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Bozo_Casanova

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Everything posted by Bozo_Casanova

  1. I’m seeing a lot of this kind of thing today reposted by old friends - good, kind people who are personally apolitical but products of their communities, which are entirely immersed in the MAGA-social media-megachurch complex.
  2. Interesting idea. I wouldn’t agree that it’s a class thing per se, but Ezra Klein directly called Charlie Kirk one of “us,” in a list that included Ben Shapiro, and said he wanted Kirk to be safe for his project for the sake of his (Klein’s) own project. For the record I found Charlie Kirk‘s politics appalling (no surprise) and even dangerous on basically every level. But I agree with Ezra Klein about how he conducted them: in the open, transparently, with words. In a healthy Republic you don’t die for that. in any case there’s no getting around the fact that he’s a martyr now and the convergent narrative on the right is that they tried to reason with the rest of America, and his murder is just another sign that the time for civil disagreement is coming to an end. And if I’m being honest it’s hard to disagree, which is why this feels like a pretty big deal. Going back to my previous point- it doesn’t really matter if the assassin was a “ radical leftist” who wanted to shut up Charlie Kirk, or if it was a right winger who wanted him to be a martyr, or a rogue element who wanted to accelerate chaos as a pretext for authoritarian crackdown, or even just a lone nut. The direction of travel is the same.
  3. His approval of the Luka trade makes far more sense if this is how he sees the league.
  4. Yes, Im sure the bullets were engraved with the complete works of Judith Butler
  5. That’s a very interesting comparison. My cousin lives in Paris and I’m not going to downplay Charlie Hebdo, but my guess is this has more impact. We’ll see.
  6. Not a tipping point or boiling point to be clear, but an acceleration.
  7. Without question
  8. A vocal minority? History is written by vocal minorities. I have never seen the American Right angrier or more frustrated than it is right now, and that was before Charlie Kirk got killed. It probably doesn’t start the fire that burns down the Republic, but it’s certainly more kindling on the pile.
  9. Apparently his last words were “take me out.”
  10. Yep. But not the last part. Maybe not the end of my days. Many of the condemnations have described Kirk’s assassination as “senseless.” It’s an interesting word. I’m assuming they either mean it serves no purpose or that it could not have been anticipated. The words I would use to describe the assassination are words like devastating, or tragic. Charlie Kirk’s death is tragic on two levels- the private human tragedy of a wife and children who lose a husband and father in the most shattering possible way, and the tragedy for American Democracy. I brought up the Reichstag fire earlier. This ain’t that, but what they have in common is that it doesn’t really matter who did it or even what their motive was. What matters is that it provided power and energy to drive historical forces in a certain direction, to drive Europe to war. It “made sense” in the context of its moment. Assassinations are like that and in some ways that’s what separates them from murders. The Minnesota lawmakers were assassinated because their murders fit into “the way things are going,” as people say. They fit into the de-civilizing shift from politics to other means. Frank Ferdinand was assassinated. So were Lincoln, Anwar Sadat, Ghandi, Allende, Yitzhak Rabin, and so on. Marinus Lubbe may have set the Reichstag fire but he’s not a major character. He just played the role of “arsonist”. Even though Gavrilo Princip set events in motion that took 100 million lives, he’s not widely seen as a major villain. In Serbia he’s a national hero, but mostly he’s just the guy who happened to play the role of inevitable spark that sets the world on fire and if it wasn’t him it would have been somebody else. Did Lubbe set the fire? Did Jefferson Davis orchestrate the conspiracy to kill Lincoln? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Does it *aftually* matter? When Princip pulls the trigger all the pieces are in place for World War. When Lincoln died the pieces are in place to roll back reconstruction. When Kennedy goes to Dallas the pieces are in place in Vietnam, big business is eyeing Vegas, and the largest generation in history is already starting to think out loud about whether the whole structure of society is a meat grinder. My point is that until we know who did it, we won’t know the specifics of why Kirk died. But we intuitively understand why, because it sadly, tragically fits into the way things are going. We don’t know how this chapter of history ends (it will end, but we don’t know how or when), but it feels like we’re in the climax, the moment when things get really bad. But they don’t have to! There have been other times when it felt this way. There’s always another chapter. The farmer’s son falls from his horse and is injured. People console the farmer. “We’ll see,” he says. War breaks out and the army doesn’t take his son. People are happy for the farmer. “We’ll see.” You know my point of view and my posture here remains the same. It goes bad a long, long time: I walk in the sunshine, I try to be a good neighbor, I buy Green Tips, and pray to never need them. My priorities are to do good, work hard and have a good time. With any luck my grandchildren will tell their kids about their silly old grandfather, a jolly old soul with malice towards none who armed himself for reasons which, in retrospect, made no sense.
  11. Wordle 1,545 4/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  12. For the most part, sure. But that doesn’t matter, does it?
  13. I think you missed the context here, so let’s move on.
  14. They do that anyway. What I’m referring to is the charge that “Democrats are celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death on social media.” It’s not 100% false, as much as I wish it were. There are some people celebrating, and they are getting a lot of attention, and because there are, Republicans will believe that Democrats, broadly speaking, were happy about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, that’s just where we are. But it’s not because of some label or purely propaganda.
  15. I get the distinction, but I’m talking about real people, celebrating. And I agree there’s not a lot of it but the algorithms are boosting it. A local activist in Dallas I grew up with was like “rest in piss.” Really embarrassing Agree, that this is most of what actual Democrats are doing. But that’s the thing- Republicans and MAGA types don’t make any distinction between the knucklehead fringe of the online left and “Democrats.”
  16. A text to my daughter. She sent me something from IG about Charlie Kirk saying gun deaths were “worth it”, and how he had opposed gun regulation etc. what I posted here was my response to her.
  17. You are incorrect, there are in fact lot of progressive-aligned idiots celebrating on social media, particularly Twitter. That doesn’t say anything about Democrats at large and represents tiny numbers, but he’s right that it’s happening.
  18. So…I feel like political assassination and terrorism, particularly if it winds up being the justification for an authoritarian crackdown or more organized political thuggery, goes well beyond the scope of either the gun control discourse or FAFO territory. I guess it’s ironic that he said it was “worth it”, and there’s certainly dark humor in the fact that he was shot under a sign that said “prove me wrong”, but none of this shit is going to be funny and nobody is going to care about memes or social media dunks when the tanks roll. I’m very worried about the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. It’s not the Reichstag fire, but it certainly takes us a step or two closer to the endgame.
  19. Especially the ones who aren’t actually disabled. Or Vets.
  20. Off topic, it does anybody remember the Shoal Creek Groper back in the 90’s? for several years women jogging on shoal creek were getting groped on the trail and the dude ended up raping a couple of women. IIRC they never caught anybody.
  21. Wordle 1,544 5/6 ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟨 ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  22. It’s pretty safe at night too. It was 10X more dangerous 30 years ago.
  23. Reagan didn’t act like that, but Trump is very continuous with Reagan. Im not sure if you were one of the Reagan Republicans who believed in all that nonsense and are still trying to rationalize your support, but there’s a straight line between the two. Reagan was just far more palatable and his administration was held much more in check by congress, which in those days was elected in mostly competitive districts by communities of interest.* or “communities of interest,” as @Ag with kids likes to call real places and people with things in common, as opposed to preordained partisan outcomes.
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