There’s a DailyMail article that soooo wants the roommate to be trans and the reason why the shooting happened.
Paraphrased only because I don’t feel like looking it up.
“Family refuses to deny the roommate is the accused trans lover!”
Then they choose the picture specifically to look as trans as possible.
And then the family just was refusing to comment on anything. Imagine getting a phone call where they just said “is your grandson trans?! Is that why Charlie Kirk was murdered?!” you answer “I don’t know anything about that, I’m hanging up.” and then that’s what’s printed.
Used a male name, family used “he” pronouns and the neighbor said there’s no reason to believe he’s trans.
The mere fact that a catastrophic event like this carries with it an inherent fog of war element in no way precludes the MAGA-verse from leaning hard into their default flood the zone with shit dynamic.
Whatever the story actually turns out to be, it’ll almost certainly bear no relationship whatsoever to the RWNJ narrative.
From observation Robinson, appears to be rational and free from mental illness. He executed his plan with calm precision. No public theater of posts and mandates and, so far as we know, no bragging to associates. His actions indicate that he fully intended to survive the incident. He engaged in consultation with someone in the Church hierarchy and followed his advice.
Mormon rationality is a closed system that is not normal to the rest of society. LDS is not a democracy and it is not a debating club. It’s a beehive of believers. Robinson may have felt the pressure of a revelation. Whatever the facts I doubt it maps to the Liberal/Maga trope. I’d expect something more complicated. It will be interesting to see what trial balloons the defense lawyers float.
I guess it depends how enmeshed he was in the Mormon world, as compared to the secular world around him. The video memes suggest he wasn’t too insular. But you may well be right. The Mormons believe that it’s fairly common for ordinary men to get direct revelations from God, and perhaps that’s what prompted him to act.
I mean, we started with “trans ideology” on the bullet, moved to a former friend who claimed he was leftist then recanted, to speaking at a DSA gathering in Salt Lake City, and back to trans ideology. We’re just missing “he’s a secret Mooslim” in the circle of horseshit.
I think my reading of the retraction is different than yours. I read it as the Guardian lost faith in them because they couldn’t answer other questions about the friendship. So not the friend saying “you know what, that’s not actually true” but the Guardian saying “this person isn’t currently credible enough to publish.”
I don’t really think there’s enough public information one way or the other to say what the ideology might be. I think what the Right is doing in pushing a narrative is abhorrent and possibly will get people killed. I also think if they had solid evidence of leftist ideology they’d present it.
In the digital age, when even a young person in a traditional LDS family in a rural Utah town can connect with, make friends with, and be influenced by others across the globe, it seems very likely that the world around him was much bigger than his family and his small town.
For that matter, he was of the age to go on a mission. That’s something that can bring you friends and an appreciation of cultures from places around the world, though the study program associated with it also tends to cement attitudes about their religion with many young LDS men.
The chair of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors is saying no to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ order that flags on public grounds be lowered to half-staff in honor of assassinated conservative figure Charlie Kirk.
Jon Green posted on social media that by his “personal authority as Chairman of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors," the county, home of Iowa City and the University of Iowa, will defy the governor’s order.
While condemning Kirk’s killing, Green, a Democrat, wrote that he will "not grant Johnson County honors to a man who made it his life’s mission to denigrate so many of the constituents I have sworn an oath to protect, and who did so much to harm not only to the marginalized, but also to degrade the fabric of our body politic.
“Johnson County flags will fly as usual. I will accept any consequence, whether legal or electoral, for my decision. It is mine alone,” he wrote.