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Which makes me think that politicians should say as little as possible in the immediate aftermath of an event like this or any other tragedy or natural disaster, because it only leads to egg on face (as well as shooting off your mouth based on inadequate information).
Walz was quick off the mark with "this is a politically motivated assassination", presumably on the basis that if Democrat politicians were attacked, it must be those dastardly Republicans to blame. Well, turns out that (it's looking like) the guy is one of your own, Tim. So now what is the political motivation, and how is your party to be held accountable?
Particularly if (let's do some wild speculating here) the guy was motivated by the David Hogg approach of "let's go after the moderate Democrats, after all they're to blame for co-operating with Republicans and enabling Trump to be elected"?
The connections to Walz are incredibly tenuous, that he was reappointed six years ago to a large bipartisan workforce advisory board (one of 130 total state boards, advisory councils, task forces, etc) with this including volunteer small business owner representatives from around the state where most of the nominations came from basically just rubber stamping local council choices.
It's a ridiculously weak connection, but that's not really the point now is it? The bigger point is the implications people try to make like you put here
The bigger logic employed here is "bad guy tenuously connected to your side did something wrong? That's proof you're evil!" and this logic means a person using this logic simply can't accept that anyone bad ever exists on their end of the political spectrum or they'd have to contend with the same implications.
And it reminds me of this point from SSC about the Ashley Todd case https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-meaningless-arguments/
And let's be honest, the large majority of the time this logic gets used it's as an isolated demand for rigor.
The other side is accountable for all their bad actions, whereas my side just has a few bad apples. I'm going to assume you're Republican aligned based off previous comments and context so let's ask that question.
Should we be holding Republicans responsible for the recent stories of people trying to kill protestors yesterday?
I think no and I've been consistent with my beliefs. I said it about Charlottesville, Gamergate, BLM, the "stochastic terrorism" accusations against LibsofTiktok, Palestine activists, Israeli activists, January 6th protestors, protestors in France during the pension strikes, etc etc that blaming groups for the actions of a few individuals is just poor reasoning.
So will you be consistent with your argument and agree Republicans should be held accountable for cases like these car attacks or the attempted assassination of Pelosi, the attempted kidnapping of Whitmer, the murder of a cop during Jan 6th, etc?
Now I'm not going to assume bad faith of you, but I will say that I find most people, right and left wingers alike tend to agree with my position that they aren't responsible for a few crazies once they're asked about their side.
What I wanted to point out was that the immediate and reflexive jump to "he must be one a' them bigot pro-lifer zealot Christian MAGAs!" has not been borne out so far by what we know, and that guy appears to be a Democrat or at least involved with the Democratic party on some level.
So there are no immediate convenient just-so stories as to "who did this why" in the aftermath of any event like this, and 'least said soonest mended' is the best advice.
I'm pretty sure I'm the one you're referring to here. I also am a "bigot pro-lifer zealot Christian MAGA". I think this guy came from my side of the aisle because the initial evidence seems to have broken that way. The assassin's connections to the Democratic party appear to be tenuous at best, and reports are citing support for abortion as the through-line of his target list and a history of Conservative Christian involvement in his social media trail. That's genuinely how the evidence looks to me. I have not been attempting to make any comment on Protestants vs Catholics; I am noting that the way the press is talking about him is generally how they talk about people like me.
It would not be surprising in the least if it turned out that the press were lying, but I have no current evidence that they're lying other than that it's the press, and if they're lying, it's at least somewhat about facts they don't control and should be publicly verifiable, so I think that's less likely.
Having observed several iterations of this particular game over the years, I think anyone who argues for ignoring the question of motive is kidding themselves; if this guy is in fact a Red Triber, that fact will, to put it delicately, be relevant to the discourse for some time. If he is not a Red Triber, then I am compelled to point out that the question of his motivations will be actively suppressed. That is the pattern I observe from the last several go-rounds.
I am deeply concerned about escalating extremism. I believe it is better in principle to consistently engage on the motives of extremists such as this and previous assassins, rather than allow our press to play their usual games.
Yeah, but so far the reports seem sketchy - not the actual list but one typed up and given to the police? I don't know how much credence to put in anything, though his sudden turn (if I believe the alleged LinkedIn page on social media claimed to be his) from a history of generally working in the food industry/retail industry to saying he was CEO of Red Lion and working in the Congo sounds very odd - maybe he had some kind of mental breakdown?
So maybe he was shooting or planning to shoot pro-choice people, or maybe he had some other reason, or who knows what exactly was going on. I'm waiting to hear more. He seems to have had a mixed background, to say the least.
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Held responsible? OR Get credit for?
This is the really intractable portion, because killing protestors is probably net pretty good when done by private individuals. Protesting, even the "peaceful" kind is still highly antisocial, at best being a massive waste of time and resources. But usually also significantly interrupting business and people's lives. And more realistically, nowadays, most are used as cover fire for violent crisis actors. Its probably bad if police just shoot them, but guys sniping them out of windows would get us back closer to a more healthy equilibrium where protesting is reserved for important government scandals like covering up sex rings and the like, not for when a teacher's union wants a 10% raise or ICE agents are check notes executing lawful detention orders.
Killing people also disrupts a lot of lives too, including taking court and police time away from other crimes. It disrupts the employers of both, the family members and friends of both, etc. It increases the fear of violence level of the rest of society. It devalues nearby property by increasing the crime rate.
Murder doesn't just hurt the murder victim.
How so? If I’m not planning on participating in a protest, why would my “fear of violence” be increased by the knowledge that protestors may suffer negative consequences for protesting? Their circumstances do not appear to mirror my circumstances in any important way, so why should I draw any conclusions about what’s likely to happen to me based on what happens to them?
Not if the police agree to do only a cursory investigation, informed by the assumption “Eh, whatever happens to these people happens, no need to look too deeply into it.” In that scenario, no arrest would be made and no court resources would need to be expended.
Putting aside any morals, I don't see how you're feasibly going to make a law that allows for people to kill others easily that also doesn't inevitably end up with a bunch of people dying because "I thought they counted as a valid target" becomes an obvious excuse with very little ability to counter, and not to mention it pretty clearly violates the entire principles behind the first amendment if we start killing people over them just existing together in a public space with signs and speech. Even with self-defense/stand your ground laws which are generally easier to work off of, we still see things with murderous people shooting doordash drivers and pulling guns on girl scouts trying to exploit it.
It comes off as "I'm bloodthirsty and I want to justify it, no one will be bothered if I just shoot that guy I find annoying right?"
No, no, no, you see, it works very well if the only people that the police is gonna give a pass to are Hoffmeisters and everyone who isn't a Hoffmeister gets hit with the full extent of the law if they try to lynch the shooter.
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Feel free to elaborate
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That is super weak, but FWIW, I'm also seeing claims that his wife was an intern for Walz at one point.
Yeah like 15 years ago for a brief stint. They're all very weak connections, and I think an obvious way to see this if you tried to draw a connection elsewhere.
Like would "Local store once hired roommate" be a convincing connection to attach Vance to the owner of the local store? Probably not.
Or if Walmart had employed him, would we be worried about the district manager? Probably not.
And yet we could just as easily draw all those connections. Hundreds or thousands of people all suspect, from former coworkers to employees for his security firm to other people on that workforce board or even just the people at the church he attended.
This too seems like an isolated demand for rigor, incredibly weak connections that include a shit ton of people who aren't being implicated despite many having even closer ties.
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Charitably, this statement is true if they were killed because of their roles as politicians, which seems likely any time a public political figure is killed except by random violence or accident. That said, the implication that "the other side" did it isn't necessarily true, and hyping it as such in this case can presumably put a lot of egg in the face if it turns out to be [your side] infighting, which also isn't uncommon.
Yeah, shooting politicians probably is politically motivated. But he could have been shooting politicians because he thinks they're lizard people controlling us all with mind rays from their lunar base. We don't know precisely what or why the guy was trying to achieve as yet, so saying nothing except some anodyne platitudes until we find the hell out what was going on is the best way to go.
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