Olympic skiers are like “I have 2% body fat. I train 23 hours a day. I have had 87 surgeries” and Olympic snowboarders are like “I have smoked this many drugs today” and they hold up their hand which is in a mitten.
I read the whole article, and it made me hate the culture of internet vigilantism even more. Somewhere along the way, we decided that being bad to someone we felt was deserving of it made us good people. And it's all been downhill since there.
This wasn't someone who shouted racial slurs at a stranger. This was someone who had what should've been an issue relevant to their families, and instead the mob thought they were doing "justice" by destroying her life and traumatizing her children.
Very few of us know the people at the tip of the spear. We can make the biggest impact by uniting against the handle, making that behavior far more taboo than it is now.
In the last few years we've seen:
- The plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer
- The Storming of the Capitol and pipe bombs left at the RNC and DNC
- The break-in to kidnap Nancy Pelosi and the brutal on Paul Pelosi
- Multiple assassination attempts against Trump
- The assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of on State Senator John Hoffman and his wife
- Luigi Mangione's assassination of Brian Thompson
- The assassination of Charlie Kirk
Political violence is contagious. It is spreading. It is not confined to one side or belief system. It should terrify us all.
The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in it without fear of violence. Political violence is always an attack against us all. You have to be so blind not to see that.
Statement by President George W. Bush:
"Today, a young man was murdered in cold blood while expressing his political views. It happened on a college campus, where the open exchange of opposing ideas should be sacrosanct. Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square. Members of other political parties are not our enemies; they are our fellow citizens. May God bless Charlie Kirk and his family, and may God guide America toward civility."