Looks like you're getting down voted a lot for this but it's all true. Trump only became president because the electoral college weighs geography higher than population. So does the senate.
Election system that give weight to geography is generally done so to encourage cooperation where people otherwise would prefer going alone. Both EU and US have large historical reasons to unify low population regions with a lot of natural resources with high population regions. Same is true in Germany, Iceland, Sweden and so on, all with varied degrees of giving weight to geography.
> Notably the shooter was a right-wing Republican wearing a shirt with a gun channel logo on it.
Curious to know why you think the shooter was right-wing?
My limited understanding is that he was a registered Republican who was wearing a shirt with the logo of a shooting range/video channel, had donated to a political campaign supporting the Democrats, and attempted to assassinate a popular right-wing politician.
Only the first of those would suggest to me that he might be right-wing.
On the other hand, I think it is entirely possible (and likely, given the donation activity) that he was registered as a Republican only to influence the Republican primary elections (not an uncommon practice as far as I'm aware).
The key point here is that gun nuts have been told for decades by the NRA and right-wing groups that their right to bear arms is critical to stop a "tyrannical government". This is commonly used to defend the right of every "patriotic" American to bear arms.
When the right keeps using rhetoric like this (after school shootings no less!) they shouldn't be making the shocked Pikachu face when one of their own takes potshots at Trump. Or anyone for that matter. It basically doesn't matter if the shooter was a tree-hugging gay democrat at this point. The message that encourages and enables this kind of violence is almost entirely coming from the right.
Speaking of the shooter's motivations: Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists", so it's entirely conceivable that a "true patriot" conservative decided to utilise his second amendment rights to stop what he felt like was a betrayal of his party and country by an openly anti-democratic autocrat.
The other key part of what I said in my GP comment is that the propagandists on the right immediately jumped on the opportunity to blame the left and the Democrats before the political affiliation of the shooter was even known.[1] Thousands upon thousands gave this the thumbs up, re-tweeted it, shared it, etc...
A right-wing congressman blames Biden personally, but he's not the only one. Here:
[1] This reminds me of when that hospital was bombed in Gaza and then palestinion authorities had an exact body count (in the hundreds!) mere minutes later and blamed Israel. Never mind that few if any died, and the bomb was one of their own missiles. That's not on message. This is precisely the same scenario. The second there's a shooting of a Republican candidate, it surely must be the Democrats doing it, that's on message.
> Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists"
Trump has been leader of the Republicans since the shooter was twelve years old...
In any case, you've weakened your claim from the shooter being right wing to it being "entirely conceivable" that he's right wing. Well, fine, many things are conceivable, but what's the positive reason for thinking that it's true? And does it outweigh the reasons against thinking that it's true? The fact that he registered as a Republican for reasons we don't know, and that he's wearing a gun-themed t-shirt (I hink we can assume he's not against guns on principle), seem to be substantially less weighty data points than the fact that he's just tried to kill Trump.
Libertarians would be pro-gun, Republican registered, and feasibly hate Trump.
Not saying this guy was Libertarian mind you, but... its not very hard to come up with Right-wing people who match this profile. Maybe with a bit more data / investigating we can come up with more information.
But the left is not exactly known for being gun nuts or bringing AR15 rifles to places.
I don't think there is value in this kind of argument.
Yes, some folks on the hard right in the US like to brandish weapons as political speech and use the implied threat of violence to make people around them feel intimidated.
However, this has nothing to do with one attempted murderer or the political party he most associates with.
I find this kind of finger pointing speculation unhelpful and divisive and I think we should be more actively aligning on "people shouldn't murder people they disagree with" which is a value everyone should be able to openly agree on.
If this were a leftist, the Right would be talking about the evils of the socialists or something.
Its all cute and "please don't talk about the Republicanness of this guy" the minute people realize he was Republican and a gun-nut.
I don't like leftists or socialists either mind you. But its pretty despicable to expect Americans to rise to the challenge. Americans failed to rise every other time, its not fair for Republicans to get a free pass on this one.
I think it's fine to attack a group's ideology but I don't think it's fine to say "that group I don't like does this so that person who did the same thing probably is in that group"
The concept is less surprising when degressive proportionality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degressive_proportionality) happens to be fairly common.
Election system that give weight to geography is generally done so to encourage cooperation where people otherwise would prefer going alone. Both EU and US have large historical reasons to unify low population regions with a lot of natural resources with high population regions. Same is true in Germany, Iceland, Sweden and so on, all with varied degrees of giving weight to geography.
[flagged]
> This was a problem (Trump) and a solution (assassination) entirely of the right’s own making.
No one should be assassinated for expressing a political viewpoint, what the hell even is this opinion?
That’s not at all what I was arguing.
The point was that Republicans immediately blamed the Democrats and even Biden personally for a problem of their own making.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Leopards_Eating_People%27s_...
> Notably the shooter was a right-wing Republican wearing a shirt with a gun channel logo on it.
Curious to know why you think the shooter was right-wing?
My limited understanding is that he was a registered Republican who was wearing a shirt with the logo of a shooting range/video channel, had donated to a political campaign supporting the Democrats, and attempted to assassinate a popular right-wing politician.
Only the first of those would suggest to me that he might be right-wing.
On the other hand, I think it is entirely possible (and likely, given the donation activity) that he was registered as a Republican only to influence the Republican primary elections (not an uncommon practice as far as I'm aware).
The key point here is that gun nuts have been told for decades by the NRA and right-wing groups that their right to bear arms is critical to stop a "tyrannical government". This is commonly used to defend the right of every "patriotic" American to bear arms.
When the right keeps using rhetoric like this (after school shootings no less!) they shouldn't be making the shocked Pikachu face when one of their own takes potshots at Trump. Or anyone for that matter. It basically doesn't matter if the shooter was a tree-hugging gay democrat at this point. The message that encourages and enables this kind of violence is almost entirely coming from the right.
Speaking of the shooter's motivations: Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists", so it's entirely conceivable that a "true patriot" conservative decided to utilise his second amendment rights to stop what he felt like was a betrayal of his party and country by an openly anti-democratic autocrat.
The other key part of what I said in my GP comment is that the propagandists on the right immediately jumped on the opportunity to blame the left and the Democrats before the political affiliation of the shooter was even known.[1] Thousands upon thousands gave this the thumbs up, re-tweeted it, shared it, etc...
A right-wing congressman blames Biden personally, but he's not the only one. Here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw0y9xljv2yo
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/prominent-repu...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/republic...
Etc...
[1] This reminds me of when that hospital was bombed in Gaza and then palestinion authorities had an exact body count (in the hundreds!) mere minutes later and blamed Israel. Never mind that few if any died, and the bomb was one of their own missiles. That's not on message. This is precisely the same scenario. The second there's a shooting of a Republican candidate, it surely must be the Democrats doing it, that's on message.
> Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists"
Trump has been leader of the Republicans since the shooter was twelve years old...
In any case, you've weakened your claim from the shooter being right wing to it being "entirely conceivable" that he's right wing. Well, fine, many things are conceivable, but what's the positive reason for thinking that it's true? And does it outweigh the reasons against thinking that it's true? The fact that he registered as a Republican for reasons we don't know, and that he's wearing a gun-themed t-shirt (I hink we can assume he's not against guns on principle), seem to be substantially less weighty data points than the fact that he's just tried to kill Trump.
Libertarians would be pro-gun, Republican registered, and feasibly hate Trump.
Not saying this guy was Libertarian mind you, but... its not very hard to come up with Right-wing people who match this profile. Maybe with a bit more data / investigating we can come up with more information.
But the left is not exactly known for being gun nuts or bringing AR15 rifles to places.
I don't think there is value in this kind of argument.
Yes, some folks on the hard right in the US like to brandish weapons as political speech and use the implied threat of violence to make people around them feel intimidated.
However, this has nothing to do with one attempted murderer or the political party he most associates with.
I find this kind of finger pointing speculation unhelpful and divisive and I think we should be more actively aligning on "people shouldn't murder people they disagree with" which is a value everyone should be able to openly agree on.
Bullshit.
If this were a leftist, the Right would be talking about the evils of the socialists or something.
Its all cute and "please don't talk about the Republicanness of this guy" the minute people realize he was Republican and a gun-nut.
I don't like leftists or socialists either mind you. But its pretty despicable to expect Americans to rise to the challenge. Americans failed to rise every other time, its not fair for Republicans to get a free pass on this one.
I think it's fine to attack a group's ideology but I don't think it's fine to say "that group I don't like does this so that person who did the same thing probably is in that group"
Yes, Libertarian could make sense. There are some reports now from his former classmates that he took conservative positions in school debates.
This makes the motive all the more enigmatic.