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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25943 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?

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.

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.

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.

While this guy's milieu indicates 'crazy liberal' more than 'crazy conservative' there are absolutely right wing conspiracy theories about the western powers preventing black Africans from developing/letting them starve because they're not gay/gender equal enough. Hang out with the people who think abortion is human sacrifice- not as some sort of metaphor but actually literally- and they'll probably share some.

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.

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