This is so horrible and so sad.
Moderating:
Yes, but political discussion about the implications of this event aren’t allowed in breaking news threads. We’re ok to have a concurrent thread in P&E.
I believe it is actions like this:
That are emboldening right/white sites. They are encouraging similar actions. Trump’s reckless pardoning doesn’t help much.
I think the implications of this event is to spur copycats.
That’s it.
What more can the government do? This is already illegal. They can’t make it more illegal. Maybe up the penalties but for this I am not sure what more can be added to a penalty. I suspect this is a life sentence as is. I doubt adding the death penalty would change anything.
It is the political discourse in this country that needs to change and I am not sure how that will be improved.
That goes both ways though, there’s no reason a left-leaning person couldn’t get their hands on a surplus police uniform and send some freedom seeds downrange in the direction of MAGA politicians. This is one aspect of political violence that I feel like the right refuses to consider. They think they’re the only ones who know how to fire guns and they think the left will just wilt and take it. They might be surprised to find out they don’t have a monopoly on violence.
Except traditionally, the left is more reasonable than that. We are for law. That’s what the No Kings rallies are about.
The shooters wife was just pulled over in a supposed routing traffic stop. She had passports, cash, ammunition and a weapon in her possession.
I’m not in favor of violence, but being for law doesn’t seem very helpful right now either.
Funny, I remember a time when the Republicans were the “party of law and order”. I must be getting old.
I mean, there have been conservatives targeted for violence by a left-winger before - it happened in 2017. Sadly, I saw more than few in the online sphere who immediately leaped to “false flag” once it was identified as deliberately targeting Republicans. And after that (possibly because he was dead), it got no significant discussion, and seems to have either been forgotten, deliberately ignored, or had people pretending it wasn’t at all politically-motivated, judging from posts like these.
I fully believe the mainstream right has been more accepting of threatening/inciting talk and even violence than the mainstream left - but I’ve seen a lot of leftists (again online - but I live in a very red area) that castigate the mainstream left and at least talk like it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be more violent (what they actually say when it happens may be different) and quite a few, frankly, who advocate violence against “the rich” (whom they often assign to their disliked political group) More still who are quite happy imagine it happening or hear about it, and don’t blame the perpetrators, even if they don’t carry it out, themselves. Though last I read, right-wing domestic terrorism was still the more common (been a while since I checked in on it, though).
The latest rumor is that he targeted them for voting for immigration policies that didn’t toe the Democratic Farmer Labor party line, and Walz was in cahoots in some way.
To me, that’s as despicable as the idea that the Donnie Two Dolls assassination attempts were false flags, or some of the stories around Sandy Hook.
People love a conspiracy theory that makes “their side” never in the wrong.
When was that? 'Cause I remember ‘law and order’ being defined by the number of Black and poor people in jail while ignoring Watergate and Iran/Contra.
I hate to say it, but somebody is going to remember Connery’s speech in The Untouchables about “the Chicago way”.
CNN is reporting that the suspect has been caught.
Also reported in the New York Times. I figured they’d have him by tonight when this thread informed me they had his wife. It’s the news I was waiting for. Glad he’s out of circulation.
As am I. And I hope he makes his motivations clear at trial.
Saying you are for law and order and actually being for law and order are two different things.
Judging from the right wing trolls I have encountered on Facebook, it’s all Democrats’ fault. Some choice bits of misinformation: “Democrat hogwash. Those lawmakers voted against Medicaid for illegals and were taken out.” and “Walz appointed him and hired his wife, she just got got picked up with her and her husband’s passport, cash and weapons. Democrats are going need all useful idiots to push this was a crazy Republican and not a Democrat hit on lawmakers who dont tow the line.”
The NY Post, ever the cesspool, isn’t helping. One issue had the headline: “Masked Walz Appointee Suspected In Assassination Of Politician”
If a right wing nutjob has any ties, no matter how tenuous, to a Democrat then Democrats are solely responsible for whatever he does.