It's the same in Southern California. When I sold my first starter home it was bought by internationals to rent. There were already multiple homes on the block owned by foreign interests.
And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.
In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.
The problem I see is that the term "conservative" is not defined. There are many places where current "conservatives" would be at odds with "conservatives" of just a few years ago. If you're a fiscal conservative, where did the tea party go?, you'd by furious by the spending of the current "conservatives".
Companies are driven by profits, but their decisions are usually based on legalities. I think their knee-jerk reaction to pull Kimmel was due to what might happen, or what the government was threatening to do. That doesn't amount to damages, legally. However, if they bring Kimmel back, and the government follows through on its initial threats, then that does amount to damages for which they can sue the government.
I've heard stories of plastic bags on the highway making their way into the path of the front-facing cameras of vehicles. Resulting in automatic emergency braking at highway speeds.
You're not wrong, but the same can be said for some militia groups and religious organizations. I think the problem people have is the selective use of this weapon to specifically target certain organizations and not others.
It's hard to justify that antifa is a problem and the people behind January 6th weren't. People were convicted of crimes and then pardoned. As long as we define what constitutes a terrorist organization and it is equally applied to all groups, I think a lot fewer people would have a problem with it. I know I would.
Having strongly held opinion on who lives and who dies are petty heavy opinions one might say, correct? Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
I'm not saying people should necessarily die for their opinions. But it shouldn't come as a surprise that if your opinion, and the political policies you push for, literally result in the life or death of someone's family members, then those people may have very strong reactions to that.
Like if there was an entire town of purple people and I went around saying I want all people purple people to be killed, should I be surprised if purple people might want to cause violence towards me? I mean, I'm just debating and using words, right? But those words an debates are literally about the lives and deaths of other people.
> Like just pushing the opinion on whether Palestine should or should not be wiped out means that you are advocating for the lives/deaths of one group of people or another?
Can you show me a video/article/blog post where he said that Palestinians should be wiped out? I would like to see/read it myself.
Are you looking for something where he literally says "wiped out"? Or are you looking for his stance that it doesn't and shouldn't exist? I'm not a follower of Charlie Kirk or his positions and I don't support any violence against him. However, finding his position on Israel and Palestine is a very simple google search away. You can hear it from his own mouth right here:
How did this interaction end? Why do you show a short scene from a potentially long discussion?
This one looks like a rage bait more than anything. Pretty equivalent to taking a phrase out of context, and then claiming whatever suits your narrative.
My point was that many of the "debates" Charlie Kirk was having were about who lives and who dies in the world. Doing so publicly with the intent of swaying policy and elections. And the fact that the topics being discussed with "just words" are really discussion of life and death. You seem to be trying to say that these debates weren't really about who lives and dies.
You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
I mean, do you think the follow up to this conversation results in the gentleman he is "debating" to walk away happily and change his views on whether Palestine exists? Because that seems to be what you're insinuating. You seem to be saying, that either his debates really weren't about the lives and deaths of others. Or that his opinions and policies were really "the right thing to do" and people on the other side just didn't understand that yet.
> You asked for evidence of this. I provided you an example of him literally telling someone from Palestine that the place they live doesn't exist and was not owned by him or his people.
You took a part of the conversation and showed it to me. Show me the whole thing, and not a rage bait piece potentially taking out of context.
I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith. You're doing a "no true scottsman" argument when you know full well there is plenty out there. But nothing will convince you.
For you it seems like unless there is a video where Charlie Kirk is telling a soldier to pull the trigger and kill somebody directly, you won't be convinced. It's the same argument that Charles Manson shouldn't be guilty because it was just his opinions that caused people to be killed.
Don't you see that one could see you're the one not arguing in good faith? What he's saying is that taking out of context clips do not represent anything. You need to understand the context of what is being said, and why.
For instance earlier in this thread numerous people were claiming he said he disliked the word empathy, completely leaving out the part of the discussion where he said that is because it had been politically weaponized and abused, much preferring the term sympathy which is less susceptible to exploitation.
> I've seen your comments elsewhere and you're not arguing in good faith.
What? Why?
What you did with your example is that you took a 60 second snippet from a conversation and use it to prove your point. I am not buying this because taking things out of context does not constitute a proof. An example would be saying that Charlie Kirk thought that empty is invented concept (a lot of people repeat it), while in fact if you watch the full video where he said that, you would know that his position was that sympathy is a better choice of a word. Now, when you learn this you realize that a single quote without a context means nothing.
This is why I am asking you to show me context.
We started this conversation when you mentioned strong opinions on who should live or die. Then, you proceeded with an example of wiping out Palestinians. Then you said that he said it "doesn't and shouldn't exist". To prove your point, you showed a short cut from a much longer discussion. I am willing to engage with you on the merits of the evidence you provide, but I think we should conduct this discussion based on the full video, and not a piece that was cut out for a rage bait articles or tweets.
This is why. In the other reply to me you said "This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that." So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences. I take your combined arguments to either be that everything Kirk said was objective (as if it being objective would automatically mean people can't be insulted). Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue. Does that mean he should have been killed? Absolutely not. But again, it is quite obvious that saying things that insult people can lead to consequences. And those consequences can vary because people vary.
You intentionally disregarded my first statement in that comment that clearly differentiated between opinions and incitement for violence.
> So you clearly understand that insulting people can have consequences.
It seems to me you cannot differentiate personal insults (e.g., saying to a dude in a bar "your wife is ugly!" -- as you suggested), and opinions about ideas, e.g., "capitalism is a bad system". Are you saying that arguing the point of why capitalism is bad should be treated as an insult to people who think capitalism is better?
The difference between making a personal insult (the key word here is personal), and arguing why something in aggregate should or should not exist are completely separate issues. However, in the world of identity politics these two are inseparable.
> Or nothing that he said should have insulted anyone and therefore should not have consequences.
Or, let's listen to the whole conversation and not a rage-bait excerpt, and see if it was what you say it was.
> If you can't find quotes in context made by Kirk that people would find insulting, then that is a search issue.
Arguing ideas is not an insult. If you believe that any challenge to any claim is an insult, then it basically kills any sort of discourse unless the point made is in full agreement with your beliefs.
The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Your current iteration is trying to differentiate between insulting a person (ie. the ugly wife) and insulting people in aggregate. And arguing that ideas about an aggregate is not insulting a person, and therefore, the aggregate cannot be insulted or offended.
Then you jump to a logical fallacy that if you challenging some ideas is offensive, then challenging all ideas is offensive.
You do realize that co-workers discussing whether we should use AWS or Azure as our cloud provider could be a rich debate on the topic. But is highly unlikely to result in someone becoming offended and evenly less likely to result in some form of violence.
But this is altogether different from other kinds of ideas. We can discuss ideas along the same topic and at some point we transition from rational debate to offense. We can start with the idea that people with blue eyes are fundamentally different than those with other eye colors. That's not too offensive. Let's take it further, people with blue eyes are inferior to all other eye colors. This might offends some people. What about, people with blue eye color are so inferior that we should expel them to "blue-eyed people island". How about, people with blue eyes are so inferior that they would be better off as slaves for people of other eye colors.
What if I went on a tour across the country to debate blue-eyed people on the topic. Did I incite any violence? Did my ideas offend any aggregate? Would you be surprised if my ideas resulted in violence against me?
If you replace "blue eyes" with other things, you can see the number and ferocity of the aggregate changes depending on the topic at hand. Your ideas are so provably contradictory to the ways of the world that I don't understand how this isn't obvious to you. Wars have been waged over the idea that one religion is superior/inferior to another. Galileo was imprisoned for his idea that planets revolved around the sun. I can go on and on.
> The amount of mental gymnastics you're doing here is impressive.
Mental gymnastics about what? I am pretty consistent in my messaging: opinions and incitement for violence are two completely different things.
You, on the other hand, full of straw mans.
Any claim can be offensive, as I said earlier with my example about capitalism. According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
PS are you applying the same standard to “From the river to the sea” chants? Or offending Israelis and denying their rights to exist is totally fine?
> According to you, we cannot discuss capitalism because some people maybe offended. Moreover, according to you, the person who will state that capitalism is bad can be rightfully attacked by the advocates of capitalism because he offended them. Thus, we have nothing left to talk about -- god forbid someone gets offended.
Where did I say that? that has nothing to do with my point. My point is that a discussion of capitalism has an entirely different risk profile than discussing other topics. I stand by the first amendment that people can say whatever they want. Where you lose me is your follow-on that what they say disallows people from being offended. And secondarily, disallows people from having consequences for what they say.
Being on HN, it is highly likely you work a corporate job and you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know that if you were to debate some of Kirk's ideas in your workplace that you could be disciplined for it. Because your workplace knows that certain topics are extremely divisive and that don't want people arguing and fighting. That is why I said you are arguing in bad faith. And both you and I know we're not talking about the topic of capitalism. Let's be real.
Next time you speak to a woman at work I want you to try this idea out on them:
"Hey X, all kidding and sarcasm aside, this is something that I hope will make you more conservative. Engage in reality more and get outside of the abstract clouds. Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, X. You're not in charge."
This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it. You obviously know what topics will get you fired from your job. You obviously know what topics will get you punched in the face if you say things to the wrong person. And that's not even politics, that's just how the world is.
I have no idea what "from the river to the sea" means. Based on what you said, it's some kind either pro-Israel or anti-Israel thing. I am not Israeli nor Palestinian so I don't know enough about the topic to publicly state an opinion on the matter.
All I know is that both Israeli and Palestinian children who have had their parents killed will grow up hating the other side. And if there were some kind of attempt at peace or debate in the future, one of those kind of people will be the one killing the person trying to have the debate. We're talking decades long generational hate from lost loved ones. Someone from the outside thinking they know what that's like to the point of deciding who should be killed can easily become the target of the other side. It doesn't matter which side that is.
> This will be my last reply since you aren't really having a debate here. You know exactly what I'm saying and the point I'm making and you're just avoiding it.
I know what point you are trying to make. I hope you realize how ridiculous it sounds. People can be offended by anything. Does it mean we should stop talking?
Ukrainians can be offended by the idea of peace talks with Russians: Russians are aggressors, there is nothing to talk about! Are we gonna stop any diplomatic contact with Russians right now?
For any somewhat important social issue I can find people who will be offended. Should we stop discussion about issues in our society?
Let's not kid ourselves here. The arguments being made were often opinions on whether one set of people should be killed and another side being saved. For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result. Saying thousands of people should be fired from their lifelong jobs in the federal government means you have had major and long-standing impacts to entire families (and there have been many suicides as a result. You can go on and on like this (Israel/Palestine for example).
Yes, these are just opinions and debate. But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people. That doesn't justify him being killed, I don't support his killing in any way. But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
> For example, by stating the opinion that we should cut funding for Ukraine means that Ukrainian will die as a result.... But these are opinions and debates about the lives and deaths of real people.
By this standard, so are all political debates. At the very least, if one person's position on a topic concerns "the lives and deaths of real people", then so, necessarily does the position of anyone who disagrees.
> But you can't just debate who lives and dies and push policy one way or another and then be shocked that the people being impacted by those opinions or decisions are going to want to cause violence towards you.
I am a bit confused. Are you saying that now we should stop debate hot topic because opinions/claims we voice during those debates can impact people and cause them to commit violence towards us?
I think you're confusing a few things here. I think you would agree that opinions exist on a spectrum from minimal impact to maximum impact. I could say I have an opinion on my preferred type of ramen noodles and people may disagree, but ultimately, it's not changing anyone's life and killing people. And on the other side of the spectrum you have things that cause harm to people. Like racism, genocide, etc.
If I use my words and political influence to support say genocide, is that a bad thing? Because you could say it is a debate we should have, right? It's just words. But topics like this mean people are literally dying. Having an opinion, especially have a strong public opinion, that people in Gaza should me evacuated, starve to death, etc. Isn't really just words. You're literally arguing those people should be displaced, eradicated, starved, etc.
You are expecting people who are the victims and supporters of death and destruction to be rational. To use words to "debate" their points. That's like arguing Israel/Hamas should be debating until there is a "winner" and the other side concedes. When in reality, there are generations of hate and anger. Neither side is really interested in a debate. And there is likely no realistic solution that either side with peacefully support. But make no mistake, this debate result in the deaths of others. People are literally dying and starving. Just because you in particular are not in that position doesn't mean you words about have no meaning. This is a person using influence to change political policy and elections. To literally choose who lives and who dies.
If you dropped into Gaza right now and tried to "debate" someone that Israel is correct, you might get some resistance, no? It's even highly likely you would meet some violence. This is pretty obvious to most of us. Didn't your parent tell you not to discuss religion or politics in certain settings? These are heated topics with histories of violence. It's disingenuous to think you can make strong public statement on those topics and not meet strong resistance in the least, and violence at the worst.
Now, it shouldn't be this way. And I wish it wasn't. But as long as military's exist and you have people willing to kill to make their points instead of debating, then that is just reality. It's like trying to debate a hornets nest and being surprised that bees aren't particularly interested in debates.
I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur. Which, unless you live in a vacuum is simply not how the world works. Why don't you walk into your local bar tonight and walk up to each couple. Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
So would your opinions be inciting violence by your own definitions? You mentioned above wanting to send weapons to Ukraine. Those weapons will be used to kill people, and have frequently been used to intentionally target victims with no military connection whatsoever. They will also be used to prolong a conflict that's not only increasingly obviously hopeless, but at this only being sustained exclusively by locking people inside of a country, making it impossible for them to leave, and then replenishing mass deaths on the front line by dragging random people in off the streets, often through violence.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want the war to end immediately by settlement, which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions. [1] The headline for that article is "Ukrainian support for war effort collapses", while you're here claiming we should perpetuate the war as much as possible, implicitly suggesting you're taking the Ukrainian side. This, by the way, is way free and open debate is so important. You obviously have not really thought to imagine how things might look from somebody else's perspective because you probably simply have not been exposed to that much, if at all.
And it seems it's literally dangerous to expose certain groups contrary view points at this time in society, as they respond to words with bullets.
This is exactly why giving examples isn't helpful. All that does is define what tribe you are on. And each tribe has talking point to defend their position. Where everything I'm saying is agnostic of that.
Without picking any side in the Ukraine/Russian conflict. You can pick one side or the other AND STILL have the other side wanting to inflict violence on you. I wasn't promoting or defending either side. My point was that have a debate, opinion, argument, whatever about something where lives are literally on the line is prone to violence. The violence is what the whole thing is about. Because if Ukraine/Russia could just "debate the idea" of land ownership, then there would be no violence.
Where you're arguing/defending for one side, the other side is in heavy opposition to that. If you want to supply Ukraine with weapons then you shouldn't be surprised if the Russian side wants suppress you. If you're arguing not to supply weapons, then Ukrainians might have issues with that. But the point isn't to pick sides. The point is that some ideas are prone to more violence than others. And if you make yourself the face of one side or the other of those ideas, it shouldn't be shocking to meet violence.
Kirk held opinions on many controversial topics. My argument isn't that any of those opinions are right or wrong. It was that strong opinions on those topics tend to result in violence. I feel like I'm the only person here who it isn't plainly obvious that religion and politics are extremely divisive topics. Especially in our current time.
I think this is increasingly clearly a false equivalency. If somebody took the equal but opposite of every Charlie Kirk position, they could go to the most religious or conservative universities in the United States and feel 100% safe, even without any sort of personal security. They'd probably have to worry much more about a false flag attack than somebody genuinely trying to hurt them because of their opinions. But many of the positions he expressed in ostensibly liberal areas suddenly open one up to the threat of overt violence, up to and including murder. Liberalism in the US has become highly dysfunctional, and I say that as somebody who still identifies as liberal, though I'm not sure for how much longer if "we" continue down this path.
You are again resorting to tribes. This is a tactic used to unite people against a common enemy. In reality, no person should be completely liberal or completely conservative. Most people have mixed views on different topics. For example, would you argue that the current "Conservative" government is fiscally conservative? A true fiscal conservative would have major issues with some of the current fiscal policies. But due to tribalism, they go along with their team because the "other side" would be worse.
It's only when people become tribal that the positions no longer matter. They devolve into the thinking that no matter what their tribe does is the right thing to do. And anything the other tribe does is the wrong thing. That is the problem in today's politics. I would further argue that it is the tribalism that leads to political murder that you speak of.
I consider myself to be in no tribes and make my decisions on what I think is best for me and my family. And from that standpoint, I'd wouldn't mind hearing what specific liberal policies that you think are resulting in overt violence and murder. Because in my opinion, irrational people combined with tribalism is what leads to the violence you're referring to. I mean, irrational people commit violence without even belonging to a tribe. Adding the tribalism just gives them more "enemies".
It has nothing to do with tribes or policies, in and of themselves. It has everything to do with politicians and the media, who are increasingly regularly labeling everything and everyone they disagree with as fascists, threats to democracy, enemies of the state, and every sort of pejorative in between. And these same politicians/media then actively and directly incite violence in no uncertain terms. [1] This is then further backed by an extensive weave of NGOs and other groups that actively agitate young and easily impressionable individuals to violence.
Even in this thread you had somebody arguing that Charlie Kirk being murdered prevented a Civil War, which is just about the dumbest take imaginable, but that's again the result of somebody consuming endless amount of hyperbolic agitprop, often in online bubbles with no contrary voices present whatsoever, so dumb takes never get challenged, which is precisely what produces people like the killer in this case who has not only thrown away his own life, but taken the life of another individual and turned somebody he probably strongly disagreed with into a martyr.
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I'd also add here that the social media response to this is itself also telling. If e.g. somebody like Cenk Uygur was murdered because of politics, you're not going to have conservatives going on social media and cheering it. That's just completely sociopathic and absurdly inappropriate behavior. People can have different opinions, even opinions we strongly disagree with.
I just want to add one more datum to this, because it's a perfect example. Recently Home Depot fired an employee who was refusing to print posters for a Charlie Kirk vigil. Trump's attorney general took this one step further and was threatening businesses with lawsuits if they or their employees engaged in "hate speech" around this event, which would include acts like this.
Did conservatives then rally around the "tribe" and cheer this on? No, obviously not. Because people have a right to their own opinion, even if its wrong and abhorrent. The response to this, primarily from conservatives, was overwhelmingly negative. [1] Again, imagine the roles were reversed. This is not a both sides thing. There is only one side that wants to silence everybody that disagrees with them.
> ... which obviously will include large scale territorial concessions.
No. That's the part you're making up. The mood has simply shifted from fighting all the way to the Russian-Ukrainian border, to forcing Russia to leave Ukraine alone through other means, such as destroying the oil and gas infrastructure that powers the Russian economy. Everyone, even Russian officials, admit that Russia is in deep-deep trouble if the attacks continue.
> I guess in your world, there are no opinions that incite violence. Even if those opinions are that violence should occur.
I am a bit confused. An opinion that states that a violence towards particular group should happen is an incitement for violence.
> Tell the male that in your opinion his wife/girlfriend is ugly. Surely you're not going to incite any violence. It's just your opinion man, you should just be debated.
This is a silly example: beauty is subjective. Thus, what you are doing you are insulting a person, and of course there are consequences for that.
I think the point being made is that you can create your own enemies. In this case, meaning enemies of the United States or politics of the United States. Many of the radicals of the world become that way due to harm that became them or their family.
If your family lived in a village in middle east and the military of another country came and seemingly killed your parents, you would think that the person would grow to have certain opinions on the things and certain enemies.
A lot of the policies being enacted have the potential to create a lot of enemies. Just to name a few, there have been thousands of people fired from federal government. Those people and their families have had their lives changed. You have people from other countries who have lived here their entire lives who are now being separated and sent to other countries. You have people playing politics with Ukraine where many people are dying due to something that the rest of the world has the power to solve. Or people in Palestine being murdered while some talk of building a wealthy paradise on the land where they were raised.
I'm not taking a side on these things. But you have to agree that these tactics have the habit of making very determined and malicious enemies. Many political policies, and the people who have strong opinions on them, have to realize that their opinions and the policies they support, do impact the lives of real people. Potentially causing devastating repercussions, death and suffering. If said people are determined to enact revenge, it is no surprise that feel justified in doing so.
I'm not justifying their thoughts or actions. But you can understand that people who have felt these impacts aren't acting particularly rationally or are stable.
I think the main problem of social media in general is that it allows for people to find things to instigate them. In essence, a single person's opinion can be amplified. This leads to at least two outcomes. One being that people "on the side" of that opinion will unite into an echo chamber of people with that opinion. Two being that people "on the other side" of that opinion will use it to justify the need for their unification and propagate it through their echo chamber.
Prior to social media, or the internet in general, it was quite difficult to amass large numbers of people in your echo chamber without becoming a person of power (like a president or equivalent). But today, it isn't uncommon for someone with views towards conspiracies or extreme viewpoints to become a "popular" voice in social media. In fact, one might argue that it is easier to become popular by being divisive. Even though most people aren't on either side. The ability to grow a "large enough" side is enough to become an existential threat to the other side. And they end up justifying their own existence.
I don't know what the solution to this is. I don't even know how to reduce it at this point.
Yes the two extremes feed off each other, and make everything worse for the rest of us.
Personally I think there needs be laws regarding social media, perhaps limiting the number of followers/viewers for anyone engaged in social or political commentary, and/or making promotion of political content illegal if it is false or misleading. Something akin to the fairness doctrine that used to exist for television prior to 1987.
Another option is to use a non-cli LLM and ask it to produce a script (bash/ps1) that uses ffmpeg to do X, Y, and Z to your video files. If using a chat LLM it will often provide suggestions or ask questions to improve your processing as well. I do this often and the results are quite good.
And at the new home I moved into, the house next door is owned by foreign interests and rented out to the highest bidder. It makes it extremely difficult to get anything done that involves shared areas (like common fence or overhanging trees) because the owner is essentially unavailable and doesn't speak english. Not to mention that every year or so we have to deal with renters who are minimally vetted. We've had a group of 5 college kids turn the place into a frat house once. There is also a property management company involved, but they can't get in contact with the owner either.
In my experience, this seems to be a bigger issue than wall street investors.
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