Harvester on 26/10/2025 at 22:28
Dude, I don’t think Kolya is a Christian.
Nicker on 27/10/2025 at 03:19
Talks like one - "By shedding religion we also lost the ability to absolve and forgive ourselves."
And it's the same victim blaming bullshit as the Abrahamic Three delight in. Quack - walk - maybe is? We don't need any religion for moral guidance or therapy.
I am prepared to be wrong about what I think Kolya wrote but that whole post is pickled in self-flagellating Judeo-Christian "values".
Koyla mistakes blame for responsibility. Plenty of people do. It's not about accepting the blame (guilt) for past atrocities, it's about accepting responsibility, the ability to respond, to address the persistent wrongs. If you have not been harmed by intergenerational damage from colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, then you have benefitted, even if only by dodging the bullet. And I don't think that beneficiaries get to judge those who feel they got burned.
If I got you wrong, Kolya, set me straight.
lowenz on 27/10/2025 at 12:07
Quote Posted by Nicker
Talks like one - "By shedding religion we also lost the ability to absolve and forgive ourselves."
*psychopaths smiling like agent Smith reading fables*
People believing this kind of "wisdom" (I mean not as a possible suggestion but as a "truth") are condamned to be utterly humiliated by the ones who know how to weaponize fables.
That's why "shedding religion" is a fundamental pass, not because religion is the target of some kind of "progressive hate" (maybe in some desperate people it can happen, but it's an unfortunate case, desperate people can't have a clarity of vision) but because it'a tool of control, directly and way more indirectly.
mxleader on 17/11/2025 at 02:50
I was never a Charlie Kirk follower but his assassination has really bothered me. I agree with some of his points but not all. I believe in the Constitution. I'm not religious nor was I raised in the church. I am a firm believer that the 1st and 2nd Amendments are the most important of all, and that they protect each other. The Yin and Yang of the Constitution. I personally have always struggled with leaning left or right 100% because I'm an adult and can rationalize things like an adult. For instance I'm not a fan of abortion as common birth control but at the same time I wouldn't ever want to tell a woman that she could not have an abortion. There are really good reasons beyond SA for having an abortion. I believe in trusting humans to make good decisions and that 99.9% of those decisions are none of my business. I fully support rational environmental concerns and other social issues but I really believe that many of those issues are best left to the public, with the government acting as a referee. I fully support things like public funding of PBS and the arts because it's less than one half of one percent of the federal budget (was). Competition and balance is the best way to build a healthy nation and economy. Of course there will always be shitty people who take advantage of left or right leaning political power. That's life. What I find abhorrent is silencing anyone in a public space like a college campus. You don't have to agree or listen to the person on the soap box, but the ability to freely step up onto that box is the most important things that should be protected in a free society.
lowenz on 17/11/2025 at 13:35
Quote Posted by mxleader
You don't have to agree or listen to the person on the soap box, but the ability to freely step up onto that box is the most important things that should be protected in a free society.
That's not why the far/extreme Right wants "freedom" and defend it.
For the right "Freedom" (and speech freedom above all) is just the possibility to destroy the "dictatorship of the rights" they see as demonic tools placed in the human mind to not achieve "perfect/divine order".
The "freedom" rhetoric is just a self-indulgent trick to hijack the system with the tools of the system itself (and so to show how it is inherently weak and must be destroyed).
That's the point, of course no one in the far/extreme Right will never tell you openly and directly, but that's what they want.
Nicker on 17/11/2025 at 19:21
Quote:
mxleader: What I find abhorrent is silencing anyone in a public space like a college campus.
Just a reminder. Kirk was given a public space to air his opinions, by the college. And while left leaning protestors were there to push back, the man who silenced Kirk was from his own side, only even further to the right. That is not a trivial distinction, IMO.
demagogue on 17/11/2025 at 20:51
The guy that silenced him lived in the meme-o-sphere, which doesn't really map easily on to the idea normies over the age of I guess 35 have of normal politics & left and right. I think Crooks too actually. He was very into gun culture, grew up in a conservative home, had a trans partner that made him break with some of his upbringing & he evidently shot Kirk to combat the hate rhetoric, but he was also terminally online and wrote memes on the bullet casings. So the act was as much a glorified meme as any coherent political statement. There's a kind of Gen Z nihilism built into it... Where their really isn't any deeper belief than memes for the luls.
But relating that to mxleader's point, I that think there are deeper problems going on where you have a generation that's losing its grip on reality on the ground and so much of what they think & do is performative. The effects of that on free speech culture is one place where it's really visible, but it's a much deeper can of worms that we have to deal with, the sort of things I was talking about in my last big posts.
RippedPhreak on 17/11/2025 at 21:14
Quote:
the man who silenced Kirk was from his own side, only even further to the right.
You can keep saying this, and still exactly zero people will believe it.
Anyway, Kirk's murder plus the attempts on Trump's life are so gut wrenching because they call into question the very bedrock of democracy. The message is "if you want to vote for a candidate outside the "accepted" norm, we'll just kill him." And as for Kirk, he was talking about conservative values to young voters. The Democrats see young voters as "their turf," so he had to go.
But if we can't use words to persuade voters without getting bullets in return, and voting itself will be invalidated by bullets, then where do we go from here? Seems like the only possible response would be bullets in return. Which is why I predicted a civil war coming in the US.
Starker on 17/11/2025 at 22:39
Republicans hold all of the branches of government and have unprecedented power with the Supreme Court giving immunity and green light to pretty much everything, federal troops are patrolling the cities, masked right-wing goons are abducting people without due process to ship them to overseas torture prisons, and yet apparently some freaks feel like it's still not nearly enough, that there needs to be violence on a mass scale to kill their political opponents.
And what do the Republicans do with their power? Fix some of the numerous problems the US has, like health care, inflation or budget deficit? No, the most pressing things are building fancy ballrooms and bombing countries (Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc) for some performative posturing. That and of course taking bribes and stuffing their pockets in all kinds of other ways.
lowenz on 17/11/2025 at 22:58
Quote Posted by demagogue
But relating that to mxleader's point, I that think there are deeper problems going on where you have a generation that's losing its grip on reality on the ground and so much of what they think &
do is performative.
+
Quote:
No, the most pressing things are building fancy ballrooms and bombing countries (Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, etc) for some
performative posturing.
Democracy has this inherent flaw.
