We said thoughts and prayers, isn’t that their custom for victims of gun violence?
Are we supposed to be emulating them? Isn’t that just stooping to their level? Why not be the better man?
I don’t feel bad stooping to their level on this. Moral victory is pretty meaningless in the end, especially in a situation like this. It’s really just cathartic.
You’re not entitled to the people you’ve hurt being the bigger person for you.
What you’re entitled to is to be grateful if all they do is pay you back evenly or at lesser cost to you than you put them through.
Somone wise once said, fool me once shame on you foot me twice… Can’t get fooled again!
Republicans have been pushing hate and fear for DECADES. They have laughed at tragedies and drawn crosshairs on their political opponents.
So yea, we don’t need to be better men.
I don’t condone violence, but I also have zero sympathy for someone who’s done nothing except stoke fear and violence at every turn.
Brilliant. The only issue is conservatives don’t make arguments by logic. Using logic against them does nothing. The people who need to see this likely can’t even read.
Agreed, they’re pretty much sub-human so it’s okay to shoo-
Whoops, almost went a little too far there. Just the hate for my fellow man for me, officer.
They are pointing out your us vs them mentality. Its bad both ways.
Edit: you also dont need to be stupid to be brainwashed
I’ve been saying this for years, you can’t do good faith with a bad faith person.
Imo the correct solution is some light trolling, light enough that you still have the moral high ground.
The shooter was a right wing nutjob apparently?
Personally I think that the whole thing was staged
I absolutely do not think it’s staged and hate conspiracy nonsense in general.
But, I like this conspiracy because it’s basically doing to Republicans what they do to all victims of actual tragedies. These monsters called Sandy hook crisis actors…
So yea, all of this was definitely staged and is fake news 😂
Yeah, according to his wikipedia page, he was:
- registered republican
- advocated for conservative views in high school debates
- donated to a progressive voter turnout project the same day Biden was sworn in
To me that means he had conservative views that don’t align with Trump’s views. My guess is that he felt Trump steered the party in the wrong direction, which is totally understandable. Prior to Trump, the Republican Party was relatively centrist (look at Romney and McCain, the two prior GOP candidates), and after Trump, the rhetoric among conservatives really ramped up.
So yeah, I think radical centrist totally fits the bill.
Honestly, I used to consider myself Republican as a teenager, and that was true until just after the 2012 election. I really liked Rand Paul, and seeing him get totally rejected was disappointing, to say the least. I voted Libertarian in 2016, and for Biden in 2020, all because I absolutely despise Trump. I am no longer under any illusion that I’m conservative (I’m very socially liberal), but I can see how someone who considers themselves conservative could not mesh at all with Trump’s message, to the point where they see him as a threat to their preferred party.
He didn’t donate to a progressive fund. That was a 69 year old man, with the same name, in Pittsburgh, not Bethel Park.
Nutjob, sure, but probably not “right wing.” Here’s the facts as stated on his wikipedia page:
- registered Republican
- held conservative views in high school
- donated to a progressive fund the day Biden was sworn in
So, he’s conservative and despises Trump. Someone who’s way far to the right wouldn’t donate to a progressive fund. I think he was a relatively moderate Republican who liked the GOP before Trump/MAGA took over, so basically Romney and McCain, not Trump and MTG.
He didn’t donate to a progressive fund. That was a 69 year old man, with the same name, in Pittsburgh, not Bethel Park.
As I wrote up elsewhere, three major news sites that I generally trust all reported the same thing. Do you have proof that they’re all wrong?
Or he’s a former Bernie supporter who got radicalized after Bernie lost. Your political compass can change very quickly when you’re that young.
Bernie ran for President in 2020 and the suspect registered Republican in 2021. It’s possible, but that’s only a year from Bernie’s campaign, so it seems unlikely.
My interpretation given Occam’s Razor is that he was likely conservative who aggressively disagreed with Trump. I wouldn’t be surprised if he would’ve voted for Biden if we was born a year earlier, based on frustration with Trump and Biden’s relatively moderate positions.
My personal suspicion is he was a high school libertarian who then realized it was not what he thought. I called myself a libertarian in high school for a short time before I realized what that group was really about (basically freedom to hate, not freedom to love, unless it’s loving children). I now call myself an anarchist.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. He was a kid who lost his life probably doing something he was convinced was important, as so many kids do. Is he better or worse than the kids who were told that people in Iraq were evil and a threat to America?
Trump, and the whole MAGA movement, have done so much to erode trust in our institutions. The fact someone felt the need to put everything on the line for their (likely futile) attempt to stop it sucks. Even in success it likely would have failed. It would have galvanized support for that faction and someone else would have taken up the position. We need something more powerful than a bullet to kill the movement.
libertarian in high school for a short time before I realized what that group was really about (basically freedom to hate, not freedom to love, unless it’s loving children)
?? That’s… exactly the opposite of libertarianism. Look at the Libertarian Party nominee for 2024, he’s a gay man who is extremely supportive of the trans community and came from the left. That’s just about the opposite of the caricature you’ve painted.
I wonder if by “libertarian” you mean the “libertarian” wing of the Republican Party? Because those aren’t libertarians at all, they’re just conservatives who aren’t as openly against civil rights. They’re the sorts that somehow justify supporting Trump, which makes absolutely no sense to someone with libertarian values (again, see how Trump was booed at the Libertarian National Convention).
Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle (i.e. they just want to leave you alone), and someone who attempts to assassinate a presidential candidate certainly doesn’t meet that bar. They believe in same sex marriage (and probably non-monogomous marriage), access to recreational drugs, no foreign military involvement, increased legal immigration, fiscal responsibility, etc.
We need something more powerful than a bullet to kill the movement.
Exactly. We need to disseminate truth. Show people how Trump’s policies have failed and will fail. Expose his lies, and demonstrate how alternatives are better. Unfortunately, Biden isn’t the right candidate to spread that message. I am looking at Chase Oliver (Libertarian Party candidate) to spread that message, but unfortunately the LP is having some internal issues so he may be limited in his reach.
What we need is a champion for liberty that’s willing to call out BS on both sides of the aisle, not in a “both sides” sense, but by calling out unique issues with both major parties. That push needs to be strong enough to make concrete steps toward solving the roots of the problem, such as:
- alternative voting systems - personal preference for STAR or Approval, but Ranked Choice works
- end gerrymandering - personal preference for proportional representation within the states, but independent commissions work
- reform political debates - any candidate who is on enough ballots to mathematically win should be invited to at least the first debate
- reform campaign funding - massive fines for inaccurate ads, and perhaps ban ads altogether except for ads for debates
Those have at least some chance at fixing things.
The libertarian ideal isn’t bad, but like you said it has internal issues where a significant portion are bad. Anyway, libertarianism doesn’t generally want to protect people. That’s why I prefer anarchism. Freedom for the individual and protections against corporations and other powers. Libertarians generally want “freedom” to be ruled by the elite, because they don’t want to put in controls over them.
That’s… exactly the opposite of libertarianism.
American libertarianism got co-opted by white nationalism way back in the 1930s, under Ludwig Von Mises and Murray Rothbard.
Look at the Libertarian Party nominee for 2024, he’s a gay man who is extremely supportive of the trans community and came from the left.
Kathy Glass won the Texas Libertarian Gubernatorial nomination in 2010 and 2014. She’s an outspoken white supremacist with deep Trump sympathies. She abandoned the party in 2016 to go follow Trump, and she took a large chunk of the party base with her.
Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle
They espouse it. But when you get into what qualifies as “aggression”, everything from migration to miscegenation can qualify. Thomas Sowell, a staunch libertarian economist, was a full throated supporter of the Iraq War on the grounds that Saddam helped perpetrate 9/11, evidence to the contrary be damned. Notorious Libertarian-Republican Ron Paul claimed that individuals infected with AIDS “victimizes innocent citizens by forcing them to pay for care", in a newsletter that argued for the criminalization of gay sex.
I am looking at Chase Oliver (Libertarian Party candidate) to spread that message, but unfortunately the LP is having some internal issues so he may be limited in his reach.
That’s by design. The LP is shot-through with the worst strains of American bigotry and xenophobia intentionally. They’re a common injection point for far-right conspiracies and a testing ground for ultra-nationalist ideology. Once you wrap an idea under the cover of free markets and individual liberties, you can smuggle it into the mainstream GOP and then on to “centrist” American politics.
Everything from Trump’s Big Beautiful Wall to Lynne Cheney’s trade war with China to JD Vance’s Project 2025 can trace their roots back to libertarian academia.
If it was staged, it was one hell of a show.
But there are more than a few Republicans who would love to see Trump six feet under, just to clear the way for their own jackboots. I don’t think its a coincidence that Trump picked Peter Thiel’s favorite Senator as his VP, two days after a far-right gun nut wings him. He’s circling the wagons and shoring up support among his gun-nuttier base.
you got to love how they turned the tables and are blaming democrats for fostering an environment of violence lol. Is this what a logic lapse looks like?
And further alienate any actual people that might support them. They have to condemn political violence because it was an attack on their class, and their class solidarity overrides any political rivalry. But even my very liberal friend said “dang, it’s too bad they missed.” Idk what my Christian grandma feels about the shooting but when Trump got covid she did say he deserved it.
it’s been a while since i’ve heard them whine about BLM burning the entire country down
I have been stuck swamping in a truck for days with the driver blasting right wing radio. They never stopped whining about BLM, they just pepper it into everything because they no longer feel the need to talk about it on it’s own anymore.
When something becomes that ubiquitous it’s always there but as a supporting member of the chorus, not the one in the spotlight
if it wasn’t BLM it would just be one of the other dozens of stupid bullshits they perpetually cry about
Is Portland still actively on fire? I heard after all the immigrants murdered everyone in Chicago they went north
It’s hard to keep up with the bullshit. I think they’re storming buildings and burning phoenix down with their angry might to make sure everyone votes republican but also applying to work at every single kitchen in the country for $2/hr. Immigrants are an easy election target
