▲ | jrflowers 4 days ago | |||||||
>Where did I obligate myself to respond to your entire comment? I quoted specifically what I wanted to reply to. Oh ok. I kind of figured that. You saw a sentence that you didn’t like and then imagined a version of it that meant something that you felt you could refute, and then ran with it. I’m kind of confused why you’re posting to other human beings on here though. If you want to have imaginary sparring battles where you get to dictate what the other party means, there are some extremely popular chat bots that you can talk to. Like you get that this hasn’t been a real conversation right? Like essentially you’ve been talking to yourself using bits and pieces of text that I wrote and arguing against a position that you made up in your head. In public. This will be the end of this talk. Enjoy this link and have a nice day! https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/short-history-turn... | ||||||||
▲ | duckdriver 4 days ago | parent [-] | |||||||
> imagined a version They were your words, not mine. Run from them if you want. He was obviously involved in many real debates, and it shouldn't be hard for you to acknowledge that. I even drafted the language for you to clarify your argument to be about what you claim to want, but your ego seems to be standing in the way of embracing it. I responded to what you asked me to, and then you tucked tail. Very disappointing. Nevertheless, I will add a final thought here. Regardless of how offensive you may find the arguments he makes, there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with him. What do you propose to do about them? Delete them? Send them to re-education camps? Strip their voting rights? Of course not. Shaming and ostracizing them as “deplorable” has now reached its 10th year as a failed strategy. There’s only 1 option — we have to talk to each other. Are the conversations imperfect? Yes. Are they often performative yelling where no one will change their mind? Sure. Does it allow people whose views are heinous to articulate those in front of an audience? You bet. And does this country need more engagement and dialogue? Unquestionably. There is no alternative. There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.). Given the segments of society that are armed to the teeth, you’d think the left would be the side that is eager for dialogue over violence, but instead many on the left are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even those who wouldn’t embrace the “violence > dialogue” rhetoric can often be influenced by it, as can be seen in the “He didn’t deserve murder, BUT…” statements. You may have seen clips of Kirk answering the question of “why are you doing this?” I’m seeing it shared frequently in the aftermath of his death, because it was asked of him a lot. He says it quite plainly: “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.” He’s correct on this point, and I believe his legacy will be for being someone gunned down for and in the act of trying to address issues via dialogue. I encourage you to consider that, as I suspect my rant above about the importance of dialogue over violence is actually very much aligned with your own values. EDIT ADDENDUM That link doesn’t prove what you want it to. The first two bullets establish 2 people fired from TPUSA for being racist. Later there's a bullet there where an attendee of a conference said racist things. Like, really? That's the best you've got? The whole “he knew bad people” style of rhetoric just doesn’t work anymore. I honestly expected to find much worse in that link — you convinced me that TPUSA and Kirk were less racist than I thought the record might show. The fact that you think that link is a slam dunk shows just how remarkably warping the tribal mentality is for clarity of thought. | ||||||||
|