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Charlie Kirk and the baby Hitler problem

· 263 words

A 2015 poll said that 42% of people would go back in time and kill baby Hitler if they had the chance. Meaning, almost half of the population thinks it’s morally OK to kill a baby if they believe it could save millions of lives (a very utilitarian idea). Anyone who is celebrating and condoning the death of Charlie Kirk has been led to believe that he’s a Hitler equivalent. This is the consequence of polarizing media. Anyone can become a boogeyman worth assassinating.

I think there’s a whole cascade of moral failures happening: first, in wanting blood; second, in ragebait media; and third, in belonging to a political party and not thinking independently about what’s presented to you.

I’m at a point where I can’ stand left/right rhetoric. If you identify with either party, I can’t take you seriously as an American. Kirk was charistmatic, likable, courageoes, and fluent, but also, a one-dimensional thinker, an automaton with shallow and predictable talking points (if you can predice someone’s entire belief system from a single belief, they are an NPC). Weirdly now, people are saying that his drifting stance on Israel could’ve been what got him killed?

The American spirit resides in each person abandoning all political templates and inefficiently thinking through every issues themselves, embracing contradiction and political loneliness. It’s a big ask, and it’s probably never going to appen. Ego death? At scale? We don’t have the emotional maturity as a people to handle that. You can only fix this at the root, in how we raise and teach the next generation.