116 replies
1d19h
How the hell did we get here?
At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years". Unless this is a lone, unstable individual, it is more evidence that our system needs more balance.
Truly sad that we've descended to this level
This is a horrible thing, but sadly nothing new. Pardon the Wikipedia block quote:
If anything we’ve been “overdue”.
6/45 presidents have been shot today.
Today that number is 7/45
So it went from 13% to 15%. Not only that, but firearms technology has advanced considerably. If anything, statistically speaking we've been incredibly lucky in the past 30 years
Curious how the shooter missed though. And just, how they seem to miss quite often in general.
Anecdotally, it seems like many people seem to underestimate how difficult accurate shooting actually is. I genuinely can't count the number of times I've taken someone interested in shooting out to the range for their first time and they get dismayed when they can't place accurate shots even at a fairly close range (<25 meters), from a sitting position, with a rifle rest and being able to aim as long as they want with no stress or pressure before firing.
The general pop culture opinion cultivated by movies, shows, video games, etc. seem to mislead a lot of people towards the idea that guns are just a "point and shoot" type of deal at any range in any situation. When the reality is like any other hobby it takes many many hours of practice and lots of $$$ worth of ammo to get to the point where you can consistently place shots on target at decent ranges and even then that's in a controlled environment with a paper target that doesn't move, no pressure on you, you're probably not firing standing up without a support etc.
A former sniper said on CNN that it should've been so easy to hit from such a short distance that it could only have been "divine intervention" that saved Trump.
A former sniper would also have a few hundred to a few thousand hours more range time than a random member of the public. I wouldn't doubt that "easy" for someone like that would have a much different meaning than for everyone else.
He was saying it would've been easy for the shooter in question (ie, a random 20-year old).
Mind you, that former sniper was also a Republican congressman so I would not be surprised if he was just using the opportunity to build the Trump Messiah narrative.
Latest news is that a local cop climbed up the ladder and saw him, he pointed his rifle at the cop, cop climbed back down, and he immediately pointed his rifle back at the at stage and started shooting at Trump. So he would've been panicking when he was shooting.
Apparently Crooks was rejected from his school rifle team for being such a bad shot they thought it would just be too dangerous if he participated...
How long till we have gun stabilizing, sort of like image stabilization in cameras?
I do not know what it would take to do that, but even if it needs AI it doesn't sound too far off.
Electronic firing probably makes more sense. So you put ai/algo between pulling trigger/pressing button and actually bullet firing.
At that point you might as well automate the whole gun.
<https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a37708762/...>
Aim enhancing guns exist. Example: TrackingPoint Precision-Guided Firearms: uses a computer-controlled firing system Tracks targets and calculates variables like distance, wind, and angle. Only fires when the gun is perfectly aligned with the target Can hit moving targets at distances up to 1,200 yards
they say it was around 120 meters, the first time i picked up my rifle and went to the range, i was able to consistently put the shots within 4cm at 100 meters. a tiny bit training, and we are talking 5cm at 200 meters.
it is NOT hard. whats hard is from-the-hip shooting like you see in movies.
i dont mean to be (too) rude, but if you have problems hitting accurately at 25 meters with a rested rifle, you have some serious problems that you should probably get looked at (im thinking inability to hold steady etc)
A consistent 4 cm at 100 meters your first time shooting, then a consistent 5 cm at 200 meters just a short time later is nothing short of a miracle. That's 1.3~ and 0.85~ MOA respectively.
Hell, many commercial and surplus rifles you buy will straight up NEVER shoot 1 MOA on their own as is even assuming you've clamped them perfectly to a table with no human input for error due to their construction.
In your situation you had no pressure at all. I imagine that even getting to the top of the roof without the police spotting hin is enough to give him an extremely high level of adrenaline that causes his body to start shaking.
In addition he knew that snipers and police were constantly watching roof tops, and if he poked his head out he may not have many seconds to actually raise his gun, aim and shoot.
I am not an expert, but I doubt you can compare your experience on the range to a kid full of adrenaline trying to take a shot at one of the most protected persons in the world. It's a completely different situation.
They also forget all those times they've gotten excited in a confrontation and started to shake. Trying to be accurate is hard. Trying to do it while pumping with adrenaline changes it to basically impossible.
It’s probably not easy to take careful aim while in a large crowd without someone noticing— especially since there are skilled professionals whose only job is to watch for people taking careful aim…
Dude was on a roof. 400ft away
Less than 140 yards and missed?
Firstly needs to learn how to engage in politics w/out a gun. Also needs to practice.
Meanwhile, next door in Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEY00iJv4CQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6KJM-MODME but we're just farmers.
Person aimed for the head, seems like he wasn't trained how to kill people.
Anyway, the person knew they would die seconds later, heavy breathing makes it is massively harder to aim when you are nervous, then it is easy to miss a moving head at 140 yards.
Presumably Trump would have a vest on
Rifle rounds go straight through medium vests, you need a really heavy and bulky vest to stop them, Trump wouldn't wear one of those. The typical vests you see just stop low caliber bullets like pistols, and then you hope secret service can stop anyone with a rifle from getting a shot.
The times I’ve worn vests I’ve had to have ceramic plates in for ak-47 style bullets, but I’d assume that the secret service would have something more fancy available.
Nope. Thick layered ceramics are still pretty much the best stuff to stop high energy rounds. Got 2 sets of AR500 plates myself.
There is actually now very expensive cutting edge stuff (FRAS) that’s flexible and can barely stop a 5.56 round, and i’d assume important people have whatever top secret upgrade exists for that, but that could be wrong.
Difficult to practice with your head full of adrenaline.
The practice is there to help when your head's full of adrenaline.
That's fair, but it's only part of it. The issue of "stage fright" still exists and can't be mastered just by practicing your craft to proficiency in solitude. There are other practices, like literally going on stages (speaking, performing) and becoming used to the pressure, that would overlap.
Hopefully I'm not giving useful tips to future assassins. :P
It was a kid out of highschool who had confronted a policeman just moments before. The guy was under a lot of pressure.
You know he wasn't that well trained when you see that he killed a bystander.
shooting is quite difficult in real life.
One report I heard said that someone (security?) went up to the roof to confront the shooter before he made his shots. The shooter pointed his rifle at this person who then backed down for cover. This might explain why the snipers got a fix on him so quickly.
One ex-USMC commentator on Bloomberg said that the shot wouldn’t have been very difficult at that range. As to why he missed, maybe the shooter had to rush his shots since he was spotted. Maybe he was just a bad shot. It was explained that he wasn’t accepted into his high school shooting team.
This is what I remember hearing while doom-browsing YouTube, so take with a grain of salt.
Being President is statistically the most dangerous job in the United States
Compared to other places (like ancient Greece that switched rulers twice a year).. I guess it's a risky job, but someone's gotta do it.
Maybe, but hopefully we can move towards a future with more voting and less violence.
and maybe if we are really lucky, we could also move towards a future where candidates are allowed to be on the ballot, and shouldnt be kept off to "save democracy" - we must save democracy by disallowing people voting for who they want!
I actually agreed that Trump should be on the ballot back when that was a thing.
I guess my point is: if anyone thinks their grievances justifies violence, remember that the other side has grievances too.
We have free speech in the United States, so we are free to say things like “Biden is senile” or “Trump is anti-democratic.” But if we can’t exercise free speech and disagree without descending into violence, then it will be our downfall. Xi and Putin will be delighted. Maybe they’ll take over and we’ll have a system where saying the wrong thing gets you disappeared, strapped to a tiger chair, or thrown out of a window.
Or a future where the loser doesn’t desperately cling to power and incite violence to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
"And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson, 1787
And what was TJ's attitude when New England cut up rough about the embargo?
It's not very common in the modern era, though I would add in RFK Sr., who was assassinated while running for president several decades ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._Ken...
Excepting Eisenhower and Johnson, every US president (or president-elect) has been subject to an assassination attempt dating back nearly a century to Herbert Hoover (1929--1933).
Shots have been fired at FDR, Truman, Kennedy(†), Ford, Reagan, Clinton, and yesterday.
Bombs or explosives have been placed or deployed against Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...>
We got here because both sides have for the last 8 years consistently failed to treat one another as human beings with opinions rather than the literal devil incarnate.
There are a substantial number of people on this forum who sincerely believe that if Trump is elected there will not be another election. If enough people sincerely believe that, one of them will eventually decide that it's worth it to sacrifice their own life to ensure the survival of democracy in America.
That's correct. And the idea that Trump will end democracy is a core part of the left's fear campaign. They share responsibility for this.
Oh come on man. He clearly tried to subvert the last election and came within steps of his VP being killed by a mob he encoded while trying to certify the election. This isn’t just a fear campaign.
It's a fear campaign, and the leaders of the Democratic party know it.
Trump regularly behaves completely irresponsibly and is a terrible loser, and Trump is definitely capable of (intentionally and otherwise) inciting violence, but if you compare the actions of the Democratic leadership to their rhetoric you can clearly see they don't believe the full extent of their own rhetoric about him.
They play up the apocalyptic fears for democracy itself because they know it's the only card they have left after nominating Biden. If they were serious about protecting democracy they'd have kicked him out last year when there was still time to build momentum for an electable candidate, rather than continuing to protect his ego. If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have tried harder to court the moderate voters (who are very courtable right now if anyone cared to try). If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have done anything other than focus exclusively on how terrible Trump is for the last four years, because they know that you don't beat a fire by fanning it. They would have deescalated, but instead they escalated, and they absolutely share responsibility for this.
I remember seeing a comment in HN that went like "So some group of people walked into a government building. Big deal."
I guess, for people whose world view is so malleable that they can look at an attempt to overthrow the government and say "Some people walked into a government building," it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for Trump being demonized by the Left.
Lucky they all forgot their guns that day.
Multiple people were convicted of carrying firearms inside the Capitol on Jan 6th, and it's been documented that weapon caches were prepared close by.
If they were all armed (looks like a guy had a knife and another claimed to have had his handgun), why didn't they use them?
Because, due to the actions of a few brave people, they didn't get the chance to use them on any politicians.
Let me turn this around - why lie about such an easy-to-check fact? Even RFK has stopped pushing this, why do you continue when it's trivial to disprove?
Was the plan to run back for the weapons once the politicians had been spotted? They assumed no resistance until that point? Why wouldn't you arm everyone?
As far as what was brought into the building I only see mention of a potential concealed carry handgun or two? The only person shot was a unarmed woman who apparently caused the capitol police to fear for their lives. If they had guns as you claimed then they forgot to use them?
Sort of sounds like they forgot the guns, make sense given so many of them were elderly.
I don't have to know the exact plans to disprove your claim that "they all forgot their guns that day". Some people brought guns, and some people specifically stashed guns close by.
I mean, why do you think guns were stashed close by? Just for fun? Do you do this as a hobby as well?
I expect many own firearms for hobby purposes.
Really? How often do you stash weapons in close proximity to political events? How many weapons do you usually stash?
I'm sure you are aware that I didn't ask whether you own weapons as a hobby. Since we're interacting in good faith and you're surely not attempting to derail the conversation with unrelated remarks, I'm interpreting your answer as affirmative.
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-florida-virginia-co...
"You guys ready to overthrow the government?"
"Almost, just let me drop off all the guns and ammo somewhere outside the city limits"
Oh, so you're just fully committing to bad faith? Don't let me stop you, but please be aware that is against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What actually constitutes an "attempt to overthrow a government"? Do you think a random mob would be followed by the country as a whole? Do you have so little faith in the government's institutions that they'd just agree to follow them? Do you think the military would?
If an "attempt" is so far flung from reality as to be impossible does it actually make it an attempt? If the mob had been half its size, or a quarter its size, or even one person, is that still an "attempt to overthrow the government"?
Even if they'd literally walked in with their guns blazing and killed every single politician they could find, while it'd cause a ton of chaos, the government would still have elections to replace those people killed and government would continue.
That's an extremely naive statement. Massacres of politicans are rarely followed by everything going calmly back to normal, it's much more likely to be followed by more violence, a crackdown on freedoms and liberties and a slide away from democracy.
That is correct. Massacres of politicans are generally followed by military factions taking control of a country, also generally a military faction that participated in the massacre. Those are coups.
When we have massacre of politicians like the 2011 Norway attacks, we call it a domestic terrorism and throw the guilty into jail, and then everything goes mostly calmly back to normal. The risk that those actually succeed in changing the government of a democracy is thankfully very slim. Obviously they are still very horrible acts.
Yes institutions and democracy can resist and win against a small group of armed people taking over the physical seats of the government.
But in order to win people have to agree that the act is profoundly antidemocratic and a punishable offence.
It becomes more problematic when a sizable part of the population dismisses it as a non-issue. That very fact raises the level of concern several orders of magnitude. The more people dismiss the level of severity of an act of subversion the less faith you can have that the problem will just fix itself.
So yeah, it's not a big deal, provided that we all agree it is a big deal. Otherwise it becomes a big deal.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
These conversations (this entire thread and all(!) others like it, with perhaps a few exceptional comments here and there) are like listening to my uneducated family members discussing AI at my last family reunion.
Noteworthy: they show no signs that they realize the predicament they are in.
Why are people like this?
How can there be no exceptions?
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy...
Look only at the Trump-Raffensberger phone call. You're asking me to ignore the evidence of my senses. The transcript is there for you to read.
The 22nd amendment is the only thing that gives me confidence, but it won't be for lack of trying on his part.
Trump is completely normal - let’s roll the dice after his Jan 6th performance and hope for the best.
We’ve got a SCOTUS that says he can be King. Surely he won’t use it, because…
It's wild how the Overton window has shifted for the worse. Back in 2015-2016, supporting Trump was politically incorrect because of what he theoretically might do. Now after he actually tried to do the thing, the floodgates seem to have opened and all the scum have given each other confidence to come out showing their true colours.
Are you forgetting what happened after the 2020 election? This “both sides” shit is a bunch of fucking baloney.
I'm quite sure he is open about ending democracy from day one?
There were 16 years of bad faith negotiations from one side
Case in point. Show this comment to either side and they'd heartily agree with you.
I realize the phrase "both sides" is triggering for anyone who sees the other side as completely insane and their side as correct and rational, but I stand by what I said. I live among rabid right-wingers and work among rabid left-wingers, and neither group sees the other as anything other than evil or stupidly deluded.
They're both wrong on that front and both need to stop and actually try to understand each other before we see more violence.
Trump tried to cling to power once after losing a fair election. You don’t think he’ll try again?
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.
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.
Notably the shooter was a right-wing Republican wearing a shirt with a gun channel logo on it.
This was a problem (Trump) and a solution (assassination) entirely of the right’s own making.
The “both sides” rhetoric is a political talking point invented by people with degrees in marketing. They trot it out every time there’s an one-sided problem like this because they know that the partisan public will be quick to blame “the other side”.
What’s sad is that everyone keeps falling for it, even here, a forum of supposedly enlightened technologists.
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.
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.
No one should be assassinated for expressing a political viewpoint, what the hell even is this opinion?
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.
You're misinformed. You're confusing the 3/5ths compromise with the desire to not allow mob rule from more populated states to unfairly control the smaller states.
It's not surprising, because Democrats try very hard to instill this sense of victimhood in their fight for power at any cost.
What do you mean by 'unfairly control' the small states? They should get to influence national decisions based on their population, not their land.
The original arrangement was that the seperate and independant States|Colonies were seperate and independant States|Colonies working together in a collective Union that wouldn't overrule or take away from the seperate and individual State|Colony part.
Like a neighbourhood action group, or twelve distinct farming families working together on an agricultural Bulk Harvesting collective, etc.
The decisions of the collective were to be made (hey, check the paperwork, it's still around) on a weighted vote per State basis .. it was never the case that if one member bred exponentially and had way more kids than all the others put together then that member State would get all the decision making power.
Clearly time has marched on and people now think of The United States of America as a single country .. it's not, nor is the European Union.
But maybe it is time to update the paperwork and common rules?
The original arrangement was the articles of confederation, and explicitly weak federal government which was made as a loose federation of fairly powerful states, each allowed to mostly do their own thing, with a federal government that did as little as possible.
It didn't even make it ten years before it would have died.
The Constitution of the United States was written entirely to give the Federal government actual power and control and teeth. It was very clear that signing up to the United States meant individual states significantly giving away their power. That's why the constitution had so many extreme compromises, especially to slave states.
The US constitution entirely exists to codify the US being one nation.
The paperwork and common rules were updated after the dissolution of the Continental Congress in 1789. But it seems a few people still haven't gotten the memo.
That is exactly mob rule. Why should any group of people be allowed to enforce its will on another group simply because they are more numerous? If there are no systems put into place to limit and balance the will of the majority then they are perfectly capable of running amok. How do you think things like lynchings and pogroms happen? A majority decides the minority is to blame for some evil and they happily ignore laws and morals because they have come to a unanimous decision. The same thing can happen at national scale.
Imagine if you applied your population rule to the U.N., what a farce that would be.
A simple majority vote only works in relatively small groups where all of the participants are on roughly equal standing and even then it's a good idea to have some secondary authority re-evaluate the decision and ensure everyone is acting in good faith and not simply forming temporary alliances in order to rob some weaker group and divide the spoils.
This whole retelling of history exclusively through the lens of the slavery is getting super old. It is divisive, it’s a form of revisionist history, and it’s wrong.
Read about the Northwest Ordinance, the provisions in it banning slavery in the 1780s were ultimately adopted verbatim into the Thirteenth Amendment. Or the actions of the founders including John Adams who put their lives on the line to fight against slavery. And the numerous states that made it illegal at the time of the nation’s founding.
There’s a lot more to history than the over-simplified retelling about how the radical pace of social change in the 18th century wasn’t somehow fast enough for our 2024 sensibilities.
The founders feared the will of the majority partially because they saw the instability in France and recognized the dangers of mob rule.
Within a few years of the drafting of the constitution, the reign of terror began.
The majority isn't always right.
I think part of the answer is how you phrased the situation yourself, as a "battle of ideas."
The rhetoric by both "left" and "right" platforms pitches a divided America, and a "battle for the soul of the nation." Battle against whom? My own countrymen? For what? For my vision for America? I was unsettled when I heard this (but maybe I'm just too sensitive.)
When you combine this kind of inflammatory speech with blanket group classifications like "liberals" or "MAGA" or "democrats" or whatever, you've now identified an enemy in this "battle", and as I've seen lately, can completely lose sight that these people are our countrymen too.
The language on both sides is apocalyptic - if we don't win this election, it's the end of America! And you have to fight for your country, or you won't have one! It's a war!
Well, if you call it a war enough times, sooner or later somebody will take you literally.
I think you're right. That kind of language taps energy to get bases riled up, but it's a dangerous kind of excitement (panic?) that can lead to desperate acts.
It makes my stomach turn that people - and I - can be susceptible to this, and furthermore that it's taken advantage of. Politicians are skilled hackers, too.
It also, I think, sometimes gives those on the edge of doing bad things, a little push and then they do terrible things like this.
I think it's that along with a few other things. One is the media and that's nothing new. Don Henley's excellent song 'Dirty Laundry' is all about how the media loves to have bad things happen (dirty laundry) for them to report about. Another is the internet. There's something about engaging electronically that causes (I believe) people to forget that they're engaging with other people. In other words, they (generally) react more crass/aggressive than they would in person. I also believe that there is a growing acceptance (among both major parties) that the ends justify the means. This is actually the one that frightens me the most. It seems like as time goes by you see more of it. It's a dangerous path and we'll be suffering the consequences more and more.
Trump literally tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power after losing a fair election. He will likely do this again. If he succeeds, American democracy is toast.
Well, it's a battle for control over the courts, for control over the administrative state, for control over the school systems, for control over the election systems. This is why judge appointments got so strained in the last 15 years, why the Heritage Foundation wants to take back the federal government with Project 2025 (by firing 2 million federal employees en masse), why conservatives are so concerned about indoctrination in schools, and about attacking the Deep State. It's also why Democrats are campaigning on keeping democracy from ending, and keeping elections free.
"our countrymen" is yet another category.
Unskilled and unaware of it categorization is a major component of the collective hallucination we've been taught to call reality.
That said: I do not disagree with you. This planet is out of control.
Lets go backwards.
Messaging from the democrat side has been that trump is a threat to democracy, he's a fascist nazi, etc etc. You've seen the vilification. Days prior Biden literally said to put Trump in the bullseye and 'elimination' is necessary. Biden has withdrawn all these ads.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-politic...
Political polarization is primarily derived from the democrat side.
Echo chambers are mostly democrat sided. Reddit for example having banned r/thedonald for example. Each side now lives separately and aren't talking to each other except to dunk on each other's dumbest candidates. John Stewart's fault.
The fix here has to come from the democrat side, end the identity politics, and start preaching unity, democracy, and everyone is on the same team. It does seem that they have shifted their messaging, but to change your messaging strategy 3 months before the election is rather election ending.
You're really going to say that, while Trump sends out campaign emails like this?
This sort of rhetoric is standard. Seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
All of your examples are actions against him or completely reasonable things to say like "STAND WITH TRUMP"
Not prophetic, the number of people who see Trump as a fascist threat that needs to be stopped is huge.
The end of my post was the important one. The Biden team has changed their messaging. I guarantee the media will do the same. But this isn't the group im talking about who has to change.
Given your response here and I'm guessing you're average... so the democrats won't be. So what's the consequences?
For one, that was a campaign email, so it's one example.
You're going to take this position, whatever. But nothing said about Trump has been false. Democratic leaders shouldn't be apologizing for anything, but I'm sure they will.
Say what? (Even the article you cite does not support your claim.)
Double what?
There is plenty of villification coming from Trump and the right. (Read his speeches.) There is plenty of violent rhetoric on the right. There is a big echo chamber on the right. If you don't see it, maybe you're in an echo chamber?
It eerily reminds me of the dialogue scene from that recent movie.
Journalists: We are Americans.
Soldier: What kind of American are you ???.
Sorry, what movie is this? I don't watch many movies.
You're not missing anything.
That was an edgy trailer cut. In the movie, he clarified "South American, Central American...?" He wanted to know if they were from the U.S. and kill them if they weren't. (That's why he only shot the two Asians.)
Since 2016 about half the country has been fed a steady stream of rhetoric that seeks to define Trump as a literal - not figurative or metaphorical - existential threat to "our democracy". A Hitler 2.0 or worse, and the mark of Fascism finally coming to the United States.
If you take those arguments at face value, and really and truly believe they are true, then it is unsurprising that someone took a shot at "New Hitler". Because why wouldn't someone do that if it was true?
Of course it isn't true, and even the people who say this stuff don't believe it[1].
[1] https://x.com/Timodc/status/1811136469911711877
If you think "threat to our democracy" rhetoric started "from the left" in 2016, you should go lookup what Fox News has been saying for decades.
War on christmas? War on Christianity? Obama isn't even a real american so he is an illegitimate president? "They're coming for our children"? Christ that one regularly gets drag story time cleared out due to violent threats. How dare someone read a book to a child while wearing a dress.
Or maybe you forget the decades of bombing abortion clinics?
You know we USED to have violent hard left organizations like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Now the right has to wave vaguely at "auntie fa", a "group" as real as "anonymous".
Those are the stated rules, let’s be clear about that. The actual rules are that there are no rules.
Painting an election by popular vote as a “battle of ideas” is falling into the all-too-common trap of thinking that we are rational agents. I can’t even begin to expand on how incorrect that is.
Even a little bit of candid consideration would uncover the truth of this. Political ads aren’t logical arguments. They’re emotional appeals. Hell, “he should be in charge because he’s most popular” is itself an ad populum argument. It’s nonsense to begin with.
I don't know if we can honestly ask how did we get here... January 6th was just one of many shining beacons to let us know that this issue was a powder keg.
Social Media has added a layer of deep disinformation & divisive ideological bubbles that are all largely going unchecked as well, where anyone can be anyone, and where it can be quite profitable for personalities to become incendiary... We're really not holding anyone, nor the bodies managing social media and news media accountable for their actions at all, which opens the doors to sensationalism, and even to embellishment on issues which are normally meant to be commonplace and handled professionally.
I think everyone has had fair warning that the rhetoric would lead to more drama, and the country has ignored it in a quest to line pockets. Politics are meant to be boring, and in order to serve Democracy, it simply can't ignore and even encroach on basic rights of others it represents. We have gone too far in political extremes, and this is the end result, slowly getting worse over time.
It's clear that we need to stop making personal servants celebrities, and to stop watching and pushing politics as if it's a TV drama or Football game, otherwise it's only going to get worse... That being said, there is a lot more organization and agendas involved in politics now than in the past.
Technology now is widely being used against everyone to achieve and monitor goals and progress in capturing profit... Sometimes as tech insiders, we have to be careful about what we implement and even say "no" as a response to being asked to do things that undermine people and the ethical balance of the world.
Profiting off of tech is not good if it makes the world we all live in deeply unstable. There's no castle, even in Maui, that anyone can build to survive political and economic collapse of the country nor the world. There is a better way to do all of this.
He has been compared to Hitler countless times, and was demonized by the media for years, meanwhile his supporters were dismissed as lunatics and conspiracy theorists when this is pointed out.
We literally almost had civil war or at least a real insurrection today.
Did you not see the insurrection on the capital just a few years ago? People chanting Hang Mike Pence? How about the person who blew up a small part of downtown Nashville one Christmas morning because lizard people? There's lots of lunatics out there, plenty to go around.
Someone should shoot "democracy" itself. It's 2024, why are we still driving a political system with training wheels that always takes us to places other than where 90%+ of people want to go?
Could it maybe be in part because we are immersed in pro-"democracy" propaganda from the day we are born, and are denied the educational curriculum (set by "democracy") that would give us the tools to think and engage in discourse at a level that would allow us to realize it, or at least consider the idea without everyone losing their cool?
Now, sticking with convention: has anyone any epistemically unsound memorized memes and catch phrases for me, to "prove" "democracy" is the ~best we can do, and that ideas like replacing it with a more sophisticated, non-deceptive implementation shan't be discussed among "the adults at the table"?
Inb4 "this isn't what HN is for".
Protip, fellow Humans: it is possible to think your way out of this simulation we are in, at least substantially (at which point you can rest, regroup, and plan for the next stage of ascent). And it isn't even very hard. It is little more than doing just what we Humans have proven ourselves excellent at, most of the time:
1. Identify a challenge.
2. Solve it.
Heck, this problem is actually mostly far more trivial[2] than things we do every day without thinking twice about it. It's mostly just not on our radar, and heavily psychologically protected territory[1]. But religion was this way once also, and science handed it an ass whooping, didn't it?
[1] Simple experiments can be run on social media or IRL to demonstrate this: specific prompts will produce highly predictable responses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
[2] Irony noted lol
Too many guns ? Too much interference of the CIA ?
What means democracy ? Rich people buying politicians to promote laws which will make them richer ? A bunch of "citizens" sending other "citizens" to die "for their country" so some assholes can increase profits ?
By the way, sorry that this comment is so long.
This level of violence isn't new. This has never been new. There's always been stuff like this. Yes, today's era of political polarization is bad, but the US seems to go through cycles of great polarization and regrettably frequent violence followed by fairly calm periods - at least by one metric (e.g, by 'civil wars' 1860-65 was the worst, but if you measured by violent labor strikes the late 1800s-early 1900s were). Thus you get the American Revolution, then a period of relative calm, then the years leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself. Then a period of relative quiet, followed by the much smaller strikes, which often turned violent, as well as pogroms against blacks. Then relative quiet, then Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc.
Summary of the data following: Proceeding in fifty-year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024, ending at 1770-July 13, 1774, this era placed #2 in civil unrest, but #4 out of 6 - ie, below average - in a broader category, counting coups, massacres, civil unrest, rebellions, worker deaths due to labor disputes, and racial violence.
For a sense of the persistence of it, look at Wikipedia's page[1]. In fact, if anything, it seems to be slowing down; Wikipedia (thus far) lists 17 incidents from 2020-2024 (inclusive). Scrolling 50, 100, 150, 200, etc. years back shows the following:
50 years ago [1970-July 13,1974]: 28 (!)
100 years ago [1920-July 13,1924]: 9.
150 years ago [1870-July 13,1874]: 10. Again, possibly an underestimate.
200 years ago [1820-July 13,1824]: 0. This is almost certainly an underestimate, but it's how many Wikipedia lists.
250 years ago [1770-July 13, 1774]: 5[2]
So, we're the second-highest. However, Wikipedia also helpfully has lists of coup attempts, massacres, etc. So! [Note that this includes things that partially include that time period, e.g., the American Revolution, and larger things, e.g., the Black Panthers. This is from Wikipedia; you can edit it if you want. The version I'm using is accurate as of when I'm writing this]
Combined number of coups[3], massacres[4], civil unrest[1][2], rebellions[5], worker deaths "from labor disputes"[counts incidents, not individual deaths] [6], and racial violence[7] [may have some double counting], moving in 50 year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024:
2020-July 13,2024: Coup attempts: 2, massacres: 3, civil unrest: 17, rebellions: 2, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1 [it lumps police brutality together; you're welcome to object]. Total: 25.
1970-July 13,1974: coups: 0, massacres: 1, civil unrest: 28, rebellions: 5, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 15. Total: 49.
1920-July 13,1924: Coups: 0, Massacres: 6, Civil unrest: 9, rebellions: 1 [Coal Wars], worker deaths: 14, racial violence: 7 [doesn't count KKK as overarching thing]. Total: 37
1870-July 13,1874: Coups: 1 [state], Massacres: 3, Civil unrest: 10, rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 1, racial violence: 12, Total: 27
1820-July 13,1824: Coups: 0, Massacres: 0, Civil unrest: 0 [somehow], rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1, not including slavery. Total: 1
1770-July 13,1774: Coups: 0, Massacres: 1, Civil unrest: 5, rebellions: 2 [includes American revolution], worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 0, not counting slavery. Total: 8.
So we come in at position #4 out of 6. A reasonable argument could be made that we're actually BELOW average currently.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States.
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_Colonial_North_America
[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_by_country#United_States [this counts state-level attempts]
[4] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_United_States. Erratic about which mass shootings it includes.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_Unit...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...
The assassination target promised loudly and repeatedly, it would not adhere to that. This a vote for him would be the last vote. Guy may as well have be another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser if trump gets to power against the mummified establishment figure.
I know it sounds awful, but I blame the media. If you looked at some of the leading liberal newspapers in America, the minutes and hours after the shooting, you could see how they try to minimize the event, instead of reporting it truthfully.