Last week after the mass shooting in Gilroy, California, Alexandra Petri wrote a gut-wrenching column that I heartily recommend. It is first-rate writing. But I just want to call out this little bit:
Imagine being careless enough and cruel enough to allow someone to punch such holes in the world deliberately, repeatedly, in the name of a lie. The lie is that we have no choice in this matter. The lie is that any effort, however common-sense, to restrict firearms or lower the capacity of magazines, is part of a vicious scheme to strip you of your freedoms. The lie is that this imaginary, vast conspiracy is more to be feared than these deaths that occur so frequently that we are almost out of synonyms for “horror.” How do you tell someone he is a sacrifice worth making to preserve this lie? How do you tell a child?
So the Republicans are already mouthing pious things about God and whatever, and you know they will not do a damn thing about gun violence and the threat of right-wing domestic terrorism. Indeed, the first instincts of wingnuts is to misdirect —
Authorities hadn’t even released the official number of dead and wounded from a mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart on Saturday when Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick began complaining on Fox News about Antifa.
I am not aware that antifa is responsible for even one death in the U.S., although I acknowledge they’ve probably broken some windows. But never fear, Texas Republicans are on top of what needs to be done!
Texas Republicans have been steadfastly avoiding the topic of gun control in the wake of the El Paso shooting on Saturday that left 20 people dead, instead placing the blame on mental health, video games, and even lack of school prayer.
“I think we need to focus more on memorials before we start the politics,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) told reporters on Saturday when asked about his stance on gun legislation.
Did you know that 4 of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history havetaken place in Texas? The shooters were Devin Patrick Kelley (2017, 25 dead, Sutherland Springs); George Hennard (1991, 23 dead, Killeen), Charles Whitman (1966, 18 dead, University of Texas), and the alleged shooter at the El Paso WalMart was Patrick Crusius (20 dead, so far). All white men. The Sutherland Springs shooting was in a church; I assume they prayed there. Didn’t stop the bullets.
Wingnuts are telling each other that Crusius is a Latino name, but I checked — although it looks sort of Latin, it’s mostly found in Germany. Notable people with the name Crusius include Christian August Crusius (1715–1775), German philosopher and Protestant theologian; Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius (1788–1843), German Protestant theoloian; and Otto Crusius (1857–1918), German classical scholar.
I have not read the alleged shooter’s manifesto, and I wouldn’t link to it if I had. Josh Marshall has read it and makes some interesting points:
There’s abundant evidence the shooter is a big fan of President Trump and certainly of his worldview. And yet the manifesto includes a sort of preemptive rebuttal of any claims that he is a Trump supporter or that Trump influenced. He predicts that “the media” will identify him as a white supremacist and blame President Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric for radicalizing him and provoking the attack. Such claims would be “fake news” and such claims will indeed only prove that “the media” is “fake news.”
After these horrors, we expect rightwing talking heads to attack any suggestion that these attacks might be related to the President’s politics and rhetoric. But here the assailant is doing so himself in advance. Indeed he denies Trump’s influence by using Trump’s signature attack lines. For someone who specifically denies Trump radicalized him, he’s very focused protecting the President. He doth protest rather too much.
We don’t yet know enough about yesterday’s Dayton, Ohio, shooting to know if it fits the white supremacist pattern. The alleged shooter’s name was Connor Betts; his sister was among the nine killed, suggesting the motivation might have been more personal than political. But Andrew Marantz points out at The New Yorker that most recent mass shooters seem to have been radicalized in the same way.
Each killer, in the moment, may have acted alone, but they all appear to have been zealous converts to the same ideology: a paranoid snarl of raw anger, radical nationalism, unhinged nihilism, and fears of “white genocide” that is still referred to as “fringe,” although it’s creeping precariously close to the mainstream. On many social networks that bill themselves as bulwarks of “free speech,” including Gab, 4chan, and 8chan, this way of thinking is so dominant that it is often taken for granted. In April, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that such platforms “serve as round-the-clock white supremacist rallies.”
Would it help if these platforms were shutdown? Could the platforms be shut down? This is a point Marantz addresses; the answer is, probably not. And if they were, would not other platforms spring up in their place?
White supremacy has been hardwired into American culture as soon as Europeans began moving here. The whole rise of Trump and right-wing domestic terrorism might be interpreted as the fight of a wounded animal, or white supremacy’s last hoorah. We have reached a moment in our culture in which white supremacy really isn’t acceptable any more. This is not to say that systemic racism isn’t still in place, or that racial equality finally reigns o’er the land. But for those pathetic losers — who have always been among us — who take their pride and identity and self-worth from nothing but their whiteness, our culture is, finally, beginning to deny them that. And in their own minds they have no where else to go.
Update: I just noticed that this post is getting a big influx of traffic, I assume from some right-wing site. Please read the commenting rules before posting comments.
I hear all the time from people about what the President has said, accusing him of all and sundry and taking him to task for his language. But I will remind you all of the language coming from those who hate him since he started his campaign. It has not abated one iota. Please google John Legend's latest. You may have to wash out your ears after. Make sure no children are around. It's filthy.
The people killed in El Paso were not even identified, let alone a reason for the shooting given, when some of those Democarts running for president were accusing President Trump's rhetoric for being responsible. Really? Anything to score points. Never let a crisis go to waste. right?
Withouut a full ban on firearms, and good luck with that, you will not prevent this from happening again. Those who want to commit a crime will find a way.
Linda Curran — Are you seriously denying that we have an epidemic of white supremacist terrorism going on? Are you seriously denying that Trump and his far-right supporters are fanning the flames of white supremacist terrorism? How stupid are you? Well, the answer is apparent. Nearly all the violence in this country is coming from the Right. Yeah, antifa throws some punches and breaks windows, but they haven't killed anyone and aren't shooting down people in line at Trump rallies, nor have any of them advocated doing so as far as I know. The facts are that we have a right-wing racial terrorism problem and the so-called pathetic excuse of a president encourages it. Period, end of discussion.
Typical Democrat. Spew HATE and then shuts down conversation. Don't want to debate anything. You talk about the far right. We have Freedoms !!!!! Socialism is coming for all the lazy punks that don't want to work. NOTHING IN LIFE IS FREE !!!!!!
NEWS FLASH !!! Their is no one full race. Everyone has bedded down with other races, thus taking away a full race.
You are exactly the problem !!!! Spewing HATE and non truthful slurs !!!!
Um, which one of us is spewing hate, dear?
Gosh, I hate she quit so soon. I was looking forward to hearing all her rational argumentation on whatever issue she finally settled on addressing.
You do know that the KKK was started by the Democratic party – History FACT – thus the Civil War; the Republicans believed that ALL me should be created equal.
Hillary Clinton stated, and I quote, “Byrd (US Senator from West Virginia; died in 2010) was a close personal friend of my family and he was my mentor” Byrd was a sitting hierarchy of the KKK – even used the N word on public TV without any consequences.
You are needing to get you hate spewing facts right.
#growup
#stepawayfromthekoolaid
#remembergeorgetown
So it takes a century for parties to change sides. What has the Republican party done for black people _lately_?
And as long as you're digging up the past; what does the Republican party think of the first Republican president?
T– I happen to be a five-alarm American history nerd. The KKK was not started by the “Democratic Party” but by ex-Confederates. They were probably Democratic voters, since at the time the Democrats were the conservative party and the Republicans were the liberals, but the party itself didn’t inaugurate the KKK.
Please read what a man occupying the White House has been saying. Look what he has done to the nation in terms of moral leadership and tell me that the outcries against his awfulness is not justified. Many of us saw what he was before he was elected. We were stunned to see the Republicans roll over and give him the nomination, and we spoke out about what he was saying.
And you think one singer's cussing obviates all the facts about Trump's actions, speeches, positions? No. You don't think that. You think you have a curtain of offended decency over some profanity. You do not. You are defending a truly unfit president, an immoral fake-rich bigot, and a fraud.
And you're late to the party on learning to use whataboutism.
crusius is italian
It sorta looks Italian, but on checking I found that it's a more common name in Germany than anywhere else. Maybe they were Italians who moved to Germany.
https://forebears.io/surnames/crusius
How is this name Italian?
I looked it up. It’s a name that can be found in much of Europe, but the highest concentration of people with that name are in Germany. https://forebears.io/surnames/crusius
I've heard what John Legend has said about Trump and found him to be spot on. Trump is, as Swami has often described him, a big bag of sh_t. Trump has been stirring the pot of poor white people being run over by all these immigrants since before he took office. This is why he was the head birther working against our first black President who was duly elected by the majority of this country, which is not what Trump can say. Hillary had 3 million more popular votes than trump and you add up the votes for "Other" in the states; there were seven million more Americans who voted against trump than for him. He was elected by Putin; and, in the next election a vote for trump will be a vote for Putin. And, since trump doesn't take Russia's interfering with our elections seriously, Putin will be free to mess with our election again–most likely with the blessing of trump. So, Linda Curran, I hope you have a Cyrillic dictionary and suggest you start learning Russian because that is where this country is headed under scumbag trump–a moral disgrace to this country.
Trump isn't responsible for a few lone nuts! He's not a " rasis " either. He's a patriotic American. He , like the tens of millions of us who voted for him, are just against the invasion of our nation, period. You want to come here, get in line , wait your turn, come here fairly & legally.
Yesterday , there were probably scores of shooters & murderers who were Blacks , & Amerindian so called Hispanics in the nation. It's just when it's this magnitude & when they are White or said to be White (like Zimmerman) does this make the news 24 & no doubt seven.
There Blacks mass murdering on a regular basis here, but the MSM doesn't cover negative press on either Amerindian Hispanic or Black crime here. Illegal alien crimes are like chasing ghosts, they kill then they run across the border or get lost in the sea of tens of millions of illegal "ghosts" here, who can have up to a dozen alias's.
Wake up America, your nation is being stolen right in front of your lazy, brainwashed PC eyes!
Donald Trump is a second generation American bigot. He has about as many qualifications for any elected office as my dead cat.
White people are not native to this hemisphere. Who invaded who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXje3oJ8T8o
Swami — I deleted the comments from Cat. I am not paying for bandwidth to host Trump propaganda.
Hey Abbott (you corrupt KKKonservative feckin' eedjit)!
Memorials, like people, are temoprary.
Politics, when done properly, is lasting!
We need to stop the "infestation" by heavily-armed white rodents in this country! 😉
Crusius is a surname connected to both Germans and Brazillians
there are a lot of ethnic Germans in Brazil (e.g. Gisele Bunchen).
Looking back through history, it is hard to deny that White Americans Are Savages. Maybe other countries will stop feeding The Beast.
[Comment deleted. The influx of wingnuts was fun for a while, but I am reclaiming my own blog now and, per the established commenting rules, will tolerate no more comments that are racist or otherwise infused with wingnuttery. –maha]
Fear drives violence, not colour. Trump has not been a good president, but he is not the problem. Not that he has helped matters with his inflammatory remarks.
If you want change, you have to change.
I propose the following as legislation before Congress.
The Second Amendment Repair Act
1. The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia shall not be infringed.
2. Well-regulated militias shall not arm those under adult age, nor arm those found guilty of treason as defined by the Constitution.
3. States have the right to enforce additional regulation of their militias.
Commentary by the author:
Compare clause 1 of SARA to the original 2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Alas, poor Amendment! The sentence lies there, broken into four fragments, as if someone had dropped it on the floor. My critique of the 2nd Amendment is both literary and political; for its shattered incoherence is due to an unresolved political dispute. Washington insisted on good regulation of Jefferson’s popular militias; his objection was jammed on as a subordinate clause given top billing.
Clause 1 of SARA fixes the grammar of the 2nd Amendment. It’s a single coherent clause; that prevents partisans from exaggerating one clause and ignoring another. The original had well-regulation as an explanation for the need for the right to bear arms; here well-regulation is part of the right itself. This makes explicit the necessary link between rights (arms) and responsibilities (well-regulated). Clause 1 is as much about gun control as about gun rights.
This re-emphasis on regulation empowers clause 2. No children in arms, nor traitors; that’s necessary. If the militia is well-regulated, then it may not arm children or adolescents, who are not well-regulated people; and if the militia is of the state, then it may not arm those levying war upon the states. I choose these two regulations for the sake of clarity. Age is on public record; and treason is defined in the Constitution. (Article 3, section 3.)
Clause 3 establishes that militias belong to the states, which they may regulate as they see fit, as a matter of state’s rights.
This proposal is very conservative, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word ‘conservative’. It makes few changes in the original text, beyond rewriting it for clarity. This rewriting explicitly mandates both gun rights and gun control. Such rewriting is necessary because of the 2nd Amendment’s fragmented condition.
Since DC vs Heller in 2008, we have been living with a partial reading of the shattered 2nd Amendment, one that ignores the first two fragments and fetishizes the next two. So due to Scalia’s judicial activism, for over a decade the 2nd Amendment has been half-repealed, to malign effect now self-evident.
I propose that we repair it, and reinstate it, whole.
As for the loser shooters; I propose a campaign of savage mockery of all mass shooters, their fans, their enablers, and their suppliers. Unleash the comics! It's a lot better than polite numbness. Let the humor be black, bitter, and unsparing, about their insanity, their stupidity, their wicked wrath, and above all their mini-manhood. For instance:
How long is an incel's shooter?
Half as long as his gun.
How many NRA spokesmen does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They'd rather that you stayed in the dark.
Would a gun-seller honor a mass shooter's coupon?
No. Anyone who sells guns to a mass shooter has no honor.
When an 8-channer shot himself, what was his mistake?
Not starting with himself.
Why don't white terrorists blow out their brains?
What brains?
I saw Lt. Gov Dan Patrick on Fox News.. He recited the whole repertoire of NRA talking points as the cause for mass shootings.. Video games, no prayer in school, and the good guy with a gun theory. Oh, and we need to return to Jesus. Absolutely no mention of Trump's incendiary rhetoric of fueling the flames of racism and fear mongering.
I recently read the appeal for sentencing leniency for Cesar Sayoc, the MAGA bomber. In the appeal Sayoc's lawyer describes how vulnerable Cesar was to Trump's rhetoric because of his extreme need to find purpose and validation for his existence. The lawyer was basically saying that Trump enchanted Cesar with his false imagery of success and sexual prowess to the point where Cesar couldn't distinguish reality from illusion and blindly followed and adored the image of Trump. Ultimately immersing himself so deeply in the Trump cesspool that it destroyed his life. Trump's rhetoric was the catalyst that lead to his destruction.
Cesar Sayoc is a vastly flawed and failed man, but unfortunately one of his attributes was his innate ability to understand the language of code that Trump speaks in, and acting on that code cost Cesar his freedom.
Honestly, SHUT UP!!! Democrats you lost the election. This is not Trumps fault. This is the fact that kids are not disciplined ,do not have a very good family life,do not now how to cope eith disappointment,Do not know how to work,do not know how to lose… i can go on. People are so involved with their phones they do not know how to interact with other humans anymore. This boy/ man? obviously had issues, but to blame Trump is ridiculous and you sound Stupid!!!
I might sound stupid, but you are stupid. Just to give you an idea of how stupid you are..Your illustrious and venerated Trump is calling for "strong" background checks to counter the rise of mass shootings. Although he claims the shootings are solely the result of mental illness.
Anybody who has the ability to reason knows that the extent of any background check to detect issues of mental health are limited to people who have already been adjudicated by law to have serious mental health issues. Trump's claim doesn't address the hatred, the fear filled insecurities,or any of the emotional triggers that give rise to spur the sick minds that commit these horrible acts.
The only concrete steps to reduce the incidence of mass shooting are to reduce and restrict the availability of the weapons used to commit such crimes and to actively counter the rhetoric and mindset that promotes guns as a vehicle to express freedom and empowerment.
The background check legislation has been passed by the House. Trump has promised to veto it. The Senate won't bring it up for a vote. This is a classic two-steep. Trump is making promises about background checks to the low-information voters while he reassures his base that he will actually do nothing.
When Trump reverses his previous stance about the veto and calls on McConnell to pass the existing legislation as-is, I will start to question where trump stands. For now, he's an NRA stooge with enough political savvy to promise both sides of the issue. (will do background checks AND will veto legislation with background checks.)
Democrats mostly won in 2018. As for 2016: Clinton the technocrat lost control of the EC machine; Trump the populist was and remains unpopular; so they both lost, on terms most personally humiliating to each. America also lost.
As for the endless massacres by racist losers; other countries don't have this problem. My diagnosis: the 2nd Amendment is broken. Ever since Scalia's judicial activism in "DC vs Heller", the "well-regulated militia" clause has been de-facto repealed, with malign effects now self-evident. I recommend repairing the 2nd Amendment by restoring that clause.
ALERT!r
Major troll infestation in the "maha" aisle!
Russian troll infestation!
ALERT!!!
Don't feed the trolls, please.
Interesting that we haven't heard a thing about Venezuela lately. Are the Russians helping out there? If Mexico drops us, were screwed. If China drops us, we're done.
David Brooks used the term wackadoodle last week in his column. He had other word choices. Synonyms include: oddity, odd fellow, unorthodox person, character, individualist, individual, free spirit, misfit, oddball, weirdo. weirdie freak nut nutcase, head case, crank, crackpot, loony, loon, one-off, odd bod, nutter, queer fish, wacko, wack, screwball, ,kook, wackdoo, and dingbat. This is quite a word pallet, and I think his choice of the word wackadoodle a little screwball. Given the options I guess one could say it was more polite than most. One also has to excuse David a bit, as he is going though a difficult divorce with the dingbat wing of his once noble Republican party. The recent takeover by oddballs, misfits, kooks, and screwballs disturbs him quite a bit. He understands they think of themselves as free spirited individualists on an enlightened mission from the power of the supreme, they are better described as head cases with oddball ideas that come off mostly as renderings of wacko cranks.
One might think of this as a distinction without a difference, but as one reads the comments to this fine post I think the point is well illustrated. At least now we are properly terming the perpetrators of most of these shootings as white nationalist supremacist terrorists. That is an improvement in my books. Many thumbs up to the paradoctor. The mushy and outdated language of the deuce amendment has not served us well. Our founding fathers did kind of write a bit of mush and kick the problem down the road. They were only human and prone to error like us all. For the most part, however, they showed quite the foresight. Remember they were not infallible and had no crystal ball to the future. Only a wackadoodle would think something like that.
Fascinating! Multiple mass shootings that tie to Trump's racist rhetoric, and as CU observed, trolls are out in force. One might even suspect there's an organized response to what the Trump campaign has perceived as a threat. As any parent knows, when a three-year-old says "don't look there.", that's where you need to look. Trump supporters generally have the emotional maturity of toddlers so let's peel back the covering.
First, Trump is building his campaign on racist rhetoric. From what he said about, "Send then back." to the racist attacks on Congressman Cummings, to the rhetoric in his rallies, it's clear Trump has decided to throw as much red meat to his base as they want. He just doesn't want you to call it racist.
Problem: for mental midgets teetering on the edge, the red meat will predictably send some over the edge. (Remeber the van of the guy arrested for sending bombs to the media and political opponents of Trump? It was a rolling billboard for Trump!) It's not that this week was bad for Trump (being associated with racially-tinged attacks on people who were always of color) it's that the violence will get predictably WORSE as the election progresses.
I'm concerned (bordering on convinced) we're seeing the beginning of what's shaping up – violent voter intimidation. Possibly, Trump welcomes the new method(s) of voter intimidation – there's a 60-40 split on Trump approval and Trump is on the losing end. While we recognize the advantage of the Electoral College, if Trump can't turn out more people to vote for him (and there's no sign of Trump moderating his message) he's got to prevent Democrats and Independent voters from showing up in November.
Is the spontaneous mayhem part of the plan? I do think it's random but that doesn't mean Trump won't cultivate it as deliberately as he disowns each incident. (I've reached the sad point where a bloodbath isn't an outrage – it's an 'incident'.) Buckle up, folks. It's gonna be a bumpy ride for the next 15 months. If Trump gets bounced, the violence won't end. If Trump is prosecuted for crimes, Obstuction of Justice or NY state criminal charges, the violence will escalate. We will find out where the public stands when the extortion is: give Trump immunity or we will kill the innocent.
One might even suspect there's an organized response to what the Trump campaign has perceived as a threat.
In Christian circles people who are attuned to the dynamics of spiritual warfare say that demons are usually tranquil if left undisturbed. And it's only when there are active measures to cast them out that they act up in opposition to the forces that are coming against them. I think the same dynamic holds true for the Trumptards. It seems every time reasoned people hit a nerve in exposing Trump's racism and hateful rhetoric the minions in Trump's base start to swarm and lash out in defense of his hateful rhetoric.
Folks: I'm going to cut off comments on this post, because we're getting way too many racist whackjobs trying to comment. I don't have time to police comments. Maybe in a day or two I'll turn comments back on if it seems safe.