourself. You are the kind of idiot that got us here. If you can't see the danger may it strike you next.
Such rage! It's quite sexy you know. Living in your parent's basement with nothing but a joystick and empty fastfood wrappers for company. You should get out more often and try meeting some people. Get involved in sports or something. Maybe go to a bar and practice talking like that out loud.
Your lack of originality is matched only by the failure to do anything but resort to gross vulgarities when called out on it.
😂😂😂😂😂
Un huh... 100% cunt. They can have you. We don't need - or want - you.
The mad-crowd disease that has infected the far left is truly something else. I believe social media may be partly to blame, but that is no excuse for what we are seeing & hearing. The last time I checked, humans still had free will. IMHO this is your best post. Thanks for sharing it. 🤘😎🤘
“Mad-crowd disease” - excellent.
I think a good portion of blame falls on the teachers and professors spouting nonsense and anti-American values day in and day out. Another portion of blame falls on Dem leaders, mayors, DAs, and governors pushing cashless bail with criminals immediately back out on the streets attacking those who want to be left alone. Many see the criminals as victims and ignite the true victims. Excuses and soft crime peddling, as if they are virtuous, when they are guilty of destroying their cities. Criminals need to do time, not released back out to reoffend. People need to know there is justice. Right now we see little justice and fake virtue signaling.
👌👍👌
Thank you for this essay. As a person who graduated from high school during the time of the Vietnam war I have seen a lot of violence associated with political issues. There were the riots about the war itself, race riots like the Rodney King thing, and the assassination attempt on President Reagan. The point is there have always been radical people or groups but the new radicals are different. I think firstly we have medicated a lot of the young people into a psychotic state for years and now the harm is becoming obvious. Add into the mix the transgender thing where we take a mentally ill person then pump them full of dangerous drugs to modify their appearance greatly decreasing the ability to see reality and you get the gasoline on a fire thing. Add more fuel with social media and biased news and you have a five alarm fire.
I grew up during the same period and one particular moment that stands out to me was when “Hate” became a crime. A federal crime. At the time I remarked to a friend that making an emotion a crime was an extremely slippery slope. An then came “hate speech” followed quickly by “your words are violence”. That is how they justify shutting down conversation and murdering someone for inciting debate.
Totally agree! I hate to sound like one of those back in my day people but back in my day we pretty much had to figure how to handle bullying in our own way. Some used humor, some punched them in the mouth, some avoided them, whatever worked. It definitely prepared us for adult life.
Yes, and in a lot of these "hate speech" bills, you don't even have to be the one doing the hating!
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/canadian-government-introduces-online
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As is always the case with ‘hate crimes’, this definition requires the government to assess the mindset of the person who committed the crime. Does Jack hate all Latinos, or just the one who totaled his car? Does Jack hate all women, or the specific government employee who sucks at her job? Guess who gets to decide!
“Your honor, this can’t be a hate crime because I only dislike the defendant.”
But even this can’t be an actual defense, because it’s also illegal to spread content that FOMENTS hatred — meaning you don’t even have to do the hating yourself IF GOVERNMENT SAYS YOUR POST COULD GET OTHERS TO HATE.
Who or what I hate is nobody’s business.
Medicated and vaccinated 😔. No longer functional for "civilized society" yet being embraced and celebrated.
Reminds me of Sleepy Joe…
Well said. Add to that explosive mix the available porn, addictive video games, snuff/horror films, and other things the youth get addicted to which destroy their minds and ability to relate to other humans.
Pharmakoeia = sorcery.
We have heard the other side. To have productive dialogue both sides must be willing to engage. I’m all for debating ideas however, if the rebuttal is a bullet to the head we know dialogue is already dead and must plan and respond accordingly. Charlie Kirk’s assassination just killed the remaining middle ground. Scott Adams nailed it.
i mostly agree.
the time has come to pick sides for real and neutrality is no longer much of an option.
the key to this is making sure that the sorting hat runs well and accurately.
and that takes dialogue both to find those with whom we may share a social contract and to identify those with whom this is impossible.
fortunately, without actually getting them to paint themselves in fluorescent colors and stand under blacklights, it would be difficult to get the "baddies" to do a better job of identifying themselves.
Cat, it's worth noting that Tim Pool has been swatted at least 20 times over the years, which is attempted murder in my book.
I fear the sorting hat will be an increase in assassinations or assassination attempts. That glee that the Crazies on the left have shown at Charlie Kirk's murder, and their social media call for "who's next" are very ominous signs. This is their first shot of dopamine since Trump won the election and they are going to be wanting more.
We need a simple question that gets to the core crux of the issue regarding the balance of power between individual and state.
It is not perfect, but something like “who is the ultimate authority in someones life?” would get pretty close with response such as the individual, their family, their deity, etc that they recogonize individual ageny or at least submission to a moral code
Avoid or do not grant power to those with answers related to government, experts, credentialism, AI, social media etc.
Free speech on X and BSky worked like a charm to help thousands of awful leftists self-deport from normal, ethical life. In another era, on a different side of a bell curve, they would be Klansmen cheering the deaths of MLK and RFK. But they weren't yelling on a dusty streetcorner in SomethingBoro, Dixie, limiting their "reach." They were supercharged by digital cameraderie and network effects. The next trantifa shooter saw their reaction; the outcome, sadly, may depend on whether his dad took him shooting, or not.
I was hoping you'd write about Charlie Kirk's murder. Thank you for doing so with your usual thorough thoughtfulness. I think the way forward is to do what you said, what Charlie would have done had the bullet missed, and what his lioness of a widow is doing. Keep engaging others in the agora. Find the common ground with anyone regardless of other differences.
Those who shatter the social contract that requires us to exhibit basic decency when someone is murdered (if you can't say something nice, then just shut the hell up) deserve to be shunned. If they have positions of responsibility and power they should lose them because they have proven themselves untrustworthy and possibly even dangerous. We don't need to use violence, not even be verbally aggressive in most cases, we just need to be strong and resolute, the way Charlie was. He was one in a billion, God rest his soul, but we can still use his example.
Robert Malone wrote a substack today identifying a group called trans antifa. Who is organising such groups, who is funding them? Why are they even around? Do they feel that alienated from the rest of? By killing a man such as Charlie Kirk, what does that solve? So many questions, so few answers.
They're hard at work in Portland, making things miserable for everybody else.
They've been around for a long time. I was writing about them in 2016! Transtifa seem to have gotten away with everything and anything for the past 10 years.
More: back in 2020 I watched antifa riots every single night for 3-4 months straight. I wasn’t comfortable uploading livestreams, but I watched as soon as videos were uploaded. Lara Logan in particular published a lot of information about this al-qaida-style group. Andy Ngo wrote a book about it. And today I see this very good summary published by Sam Faddis, reiterating much of what I learned years ago. At that time there was video of antifa training in Syria…
https://open.substack.com/pub/andmagazine/p/tear-it-out-by-the-roots-ending-antifa
Check out Andy Ngo. He is on this platform.
I believe Andy Ngo has been on that for some time. He has a stack.
Why did Robert Malone maliciously sue Dr Peter Breggin?
I will admit. I feel a bit of guilt about enjoying watching several people learn that they are no longer in charge. The two I enjoyed most were:
1) Guy on a scooter riding through a Kirk vigil shouting, "Fuck Charlie Kirk!" Getting pulled down and beat down. He was still shouting shit after someone dragged him to the cops for his own protection.
2) Guy sitting at a table with a sign saying "Charlie Kirk Deserved It" getting pushed into the fountain he was sitting in front of.
But if I were on a jury, I'd probably acquit the people involved.
I think stupid people physically doing stupidly provocative things in public win stupid prizes. Scooter dude was basically begging for an ass kicking, and he got one. Same with fountain boy. This is a different breaking of the social contract, summed up as “don’t be an ghoulish a-hole in public or there will be consequences.” It’s actually easier to deal with as a society because it’s localized and the consequences can be immediate.
Which people? :-)
Sow the wind, and whatnot.
I hear people from overseas saying, "Be careful! You don't want a civil war!!" Like we haven't been in a civil war since the Clinton era.
Great analysis as always Gato. Your position on keeping your comments section open to all comers is critically important to me. I typically (not always, but mostly) stop reading Substackers who limit comments to paid subscribers - I presume they are afraid of wrong think and are therefore not serious. What would Charlie do?
FWIW, restricting comments to paid supporters almost certainly increases the ratio of paid to unpaid subs -- so there's a little bit of financial incentive there. However, people like gato and myself determined that gatekeeping the comments section isn't worth the cash.
No, I certainly get that. It’s a rule of thumb - to be honest, it’s usually triggered by reading a half-witted take I want to respond to but can’t. I read and enjoy your stuff, btw.
Yes, which always makes me wonder if the author threw in the half-witted take specifically to get somebody mad enough sign up to comment.......
Haha! I have a remedy for that - if it is truly stupid I restack it with the comment I would've made. I know I have no engagement stats to speak of, but if I know human nature, the poster will take note of someone re-stacking their stuff and read the comment. Low calorie, but satisfying just the same!
Priceless
Y'all should be able to restrict comments but non-subscribers get to reply for $1. Everybody wins.
Agreed. I tend to unsub or just don't read much by people who are paid-only.
I already have so many subs, it's easy to delete the ones where I can't comment on an article they send me.......
As long as I can reply and share or repost, I am happy to oblige the person providing their time, talent, and skill. I appreciate their generosity to those of us in the peanut gallery.
The cult of free needs to go.
On Stephen King: I've always been surprised that others never seemed able to smell his stink.
His entire body of work is torture porn, with the exception of "Salem's Lot" which was perhaps his final expression of comprehension of what it means to be human.
Even his breakout, Carrie, was a take on Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”.
Never forget that King wrote the teenage orgy in It.
He's yet one more example of the public making some of the worst people rich.
No, it’s the sponsoring of low culture by the already rich.
It's fascism vs communism. Both sides ran by the same ethnic group.
Exactly. Left and Right are political constructs to divide us into tribal factions so we war with each other, instead of fighting the real enemy who created those constructs.
fascism and communism are one and the same! They are both Big Daddy government will take care of you. Central Planning will make it all right. Except it won't! Why? Because concentration of power always and everywhere becomes corrupt! You give your government total power and you will have corrupt totalitarianism.
Yup.
"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide."
Ayn Rand
The way I put it is that the fascists are just communists who are smart enough to realize they can't actually run big industry, so they co-opt it and "manage" it through political means instead.
Clever, SM!
Communism and socialism differ in ways that do not matter to the trodden.
Lol. Good point. The method and the process are the same tho, with the same outcomes.
From the people who coined “hate has no home here”…yeah, bullshit too.
See that sign on a lawn and watch your back, because those are the REAL haters.