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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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How many of these mass shooters have been men living with a wife and kids? 0?

Yeahhhh. Seems pretty obvious that the perps in almost every case are people who have determined (correctly?) that they have very little to lose, and also very little to look forward to on their current life trajectory.

This is why Stephen Paddock was and is such an anomaly, since he seemed to have his life 'together' for most pursuits and purpose, though his personal life was very fraught with struggle, it must be admitted.

There's probably some other "X factor" in there that causes them to lash out rather than simply collapse into a stupor of video games and drugs and degenerate gambling on the stock market.

But the rise in suicide, the rise in rates of depression, opioid overdoses, the increase in dissatisfaction with life, the general purposelessness that seems to be permeating whole generations... it all likely has a similar root cause with those few who decide to go on rampages.

The Las Vegas mass shooting is such a weird event. The event was odd, he has all sorts of oddities in his private life that suggest asset. I don't know what the real story is, but we definitely didn't get it.

What’s so weird about it?

His wiki article makes him look about as unhinged as I’d expect for a mass murderer. Clearly capable of planning, but just an absolute train wreck of a lifestyle.

Mainly it's the apparent lack of any real grievance against 'society' that would inspire one to act violently and indiscriminately.

The extent of the planning almost seems like his main goal was literally just to set a record for deaths, which indeed he did. Like he wasn't trying to lash out at any particular target, he just one day had the thought "I bet I could kill a shit-ton of people if I shot at a crowd from this casino hotel window."

And the sheer number of people he managed to kill is also slightly suspicious for just one man to pull off.

And parts of the plan are a little absurd on their face, the number of guns the guy brought, for instance. Even if you wanted maximum carnage, you'd bring like 2-3 guns at most, and tons of magazines for reloading. You certainly wouldn't bring in cases and cases of guns, if you were trying to keep a low profile!

The bit that really tickles one's conspiracy sense is multiple guns having bump stocks, which were an item the ATF sought to ban, shortly after the event.

Most hobbyist shooters will tell you these things are novelties at best, not something you'd use if you WANTED to kill a bunch of people.

And then the shooter's brother gets arrested for CSAM shortly thereafter.

Then charges were dropped and the guy more-or-less disappeared.

None of this is to convince you that it was a vast conspiracy, just to explain why this one stands out as a "WTF was happening?" situation.

Edit: Oh yeah forgot the strange missing hard drive situation.

which were an item the ATF sought to ban, shortly after the event.

How does this suggest anything conspiratorial? High-profile mass shooting uses X implement, government responds with ban. Just seems like they were impelled to action by the shooting.

Do I actually need to point out that governments, including the U.S., have used false flag tactics to achieve or advance domestic policy goals?

That that's a thing that has 100% happened before?

The fact that the 'government responds with a ban' doesn't DISCOUNT the possibility that the government intentionally created it's own justification for the ban.

That evidence tends to explain both possibilities. We'd expect a conspiracy to create the pretext for a particular government action would result in... government taking the action. This is not a contradiction.

Do you know how many other shootings or violent crimes bump stocks were involved in prior to this? Approximately zero.

Again, not asking you to believe in the conspiracy just noting why it tickles that particular part of the brain.

including the U.S., have used false flag tactics to achieve or advance domestic policy goals?

When?

Depends on how recent and how reliable you want the examples to be.

The one that tends to stick in my mind is when they used a dubiously sourced Dossier to justify investigating a Presidential Candidate during his campaign and extensively during his term as President, even as it's veracity was genuinely questionable.

Even more recently, there's the speculation that the U.S. blew up that oil pipeline, despite ya know, not being in a declared war

Then there's the Gulf of Tonkin Incident going back further, which justified invasion of Vietnam.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

speculation that the U.S. blew up that oil pipeline, despite ya know, not being in a declared war

domestic policy goals

I never realised that Vietnam and Ukraine were inside the United State, huh.

The one that tends to stick in my mind is when they used a dubiously sourced Dossier to justify investigating a Presidential Candidate during his campaign and extensively during his term as President, even as it's veracity was genuinely questionable.

How does this count as a false flag, even if you think the dossier was rubbish?

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