[slg]

>Now, why would someone take out a prominent spokesperson for their own party? They wouldn't, because that's not something that people do to other people they agree with.

This is why I think the American government is doomed in its current construction. First past the post voting has conditioned people like you to believe that everything is binary. You describe a world with only two parties that can have no dissention in those parties and no possible disagreements among their members. Isn't it obvious how flawed that mindset is?

This country desperately needs more than two options to every issue, but our system is inadvertently designed to ensure that doesn't happen.

[qcnguy]

The US isn't designed to ensure a two party system. FPTP can allow many parties. The UK is an example of that.

America has two parties because both parties are very internally open. Democrats have given up on that in the last few primaries but that's still very new, and Republicans are still open. You can enter as an outsider and take over the parties. That's how the Republicans ended up with Trump.

If the two parties were less internally democratic you'd see the same situation in the UK where there are two dominant parties and a bunch of smaller parties that occasionally end up in coalition but mostly act to push the main parties around by threatening to take too many votes.

[jfengel]

The UK has two major parties, the Tories and Labour. Nobody else has come anywhere near a majority for decades. All of the other parties exist in orbit around one or the other.

[qcnguy]

The Tories were in a coalition not long ago and if an election were held tomorrow Reform would win a landslide victory. The SNP has dominated Scotland for years.

[slg]

I'll admit I was being somewhat simplistic blaming exclusively first past the post voting. The real problem is the combination of FPTP and our presidential system. That is what makes the US converge to a two party system, not the open primaries you mention.

The UK having a parliamentary system counteracts this due to when the coalition building step happens. In a parliamentary system, the government is formed via coalition building in the parliament after an election. However, the US being a presidential system means that post-election coalition building would be too late to impact the chief executive, the coalition must be built before the election. This combined with FPTP is what yields our two party system.

For example, imagine the US has an even 50/50 split between Democrats and Republicans. Now imagine the tension in the Democratic Party boils over and the party splits into Liberals and Progressives. Maybe some Republicans were really centrists, so they peel off to the center-left Liberal party. That might leave us with a breakdown of 45% Republicans, 35% Liberals, and 20% Progressives. This almost guarantees the president will be a Republican. Despite attracting a majority of voters, the Progressives and Liberals costs themselves a chance at winning by splitting. They would have a natural incentive to merge their parties again before the next presidential election. But if this was a parliamentary system, the Liberals and Progressives would now make up 55% of the parliament and they could successfully form a government together and choose a PM without having to actually merge parties.

The reason I blamed this entirely on FPTP in my original comment is because something like ranked choice voting is a much more reasonable change that the US could adopt. Shifting from a presidential system to a parliamentary system is an unlikely enough change that I didn't think it was worth mentioning.

[hnuser123456]

Oh trust me, I saw the CGPgrey video about the issues with first past the post pretty soon after it was uploaded 14 years ago, I know that it doesn't have to be two parties who have to convert all opinions into binary and pick a side. If there's ever an initiative to change that to ranked voting, I'll gladly vote for that proposal. People will have to do a lot more critical thinking if they can't just keep pointing to the same bogeyman over and over.

[slg]

It is funny that you skipped over my criticism of you to agree with my criticism of the US government as if I didn't make a clear connection between those two. If you "know that it doesn't have to be two parties who have to convert all opinions into binary and pick a side", why did your original comment reduce this issue down to a binary? Can you admit that it is possible for someone to disagree with Kirk from the right?

[hnuser123456]

Yes, but the casings were engraved with things like "catch, fascist", so it's pretty clear the shooter fell into leftist propaganda, which is a thing because currently, we are forced to pick from 1 of 2 parties. Perhaps he thought he would be seen like Luigi but instead he's just a weirdo.

[LastTrain]

It is not at all clear at this moment in time that the shooter had any consistent or coherent political leanings. Do you think growing up in a conservative house he might have been exposed to more "rightist propaganda", as you would put it? He certainly grew up in gun culture, which I would guess had more to do with the sick thing he did to Kirk than having a trans roommate did.

[the_gastropod]

"Hey, fascist, catch" with the arrows is a reference to an attack in the video game Helldivers 2.

He also inscribed a bullet with "If you read this, you are gay lmao."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/us/politics/tyler-robinso...

[ThrowMeAway1618]

>Yes, but the casings were engraved with things like "catch, fascist", so it's pretty clear the shooter fell into leftist propaganda

Umm, not necessarily. Apparently, the engravings are used by right wing trolls[0][1][2], many of them who absolutely despised Charlie Kirk.

As such, let's not jump to any conclusions unless and until we have factual information.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-a-groyper...

[1] https://mastodon.world/@jeffowski/115199287909601561

[2] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/639/464/1e4