Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

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So would your opinions be inciting violence by your own definitions? You mentioned above wanting to send weapons to Ukraine. Those weapons will be used to kill people, and have frequently been used to intentionally target victims with no military connection whatsoever. They will also be used to prolong a conflict that's not only increasingly obviously hopeless, but at this only being sustained exclusively by locking people inside of a country, making it impossible for them to leave, and then replenishing mass deaths on the front line by dragging random people in off the streets, often through violence.

The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want the war to end immediately by settlement, which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions. [1] The headline for that article is "Ukrainian support for war effort collapses", while you're here claiming we should perpetuate the war as much as possible, implicitly suggesting you're taking the Ukrainian side. This, by the way, is way free and open debate is so important. You obviously have not really thought to imagine how things might look from somebody else's perspective because you probably simply have not been exposed to that much, if at all.

And it seems it's literally dangerous to expose certain groups contrary view points at this time in society, as they respond to words with bullets.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/693203/ukrainian-support-war-ef...

This is exactly why giving examples isn't helpful. All that does is define what tribe you are on. And each tribe has talking point to defend their position. Where everything I'm saying is agnostic of that.

Without picking any side in the Ukraine/Russian conflict. You can pick one side or the other AND STILL have the other side wanting to inflict violence on you. I wasn't promoting or defending either side. My point was that have a debate, opinion, argument, whatever about something where lives are literally on the line is prone to violence. The violence is what the whole thing is about. Because if Ukraine/Russia could just "debate the idea" of land ownership, then there would be no violence.

Where you're arguing/defending for one side, the other side is in heavy opposition to that. If you want to supply Ukraine with weapons then you shouldn't be surprised if the Russian side wants suppress you. If you're arguing not to supply weapons, then Ukrainians might have issues with that. But the point isn't to pick sides. The point is that some ideas are prone to more violence than others. And if you make yourself the face of one side or the other of those ideas, it shouldn't be shocking to meet violence.

Kirk held opinions on many controversial topics. My argument isn't that any of those opinions are right or wrong. It was that strong opinions on those topics tend to result in violence. I feel like I'm the only person here who it isn't plainly obvious that religion and politics are extremely divisive topics. Especially in our current time.

I think this is increasingly clearly a false equivalency. If somebody took the equal but opposite of every Charlie Kirk position, they could go to the most religious or conservative universities in the United States and feel 100% safe, even without any sort of personal security. They'd probably have to worry much more about a false flag attack than somebody genuinely trying to hurt them because of their opinions. But many of the positions he expressed in ostensibly liberal areas suddenly open one up to the threat of overt violence, up to and including murder. Liberalism in the US has become highly dysfunctional, and I say that as somebody who still identifies as liberal, though I'm not sure for how much longer if "we" continue down this path.

You are again resorting to tribes. This is a tactic used to unite people against a common enemy. In reality, no person should be completely liberal or completely conservative. Most people have mixed views on different topics. For example, would you argue that the current "Conservative" government is fiscally conservative? A true fiscal conservative would have major issues with some of the current fiscal policies. But due to tribalism, they go along with their team because the "other side" would be worse.

It's only when people become tribal that the positions no longer matter. They devolve into the thinking that no matter what their tribe does is the right thing to do. And anything the other tribe does is the wrong thing. That is the problem in today's politics. I would further argue that it is the tribalism that leads to political murder that you speak of.

I consider myself to be in no tribes and make my decisions on what I think is best for me and my family. And from that standpoint, I'd wouldn't mind hearing what specific liberal policies that you think are resulting in overt violence and murder. Because in my opinion, irrational people combined with tribalism is what leads to the violence you're referring to. I mean, irrational people commit violence without even belonging to a tribe. Adding the tribalism just gives them more "enemies".

It has nothing to do with tribes or policies, in and of themselves. It has everything to do with politicians and the media, who are increasingly regularly labeling everything and everyone they disagree with as fascists, threats to democracy, enemies of the state, and every sort of pejorative in between. And these same politicians/media then actively and directly incite violence in no uncertain terms. [1] This is then further backed by an extensive weave of NGOs and other groups that actively agitate young and easily impressionable individuals to violence.

Even in this thread you had somebody arguing that Charlie Kirk being murdered prevented a Civil War, which is just about the dumbest take imaginable, but that's again the result of somebody consuming endless amount of hyperbolic agitprop, often in online bubbles with no contrary voices present whatsoever, so dumb takes never get challenged, which is precisely what produces people like the killer in this case who has not only thrown away his own life, but taken the life of another individual and turned somebody he probably strongly disagreed with into a martyr.

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I'd also add here that the social media response to this is itself also telling. If e.g. somebody like Cenk Uygur was murdered because of politics, you're not going to have conservatives going on social media and cheering it. That's just completely sociopathic and absurdly inappropriate behavior. People can have different opinions, even opinions we strongly disagree with.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QaXGM24Wo

I just want to add one more datum to this, because it's a perfect example. Recently Home Depot fired an employee who was refusing to print posters for a Charlie Kirk vigil. Trump's attorney general took this one step further and was threatening businesses with lawsuits if they or their employees engaged in "hate speech" around this event, which would include acts like this.

Did conservatives then rally around the "tribe" and cheer this on? No, obviously not. Because people have a right to their own opinion, even if its wrong and abhorrent. The response to this, primarily from conservatives, was overwhelmingly negative. [1] Again, imagine the roles were reversed. This is not a both sides thing. There is only one side that wants to silence everybody that disagrees with them.

[1] - https://xcancel.com/Acyn/status/1967759168217157837

> ... which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions.

No. That's the part you're making up. The mood has simply shifted from fighting all the way to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to forcing Russia to leave Ukraine alone through other means, such as destroying the oil and gas infrastructure that powers the Russian economy. Everyone, even Russian officials, admit that Russia is in deep-deep trouble if the attacks continue.

I love how the b... 0 ... t... shows up even in some buried flagged thread in a flagged topic in the middle of nowhere.

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