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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'd like to point out what a civilized equilibrium we seem to be in, borne out by what I see seems to be a fairly common reaction to hearing some story of atrocity. You look at the news and you see some horrible massacre has been committed by a lunatic (with nobody you personally know remotely involved) and what do you hope? Not that one of Your Tribe slaughtered members of the Enemy Tribe, but the exact opposite.
From the brutal self-interested outlook, that would seem to be topsy-turvy, but so strong is the edifice of civilization we live in that the lives of our tribesmen - probably by the thousands - are less valuable than moral standing and a grievance to cash in, given that they're strangers. (Well, for most of us. If there's a place where I'd find people who'd unironically ask why Ross, the largest friend, does not simply eat the other five, it would be here.)
What this says to me is that, so long as we're playing this "please let the blood be on their hands" game, we're not nearly as close to civil war as some might fear. I'd worry more about that if I were hearing more of the opposite.
The ‘Radio War Nerd’ hosts have talked about this in relation to Charlottesville and street clashes in Portland. If you have a nation where firearms are prevalent and people are fighting with improvised melee weapons, what you are witnessing is political theater.
I’ll start taking Blue-Anon scaremongering over the rise of fascism in America seriously when we start seeing Weimar-era daily death counts from street violence.
In the Charlottesville case, an incel wasn’t bright enough to grok this and inspired a backlash by crossing the line to premeditated lethality.
In the latter, Proud Boy/Patriot Prayer type groups are bussing people in to Portland because that’s where they can get video squaring off with the Black Bloc folks, while the Black Bloc types hilariously claim their street violence deters the former from gathering in public.
It's also why the black bloc folks don't operate outside cities where the local government isn't already firmly on thier side.
I suspect that one of the reasons January 6th seemed to have progressives so shaken, was that they didn't think a protest could happen in territory that they controlled.
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