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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   38341 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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Trump shot during rally.

The biggest news. The biggest! It literally just happened. I don't know what to say. Commentary beggars one's belief. I apologize for the brevity of this post, but the implications of it are mind-boggling. Political violence has escalated (perhaps, degenerated) into new levels of unforeseen disaster. What do you Americans think?

I, for one, think that everyone who talks about how this means a surefire Trump win is seriously underestimating our media institutions' skills at narrative management.

I mean, beyond the people claiming this was a false flag — our Reichstag fire, even — there seems to me to be an increasing prevalence of "frontlash" arguments: that this means it has only become more important than ever to keep Trump out of the White House, to protect the many innocent people who will be hurt by Trump (and his violent, bigoted supporters) when he lashes out violently in Putin-esque vengeance against anyone and everyone he happens to perceive as an enemy the moment he retakes power.

Edit: I also find quite rich the narrative that this indicates Trump is a threat to himself, because it was "his rhetoric and manipulation of people's emotions in a dangerous way" that caused this, and that if the shooter was left-wing, then he only did it because of "crazy right wingers killing their imagined enemies" thanks to Trump causes people on the left "who have been told they are an enemy" to feel like they have no choice but to "attack their enemy in kind."

this means it has only become more important than ever to keep Trump out of the White House, to protect the many innocent people who will be hurt by Trump (and his violent, bigoted supporters)

Maybe you added that last bit as a joke, but I think the incongruousness of panicking about violence from the candidate who just came almost literally within a hair's breadth of being brained by (presumably) a Biden supporter would not be lost on most viewers who are not already extremists.

The shooter appears to be a registered republican

The very special sort of Republican who donates to ActBlue.

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