Political Memes

Except that isn't what Kirk did.

He dedicated his life to destabilizing the united States and endlessly campaigning for the party and man who destroyed US democracy and its constitution.

He dedicated his life to convincing the working class to fundamentally give up all their rights and voluntarily become slaves to pedophile oligarchs.

He dedicated his life to spreading white supremacy and the genocide of PoC, domestic and abroad.

Advocation for violence from a position of influence is itself an act of violence. It is knowing that you (rhetorically) are convincing the most violent and unhinged in the population to inevitably physically attack and oppress the groups you hate. Its knowing that violence isn't nearly as likely to happen without your public calls for it.

While I agree with you in a general blanket sense, there has to be a limit here. You can't let someone have a platform where they constantly advocate violence against millions of people to millions of people and then give him a pass because they didn't commit any visible acts of violence himself.

Do we say that Hitler is only responsible for the people he himself killed, or do we see him as the murderer of some 6 million Jewish people? Or how about Joeseph Goebbels? He had little to no legislative power, and as far as I'm aware we don't have any direct records of him killing anyone. Does he get the pass because he was just the messenger?

I understand your position, and in a general sense I agree with you, but there's an important intangible threshold that some notable rhetorical violence has passed lately, and we need to treat that as the existential threat that it is. I'd love to deal with such threats via lawful imprisonment and rehabilitation, but the government is currently aiding and abetting these people, because they're the same people. So, what's the solution? Minorities live in fear, day to day, until they're the next people on the list to wind up in prisons, camps and asylums?

The buck has to stop somewhere, or we just accept the extinction of anyone outside of the right-wing sphere.

That guy advocated for systemic policies that did kill thousands of people

At some point a line has to be drawn in the sand.

about 3-4 posts down I see a collection of a particular someone's quotes

It's not just that he was trash, or that he merely advocated violence. It's that the violent threats he made were credible. The state isn't a magical filter through which threatening people becomes okay.

Then you shouldn't have a problem with a comic. It's rhetorical after all.

Yeah, laying the groundwork for Genocide and fascism is way worse than an individual killing. Agreed! Thanks for saying something!

Well take it up with the courts that would- oh wait the US is built to protect the hateful and corrupt.

Look, I’d love to have seen Kirk punished, even just mocked by the entire general public as a little weirdo, but that’s not the kind of country he and people like him built. I feel not a shred of sympathy, not even the littlest bit, and I’m the kinda person who’s even apologized to furniture that I’ve bumped into and try to not kill bugs if I can do anything to help it.

There exists a legal term called "fighting words". If a man walks up to me saying, "I'm going to fucking KILL YOU!", I have every right to shoot him.

We can easily argue that a direct physical threat isn't in the same ballpark, but I am absolutely gleeful that Kirk was murdered.

it is a fine take. they should be shot in the face