What a profound piece of writing. Wow, that was exceptionally written and to the point without being hyperbolic. IF ONLY people would see this truth. Instead, we are collapsing under the weight of propaganda, lies and smears of decent people who simply don't agree with this agenda of hate. Thank you Nina for writing this excellent piece.
Kirk was a very nasty piece of work. Should he be missed? As someone wrote, "I wish no man dead. But some obituaries I have read with an element of satisfaction."
I'm a fan of that quote but keep forgetting the source, so I just looked it up again. A very close version of that comes from Clarence Darrow's 1932 memoir: “I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
A longer version can be found in a 1922 Darrow speech: “One reason why we don’t kill is because we are not used to it. I never killed anybody, but I have done just the same thing. I have had a great deal of satisfaction over many obituary notices that I have read. I never got into the habit of killing. I could mention the names of many that it would please me if I could read their obituaries in the paper in the morning,”
Just a fact-checking note: When Milton wrote and published Areopagitica, the king's authority was being violently challenged, and the Cavaliers had been at war with the Roundheads for two years, but the head of Charles I was still securely attached to his body. He was not executed until January 1649.
I guess you could say guns don’t directly kill, people do, but that has changed. There are autonomous systems now, guns that fire on their own, AI driven.
You could say there is a person in that stream of consequence way back there somewhere in the fiddling of that algorithm? But like our own children, when they leave the nest, they are ours no longer.
With all the advanced technology at our disposal, we have never made guns safer for the innocent. People kill people. Seems to me people should not have guns.
Think of all the rending of clothes, the gnashing of teeth, the pulling of hair, the sadness and outrage, the useless mocking prayers, the blaming, the hatred, the cursing, the injustice, the trauma, that all generate more hatred and promote politicians who feed their own aberrant thirst for power.
I'm all in with Milton’s argument about Truth and Falsehood grappling "in a free and open encounter," but are truly free and open encounters possible in the U.S. at this time? I don't think so.
The "public square" includes the news media and, especially, social media. These are dominated (and skewed) by powerful economic interests: billionaires, mega-multimillionaires, and corporations. They aren't "free and open" by any stretch of imagination. At his passing, Charlie Kirk was said to be worth $12 million -- a considerable feat for a man of 31. What interests were amplifying his "free speech"?
Whether Trump, Vance, and their handlers and enablers realize it or not, their crackdown on dissent and dissenters is heading us further down a very dangerous road, toward a place where responsible opposition can't be heard and thus can't have meaningful effect. In that place, violence starts to look like the best, if not the only, option. We're not there yet, but the caving of so many universities, law firms, and media giants is a flashing red wakeup call.
Tyson is a GROYPER from a Mormon family who supposedly used his grandfather's rifle to kill Kirk.
The Groypers, sometimes called the Groyper Army, are a group of alt-right, white nationalist, and Christian nationalist activists led by Nick Fuentes, a competitor of Kirks. There are roughly 60 such neoNazi groups in the USA Their vetting procedure revolves around motorcycles and they are of a criminal nature. Itight be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
What a profound piece of writing. Wow, that was exceptionally written and to the point without being hyperbolic. IF ONLY people would see this truth. Instead, we are collapsing under the weight of propaganda, lies and smears of decent people who simply don't agree with this agenda of hate. Thank you Nina for writing this excellent piece.
thank you!
Kirk was a very nasty piece of work. Should he be missed? As someone wrote, "I wish no man dead. But some obituaries I have read with an element of satisfaction."
I'm a fan of that quote but keep forgetting the source, so I just looked it up again. A very close version of that comes from Clarence Darrow's 1932 memoir: “I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
A longer version can be found in a 1922 Darrow speech: “One reason why we don’t kill is because we are not used to it. I never killed anybody, but I have done just the same thing. I have had a great deal of satisfaction over many obituary notices that I have read. I never got into the habit of killing. I could mention the names of many that it would please me if I could read their obituaries in the paper in the morning,”
Info and sources in USA TODAY, Feb. 19, 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/19/fact-check-clarence-darrow-quote-obits-misattributed-mark-twain/4507308001/
Just a fact-checking note: When Milton wrote and published Areopagitica, the king's authority was being violently challenged, and the Cavaliers had been at war with the Roundheads for two years, but the head of Charles I was still securely attached to his body. He was not executed until January 1649.
Thank you for this great piece Nina. Scary time to be whipping facts about.
I guess you could say guns don’t directly kill, people do, but that has changed. There are autonomous systems now, guns that fire on their own, AI driven.
You could say there is a person in that stream of consequence way back there somewhere in the fiddling of that algorithm? But like our own children, when they leave the nest, they are ours no longer.
With all the advanced technology at our disposal, we have never made guns safer for the innocent. People kill people. Seems to me people should not have guns.
Think of all the rending of clothes, the gnashing of teeth, the pulling of hair, the sadness and outrage, the useless mocking prayers, the blaming, the hatred, the cursing, the injustice, the trauma, that all generate more hatred and promote politicians who feed their own aberrant thirst for power.
Take guns off the table and all that goes away.
I'm all in with Milton’s argument about Truth and Falsehood grappling "in a free and open encounter," but are truly free and open encounters possible in the U.S. at this time? I don't think so.
The "public square" includes the news media and, especially, social media. These are dominated (and skewed) by powerful economic interests: billionaires, mega-multimillionaires, and corporations. They aren't "free and open" by any stretch of imagination. At his passing, Charlie Kirk was said to be worth $12 million -- a considerable feat for a man of 31. What interests were amplifying his "free speech"?
Whether Trump, Vance, and their handlers and enablers realize it or not, their crackdown on dissent and dissenters is heading us further down a very dangerous road, toward a place where responsible opposition can't be heard and thus can't have meaningful effect. In that place, violence starts to look like the best, if not the only, option. We're not there yet, but the caving of so many universities, law firms, and media giants is a flashing red wakeup call.
Tyson is a GROYPER from a Mormon family who supposedly used his grandfather's rifle to kill Kirk.
The Groypers, sometimes called the Groyper Army, are a group of alt-right, white nationalist, and Christian nationalist activists led by Nick Fuentes, a competitor of Kirks. There are roughly 60 such neoNazi groups in the USA Their vetting procedure revolves around motorcycles and they are of a criminal nature. Itight be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.