What I've noticed, though, is that in all my time of saying we should seek non-violent solutions it doesn't matter what you say: The violence goes on and on and on, whether we trade eyes and make us both blind or don't and get to be blinded.

Not what happened.

But had the jews managed to stop the Nazis from their evil I think that'd been a good thing.

At least the genocide part.

Understandable, but a sign of a degenerate society. Even during WWII Jews didn't go around murdering or mass murdering German civilians. — BitconnectCarlos

Suppose they had the means, though.

And suppose it'd been an 80 year occupation.

Are you doubting that ~1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7, the majority of whom were innocent civilians? They went from house to house indiscriminately murdering. It's proudly recorded on video. — BitconnectCarlos

No, I'm not doubting that event. I'm doubting some of the reports, as one ought to, but I'm not saying "That never happened"

The report I've come to doubt is with respect to the dancing festival -- I read a news article which noted how it was an Israeli helicopter which fired upon that festival.

Could be for the same banal reasons of fear and retwisted in various ways, of course -- it just made me realize that the story isn't so clean as "OCT 7 justifies Amulek!"

I remember the second intifada in the early 2000s, where Palestinian terrorists would go into bars, restaurants, and buses full of civilians and blow themselves up. I recall they'd attach unclean material to their explosive devices, so for anyone who got hit with shrapnel, the wound would get infected. It never made sense to me. If you hate a government, why attack random people living there? Unless that hatred is much deeper. — BitconnectCarlos

Because that government has been attacking you in the exact same way, and old cynical men know the piss and vinegar of young men and convince them to in order to get a bargaining chip.

Now if that's what Malcolm X wanted or would accomplish or did accomplish then certainly that's bad.

I have a different feeling on what he did -- I have respect for him and the other civil rights warriors.

What you portray is bad, so I can see why you'd say MX is bad. I don't think that's what his politics would result in, though.

They're far from perfect, but that's part of dealing with this world we're in. Whatever counter-factual we can come up with I want to use his reality as a point of reflection because that's not what happened, and he had justifications for how he acted, and was basically a martyr to his cause like MLK.

If all it led to was something like what you say that'd be evil.

But that's not what happened.

And Malcolm X was full of shit. He wouldn't have accomplished anything but to get a bunch of black people killed. — frank

From my perspective he already accomplished many things, and died in that pursuit.

Like MLK.

Also, we're sure it's a political assassination now? When did that happen? I wanted to think it was my imagination but for some reason it just seems like more and more modern day conservatives take joy in crudeness and "crossing lines" for little reason other than to do so and illicit a negative emotional response in others I.E. to spread misery. Major turn off for me, despite being in favor of many stereotypical "conservative" things. Point being, you don't have to give a hoot about politics to not like a guy or what he has to say to the point of drastic action. People assault and murder people they don't like every single day. This guy just happened to be a bit of a minor celebrity who yes is known for engaging in political activity. — Outlander

I'm not certain. I could see it being as dumb as you say here: a banality of evil whereby a young frustrated man decided to do something dumb that was way larger than he understood.

That'd be the sympathetic reading, I think.

I've guessed inter-fascist, but that he was turned in by his own father is what persuaded me he could fit the school-shooter archetype (what a dark world where that's an archetype...)

And it could be a mix of these things. I'm far away from the situation. It hit me hard enough to want to say something that I didn't know how to say.

We're not going to agree on this. — BitconnectCarlos

Also, we don't have to. If I've said too much and that's that then no need to frustrate one another.

When I think "genocide," I think October 7th, when thousands of Palestinians went house to house murdering, raping, and torturing Israeli civilians living in border regions with the Palestinians as their neighbors. — BitconnectCarlos

The part that makes me hesitate here is that there were also immediate reports about finding hundreds of beheaded babies.

And then learning that Israeli attack helicopters shot on Israelis.

Sometimes states just say shit to demonize someone they want to kill.

I fear that's part of what's going on.

You like that word "valence" don't you? :grin: There's a big valence band around the whole nucleus of the situation. — frank

I do. It's something that makes sense to me both in the literary and the chemical sense.

If it's false then I can't clarify by analogy, but if it's true (non-chemically) then perhaps there's some analogy whereby we can "trade electrons"

It sounds like your concern is primarily political. — frank

Yes.

Hence Malcolm X.

Tho the event isn't the best one I'll admit now -- it was just the one that made me feel so frustrated at the absurdity of the world that I couldn't help but start the thought.

Does the fact that Gaza sticks in your craw have anything to do with the political scene surrounding it in the US? If so, you aren't honoring those victims anymore than anyone else is. You're just engaging in more tit for tat. Really coming to terms with humanity's potential for horror and bloodshed, now that's a philosophical problem. It's called Nietzsche's eternal return. — frank

The reason Gaza "sticks in my craw" is because I went to a conference and spoke to various Palestinians there. I did this because I had a friend from Gaza and he suggested I go. I looked into the history and am basically on the Palestinian side in terms of rights, such as the right of return, though these things are so far off the table due to what Israel has done.

Now if Israel happened to be manufacturing their own weapons on their own soil by their own means it'd be just another genocide -- but it's a genocide the country I live in supports. Not in a small way either.

So the answer to your first question is "yes", but "political scene" denigrates the efforts of people in the United States who have pushed for non-violent change even in the face of genocide. Truly moral giants to my mind. BDS is such a movement, and the US equates it with "Hamas"

Did Nietzsche come to terms with our potential for horror? I'm not sure. If so, that's a shame that that's all we could come up with is an eternal return to the same.

I have a thing for unhonored victims. For instance, in the Atlantic slave trade, about 9 million went to Brazil and the Caribbean where they died young of disease and being worked to death. How often do you hear anyone speak of these millions of people? They aren't honored because most people don't know anything about them. And yet we despair to no end over 100,000 in Gaza? See how that works? — frank

There's a big difference here -- I'm not looking to honor death, since there is nothing to honor there. Remembering death is worthwhile insofar that we can prevent death. There may be other valences, spiritual respect and such.

I figure if we really care about life we'd not give excuses to the killers on the basis of the forgotten tortured -- if anything that there are forgotten tortured should connect you to the now suffering.

Honor the dead in peace, but there are bodies piling.

So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? — Christoffer

And why does it continue to happen?

And, the bigger political question -- what's with the intuition that killing is wrong and our constant habit of making exceptions for ourselves?

When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence. — Christoffer

There's a sense in which I think of Kirk as an early fascist agitator. To use the time travelling assassin scenario one would not go back in time to kill some random propagandist who is close enough to count. That seems cruel, and probably ineffective.

I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.

Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.

I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.

I like this as an ideal.

Partially what the debate is about are "these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad" -- hence @Hanover's point that I don't know good from evil and my admission that this is exactly what I'm saying: I don't know good from evil.

That one person gives themself permission to kill for some political reason vs that a state writes it down a head of time and goes on doing the same seems like a distinction that makes no difference with respect to the sanctity of life, AND with respect to the practical realities of life. The first is easily seen as absurd, and the latter isn't answered.

If being distressed about Palestine leads to bloodlust for conservative assholes, it's probably time for a therapist and some meds. — frank

The feeling of absurdity I have is with respect to the condemnation of such violence.

Biblically we have some planks in our eyes. And to see the amount of emotional fervor this assassination produced vs the lack of response in the face of genocide -- an absurd reflection, an uncomfortable aporia.

Depends on the nature of the support. If one supports, for example, the Gaza Health Foundation's efforts to give meals directly to Palestinians, that's laudable. Fundraising for Hamas and occupying college campuses is not. A student visa is a privilege. — BitconnectCarlos

This strikes me as backwards.

One can only give aid to the suffering, but if you dare try to resist the movement of weapons to actually prevent the genocide we will take away your privilege of being here.

What about the students who are citizens that put up a similar resistance? Ought we to deport them too?

This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. — Hanover

And they did so with the blessing of the law.

The American Revolution broke the law with respect to murder, too.

The law isn't a basis for making this decision -- that's just the way we do things at the moment. Part of the weather. It's not a moral or political code as much as a "If you do such and such and get caught and tried and persecuted then this punishment will follow"


Further, pointing to Hitler after the fact is to sidestep the question: If all we do is look to the past to decide when someone is a hero rather than a criminal then we'll always condemn heroes in the moment and then change our mind later. That's a policy of convenience, but it doesn't tell us about when one is justified in using political violence.

If it's just that there's a law for it it seems to much the same to me as the person who follows their own moral code -- since they wrote it down ahead of time and are consistent they are thereby justified.

But I know you'd see this as patently absurd -- I don't see how appeal to law gets around that absurdity though.


****

The pop question is "If you could go back in time to shoot Hitler, would you do it?" -- generically people unthinkingly say "Yes" -- but here the question isn't about one-off assassins as much as "How do you* live with the violence you are responsible for, and how do you* consistently condemn the violence of others with the blood on your hands?"

When I hear "The law", that sounds to me like the one-off manifesto -- because we gave ourselves permission this time.

EDIT: *You because I'm asking, not because I'm not guilty.

The assassin was not a part of the military.

He fits the profile of white Utah boy who thought it'd be funny if he shot a guy he probably had some itch against.

Basically a school shooter. (EDIT: Else, how to make sense of the fact that his own father turned him in?)

Me neither, but I still believe that Trump will ultimately fail because he’s a completely mediocre individual and not even competent. Amazingly it hasn’t stopped him yet, but I still hold out hope. — Wayfarer

In this circumstance I do too.

No point in being a cynic in a terrible world where everyone sees the same.

This is something I was hoping to express in my comment upthread. The thoughts brewing in the young killer in the school shooting scene are not political in the way people organize to bring about a change in their circumstances. It is a different culture. — Paine

Yeah, it is.

Obviously I've stated that I think these are fascists.

Which makes sense of the "not organizing to bring about change"

-- a big part of why I see the 4chan/etc. channels as fascist propaganda is that it spews not even ironic hate speech as a "joke", similar to what our present assassin did. He did it for the memes because there was nothing for him, because he was more connected to this idea, and -- really the same for any political movement -- somehow the words stirred up and utilized the piss and vinegar a young man feels, a desire to change the world, and an apathy towards what *must* make it happen.

"I'll even tell a little joke on my bullets like that one Luigi guy did, to match the theatre I want to be a part of because -- fuck it. No future anyways. LOL"

I don't know who David Hogg is. — Wayfarer

Demographically he's a young white guy that came out for gun control and is basically an influencer, but for the democrats.

Trump/MAGA is doing everything it can to deepen the division; Trump is 'the great divider'. It is the way that demagogues have to work - anything like a liberal consensus is kryptonite to them.

So all this talk about what the Kirk assassination really means - what I think it really is, is a pretext for Trump and the MAGA cabal to drive their 'second American revolution' ever harder. — Wayfarer

Makes sense to me, and scares me.

Not that I'm placing bets yet -- but I also didn't place bets on Trump blooming into full fascism by being re-elected. I don't know the future at all.

There's a part of me that wonders if it had been Hogg then such a strict condemnation would not have been issued.

Technically, yeah, you're not supposed to do such and such as noted.

It is way out of line.

": But "

I have a strong feeling if it had been David Hogg, whom I hold little respect for, this would not be so loud as to reach our ears, people on an online forum who don't have to follow the UCMJ

Do you think, had it been a liberal influencer, it would have been so far out of line?

Link?

OK I see it's from the live updates.

Anyway, having researched Charlie Kirk, it appears many of his views (anti-semitic statements, racism, homophobia etc) are not all that far off from the bigotry level of early era Nazi party rabble rousers. — Baden

Yes.

He's close enough to count, to my mind, as a fascist. He may not have been knowledgeable about what he was saying -- i.e. doing it because he found a career for himself.

": But...." -- I found myself not mourning when I felt I ought to.

A Slate columnist wrote a sensible take on X regarding the assassination:

I see no point in searching for left/right valence in Tyler Robinson. He fits the school shooter archetype: young, disaffected, ideologically amorphous, extremely online and raised in gun culture. The theater of such violence is just expanding to include political assassination.

They are not the dogs, we are, in their eyes. It is a symmetrical understanding of each that the other is the dog. — unenlightened

I sort of wonder on that one, honestly. Even if I lick the boot I sort of feel like they'll laugh and dispose of me.

If only I could be a dog -- that'd be a worker-boss relationship.

Here we're talking about who they see as degenerates that need to be eliminated: people that associate with labor, have non-heterosexual desire, are of a different race, speak out of line or have spoken out of line, or is simply annoying.

I'm not the first in line but I am wondering if I'm even a dog to a fascist.

The reason for this is economic. During the 20th Century, wealth was produced by mass production and sustained by mass consumption. This required a mass of 'wage slaves' that also functioned as consumers. But the advent of robots and 3d printing eliminates the need for mass production and consumption as everything can be made 'bespoke'. The masses are surplus to requirements, and are therefore being turned against each other. It becomes a dog eat dog world.

This makes sense for a run-of-the-mill capitalist -- it's why the proliferation of bullshit jobs which have no future is larger than stable employment. There is still a need for manufacturing and automation but it's guided by the capitalist hand which pits us one against one another -- a violence.

Neither ballot nor bullet will save us because we are the dogs of war fighting amongst ourselves. "Oh ye of little faith!"

Often times I believe that. Especially for anyone I associate with now -- having been out of the game for some time I pretty much only have "regular" associates which makes for a much more peaceful work environment.

But then this sidesteps the question -- we can insist on pacifism, but it doesn't help me deal with the violence thrust upon me. In a way I want to understand this violence better in order to deal with it as a person who wants life to be seen as sacred, in the end.

The population will crash to the point where everyone becomes glad to see another human, of any kind, that is not a corpse. Love triumphs in the long run.

But will they just start up the same old story again?

I suppose I like to long for something a bit better than that.

Fair.

I suppose the question then is, given this realization, how do we make the dog obey? Is a fascist the equivalent of a feral dog which has no other solution but to put it out of its misery? And if so, does it matter if the person who accomplishes the task is motivated wrongly if the dog is taken care of?

There's also something scary about this analogy: for them we are cockroaches, and to us they are dogs. In some ways perhaps just to retain a shred of humanity in a bad situation (since you don't just default to eliminating dogs, but do so with cockroaches).

That might be a better way to approach the question: Rather than looking at it like a justificatory process whereby we rationally decide when something which is absurd is permissible or not we can first accept that the act is evil.

But given the circumstances, at least from my perspective, violence becomes a necessary evil: that which must be done even if we know in the ideal it's not what we should want to do. In the case of fascists they only feign irony long enough to speak a message of hate. The hate and disgust of another group is the point. They advocate for murder with their mouths to incite the passions of people to commit murder for its own sake. Here I'm referring to 4Chan and related sights which actively post fascist memes that call for the death of people, spouts white-supremacist talking points, and so on.

So the question becomes: How do I retain my humanity in the face of necessary evil forced upon me? Is it even possible?

Here I want to clarify that I'm not contemplating being a random assassin as much as looking at the genocide in Gaza as a set of senseless murders that I'm already guilty for. Malcolm X was an example meant to demonstrate a sort of principled stance on political violence.

But these aren't his circumstances so the need to make sense of my situation remains.

Though perhaps it's best to see it as not exactly a rational process whereby I deduce the correct actions in accord with maxims. It's a situation which falls outside of deontological methods which tend to be absolute, and even if relativized they are absolutely relativized (except condition 1 being fulfilled, thou shalt..."

And perhaps I just need to lament the state of the world sometimes and certain events trigger that need in me, and there is nothing more here than that lament: a useless reflection we can forget when we get back to work.

I suppose what we could say is that there are situations in which ethical commitments apply, and situations in which they do not apply. When is what will be up for debate but given the prevalence of one of the basic precepts that is shared across many cultures -- like the prohibition against killing (sometimes) -- opens what we may term an amoral dialogue that is still normative.

It'd be insane to just say something like "Because he gave himself permission" (or, from early reports, is bullet casings had a video game meme -- so it looks like an inter-fascist dispute on its face, with a cynicism so deep that the killing was dressed up as a joke. Killing 31 year olds for fun, more or less)

But to take a stab at some rough amoral criteria that seems better than "just because it sounded like a good time": it seems there needs to be some kind of interest that is deemed important enough to utilize the harshest tool, and that all other options have been previously attempted to no amend.

There also seems to me to be a sense in which how much power one holds is relevant -- the case of the school shooter @unenlightened is obviously evil because there was even less of a reason: Truly senseless.

I suppose that is what I'm getting after, yes. We swim in violence on a daily basis. I want to make sense of what seems entirely senseless to me. Now, I see the world as absurd so it really could just terminate there -- in a kind of aporia. We should also be skeptical of any philosophy of violence that's more than a philosophy, i.e. it should not -- from a meta-philosophical perspective -- be a treatise advocating for violence but instead is seeking how it is we come to make these decisions.

For me to understand violence is a means of understanding how to negotiate towards non-violence.

Also I sometimes wonder if I'm just entirely barmy and it's really just OK that we kill and I should just accept that I'm the mad one. Which is when I start to feel rather numb.

I'm a moral nihilist. — frank

Not necessarily at odds with deontology -- meta-ethical nihilist, deontological normativist is fairly close to how I think about morality in the ideal.

With the caveat being that if everyone actually does follow such and such a principle then it seems hard to deny that the moral commitments have a certain kind of truth to them -- but the world we live in doesn't really look like that.


You could still deny deontology, of course -- but then I'd want to know how :

My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse. — frank

Parses political violence. "In self defense only"? In which case the American Revolution is immoral rather than amoral because it wasn't for survival but to claim a nation?

Precisely. Not good, or bad, or indifferent -- it's just the weather report.

And Gaza's weather reports are passed over.

The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now. — Baden

Maybe so-- but then there are many people celebrating in bad taste in addition to condemning in bad taste.

There's a sense in which I want to say it's screamingly obvious that killing is wrong. And so we can condemn political assassination and genocide equally. But there's also a sense in which this viewpoint is incredibly naive -- not that the person who espouses such and such is so (a person can be a principled pacifist, for instance), but that it quite literally ignores a huge part of how decisions are made in our political world.

So the question is -- if killing is screamingly obvious, how do we get to a justification of the ": But..." one utilizes in justifying killing.

Malcolm X is a good example of a person who used political violence and its threat as a tool for liberation. A Jewish sniper killing a Nazi is similar. But, as you noted, these are in retrospect -- they only become heroes in the stories we tell of them after.

The reality in the moment is that we live with killing without thinking about killing because "that's just the way things are": Why argue that the moon shouldn't spin around the Earth?

Why argue that we must support Israel for our national interests in the Middle East? These are just the way of things.

But, surely, insofar that we can answer the question philosophically at all, we'd have to have some consistent basis for when that isn't just "Because I gave myself permission this one time" -- which is what the appeal to law looks like to me, except with a few extra steps "Because we talked about it and said this was when it's OK"


****

I suppose I see these questions are a bit more activated by current events, but yes I'm hoping to touch a philosophical ground somewhere. In a lot of ways this mirrors my argument for moral anti-realism: In the world we happen to inhabit even murder is justifiable, under the right conditions. Were the world to have morality as a part of it it seems to me that we'd live in a world where we have finally found ways to negotiate our differences without the tools of murder.

But we don't live in that world, and so such ideals seem to float above in some transcendental world away from us.

So how do we deal with the world we find ourselves in, imperfect and callous as it is?

The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call. — Hanover

I agree it's not a close call. It's the first person I thought of in the moment that has a coherent philosophy of political violence.

Do you wonder if I've read him, for reals?

I have, but I'm not going to claim expertise. I have admiration for his moral convictions that he followed through on, and even revised.

If you actually think it’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. — Hanover

Though the way you put it here -- sure.

I'm hoping that I've made my point clear enough that I'm not advocating for "any public speaker with such and such a view is good to be shot by any random citizen because of their views"

I'd much rather not live in a world like that.

I have a hard time caring, however, in the face of our genocide.

Whether it's the left or not for people dealing with the war against Gaza it seems to me that the bullet is justified. No politician wants to step up to stop supplying arms, and many people against what's happening in Gaza are "right wing", but not fascist.

But the story of the day is this -- so... if you care about Gaza, the ballot or the bullet?

I, myself, would like our states to represent us, but they don't.

No taxation without....

The question between pacifism and violence is easy to answer at its ideals: Pacifists don't do that on principle.

They, more often than not, suffer for these beliefs and move on with their lives when they can -- but also get eaten up by the harsher people amongst us, and forgotten.

Mr Kirk held views -- he held views that are against the gays, for instance, and expressing them kind of views has effects.

He's not a peaceful individual sitting at a college campus just having a conversation -- he's a professional propagandist spreading hate for the FREAKS.

Insofar that anyone is against THE FREAKS then it's really just an existential question for me: Do I want to live or not?

In spite of everything I do.

Mourning the haters of FREAKS wanting a Christian nation is hard to do. I'm willing to go so far as saying killing is evil.

But that's kind of the thing: We are killers, like it or not. We have more kills on our hands than the 1 guy shot yesterday.

So do we apply that same ire and disappointment to ourselves?

Unfortunately, this isn't even registered -- it's not good, bad, indifferent -- it's something so far beyond the subject that it's meaningless fluff.

The OP would not be at all provocative if it were presented this abstractly, simply asking the question of when violence is permitted and when it is not. The OP, however, presented the question of whether the assassination of Charlie Kirk was justified under the logic employed during the Civil Rights Movement, suggesting that the plight of today’s left is much like the plight of African Americans in the 1960s, and so now is the time to take up arms. — Hanover

Yes.

What else is there?

The comment, for example, by Malcolm X: “If they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over” is an appeal to self-defense, alluding to instances where MLK’s strategy of nonviolence is suicidal. It is, of course, philosophically reasonable to want to parse out those moments when the violence against someone is great enough to justify lashing out with additional violence, but not by citing an instance that is nowhere near a close call.

If you actually think it’s a hard one to noodle through whether someone who holds political views on abortion, homosexuality, transsexualism, guns, and the climate should be executed by a rifle in a public arena at the will of any random citizen, then this is not a conversation about pacifism versus violence generally. It is a conversation with someone who doesn’t know basic right from wrong. — Hanover

I said it's murder.

I'm suggesting that this isn't the only murder we're responsible for -- so pacifism becomes an absurd dream.

Yes, I don't know basic right from wrong -- how could we in this world? Who does?

In such a world I don't want to set up heroes and anti-heroes. That'd lead to even more death -- as much of a cynic as I am I do think all life is important, even Mr Kirk's. — Moliere

Conflict here being: I admire John Brown, Eugene Debs, and various others who are heroes to my mind: I thought of these two because one did it with the bullet and the other did it with the ballot.

With "the ballot" the same issue occurs as with "the bullet." Simply having elections does not produce good governance nor "progress," nor justice, nor liberty. There are plenty of examples of extremely dysfunctional nations that nonetheless host relatively free and fair elections. There are important prerequisites for self-determination; many I'd argue are more important than democracy (and indeed, they can be eroded by democracy or liberalism/consumerism in some cases). Republican government might crown the achievement of self-governance, and it might even be a means towards it (although by no means a foolproof one), since it creates a system where poor leadership is punished (of course, in dysfunctional democracies, good leadership is often punished and demagoguery rewarded). But people who cannot govern themselves as individuals can hardly be expected to collectively each other. It's the same way worker's collectives could create great workplaces, but often didn't. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If "the ballot" and "the bullet" are the same then it shouldn't matter which anyone chooses -- it's the results that matter.

I don't think you believe this at all I'm more asking you to clarify that assertion.

Too often I think we tend to think of democracy as a good in itself. Perhaps it is, or at least can be. It can lead to people taking a strong ownership over the common good. It hardly seems to today though. Likewise with the right to bear arms. But it seems obvious that places like the Republic of Korea and Singapore have provided for not only a better life, but even a better commonwealth and form of citizenship without full democracy than places like Afghanistan and Iraq had despite having free and fair elections. So too, there are plenty of places that are awash with weapons with little by way of liberty or a common wealth; the Central African Republic is a fine example. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am a skeptic of liberal democracy in the sense usually meant: A representative government with a division of powers and rules which define when and who gets to be the decider, and various rights to property.

Not that I wanted to be, but *gestures at the world*

But I don't think we're democratic exactly -- so while we're responsible for our government's actions we're also not in charge of what they do, no matter how hard you try.

I suppose I'd believe democracy doesn't work once I see it in action. At least a little bit more than a first-past-the-post representative government with an electoral college wherein money is what heavily determines who gets to be the decider, wherein the parties draw their own districts, and wherein the intelligence agencies of the government infiltrate social movements in order to disrupt them so that we remain the same.

That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.

"Fucked up" is the correct description here. — Leontiskos

I hope you've seen I've said as much.

You're right that ": But" is the whole schtick -- that's the question I'm posing.

When is the schtick justified, if ever?

That we live in a fucked up world is part of my lament here.

The fact is that almost everyone speaks out in horror against this assassination, but I would argue that there are far more people than people think who behind those words have no problem with it happening. — Christoffer

Oh, I'm unfortunately aware of such sentiments.

It's not just one person, let's say.

This is how polarized things have become. In which people play some charade of thoughts and prayers, but view each other as mortal enemies.

So when does this "cold war" become an actual war? When does it become something in which people openly accept themselves to be on a side that shoots the other, rather than playing the charade?

Is the current situation in the US, and even globally, between the far right and most people left of that far right... enough of a divide to spark warranted violence to balance things back from that extreme?

Good question.

I want to focus on this notion of "balance", in particular, because that seems to be a concept in play in these discussions -- if we could trust one another well enough that what the other does, even if I wouldn't do it, then "balance" is at least adjacent to a good goal.

But we don't live in a time where "balance" is possible.

I don't know if the violence is warranted. That's the question, in the face of the absurd world we live in.

If the political extreme is whatever sparks consequences of death for people in a society, be that direct or indirect (suicides or being left to die), is it warranted to violently fight back at the extreme that caused it? If society can't use rule of law and democratic methods to fight that extreme and that extreme worms its way into actual government... does that warrant revolutionary violence against this status quo?

In hindsight we look back at regimes and wonder why no one fought back before it became this regime. But I would argue that the time before those regimes look almost exactly as how it is now. We can't know if the US marches towards an authoritarian regime before it actually happens.

So is this a time that we in the future will look back on and wonder... why didn't anyone do anything before it was too late?

Will the assassin who tried to kill Trump be viewed as a hero who failed if we end up in a dictatorship under Trump? Like operation Valkyrie?

That's similar to the reflection I'm having.

To define what warrants political violence as being good demands perfect knowledge of the future. Maybe many previous successful assassinations actually prevented something we didn't know would happen, no one knows.

If so then we never have warrant for political violence, since no one has perfect knowledge of the future.

Most of what you said is screamingly obvious.

The absurd situation is when the screamingly obvious doesn't even register -- what had been bad or good or indifferent isn't even named or thought about.

For myself, at least, when I reflect from a position that wants pacifism I end up here: So the world hates this idea because it's(EDIT: "violence is") justified sometimes.

How and when? It feels so absurd.

When rule of law doesn't function and democracy is being manipulated... what purpose does the ballot have? — Christoffer

Not the one I'd like.

It's why I think The Dead Zone is a really good philosophical experiment for this topic. — Christoffer

I agree that hits the topic.

I'm still thinking through and so didn't address your thoughts in between, but wanted to say something.

Once that happens, the military will have to make a choice whether to uphold Trump or the constitution. If they choose Trump, then the only recourse is states leaving the union and people fighting back if the army tries to stop it. — Mikie

The military is very Republican, and basically is into war. So that doesn't give me high hopes, but is realistic.

Right. Let's stick to that, then, please. As the OP, it would be more effective if you correct those who deviate from your purported line of discussion. — Outlander

Admittedly it's not an easy thing to broach -- hence the discussion.

I'm still wrapping my mind around this absurd world we live in.

Two days ago The Guardian published The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich.

The quote that pops to mind:

Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.

“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse?”