It can be useful to strategically pretend to be shocked and disgusted, because normal people legitimately are shocked and disgusted.
If for example a coworker you don't like says something like "too bad he missed" it may behoove you to act "shocked and disgusted" in front of HR who (even if they too are sad he missed) now will probably be obligated to take "glorification of violence" much more seriously than two weeks ago now that first blood has been drawn.
Think of today as 9/14/2001: tenured university professors could say "the US deserved it" in the right company, but otherwise that was a good way to get into a confrontation. But this is a limited time offer that won't last forever.
Yep, this is what a lot of us are doing, to be honest. We're using the left's tactics against them. Because do you know what gets corporations to do something about piece of shit figures?
You pretend to be outraged and tell the corporation how dare they hire employees that think like this and do they support having these kinds of people on their staff, etc.
We're simply using their rhetoric against them. It's been working, so keep fucking doing it.
Basically you can appeal to the moderates by pretending outrage like that ebcause what decent human being wouldn't be against political violence?
It helps our cause, but appeals to the normie sense of morality, the same way the left fooled normies into supporting far left LGBTBBQ idpol trash.
Honestly, I think more than a few of the proper rightists are feigning outrage at the moment.
I think some are genuinely shocked because, well, holy shit that was close; but I think most are expressing outrage to teach normies that "Hey, saying the president should be murdered is wrong".
Which, because of the well-poisoning, a bunch thought was okay.
If for example a coworker you don't like says something like "too bad he missed" it may behoove you to act "shocked and disgusted" in front of HR who (even if they too are sad he missed) now will probably be obligated to take "glorification of violence" much more seriously than two weeks ago now that first blood has been drawn.
Maybe it's me just being a cuck, but I don't like screwing over co-workers even for 'bad opinions'.
The following is definitely me being a cuck: I actually feel sorry for people who want DJT dead. They've been so brainwashed that they think Donald Trump is the cause of their problems. I saw a video of a middle-aged, woman at a cash register being confronted over opinions online. A woman who was obviously poor and miserable. Should she lose her job, and what little she has, because she believed the media?
The Inquisition always attempted persuasio before relaxatio.
I'm pretty sure that if I asked HR if they fire people for supporting Trump, they'd look at me in bemusement like I'm a crazy person, and point out that it's not even legal.
So much of these ideas are based on rare worst case scenarios.
It's a tactical matter whether or not you wish to employ the strategy against any given person. I probably wouldn't do it to someone I otherwise liked and who I didn't think would do the same thing to me.
That said, at a higher level I think society has gotten too casual in its use of "war verbiage" in politics. OP is right that "war is a continuation of politics by other means", so I would think then that unless you are prepared to go to war you wouldn't want to speak of existential threats, and heavily discourage people from speaking in such terms.
You could see (and I commented on several times at the time) in the aftermath of the 2020 election the same sort of "war verbiage" (eg. "if we let this election fraud stand we don't have a country any more"), and I said at the time (before 1/6) "these people saying these things are playing a dangerous game, because you risk people taking them seriously and taking them to their logical conclusions. So if you say them then you'd better really believe them, because some people will." And lo and behold, a lot of the politicians saying those things actually didn't believe them; and a lot of normal people who did are sitting in prison right now as a result when support they probably thought they had completely evaporated.
And it's happening here too: "threat to democracy and our very way of life" taken to its logical conclusion is...what almost happened on Saturday. If you believe that statement is true (which I don't of course), then the only logically consistent critique of the shooter is that he didn't actually wait until Trump won the election. And now a husband and father is dead, as is a 20-year old kid who got whipped into a frenzy by being exposed to it for half his life.
So I would say that if you don't want these things to happen every election you need to tamp down heavily on that sort of verbiage unless you really mean it. Ideally the politicians and press who pushed this would be in prison for instigating it, but I think we both know that won't happen. The next best thing (but far from a perfect solution because it punishes normal people) is for there to be consequences for normal people saying such things the same way there is for joking about bombs in an airport security line.
One of the problems with that line of thinking though is it smacks very heavily of the notion "we'd better not do it because that gives them permission to do it". Which is utter lunacy because they're already doing it and they're going to do it anyways no matter what we do. So we can either match them or be overrun. There is no scenario where if we stop, they also stop. There is they do it and we do it, and they do it and we don't and we lose. Those are the only two options.
My line of thinking is more "smack their instigators down hard (because they just shot one of ours), and only if they've shown they can behave* can there be a mutual de-escalation where if either side instigates they get smacked down."
Unless and until that happens you have to do tit for tat. Arguably smacking them down hard itself is tit for tat since that's what they did for 1/6.
* Which given their total reversal in less than 24 hours is highly improbable.
OP is right that "war is a continuation of politics by other means",
As you no doubt know, that is from Clausewitz, and the proper translation is policy, not politics. And that was obviously never meant as domestic politics, except when war is leveraged to accomplish to accomplish domestic goals - e.g. the French Revolutionary Wars.
I said at the time (before 1/6) "these people saying these things are playing a dangerous game, because you risk people taking them seriously and taking them to their logical conclusions. So if you say them then you'd better really believe them, because some people will." And lo and behold, a lot of the politicians saying those things actually didn't believe them; and a lot of normal people who did are sitting in prison right now as a result when support they probably thought they had completely evaporated.
But that was probably inevitable. Even if they did all believe it, there is nothing that you can do. Not to mention that they act in accordance with their interests and not in accordance with their beliefs, whatever these are.
And it's happening here too: "threat to democracy and our very way of life" taken to its logical conclusion is...what almost happened on Saturday. If you believe that statement is true (which I don't of course), then the only logically consistent critique of the shooter is that he didn't actually wait until Trump won the election.
He'd probably have better security. But point taken. Condemning this attack is incompatible with believing that he is worse than Hitler. There are some people who try to square the circle by arguing that Trump is an existential threat who should be taken out using lawful means, but I can't say it is very persuasive.
Ideally the politicians and press who pushed this would be in prison for instigating it, but I think we both know that won't happen.
It'd also violate Brandenburg vs. Ohio.
The next best thing (but far from a perfect solution because it punishes normal people) is for there to be consequences for normal people saying such things the same way there is for joking about bombs in an airport security line.
But that serves an actual purpose. I would be OK with the cruelty if it actually advanced the good in some meaningful way. How exactly does punishing miserable minimum wage workers, who have no idea about politics beyond what they hear from the lying media, advance the good?.
I guess spreading terror. But will it improve things if people do not feel as comfortable mouthing off about Trump as they are now? I'd say that a lot of pro-Trump sentiment is caused not by the man's virtues, but by the vileness of his opponents.
Let "weakening Russia" be your policy. You can do that by ordinary means, like sanctions. You can do it by sending weapons to some country sacrificing its young men for your empire. And you can do it by declaring war.
It's not my translation. It's that of Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
Acknowledging that Rubio (and approximately 150 million other people) are a better candidate for a Republican VP nomination doesn't make someone a Rubio supporter, you simp. But you know this, since I explained it over and over again to you the last time you went on a simping spree for your kween.
I'm not at all shocked or disgusted by the reaction of the Left, and I think anyone who is, is revealing themselves to be a bit of a cuck
Well, dang, because I'm a little shocked.
Not that they're losers, not that they're hateful, not that they're retarded...but by just how retarded they are. That's kind of awe inspiring.
It also once again shows the left/right dichotomy, or the progressive/conservative, or however you want to measure things.
"Right" conspiracy theories are trying to understand reality. "Left" conspiracy theories are desperate attempts to pretend reality if how they want it to be, and force it to their world view.
Just like how left economic/political policy is trying to force things, and based on a faulty premise, while the right is more along the lines of trying to build on existing reality in a way that works.
Lastly, perhaps the most glaring: Leftists shape reality to fit their ideology. The right shapes their ideology to fit reality. Yes, standard disclaimer, of course: Not always, there are losers everywhere, the right isn't perfect - far from it - but the generalizing largely holds true.
"Right" conspiracy theories are trying to understand reality. "Left" conspiracy theories are desperate attempts to pretend reality if how they want it to be, and force it to their world view.
That is a really great way of putting it and I see it the same way.
"TRUMP FAKED THIS """ASSASSINATION""" ATEMPT BY ORDERING SOMEONE TO SHOOT HIM IN THE FACE TO WIN AN ELECTION HE WAS ALREADY WINNING"
"The real proof that he wasn't shot is that he was wearing a bandage on his ear, to hide the fact that he wasn't shot in the ear!"
It makes you realize what they're capable of since they project so much.
Yup. Considering all the other stuff they've blamed on their opponents, only to have it come out that they've been doing it the whole time...things could get even messier.
Just because you expect something doesn't mean you can't be disgusted by it, and while I'm not shocked by the worst leftist reactions, I am disappointed by some of them.
Say you were an infantryman in the Korean War, and you see a Chinese machine gun nest firing at your squad's position. How disgusted are you that they would do that to you?
Interesting that I got downvoted, but the person I asked never actually answered the question.
That's completely different because we're not actually shooting leftists. If we were then it would be completely understandable that they would return fire.
Maybe you don't see yourself as any different than the leftist radicals, but I do. All I wanted was to stop immigration, improve the economy, and stop pandering to women and nonwhites. It's completely reasonable to be disgusted that the left would attempt an assassination or any violence in response to that. It's like if you call someone a bad word and then say, "yeah, they were right to chimp out and stab me. I would do the same."
I mean, not really. My desires are even less specific than yours. I just want to be left mostly alone.
That alone means I deserve to die according to my political opponents, and the reality of conflict is that stakes and depths are decided by the more extreme position.
Your choices are to meet them in kind, or to lose.
So yes, the left has yet to shoot at me. But that's 100% a tactical decision not a moral one for them. Pretending otherwise, pretending that we can have a gentleman's conflict is an illusion that ends the exact second they have a clear shot.
Congrats on your moral high ground, ill be sure to ask them to engrave it on your fancy tombstone.
If you want to be left alone then you would be better off not engaging in any violence. As much as I hate leftist ideology, it's a bit ridiculous to assume that everyone who expresses a left wing opinion is trying to kill me. One of your relatives, your neighbor, a fellow church-member, the old lady ringing up your merchandise; they could be naive Biden voters or maybe they were influenced by some reddit posts; are they enemy combatants? Do you need to attack them now before they attack you? That kind of tribalism is a rabbit-hole that never turns out well.
I want to live in a world where all forms of leftism have just about as many adherents as ancient Olympian Greek religion. And for it to be looked at as laughably in hindsight as that religion is. I want leftism wiped off the face of the Earth to such an extent that future generations look at it's very existence in this time as hilariously backwards with essentially zero living people putting any stock in any of its precepts whatsoever. And I believe absolutely anything done that achieves that final goal is good and noble.
I want leftism wiped off the face of the Earth to such an extent that future generations look at it's very existence in this time as hilariously backwards with essentially zero living people putting any stock in any of its precepts whatsoever
Ah, yes. The National SOCIALIST party. the most right wing party of all time. Definitely. Not one doubt in my mind that the National SOCIALIST party was right wing.
It's been years. Years of this shit parading unendingly. If you're still stuck on disgust you're like a gastric surgeon who gets squeamish about vomit and shit.
It's an understandable response and in most other contexts perfectly reasonable, but in this one it's still going to piss off whoever has to pick up your slack in the operating room, maybe enough that they'll even call you a cuck. Because you're already on the team that's elbow deep in shit and just going "woe is me, I just want these bowels working correctly" instead of being willing to do the necessary work to make that reality. Disgust isn't a productive emotion and it's one that you rightly should acclimatize to if it's necessary.
Engage in real politics and think through the full series of causes an effects that don't lead to a sizeable domestic faction with establishment backing that wants you dead or enslaved actually killing or enslaving you or your friends.
Burying your head in the sand and wailing "I wish it wasn't this way!" isn't one of them.
That dude is a shill. No one on our side uses the term fascism unironically. It's just an enemy buzzword. He's a typical entryist meant to shame and attack us.
I'm not attacking you. I only disagreed with the idea of killing people for having a different opinion. Also, people here use the term fascists regularly, as in, "leftists have always been the real fascists." We don't behave like our enemy does because we have standards.
I get where your analogy is going but let me flip it on you. You're a soldier in the War in Afghanistan and you see insurgents strapping explosives to a child and sending him towards your position. How disgusted are you that they would do that?
In your example, it's soldiers with similar notions of war, with similar values. You and the Chinese guy both consider shooting machine guns at soldiers to be within the bounds of what is acceptable. But that's not what this is. This is decent people with one notion of war/politics against a group that will cross every line if they think it benefits them.
The right is continually shocked and disgusted at the left because the right has ideals and one of them is placing value on morality.
Great post. When it comes to committed partisans on the left, anyone who didn't know they wanted us dead wasn't paying attention. This is the weakness of the right, that we believe that everyone else has the same vital urges in their hearts.
However, regarding the Civil War and the Germans/Japs in WWII, or even the Taliban, the modern leftist is fundamentally different. Even the Taliban retain enough respect for human dignity that they can reconcile after the war. Lord Miles, a British citizen, has safe passage through Taliban territory. On the other hand, leftists won't be satisfied as long as there's somebody left breathing in the world, somewhere, that disagrees with them. Even then they won't be satisfied because their whole reason for being depends on purging the unbeliever.
I've probably said the same thing about almost respecting the people like Destiny because they unleash their inner thoughts on the world, but I really can't. Their whole philosophy is misanthropic.
To add a note though... there are a lot of people holding soft left beliefs that don't want to kill anyone. The majority of Americans have partially formed political views at best. I don't want anyone here, especially younger people, to cut themselves off from a social life unnecessarily.
On the other hand, leftists won't be satisfied as long as there's somebody left breathing in the world, somewhere, that disagrees with them. Even then they won't be satisfied because their whole reason for being depends on purging the unbeliever.
Yeah, them and moo-slimes have a lot in common that way. No wonder the Left loves them. At least, they "love" them in the same way Mr Burns loves his Hounds.
If anyone's behavior is disgusting, it's brothers in the sights of our shared enemy who are still willing to hand them ammo if they just ask nicely enough.
They have no marching orders. Or more accurately: the marching orders coming down from leftist media are insufficient. The attempt on Trump’s life represents a seismic instantaneous shift in the Overton Window. It is so beneficial for the right that the left is reflexively calling false flag even though it makes zero sense. They cannot accept that something so catastrophic to their agenda has actually happened. So their organic response is total silence and/or feigned ignorance.
I think that's because it's all tongue in cheek enough that it's almost universally understood nobody means it when they say "noooo, don't do violence, that's bad", it's just strategic blame dodging.
And since we're already at the point where people are getting shot dead at opposition rallies, even the crazies don't feel the need to agitate further when all their ringleaders are going "shhhhh, act innocent for a minute!"
Just to give a little perspective on "omg imagine if it was the other side crowd":
They don't see them as the enemy, as you correctly point out. But they don't see that because they think they can be redeemed. I know I was a raving liberal in my 20s. I was saved because the message reached me about how everything from which I was forming my opinions and beliefs were lies. If what the media said about Trump were true, yeah, of course I would be anti-Trump. If what the media said about Trayvon Martin were true, yeah, of course I would be pro-BLM. And so on.
The problem with this line of thinking -- that the left can be saved the way many of us were -- is that if they haven't landed on the right by now, they never will. They have been hopelessly captured, fully broken by the programming and are reading aloud the false confessions their captors are writing for them. The desire to rescue them is there, for sure, but your rescued captives will fight YOU tooth and nail to remain in their cages.
Correct. The history of the world is a history of murder, violence, and war. We've been spoiled by peaceful times. Every leftist is sad he missed, and every righty wants heads on spikes. Both attitudes are perfectly normal. This is, in fact, Who We Are.
We're not shocked and disgusted. We're used to it. But sometimes it's not a bad idea to act shocked and disgusted anyway. There's always someone encountering leftist bile for the first time and our side saying it's no big deal sends the wrong message. Having like-minded people who dislike them and haven't descended into apathy is a plus.
My reaction to the Left's reaction is basically "well yeah, they're the enemy. They're supposed to want us dead." I'm more shocked and disgusted that so many on the right don't get this and feel the same back at them.
What is your reaction to the leftists who are appalled at what happened?
I was actually shocked by Josh Shapiro's comments about the guy who was killed.
I've been seeing this cultural war slowly unfold for a decade now, but giving tit-for-tat against brainwashed or social engineered sheep (read: midwits) is giving those who engineered/guided these people the results they want. They would gladly accept White people once again massacring themselves over political bullshit for the umpteenth time in the past few millennia, if it means clearing the way for their newfound control over the serf classes and whatnot.
The first real flaw of European/American whites is too much compassion, the second flaw is that they keep doing the same shit over and over again.
Retarded midwits (normies) move with the zeitgeist.
Attentive reactionaries just simply give in to the animal portion of the hindbrain.
Humans have never learned, and, guaranteed, never will.
Hard disagree. There are boundaries for what is acceptable, and even in international war there are rules of conflict set in place. You just come across as a fedposter or internet edgelord if you try to argue that we're actually justified in committing assassinations or political violence.
The whole reason why we can condemn people for supporting the assassination attempt is because we've never resorted to those kinds of vulgar tactics. And look what's happened, it's damaged the left's reputation and caused a lot of people to shift to our side. Political violence is the last thing that anyone should be advocating right now.
They are at war with you. You can keep pretending that it doesn't count so long as you aren't also at war with them, but that doesn't make it true. It just makes you a fool.
If you get in a verbal argument with someone then that doesn't suddenly open things up to physical violence, and if they take the first punch then it makes them look bad and makes us look good, which is exactly what has just happened.
Ask the South how fighting a moral war worked out for them.
Spoilers: The Yankees wrote them as evil racists who wanted to keep slavery, while Lincoln, who loved the UNITED States and only wanted to keep it together, wept at his desk when the Confederates took Fort Sumpter.
Wars are won when one side kills so many of the other side and destroys so much of their stuff that they can't resist anymore, and then the winner gets to decide who looks good in retrospect.
I'm sorry but you are a fucking idiot if you think looking good means anything in winning wars for survival. You're the kind of guy who is going to try to hold his chin high and tell himself "at least I didn't compromise my principles" while your enemy slips the blindfold down.
Looking good is quite literally the entire war. It's a war being fought through media and appearances. If you start LARPing as a real-life fascist then you will get shut down immediately and lose all support. It's not even just a matter of morals, but also simple practicality and effectiveness.
But I'm not backstabbing anybody. I really just want people to try to be logical instead of thinking with their feelings and doing something stupid that will make the rest of us look bad by association.
That reminds me, someone else told me to "STOP PUNCHING RIGHT" a while ago, but ironically it seems like the people in that group are actually the ones who attack the right the most.
I really just want people to try to be logical instead of thinking with their feelings
I hope you’re young. Because then there might still be time for you to learn that logic plays almost no role in society. 90% of people either can’t process it or don’t abide by it. That’s why rhetoric is all that matters. The sooner you accept this, the better you will function in this world.
Dialectic is good for nudging people who mostly agree with you. It will never convince someone who is neutral, much less antagonistic. That's where rhetoric wins.
I'm not sure how that contradicts anything I've said. I'm already well aware that people are easily manipulated by propaganda. I was just hoping the people on this site would be a little bit better about it.
You're trotting out the same tired "muh optics" horse shit the tradcuck right has used to lull us into passive inaction while the left takes territory for decades. And now they literally just tried to murder our leader on live TV and here you are pulling out the same old "remember, if you fight your enemies they win" garbage.
You're acting as if I'm saying we shouldn't have shot the shooter. Obviously defend yourself with force when your life is threatened. But the original argument was that it's perfectly reasonable to be disgusted by the left attempting and supporting an assassination attempt. Trying to paint me as a pacifist is completely disingenuous.
And your enemy believes that using Force proactively in order to achieve your goals is just as acceptable as using it in self-defense. And they believe that because they are at war with you and that's what you do in war. You are going to lose if you don't understand this. And if enough people on your side believe the same thing, your entire side loses. And then it won't matter whether or not you had the moral high ground, because you'll be dead and your enemies will rewrite history to make it look like you were the bad guy all along, and you'll be too dead to do anything about it.
It's always shocking to me just how many people have no idea of the value of initiative in a fight. They don't realize that "just let them strike first then fight back, so you look better" is saying "just vastly increase the likelihood you will die, so you look better"
To be fair, most of those oblivious, politically divested real world people eventually just tend to do what they're told by whichever small group is willing to play the game of political king of the hill and is currently winning.
They might not want people dead themselves, but if the media propaganda machine tells them it's necessary often enough, the vast majority won't do anything to stop it and a disturbing number will even help in small logistical ways whilst claiming they still don't like it.
And they all started out and made it to the period where they could try to live by those standards, by fighting a war and killing a lot of people who wanted to stop them. Every single one. Our founding fathers did not give the Redcoats due process of law to protect their right to life and liberty. They gave them the bayonet. And both sides understood that no matter which principles either side were fighting for, it was a war and the principles that would win would be the principles of the side that killed more of the other. Rule number one in war is Win. There is no rule number two. Every other rule comes after the war. Including quibbling about morals and principles and who looks good and had the moral high ground.
Our founding fathers did not give the Redcoats due process of law to protect their right to life and liberty.
One did: John Adams, who represented the Redcoats who instigated the Boston Massacre. Because the rule of law matters he defended them.
So while I agree that the friend/enemy distinction needs to be drawn, there are traditional, civilizationally-important controls around the violence which threatens to be unleashed. There are forms of process and warrants for actions, especially violent actions, which are to be taken against your enemies-- and this is baked into the American Tradition. If you resort to unrestrained violence, you undermine your Causus Belli. You lose the support you'd have if you fought a Just War.
No, I'm just shocked and disgusted by the reaction of the right.
Doxing and canceling absolute nobodies who tweeted "aim better" while doing nothing to big people who actually called for his assassination.
Completely ignoring all the details of shit coming out, like the fact that Crooks posted a new video of himself saying he's not the shooter, while others have pointed out that Yearick fits the bill perfectly.
Ignoring evidence there was possibly a second shooter.
Sitting on their thumbs and bragging that they're doing fuck all while waiting for the FBI to finish investigating themselves again.
Ignoring or even cheering the radical jump left by the RNC this week, including doting on the clearly shit VP announcement.
It can be useful to strategically pretend to be shocked and disgusted, because normal people legitimately are shocked and disgusted.
If for example a coworker you don't like says something like "too bad he missed" it may behoove you to act "shocked and disgusted" in front of HR who (even if they too are sad he missed) now will probably be obligated to take "glorification of violence" much more seriously than two weeks ago now that first blood has been drawn.
Think of today as 9/14/2001: tenured university professors could say "the US deserved it" in the right company, but otherwise that was a good way to get into a confrontation. But this is a limited time offer that won't last forever.
Yep, this is what a lot of us are doing, to be honest. We're using the left's tactics against them. Because do you know what gets corporations to do something about piece of shit figures?
You pretend to be outraged and tell the corporation how dare they hire employees that think like this and do they support having these kinds of people on their staff, etc.
We're simply using their rhetoric against them. It's been working, so keep fucking doing it.
Basically you can appeal to the moderates by pretending outrage like that ebcause what decent human being wouldn't be against political violence?
It helps our cause, but appeals to the normie sense of morality, the same way the left fooled normies into supporting far left LGBTBBQ idpol trash.
A fair point.
Honestly, I think more than a few of the proper rightists are feigning outrage at the moment.
I think some are genuinely shocked because, well, holy shit that was close; but I think most are expressing outrage to teach normies that "Hey, saying the president should be murdered is wrong".
Which, because of the well-poisoning, a bunch thought was okay.
Maybe it's me just being a cuck, but I don't like screwing over co-workers even for 'bad opinions'.
The following is definitely me being a cuck: I actually feel sorry for people who want DJT dead. They've been so brainwashed that they think Donald Trump is the cause of their problems. I saw a video of a middle-aged, woman at a cash register being confronted over opinions online. A woman who was obviously poor and miserable. Should she lose her job, and what little she has, because she believed the media?
The Inquisition always attempted persuasio before relaxatio.
Your coworker won't hesitate to do it against you when they find out your true beliefs bud.
I'm not exactly hiding either my support for Trump or that for the local "far-right" party.
Normies prize their relations over politics. Or they wouldn't be normies.
Maybe, but HR doesn't have that distinction.
I'm pretty sure that if I asked HR if they fire people for supporting Trump, they'd look at me in bemusement like I'm a crazy person, and point out that it's not even legal.
So much of these ideas are based on rare worst case scenarios.
It's a tactical matter whether or not you wish to employ the strategy against any given person. I probably wouldn't do it to someone I otherwise liked and who I didn't think would do the same thing to me.
That said, at a higher level I think society has gotten too casual in its use of "war verbiage" in politics. OP is right that "war is a continuation of politics by other means", so I would think then that unless you are prepared to go to war you wouldn't want to speak of existential threats, and heavily discourage people from speaking in such terms.
You could see (and I commented on several times at the time) in the aftermath of the 2020 election the same sort of "war verbiage" (eg. "if we let this election fraud stand we don't have a country any more"), and I said at the time (before 1/6) "these people saying these things are playing a dangerous game, because you risk people taking them seriously and taking them to their logical conclusions. So if you say them then you'd better really believe them, because some people will." And lo and behold, a lot of the politicians saying those things actually didn't believe them; and a lot of normal people who did are sitting in prison right now as a result when support they probably thought they had completely evaporated.
And it's happening here too: "threat to democracy and our very way of life" taken to its logical conclusion is...what almost happened on Saturday. If you believe that statement is true (which I don't of course), then the only logically consistent critique of the shooter is that he didn't actually wait until Trump won the election. And now a husband and father is dead, as is a 20-year old kid who got whipped into a frenzy by being exposed to it for half his life.
So I would say that if you don't want these things to happen every election you need to tamp down heavily on that sort of verbiage unless you really mean it. Ideally the politicians and press who pushed this would be in prison for instigating it, but I think we both know that won't happen. The next best thing (but far from a perfect solution because it punishes normal people) is for there to be consequences for normal people saying such things the same way there is for joking about bombs in an airport security line.
One of the problems with that line of thinking though is it smacks very heavily of the notion "we'd better not do it because that gives them permission to do it". Which is utter lunacy because they're already doing it and they're going to do it anyways no matter what we do. So we can either match them or be overrun. There is no scenario where if we stop, they also stop. There is they do it and we do it, and they do it and we don't and we lose. Those are the only two options.
My line of thinking is more "smack their instigators down hard (because they just shot one of ours), and only if they've shown they can behave* can there be a mutual de-escalation where if either side instigates they get smacked down."
Unless and until that happens you have to do tit for tat. Arguably smacking them down hard itself is tit for tat since that's what they did for 1/6.
* Which given their total reversal in less than 24 hours is highly improbable.
As you no doubt know, that is from Clausewitz, and the proper translation is policy, not politics. And that was obviously never meant as domestic politics, except when war is leveraged to accomplish to accomplish domestic goals - e.g. the French Revolutionary Wars.
But that was probably inevitable. Even if they did all believe it, there is nothing that you can do. Not to mention that they act in accordance with their interests and not in accordance with their beliefs, whatever these are.
He'd probably have better security. But point taken. Condemning this attack is incompatible with believing that he is worse than Hitler. There are some people who try to square the circle by arguing that Trump is an existential threat who should be taken out using lawful means, but I can't say it is very persuasive.
It'd also violate Brandenburg vs. Ohio.
But that serves an actual purpose. I would be OK with the cruelty if it actually advanced the good in some meaningful way. How exactly does punishing miserable minimum wage workers, who have no idea about politics beyond what they hear from the lying media, advance the good?.
I guess spreading terror. But will it improve things if people do not feel as comfortable mouthing off about Trump as they are now? I'd say that a lot of pro-Trump sentiment is caused not by the man's virtues, but by the vileness of his opponents.
I dispute your translation. Policies don’t have means. There are ends.
Let "weakening Russia" be your policy. You can do that by ordinary means, like sanctions. You can do it by sending weapons to some country sacrificing its young men for your empire. And you can do it by declaring war.
It's not my translation. It's that of Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
Then, as a German-speaker, I dispute their translation. It’s incorrect.
I do too, but that doesn't mean that I don't also recognize that they are a threat to me.
She'll learn to #DoBetter next time.
That goes without saying. How is your kween Tulsi doing these days?
Oh, you're that loony tune? I hope you're not too heartbroken that your neocon hero Marco Rubio was rejected for VP.
Acknowledging that Rubio (and approximately 150 million other people) are a better candidate for a Republican VP nomination doesn't make someone a Rubio supporter, you simp. But you know this, since I explained it over and over again to you the last time you went on a simping spree for your kween.
Well, dang, because I'm a little shocked.
Not that they're losers, not that they're hateful, not that they're retarded...but by just how retarded they are. That's kind of awe inspiring.
It also once again shows the left/right dichotomy, or the progressive/conservative, or however you want to measure things.
"Right" conspiracy theories are trying to understand reality. "Left" conspiracy theories are desperate attempts to pretend reality if how they want it to be, and force it to their world view.
Just like how left economic/political policy is trying to force things, and based on a faulty premise, while the right is more along the lines of trying to build on existing reality in a way that works.
Lastly, perhaps the most glaring: Leftists shape reality to fit their ideology. The right shapes their ideology to fit reality. Yes, standard disclaimer, of course: Not always, there are losers everywhere, the right isn't perfect - far from it - but the generalizing largely holds true.
That is a really great way of putting it and I see it the same way.
It's always been Idealism v Realism
Yeah, it does kinda blow you away sometimes.
"TRUMP FAKED THIS """ASSASSINATION""" ATEMPT BY ORDERING SOMEONE TO SHOOT HIM IN THE FACE TO WIN AN ELECTION HE WAS ALREADY WINNING"
It makes you realize what they're capable of since they project so much.
"The real proof that he wasn't shot is that he was wearing a bandage on his ear, to hide the fact that he wasn't shot in the ear!"
Yup. Considering all the other stuff they've blamed on their opponents, only to have it come out that they've been doing it the whole time...things could get even messier.
Just because you expect something doesn't mean you can't be disgusted by it, and while I'm not shocked by the worst leftist reactions, I am disappointed by some of them.
Say you were an infantryman in the Korean War, and you see a Chinese machine gun nest firing at your squad's position. How disgusted are you that they would do that to you?
Interesting that I got downvoted, but the person I asked never actually answered the question.
That's completely different because we're not actually shooting leftists. If we were then it would be completely understandable that they would return fire.
It's not different at all, and the fact you think it is means this post was for you.
Maybe you don't see yourself as any different than the leftist radicals, but I do. All I wanted was to stop immigration, improve the economy, and stop pandering to women and nonwhites. It's completely reasonable to be disgusted that the left would attempt an assassination or any violence in response to that. It's like if you call someone a bad word and then say, "yeah, they were right to chimp out and stab me. I would do the same."
I mean, not really. My desires are even less specific than yours. I just want to be left mostly alone.
That alone means I deserve to die according to my political opponents, and the reality of conflict is that stakes and depths are decided by the more extreme position.
Your choices are to meet them in kind, or to lose.
So yes, the left has yet to shoot at me. But that's 100% a tactical decision not a moral one for them. Pretending otherwise, pretending that we can have a gentleman's conflict is an illusion that ends the exact second they have a clear shot.
Congrats on your moral high ground, ill be sure to ask them to engrave it on your fancy tombstone.
If you want to be left alone then you would be better off not engaging in any violence. As much as I hate leftist ideology, it's a bit ridiculous to assume that everyone who expresses a left wing opinion is trying to kill me. One of your relatives, your neighbor, a fellow church-member, the old lady ringing up your merchandise; they could be naive Biden voters or maybe they were influenced by some reddit posts; are they enemy combatants? Do you need to attack them now before they attack you? That kind of tribalism is a rabbit-hole that never turns out well.
Tribalism as a scare word is why we're in this mess.
Fuck off cunt.
I want to live in a world where all forms of leftism have just about as many adherents as ancient Olympian Greek religion. And for it to be looked at as laughably in hindsight as that religion is. I want leftism wiped off the face of the Earth to such an extent that future generations look at it's very existence in this time as hilariously backwards with essentially zero living people putting any stock in any of its precepts whatsoever. And I believe absolutely anything done that achieves that final goal is good and noble.
You mean like Nazism?
Ah, yes. The National SOCIALIST party. the most right wing party of all time. Definitely. Not one doubt in my mind that the National SOCIALIST party was right wing.
Yes, that would be one type.
It's been years. Years of this shit parading unendingly. If you're still stuck on disgust you're like a gastric surgeon who gets squeamish about vomit and shit.
It's an understandable response and in most other contexts perfectly reasonable, but in this one it's still going to piss off whoever has to pick up your slack in the operating room, maybe enough that they'll even call you a cuck. Because you're already on the team that's elbow deep in shit and just going "woe is me, I just want these bowels working correctly" instead of being willing to do the necessary work to make that reality. Disgust isn't a productive emotion and it's one that you rightly should acclimatize to if it's necessary.
And what exactly would that be?
Engage in real politics and think through the full series of causes an effects that don't lead to a sizeable domestic faction with establishment backing that wants you dead or enslaved actually killing or enslaving you or your friends.
Burying your head in the sand and wailing "I wish it wasn't this way!" isn't one of them.
That dude is a shill. No one on our side uses the term fascism unironically. It's just an enemy buzzword. He's a typical entryist meant to shame and attack us.
I'm not attacking you. I only disagreed with the idea of killing people for having a different opinion. Also, people here use the term fascists regularly, as in, "leftists have always been the real fascists." We don't behave like our enemy does because we have standards.
I genuinely don't see how that's analogous.
Also, you've got to give a brother some leeway on response time LOL. I have a job, and it's only been four hours. Chill dude.
I get where your analogy is going but let me flip it on you. You're a soldier in the War in Afghanistan and you see insurgents strapping explosives to a child and sending him towards your position. How disgusted are you that they would do that?
In your example, it's soldiers with similar notions of war, with similar values. You and the Chinese guy both consider shooting machine guns at soldiers to be within the bounds of what is acceptable. But that's not what this is. This is decent people with one notion of war/politics against a group that will cross every line if they think it benefits them.
The right is continually shocked and disgusted at the left because the right has ideals and one of them is placing value on morality.
Great post. When it comes to committed partisans on the left, anyone who didn't know they wanted us dead wasn't paying attention. This is the weakness of the right, that we believe that everyone else has the same vital urges in their hearts.
However, regarding the Civil War and the Germans/Japs in WWII, or even the Taliban, the modern leftist is fundamentally different. Even the Taliban retain enough respect for human dignity that they can reconcile after the war. Lord Miles, a British citizen, has safe passage through Taliban territory. On the other hand, leftists won't be satisfied as long as there's somebody left breathing in the world, somewhere, that disagrees with them. Even then they won't be satisfied because their whole reason for being depends on purging the unbeliever.
I've probably said the same thing about almost respecting the people like Destiny because they unleash their inner thoughts on the world, but I really can't. Their whole philosophy is misanthropic.
To add a note though... there are a lot of people holding soft left beliefs that don't want to kill anyone. The majority of Americans have partially formed political views at best. I don't want anyone here, especially younger people, to cut themselves off from a social life unnecessarily.
Yeah, them and moo-slimes have a lot in common that way. No wonder the Left loves them. At least, they "love" them in the same way Mr Burns loves his Hounds.
If anyone's behavior is disgusting, it's brothers in the sights of our shared enemy who are still willing to hand them ammo if they just ask nicely enough.
I'm more shocked at how much they aren't responding. I do see comments, but not from friends. Even the crazies are holding back.
They have no marching orders. Or more accurately: the marching orders coming down from leftist media are insufficient. The attempt on Trump’s life represents a seismic instantaneous shift in the Overton Window. It is so beneficial for the right that the left is reflexively calling false flag even though it makes zero sense. They cannot accept that something so catastrophic to their agenda has actually happened. So their organic response is total silence and/or feigned ignorance.
I think that's because it's all tongue in cheek enough that it's almost universally understood nobody means it when they say "noooo, don't do violence, that's bad", it's just strategic blame dodging.
And since we're already at the point where people are getting shot dead at opposition rallies, even the crazies don't feel the need to agitate further when all their ringleaders are going "shhhhh, act innocent for a minute!"
The media isn't telling them what to do, it seems they're as confused as how to approach this as anyone else.
Pacifism benefits only the enemy.
Just to give a little perspective on "omg imagine if it was the other side crowd":
They don't see them as the enemy, as you correctly point out. But they don't see that because they think they can be redeemed. I know I was a raving liberal in my 20s. I was saved because the message reached me about how everything from which I was forming my opinions and beliefs were lies. If what the media said about Trump were true, yeah, of course I would be anti-Trump. If what the media said about Trayvon Martin were true, yeah, of course I would be pro-BLM. And so on.
The problem with this line of thinking -- that the left can be saved the way many of us were -- is that if they haven't landed on the right by now, they never will. They have been hopelessly captured, fully broken by the programming and are reading aloud the false confessions their captors are writing for them. The desire to rescue them is there, for sure, but your rescued captives will fight YOU tooth and nail to remain in their cages.
Correct. The history of the world is a history of murder, violence, and war. We've been spoiled by peaceful times. Every leftist is sad he missed, and every righty wants heads on spikes. Both attitudes are perfectly normal. This is, in fact, Who We Are.
We're not shocked and disgusted. We're used to it. But sometimes it's not a bad idea to act shocked and disgusted anyway. There's always someone encountering leftist bile for the first time and our side saying it's no big deal sends the wrong message. Having like-minded people who dislike them and haven't descended into apathy is a plus.
What is your reaction to the leftists who are appalled at what happened?
I was actually shocked by Josh Shapiro's comments about the guy who was killed.
I've been seeing this cultural war slowly unfold for a decade now, but giving tit-for-tat against brainwashed or social engineered sheep (read: midwits) is giving those who engineered/guided these people the results they want. They would gladly accept White people once again massacring themselves over political bullshit for the umpteenth time in the past few millennia, if it means clearing the way for their newfound control over the serf classes and whatnot.
The first real flaw of European/American whites is too much compassion, the second flaw is that they keep doing the same shit over and over again.
Retarded midwits (normies) move with the zeitgeist.
Attentive reactionaries just simply give in to the animal portion of the hindbrain.
Humans have never learned, and, guaranteed, never will.
I don't think this is a thing SG. I think you're imaging this group of people who are supposedly surprised by the left's behavior.
Truth. I've tried to get this point across before but you stated it much better, more completely.
Hard disagree. There are boundaries for what is acceptable, and even in international war there are rules of conflict set in place. You just come across as a fedposter or internet edgelord if you try to argue that we're actually justified in committing assassinations or political violence.
The whole reason why we can condemn people for supporting the assassination attempt is because we've never resorted to those kinds of vulgar tactics. And look what's happened, it's damaged the left's reputation and caused a lot of people to shift to our side. Political violence is the last thing that anyone should be advocating right now.
They are at war with you. You can keep pretending that it doesn't count so long as you aren't also at war with them, but that doesn't make it true. It just makes you a fool.
If you get in a verbal argument with someone then that doesn't suddenly open things up to physical violence, and if they take the first punch then it makes them look bad and makes us look good, which is exactly what has just happened.
Ask the South how fighting a moral war worked out for them.
Spoilers: The Yankees wrote them as evil racists who wanted to keep slavery, while Lincoln, who loved the UNITED States and only wanted to keep it together, wept at his desk when the Confederates took Fort Sumpter.
The outcome of the Civil War actually proves my point. I'm not exactly sure what alternative outcome you think could have occurred there.
Wars are won when one side kills so many of the other side and destroys so much of their stuff that they can't resist anymore, and then the winner gets to decide who looks good in retrospect.
John Wilkes Booth ended the tyrant, not a bunch of optics cucks who VOTED HARDER.
And then Lincoln became a martyr, blacks ended up remaining in America and gaining citizenship, and the South was devastated by carpetbaggers.
I'm sorry but you are a fucking idiot if you think looking good means anything in winning wars for survival. You're the kind of guy who is going to try to hold his chin high and tell himself "at least I didn't compromise my principles" while your enemy slips the blindfold down.
Looking good is quite literally the entire war. It's a war being fought through media and appearances. If you start LARPing as a real-life fascist then you will get shut down immediately and lose all support. It's not even just a matter of morals, but also simple practicality and effectiveness.
Found the shill
What do you think I'm shilling for?
You're the typical "leftism but slower" conservative who would shoot your own side in the back for the crime of returning fire.
But I'm not backstabbing anybody. I really just want people to try to be logical instead of thinking with their feelings and doing something stupid that will make the rest of us look bad by association.
That reminds me, someone else told me to "STOP PUNCHING RIGHT" a while ago, but ironically it seems like the people in that group are actually the ones who attack the right the most.
I hope you’re young. Because then there might still be time for you to learn that logic plays almost no role in society. 90% of people either can’t process it or don’t abide by it. That’s why rhetoric is all that matters. The sooner you accept this, the better you will function in this world.
Dialectic is good for nudging people who mostly agree with you. It will never convince someone who is neutral, much less antagonistic. That's where rhetoric wins.
I'm not sure how that contradicts anything I've said. I'm already well aware that people are easily manipulated by propaganda. I was just hoping the people on this site would be a little bit better about it.
You're trotting out the same tired "muh optics" horse shit the tradcuck right has used to lull us into passive inaction while the left takes territory for decades. And now they literally just tried to murder our leader on live TV and here you are pulling out the same old "remember, if you fight your enemies they win" garbage.
You're acting as if I'm saying we shouldn't have shot the shooter. Obviously defend yourself with force when your life is threatened. But the original argument was that it's perfectly reasonable to be disgusted by the left attempting and supporting an assassination attempt. Trying to paint me as a pacifist is completely disingenuous.
And your enemy believes that using Force proactively in order to achieve your goals is just as acceptable as using it in self-defense. And they believe that because they are at war with you and that's what you do in war. You are going to lose if you don't understand this. And if enough people on your side believe the same thing, your entire side loses. And then it won't matter whether or not you had the moral high ground, because you'll be dead and your enemies will rewrite history to make it look like you were the bad guy all along, and you'll be too dead to do anything about it.
It's always shocking to me just how many people have no idea of the value of initiative in a fight. They don't realize that "just let them strike first then fight back, so you look better" is saying "just vastly increase the likelihood you will die, so you look better"
"If you let your enemy kill you, you win!" -- Justin
CastroTrudeauDifferences in opinion should not result in violence. Ever.
Unjust action without the option for recourse is a different matter entirely.
Side note: a healthy fear of assassination in all politicians is a good thing.
Someday how the real world works is going to smack you really hard in the face, and if you survive it, you're going to be really surprised.
This is how the common nigger acts. Its why we cant have nice things.
In the real world, barely anyone wants other people dead over differences of opinion.
The real world is not 4chan and politicians. The real world is people whose lives don't revolve around politics.
To be fair, most of those oblivious, politically divested real world people eventually just tend to do what they're told by whichever small group is willing to play the game of political king of the hill and is currently winning.
They might not want people dead themselves, but if the media propaganda machine tells them it's necessary often enough, the vast majority won't do anything to stop it and a disturbing number will even help in small logistical ways whilst claiming they still don't like it.
Normies revolving around the gibs isn't much better.
Ahem, I live in Europe. These people pay for the gibs.
Idk man the best countries in history were built on a foundation of TRYING to live by those standards.
And they all started out and made it to the period where they could try to live by those standards, by fighting a war and killing a lot of people who wanted to stop them. Every single one. Our founding fathers did not give the Redcoats due process of law to protect their right to life and liberty. They gave them the bayonet. And both sides understood that no matter which principles either side were fighting for, it was a war and the principles that would win would be the principles of the side that killed more of the other. Rule number one in war is Win. There is no rule number two. Every other rule comes after the war. Including quibbling about morals and principles and who looks good and had the moral high ground.
One did: John Adams, who represented the Redcoats who instigated the Boston Massacre. Because the rule of law matters he defended them.
So while I agree that the friend/enemy distinction needs to be drawn, there are traditional, civilizationally-important controls around the violence which threatens to be unleashed. There are forms of process and warrants for actions, especially violent actions, which are to be taken against your enemies-- and this is baked into the American Tradition. If you resort to unrestrained violence, you undermine your Causus Belli. You lose the support you'd have if you fought a Just War.
Sic pacem, para bellum.
No, I'm just shocked and disgusted by the reaction of the right.
Doxing and canceling absolute nobodies who tweeted "aim better" while doing nothing to big people who actually called for his assassination.
Completely ignoring all the details of shit coming out, like the fact that Crooks posted a new video of himself saying he's not the shooter, while others have pointed out that Yearick fits the bill perfectly.
Ignoring evidence there was possibly a second shooter.
Sitting on their thumbs and bragging that they're doing fuck all while waiting for the FBI to finish investigating themselves again.
Ignoring or even cheering the radical jump left by the RNC this week, including doting on the clearly shit VP announcement.
It's fucking embarrassing.