I don’t think it’s a small thing, I’ve noticed it myself a lot, more than any young generation before today’s young teens are extremely composed and thoughtful broadly, and it does give me hope for the future.

let me debate high schoolers and then call me skilled!

To be fair, I think a lot of gen Alpha right now would absolutely trounce most Gen-Z at interpersonal debate and discussion. Gen-Z got a shitty hand growing up in the most checked-out period of American history. At least a lot of Gen Alpha from what I’ve seen have learned right away they’re basically on their own, adapted fast to things like Covid, political upheaval and unstable economics, and know already even at an early age that they need to figure out how to do everything by themselves and don’t really have as much extreme social anxiety as their older peers.

I’m sure it varies from place to place, but I don’t think this debate model that people like Kirk and Shapiro pioneered, which is going to high-schools and debating kids, will hold up long-term.

I made zero assumptions about you, my comment was objectively very generalized, but if you took it personally, that’s on you and how you choose to take even mildly, distantly opposing views and maybe you should work on that.

We’re at the Thought Police stage it appears.

Corporate America has always fired people for expressing political opinions. Ya’ll either haven’t worked in a real job or are very young, this isn’t anything new. Whether or not this decades-old unspoken policy is correct or not is an entirely different conversation, but let’s not pretend that corporate America has ever stood up for freedom of speech or let people express their hot takes at work, that’s fucking absurd.

Just as an FYI out there, the majority of liberal, middle-class America’s attitude about this entire thing is as follows:

“Oh dear, that was so scary, I hope they catch the person who did it, it’s so frightening knowing that can happen!”

Seriously, I have toured companies, I talk to coworkers and associates and managers every day, I am surrounded by America’s white-collar workforce and nobody has ANY political principles. They may once in a while laugh at a conservative meme or joke, but will just as readily laugh at a left-wing meme.

Our country can be broadly divided into two camps, people who know even marginally enough to take a stance and have political affiliation, and people who have ZERO knowledge or interest in what’s going on in our country. The last three federal election cycles saw the highest turnout of voters in American history. But exit polling showed that most people had no real idea who to vote for and just went with whatever their social media was showing them.

This malignant apathy, cynicism or ignorance also fills the segment with political ideology. Most conservatives in America do not have strong principles or thought-out positions. Years back I had a blow-hard conservative-sounding coworker complaining about special accomodations for handicapped workers, IE: special desks “going to waste” right up until they actually made friends with a coworker who had a prosthetic leg and suddenly never another complaint. You’ve probably all read plenty of stories about pro-life activists getting abortions, and so on.

On the left it’s exactly the same. You see plenty of leftists right here on Lemmy who would support fascists and authoritarians if those people wore the right colors and promised to “hurt the right people” without thinking about long-term consequence or larger political pictures.

What’s my point? We need to talk to each other more. We need to work harder to share our realities again, because the majority of people are far more receptive to intelligent, thoughtful examples of having strong, thoughtful values like “We shouldn’t support countries committing genocide” or “We should have social safety nets and healthcare for the amount of taxes we pay” and so on. We CAN infect the population with positive mind-viruses but it takes socializing, it takes effort, it takes caring enough to make yourself uncomfortable.

They’re dungeon dwellers who have no real values or principles other than trolling and being offensive. They’re not any kind of real movement, just an online clubhouse. A lot more people than them called Kirk a fascist, but we have a general public who really want to draw lines and find reasons for things.

Everyone saying this has no idea what a groyper is. But I am numb to caring at this point. Every last American wants to feel like they know something special and unique about every notable event.

edit: STOP 👏 GIVING 👏 POLITICAL 👏 RELEVANCE 👏 TO 👏 MORONS 👏 WHO 👏 WANT 👏 ATTENTION

Exactly.

As well as not putting every Jan 6th insurrectionist in prison.

Absolutely agree, every single person involved in that coup attempt should have been paraded around in orange jumpsuits and shackles and publicly shamed before being locked away for however many years traitors get in prison.

The next slap in America’s dying face was the Supreme Court granting our king, I mean president, full immunity for whatever the fuck he wants to do.

Now that people are starting to realize we don’t have a system anymore, we’re going to see more and more violence as the country continues to decay.

oh I know, I was a mod of a large sub and know the rules, or at least how they used to be. They really didn’t like me, likely because I was antagonizing conservatives a lot harder than I antagonize leftists here.

Had my 12-year-old account banned without recourse or appeal because I quoted someone using a mild slur so they couldn’t edit it after I reported them, I got the ban from that subreddit instead, mod was a blithering child who just laughed and told me to fuck off, the next day reddit admins had perma-banned me and I don’t have the energy to do the whole IP-reset-cookie-clearing dance to make an account that isn’t automatically shadowbanned.

The people I knew there, the communities I modded, all gone. Fuck that site. It’s now like half bots anyway.

He’s dead. I hated him but I can’t cheer.

This is too violent, too awful for the country I grew up in. I am sad not because I give a shit about a dirtbag like Kirk, but that we are now losing Rule of Law and the social contract. We are falling as a nation, and this is just one more domino in that process. They made this world for us but they’re not the only ones who are going to suffer from it.

We’re never going to hear anything about Epstein again.

We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing, and a lot of it has roots in the idea that Garland and the SC threw away Rule Of Law and decided that political agendas are above the law and that the social contract no longer matters.

More and more people, groups and institutions are going to decide that they can interpret and enforce whatever laws they want to see.

That is just…a little too convenient?

Too convenient? It’s an assassination attempt, of course it’s convenient, it’s deliberate.

We just don’t know what the exact motive was, or if there even was one. There’s a lot of information we’re missing.

We don’t know, having vital signs when taken into ER isn’t necessarily the same as “gonna live” but we don’t even know if he had vital signs, they don’t pronounce people dead on-scene, only hospitals will do that after exhausting all avenues for care.

edit: dead.

He hasn’t been pronounced dead, he was taken to the hospital, where we can assume they’re doing everything they can to keep his brain alive. Likely massive blood loss, throat and neck trauma and potential spinal damage, if he does live it’s a radically life-altering injury.

Death isn’t such a simple process, doctors have different levels they respond to before they make an announcement. Not much we can speculate on other than that. Wait and see.

edit: he ded

It doesn’t matter what state of even what country you live in, you should ALL be fixed on this election and deeply concerned about the outcome.

The New York mayor is a massively powerful seat in the world, it’s one of THE cities that move our entire world. For an open socialist to get this much public support flies in the face of the authoritarian/capitalist narratives that have been trying to convince people all over the world that no, they don’t actually want affordable groceries or affordable rent prices.

If this lands, if Mamdani succeeds, and the chances are quite high if not sabotaged, the precedent means a LOT for the world. Populists will take notice. Up and coming leaders will be inspired. Corporations will realize they’re pushing the line too hard and may back off just long enough for our world to get back on track. Maybe.

It’s worth watching. It’s worth being invested in.

It’s objectively a horrible thing to do to anyone, for any reason, and inhuman and condemnable.

That all said, if you’re reading this and you’re married to someone advocating or supporting the execution of students and teens via assault rifles in the street, and a lot of people are angry about it, you should probably fucking leave.

I don’t know anything about the ex-wife or her involvement with anything, but I know the Nepalese ruling class have been flaunting their wealth and the videos going around showing kids getting shot in the head and slumping over as blood pours out of their bodies and their friends crying and trying to pull their limp bodies out of the line of fire, have been circulating and it made MY blood boil and I’m on the other side of the world.

I think maybe our “ruling class” in all nations need a wake-up call that they are our servants, not our masters.

If you’re insecure and on lemmy, that makes you a sub, not a conservative.