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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.
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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