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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   41896 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Well, when you thought the week was boring...

Charlie Kirk was just shot at an event, shooter in custody. There's apparently a video going around of the attack, but I haven't a desire to see it. People who have seen it are suggesting he was shot center mass in the neck, and is likely dead. That makes this the second time that a shooter targeted a conservative political figure at a political event in two years. If Trump hadn't moved his head at the last second, it would've been him, too.

I've never followed the young conservative influencers much, but Kirk always seemed like the moderate, respectable sort -- it's wild that he would be the victim of political violence and not someone like Fuentes.

I fear this is what happens when the culture war is at a fever pitch. Political violence in the US is at heights not seen since the 1970s, from riots in the 2010s and especially 2020 over police-involved shootings, to the capitol riot in 2021, to the attempted assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania, to the United Healthcare killing, to finally this murder of a political influencer. I fear for my country when I look at how divided we are, and how immanently we seem to be sliding into violence.

I guess I just find politics tiring nowadays. I vote for a Democrat and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. I vote for a Republican and they do stupid things that conspicuously harm the outgroup. Whether J.D. Vance or Gavin Newsom wins in 28, there will be no future in which Americans look each other eye to eye.

I actually believe things are much better in this country than people think: our economy is surprisingly resilient, we've never suffered under the kind of austerity that's defined post-colonial European governance, our infrastructure, while declining, actually functions in a way that most of the world isn't blessed with, our medical system is mired in governmental and insurance red tape yet the standard of care and state of medical research is world-class, our capacity to innovate technologically is still real and still compelling, and one of our most pressing political issues, illegal immigration, exists solely because people are willing to climb over rocks and drift on rafts simply to try and live here.

We have real problems. And intense escalations on the part of our political tribes are absolutely in the top five. We also have a severe problem with social atomization -- and these two things are related -- which has led to our intimate relationship and loneliness crisis, the rapid decline in social capital, and the technological solitary confinement of the smartphone screen which dehumanizes people like real solitary confinement while confining them to the most intense narrative possible. "If it bleeds, it leads" means that many will be led into bleeding.

I don't know how we rebuild the world, or come to a point where Americans of different views can view each other as well-intentioned. But Kirk is just the latest victim of a crisis that I don't know if there's any way to solve.

I'm gonna admit, I'm feeling some simmering rage.

Years, YEARS of being told that right-wing violence vastly outstripped the amount of left-wing violence. Which was even technically correct if you consider prison gang murders to be ideologically motivated. Which is to say, a perfect motte and bailey. "Right wingers are more violent [in prison], therefore we should crack down on right wingers [outside of prison] because they're more of a threat."

But in real life, especially the past few years, the majority of the stories I actually find is lefties shooting politicians, threatening politicians, engaging in riots, or some rando popping a CEO (I admit that MAY not have been ideologically motivated). Oh, yeah, that recent attack on ICE Agents that many have already probably forgotten. Sometimes the lefties self-immolate instead, which is something you almost never catch righties doing.

J6 was indeed an example of right-wing 'violence' but of course only one person died in that event. Who was in fact a rightie.

I'm old enough to remember:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting

So Trump gets shot... and has multiple other attempts on his life. Lefties more or less OPENLY suggest that it'd be morally good to kill him and his associates. Punch Nazis. Where "Nazi" is anybody who believes what the median voter did circa 2007.

And then Charlie Kirk, whose WHOLE FUCKING SHTICK is that he tries to win debates and spread ideas rather than push for fighting, gets popped by what will probably end up being another lefty type. I'm prepared to be wrong on that, but I'll take bets with any comers at this point.

And all of that might not piss me off, if it weren't for lefty media running constant cover, tacitly agreeing that the violence was justifiable and refusing to actually lower the temperature surrounding these events.

I'm tired. But not in the "won't it all stop" sense. More in the "when do we actually fight back and do something about it" sense.

For the time being, stay strapped.

EDIT: oh, I forgot, someone took a run at Nicholas Fuentes, too. I don't even like that dude but its exactly more of my point. Lefty commentators are not in the crosshairs.

As it turns out, the shooter in this case was a Trump supporter at one point (with donations to boot. Edit: Fake claim, it was actually a guy who lived on the same street and had the same name), and was posting groyper or /pol/ or /k/ memes. Preemptively assuming he was probably a lefty seems like a pretty big stretch. You should update your argument and assumptions given this new information, no?

Nice try.

Is "Hey fascist! Catch!" a /pol/ or /k/ meme?

Did he write it on his bullet casing ironically?

Can you provide me a single reason why a Trump Supporter, groyper, /pol/ or /k/ poster would want Charlie Kirk dead?

What about the statements of the family:

Utah Governor Spencer Cox said a family member interviewed by investigators stated that Mr Robinson had become "more political" in recent years.

The relative also said that during a dinner conversation before the attack, Mr Robinson had stated Kirk "was full of hate and spreading hate" and mentioned Kirk's upcoming event at Utah Valley University, according to Cox.

Oh and I haven't seen evidence that HE was a Republican at any point:

Public records reviewed by the BBC suggest Mr Robinson had in the past registered as an unaffiliated, or nonpartisan, voter in Utah. Matthew Carl Robinson, the suspect's father, and Amber Denise Robinson, the suspect's mother, are registered Republicans, according to state records.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wl2y66p9o

I'm updating against him being trans, but much, MUCH more in favor of him being a brain-poisoned Zoomer with lefty sympathies.

Do you want to register a prediction right now as to which sort of Discord communities he was active in?

I am going to say its mildly ironic that the most competent/effective assassins that the left has are heterosexual young white men. Interesting message that sends.

But, the right has a LOT more of that particular demographic than the left does.

Textual analysis on individual phrasings when it relates to online meme groups is haphazard because of the self-referential, ironic, and (sigh) even post modern nature of the discourse. People often use phrases meant to denigrate them (Think of mocking "Orange Man Bad" phrases used by Trump supporters). The Ciao Bella thing is a good example because it's literally a leftist/communist rally song but has been remixed and featured in Groyper playlists and youtube videos(Or so the reporting goes, it could be wrong like my above political donation claim).

Did he write it on his bullet casing ironically

Probably, yes. If you were arguing the opposite point you'd pick the example of "If you're reading this you're gay LMAO", does that sound like something a leftist would say? Did he write it ironically? Maybe he wrote some ironically and some not ironically.

I would guess that 98% of people who use this website are aware of all of the above annoying ironic quirks and you're probably being a little bit bad faith.

As to his political leanings, we know he dressed up as Trump (without any apparent animus, but as above irony is always possible) for Halloween. Complaints about spreading hate aren't really unique to any side with how gotcha-focused discourse is (especially online). Even in this thread yesterday you can find half a dozen examples of posters here saying this is an example of how leftists are the real violent terrorists not the right.

Pegging someone's exact political views is hard because a) people change over time b) people's politics are inconsistent c) reasoning and motivations can be opaque, but that all being said it seems very likely that he wasn't a garden variety leftist of BLM or Kamala or Joe Biden or I dont know Dennis Kucinich(obviously) or some transgender activist and so on. More details will come forth and I'm happy to be corrected where wrong, but the general tone and attitude of this thread yesterday seems to have been largely disproved.

Edit: I'll even take a more extreme claim and say that guy that got fired from MSNBC for saying that Kirk's own rhetoric about hateful actions leading to this violence ended up seeming more true than most of the upvoted opinions provided in this week's thread.

As it turns out, the shooter in this case was a Trump supporter at one point (with donations to boot)

I thought that was deboonked (they got the wrong guy, and doxxed someone completely different in the process)?

More in the "when do we actually fight back and do something about it" sense.

Never. Because we have no way to fight back. We're hopelessly outmatched and outgunned. We'd be crushed even harder and even faster if we tried.

Lefties more or less OPENLY suggest that it'd be morally good to kill him and his associates.

I'm not much of a lefty, and if I had a button that would make Trump die of a heart attack I would press it on utilitarian grounds. A few QALYs from an old man who's already lived a life of ease and luxury, compared to the political chaos he causes? Easy trade.

Then again, maybe I am a lefty. The Motte is more heretic blue tribe than it is red tribe.

That aside, I think people catastrophize about what would happen if a President were assassinated. The President is like a Jedi - if you strike him down, he will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. If President Trump is shot, what do you get? Acting President Vance with emergency powers. If you kill Trump and Vance, what do you get? Acting President Mike Johnson leading a unified (and terrified) House and Senate, declaring martial law and putting tanks in the streets of Washington DC with the overwhelming support of the public.

The US Federal Government is one of the only institutions in history that becomes more powerful when its leader is killed.

I suppose by that line of thinking, assassinating Kennedy got us deeper into Vietnam, memory holed the Bay of Pigs, and to the moon in 1969. At least the last one feels like a win?

I'm gonna admit, I'm feeling some simmering rage.

I have to admit, I feel simmering rage whenever I see right-wingers completely memoryhole every instance of right-wing violence to build a one-sided persecution narrative meant to justify more right-wing violence. Oh, you're old enough to remember Scalise getting shot? Are you old enough to remember two fucking months ago? Or three years ago? Or or or.

Oh, wait, I forgot. When a right-winger does it, it was actually a mental health issue. At this point, I'm genuinely convinced there's a subset of American right-wingers that is dug so far into their siege mentality that they're incapable of grasping this. They crouch in the corner, fantasizing about violence until one of them does something, at which point they act shocked for ten seconds before flushing the whole thing down a mental toilet. The ability to flip between gleeful viciousness and 'have you no decency' pearl-clutching is incredible. Not a shred of self-awareness, just an impenetrable conviction that they are innocent victims.

  • -21

One difference is that it seems to be acceptable among much broader swathes of the left to celebrate violence against the outgroup it is on the right. Look at how many people expressed admiration for Luigi Mangione, for example. It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that the left has far more of a problem with tacitly supporting violence than the right.

Your mileage may definitely vary. I've grown up listening to right-wingers not-as-coyly-as-they-think cheer for all manner of violence against their enemies. There's a lot of stuff I ignored when I was inside the tent that I reflect back on and realize how casual support for violence was. It certainly wasn't everybody, but it was quite common and encountered very little pushback.

And these were normies conservatives and that was before Trump came in the scene and started actively riling them up.

Certainly you can find people like that on the left. IME the biggest difference is that when there's left-wing political violence, normie liberals will usually say "that's terrible" and when there's right-wing political violence, normie conservatives will split into thirds along the lines of "it's good, actually", blaming the left, and just pretending it didn't happen.

I don't know what the situation was like for you growing up, but my sense is that there's currently a clear asymmetry. I believe you if you say that individual right-wingers said those sorts of things around you, but the difference as far as I see is that you have close to entire mainstream platforms like reddit and branches of academia that openly celebrate things like this in a way there's no real right-wing equivalent for.

IME the biggest difference is that when there's left-wing political violence, normie liberals will usually say "that's terrible"

It's meaningless for 80% of liberals to say "that's terrible" when they refuse to disassociate from the 20% who say "that's awesome" and when that latter group has outsize influence in left-wing politics.

and when there's right-wing political violence, normie conservatives will split into thirds along the lines of "it's good, actually", blaming the left, and just pretending it didn't happen.

Do you have evidence of this? I don't live in the US so my exposure to American media is limited, but I can't think of any non-fringe right-wing group that celebrates political violence on the right. You'd have to go to really marginal groups with tiny numbers like white supremacist or incel forums. There are multiple often-violent groups often have the tacit if not explicit support of much of the American left: Antifa, the Punch A Terf crowd, the pro-Hamas people, the Defund the police contingent, BLM etc.

I can't think of any non-fringe right-wing group that celebrates political violence on the right.

You would be correct.

Do you have evidence of this?

Jan 6 will continue to be the premier example. The conservative reaction basically split three ways between "it was a false flag", J6ers are heroes, and it was actually no big deal. Eventually this consolidated on a hybrid of the latter two positions (e.g. the lionization of Ashli Babbitt). You don't have to go dumpster diving for groypers to find this. It will come up relatively frequently on gun/hunting forums or other conservative-dominated space where they feel they are 'in private'. I mean, shit, it comes up here from time to time.

However, to your opening paragraph: half my point in this thread has been that American right-wingers don't process their support for political violence as support for political violence. When Tom Cotton calls for people to beat up pro-Palestinian protestors, or they laugh about a guy nearly beating Paul Pelosi to death, or they cheer for police brutality, they don't think of that as supporting political violence. When someone plows a truck into a crowd of protestors, they shrug and say "shouldn't have been standing there" (while laughing behind their hands). When it becomes unignorable (as in the Minnesota case), they shift the blame to mental health or somehow try to make it the fault of left-wingers.

You mention not disassociating from the 20%, but for American* right-wingers the 20% includes much of their senior leadership.

(I also want to note that this is not a new phenomenon; conservatives have been joking about murdering Democrats for decades)

*I have to specify American right-wingers because I don't think this is some timeless quality of conservatism; Americans in general seem a lot more comfortable with violence than their European counterparts

Jan 6 will continue to be the premier example.

Jan 6th is fair to bring up, although I'm not sure it was any more violent in nature than many of the BLM riots or things like setting up CHAZ.

It will come up relatively frequently on gun/hunting forums or other conservative-dominated space where they feel they are 'in private'. I mean, shit, it comes up here from time to time.

Such forums have far smaller cultural reach than places like Reddit or even Bluesky. They also have essentially no representation among university departments and college campuses, which play a critical role in shaping the attitudes of young, politically-involved people. The point is that if you're a mentally-unstable, violently inclined individual, you know you're going to get far more widespread adulation and praise for killing a right-wing figure than a left-wing one.

When Tom Cotton calls for people to beat up pro-Palestinian protestors,

I googled "Tom Cotton Palestine protests" and what I found was him saying this:

"I’m saying that if people are trying to get to work or pick up their kids from school or take a sick kid to the doctor and you have pro-Hamas vigilantes blocking the streets, they should get out and move those people off the streets," Cotton said. “The police will get there eventually. But a lot of damage will be done in the meantime."

That seems pretty distant for saying they should be beaten up for the positions they hold.

or they laugh about a guy nearly beating Paul Pelosi to death, or they cheer for police brutality,

Do you have examples of prominent right-wingers doing either of this (for cases of unambiguous police brutality)?

When someone plows a truck into a crowd of protestors, they shrug and say "shouldn't have been standing there" (while laughing behind their hands).

Evidence? I'm not trying to be obtuse btw. I don't live in America and I don't particularly follow American news (90% of what I know about it I pick up from this website).

You mention not disassociating from the 20%, but for American* right-wingers the 20% includes much of their senior leadership.

I have the opposite impression. That 20% on the left includes celebrities, writers, academics, politicians and platforms like reddit. I don't see an equivalent on the right.

Jan 6 will continue to be a major point of contention not for the level of violence in itself, but what that violence (along with other aspects) represents: an attempt forcibly subvert election outcomes. This is sui generis in the history of American political violence.

That seems pretty distant for saying they should be beaten up for the positions they hold.

Firstly, physically manhandling someone against their will is assault. But, to rewind, the reason he is 'clarifying' is that he previously said this:

"I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way. It's time to put an end to this nonsense."

If you consistently characterize peaceful protestors as criminals, suggest the police should be deployed against them, suggest people should take matters into their own hands, etc... then I'm not inclined to be charitable to coy walkbacks.

Do you have examples of prominent right-wingers doing either of this (for cases of unambiguous police brutality)?

Off the top of my head: Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump Jr. both openly mocked the Pelosi attack. Mike Lee mocked the murder Melissa Hortman and suggested the far-left was to blame. I don't know what 'unambiguous' police brutality means, given how lenient the US is to police violence, efforts of state governments to curtail protest rights, and the tendency of right-wingers to equate any form of protest stronger than standing quietly for an hour or two with rioting, but one of the more notorious incidents to come out of the summer 2020 protests was the dispersal of protests in Lafayette Square in DC at the direction of Donald Trump and with the approval of prominent Republicans. We have Ben Shapiro has advocated that Derek Chauvin be pardoned, as another, later example.

On a policy level, you have things like the Trump administration pulling back on civil rights investigations related to police brutality and refusing to enforce oversight, which I would argue constitutes tacit approval for police brutality (as long as the victims are not the wrong sort of people).

For more grass roots expression, I guess you're just going to have to take my word for it that a lot of conservative voters subscribe to the Tango & Cash theory of criminal justice (and can get pretty damn racist about it to boot). Or not.

Alternatively, if you'll forgive the shitty image macro, I think this succinctly captures why left-wingers are unimpressed by right-wing scolding.

(90% of what I know about it I pick up from this website).

No offense, but the TheMotte is literally a forum for right-wing culture warriors and a handful of contrarian gadflies who like arguing with them. Even for the people who aren't far right, they're almost always people with progressive-critical views. It is in no way representative of American political culture, or even of normie conservative American political culture. It gives you a very one-sided view of the state of affairs, e.g. persistently highlighting RW grievances with academia while ignoring or downplaying influential right-wing media figures and general bad behavior. (If one were to base their impression of US politics purely on Motteposting, one might conclude that the right has virtually no media presence, rather than the reality that there's a massive right-wing media ecosystem).

The left has its big somewhat-public bubbles in which anything can be said so long as it's directionally aligned with the ideology. Reddit, discord, academia, you know the rough map. But that doesn't mean that the right doesn't do the same - it just happens behind closed doors, so to speak, since right-wing spaces are by necessity less public.

When a right-winger does it, they get denounced by everyone. When the left does, not so much.

Do you think you could find even 1/100th the support for your two examples (or any other ones you care to use) compared to crowdfunding for the ICE attackers or a community dedicated to "Free Luigi [Mangione]"? The would-be Trump assassin got lauded for his attempt, though his death put a damper on any attempt to rally support.

To be clear: the threshold I'm looking for is $360 in public fundraising from at least five people, or a 400 member community dedicated to them.

It's the difference between one crazy person (who happened to be right-wing), and a notable fraction of the left wing as a whole (who are rallying around one crazy person who happened to be left-wing).

The President of the United States was involved in fundraising for the people who engaged in political violence on January 6th.

  • -10

Supporting rioters is par for the course for either side, he seems to have been talking about murders.

Well, no, supporting rioters had not been par for the course for the right for many years before January 6. Because the right pretty much didn't riot. And if the Democrats hadn't decided to try to bury the January 6 rioters under the jail, and quite a few non-rioters with them, and use the whole thing to try to disqualify the Republican candidate, I doubt the larger right would have supported them.

When a right-winger does it, they get denounced by everyone.

When a right-winger does it, everyone on the right acts all mystified as to how their constant violent fantasies could have led to violent action. They shift the blame to mental health while half of them snigger behind their hands.

This quote really sums up my experience with the asymmetry here:

My feed is filled with statements from elected democrats condemning the shooting which is obviously good but I have a sneaking suspicion it will all be forgotten when someone named like MyLittleCommunistPony got 100k Likes on TikTok for saying “Good” or whatever

Except that when the tables are turned, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony it's senior Republican leadership. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples would be Trump pardoning J6 insurrectionists. But also Mike Lee claiming the Minnesota assassin was a radical left-winger. Or, uh, Charlie Kirk.

(And all this is leaving aside the reality that right-wingers outsource most of their political violence to law enforcement and cheer from the sidelines)

  • -20

Charlie Kirk was asking for someone to bail out the Pelosi attacker specifically to ask the guy questions about his motives. Not because he supported the attack, but because he wanted to learn more about it. And then compared how easy most violent criminals are let out on bail compared to this attacker.

That is 100% different from thousands of people gleefully saying, "Finally! I hope they do Matt Walsh next." Sure, it's not as bad as Obama saying, "Finally! I hope they do Matt Walsh next!" But it's still pretty bad! If Obama made a similar statement to what Kirk said about the Pelosi attacker, something like, "I hope someone on the left gets the opportunity to talk to the assassin and find out his motives before the corrupt Trump DOJ gets their hands on him!" I don't think you'd see a problem with that statement.

If Barack Hussein Obama, icon of milquetoast respectability, says that, I'd probably drive to three different gun stores to buy ammo.

Fine, not Obama, but some Left wing commentator? That would be a better comparison to Kirk anyways.

I think the predominant reaction would be to write that person off as a crank, but I'm not an MSNBC viewer so I may be wrong about that reaction.

Except that when the tables are turned, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony it's senior Republican leadership. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples would be Trump pardoning J6 insurrectionists. But also Mike Lee claiming the Minnesota assassin was a radical left-winger. Or, uh, Charlie Kirk.

Your examples are about a mostly peaceful group that didn't kill anyone, an inaccurate denunciation, and a (surprisingly apt) lone voice (why hadn't anyone bailed him out)? I'm still not seeing a pattern of the right supporting assassination or any other political violence.

I thought the Minnesota guys' politics/general motivations turned out to be pretty weird and unclear?

Oh, wait, I forgot. When a right-winger does it, it was actually a mental health issue.

  • -36

The sheer obscurity of the Minnesotans plus the weirdness of the shooter's autobiography/having met them occasionally on all accounts create a different picture than trying to blast a Trump or w/e.

When a right-winger does it, it was actually a mental health issue.

I'm talking about the first clause, not the second -- mental health issues are kind of par for the course with multiple murderers, no?

I'm saying that it's not clear at all where this guy sits on the political spectrum and he has mental health issues. Even if he's a left winger!

You misunderstand me. RWers never, ever own their violent extremists, no matter how blatant it is (I mean, seriously, the guy was going down a hit list of democratic legislators). The blame is always shifted onto mental health. This despite how much time the far right spend fantasizing about violence (shit, the most common far-right response I've seen to Kirk's murder is "this is our Reichstag fire, time to break out the jackboots")

I found this remark from Ben Dreyfuss illustrative:

My feed is filled with statements from elected democrats condemning the shooting which is obviously good but I have a sneaking suspicion it will all be forgotten when someone named like MyLittleCommunistPony got 100k Likes on TikTok for saying “Good” or whatever

Except when it's a right-wing extremist, instead of MyLittleCommunistPony saying 'good', it's, like, Mike Lee, and right-wing commentators invent cope about how the guy was really mentally ill and we can't really know what was in his heart.

  • -19

no matter how blatant it is (I mean, seriously, the guy was going down a hit list of democratic legislators).

The guy also had a bunch of "no kings" anti-trump fliers -- as mentioned, rounding him off to "right wing extremist" doesn't even match up with the (normally left-wing slanted) article you linked in wikipedia. Which is kind of rough on your whole premise, mental health issues aside.

(shit, the most common far-right response I've seen to Kirk's murder is "this is our Reichstag fire, time to break out the jackboots")

You may have bubble issues -- the most common response I've seen anywhere is more like "I'm praying for his family".

The guy also had a bunch of "no kings" anti-trump fliers

Which do you think is more likely: that this guy who was specifically targeting Democrats was also carrying fliers for a normie resist-lib protest because after he finished up murdering his way through the MN state legislature he was going to pass out some literature? Or that this guy with a history of right-wing views (pro-life, anti-trans, evangelical, etc...) was trying to throw people off the scent?

Boelter was not just an unhinged guy (he is also an unhinged guy, but that's just table stakes) who intended to pull the trigger and see what happened. Even if he didn't expect to get away with it, he clearly planned to.

  • -14
More comments

condemning the shooting

For the duration of the tweet. Tomorrow they'll be back to explaining how Charlie Kirk rhetoric justifies violence.

I was actually thinking earlier how it's the left-wing version of the "thoughts and prayers" ritual.

My dude, the guy said Tim Walz told him to do it. I was obsessed with that case, but the guy does seem to actually just be untethered to objective reality, like Jared Loughtner. FWIW, I think Mangione is in this category as well.

Relatedly, can you show a single right-winger who approved of Gendron? I feel confident predicting that an overwhelming supermajority of rightwingers support giving him the chair.

That's exactly what the wikipedia article says. But Boelter tracks to right wing and has said he was right wing 20 years ago.

It just reads, to me, like Skibboleth giving up and getting mired in the same guesswork where everything is made up and the points don't matter that he's decrying which undermines the point just a bit.

but he tracks to right wing and is more likely right wing than left.

How, specifically?

I followed this at the time, and my prediction was that it didn't look like a crazy person (obvious premeditation, use of tactics, use of a mask, etc), and seemed more likely to be a right-winger than a left-winger, given the available evidence. But then more evidence came out, and what it showed was that this guy had been fairly apolitical but mental-health-wise marginal, and that recently he had gone cuckoo-bananas based on his public pronouncements, in a way that did not map to the red-blue split.

I was, from the start, prepared to believe that he was motivated by right-wing ideology, and I maintain that the prior for any murder of politicians should be that the act is political. But in this case, he genuinely seemed to believe that (IIRC) he'd figured out how to end world hunger by outlawing food waste at the federal level, and thought the politicians who weren't listening to him were on the side of Big Hunger. That is not right-wing ideology. That is actual craziness.

How, specifically?

from the wiki:

Boelter claimed to have military training and a career in private security

His anti-abortion views are considered a possible motive.

Boelter was registered to vote in Oklahoma as a Republican for the 2004 United States presidential election

Boelter's wife told investigators their family "prepared for major or catastrophic incidents"

He's also a white guy that was wearing a cowboy hat in CCTV footage.

These all track right wing to me. There's a ton of confounders to this, yeah, which is why even his affiliation was muddy. But in situations like these affiliation is being used as an assumed motivation most of the time. I don't think that's true but I was just trying to meet Skibboleth halfway to try to maintain decorum since the post was mostly just pure seething.

All of those are indeed weak evidence that he was Red-aligned, which was why at the time I bet he was actually Red-aligned. But then I actually read what he'd been writing and posting shortly before the attack, and what some of his colleagues reported of his actions, and that gave much, much stronger evidence that he was in fact just insane.

They caught him alive, IIRC, they have all his devices and all his possessions. If someone can point to any actual evidence that his attacks were motivated by anything resembling red-tribe political ideology, I will be happy to count him as a Red-aligned ideological killer.

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....
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.

You tell me how this sounds like a Red Tribe grievance.

@Skibboleth is flaming out because he is a die-hard partisan whose goal is to pretend to be reasonable, and his side is having a very bad week. We actually discussed the Waltz shooting at some length at the time, including considerable speculation about motives. The shooting happened in the middle of the night and IIRC by the next afternoon they caught the guy and had established that he was legitimately crazy, so the conversation died out. The arguments he is presenting above are specious, but he puffs up big, neglects the detail and shouts in outrage, so mostly people don't notice.

What we are seeing now is legitimately way, way worse than the Minnesota shootings. We have video of people in the crowd jumping and screaming for joy within seconds of the bullet's impact. the entire left-wing internet is either openly celebrating his murder or feigning smug disinterest.

Didn't you just say that your side will not accept a crazy guy with a gun explanation?

No one in Red Tribe is going to accept that a famous Conservative activist being sniped on a college campus can be summarized as "crazy guy with a gun".

Why are your enemies required to be so much more rational and forgiving than you are?

the entire left-wing internet is either openly celebrating his murder or feigning smug disinterest.

This is A) not true, and B) "murder and suspected jaywalking".

More comments

I'm not really going to debate the matter by trading anectdotes of individual acts.

The point is that ACCORDING TO THE LEFT its the righties doing most of the violence.

Here.

Here. (who invented the term "stochastic terrorism," anyway?)

Here.

Here. Mr. Donie O'Sullivan, directly says:

"And while America's roots are soaked in bloodshed, violence in the country today is mostly from right-wing extremism. From Oklahoma City to Charlottesville to January 6th. There is simply no equivalent on the left..."

Yes, the consistent message the left/liberals likes to assert is "Those loony right wingers are a threat to us all, there is no real danger from the left!" That's the narrative 'enforced' by the entire mainstream media.

And that is just an abject lie. Those same sources of course downplayed an entire summer of violent and deadly riots in 2020. That's when the 'switch' flipped for me. The level of dishonesty about what I could see with my eyes of course leads me to assume they're lying about stuff that I can't see, too.

If you intend to keep repeating the lie, all you're doing is giving me cause to ignore you. I'm not pretending that e.g. Timothy McVeigh weren't ideologically motivated terrorists.

And certainly not using 'mental health' as an excuse.

But I'm not going to give any more benefit of the doubt to those desperate to convince me that the right, in the U.S., is the greater danger to regular people.

I'm not pretending that e.g. Timothy McVeigh weren't ideologically motivated terrorists.

IMO McVeigh is a terrorist, but it's complicated because I'm not sure what the correct response should be to the government murdering 86 people, including 54 women and children, without much remorse. Koresh wasn't a good guy, but the lack of a government investigation to doing so seems at least parallel to the perceived lack of concern for the Floyd incident. If I squint enough, the responses of "choosing violence against the system" at least rhyme a bit.

Not that I would endorse violence in either of these cases, but the abstract "how to hold one's government accountable?" question in answer to an atrocity maybe does rightfully call for violence at some point: "When in the course of human events..."

because I'm not sure what the correct response should be to the government murdering 86 people, including 54 women and children, without much remorse.

Ideally, you strike out directly at the responsible parties, if you're enacting violence.

My main critique (by no means ONLY) of these sorts of smallish scale rebellion is they're simply not targeted at the people who were actually responsible for the acts you're trying to punish. Sometimes you can't actually hit them, which is often true in asymetric wars. But I genuinely do not think it an excuse for going after unrelated members of their organization, or civilians who are at best tangentially connected.

That's gangland tactics, of course.

That's also why, JUST AS AN EXAMPLE, Israel's repeated successful destruction of the entire leadership structure of their biggest enemies is impressive to me. If every war could be fought such that really only the heads of the respective states/organizations were killed it'd be a vast improvement across the board. Its about the only 'moral' way to prosecute such a conflict.

Ideally, you strike out directly at the responsible parties, if you're enacting violence.

Fun fact: after reading Unintended Consequences McVeigh actually said that he might have gone with sniper attacks rather than the bombing, had he read the book first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_Consequences_(novel)#Timothy_McVeigh_controversy

I would like to subscribe to receive more "McVeigh Facts".

If every war could be fought such that really only the heads of the respective states/organizations were killed it'd be a vast improvement across the board.

Have you seen any pictures out of Gaza recently, or seen any of the stories about what's happening? I don't think you're making the point you think you're making if you've actually seen what the strip looks like now.

That doesn't contradict my point.

Indeed, I would make the same grievance about the Ukraine situation.

My sympathy for Hamas in particular is in short supply since they targeted bystanders/civilians to kick off festivities.

There's ample room for EVERYONE involved to be horrible.

I noticed something rather spooky a while back, reading up on McVeigh's case, which is that the total death count from the OKC bombing, 168, was exactly double the combined death count from Waco (82) and Ruby Ridge (2), excluding the federal agents who themselves died in those incidents.

Outside of the general ethical problem with 'government agents did bad things, these guys are also government agents' -- it's hard to overstate how indiscriminate -- McVeigh specifically evaluated the daycare situation in the building he targeted. That's a good part of the point of the original charcoal briquettes rant.

And all of that might not piss me off, if it weren't for lefty media running constant cover, tacitly agreeing that the violence was justifiable and refusing to actually lower the temperature for these events.

Because people are going to ask for examples, they aren't hard to find.

https://x.com/Banned_Bill/status/1965860260368822399

MSNBC

“[He is] constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech, aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which often then to hateful actions.”

If you've seen the guy they arrested, he looks like he has terminal MSNBC brain. Old white boomer who's brain has probably been soaked in MSM propaganda about Kirk for years.

If you've seen the guy they arrested, he looks like he has terminal MSNBC brain. Old white boomer who's brain has probably been soaked in MSM propaganda about Kirk for years.

Yes, that's accurate. But latest indication is he wasn't the shooter and the shooter is still at large.

I'm not wishing one way or the other, but if the shooter turns out to be an illegal immigrant that'll just be the crap cherry on this shit sandwich.

I'd be interested in a pool, if it weren't so ghoulish, and if I thought at this point that the shooter will ever be conclusively identified. But if they still don't know who it was, idk how they ever will. Might be some really impressive surveillance/detective work here. We'll see.

My money would be on trans-woman, since in my experience they're the majority of extreme leftists who also happen to be competent with long guns.

I emphasize that we do not know yet.

Did the shooter paraglide onto the roof, wipe the gun of all prints, abandon the rifle, rappel down, and walk away with hands in pockets, or something? Otherwise it's very hard to imagine the killer getting away unidentified.

But if they still don't know who it was, idk how they ever will

They found Mangione. It's not impossible.

Since Trump is personally involved and also mad, he’s going to pressure the FBI to step in more, and they will do the thing where they comb through tons of video footage and such. I give it maybe 85% odds they catch him, but that includes taking a few weeks to do so.

But if they still don't know who it was, idk how they ever will.

On a college campus?

Surveillance cameras and eyewitnesses abound.

I can't think of the last time a shooter in the U.S. actually got away with this sort of act.

And uh, the victim in this case was a personal friend of the guy who controls the entire Federal Law Enforcement apparatus.

Trump could walk into NSA headquarters and probably have the Killer's name, face, and full DNA sequence in five minutes.

I can't think of the last time a shooter in the U.S. actually got away with this sort of act.

I don't think they have ever found who placed the pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters on January 6 5th (the night before).

I don't think they have ever found who placed the pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters on January 6 5th (the night before).

That was a false flag. The previous night a cop looking MF places the backpacks, the next day another also cop looking doesn't find them randomly or search for them or whatever, instead they beeline straight for where the backpacks are, pick them up and go talk to a police cruiser.

Gee, what tight little coincidence and nice justification to RICO the lot of the jan 6 protestors.

They also fought tooth and nail not to have the surveillance footage of what happened released.

Well, when you are investigating yourself, it’s easy not to find the culprit

This wasn’t a particularly difficult shot- this could easily be an actual Trotskyite or one of the tens of remaining red tribe leftists, or some kind of apolitical loon. There’s a lot of people who can make that shot.

Oh, yeah, that recent attack on ICE Agents that many have already probably forgotten.

I was talking to my father earlier today (right leaning big business Republican) and he said "you know if this rhetoric keeps up someone is going to take a shot at ICE."

For. Fuck. Sake.

I think there has been at least three?

Something has to be done about the complete failure of the media to keep people informed.

It was a whole fucking organized ambush!

Now, they were incompetent at it, but they were acting precisely like an insurgent military force.

And THAT got less mention in the media than when Trump dropped some ordinance on drug runners in International Waters.

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