Madeline Osburn

No, Chait said Rs created an alternate world where these things exist. It’s not an alternate world. We can stipulate it was not nationally elected Ds or we can have a discussion about whether they should be fired for openly advocating and celebrating murder of people with whom they disagree. But stop the gaslighting. I have for 7-10 yrs been keeping my job hush-hush when I seek medical care or sign my kids up for activities, lest someone take their issues with my beliefs out on us. I’m sure some on the Left would call this paranoid, but doesn’t feel like it to me! I try to vet organizations we associate with for indications of these hateful types and have sometimes failed. I have many normie D friends who didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk, one who checked in kindly, a handful of acquaintances who definitely justified it, and ALSO THE NORMIE-SEEMING NURSES AND TEACHERS CELEBRATING HIS MURDER ARE REAL. This is disturbing to me, though somewhat less surprising after the same types of people openly and casually celebrated Luigi Mangione’s execution of Brian Thompson. Not only are these people real, there is a pattern. Now, if I’m a nurse who hears a doctor say a man should die for his beliefs, when that doctor is just as likely to have to treat a man in a MAGA hat as a BLM hat, is it the pro-speech position that I should not report him? Bc I think I should absolutely report him. If I’m a conservative mom who sees her kids’ teacher reveling in the spilled blood of a man who shares our beliefs, should I abstain from trying to have her disciplined? No, obviously not. These people have not learned to control their emotions in public in the most basic way and are literally broadcasting the most vile inner monologues imaginable. It signals a big problem to me that they can’t control themselves in very basic ways and also think murder of political opponents is justified. Might send a signal to your employer, too, who is going to be liable for your unstable ass when you pop off. This seems like a pretty bright line! They can be assholes and say they didn’t like Charlie. That’s not a fireable offense in most places even though I think they’re likely misinformed and Charlie would have given them far fairer treatment than they give him. But celebration of political murder in a position of public trust is gonna make me wonder if you can do your job faithfully. A useful rubric might be that if something would have gotten you fired before cancel culture existed, maybe it’s just a normal thing people get fired for. So, an OK symbol out of the window of your truck in traffic— not fireable pre-cancel culture, so not good. Publicly celebrating the murder of a public figure for their opinions, fireable in 1980, so more legit. Like, imagine a doctor putting up flyers on telephone poles all over town about how he wished Hinkley had shot straighter and keeping his job. We want to set the bar very high for this stuff, but employers are allowed to have a bar. I’ve written a book about how cancel culture is bad (before it had a name), I’ve defended James Gunn and Trevor Noah over bad tweets, said teenage tweets shouldn’t be a basis for anything, likes shouldn’t get you fired, offensive jokes are usually pretty good, actually. I’ve also said that blatant racism is gonna take you down— not the “didn’t post a black square” kind of racism but the kind that got you fired pre-cancel culture. I know we can’t ever draw sensible lines anymore, but if we could, we would in fact be fine with employers declining to be associated with pro-murder people and also defend people who are simply jerky about Charlie while denouncing political violence. I will try to do so. In the meantime it would make it easier for me, for the love of God, if you stopped telling me videos I can see with my eyes are not real.