What, specifically, was the “pro genocide platform”? Because I remember that election pretty well, and I don’t recall any advocacy of genocide, at least not from Harris.

Let’s be honest for one second. Here’s how American politics on Israel actually breaks down:

Democrats: often criticize Netanyahu but never actually cut off aid. However, several Democrats already opposed continuing aid to Israel and the rest of the party conceivably could listen to growing opposition to Israel’s war.

Republicans: actively hate all poor brown people and want Israel to kill them all. They will also use deportations and any other means available to silence anyone voicing opposition to said killing of all poor brown people.

I get that neither choice is perfect, but I really can’t see why it’s a struggle.

I’ll say this about Charlie Kirk: while inconsistent, at some point he wanted the Epstein files released. Let’s mourn him properly. Let’s get those files. Do it for Charlie™.

Someone on reddit found the t shirt, definitely the same kind. It has a flag and eagle with “land of the free, home of the brave”.

It also is listed in numerous places as a “disabled veterans national foundation” shirt.

Under the circumstances, could be relevant.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/317271063419

Update: seems to be a gift for donating to that organization. https://www.dvnf.org/freegift15/

Of course the usual caveats - don’t assume this person actually donated to them, or even is the actual shooter. But yeah, this all may be a clue why they’re so slow to tell us what they know about the shooter, given that it increasingly looks like it doesn’t support the narrative they led with.

I mean look at literally anything that actually has worked. Civil disobedience, documenting and publicizing fascist abuses, and yes IF you have the military advantage AND everything else has failed, fight violently - but targeting the leaders, not some clown who’s exploiting fascism for personal gain.

Look at what just happened in DC. There’s lots to criticize there, but nonviolence still worked. The takeover was an embarrassing fiasco and it’s expiring right now. Done. And the most violence used was throwing a sandwich.

No lone assassin has ever defeated fascism. Certainly not one who isn’t even targeting an actual leader.

Of course they did it for attention. I’m not saying this about the Trump shooter. I’m saying this about someone who targeted not an oligarch, not Trump himself or anyone with actual concrete power. But a guy whose job was to speak in front of crowds. The crowd and the spectacle was the point. Nothing is to be gained by removing Charlie Kirk from existence. His damage is already done, and this just makes that worse by giving him free sympathy and attention.

Whoever did this clearly didn’t care that they were harming the left and helping the far right, at least they didn’t care more about that than getting attention for themselves.

This whole time we’ve been wondering how Trump will distract from Epstein, then someone does it for him. If this is a leftist, it’s the dumbest fucking leftist ever.

I just wanna say, even if this guy turns out to be antifa or whatever, fuck him. He stole the headlines from Trump-Epstein and made a ridiculous oligarch bootlicker like Charlie Kirk seem sympathetic. He didn’t do this to defend Trump’s victims, he did it to get attention. If he dies before getting captured, piss on his grave.

Hopefully though he’s some right winger who thought Kirk was too far left. Unlikely, but if it does happen then watch how fast this drops from the headlines.

Edit: I’m now increasingly convinced this is not a leftist. Ignore this post and thread.

Trump wouldn’t kill one of his most loyal fundraisers.

I just want to point out some things since everyone is assuming it was a leftist shooter:

1. No one knows who the shooter actually is.
2. Most leftist reactions I’ve seen to Kirk have been to laugh at his stupidity, not get murderously angry at him.
3. No political message has appeared yet, like the one Luigi put on the bullets he used. Which if you’re a leftist shooter, come on you gotta at least do that homage.
4. The shooter killed him with one shot from a distance and got out without being caught.
5. I’ve never met a leftist who knows how to shoot a gun, nevermind one with that level of skill. If it was a leftist, I’m surprised they couldn’t catch them by now by simply arresting the one leftist who knows how to shoot at long distance.

It’s the 48 Star American flag, thus it’s the German American Bund in the 30s. To be fair to the literal Nazis pictured it’s before the holocaust was discovered. It’s not AI, it appears in this 2017 article: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-the-1930sthe-german-american-bund/529185/

They’re really against anything nice that can be achieved through cooperation, aren’t they?

Nah they would just invent new races. What’s the point of race? What does it mean exactly? Notice that the races in the US at least roughly align with economic classes.

That’s not an accident. Obviously without the concept of races, people would still have different skin color and hair, but the implications would be entirely different. Culture, neighborhoods, etc. wouldn’t be separated. And most importantly, it would be ever so slightly harder for rich people to make the majority feel like they’re in the same group as them as opposed to some “other”.

So if there was only one race, the rich would need to invent new ones.

Well that would eliminate the whole point of corporations, which is to make it easy to raise money.

Let’s start with an understanding of why corporations suck in the first place. The root of all good and evil in a corporation is limited lability. This allows investors to not have to worry that they’re going to lose more than their investment, so they don’t need to think too hard before putting their money in some company they just heard of. This is great for investors and for the corporation.

But this comes with a cost to everyone else. There’s the direct cost that if the corporation ends up owing people money through excessive debt, negligence, or illegal activities, they can declare bankruptcy and the investors don’t have to worry any paying for those (other than their losses on the stock). But I suspect the more pernicious effect is that the investors’ lack of concern over their investment as anything but a vehicle of profit basically leads them to pick sociopathic CEOs and demand profit maximizing behavior at the cost of social good and even long term stability. And since all this sociopathic activity is really great at amassing money, it’s kind of a big power boost for sociopathy overall.

However, the ease of investing can be a good thing for society too - basically it allows a lot of people to retire at some point, and allows for rapid funding of new ideas. So is there a way to get corporations back under control without throwing out the baby? I tend to think we should tax corporations higher if nothing else, as it is we do the opposite thanks to Trump’s last tax cut plan.

Ackman is also a part owner of X, and that platform will also definitely be a big part of an effort to defeat Mamdani.

Edit: a family member just asked me what I think of Mamdani wanting to put a tax on all hiring, saying he proposed a 35% tax on the salary of all new hires. I googled this, and the only results are on X. The fix is in.

I get that this is upvoted a lot due to being constructive but it also reflects a lot of Republican media tropes about the left that aren’t really true - and that’s why trying to “fix” these things won’t work - because it misses the real problem.

Examples: No significant figure on the left is saying “men are rapists”, or telling men to be more like women, etc. Reducing suicide, safer workplaces, and reducing excessive prison sentences are all priorities for the left and not for the right.

I think the real problem is quite simple: Republicans have invested heavily in portraying themselves as the “masculine party”, and in driving the narratives I’ve mentioned. And because Republican leaders like the Murdochs and Elon tend to be men, they’re best at driving those narratives.

Which goes to the real underlying problem with the left as a whole - no ability to drive or counter a media narrative. The right has Fox news and Elon’s control over Twitter, which they can and do regularly use to create whatever narrative they want. Notice how for example they just made white south African farmer killings a topic all of a sudden. The left has a bunch of corporate media whose top priority is selling truck ads. Sure, maybe the reporters themselves are left leaning, but they have no top down guidance as to what narratives to build.

And until the left creates some sort of media capability to create and control narratives, the right will always have a leg up. And because of that, none of the well intentioned ideas here will actually work. If the left tries to appeal to men, the right will decide how those appeals will be interpreted.

Bill Maher used to be a right leaning “centrist” when he was running politically incorrect in the 90s. His politics never changed, he just got critical of crazy Republican shit like the Iraq war and then Trump ignoring elections.

A certain percentage of all people are bloodthirsty monsters, especially when it comes to people unlike themselves.

And anyone who thinks this problem is caused by no one trying to use a bomb, gun, or flamethrower to solve it is the biggest idiot in planet earth.

To be fair, that grey tree trunk looked a lot like a road

If he yells “free Palestine” while doing it, that means he’s associating himself with others who support a free Palestine. And that means other people won’t want to associate themselves with them.

I feel like this is very obvious but people seem unwilling to acknowledge it. Because they view this guy as on their side. But he’s on the side of narcissists, not people who are effective at saving Palestinian lives. He didn’t think at all about whether this will save or cost Palestinian lives.

I feel like the free Palestine movement in particular needs to understand this: if you want to save Palestinian lives, you need to convince people. And you don’t convince people by shooting at them, or by justifying people who shoot at them. Think about it: do you see Coke murdering Pepsi supporters as part of a marketing campaign? No. Because the people they hire for marketing are paid a lot of money to actually succeed. Instead they associate coke with positive things, by bringing in celebrities, and generally portraying coke drinkers as cool people.

You should try being more like coke. Sorry if this sounds belittling, but I feel like it needs to be said because free Palestine people seem to think the best strategy is to piss off the people you’re trying to convince. And that has never worked once in the history of mankind.

Killing is only justified if it saves lives. Anyone can see this act will cost lives on both sides. And 1000x as many on the Palestinian side.

Let’s be real, this guy wanted to be a badass and get praise and attention. And he doesn’t care how many die because of that.

It’s not that no one cares, it’s that people who do care don’t want to be associated with others who care like this guy.