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> I am largely neutral on this particular assassination, as I knew almost nothing about Mr. Kirk prior to his departure (just name recognition & basic political associations).

This seems confusing to me. The default "neutral" position on any murder, most of all when you don't know much about the victim, is that murder is a horrible thing, is it not? Is that what you mean, or do you mean you aren't sure if this was good or bad?

Any human with their head screwed on straight innately assigns a very negative value weight to murder. To get yourself into a situation where you aren't sure about a murder would require you to have pretty strong beliefs about the victim or circumstance, which you claim to not have.



Well thousands and thousands of people are being murdered all the time. You (or anyone) couldn’t care less about almost every single one of them.

So why single out this one? I mean who cares about school shootings? One nutjob murdering another nutjob on the other hand…


I think a lot of people care about shootings and murders. Almost every shooting that you turn on the tv for entertainment, at some local level, a lot of people are affected and those communities hold vigils, etc...

At least they used to. I've lived through the 80s and 90s as a kid, so when someone was murdered - even someone that no one knew - everyone in the country cried.

These days people's minds are so used to it, we're all warped. We were not meant to handle information at that level, so, effectively, we're broken.

It's why there is Tyler Robinson and Luigi and Decarlos. We used to have a country that this kind of thing was so outrageous that it was rare.

And what's even crazier is in the 80s and 90s is that everyone had guns. Even life-long democrats! There wasn't even a movement to get rid of guns. (Well of course there was but it was basically 3 people)


Political violence was certainly very common in the 60s and 70s. Maybe the 80s and 90s were a bit of a lull in that sense but the murder rate was still much higher in 1990 than it’s now.


There's also Bob Lee. When he died hundreds of people on here eulogized him. I myself attended a talk at Google on that Guice injection library he wrote.

People do care about murder for a lot of different reasons.


The only figures of note that were assassinated that i can think of were more lefty -- or at least non right -- jfk, mlk, harvey milk, bobby kennedy, malcolm x -- were there actually any prominent american right wing figures assassinated in this "period of escalated political assassinations ...?"


Reagan??


Rockwell.


Not feeling personally invested in every murder is normal. Taking the position that you don't know if a murder was good or bad is highly abnormal.


>Any human with their head screwed on straight innately assigns a very negative value weight to murder.

Murderers walk freely among you, and we're not all bad people. A few good people earn their legal kills.

A healthy society would encourage any speech which could reduce divisiveness (e.g. comments on Mr. Kirk, without retribution) — yet ours thrives on division, getting people to hate better with bigger hearts.

¢¢

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society..."


> Murderers walk freely among you, and _we're_ not all bad people

what? This is nuts. Are you saying you murder people?

> A healthy society would encourage any speech which could reduce divisiveness (e.g. comments on Mr. Kirk, without retribution)

Yes I agree with this. There are a lot of people that do vigils and prayers and eulogies when people die. Then there are people that go: he deserved it and XXX is next. The former does not drive division. The latter does - and that's what needs to stop.


>This is nuts. Are you saying you['ve] murder[ed] people?

Yes; I talked about this here two months ago [0]. In my circumstance, I would do it again with even less hesitation...

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44476115#44482107

I also have a brother — served four tours as enlisted grunt kicking in combatants' doors — whose tally far exceeds my own (war. is. hell).

It's not that I'm encouraging murder (I'm not); rather, I'm encouraging people to not live in a world where killing is never an acceptible outcome (because it is, sometimes justifiably).

Some actions should literally be paid for with guilty lives ("FAFO"), e.g. child molesters.


Do you feel that your killings were murder or are you being hard on yourself? Do you forgive yourself?


Yes. Yes. and Yes.

Given identical circumstances, I would hesitate even less doing this again.


Hey I don't disagree with anything you've said here. I just was surprised by your comment.


I would recon that if you walk around any medium+sized city, you probably see several murder-ers daily. If you buy food for three solid meals, you're almost-certainly interacting with one.

Thanks for your feedback and previous discussion.

----

I know I'm crazy (the fun side) but can be serious when trying to share commonalities / discriminations (against murderers — lol — I get your initial point/comment).

Have a great day.


You as well. And thank you for your service.


the person might be saying they fought in a war involving shooting others


I mean that's one thing, but I wouldn't call that murder - which looking at the definition "unlawfully killing of someone" I guess would depend on who calls it lawful or not.


I am sure the people that died in war are glad they were killed lawfully instead of murdered.




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