we don’t have the mental tools

One of the exceptional traits of humans is their ability to build and create tools. Language, reading and mathematics are some of the most powerful tools humans have and they’re all mental tools. Unfortunately that tool making skill is a double edged sword as it’s capable of both creating tools of information/education/etc. and tools of manipulation/misinformation/etc.

It wouldn’t be as much of an issue if there weren’t decades of cultivating mental tools of disinformation and manipulation, marketing/propaganda/public speaking/etc. and if humans can create those tools they can create tools that do the opposite.

Unfortunately, the “evil” tools are currently winning and will take quite a bit of effort to dismantle and healthy/productive tools built in their stead. Hoarding and rampant exploitation are not inherent laws and could be reversed. Seems rather unlikely at the moment, but teetering on the brink of extinction tends to cause pretty radical shifts.

Reduced short term costs. Vaccines aren’t free and operate on a fairly slim profit margin.

More customers in higher profit services. Emergency, surgical and palliative care have significantly higher profits especially since chargemasters are largely given a blank check on which to write the charges on.

“But surely this is bad for the insurance industry who will push against this.” Nope! The biggest obstacle to them raising rates is that to avoid any legal pushback there needs to be something to point at for why their costs increase. Insurance rates will, and currently are, going to rise significantly faster than any payouts.

This isn’t some “Alex jones conspiracy” it’s the entirely predictable outcome of a privatized healthcare system and is only going to get worse. The Alex Jones types are taking advantage of the crisis by selling snake oil cures for it, but they aren’t a primary driver of the problem.

Luckily he is American famous.

The usual story here for Americans is that they get arrested for resisting arrest and assulting a police officer and then get sentences to 10+ years in the local gulag.

Immigrants instead get sent to the camps for deportation.

He’s well enough known, there were enough cameras and he’s media/white american savvy enough to avoid the worst outcomes.

I do talk to people who think the reasonable punishment for assault is the extermination of them and their entire immediate family.

Maybe I should be ashamed of thinking I can get through to reactionaries like you, but you’re right that I’m not.

How do you interpret “killing 4 kids and their entire immediate families due to an assault, even a hate crime based one, isn’t justice” as “no consequences for hate crimes”.

You’re being reactionary.

lalala I can’t hear you

Way to demonstrate how a mature adult behaves.

Very telling that the exaggeration you take issue with is the “hate crime as a “bruising.”” and not the “kill them and their entire families”. You are correct that I exaggerated, specifically to make the contradictions more apparent. I am sorry that came off as overly callous.

Nobody is responsible for the actions of others. Your idea on how much control a parent has/should have is truly frightening and unhinged. That is not a parent-child type relationship, that is a operator-machine type relationship. The idea you are advocating for is collective punishment and is a war crime for a good reason.

Your path leads to concentration camps and escalating violence that result in what are now just assaults becoming murders. How the hell have you deluded yourself into believing that pro-carceral solutions are the opposite of “conservative mentality”?

Fuck you, be better.

Parents stop having “exclusive” control of their children at around 6-7yo, arguably younger but… Teenagers acting like this is a result of the society they are raised in.

So your solution is to incarcerated all of society? Go door to door and lock up the entire neighborhood they live in? Arrest all their teachers? Maybe the person who was assaulted is to blame and should be locked up because they caused those kids to get violent in the first place ¹.

No, these actions are owned by these kids, stop trying to shift the blame.

I am not promoting tolerance for hate, I’m advocating for implementing real solutions to problems. Prison is for sweeping problems under a rug and letting them faster and grow. Eye for an eye seems really tolerant when you’re starting from a position of “kill them and their entire families for a bruising”.

¹ for the record, that is often how the legal system handles these issues and is how American schools are supposed to.

That’s just a death sentence with extra steps. You do understand where this sort of scorched earth type retaliation leads right?

Prison isn’t a place anybody goes and learns to become less violent. Foster care is an unfortunately similar story.

Yep.

By what metrics?

I obviously have no clue exactly how many of his supporters were dissilusioned, which is why I will use “weasel words” (aka estimates and guesses)

If I had responded to your last question with this sort of “I have no clue, it’s just a guess” you would have, rightfully, called bullshit.

It might be naïvely optimistic of me but I refuse to believe that you have come to your beliefs purely based on ‘vibes’. Help me see what you see because I don’t see it.

If I’m wrong and you have extremely confident beliefs based entirely on “estimates and guesses” that is a serious fucking problem means you are, by definition, divorced from reality.

I doubt that there will ever be the “one thing”

Other than the Epstein files? :P

Seriously though, I wasn’t asking for “one thing” I was asking for being specific and providing an example of something that does so that we can establish where the goalpost and what is/isn’t effective.

George Floyd? Trayvon Martin? Eric Garner?

Yep and the problem has gotten worse since then. IE not an effective solution to the problem.

Also 3 names from half a decade ago compared to the ~5500 deaths in the interim gives a “martyr success rate” of ~0.05%. I have a hard time believing Charlie will statistically be in the “successful martyr” group even if being a “influential” person is a 100x multiplier and even with such a pathetically low bar of “success”

Pretty insignificant considering the countless other right wing propagandists

It seems like you are falling for the same fallacy of there being “one singular influencer which will end it all”… Obviously that’s not how it works…

is not THAT important ___ continues to concolidate power.

You do see how that leads to them being “THAT important”? In my opinion any roadblock to those efforts and that desired outcome is a good thing.

Let’s try a different approach. Can you expand on why you think this will make left-wing organizing less effective/more difficult/etc.?

it has disillusioned at least some of his supporters

Has it? You added a lot of weasel words to that claim there. If so what evidence specifically disillusioned them? Again from my perspective I hear a lot of “this will surely be the end of him” and then that predicted “end” never comes. My understanding is that disconnect comes from an inaccurate belief that there is equality under law, equality in reporting, etc.

Kirk is still incredibly useful as a martyr figure

Probably, but if martyr figures were that powerful then wouldn’t it be useful for ‘the left’ to also start martyring themselves? Martyrs can only ever do passive propoganda, Charlie was doing active propoganda and ultimately I don’t think Martyrs tend to be all that useful.

why you think his assasination will weaken or harm the right

• one less active propagandist
• power vacuum and loss of leadership within turning point
• chilling effect on this sort of rhetoric
• impulsive and poorly planned ‘retaliations’ causing further damage
• reminding those ‘in power’ of their mortality

Stuff like the Epstein thing actually seemed to hurt him.

The “Epstein thing” is never going to have reprecussions within Trump’s natural lifespan. Those “50yr birthday cards” that are getting showcased are over 24 years old at this point. Nearly twice the age of some of the alleged victims. Several of who have been saying, with signed testimonials and everything that Trump was there.

What evidence exactly do you want that you think would have any effect? From my perspective even if there was an explicit video of him unambiguously raping a child his supporters would claim it was a “deep fake” and anyone who viewed, distributed, or acknowledged it’s existence it would be serving 20yrs to life for CP possession. It might be acknowledged as fact 50 years afterwards, but by that point it really doesn’t matter.

he’s not irreplaceable

Nobody is perfectly replaceable. But I understand what you’re saying and I unfortunately don’t think your wrong, but it will take a lot of time and significant financial investment for someone else to fill that role. It’s how the state has kept “leftist” orgs down in the US for at least 50+ years.

There has never been another Fred Hampton, there will never be another Charlie Kirk.

You need stronger organization. This makes organizing way more difficult.

I agree fully on needing stronger organization, however the biggest issue I have found in most leftist organizing is there is little to no understanding or willingness for any form of self defense. I don’t see how this affects existing organizing methods, tactics, etc. Can you expand on what you’re seeing here?

If it wasn’t this it was going to be something else. At least this definitely solved a problem permanently.

A repeat of something like the doge employee assult could fix some issues, but probably only temporarily and would ultimately have the same end result.

If there’s anything to learn from Kristallnacht is that there was never going to be enough capitulation and appeasement that would’ve prevented it and that appeasement ultimately works to multiply the harms done.

look at the actual data

Would you like to provide the data you’re referencing? Because what data I’m aware of is nowhere near as black and white as you suggest.

that doesn’t mean that drug testing pregnant mothers is a bad policy inherently ___ it’s a good policy, with sub-par implementation

What is the goal with the drug tests? If it’s to determine what additional resources and medical care will be needed then I agree with you. If the goal is incarceration and punishment, which is the majority of “resources” CPS has to offer, then it’s actively harmful.

Good policy fundamentally requires good implementation. Don’t forget when forced sterilization was just “good policy” for the exact reasons you’re outlining above. The “sub-par implementation” you’re describing has the same ultimate result, just with a lot more orphans.

501c organizations and feds

Yes. Co-opting CPS a weapon in the “war on drugs” was a very intentional choice with extremely predictable outcomes.

While CPS is a good thing in concept it most often gets used as a weapon for class warfare. No angel investor is getting their kids taken away for getting busted snorting coke off a stripper.

why don’t they just ask the mother whether she took any medication or drugs she shouldn’t have?

Because when you live in a police state where medical information is used to prosecute people then people have a strong incentive to lie which. Gets. People. Killed.

The issue here is one of medical ethics.

It’s important for the doctors to know if the baby is going to suffer and possibly die from withdrawals after being born. The drug tests are important for knowing that.

However sharing that information with anyone else violates the trust with healthcare providers which results in significantly poorer health outcomes for everyone and pours gasoline on anti-intelluctual movements like antivax etc.

Economic conscription is not consent.