> Lethal violence is the line that should only be crossed when it, too, is the last available option.
No, violence is never necessary. Once you use violence, you start the downward spiral of perpetual hatred; after all, if someone harms one that you love, forgiveness becomes difficult.
The only solution to perpetual hatred is peace, understanding and love.
As long as you think violence is a solution, you'll gravitate toward the short term gratification that may or may not come therewith.
Get that out of your head.
Violence is never the answer.
The person I asked said "violence is never the answer" so I wanted to explore that.
Violence can be the answer. We are nowhere near that point in America.
The murder of Kirk wasn’t a thoughtful application of violence. It was a tantrum, and this being the U.S., one acted out with a gun.
If you are indeed willing to call the police then you are simply outsourcing your violence to someone else. I personally do have friends who are proper pacifists -- they would not fight an attacker (but would try to deescalate them or run away), and they would not call the cops under basically any circumstances.
That has taught me that pacifism requires a lot of bravery. Whereas saying "violence is never the answer" is usually cheap, thoughtless rhetoric.
2nd amendment, ehh. Most of the world requires permits. A gun isn't a toy, nor a tool we use in everyday modern society. If we use 2A to justify a way to rebel, we need to examine what an "arm" really is in the modern war. The useful ones are still banned from civilian use.
This is admirable and works in a lot of situations. But exhausting nonviolent options can foreclose success and be abused by an opponent.
It is an understandable argument but like "think of the children" it can also be used to normalize the violence of the state and de-legitimize dissent.
The entire country is flying flags flags at half staff in honor of Charlie Kirk. His murder is filling headlines across the country. It's being declared an act of domestic terrorism, and right-wingers are calling for civil war. Meanwhile the explicitly politically motivated murders of Melissa and Mark Holtman, the attacks on Nancy Pelosi and her husband, and the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer go utterly unremarked upon.
We notice when the rhetoric about nonviolence implies that only one side should stand down.
I don't know if it technically counts as "civil war" if the government declares war on its own citizens, and one half of the population declares war against the other half. It's not as though "declaring war" actually means anything in the US. Maybe it's just sparkling fascism.
- Gabrielle Giffords (2011) - shot in the head, survived.
- Gretchen Whitmer (2020) - kidnapping plot foiled by the FBI.
- Paul Pelosi (2022) - hammer blows to the head, survived.
- Josh Shapiro (2024) - arson attacked family home while Josh Shapiro along with this wife and kids were residing at the time.
- Melissa and John Hoffman (2025) - Murdered by a man posing as law enforcement.
Now you want me to get concerned that MAGA might get upset with the murder of Charlie Kirk? I'm supposed to get concerned that MAGA is going to use this event as a rally cry - a rally cry for what, exactly? More violence? What does that say about them? That's just a threat they make to further their use of fear and intimidation to silence their critics. As I told my grown children time and time again while they were growing up: don't ever use the excuse that someone "made you" do something to rationalize your behavior. You chose your behavior, stop making excuses to justify it. Own it.
If I recall several of the alleged plotters were found not guilty or hung jury because some of the jurors were having trouble with who even came up with and encouraged the plot.
There is no need to "imagine" -- many of them were found not guilty, and their defenses are openly available. You can pull up the cases, and I think the situation was a little beyond a sort of one liner defense or anything like that. Brandon Caserta also was featured in several interviews and commented on it, for a briefer view of his situation.
Either way I think we should be concerned that the government is generating violent conspiracies against the government while intentionally trying to drag 3rd parties along with it. I also just kind of object to calling something "foiled" when the entity foiling it appears to have likely been the one generating it in the first place.
FBI informant "Big Dan" was the guy that drove them to the supposed casing of Whitmer's vacation home, acted as one of the leaders of the militia, and he also spent hours and hours planning the kidnapping. For one. (from memory, the FBI even supplied the addresses to case).
FBI credit cards bought a lot of the ammunition and the stuff involved in the plot.
I believe Caserta (not guilty) was referencing him when in his interviews he talked about how the guys training them were FBI assets as referenced in wikipedia "Chappel taught the group tactical skills he had learned in the U.S. Army."
A confidential FBI informant known as "Big Dan," identified in court as Dan Chappel, testified that he drove plotters involved in the scheme to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Chappel also drove with Adam Fox, the group's ringleader, to scout Whitmer's vacation home.
Dan Chappel (born c. 1987), nicknamed "Big Dan", an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. He has stated that he joined the Wolverine Watchmen in 2020 after finding them on Facebook, wanting to keep up his firearms skills, but contacted law enforcement after seeing the group's radicalization.[109] After becoming an informant, Chappel became the group's "XO", or executive officer, the second-highest rank in the group,[110] and then its highest-ranked officer after Morrison departed the group due to marital problems.[110] Chappel taught the group tactical skills he had learned in the U.S. Army,[110] offered the group use of a credit card (paid for by the FBI) to buy ammunition and supplies,[111] and in summer 2020 spent hours on the phone with Fox planning the kidnapping.[110]
The FBI provided the training, ammunition, addresses, and driving. If the best counterpoint is another crackpot conspirator had allegedly the initial mere idea (which, depending how it is conveyed, may not even be illegal merely as speech if not calling for imminent action or soliciting or threatening to actually do it), well I rest my case about their involvement in generating the conspiracy.
> If the best counterpoint is another crackpot conspirator had allegedly the initial mere idea (which, depending how it is conveyed, may not even be illegal
Seems like exactly the reason the feds would have to allow the conspiracy to develop. What would you have them do? Give them a stern warning and let them know who their informants were?
I think it impossible to know who came up with the mere idea first. You'd have to prove a negative that no one else did which seems impossible. So the assertion regarding Musico is questionable, at best you could assert he did utter the idea at some point.
>eems like exactly the reason the feds would have to allow the conspiracy to develop
You're speaking of alternate reality. Fed assets trained , funded, planned, and encouraged it. They weren't 'allowing it' -- they were actively creating it. No i dont condone that.
Which parts?
> You'd have to prove a negative that no one else did which seems impossible.
That is a weird way to operate, particularly since you just assigned "a large part" of the creation of the plot to informants without proving that no one else on earth thought of it beforehand.
> Fed assets trained , funded, planned, and encouraged it
They were also militia assets with a pretty strong incentive to not act abnormally. You are welcome to be opposed to undercover work, most of the country is not. In the end, they key figures were convicted and the kidnapping didn't happen.
>st assigned "a large part" of the creation
Stated as generation/"generating violent conspiracies", not initial conception of mere idea which by itself might not even be illegal activity. You can't even have a conspiracy without an overt act, which FBI extensively aided and generated.
We're just looping now. End of loop.
The FBI did a great job exposing a violent militia.
Yes. Namely. You wait and see, with how public figures on the right have been talking.
The political party which tends more than the other to house bunches of heavily armed wingnuts who like to muse about the prospect of a civil war... How do you think this is going to go when one of their media darlings gets murdered? And then quotes like this are put out there:
"Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died" - Trump, 2 days ago before anything was known.
I actually think we're lucky that reflexively they haven't started jailing the political opposition just to make the base feel warm and fuzzy.
This kid without question made the world a worse place for liberals and conservatives both. What a complete asshole.
A guy I've never heard of getting assassinated and it making to the top of news, while a bunch of other people cheer it on, is one input.
If I just randomly hear some guy was shot by the local schizophrenic, no I probably won't look up their videos.
I really don't think there are "loads" of people saying he needed to die at all. Just a few fringe wingnuts. There are many people who do not mourn him but that's different to "he needed to die".
Meanwhile, there is a group who condemn this and all murders. They largely believe the offenders in these cases should be prosecuted to deter similar actions. However, they can't find much empathy for the particular victim. This group is significantly larger. Members of this group are sometimes mistaken for members of the former group because of that noise.
As for taking sides, I'm not sure why taking the side of a man who was wrongfully murdered irks you. Its basic ethics. You don't have to agree with him, or even support their views, to denounce his murder.
Unless you have an issue with people like Kirk being allowed to live, I'm not sure where the conflict is.
afavour•4mo ago
But because clicks and outrage rule supreme we end up with screenshots of a couple of dozen nobodies saying controversial things used to paint the "other side" as unhinged and violent. I wish we could all move beyond it but we seem unable.
AnimalMuppet•4mo ago
tstrimple•4mo ago
johnnyanmac•4mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45202200
To this one
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44276916
You won't even get the names of the latter on this site if this is how you consume news.
AnimalMuppet•4mo ago
Charlie Kirk gets killed. There's some number of right-wing zealots who go on X or BlueSky or whatever and say "Kill all the Democrats!" Then the left (all the left, not just the zealots) points to that and says "See, they're completely insane!". But it's not all the right, it's some number of unhinged plus some number of trolls.
Same thing happens with the left. AOC says something or Mandami says something, and the right (not just the complete nut jobs) say "look, they're completely insane!"
Both sides use the statements of the extreme of the other side to paint the entirety of the other side as complete wackos.
silverquiet•4mo ago