4am

Leftists have been playing a particularly stupid game in my comments over this Hasan Piker situation, demanding "proof" of Piker's homicidal prescriptions, as if it's my responsibility to curate news for them rather than theirs to take well-documented facts for granted. It's a common tactic on social media, posturing as if a fact can be ignored (and therefore not discussed) by pretending not to know it. One of these sophomoric pseudointellectuals (@bennetthaselton), so proud of his imagined rhetorical prowess, put it this way. He posted, "Did you have a specific quote, meaning open quote followed by the exact words that Piker wrote or said followed by close quote, where Piker "advocated for the murder of conservatives"? (A response not containing an exact quote, means "No".)" The game there is to ignore the legitimacy of paraphrase and deny the broader implications of Piker's statements. Unless I can find Piker verbatim saying "I want conservatives to be murdered," in Haselton's mind, he wins the argument. This is, of course, embarrassingly retarded. It's also lazy and immoral. Piker told his audience to kill landlords. "Kill them. Kill those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the street. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood." He said America deserved 9/11. He said that people should kill Rick Scott. He once said, “Left-wingers, liberals, you need to be fucking showing your opponents’ guts on there, you need to be gutting them. You need to be shanking these motherfuckers and letting their fucking intestines writhe on-stage. Slice them up. Slice ‘em and fucking dice ’em.” These were not one-off statements. This is reflective of his body of work. This is what he has consistently expressed. It's been widely reported in the mainstream. Someone put together a compilation of 65 incidents which you can watch below. Sixty-five. So, when someone says "Piker advocates for the murder of conservatives," that is an accurate summation of the record. It's a paraphrase that is no less true because it wasn't contained between an open-quote and a close-quote. Even someone as silly as @NortonMpls or @bennetthaselton should be able to acknowledge that. And they are able. They choose not to as a clumsy rhetorical deflection, attempting to place the onus on the victims of Piker's intimidation to "prove" what was never in doubt. Then they can evade the moral responsibility to address what Piker has said and the implications of so many high-profile Democrats proudly associating with him. I can't begin to tell you how much I despise this quality in my opponents. It's like a bully's dumber less intimidating buddy who stands behind him making oafish low-brow heckles, thinking that somehow makes *him* tough.