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Latest updates, now that it's spreading around official media outlets: a suspect is wanted, Vance Boelter. He has ties to Tim Walz and the greater Democratic Party. Still no released motive.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/14/democratic-lawmakers-minnesota-shot
A man masquerading as a police officer is shooting politicians in their homes. The why is debatable; the theories I see floating around have to do with these two Democrat's recent voting records, and breaking from Dem consensus to support the Republicans. I don't know if this is true, I didn't check their records -- I share only because it's what I heard.
The why is also, I think, insignificant. There are so many reasons to be violent in modern society, if you're not intrinsically against violence itself -- punishing defectors, rallying your side with a show of force, intimidating people and politicians on the margins. I don't care what specific social ill or rage drove this would-be assassin.
More interesting, to me, is that we're seeing assassinations and their attempts more and more. It seems that way to me, at least -- I'm going off vibes and a gut reckoning with the numbers, not a reasoned analysis. Maybe I'm entirely wrong! But the vibe I get is the willingness to use violence on one's enemies is becoming significantly more normalized by the day, and eventually, I suspect, we're going to hit a turning point where no one pretends they don't want the other side dead and we get to it.
I don't particularly want that end result, but I find it hard to argue against murderous force on principle. The arguments supporting it seem obviously correct; the protests against it seem sincere, well-meaning, and completely wrong.
It makes me think. We're materially better off than ever. We're spiritually dead. We have more freedom than ever. We're trapped in our heads like anxious prisons. We solved hunger, and crippled ourselves with food.
We don't build. We don't conquer. We prosper, sort of, the numbers on the charts go up and the useless shit is really cheap -- but the precious things are rarer than ever.
I dunno. Nobody died this time, I guess that's nice. And the future, rough beast that it is, continues to slouch toward Bethlehem.
edit: scratch that two died, I guess that's less nice. RIP.
I think honestly we talk about politics as identity and warfare, in ways that paint the other as an enemy, talk about the stakes as if they’re of earthshaking importance. And on top of that, everything is political, or if not by nature political, it will be used as a vehicle for political messaging.
This creates a supersaturated solution of political angst. Theres all this pent up emotion about things people are told are super important, that their enemies are working to destroy. Honestly, expect this to get much much worse because people are encouraged to see their problems in political light with those guys over there are making your life worse.
Near term, I think we need to actually disengage. Consume less news, stop following political opinion-makers and listening to political commentary. Go get a real hobby or three. Find a non political group of people — and in a space that explicitly doesn’t allow political commentary or discussion. If we go back to that, I think we’ll muddle through with a minimum of actual deaths. If everyone leans in and gets more engaged and more attached to causes, you can expect more shooting.
Awareness might inflame the tensions, to the extent you can't fight an enemy if you don't know he's there, but I don't believe the problems are people being "told" anything. The problems are genuine and irreconcilable differences in terminal values and mutually alien axioms. Once, those differences didn't exist or weren't known, so we muddled along, but there's shared knowledge now. We do, in fact, know what our fellows think, what they want, and what they vote for.
The Fruit of Knowledge has been eaten. We cannot now lose our awareness of good and evil.
The question that befalls those that are cursed with this knowledge is then, what to do about it?
Can war be avoided, can any side triumph without vast bloodshed, can compromises be negotiated, can assurances be made?
Separation. Erode federal power, establish common knowledge that federal power should not be enforced or respected. That's the best possible use of power, and even that is Russian roulette.
On an individual level, allow the Sort to run its course, cooperate with it if possible. If you live in the wrong place, move. That's just common sense.
This was apparently blue-on-blue though. Can't avoid that by sorting, unless the sort becomes fractal.
Was it? Not all democrats, especially in Minnesota, are blue tribers(although that is changing). This could easily have been blue on red-tribe blue dog.
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Whether it was blue-on-blue remains to be seen, but blue-on-blue is much, much easier to deal with than red/blue.
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