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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3666 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What have your personal public conversations about the Trump shooting looked like?

I feel like everyone around me has barely mentioned it outside immediate family and friends. It's like everyone just backed off, left wingers and right wingers are giving fewer zingers. The closest I've gotten to having a real conversation about it was at a gun store, explaining why I wanted something in stock with a reference to "you know, everything going on..." Which he nodded to acknowledge and said something like yeah it's crazy.

I have a lefty Coworker, and the only way I could get him to give up the Teleprompter glass cut hypothesis was showing him multiple pictures of the Teleprompters not being broken on an article on Snopes about same.

Whereupon he fell back to the blood pellet or palmed razor cut theory.

I was confused at what the point of these theories even was. What, if he'd been shot at and the bullet missed by a foot and only managed to wound him with shrapnel, that would suggest that the security was basically fine or the attempt wasn't a big deal? As a point of curiosity, I get it, but I don't understand how the motivated reasoning for the teleprompter theory got to whirring.

I think they know that “Trump was shot and survived” makes him seem much more badass than the alternative “Trump was hit by flying glass when one of his supporters was shot and killed.” The former puts him in the same league as Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson and has the potential to make him much more popular.

I think you're exactly right about the underlying motivation. But, as Walterdim's post makes clear, reframing "flying glass" to 'shrapnel" is so trivial that a lot of people are going to do it without even thinking. And if "flying glass" sounds less badass than "bullet", "shrapnel" is arguably even more badass.

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