September 11, 2025
On the Doubts Expressed in the Comments
ctx217 asks how we defeat this at the ballot box.
This is not a silly question given the current environment and rhetoric. Bringing strong words to a gunfight is rarely a path to victory and a long life in a street fight Moreover the left in the U.S. is quite definitely Maoist in their view of violence and political activism. The fear that civil engagement in the manner of Charlie Kirk will lead inevitably to his fate is not unreasonable, especially if one gets what little history and civics students learn today taught to the by followers of Alinsky.
However....
An understanding of history does put the problem in a different light. The Democrats and their goons have been engaging in political violence in a variable intensity way this since reconstruction off and on. Before the current crop of "direct actions" we had the Klan, the Anarchists, Tammany Hall, and the assassinations and bombings of the1960's & 1970s. We defeated them all by prosecuting the perpetrators. Though lessons can still be learned from the errors that let the Weathermen and their ilk walk free and into education jobs.
Our principles work.
So to answer the question "How can we win at the ballot box?"
We vote.
We win.
We prosecute the fiends.
But wait!
Rick C. points out that the Mayor of Charlotte won her primary. Well, that does reflect poorly on the Democrats now doesn't it? Now this blood tainted race hustler must face a conservative in the general. Despite Charlotte's leftward tilt, we might actually have a shot at turning even that blue hell hole red.
We CANNOT get rid of all violence, but we can put away the criminals and those so mentally challenged that they are active dangers to the populace.
But there is more. We should not go off half cocked, even as awful as this sickening crime is.
While I certainly give the domestic leftists the side-eye here, and am sickened by the reaction of many of them (though by no means all) to this horror show... I am not completely convinced that this particular atrocity was even domestic. It plays into the hands of foreign adversaries to see us fall on one another like condors and coyotes fighting over a dead deer. Several nations are contemplating, or engaged in rather high risk mischief and would dearly like to see the US engaged in violent navel gazing for a few years.
Those principles again. Due process and the idea of being innocent until guilty. (rather the opposite of leftist notions like Me-Too and cancellation).
Now the alternative to this admittedly difficult and dangerous struggle is to try and make them understand the gravity of the situation by putting large caliber rounds in the heads of their influencers....outside the context of Minecraft. This is the path that most other nations that have faced our problems have taken, and an option we (arguably inadvertently) flirted with in the 1860s. This might be viscerally satisfying in the shortest of terms, but it always leads to sub optimal outcomes.
Pablo Picasso provides us a very stylized, sanitized example of a sub-optimal outcome.
In that scenario, for every free helicopter ride there will be another deposit in the bucket in front of the guillotine. The other issue is the notion that one should not become the monster one is fighting as that defeats the point of fighting the monsters....at least in the eyes of the broader public, who in the absence of complete totalitarianism will be required to be persuaded to support any resolution of the absolute bloody shit-show that a tit-for-tat series of political assassinations, let alone the full-blown civil war that would probably result from that.
We are almost certainly entering a dark time, likely akin to the 1970s or slightly worse. However, it will be darker than Vantablack if we decide to accept the invitation of the assassin and engage in direct reciprocity.
Charlie Kirk set an example. Do not let his death be in vain.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
08:50 AM
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Bingo. The fact of the matter is, American culture has, and has had, really good answers, as imperfect as those answers can be presented as being in hindsight. Some of those imperfect remedies massively sucked, and as historians it is correct for us to ask how we might try to do better in the future. The natural trned of American culture, as divorced from academic claims, has been pretty good (partly relying on Christian influence, I am confident). Don't put faith in the academic doomspeakers and naysayers. But also don't put faith in the aggregate whole without considering the right and the worng, the good and the evil, of what you may personally do. If you are the praying sort, prayer is always appropriate. But, American culture has already provided, and bet upon, some good and appropriate remedies to the evils of the the current day. This was in progress the week before last, and will continue the week after next.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Fri Sep 12 10:43:24 2025 (rcPLc)
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