I liked this a lot, as a piece of writing, but am having a hard time squaring it with the clips of Kirk debating that he and his fans produced (ie not the ones cut together by his enemies).
They look like debate culture at its worst - point scoring, dominance displays. They seemed toxic and not so small-r republican in spirit. And again, these were the clips that he himself privileged.
Is it possible to say that this aspect of him was fairly toxic but also that he was motivated by sincere faith and could be a warm person in interpersonal interactions?
I can extend that it's complicated because he produced a lot of content on the internet. He has tweets, yes, and also supercuts and podcasts and within them some right-wing arguments that were underbaked. But there's just a lot out there that also doesn't fit the ten second debate montage stuff at all, because as I said, he was *constantly* going to colleges to sit for hours and talk.
Here's a video[1] his team put out from him on a college campus, taking what I think is probably *the* most unpopular angle you can take with college kids: marijuana policy. There are a few sentences where he's polemical outright ("the lies they've told us") for what are I think better described as failed predictions, but most of what he says is entirely candid and fluid for the sake of a conversation. He's not making things up or doing the Milo thing. Kirk comes off as a dry county 1950s evangelical explaining that he thinks marijuana legalization has really gone awry, and when asked by the student about alcohol, he does not really dodge it. He is entirely candid that he thinks alcohol use has gone too far and while he wouldn't go in on a crackdown, people underrate the domestic abuse prior to prohibition and violence alcohol enables to this very day. He thinks *on the margin*, we should not be encouraging additional substance use.
This kind of thing is basically why I cited Wilson's sociology to explain Charlie Kirk; he was the real deal. He would not cave and change his social views to cater to the college right-wing libertarian types. I recall a different video (I can't find it right now) where he just upfront told a young woman on the fence about Trump that Trump disagrees with him on abortion, and will allow whatever the state of Nevada is doing. There is a candor there about his views on abortion and the GOP nominee's, something that goes beyond just idle politicking. He was saying things that were both not trolling and would be obvious liabilities in some median young voter focus group experiment, and he didn't change what he believed anyways. He was the last store-front church conservative of his generation in that regard.
I liked this a lot, as a piece of writing, but am having a hard time squaring it with the clips of Kirk debating that he and his fans produced (ie not the ones cut together by his enemies).
They look like debate culture at its worst - point scoring, dominance displays. They seemed toxic and not so small-r republican in spirit. And again, these were the clips that he himself privileged.
Is it possible to say that this aspect of him was fairly toxic but also that he was motivated by sincere faith and could be a warm person in interpersonal interactions?
I can extend that it's complicated because he produced a lot of content on the internet. He has tweets, yes, and also supercuts and podcasts and within them some right-wing arguments that were underbaked. But there's just a lot out there that also doesn't fit the ten second debate montage stuff at all, because as I said, he was *constantly* going to colleges to sit for hours and talk.
Here's a video[1] his team put out from him on a college campus, taking what I think is probably *the* most unpopular angle you can take with college kids: marijuana policy. There are a few sentences where he's polemical outright ("the lies they've told us") for what are I think better described as failed predictions, but most of what he says is entirely candid and fluid for the sake of a conversation. He's not making things up or doing the Milo thing. Kirk comes off as a dry county 1950s evangelical explaining that he thinks marijuana legalization has really gone awry, and when asked by the student about alcohol, he does not really dodge it. He is entirely candid that he thinks alcohol use has gone too far and while he wouldn't go in on a crackdown, people underrate the domestic abuse prior to prohibition and violence alcohol enables to this very day. He thinks *on the margin*, we should not be encouraging additional substance use.
This kind of thing is basically why I cited Wilson's sociology to explain Charlie Kirk; he was the real deal. He would not cave and change his social views to cater to the college right-wing libertarian types. I recall a different video (I can't find it right now) where he just upfront told a young woman on the fence about Trump that Trump disagrees with him on abortion, and will allow whatever the state of Nevada is doing. There is a candor there about his views on abortion and the GOP nominee's, something that goes beyond just idle politicking. He was saying things that were both not trolling and would be obvious liabilities in some median young voter focus group experiment, and he didn't change what he believed anyways. He was the last store-front church conservative of his generation in that regard.
[1] https://youtu.be/pyvtxzZbLhQ?t=2288