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Since I don't see a thread about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, what the hell, I guess I'll make one.
I'll probably do a poor job of cataloguing the current state of known facts, but as best I can...
Paul Pelosi's attacker was a guy name David DePape, he appears to have a fairly checkered mental health history, if not homeless, appears to have lived on the edge of homelessness, appears to have social media history that doesn't have zero overlap various right wing issues (apparently concerning Covid), but appears to have a set a life circumstances far outside of the standard Trump supporter. (Is that fair summation of the facts? I hope so, if not, my apologies).
Anyway, more interesting from my viewpoint, Hillary Clinton and Elon Musk exchanged tweets over various theories of the case. With Clinton basically saying this is Trump fault, and Elon linking to an article hypothesizing that DePape might have been a gay escort. Which the NY Times quickly declared misinformation (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/business/musk-tweets-hillary-clinton-pelosi-husband.html), Musk deleted his tweet.
As best I can tell, the gay escort theory at this point is almost entirely based on conjecture.
Here's my question, if the conjecture turns out to be correct, will it come to light? What concatenation of events would keep it from coming to light?
Right now DePape is under arrest for attempted murder, its not apparent to me if he's lawyered up or not yet, I assume at some point he's going to have to go on record establishing a timeline for what he was doing in the 5 or so hours prior to the incident, if he met Paul Pelosi in a gay bar, that seems like something that would be fairly straight forward to corroborate with witnesses, if they arranged a meeting on an app, it would seem that digital corroboration would be pretty straight forward.
Not sure about Paul Pelosi's current ability to speak with police, but I presume they're going to establish a timeline for him as well.
If that is what happened, what would keep if from coming to light? (I anticipate some joke about DePape committing suicide, but, that would obviously drive a fair amount of theorizing were it to happen).
Follow up question, what are the consequences if either story pans out?
I’m back to the usual refrain of every year since about 2015:
“How is this becoming partisan?”
Someone breaks in and makes a probably-political, certifiably-insane attack on a public figure. This is obviously bad. Stochastic terrorism is bad. Defending the actions is (or should be?) basically off the table.
That leaves deflection. First responses in last week’s thread: “gosh those wacky Green Party members” followed by a squabble over whether or not DePape’s emphatic support for QAnon and Trump meant he counted as Republican. Now: one of the most powerful men in America memeing about how the attacker might have been a gay escort, and thus...it’s a Democrat own-goal? What?
I’m reminded of any number of events in summer 2020 in which people tried to rationalize rioting. “Yeah, I get that XYZ was unjust, but I’d like to step back to the part where y’all decided to start burning stuff.” When the bad thing is indefensible, we are more likely to see deflection.
Presumably the motivation is getting out ahead of the Other Team abusing their actual, legitimate criticism. Even if Democrats somehow resisted the lure of equating DePape with mainstream Republicans—which he clearly was not—, there’s still hay to be made of the extremists. It’s the traditional setup for a little “something has to be done.” But is throwing out bullshit theories really the best way to counter it?
I suspect that the answer is no, and that the mainstream GOP response is a more measured rejection. I don’t have evidence for this at the moment; if anyone has examples of GOP officials making public statements on the matter, I’d like to see them. But my theory is that when the official policy is silence, in the era of social media, that’s effectively handing a megaphone to the fringe.
Yes, "silence is violence" has been the Progressive party line for a long time.
The trick is that, frequently, the yeschad.jpg response is the correct one; violence upon people who falsely accuse others of crimes for political gain rather than following the established law and procedure for that (on both sides) is generally called "justice".
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I believe I can safely say this about the past: I, and a few other dorks I know, would have cheered the death of any mayor that closed their town down and was seen eating lobster in a near by town.
So, maybe?
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You may not like being compared to Stalin. You may not think you and Stalin have much in common politically. You might abhor Stalin and his politics. And yet, so long as comparing you to Stalin is an effective tactic, you have no choice but to defend yourself against it. So long as this action can be credibly linked to conservatives, they have no choice but to claim that beating up politician husbands is the gasp of the oppressed and the voice of the downtrodden.
Aye, that's what I was trying to include as getting out ahead. I'd rather Democrats not try to conflate this dude with the mainstream right, such that Republicans didn't reach for dumb justifications...but I'm not holding my breath for everyone to be reasonable. Given that Democrats are going to push hard on this, sitting around and doing nothing is no good. Saying "whoops, my bad" is worse, especially if you didn't do it.
But are outlandish accusations any more effective? Maybe I'm typical-minding, but my reflex to gay-escort or pizza-parlor conspiracies is "are you serious?" It loses credibility compared to quiet disapproval and disavowal.
I present, as evidence, the measured response from party officials. (This could also be down to branding, as no one would be impressed by Mitch McConnell trying to play firebrand.) I think that career politicians are content to quietly let the accusations smolder out, but outsiders and/or randos on Twitter have to use a different calculus. What's best for engagement isn't necessarily best in a general sense.
A shady member of a mildly-corrupt political dynasty based in San Francisco cavorting with an obviously off his rocker gay prostitute isn't totally implausible, especially given the dude was arrested in his underwear. And especially given that the political dynasty in question is extremely unpopular.
The hell?
No, bringing mentally ill hookers to your house is not normal. Neither for random citizens nor for politicians, unpopular or otherwise. Not even in California, har har.
It is not maximally implausible, just incredibly so. Literally incredibly: I wouldn't expect it, and believing it without a stitch of evidence is...unwise. I shouldn't have to point out that we have DePape, in his own words, talking about "punishment" for Nancy Pelosi, and how he was "fighting against tyranny." It's batshit crazy--but it is strictly less batshit crazy than saying all this, but lied to the police to cover for the man he just hospitalized with a hammer.
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Because we live in the era of hate hoaxes, lies, etc.
Jussie Smollett happened, basically every instance of feces-swasticas or n-words on college campuses, if solved, ends up being done by a black or jew. Kavanaugh.
Everyone notices these patterns. Being a victim is one of the greatest currencies in the modern media. If sympathy and prestige is granted for being hit with a hammer, the incentive to get hit is obvious. If we just called everyone who got assaulted by homeless schitzos losers, which is more accurate historically than what we do now, the incentive for hoaxes would go away, and people would stop suspecting hoaxes.
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Senate Republicans have made the usual statements, e.g.
https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1586081299076419586
https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2022/10/sasse-statement-on-pelosi-attack
https://twitter.com/LeaderMcConnell/status/1586017719912210440
On the other hand, as far as I can tell there have been no comments from Trump or prominent House Republicans like McCarthy or Jordan. And conservative media has been markedly less measured, where aside from the rumormongering there's the position that this is really the fault of Democrats for failing to control crime (see also: MTG in the House).
Trump seems to have condemned the attack, but he couldn't avoid putting some spin on it.
Per The Hill:
Per usual, Trump is god-damn right (insert Breaking Bad gif) ... death and decline in America is much worse than any other part of the world, but most especially the past of the world that for 2,000 years is unchanged - with all the negatives that entails. Sure, the almost 2,000 US deaths there is a shame, but the 175,000(ish) death of the Afghani are, I don't know, worth less than the weekend murders in Chicago. It's obviously a shame, it makes me hate America so much, I wish those Afghan's could be fat pieces of shit like me drinking IPA's on Halloween night while watching MNF and possibly ordering Mexican food (imagine an Afghani burrito? Bet that shit would be tight), but they're not. They're some kind of other that isn't me and it's a travesty. But fuck if we can't even make our own better, TF are we gonna do with the average Afghani? Let them live their lives? Ok - but that life is objectively terrible.
I'm pretty sure that your post is sarcastic, but I must note how easy it is to imagine an afghani burrito. I've more or less assembled such before, and it was great since chickpeas are way better than beans in my book.
I'm honestly not sure it's all that sarcastic. One thing I read into that was "Afghanistan and other parts of the world were never all that great, but we've had further to fall and we're getting there fast."
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Thanks. This sort of quiet condemnation is pretty close to what I was expecting: polite solidarity. It’s decidedly not a mea culpa, which would be foolish, and it’s also not full-throated spin.
I’m not sure if the media response supports my theory. On one hand, it’s good sensationalism, especially reporting on meta-drama like Musk tweets. On the other, I expected more lockstep with the party.
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But rioting isn't indefensible. Even the looting part. All one has to do is claim that the person whose store is getting looted owes his property to some widely denounced social force. Since one shouldn't be allowed gain from "crime" his title anulled to it, and anyone is free to take it. If the looters have excuse that they are victims of the very same force, well that just makes their looting a form of restitution.
One can quibble about the details, but looting as reparations is on solid logical grounds, assuming common legal principles and the progressive ideas regarding "white supremacy".
But defense of looting was multi-faceted: aforementioned "it happened, it was us, it was justified", the "it didn't happen" the "it happened, but it wasn't us".
There was some dissent, which admitted fault, but it was more about violent protests being ineffective/harmful for achieving their goals, than harms of violence itself. (This qualified denunciation of violence got the person who suggested twitter bachlash, but I forgot who it was.)
Yes, but there's established procedure to do that.
The fact that a partisan can't convince most of the country's power brokers to impose them is not an excuse to go levy that tax anyway; the concept that at the end of the day, that partisan is not allowed to deny you the ability to defend yourself against them if they try to do it anyway... is what the term "bearing arms" means.
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No, it’s still not logical, and I don’t think that argument made much headway in the mainstream. I’m sure some people said it on Twitter; some of them were probably even serious. But the two options you linked were much more common.
For most people in the US, widespread violence is something that happens to other people. Defending on the facts is something reserved for people with skin in the game. Deflecting or denying is more likely for a bystander.
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You're thinking of David Shor.
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