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Notes -
Manifesto/suicide note being reported.
I don't think I have much to write about this without breaking the rules. At least there is the comedy factor. Sonny here thought he was all geared up and prepared. Ready for his his big blaze of glory before sprinting a few feet and falling flat on his face. Not only were the Secret Service competent enough to stop him from attempting murder*, but they were competent enough to do so while preventing his suicide. The objections this guy chooses to address also indicate to me he was utterly mind killed by narrative. Who would object to him as an assassin a "half-black, half-white" assassin were he to succeed? Bluesky users? Yeah right.
With his life history this dude does not appear to have a great reason to throw himself away for the Cause-- as a sexless loser or a trans depressive might. This should be a normal guy. Stay out of the muck, protect your minds, people.
Some takes
The hypocrisy!
That's odd. Half-decent Caltech grads can walk into elite master's programmes with scholarships. I'd argue it is more prestigious than MIT for STEM. Going to a CSU for master's is a red flag.
Culture war angle -
Mixed identities, irreconcilable differences, and violence as a cry for acceptance.
At the risk of contriving a point, the unsuccessful mixing of identities is a common source of identity crises. And, radicalization is tied to identity crises. Here, I mean 'identity' in a wide sense : 2nd gen middle-eastern immigrants (mixed-nationals), bi-racial kids (mixed-race), trans people (mixed sex). If you squint, then the zeal of a convert can be reframed as radical behavior among the trans-religious.
This tension is reconcilable if the identities are compatible (eg: mixed nationals of allied nations) or orthogonal (say US-Ghana, latino-filipino). Obama's Kenyan-Hawaiian-White identities seem compatible, and he turned out alright. From Cole Allen's characterization of his identity, it sounds like he hadn't reconciled his African-American & American-White sides. I'd love to understand the specific mechanisms by which conflicting mixed identities reach violent or peaceful resolution. I'm sure it is different for each group.
In a less violent context and closer to home, I am endlessly fascinated by the dynamics of Indian-American mixed nationals. [Very much anecdotal]FOB (1st gen) immigrants like me are comfortable in adopting an American professional & civic identity, while holding onto their Indian cultural & spiritual identity. I've observed that East-Coast 2nd generations have a well integrated '2nd gen American-Indian' identity. Nimesh Patel and Akaash Singh are the classic archetypes. They hold onto an Indian religious identity, but have a distinctly east coast cultural identity. It's stable. West-Coast 2nd generations are the more interesting group. I've observed a visible discomfort that emanates from many west-coast 2nd gen Indians. Like they don't belong. Kamala is the most visible example of this archetype.[/Very much anecdotal]
I can't read their minds, so I'm projecting by relying on the closest analogue from my own experiences. As a kid, I had long periods where I was left out and didn't know my place. I hadn't figured out who I was supposed to be. It was a bad feeling. A physically perceptible discomfort coursed through me like a miasma. It festered for years before it got better (I use big words, because it was a big feeling). I'd fantasize about doing something heroic that'd get me accepted. Other times, I'd fantasize about angrily lashing out. I suspect those are common fantasies among people who don't have settled identities. Thankfully for me, I found myself and put that period behind me. Sometimes, I wonder how I would have fared in an era of Bluesky and social media.
The topic is close to my heart for more reasons than idle fascination. If things pan out, my child will be mixed-national , mixed-religious and mixed-race. I'm optimistic that the parents' identities are more compatible than not. But I will have to actively plan for mitigations instead of hoping for a default harmonious resolution.
Have users on this forum struggled with mixed identities? How did you resolve the frictions? Do you have a stable identity that you're now at peace with?
Certainly not as drastic as half black half white or half Indian half American, but my dad was Presbyterian (of Scottish decent), my mom was Catholic (of Irish and French descent). They both became Mormon before my oldest brother was born, so they found a new (shared) identity to raise us up as. That would be my advice - find a new common identity you and your wife can share, and raise your kid to identify as that. If you ever immigrate to the US (or Europe). I would strongly recommend adopting being American or being European as an identity. Especially in America, there is nothing that Americans (especially more right wing Americans) love more than an immigrant who goes whole hog into the American identity.
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One of the phenomena I've noticed is that marginal members of groups often position themselves as radical partisans of that group. Colin Kaepernick is a half-black kid raised by a white couple. So of course he has a giant afro and a black-supremacist girlfriend.
Fuentes is a gay little mexican, so of course he's a "white nationalist" or whatever.
Those stuck inbetween groups may feel the need to loudly signal their loyalty through signals that may or may not be seen as authentic by more central members of the group.
This is not what "the Worf effect" means. But maybe it should.
And here I thought I was the only one who noticed that in Star Trek.
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It's so revealing that he chose to include this objection. There are layers of assumptions one must ascribe to before this even makes sense, and yet he doesn't feel the need to explain anything.
I don't think he's going to get the same female attention as Mangioni.
Historically half-black/half-white isn’t even rare in America. You can look at the NBA and realize there are a lot of them. But most firmly plant themselves in the African community. And the mixing likely occurred much early with the modern parents generally being in the black community but both parents are halfies. His difference is one parent was black and one parent fully white. Plus being smart enough for DEI at Caltech would be too smart to fit into US black community.
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Dear lord.
I just really don't want to share a country with these people.
Like, he's getting the barest of points for intentionally targeting the officials he actually has a beef with, and not people tangentially connected with their policies.
But as the central justification for the action:
Really. Gonna go with the most spurious of the allegations rather than something particularly concrete about his policies or the negative impact you think they've had on actual individuals. Didn't even tack "Nazi" on the end there.
I genuinely consider armed rebellion a feature of our political system, so hey, a guy wants to grab a gun and make a run at a politician, its not my preference and I'd advise against it, but I won't say its morally wrong. But I can't support it when someone goes off on such an adventure with such a limited casus belli and even more limited idea of how offing his target(s) would improve the situation as stated.
I dunno man. I can imagine a list of specific grievances you could attach to Trump and this administration that would create a tangible justification for offing them. I would probably disagree with most of them, but I could get why someone whose family got deported or who thought they were protecting trans people's lives or claimed we were days away from a fascist takeover might feel compelled to act.
But "he's a pedophile rapist traitor" is a bit thin on the face of it. "He raped my sister" or "he's about to sell nukes to Russia" would have more oomph.
Speaking as a member of the extreme right fringe, Trump going out by assassination sometime late in his second term would be near best case scenario for the MAGA/nationalist movement. Now is a little early, but not unreasonably so. It anoints Vance as the successor and bolsters the chance at grabbing more power and will to force through more effective change.
Oh no Mr. Leftist, please don't assassinate my President early in the primary season leading up to 2028. I would be so sad.
Its mildly amusing how the reddit left doesn't want to claim this particular guy, but they do want to praise the idea of killing Trump, so they can't reject him either.
So they keep getting incompetent, uncharismatic assassins making poorly-timed (politically speaking) doomed attempts and getting embarrassingly thwarted.
Which ends up running against their interests, since we see the various MAGA factions set aside their differences and gift Trump substantial political capital that he didn't even have to work for.
And I'm not making a galaxy-brained argument that its good for Trump that people keep trying to kill him. I am saying that he is pretty good at spinning such failed attempts into favorable results. Its pretty freakin' fair to say the Butler attempt, and his immediate reaction, contributed to his later win.
But they can't bring themselves to say "STOP trying to kill the guy, you're not going to succeed, its bad optics, and he'll use it to advance his own goals." Because they presumably do wish one of them gets lucky.
And yeah, imagine they 'get lucky' and take out Trump at the perfect time to ensure the GOP sweeps 2028 and Vance has a mandate to root out the domestic terrorists who offed the beloved orange man.
I remember back during the war on terror, one right wing blog or another, maybe Little Green Footballs (whatever happened to that guy?) or Jihad Watch. There was some interview with a veteran who had served in the middle east, talking about how these people simply cannot be allies. Their brains are completely broken, and they simply lack the intelligence to realize how broken they are. As an example, he cited a common conversation you may have with an Arab would contain both praise for the 9/11 attacks as a great victory for Islam over the evil United States, and also insistence that it was all a Jewish plot to provoke the United States into attacking the Middle East.
Turns out there is nothing uniquely Arab, or requiring exceptionally low intelligence, to support double think this overt and retarded. Apparently millions of Democrats, highly educated and otherwise well adjusted, are perfectly capable of simultaneously believing that Donald Trump needs to be assassinated and that it's a shame all these courageous shooters keep missing, and also that they are all hoaxes and staged by the evil Orange Man to raise his political capital and make them look bad.
But, while I can no longer endorse the bent of that random blog I read in the 90's that this behavior is uniquely Arab, I can endorse his conclusion. You cannot engage with those people. They belong in asylums, not voting, running for office, or dictating policies. Unfortunately the inmates run the asylums now.
Knowing where we are is the first step in formulating a plan to protect yourself and your families from them.
This is adaptive and useful politically.
'All our wins and successes are due to the hard work and excellence of us and our allies. Failures and defeats and costs of the struggle? Those are due to the schemes and plots of the enemy.'
What good is sober introspection and self doubt, how does that rally people to a cause and an identity? Willpower and determination can change the real state of things, after all.
There needs to be a balance between appreciating things realistically and making use of narrative, can't just have one or the other.
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Its even a bit worse than that, the logic they're apparently using.
23k upvotes on the suggestion that it is highly suspicious that a shooter showed up to the one Correspondent's dinner Trump has attended in years. Of course the original twitter post has 250k likes so its even worse there
Which, you know, Occam's razor would say that a shooter who wanted Trump dead would NOT show up to a Correspondent's dinner where he wasn't attending, but surely might show up if Trump was there and this was the best opening. It is not odd that these two things were correlated.
Disclaimer: Reddit it is astroturfed to all hell, so I can't even be sure this is an organic depiction of Redditors' views, but the fact that the echo chamber will defend both the need to kill him AND write off failed attempts as false flags shows serious epistemic collapse.
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You say that. But without Trump to campaign for Vance, where are we? I take nothing for granted after Kirk's assassination and how much it felt like some core to the MAGA movement that was load bearing in a way I hadn't appreciated was ripped away. After he was buried, suddenly Republicans were looking at getting slaughtered in the midterms. Turns out political murders work.
I wouldn’t necessarily trust prediction markets at this point. I feel like most regular betters on them liking lean left and are biased against Trump. Prediction markets are not public opinion polls since you have money in them, but they sort of are. Betting on Trump outperforming has worked in the past and my gut says the true quants “give me the money” types have not entered the market yet until you can see a more systematic edge in the bet.
My instincts tell me the true macro type betters haven’t placed their wages yet. A lot of people seem to like to highlight the prediction markets as a sign Trump is losing, but I think it is wrong for now.
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While it’s true that Trump has some use on the campaign trail to draw crowds, his successor/widow + Elon will have much of the same capability. He’s kinda mixed on TV, with both gaffes and zingers. His debate with Kamala was a pathetic stalemate against a dim talent and he’s only getting older.
It’s hard for me to say that Trump the martyr wouldn’t be of more use than a live Trump in 2028. And after 2028, he just becomes a liability and chaos monkey to the nationalist movement. He’s not an important thinker or strategic asset. He’s polarizing and will be remembered more fondly by centrist voters dead than alive.
For those of us that want a capable right-wing takeover of America, Trump is going to be a major pain in the ass after 2028.
Now Charlie Kirk was a telegenic movement builder in his 30s. That was a massive loss. There is no replacement for him.
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Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen such a theory. I would have said there’s been more support for Trump et. al in the wake of the killing. People like @JeSuisCharlie joining up to talk about how he was the last beacon of hope or whatever.
How could you distinguish “political murders work” from Republicans losing on fundamentals? Say, if they did a bunch of highly-visible police actions and then started a war in the Middle East?
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Even assuming it 'worked out' electorally, there's also a pretty broad 'there's two types of people that want to get into dead men's shoes' problem. To get any statutory changes, you don't just need one person with the will to force effective change: it's 1 President + 50 Senators + 218 Representatives + 5 Justices. Even a tiny or trivial number gets cold feet because they're more interest in living to see retirement than in getting those concrete wins, you go nowhere. There's even some juice in being in the handful to disagree!
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This guy is potentially anyone. You just need to lose them into echo chambers in which they spend hours hearing that their out-group is evil and that the future of the country hangs in the balance — and time is running out.
This is also why the grievances feel so vague. Most of the accusations are vague because they’re designed to create a vibe of being the resistance. It’s meant to drive engagement, to keep the person angry and afraid so they’ll keep reading and watching and scrolling. Specifics don’t work well for this, as the spell can be broken by a falsified claim. If the claim was that Trump was going to cancel the election, an election would be a chance to break the spell, so you don’t want to do that. Claim he might or that he’s a “wannabe dictator” or something, and you get the same effect, but without the potential of being proved wrong.
The only solution, at least if you have young people in your life (or even just yourself) is to absolutely put strict limitations on the political content you consume, and avoid it on social media. For me, I restrict myself to hard news from AP or a five minute news update from NPR. I don’t listen to political commentary at all. Most, if not all of it is designed to be viral in the attention/addiction economy, and thus to inflame rather than inform. There’s nothing of value there. And the potential of a kid to become radicalized from constantly listening to or watching to political rhetoric designed to get attention and inflame people is much too great.
Think I agree with almost all of that.
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Unintentionally hilarious manifesto; massive aura loss for mini-Wemby.
He somehow made a manifesto for a Presidential assasination attempt sound soy. Kicking off with “Hello everybody!” like a Redditor announcing an AMA didn’t help.
Bro really thought he’s Him and could John Wick his way through Secret Service while trying to spare innocent lives like a benevolent superhero, only to game over on 1-1.
Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre half-black, half-white aspiring Presidential assassin.
>sexless loser
>normal guy
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive, although dependent on one’s definition of “loser” and “normal.”
Dude had a fuckin' shotgun. Successful assassins use sniper rifles. Maybe a pistol to get in close undetected. But a shotgun? What on Earth is the success scenario?
I have to wonder if it was pump or semi-auto. Can't find any sources online.
This guy seemed middle class. Guns are expensive but not in the context of "forfeiting the rest of your life." Open a credit card and get properly equipped. Even if you survive, the debt collectors aren't going to pay collect to hound you in Leavenworth.
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Offhand, successful sniper assassins are fucking rare. There's a few, but the vast majority of firearm assassinations are done a couple of ways. There's the concealed handgun at gut range, and the classic Three Guys in a Van With AKs Riddle Your Ride.
At teh ranges to be expected in even a large indoor venue, a shotgun isn't an obviously crazy choice, unless you're considering SS body armor. But, of course, the weapon choice was the least of his tactical errors.
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Most successful ones seem to be in conversational distance.
Yeah. Most people are bad at aiming and shooting firearms at distance. Double that with the actual adrenaline from doing an assassination, most people are going to miss. The Charlie Kirk thing was an aberration. Also, Charlie Kirk didn't have SS level security.
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Isn't a shotgun what was used in the "all out of bubblegum" scene from They Live?
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That sounds like he played too many FPSes and thought that "shotgun ape" was a viable tactic IRL.
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You are right. I regret my phrasing there, anyway. I don't really mean to bash on any sexless or depressed "losers" out there-- normal or not. Contingent on the fact that an individual is not interested in planning to murder the president or anyone else I wish all of them the best. I hope they all find healthy convictions if not relief. I am simply frustrated with and have grown intolerant of the radicals in our time.
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Why is Patel exempt?
Harming Patel is counterproductive if you're trying to undermine the Trump administration.
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To instill doubt that this is a weirdly dumb/fake manifesto/false flag planted by the FBI? That's what it's being used as "evidence" for in certain parts of the internet, at least.
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Reports are that Kash is on the way out. He may see him as not a live player in the administration anymore.
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Because Patel's Indian and this guy just hates white people is the only thing I can think of. Otherwise complete mystery.
That was my first thought too.
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Could be a good career move, wouldn't be the first leftist terrorist to get tenure.
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What a lame manifesto honestly.
It would have sucked if he was successful and this was what we had to put in the history books
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The slow shift from relatable, funny dude:
to 'I will kill you if you're in my way or you try to stop me':
is really, really creepy.
I mean, given the premise that you’re attempting an assassination of the most powerful people on earth, how else would you better phrase it? Came across as shockingly self-aware, to me.
That’s what’s creepy about it. He’s a perfectly nice, intelligent, self-aware… murderer.
He is so incompetent he is not even murderer.
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