Posting for the "Now guys he was MURDERED! Don't celebrate!" Crowd

I'll sleep ever so slightly better now.

trump is honoring him with a military procession, to distract from epstein. people said he was killed over, because he was pining for epstein files to be released. Kirk did more harm than good, but MSMS seems to try to sanewash him.

He had shitty opinions, we know. I won't follow them. I will have empathy and I will not celebrate his death. Still, I think the world's population improved with one less hateful person around.

He had shitty opinions
I think we should stop saying this.
He was killed for his actions, not his opinions. His audience members are the ones who kill for opinions.
Discussing his personal opinions feels like a bit of a republican both sidesing talking point, honestly. I mean, if one side can kill the other just for having conservative opinions, then certainly they can fight back and kill people just for having blue hair and using the "wrong" bathroom!
It was the same with talk radio hosts decades ago. People would argue whether Limbaugh or Hannity really believe all the BS or if they just do it for ratings.
I only remember caring about that distinction when I was still immersed in the conservatism I was born into.
edit: added many word was not there
What would you say if someone on the left was killed as revenge?
- www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7717mk1gk6o.amp
  They have a time machine
I'd also add the argument of, "Don't stare into the abyss, lest we become the monsters we're denouncing."

I had someone try to tell me I was stooping to his level with my dark humor memes.

I told them, I can't do that because I'm not 6ft under.

Here’s the frustration and why this should not be celebrated:

Charlie Kirk spent years dehumanizing people, making lives measurably worse, and profiting from hatred. The cosmic irony of him being shot while calling trans people dangerous and minimizing gun violence feels like the universe delivering a punchline he wrote himself. There’s a cathartic release in seeing someone who seemed untouchable suddenly silenced by the very violence he dismissed.

But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive. Every celebration post, every "rest in piss" meme, every "fucked around and found out" joke is already being screenshot and weaponized. The worst people imaginable, those eager to exploit violence, are being handed exactly what they want: supposed proof that “they were right,” justification for crackdowns, and, most dangerously, a martyr whose blood sanctifies every awful thing he stood for.

Celebration may feel like a dunk on fascism, but in reality it accelerates it. It may feel like strength, but it exposes a movement so strategically bankrupt that it mistakes emotional satisfaction for political victory. Kirk alive was one influencer among many; Kirk dead is a rallying cry that will outlive us all.

The rage at what he represented is justified. But celebrating his death guarantees those very ideas will flourish. American democracy is dying, and a gravedigger falling into the hole is no victory when it only deepens the grave.

His ideas needed to be defeated. Instead, they’ve been immortalized.

Cool story bro.
They were gonna do it, anyway. They were just waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. In a world as big and complex as ours, probability would have provided them with some pretext sooner or later. As we can see, they don't know anything about the shooter, or his ideology. It's just an excuse. If the world didn't provide them one, they'd manufacture it. Walking around on eggshells and trying to avoid giving them one was never tenable.
But that catharsis is blinding, vile, and destructive.
My friend, you've got the right stuff. You have a very smooth and relatable style of communication and I really do value when those like you say something that I espouse and would otherwise butcher.
I won't tell people not to celebrate because I know how disliked that sort of sentiment is on a thread like this. But you're absolutely right and it sucks. They know that they just hit the "not crying wolf" lottery and will never stop banging that drum.
I'm frightened for whom the bell tolls.
Only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
He wasn't just a racist he was a fucking Nazi.
- I get the impulse, truly. He spread hate and did real harm, and the anger at that is justified. But celebrating his death doesn’t hurt his cause, it builds it. The right has shown us the playbook: when left-wing leaders are killed, they shrug it off, Trump even said it 'doesn’t matter.' Yet with Kirk, before there’s even a suspect, they’re already framing it as the start of the left’s downfall. When we celebrate, we feed that narrative. We give the Nazis exactly what they want. The real strength is being better than them, and making sure their ideas lose.
Thank you for that. Even though he died, he has won. Look at the amount of hatred he has nourished. Furthermore, I don’t believe his death will bring any justice to the people he impacted with his hatred. While I see people celebrating, I’m terrified.
Terrified this is how things are at the moment. If you can celebrate the death of Charlie, it means you have it in you to celebrate anyone’s else given a motive. And I think that is The first step of the dehumanisation process he so fondly used.
- I take a little solace from the fact that win or not, he will not be here to see it through

Did he actually say that? That literally what genuine psychopaths say.

I had to look it up. The full context is:
So the new communications strategy for Democrats, now that their polling advantage is collapsing in every single state… collapsing in Ohio. It's collapsing even in Arizona. It is now a race where Blake Masters is in striking distance. Kari Lake is doing very, very well. The new communications strategy is not to do what Bill Clinton used to do, where he would say, "I feel your pain." Instead, it is to say, "You're actually not in pain." So let's just, little, very short clip. Bill Clinton in the 1990s. It was all about empathy and sympathy. I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That's a separate topic for a different time.
Later on Twitter:
The same people who lecture you about 'empathy' have none for the soldiers discharged for the jab, the children mutilated by Big Medicine, or the lives devastated by fentanyl pouring over the border. Spare me your fake outrage, your fake science, and your fake moral superiority.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-empathy-quote/
It's not as bad as the out-of-context quote, but I'm having trouble even wrapping my head around it. I guess the argument is something like:
How can you claim to have empathy when you actively ignore or dismiss the pain of these specific groups? Your empathy is not real; it's a political weapon. Fake outrage, fake science, and fake moral superiority used to win arguments and elections.
He's not wrong about (many) Democrats. But even setting vaccine denialism aside, the core of favoring 'sympathy over empathy' is kind of unavoidable. It feels like tankie whataboutism: 'Democrat's empathy is fake, therefore, more distanced sympathy is our justified approach'
didn't elon musk also say something along the lines? "empathy is a weakness and our demise" or sth like that ...
- I'm sensing a pattern.
  No but seriously, the psychopathic allure of leadership (Forbes, sry just the first link I found) is leading to civilization scale decisions which are 1) out of sync with what a reasonable person wants, 2) counter to general human flourishing.
  Tech leadership wants us to worry about potential ethical "alignment issues" with a theoretical AGI, but we're already in crisis if those leading us don't share our basic human values.
  PS. I'm not trying to say psychopaths nonghuman. They're the same species and probably as conscious as I am. I just don't think they're an apt choice to decide matters for humans who do have empathy. Imagine a chef with no sense of taste running a restaurant kind of deal.
- And then there was this guy who was part of the Nuremberg trials or interviewed a lot of Nazis and tried to figure out what they all have in common, guess what: lack of empathy
  Found some reference:
  https://sluggerotoole.com/2018/06/19/evil-i-think-is-the-absence-of-empathy/
Yes, snopes link: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-empathy-quote/
- Yeah he was a straight up psychopath. Preferring sympathy means pitying the fate of others but not feeling their experience. Psychopaths generally see themselves a superior to others and pitying people for not being as awesome as they are, while also being confused about the experience of empathizing is exactly what a psychopath does.

Back during Trump's first term I would hear people saying "this country is going to fall into civil war" and I told my friends "we are nowhere near a civil war." Because the conditions were not there. It takes a huge buildup to move people to organized violence. You have to have thousands and in the US case millions or at least 100s of thousands of people willing to kill and die for a cause and we didn't have that, and still don't.

But the pandemic came and we saw half the country couldn't be bothered to wear a mask or get a vaccine to protect their neighbors and the other half saw that outpouring of collective psychopathy and realized that their neighbors were willing to risk their lives and the lives of their family and community to "own the libs" and we moved a step closer.

But you can't have a civil war like the 1800's today, there aren't bright geographical lines of loyalty. I predicted in the Biden administration that we would see a period of rising violence scattered across the country, like bleeding Kansas, but spread all over.

And that is exactly what we are seeing.

We still aren't at the point where we could fall into civil war, but we are closer every year. Trump is doing his damndest to create the conditions.

I pray we never get that far. Civil wars are the worst short of full on genocide, and they make the big G a whole lot more likely.

Civil war isn’t the only option. If you folks stopped looking left and right and started looking up and down you could move right to revolution.

I have seen so many right wingers post something along the lines of "leftists are so psychotic for being happy he was killed, we should kill all leftists in response!"

I don't give a shit about Charlie Kirk, rest in piss, but my celebration is mildly stunted by the fact that this is a dangerous thing to normalize and this is a massive notch in that direction given how huge of a public figure he was and the nature of his assassination being so public.

Of course, the right is largely responsible for that normalization, and Charlie Kirk's death is actually on people like Charlie Kirk's very hands. However, for me its just the consequences and the dark future that this seems to push us further into.

Hopefully the right fails to capitalize on his death effectively and we move onto largely forgetting about the piece of shit.

We have a MAGA dictatorship with a corrupt government being led by a literal sex offender, felon, and pedophile. This guy getting shot wasn't murder, it was a heroic attack made in self defense of our nation.
- Exactly where I'm at. I just hope the next one takes someone actually important., and useful to Project 2025. Fascism isn't defeated with words, it's defeated one bullet at a time. When Fascists are afraid to be fascist, then we will have Liberty again.
Exactly who could have one iota of care for a shitstain who made a living spewing this type of hateful screed. Rest in Piss indeed.
- Is that a speech of his or just his opinions?
Your last sentence is what I've been worried about as well. We all know Trump is a blathering idiot, but he's chomping at the bit to use military powers on US soil, and so far has been with no real reason. He could very easily use this as an excuse to further deploy troops and/or push more of his fascist agenda.
- Didn't he already deploy to Chicago? What excuse is needed when he's already doing so? I don't understand how everybody who portrays your sentiment is so daft/ignorant to what's already going on.
- He doesn't need an excuse though. He's going to do it no matter what happens. There is absolutely no hope he won't, just because you don't make a fuzz about it. It's not like he's just now thinking: "well now they've done it! They've gotten violent! I gotta make concentration camps, and use military personel and weapons to quell their protests, and maybe even attack the whole democratic process!". He's already doing it.
How do you unfuck this mess?
- Same lesson the South had to learn in the late 19th century.
- One side cannot unilaterally declare peace. We've tried for years and they made it clear the terms of peace are to redefine it so their violence against innocents is peace in absence of opposition.
- Not have Trump as president right now is a small first step.
- Historically? With extreme violence, let's hope we do better this time but I wouldn't hold my breath.

God works in mysterious ways.

The people cheering are just honoring Charlie's legacy.

OK, honestly I’m not going to celebrate a murder. But nothing can stop me from appreciating the heck out of the irony.

"I cannot wish death upon a man, but I have read some obituaries with great delight."
Yes. I cannot willingly be gleeful of another's death. Physically can't.
A cashier told me in glee when he had been shot. I thought that moment was so representative of where we are now.
Hateful cunts finally getting consequence On one hand, but gleeful at another humans death. Odd feeling.
Systems are broken. Rise in political violence. Tale as old as time..
- ........Song as old as rhyme Beauty and the bEEEAASST!
  (runs away)
- Are you new to the human race? Glee at other's deaths is in our DNA.
  Systems aren't broken so much as the last few decades, say from the 1980s to about the mid 2000s, were the unusual thing. Now is normal again compared to the long-term behavior of our unsavory little ape-based species.
  We're garbage, the sooner you make peace with that, the easier it gets.
Some losses are a hard gut punch, others are a mild tickle

Comical to me how many people in soooooo many posts about this just HAVE to go out of their way to note they aren't celebrating or some blah blah about any human dying.

Voluntary censorship; this is the world we live in now.
- Because Humans in this day and age are little more than Livestock for the Billionaires. Well except those in Nepal for the moment, for the moment they have slipped their chains. Hope they can keep them off.

I remember every single time someone they didn't like died. They would rejoice in the most vile manner imaginable. Fuck them.

I am betting that Kirk's killer was a fellow conservative who found him too soft and not hard right enough.

Or... maybe it was the same guy who killed Brian Thompson... because Luigi is innocent.

Literally right-wingers 24/7 are praising political violence, calling for the eradication of all Palestinians, glorifying the gunning down or running over of protestors, praising the murder of homeless people, praising the execution of minorities by cops, constantly glorifying the suicide rate of trans people, etc. Literally you can go on Twitter and find any of these right-wing accounts crying about how we shouldn't glorify violence and read their post history and you will likely not even have to go back more than 1 day to find them glorifying violence.
Honestly I wonder how much they're going to steer that narrative, even if it was a conservative.
- I just read somewhere that... well maybe this was an inside job? The reason being is that since Trump's creepy as fuck birthday letter became public, he needed something big to distract and shut down discussion so he had Kirk shot?
Imagine they end up framing luigi for this too
- The corrupt prosecution will probably insist that the shooting would not have happened if Luigi didn't shoot Brian Thompson (he didn't do that) even if the two murders are entirely unrelated.

Not wearing a helmet, bullet-proof vest and all and arguing against gun control.

He was asking to be shot...

/s obvsly ffs

Bullet-proof vest wouldn't have saved him as he was sniped in the neck. The head is a moving target and harder to hit, which is why the less professional sniper missed Trump, he tried to shoot him in the head and Trump happened to move his head at that very second, and aiming for center of mass can be risky in case they are wearing something bullet proof. The neck is clearly exposed and more stable of a target than the head. The sniper knew what they were doing.

They want pity and/or retribution for him for him, then there's a list he needs to get on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Hortman

I'm not celebrating, it's just a routine champagne toast. I do it every time a fascist dies of unnatural causes.

I firmly believe that there are people who make the world better by dying.

I beleive all life is sacred and that there is always opportunity for reform.
But at the end of the day we are defined by our ideas and the actions that back them.
If our ideas and actions undermine the greater good then its hard to argue that much is lost when the person that brings that ideology to life is themselves lost.
The problem with this is that it will be used to increase violence against non-white cis males.
- ah yes, because it's not like they're alrrady commiting violence. If they're gonna try and eradicate minorities, we should at least take some of them out with us
- Like that wouldn't happen without this. This belief that "if we don't give them an excuse, they won't make things worse" really needs to die. Fascists will do evil things, regardless of what anybody does.
- Guess how Nazis were defeated in WW2...
- I'm almost certain you guys write replies like this with the frame of mind that it's a clever way of wishing violence. It's a peak reddit tier response designed to dodge moderators.
- That sounds like an argument for protecting ourselves, not that Kirks death isn't a positive.
- Like winning WWII increased violence against non-nazis?

No empathy for this scum <3

How touching! Just like how he would've wanted!

Yep. I've already said this like three times on other platforms: it's ok to be happy about this. He gave you permission. Twice, actually. The "it's worth sacrificing a person every now and then if it means we get to have guns" and this empathy thing.

This is maybe the only time it's ok to be happy someone died.

It's what he would have wanted.
Every single time a fascist dies, is a time to celebrate. And yes, I mean absolutely every single fucking time.
This is maybe the only time it’s ok to be happy someone died.
There was also that one guy who shot himself in an underground bunker in Berlin. Gun violence and suicide are never OK but sometimes they are.
- There are many who believe that one guy escaped to Argentina and lived a long life.
You could also be happy in Kim Jon Un dies... maybe Putin?
I always wonder where the cut off is, how evil does someone have to be for society to accept their death with gladness?
- Putin is definitely on that list.
I'm sure there's way more than only two examples, but I'll be fucked if I'm going to wade through his nonsense to find them.

I wonder if we will get a new wave of users as reddit has another ban wave for people laughing at this cunts neck exploding.

Literally me. Been banned there way too many times, and for a lot worse things than what I've said here in the past 10 hours.
I'm done with that fucking site. They love censorship.
I made a comment asking where this was when two Democrats were executed in their homes, Trump said it'd be a waste of time to show empathy, etc.
Now they're calling timeout because they're the target.
- If you shoot politicians and billionaires instead of kids they might finally care about gun violence in the US.
Most likely given that we should know ~~imperial lackey spez~~ Reddit uses a form of AI-powered profiling on users for mods, data based mainly on personal content and types of subreddits visited.

LOL. Meanwhile Glen Beck is crying his eyes out on TV.

I'm not going to celebrate, I simply don't care that karma struck him so hard.

good riddance.

They didn't seem to care when it was Paul Pelosi, or the two democratic politicians that were assassinated in their homes.

They'll care when it's Republican Politicians being paraded through the streets like the politicians in Nepal.

Let's also not forget how giddy he was when Paul pelosi was nearly killed over his politics.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paul-pelosi-charlie-kirk-bail-conspiracies-b2214680.html

I hate how some are trying to spin this as "he was killed just for having different opinions" like no, he didn't just have "different opinions" that's grossly oversimplifying things, he advocated for the genocide in Gaza, said kids being shot in school is "worth it" because "god given rights" (which version of the Bible had assault rifles in it?) ridiculed disabled people in his circles, and said if his 9 year old daughter got raped he wouldn't allow her to have an abortion

All while in a position of authority and power with influence over a significant portion of people. How anyone can sympathise for him I don't know

I dearly regret Charlies tragic passing.
When I initially heard the news I was hoping he was in for a half a century of quadriplegia with destroyed vocal cords.
If they're "just words" then why are they so butthurt over our words? It's just words when I say "Charlie Kirk deserved what he got". What's the big deal???
How anyone can sympathise for him I don’t know
For a white ethnostate run by fuck-you-got-mines, obviously.
I hate how some are trying to spin this as “he was killed just for having different opinions”
...like who?
- I heard something like that from 2 different 'news' sources. One was Fox News and the other was PBS news. The PBS one was a lot less direct, but some rando who knew nothing about him could still take that message away. Zero mention of what he advocated for beyond challenging opinions on college campuses and mentioning he was a right wing influencer. They were playing up the think of the CEO's family card just like they did with the UHC CEO. Oh and don't forget the 247 (/s) random politicians who condemn political violence.
Advocating for genocide in Gaza isn't even a different opinion. It's the same opinion as democratic party leadership.
- This person is correct.
How anyone can sympathise for him I don’t know
At the end of the day he is a human being, that's why. I'm not trying to defend the guy, but fundamentally that's what is supposed to divide the progressives/liberals vs the conservatives. The conservatives don't care except when it's their own while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.
- while the progressives and liberals are supposed to care about all people supposedly.
  This is like saying "so much for tolerance" when progressives don't tolerate intolerance. It's a social contract: if you are intolerant of others you don't get the benefit of tolerance extended to you.
  If you are unsympathetic towards others then you don't get the benefit of sympathy.
- He was a human being who tried every day to be and say as inhumane shit as possible. Fuck anyone so willing to betray humanity.
- At the end of the day he is a human being, that’s why.
  Julius Streicher was also a human being. He was hanged at Nuremberg for the same kind of hate-mongering that Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of crimes against humanity.
- Maybe it's time to start fighting fot our liberties, instead of feeling bad for the guys taking them away.
- No, someone who spread as much hate as he did, doesn't deserve sympathy.
  I hope the bullet is ok.
- No he wasn't a human being, he was a fascist. The two are mutually exclusive. The world is a better place now that he's not in it and that's worth celebrating.
- Whatever. He was fucking gloating ever since the MAGAts took over, while others are being violently oppressed for "not qualifying" to be "American".
- People don't sympathize with their trash when it ends up in landfill.

Fight fire with fire. Apparently it's the only thing conservatives will pay attention to
So many of them are convinced all gun violence is coming from the left, and at this point I'm ready to just let them have their delusions. What are they going to do about it? Implement gun control? Please do
Icon

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

No really, if he was a nicer guy this probably wouldn't have happened.

I’m not convinced it did happen. His last words were literally making light of gun violence. If I read this in a book, I’d say it was too on-the-nose
- We have no clue how long the shooter was zeroed in. It's entirely possible they chose the funniest moments to pull the trigger.
- This timeline's scriptwriter has been phoning it in for years.
- Seemed like it was more in the neck to me

I wouldn't say he was murdered. He considered himself to be a culture warrior and when a warrior falls in battle, even if it's a most pointless battle standing on the wrong side of history, it's generally not considered murder.

His last words

He was asked how many shooters were trans in the last 10 years and replied "Too many"

He was corrected, the number is 5.

He was then asked how many shootings happened in these years (there were 5700)

He asked back: "Counting or not counting gang violence?" and got shot

His last word was "violence".
- It's beautiful
- A sniper with an innate sense of comedic timing?
- If violence isn’t working, you’re not using enough violence.
  shot; dies
  Narrator:
  the violence worked.
I always said "You can tell when Charlie Kirk is arguing in bad faith by when his lips are moving and sounds are coming out."
And it was literally the last thing he ever did.
- He died doing what he loved
He was engaging in hate-mongering right until the end. Just like the Nazi propagandists of the WW2 era, he was spreading a message of a demonized minority group being responsible for countless crimes and social ills. He ran literally the exact same playbook against trans people as the Nazis did against Jews.
I have no more sympathy for him than the Nazi propagandists we hanged at Nuremberg. They're guilty of the exact same crimes against humanity.
“Gang violence” = racist dog whistle. The assassin couldn’t have picked a more perfect time to fire. 😂
- I mean ideally it would've been at his time of birth
- I mean, most gang activity comes from young black men, but that does not mean it's racist to talk about it. I think talking about whether to include or exclude "gang violence" from a conversation about mass shootings is appropriate and not offensive in the slightest.
Reality displayed an immaculate sense of poetic justice today.
I would actually like to know what he was leading to with that question. Is the implication that gangs have an overrepresentation of trans people? Or that gang violence doesn't count for some reason?
I guess we'll never know.
- It's a common talking point among the right that there aren't really that many mass shootings in America if you exclude gang violence. Y'know, which is done by and only effects those people
- Pointing out that gangs do a lot of violence is an attempt to shift blame onto the demographic groups which are overrepresented in gangs due to socioeconomic reasons (systemic racism).
- Given who he was, probably the latter as a to-him socially acceptable racist dog whistle.
- Using one minority as a scapegoat for gun violence wasn't working, so he was switching to a different minority.
- It's a deflection technique. The intention was to not answer or address the question at all, but to shift to another topic he could more easily use to manipulate his audience. If you've ever watched him "debate" he was a master of deflection.
- As others mentioned, "gang violence" is generally a euphemism for non white, especially poor, people. I used to listen to Knowledge Fight(stopped after election not because of the boys, but didn't want to hear Jones gloat) and during several shootings that involved black victims Jones dismissed it as gang violence.
  One case I recall was a shooting in a school in GA that he was spinning some other way, until he found out the school was primarily black and the victim (who survived iirc) was black. He then just stated the kid was in a gang with no proof and dismissed the story.
- He was obviously arguing that skin colour minorities were doing any shooting that trans Americans weren't. Because his goal in life was to make people feel like they belonged - by vilifying out groups. And then monetizing that shit.
- Just some good old racism
- It was more anti-trans hate mongering. 2 or 3 trans shooters out of 5700 is nothing. If you can whittle down the number of "mass shootings" to just a handful of incidents, can make it seem like trans people are vastly over-represented among school shooters.
- our gangs of forcefemme communists are very trans and very violent, yes
Seriously? We’re living in a movie.
- It gets dumber...there was a school shooting today, 3 kids dead, 1 state over from this.
Does anyone have video of this? (This conversation, not the shooty part) All the news media are quoting this while referring to a video but not showing it.
- I watched the close up video and didn’t find it traumatic especially given all what has been happening in gaza and Ukraine, not to mention the children being shot in schools
- They're /very/ intertwined. I don't recommend looking for it unless you want trauma
Almost like the one asking the questions was in on it. I hope they never find them.

I'm laughing at the song choices being posted on the music community.

Man, I haven't thought about Heaven 17 in decades. My favorite lyric of theirs was "brothers, sisters, we don't need that fascist groove thing". I remember liking them in the '80s but thinking that their political stance was pretty over the top and that things weren't really that bad in the world. How wrong I was.
Fun fact: the band took their name from a fictional group that was referenced in A Clockwork Orange.
Golden Earring - Twilight Zone for the lyrics
"Where am I to go now that I've gone too far? Soon, you will come to know when the bullet hits the bone"
Utah Saints - Something Good, for the hilarious, to me, coincidence between the song title, the band name and the location of the event
*NSYNC - Bye Bye Bye, need I say more
- Filter - Hey Man, Nice Shot... how could I forget. Still have the CD somewhere, the singer is the brother of the T-1000.
- U2 - Bullet the Blue Sky
  You plant a demon seed
  You raise a flower of fire

I'd like to ask a general question that I'm not entirely sure I can give enough context for.

When did we as a society start listening so intently to what amounts to barely more than children? This Kirk guy looked chromosomal on top of being barely out of high school, how and why do so many people listen to him?

Half a century ago thought leaders were people like Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan or Gwynne Dyer or Roy Bonisteel or any number of scholarly people over a certain age.

When did we start caring about high schooler's opinions on a national level?

I see your point, but Asimov was born in 1920 and Foundation, arguably his greatest work, came out in 1951 when he was 31, the same age numbnuts was. "Barely out of highschool" just doesn't apply and frankly feels like a disingenuous attempt to disparage youth. Age unfortunately has very little to do with stupid opinions.
- Charlie Kirk co-founded TP USA in 2012 with a tea party activist when he was 18, the day after he graduated from high school. He also wrote an article for breitbart and appeared on fox news in his senior year of highschool. I believe that's probably what the OP is referring to.
The answer is social media. And theres grifters for everyone to latch on to, and get their opinions from.
It seems like the right wing have the market cornered, but thats only because we frequent left leaning social media holes. If you look at the right holes, you'll see the same insanity going the other way. Unhinged blue hair land whales getting weird as fuck about a hot girl wearing jeans for example. But right now, if you look, what you'll see an ocean of right wing grifters pointing to social media posts and comments and that are cheering on the death of Kirk. Which if you think about it, its pretty fucking sick. Yeah, he was a cunt. But that doesnt mean we have to be as well.
I mean, if I told you that someone was killed because of their political beliefs, youd think of Lincoln or Kennedy. And then if I told you people were cheering about it, youd think they were sick. But this is somehow worse. Charlie Kirk was killed not for politics, but because of the dumb as fuck culture wars that he took part in. Saying outrageous, bigoted dog shit, and then being celebrated for it by an annoying gaggle of cave brained cunts.
This is why people are celebrating. This weird culture war, that has both sides not seeing human beings anymore. Just talking heads that say things they dont like. The real horror of this is that a human being was murdered, and no one on the left side of the culture war for one second thought of the human being, or the horrific way he died. They just cheered and tapped away keys with satisfying clicky sounds. And worse than that, the cunt is now a martyr to that cause. This will only escalate now. And that, is nothing that anyone should be happy about.
I think since forever, there's for example quite a few teenagers amongst the US Founding Fathers age when signing declaration of independence:
Alexander Hamilton 21 James Monroe 18 Nathan Hale 21 John Marshall 20 Aaron Burr 20 Charles Pinckney 18
- Imagine having to juggle being a Father and getting through college at the same time.
We always have and it's how the left has lost young men. Counterculture and much progressivism has always been young men meeting up to consume drugs and engage in pseudointellectual conversation. Each generation had them, the hippies of the 60s, punks of the 80s, beatniks of the 50s. However the counterculture spaces of growth and optimism men created grew to resent and exclude them, and they have been scooped up by the testosterone peddling rage dealers that pull them in by their curiosity and desire to better understand and affect the world and themselves. There they are twisted into being dependent on a guide to get them through the delusional world they then believe in.

He is right, empathy is a dangerous feeling. Sometimes, it is better to feel it, and still toss it aside when it apply to assholes

I'll respond the same way he would have.

Yeah but you gain one smug counter or one sanctimony counter.
- X smug counters make x number of your opponents creatures attack, your blockers take no damage.

I feel bad for this guys family but becoming your own meme for getting assassinated is crazy. This whole thing has been insane.

I dont feel bad for his family.
- Considering he literally said he'd force his own prepubescent daughter to carry a pregnancy to term if raped, i'd say they dodged the bullet he didn't
- I feel bad for his kids. They didn't choose to have a piece of shit for a father.
- They're safe now

Fuck him. ❤️ ::: spoiler Spoiler

:::

spoilers please
- I think I figured it out. Thanks! I’m sorry.

The world is just a little better today.

Overall it still sucks, but it's nice to know good things still happen once in a while.

I’m savoring it, as things are bound to get worse. The right produces too many directed nutters.
- This will directly lead to things getting worse. The right will be mobilized by the martyr, is my fear.
- Yeah we merged onto the highway to hell in November... Things were always going to get worse. It's nice to have the occasional shining moment though.

Don’t feel any empathy when Nazis get hunted

When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel. Does Nazi just mean conservative fascist now? And if so is B. Netanyahu a Nazi? That seems weird.
- Yes, it is a good way to describe a genocidal facist. The Nazis do appear to have aligned with Zionist in modern times. Nazism and Zionism are very similar because they both have goals to create a white ethnostate. The brand of nazism we are seeing in the United States is targeting and scapegoating (hallmark of Nazism) the homeless, and Latino communities. People are being disappeared off the streets without due process or accountability. In Germany the worst concentration camps were on foreign soil during the holocaust so the United States shipping people to Africa and El Salvador should worry even the most skeptical critic. RFK has talked openly about sending people with mental illness to camps. He also has openly made blanket statements about autistic people not having a life worth living.
- When I hear Nazi I think of concentration camps and killing Jews. Kirk was a big supporter of Israel.
  Well, Israel didn't exist when the NSDAP did, so if you apply the literal meaning of each, a Nazi couldn't support Israel. But fascism was also something that only applied to the party in power in Italy from 1922 to 1945. The terms have somewhat evolved since then; fascism generally meaning authoritarian, ultranationalistic and antiliberal. The same applies to nazism, but usually with some racist ideology with hatred for other religions.
- Yes Netanyahu is a Nazi

so does this mean that any maggot who says they feel for his family or friends or colleagues, are really just liberal cucks in disguise?

Sure enough. Probably on soros payroll too.

That's what they definitely want, but keep in mind, there's two outcomes for them: one, you try to hold moral superiority and succumb once again to justifying their victim narratives and allowing them to change the discourse, or two, which they will still claim regardless, that you fight back and they have an additional excuse they would have manufactured regardless.

Anywhere in the world and even in the US' own history, when things get bad enough, you have to recognize you will never get through the mental gymnastics and that you are under a regime that's only going to get worse. And yes, that certain people are going to try to benefit from that instability and perhaps are even forcing it, but also that sometimes the only answer is to get ahead of the road they've paved so you can change the course faster and sooner than they would have expected. Not doing so or even fighting against the people actually resisting against the regime due to your own superiority complex is what has ended up cementing dictatorships instead of powering successful revolutions back into democracies.

GOP heard they'd be getting tots and are trying to hide their disappointment that you meant the potato product.
- dude it's tots how are you sad? get me some franks red hot it's happy time
I prefer thots to tots.
these are actually useful though

Maybe it wasn't murder. Maybe it was just an accident. There were probably lots of guns on campus, after all open carry is legal on campus' in UT, as I understand. Let's not prejudge the guy, he deserved a fair trial.

The whole concept of having that fascist there and treating his appearance as some sort of festive event, on a university of all places, is just so bizarre to me. And then this "open carry campus" nonsense.
It sounds like UT is just a fascist breeding ground.

He was permanently deported to the afterlife.

Plenty of people have been deported much worse places based on his brand of rhetoric.
- Ma'at hasn't spoken yet.
Even better & since the afterlife is made-up bullshit, he was deleted from existence! And the world is a better place without him.
If so then he is sucking hitlers dick as we speak.

This is genuinely the first time in a long time that the news has brought me genuine joy. I don't give a fuck, but I am angry at him and people like him for being so shitty that it makes me feel joy at their deaths. This is on you bitch.

Have you tried therapy? Enjoying murder is horrific
- Yeah, murder is horrific. I don't enjoy the fact that he was murdered; I feel joy at the fact that he can no longer spread his toxic filth anymore.
- enjoying his murder is part of our therapy

"Unalived"

Right?

"Some gun deaths are worth in order to have the second amendment"

I hope he had couple minutes to reflect on this before he died.

Billy Joel was finally wrong: not only the good die young.

I can't believe he was only 31. Like he didn't seem that young at all to me

Stupid fuckers on Australian news are going with the 'conservative activist' shit.

Nazi pig got put down like the animal he was. Activism is for the oppressed against their oppressors.

A reputable news source, though, or NewsCorpse/Sky/Ch 9?
I checked the ABC News website, and they're calling him "MAGA Influencer", which I'll accept.
Nooo, we need more respectability politics, surely if we kowtow to fascist harder they will see the error of their ways.

the problem is that he was wrong; Empathy is a good thing. You are embodying his shitty ideology by not having empathy. That doesn't mean you gotta suddenly like the guy or not call out his shitty ideology, but don't let yourself get dragged down into the septic tank and get covered in the shit.

I'll gladly die on this hill, get at me nerds

Some people say empathy, tolerance, & inclusion are strictly moral values. However this misses that they are also a social contract lest we end up in the paradox of tolerance.
Kirk had none for those outside his in-group. Those outside his in-group owe him none in return.
- How, exactly, does having empathy lead to toleration of unempathetic ideologies like fascism? It logically would make us even more averse to those kinds of ideas. Dare I say, a dearth of empathy on a societal level leads directly to those places.
  What a reductive and unnuanced view of the world. I sure hope you are not representative of the rest of the population or we are even more fucked than I thought.
- You're arguing for parochial empathy over real empathy.
I choose not to have empathy for those who wouldn't have empathy for me in the same situation. He openly mocked people who die to gun violence, so no sympathy from me. I lean towards enjoying that he is gone. The line for me is killing is bad, but I'm glad he's dead.
- All those people have loved ones, who are surprised that this worked for once
  https://youtube.com/shorts/h9qQ1kC8xWg
- I empathize with him. Live by the sword, die by the sword... In his situation, I'd accept my fate
I’ll gladly die on this hill
Come on now, someone already died

In the end, he did get one vaccine shot.

The anti-life one.

More people like him should get their shots. Hey, it's a matter of public health!

"I'ma give you a gangster pill, that's a little piece of lead taken to the head"

Thoughts and prayers, lmao

So we're just practicing what Charlie preached by not giving a single fuck that he died by a shooting.

So you agree with Kirk?

I keep thinking about this angle. Maybe it’s a case of a double standard being ok? Like if some group of people are like “Don’t worry about me, I don’t need any empathy” and others say, “I hope you will show me empathy” then I don’t see why a single standard has to be applied.
Not sure if you agree with this analogy but for example as a male, I don’t mind if a woman says something to me that might be considered intimidating if the roles were reversed. Sure, I need to be mindful of whether she might cause harm to someone who isn’t me, but again, I don’t need to apply a single universal approach to myself if I know in my heart it’s not necessary.
Anyway, maybe the stronger rebuttal is “That’s not what he meant”.
- A double-standard is not inherently a bad thing. It's a double-standard that we allow trained and licensed medical doctors to do operations on people but not bozos without any medical background, but one would have to be an imbecile to say this double-standard is a bad thing. It is indeed a double-standard to not show empathy to people who support industrial scale genocide to themselves be merked while believing we should show empathy to the victims and to people who do not advocate for such things when they die, but it is a good double-standard. It's completely ridiculous to think we should be applying a single universal standard to everyone because people are not all the same.

"A few gun deaths are worth it to protect the God given rights of women and LGBTQ+." - Charlie Kirk

Well gonna be interesting to see what south park does

Agreed... I am very interested to see if they'll double down or fold

I mean, I wouldn't say "don't celebrate it" but just because someone else is a piece of shit isn't a blank check for you* to be a piece of shit.

*Collective "you"

There's a difference between being an asshole and being an asshole while monetizing it and corrupting the next generation.
Even the CEO guy who got Luigi'd was not as bad as Charlie Kirk in my eyes, he just made evil decisions for profit
Charlie Kirk exported his evil. Taught kids how to be evil. To be all manner of phobic. To hate. He actively worked to make the world a worse place
Fuck him
- Exactly. I've been saying this all day, but we literally hanged people at Nuremberg for doing exactly what Kirk made his whole career doing. Kirk was guilty of incitement to genocide.
I don't like the tone of that. If some dude peddling bullshit gets what he deserves, I don't see the reason not to relish in it even a little. This guy has been an oppressive POS who's rhetoric is celebrated by Neo Nazis. That's like saying, "just cuz hitler died doesn't mean you get to say mean things."
Look, I know we all struggle to maintain morality against our emotions, but, sometimes, the reaction is perfectly valid.
- I'm not celebrating his death, I'm celebrating the fact that he will no longer be calling for violence. Don't see how that makes me the bad guy
- I respect the dead the same way Hoots and Caelan Conrad do. I wonder if small face man from Toilet Paper USA will get an episode.
I always celebrate the elimination of cancer.
Schadenfreude.
With you. We can't sit here and make fun of him for thinking so poorly of empathy while refusing to show any empathy. He was a piece of trash and needed to be taken out like one, but I'm not going to throw a party over it. It's a "you gotta do what you gotta do" situation.
- I feel more similarly to when you hear about exotic game hunters getting killed by the endangered animals they were hunting.
  This got seems like a huge piece of crap, but I don’t take joy in this. But after all I’ve read he’s said today, yeah, not surprised at all.
  I worry this is the start of something bigger though that will be terrible for everyone.
- Having empathy is having the ability to see someone's emotions and understand things from their point of view. Calling someone out for being am unpathetic POS doesn't preclude you from being empathetic. Empathy doesn't mean you have to abide evil.

Oh hell yeah. I'm cracking open a bottle of wine for celebration. So well deserved.

I've been saving a small bottle of bubbly for something, not sure what. This is the perfect occasion. Cheers, friend!

And nothing of value was lost.

Political violence is of course bad... but as soon as you call for it, especially indirectly, you deserve whatever comes to you. Stochastic terrorism is still terrorism, and there's not a lot more American than the fact we don't negotiate with terrorists.

Yeah, the victim literally called for it. He celebrated it against his enemies, I'm not all that tore up about it
Political violence is bad... But what no one seems to be saying is that it's a symptom.
You can't stop it. You can't take all the guns. You can't crack down on it.
It's a sign of where we are as a country right now.
What? The US negotiates with terrorists all the time
- You seem to misunderstand. We don't negotiate. We supply them because they're killing people we want killed, or we blow them up.

Charlie Kirt says he’s pro life, dies…

I find no joy in anyone's death, but in some deaths I do find amusement.

Fair point.

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHhahzhzhzhzhahahahhzhahahashhahahahahahaha

Cheer Up Charlie

Today's theme song

To be fair, using his talking points that made him one of the biggest cunts on the planet as justification to be just like him, its pretty wild. He was cunt, there no doubt about that. But his death brings that question back onto you. Are you going to celebrate the death of a 31 year old man just because you didnt like the dumb shit he said? If the answer is yes, you might not be the good guy you think you are.

He wasn't just spreading shitty opinions, he was spreading hate and fear and creating a dangerous environment for those he didn't like. He got what he fucking deserved.
- And what do you think celebrating his death is doing?
  I know you keyboard warriors are dumb as fuck, so Ill just tell you. Youre ramping up the other side of your dumb culture war. Youre spreading hate, and celebrating murder. You are the very thing you hate. You just dont have as many followers. But theres enough of you doing it, that right now there will be a number of unhinged right wingers looking for "payback". And thats on you, and every single other mouth breather out there cheers for murder.
I hold people like him personally responsible for the violence against POC's and trans people. So yeah, I am going to PARTYYYYYYY
- The worst thing you can to do an enemy is kill him. The worst thing he can do to you, is have you become just like him. Something to think about... or ignore, if youre already too far gone.