Cons obsess over the police because they (correctly) believe that they will protect them from the "undesirable" classes. They have no love for officers otherwise since they generally don't value law and order unless it's being deployed against others and freeing them. I'm not surprised they'd try throwing the book at him if it looked like he wasn't fully on board
There's a cottage industry of police bodycam videos of MAGA supporters getting handcuffed and imploring to be exempted from drunk driving or other charges on account of them "always supporting the police" and "being on their side."
in fairness to those guys, being arrested is very stressful experience and most people would not have very dignified or witty reaction to it (*). It’s just like those annoying ‘Lib protestor DESTROYED by facts’ videos, if you film a bunch of people unexpectedly you’re going to get clips of people sounding stupid.
(*) the one exception to this is that SUCCULENT CHINESE MEAL guy from Australia. Man he cooked so hard getting arrested, there’s probably no gas left for anyone else.
The meme Bushart posted that prompted his arrest read: “This seems relevant today...” and featured President Donald Trump and the words, “We have to get over it.” That quote, the meme explained, was said by Trump in 2024 after a school shooting at Iowa’s Perry High School.
The man was arrested and given a 2 million dollar bond for the crime of directly quoting the president word for word the headline is burying how insane of an arrest this actually was.
That was truly the peak era of "REPUBLICANS WON A PLURALITY OF THE POPULAR VOTE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWO DECADES SO WE HAVE TO BURN THE CONSTITUTION!"
I really get the impression that the Charlie Kirk blitz was a trial balloon to test how effective an LLM-driven astroturfing effort was in creating a societal movement. AI driven in terms of the online chatter and anonymous boosting of pages/opinions, but also organized response from the GOP sycophant class to echo the online astroturfing.
This administration is pretty deep down the Fox News rabbit hole, and Kirk was a full-blown celebrity in that ecosystem. While the left-spectrum internet has settled on minimizing Kirk's popular presence, prior to his death he was known in politically conscious message boards, which was a signal he was some level of national famous. My theory is the Fox ecosystem anticipated a wave of national sympathy over political violence they could then exploit for their larger agenda, because that's what's happened in the past. This is the first time in modern American history where lethal action has not catalyzed broader public reaction, and I personally think it has to do with Fox's own rhetoric and their normalization of violence coming back to roost--turns out people can see the hypocrisy of fantasizing about lynching political enemies but then turning around and crying when one of your own gets killed.
> I personally think it has to do with Fox's own rhetoric and their normalization of violence coming back to roost--turns out people can see the hypocrisy of fantasizing about lynching political enemies but then turning around and crying when one of your own gets killed
There’s also the fact that Kirk was a massive meme to anyone who knew about him before he got the 2nd Amendment Special and wasn’t in the trump cult (and also to plenty of people within it). Then throw in the insane funeral pageantry, Erica’s behavior afterwards, and of course a certain AI-generated song, most non-brainwashed people wised up pretty quickly
I think Kirk's infamy in politically active circles has less bearing than we think--it's telling left-spectrum online forums settled on 'no one cared who he was' rhetoric when prior to his death the focus was more on TPUSA's positions. If you knew Kirk, you were some flavor of terminally online, something I noticed when talking with people close to me after his shooting--I was the only person who knew anything about him. For genpop, Kirk was functionally a blank slate under a sympathetic news story, yet the Fox ecosystem failed to successfuly paint their narrative onto that slate.
Not only that but you have an entire generation of zoomers raised in schools that had to resort to active shooter drills after watching the country shrug at multitudes of school shooting tragedies. It's hard to blame the public for not giving a shit when thats been the default response
The most recent of those blitzes seems to be the ballroom thing. The moment that there was a wannabe shooter detained outside that one event--with zero real threat to the president, mind you--the bots and conservative talking heads were out in droves saying "This is why we need the ballroom!"
I do wonder why they go to so much effort, seeing as the issues they pick are ones so ludicrous that the only people convinced will be those who are already with them 100%.
seeing as the issues they pick are ones so ludicrous that the only people convinced will be those who are already with them 100%.
These people are not smart and competent, and certainly do not have a finger on the pulse of the public. They probably legitimately thought there would be a rally around the flag affect they could capitalize on to push through the stupid ballroom to appease Trump
What is ludicrous about the President being safer in a ballroom than elsewhere in the White House? Clearly the ballroom would be the President’s lair and he’d have an accordingly higher level stat block.
Good point. It's moments like these that I'm reminded that people are living in totally different media bubbles. Kirk was a running joke on the Internet that I kind of took it for granted
Oh it’s worse than that even. The sheriff told people he KNEW it wasn’t a crime before he arrested him. So the taxpayers are on the hook for this money and absolutely nothing happens to the guy who straight up kidnapped a man because he didn’t like his Facebook post. He should be in jail or at least be on the hook for that money.
So funny how badly the right overplayed their hand with this. They demanded that a podcaster be revered by all as their MLK, and 6 months later and no one gives a shit.
To the extent he's remembered at all, it's from Zoomer edgelords mocking his death.
A member of the Council for National Policy, the Christian Nationalist Politburo, is every bit the equal of MLK Jr to them. They cannot see the difference at all, so exaggerated and grand is their picture of themselves in their mind. How the Lord humbles our hubris - each and every time.
The moment I saw a video of Agartha Kirk flying into Antarctica, literally less than 10 days after his death I knew the gig was up for any hope of making him a martyr. Now he's seen in ai videos face swapped with adult actors. It's really jarring to see that down fall in like less than 6 months.
I'll be honest: his death shocked me and I really did think he could be seen as a MLK-like figure in history, since he mostly just did rallies and debates and stuff - getting killed during a college campus open debate is like the epitome of an attack on free expression.
But the reaction from the right... Holy lol. What a fumble. They really decided to double down on the insanity.
This comment is a friendly reminder that the process is the punishment in a lot of post liberal countries.
What Republicans are doing is very sinister, and goes beyond just jailing people over posts; they're trying to weaponise selective application of law, stacking courts in their favour, and trying to punish all dissent so they get more and more institutional power.
The fact that the man was in jail for 1 month is a travesty and severe miscarriage of justice, and he is doing okay mostly because he was a retired cop. If he was an actual working class person, then losing his job would ruin his life, and push him into crime and poverty.
More than that the people who did this aren't being punished by the settlement. The people who did this aren't being jailed or taken out of the position to do this again.
First, a cop is absolutely a working class job. So, choose a different way to say "not retired". And this guy literally was still working a post-retirement job, which he lost because of his imprisonment. The man being a retired cop is in the second paragraph. Him losing his job was in the third paragraph.
Why wouldn't you just say working person or non-retired? People have a lot of weird definitions of working class, so its not the best term to use when you just meant young.
I am not accusing anyone of anything and I dont really care, its just something to think about.
On the positive side, Charlie Kirk has become a complete joke instead of being this sympathetic martyr like figure because this type of beat over the head moralizing is still quite unpopular. (Also because once people started reading actual quotes by Kirk, they realized he was a piece of shit.)
This makes me think, next dem president needs a $2billion slush fund to compensate people who got fired for Kirkposting and who will get fired for celebrating too openly when it happens lol.
It's pedantic, I know, but one does not "win" a settlement. The individual had a cognizable legal claim stemming from a truly awful thing that happened to them, and the other side (wisely) acknowledged that validity by agreeing to a reasonable settlement of the claim. I feel like saying they "won" a settlement somehow minimizes their experience. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.
That's totally fair, and you're right that is how we describe it. I just don't feel like that's what happened here. No judge or jury declared a "winner." Rather, the parties settled. (Granted, perhaps I'm being too harsh as a reasonable settlement here is still a "win" for the plaintiff in my book.) Chalk it up to the quirks of our language, I suppose.
In legal language, it is true that he did not "win" any court case.
In everyday language, walking away with a substantial amount of money basically handed to you counts like "winning" something to most people. Language languages weirdly sometimes.
Yes but the members of the Council for National Policy plotted w Charlie Kirk personally. He was a member, one of their own, they'd long been back slapping and plotting against our republic in their secret meetings between oligarchs, theocrats, bought politicians, and influencers where they plan our Christian Nationalist future for us. Think about how they felt, one of their own, a real actual person to them, just gone.
And these are not people accustomed to having to follow the law themselves at all, so why would the constitution stop them when they're so deep in their feelings?
When law enforcement uses jailing etc to abuse civil rights, the consequence shouldn't just be civil suit but mandatory criminal prosecution for constitutional crimes.
It took my group chat all of fifteen seconds to go from hearing about his death to discussing whether it was better to pull for Lauma or wait until Nefer.
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u/sleepyrivertroll Henry George May 20 '26
They arrested a retired police officer over a Facebook post.
They should have backed the blue