There is a lot of emotion here, which I think is justified in the sense that men must be allowed to talk through issues and feeling and to be vulnerable. I can also attest that it is extremely painful to see yourself or people you care about reflected in a terrifying and senseless murder.
That said my issue with the pod started with HODLs bit “You as a straight whit man in America are THE ONLY thing standing between them and TOTAL DOMINATION of the entire world. A GLOBAL SLAVE SYSTEM! OK, periodt. THATS WHY YOU’RE THE GROUP THEY HATE THE MOST!”
As it needlessly racializes, genders, and assigns sexual preference to the freedom movement as though hetero white dudes are the only group that can understand freedom, free speech, egalitarian values, etc. ALSO, I will say that it smacks of the same victimhood framing / mindset that is so often called out on the Left (as it ABSOLUTELY exists there too). As an African American, I understand where these emotions come from, but I also understand when they go too far, become regressive, or are simply wrong.
Moving on, the 1A is there to protect people from GOVERNMENT subversion of free speech - as such, a lone lunatic committing a heinous murder is a nihilistic crime, but not the government surprising free speech. That said, Pam Bondi’s and the Trump administration’s follow on push to criminalize their definition of “hate speech”certainly is an attack on 1A. And there’s a reason 1A is 1A. 2A might defend 1A but if we let 1A fall, the game is up completely.
The pod is full of reference to a nebulous and otherized Leftist “them” who - without any evidence - are supposed to have orchestrated Kirk’s murder in some organized and grand conspiratorial fashion. The danger here, is that the speakers have predetermined, by their own politics, who the culprit is, framed it in political terms, and will accept not evidence to the contrary.
That some vile asshats on the Authoritarian left have celebrated Kirk’s death - does not make the “The Left” responsible for Kirk’s death. Or if it does, then logic would follow that as one could find Right aligned internet people who mocked or celebrated George Floyd’s death (who was murdered, on camera, in broad daylight, by uniformed agents of the state), “The Right” is at once responsible for Floyd’s death and the eternal wellspring of racism and Thin Blue Line bootlicking.
A less emotionally charged and more apt reading of our times would conclude that nothing in the above paragraph is accurate and that rather violent nihilism is the ONLY terminus of Authoritarian-only Left/Right, Red/Blue fiat politics, its not some much about left or right, but rather from standing ANYWHERE in the Authoritarian squares.
Our politics have become violent because, due to most of the economy becoming near invalid dependent on the fiat money printer, instead of politics being about “How to do make decisions today that will create the space and incentives to raise productive children who will lead their world into an ever more prosperous future,” now every 4 years we engage in an existential struggle over who will spend the next 4 years being defunded / attacked or aggrandized at the whims of the state - and for many, terrifyingly, this question IS life or death.
Instead of coalescing around identity similarities that one might share with Kirk (which again is an understandable, though unproductive reaction) - reject nihilism, break down barriers faster than they are being thrown up, widen the tent, shift the frame out of the Authoritarian quadrants and into the Libertarian half where individual freedoms, tempered by the non-aggression principle make Left/Right, Red/Blue irrelevant.
Anyways, I appreciate all the speakers on the pod even if I didn’t agree with them on anything (and I agree with all of them on more than a few things).
#plebchain
