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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24747 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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https://www.startribune.com/vance-boelter-letter-klobuchar-walz-mn-assassination/601376682

Update on the Minnesota assassination spree, the killer has stated in a letter that he was acting under the direction of Governor Tim Walz in order to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate. The article expands on this, notably with very partisan language intending to wash away any kind of culpability from the offending parties. Apparently he was also trained by elements within the US military, which is frightening if true.

Political violence has been simmering in the background for a while now, particularly with the rise of Antifa, BLM in the past Trump admin. These groups recruit susceptible members through radicalization by politicians who race-bait and highlight extraordinary events and treat them as if they represent systemic problems. This is different. Rather than relying on mass mobilization and radicalization, they seem to be moving towards more highly trained and disciplined killers performing targeted assassinations instead of widespread property damage. Maybe they've learned something from the backlash towards their previous tactics?

This guy is probably just crazy, Walz might not be a great guy but a governor of a small state in flyover having a secret stable of US-military trained assassins doesn’t sound real.

The main thing I am seeing here is that (after the very real spate of political violence in 2020, which largely ended on Jan 7th 2021), the demand for political violence in the US massively exceeds the supply, in the same way that Steve Sailer used to joke about the demand for racism exceeding the supply. People on both sides desperately want their opponents to be launching the red/brown terror, both to gain political capital by criticising the other side and to feed their own vicarious martyrdom fantasies. And this desire to big up political-looking violence for partisan reasons leads to the kind of media coverage that attracts copycats, so your average unhinged shooter is now more likely to shoot politicians and less likely to shoot up a school.

This isn't new, of course. If you look at the list of attempted Presidential assassinations going back to the founding the words "insanity" and "unfit to plead" appear an awful lot.

Roughly none of the recent cases of "political" violence that blew up in the media involve any of:

  • Someone with a history of Dem activism shooting a Republican
  • Someone with a history of GOP activism shooting a Democrat
  • A perp affiliated with an organised far-left group
  • A perp affiliated with an organised far-right group Instead we see the usual lineup of wackjobs plus the occasional Islamist, and one truly weird fringe group (the Zizians).

Apart from the Islamists, the nearest thing we see to an inteligible political motivation is something like Boelter or Wayne DePape (Paul Pelosi hammer guy) - an unhinged Red Triber who consumes right-wing media and is presumed to vote Republican decides to attack a Democrat for unhinged reasons. And the only reason why this is a mostly-Red thing is that comparably unhinged Blues don't have access to guns.

This is nothing like the Days of Rage, Reconstruction/Redemption, or the early C20 spate of anarchist violence. Nobody keeps the required statistics, but I suspect it is closer to a summer of the shark.

Probably neither of them voted republican, though.

If this latest information is accurate, then (1) the guy was a nutjob (2) he was a Dem (3) contra other comments on here he wasn't motivated by right-wing anti-abortion sentiment (if he was going to knock off Democratic politicians, then they're mainly going to be pro-choice as well, so looks like once more correlation is not causation).

Do you believe that Tim Waltz actually directed this man to kill state politicians to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate?

I am going to say that this is almost certainly a lie. I've been watching the story develop as well, and have been updating against my previous prediction that this guy was a Red ideologue, and in favor of him being a straightforward wacko. I'm not sure how this shifts the calculus; if he were a Red ideologue, claiming Tim Waltz put him up to it makes this an after-the-fact false flag, but it's also compatible with serious delusion.

I would estimate a roughly 0% chance that he is a democrat operative, or that any amount of "training" he received from "elements of the US military" is anything at all resembling the median image evoked by that phrase. If I visit a shooting range with a buddy in the guard, I'm "receiving training from elements of the US military". That doesn't make me John Rambo.

Reporting on his previous activities shows a clear pattern of delusional/manic energy animating his various schemes.

However, in the preceding years, Boelter seemed like a hard worker striving to make his ideas real, and sometimes, struggling to make ends meet. His fervent personality frothed with big, civic-minded ideas on how to "make the world a better place," Kalech said. In the professional relationship they had, Boelter was clearly "idealistic."

"I think he sincerely believed in the projects that we worked on, that he was acting for the greater good," Kalech told ABC News. "I certainly never got the impression he saw himself as a savior. He just thought of himself as a smart guy who figured out the solution to problems, and it's not so difficult – so let's just do it. Like a call to action kind of person." Most of those grand-scale projects never came to fruition, and the last time Kalech said he had contact with Boelter was May 2022. But in planning documents and PowerPoint presentations shared with ABC News, which Kalech said Boelter wrote for the web design, Boelter detailed lengthy proposals that expressed frustration with what he saw as unjust suffering that needed to be stopped. Some of those projects were also sweeping, to the point of quixotic -- even for the deepest-pocketed entrepreneur.

Boelter first reached out to Kalech's firm for a book he had written, "Revoformation," which Kalech took to be a mashup between "revolution" and "reformation." It's also the name of the ministry Boelter had once tried to get off the ground, according to the organization's tax forms. "It seemed to me like maybe he volunteered more than what was good for him. In other words, he gave too much away instead of worrying about earning money, because he didn't always have money," Kalech said. "It was never clear to me if the ministry really existed. Are there congregants? Is there a constituency? I don't know. Or was it like something in his head that he was trying to make? That was never clear to me."

I'd imagine I'm not the only one here for whom this description feels uncomfortably familiar. I've known a few people like this.

Kalech recalled that Boelter chose his firm for the work because they are Jerusalem-based, and he wanted to support Israel. Boelter's interest in religion's impact on society is reflected in a "Revoformation" PowerPoint that Kalech said Boelter gave him, dated September 2017. "I am very concerned that the leadership in the U.S. is slowly turning against Israel because we are losing our Judaic / Christian foundations that was [sic] once very strong," the presentation said. "I believe that if the Christians are united and the people who are leading this Revoformation are a blessing to Israel that it will be good for both Israel and the U.S."

Over the years, Boelter would reach out with what appeared to be exponentially ambitious endeavors, Kalech said: "What he wanted to take on, I think, might have been bigger." Boelter wanted to end American hunger, according to another project's PowerPoint. And while the idea would require massive changes to current laws and food regulation, it appeared Boelter dismissed that as surmountable if only elected officials could get on board. "American Hunger isn't a food availability problem," the presentation said. "American Hunger is a tool that has been used to manipulate and control a vast number of American's [sic], with the highest percentage being people of color. This tool can and should be broken now, and failure to do so will be seen as intentional criminal negligence by future generations. We should be embarrassed as a nation that we let this happen and have not correctly [sic] this injustice 100 years ago," one slide said. One slide described how his own lived experience informed his idea, referring to him in the third person: "several times in his life Vance Boelter was the first person on the scene of very bad head on car accidents," and that he was able to help "without fear of doing something wrong" because he was "protected" by Good Samaritan law – which could and should be applied to food waste, the slide said.

This part right here seems illustrative. This guy is not tethered. It does not sound like he understands mundane power, nor what is relevant to that power. He's feeding back the banalities he observes via cable news as the final output of the political process, and he thinks the eight-second soundbite in between anchor waffling is what the actual top-level inputs look like. He's unbearably, excruciatingly naïve

To keep an eye on which lawmakers supported the necessary legislation, "there needs to be a tracking mechanism," the presentation said, where citizens could "see listed every singe [sic] elected official and where they stand on the Law (Food Providers Good Samaritan Law)." "Those few that come out and try to convince people that it is better to destroy food than to give it away free to people, will be quickly seen for who they are. Food Slavers that have profited off the hunger of people for years," the 18-slide, nearly 2,000-word presentation said.

There's the lists of Bad People, and the focus on politicians. Also, complete disconnect from basic reality. The windmill he's tilting at doesn't exist. To a first approximation, hunger does not exist in America. There are food banks literally everywhere. Most grocery store and many restaurants supply them with large quantities of nutritious food.

"At least in his mind and on paper, he was solving problems," Kalech told ABC News. "He would think about things and then have a euphoric moment and write out a manifesto of, How am I going to solve this? And then bring those thoughts to paper and bring that paper to an action plan and try to implement it." The last project Kalech said Boelter wanted to engage him for was a multifaceted collection of corporations to help start-up and expanding businesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all under the umbrella "Red Lion Group." The 14-page, over 6,000-word planning document for the project outlined ideas for what Red Lion Group would offer: ranging widely from "security services" to agricultural and weapons manufacturing sectors, medical supplies, investment services, martial arts, oil and gas and waste management. Red Lion would also serve in media spaces: with "CONGOWOOD" Film Productions "to be what Hollywood is to American movies and what Bollywood is to Indian movies."

...The above doesn't sound like a Red Tribe partisan flaming out into violent extremism, and it doesn't sound like a Democratic machine assassin. It sounds like an earnest moderate normie with deteriorating mental health catching a bad case of the currently-endemic madness. The last two personal interactions I had were with Blues, both mentioned their desire for bad-people-murder unprompted. I do not doubt for a second that I could get equivalent expressions from my Red acquaintances. I'm pretty sure large portions of the population are simply marinating in this soup 24/7; fill an echo chamber with "kill the bad guys" enough, and someone's going to take you seriously.

It bears mentioning that the above is from the Press, and one should never trust them. But from the evidence available, it looks like I was wrong and this guy was just a normie psycho with nothing approaching a coherent tribal agenda.

Do you believe that Tim Waltz actually directed this man to kill state politicians to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate?

No, of course not. But you were pretty dang sure you had his motivations taped, and it seems you were wrong, so maybe a little silence from all parties to digest and consider this new information is in order:

I'm going to bet that the motivations for this assassination end up red-coded. Per CNN, the shooter is apparently a devout Christian, with him being caught on video "pointedly questioned American morals on sexual orientation". I've seen reports that he had a target list of pro-choice politicians and abortion providers. And not to put too fine a point on it, but he just shot two democrats.

You do acknowledge you were wrong about this, so I appreciate that. But I do think everyone was a bit too quick off the mark making definite pronouncements before we knew anything solidly, and I mean both left and right in this instance. We seem to have had a rash of nutjob shooters, and whatever sense their motivations make in their own heads as to how it all ties together, trying to label "definitely a right-winger because this, that, the other" or "definitely a left-winger because hither, thither and yonder" in the ten seconds after it goes public is too fast and too over-confident in "we know this must have been done by Our Enemies".

Do you mind unfiltering this guy?

Do you believe that Tim Waltz actually directed this man to kill state politicians to clear up seats for him to run for the Senate?

No, but also isn't that what a Keyser Söze or John List would want us to think.

I agree the dude just appears to be totally nuts. In a way that’s the best outcome.

I don’t really think that “food insecurity” which is how im understanding his bizarre ideas about controlling colored people with food, is a neutral or red idea. I’ve really only heard it in blue leaning areas. As is his concern about said colored people as a group separate from poverty issues. Reds don’t tend to do that, they tend to talk about poverty as a problem and solve for poverty, with a pretty strong allergy to bringing up race in most contexts. It’s almost a useful heuristic at this point. A person who brings up minorities unbidden when talking about an unrelated subject is likely a blue.

There's definitely conspiracy theorists of all stripes who believe the colored population is being controlled with food.

I mean, I was looking at his Linkedin early on after someone provided a link online, and it went from "working in food production and large-scale retail" to this Red Lion Group very fast, as in "last job working for Walmart" then "now I am CEO of my own company in the Congo". (May not have been Walmart, but that kind of thing).

So with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the guy getting delusions of grandeur and going off the deep end. But that still would give us no clue as to whether he was left, right, centre, or upside-down pineapple cake, politically.

I’m just looking at his particular interest in Africa, and food insecurity in Africa and tge Congo. None of this sounds like a guy with right-leaning tendencies. He does have a grandiose agenda and vision for how and what he’s going to do in DRC, but the choice of “American hunger to control black people in Africa” has no right-coded hooks, but does have left-coded hooks (international food security, American Empire, etc). This just doesn’t read like even a center left idea. This sounds pretty progressive in its choice of location and race-hierarchy and America-booing. I don’t think anyone remotely MAGA, NRx, or dissident right is going to glom onto “people in Congo need my help because America is using food to control black people in Africa.” They won’t because this isn’t on the list of concerns right leaning people would have. Right spaces tend toward nationalism, religion, masculinity, and similar issues. He doesn’t care about any right-coded ideology at all.

It'd be a very odd right-winger of any sort who concerns himself with the Congo. Even a genuinely Christian soul, selfless and eager to help, would probably not then pair it with anti-American conspiracy theories. More than anything, the guy codes as pure crazy, but definitely crazy from a liberal direction.

That said, he's absolutely fucking cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and no one should take any sort of vindication. I'm a right wing man and I don't think him being a Democrat or a left-leaning weirdo is a slamdunk against progressives in general. This guy is actually just mad, and he would have done some mad thing no matter what group he attached to.

Well said. Bigloom is filtered though.

I think your last point sums it up pretty well. The press is going to work over time to find SOME form of justification to deflect away from whatever his real motives are. I'm not saying he was a Dem agent, but that is something that he himself stated and it is something which should be investigated with transparency and honesty which is something I do not see forthcoming from the establishment or the media. The truth is probably more muddled but seeing that Tim Walz is implicated in some manner, I have very little faith that we'll ever know the real truth about what happened.

I'm not saying he was a Dem agent, but that is something that he himself stated and it is something which should be investigated with transparency and honesty which is something I do not see forthcoming from the establishment or the media.

I think he probably started off basic Democratic voter, then whatever happened to crack his sanity he went off into his own little land of 'this all ties together in the Grand Unified Plan'. I don't think he had any ties to Walz apart from the kind of "nominated to a public board that is one of the business community tie-in things", but that doesn't mean that in his mind (and in his mind alone) he wasn't working on behalf of Walz.

I think this may be more fall-out from the last presidential campaign. If he was already cracking, and if he was a Democratic voter from Minnesota proud that their governor was the potential next VP of the USA, and he believed all the stuff about Trump and MAGA and the GOP are fundamental threats to democracy, Project 2025, tyranny, fascist nazi etc., then the defeat would only have convinced him even more that drastic action on behalf of the nation needed to be taken, and that Walz was the man they needed to put into a position of power where he could influence events (e.g. get him elected to the national Senate). It makes it even more unintentionally embarrassing that Walz came out with "this is politically motivated assassination" instead of keeping his mouth shut and just releasing an anodyne statement about "we have to wait until further information as to this tragedy comes out". Yeah Tim, politically motivated on your behalf, even though you didn't know or intend anything of the kind. Probably he was working off the same assumption that "this is a Republican guy and this will embarrass them and Trump in particular politically, which is good for our side".

If anyone can figure out how to turn the temperature down under the stockpot, please let us all know, because this boiling over of extremism is the biggest threat of all.

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