After Kirk shooting, Utah governor calls social media a “cancer.” Will we treat it like one?

We did not evolve to handle this, Utah governor says.

See full article...

 

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Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, said at a press conference that the shooter's bullets were covered with various bits of graffiti, including:

A post on lemmy claims this wasn't true at all, that it was just made-up crap. I'm not sure who to believe here, but I figured I should pass the doubt along.

I don't know anything about the poster, and it could easily be disinformation.

edit with a thought: there's not a lot of room on a bullet for sayings that complex.

 

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I have no social media accounts; the promise of a virtual town square just does not hold up to scale. Add in the algorithms that only promote individual self-interest and platform profit makes your cancer diagnosis spot on

One could certainly argue that an Ars account is social media.

 

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As for Kirk, he said "It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.” Now he is another grim gun death statistic. Some how I think his kids may disagree.

I've seen that phrased as "Kirk loses argument on gun rights", but I really wonder. Knowing that he would be killed with a gun, would he still have held that stance? I think it's possible he might have.

I mean, I disagreed with him about as much as it's possible to disagree with a single person, but he at least talked like he believed that. I wonder if he actually meant it? Would he have been principled enough to keep that opinion, knowing that it was his life that would be lost, and not that of some random stranger?

 

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This is likely the worst article ever posted by ars.

Naw, the one about Snowden's girlfriend was by far the worst.

 

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We all know that "something" is to round up the "leftists" and, you know…

That's what the massive ICE buildup is for. They wouldn't need to spend all those billions to round up just immigrants.

They're trying to get us used to seeing people grabbed off the streets. Just exactly who is getting grabbed is kind of an irrelevant detail.

 

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I swear, I feel like I have less and less understanding of what the rules are every single day.

Rules only apply to liberals. Conservatives get to do what they want, and hurt who they want, without consequence.

 

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So is it just to demean Musk by relating him to a not-very-beloved kids' figure? Is it really that two-dimensional?

I always thought it was because Elmo wasn't too bright, but it's not like I actually know.

 

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I refuse to even accept this as understandable. Because what you're doing is giving cover to common people to deadname trans celebrities because they're rich and famous and have power and therefore deserve it. Is it cool to deadname Caitlyn Jenner? She's an author and celeb too.

"It's okay when I do it" is almost always a cop out.

IMO, if they deliberately use incorrect names for others in a denigrating/invalidating way, then it's perfectly okay to do the same thing back. You're just treating them as they choose to treat others.

 

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I think I might rephrase jtwrenn's argument this way: arguing in favor of trans rights will keep Democrats out of power. That doesn't mean to actually infringe on them, just don't push them as a central issue, because there's a lot of stuff going on that also needs to be fought, most of which is a lot more popular. The Republicans are using this, successfully, as a tactic of division, which is pretty obvious right here in this thread.

You're all way closer to one another than you would be to any Republican, but you're putting more effort into fighting each other than you are into fighting them. You can support trans rights without making it a huge issue. It's a loser to visibly back them, so deflect instead. Don't agree with Republicans, just talk about something else. Save the activism for your votes and when Democrats are in power.

It doesn't matter what your opinion is, what matters is the opinions of everyone else. Adapt your message to suit the intended audience. It's disgusting that the Republicans are winning on this issue, but like it or not, they are.

 

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Then we'll fight to change minds, not shrug our shoulders and say "Oh well, I guess we should pipe down about the pervasive bigotry against trans people."

So you flail about, taking on the wrong fights, and lose, and then trans people end up even worse off.

From prior experience with white supremacist/fascists, they're going to end up in fucking gas chambers within the next few years if Democrats don't start winning soon. I would suggest that ideological purity is maybe not the best position, given the opposition and the stakes. I'm willing for my purity to be a little diminished if it keeps people alive that otherwise wouldn't be.

 

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Wow, they're literally down to making up facts they like better.

 

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The shooter was using a bolt action rifle that somehow had a magazine, was a groyper right wing loonie, but also a liberal furry.

My entire expertise comes from videogames, but I think you can have a bolt-action rifle that has a magazine. The M1 Garand was one of them, I believe; it had a 5-round magazine that you couldn't replace until you'd fired all five shots. But you still had to work the bolt for every round, even though it had a mag. At least I think you did, I haven't played a WW2 game in a great long while. I could easily be mixing my memories together.

Again, I am a keyboard warrior at best. If anyone claims otherwise and appears to have any actual expertise, pay attention to them, not to me.

 

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"Who cares about the Roma, or the LGBTQ people? We need to not take on the fight for them, and instead worry about the people who matter."

Don't worry. The fascists will get around to you too once they get rolling with the LGBTQ people first, like they always do.

It's not all or nothing. Making it all or nothing means you get nothing. And you're probably putting lives on the line. It's not there yet, but I don't think it's that far off, either.

What is wrong with you people? You don't have to give anything up, you just don't focus there. At the moment, at least, if someone votes a Democrat into power, it doesn't fucking matter why, just that a position didn't go to the fascists. Stop the ship from sinking and then worry about the deck chairs.

Of course, the thought occurs that the Chinese and Russian disinformation campaigns will be doing their very best to sow dissent among the liberals....... Arguing in favor of purity and perfect coherence of message are fantastic ways to do that.

edit to add: let me rephrase this. The Democrat's butt in the seat is the only thing that will protect LGBTQ people. You have to get the butt in the seat. Pretty words that don't get you the seat are putting them at risk. A Democrat seated in government via not being super vociferous about trans rights is still protecting trans people anyway. The pure Democrat that doesn't have the seat has no power and means nothing, while the Republican that won proceeds with their agenda.

 

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everyone is harping on this quote because of him supposedly thinking empathy is a terrible thing that no one should show, when in reality, he was saying he prefers sympathy because you can't truly ever know exactly what someone is feeling or going through?

Because anyone that can really think that has an excellent chance of being a sociopath. Healthy people have an entire class of neurons that do exactly what he decries as impossible. ("mirror neurons").

What you're seeing and wondering about is healthy people spotting someone who isn't. This should not be confusing to you.

 

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Kicking the can down the road is not a neutral act.

Putting Republicans in power is enormously more dangerous.

You purists are gonna end up letting the bad guys kill the people you're trying to protect. But your consciences will be oh-so-shiny-clean as they're frogmarched off to gulags. I'm sure they'll be very thankful for your upset, powerless reactions.

 

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"If you can't agree with throwing trans people under the bus to hopefully maybe win a few more seats to save them later then you're not being honest with yourself."

You people deliberately mischaracterize my argument as throwing them under the bus. That's ridiculous. It means you're not hearing me. Your purity drive is stopping up your ears, perhaps because it would be uncomfortable to actually understand what I'm saying.

 

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You don't have to guess, we are not misunderstanding you. You are misunderstanding the implications of your grand election strategy.
As evidenced by the fact that you consistently neglect to address the parallels drawn to racial civil rights in the past and how that shaped up, and the fact that a non-cis person in this thread has told you exactly what your strategy means for people like them.
This is not a problem of you being misunderstood. This is not a problem of One Off being misunderstood. This is not a problem of jtwrenn being misunderstood. We're not missing your message, we're not failing to grasp your point.

Yet, somehow, you keep mischaracterizing it. Funny how that works.