#it was not just an assassination attempt it was a mass shooting

[a-moth-to-the-light]

i will say that i’m devastated a person died, and that two other people were injured. i do not care at all what happens to trump, but i do care about mass shootings. i’m devastated, and i’m terrified. and my leftist desire to protect people from mass shootings doesn’t change when those people are attending a trump rally.

[stele3]

A History of (Supposed) Violence

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

(Apologies for the brief hiatus, I needed some time to digest Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Conclusion: fuck Donna Troy and Kyle Rayner, they killed an entire planet and didn't have the good grace to feel bad about it afterwards.)

Foreword: Jason Todd kills people. But has he killed as many people as fandom thinks he has? I'm starting to think the answer is a resounding no. Therefore, I am starting this series to list every single one of Jason Todd's on-page, confirmed kills, and -- to be fair -- all of the heavily-implied and attempted ones, too.

Caveat: I have not read every single comic featuring Jason Todd. But by God, by the end of this series, I will have. Do not send me angry messages telling me I have forgotten this glaring example of his murderous ways. I am moving in deliberate, exhaustive, chronological order. I will get to it.

Part 8: Batman & Robin, Issues #3-6

Oh goody, we've hit the Grant Morrison part of our ride.

Jason enters this already bonkers-ass story by shooting two cops. This marks an interesting departure from his previous history: we've seen him kill rapists, assassins, and petty criminals, but now he's shooting the "good" guys. To be fair, the cops were about to shoot an incredibly traumatized young girl who's been tortured and had her face altered by this week's villain.

Also, what the FUCK is he wearing?

Wild. When the pill helmet comes off, Jason is a redhead. He mentions that Bruce made him dye his hair black to match Dick's, which is fun.

Jason decides to make the young girl his new sidekick, and introduces her to the practice of killing murderers.

(Side note: the Batman series has always dabbled in some really gross stereotypes about mentally-ill individuals, but Morrison's run cranks the dial up to 11 and breaks it off.)

They then throw the guy out of a window and he lands on the street below. His lightning-based weapon then explodes, blowing up two cop cars; it's unclear if there was anyone inside the cop cars at the time, and it wasn't a direct, intentional kill, so I'm not counting this towards the murder count. It's still interesting to see the emphasis on Jason's violence affecting cops in addition to criminals. Of course, in Gotham (and everywhere else) those two categories aren't exclusive, but I find it hard to overlook the fact that Jason is shown killing police officers just as Dick Grayson, former police officer, has stepped into the role of Batman. The writing even makes sure to mention it.

Jason and his new sidekick Scarlet break into a meeting of rogues, where Jason announces that he's killed one of their members already and then proceeds to kill at least another three.

A new baddie named Flamingo shows up and he's...I'm not giving you a picture of him, because it's cartoonishly homophobic. I knew to expect this from Morrison's run but damn, dude.

Anyway. The baddie is there to assassinate Jason, but takes the time to shoot Damian in the spine, paralyzing him.

Once again, fandom mass delusion strikes. I've heard it said that Jason was to blame for Damian's temporary paralysis, but the injury didn't come from Jason's hands, it came from the assassin sent to kill Jason.

Jason then borrows some construction equipment to kill Flamingo, though it's a little unclear if he succeeds, since Flamingo winds up buried under rubble.

Death count: 8 (I am counting Flamingo in the death count, mainly because I don't like to contemplate the idea of him reappearing in the comics)

[cursedreverie1945]

Today is trump's inauguration

MLK Day

It's also the 83rd anniversary of the Wannsee Conference.

The Wannsee Conference was held OTD in 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. It was organized by Reinhard Heydrich, at the request of Hermann Göring, to discuss and coordinate the implementation of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question,"which was the plan to systematically exterminate European Jews. Key attendees included:

Reinhard Heydrich: As the chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Heydrich was the main architect of the Final Solution. He called and chaired the conference to ensure coordination among various Nazi departments in the extermination plan.

Adolf Eichmann: A key figure in organizing the logistics of the Holocaust, Eichmann was the head of the RSHA department responsible for Jewish affairs and coordinating the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, ghettos, and death camps. He took minutes during the meeting. One copy survived and it wasn't even a full copy.

Heinrich Müller: As head of the Gestapo, Müller was involved in the coordination of secret police operations during the Holocaust.

Karl Eberhard Schöngarth: A commander in the SS and police in the General Government (part of occupied Poland), Schöngarth was actively involved in the implementation of mass shootings and deportations of Jews.

Josef Bühler: As the State Secretary for the General Government, Bühler advocated for the inclusion of Poland in the Final Solution plans, expressing eagerness to "solve" the Jewish question in his jurisdiction promptly.

Roland Freisler: A representative of the Reich Ministry of Justice, Freisler was involved in ensuring that legal frameworks were in place for the persecution and deportation of Jews.

Otto Hofmann: As the head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office, Hofmann was responsible for racial policies that included identifying and rounding up Jews for deportation.

At the Conference, Bühler remarked “...that the General Government would welcome it if a start were to be made on the final solution of this question in the General Government, because here transportation does not pose a real problem nor would the deployment of a labor force interfere with the process of this operation. Jews should be removed from the area of the General Government as quickly as possible, because it is here that the Jew represents a serious danger as a carrier of epidemics, and in addition his incessant black marketeering constantly upsets the country's economic structure. Of the approximately 2.5 million Jews in question, the majority are anyway unfit for work.”

Soon after the Conference, the Holocaust entered into a new, more deadly phase. Among other events, Operation Reinhard was a direct result. Named for Heydrich, who was assassinated just months after the conference, it was intended to kill every Jew.

Operation Reinhard built a series of death camps called Operation Reinhard Camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Three other pre-existing camps, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz II, were also put to work towards this goal.

Ultimately, 90% of the Jews of Poland would not survive.

May all of these sonsofbitches never find rest.

Pictured, Reinhard and Lina Heydrich the day before the attempt on his life 26 May 1942. He would die on 04 June 1942.

[droctarine]

my dash made me curious, so I decided to take a look at the public record* to see what the most comparable assassination in recent USAmerican memory was via these two pages:

*It's wikipedia all right, I'm not doing real live research here. I am reading these pages and their biases and drawing inferences and conclusions based on them, that's all

Successful assassinations in the USA's 21st century are plentiful, but if we choose to ignore musicians and organized crime (not saying these don't count, just that they seem to me to be the least comparable to UHC), we're left with an NYC councilman, a doctor running an abortion clinic, an Arizona judge, a South Carolina state senator at the Charleston Church shooting, and an LA bishop. All of these people wielded power regionally to some extent or other, but none at the intranational level like Thompson (Possibly Dr. Tiller in his advocacy for abortion availability in the public eye, but it's a stretch).

If Dr. Tiller is actually the most notable of these persons, then the last truly notable individual USAmerican to be publicly assassinated for overtly political reasoning was in 2009. The Charleston Church shooting in 2015 arguably received equal or greater media coverage (anecdotally), but the UHC shooting was not a mass one (rather the opposite), so those will also be discounted for the sake of comparison.

As far as major attempts of the century go, none of them seem to be targeted at financial or business leaders specifically. It's Trump, Obama, a few congresspeople, and Salman Rushdie. Still nothing that fits well.

In fact, after looking through everything earlier than the 21st century, (most of these are activists, politicians, artists, or members of the media) I think there's only 3 incidents that come the closest in similarity:

Leno Labianca, murdered by the Mansons in 1969 along with his wife. Labianca was the president of local grocery/grocery wholesale companies. While it's true their deaths were generally due to their status as affluent white people, the Mansons were killing a bunch of people to try and gin up a race war, so again it seems less personally targeted and more that they simply checked enough boxes. Also multiples again.

Stanford White, murdered by jilted lover and coal/railroad tycoon Harry Kendall Thaw in 1906. White was an architect of some renown, and a partner in an influential NYC firm at the time (he also designed the Washington Square Arch in NYC if you've ever been to that!). Thaw had something of a one-sided rivalry with White, and had a lifelong battle with various mental illnesses it seems. Again, it's close in terms of persons targeted, but White still seems to be a regional figure rather than a national one (as Labianca was).

Henry Clay Frick, an attempted assassination by the anarchist Alexander Berkman in 1892. Frick was the chairman of Carnegie Steel, so he's my guess as to being the closest in terms of influence and affluence to Thompson. During the Homestead Strike, Berkman took it upon himself to see to Frick's death personally, despite the fact that he had zero contact or involvement with the striking steelworkers. Bad publicity from the failed assassination kneecapped the strike, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers never recovered from the loss.

All this to say, unless I've missed something (so majorly possible, I cannot stress enough how cursory this all was, as well as limited to the USA in scope), Brian Thompson may well be a first in this country. A CEO of a wide-reaching national company assassinated (seemingly) due to the nature of the work he and his company enact may not be entirely unprecedented, but at the very least they are in rarer company than I expected.

[actualadvocacybruh]

I don’t usually bite into conspiracy theories as most are very stupid and can be explained with “people aren’t that smart or coordinated”

But boy is it strange that we have constant mass shooting ending dozens of lives in the US almost weekly but trump has “assassination attempts” that fail so miserably they seem like fuckin ops

And always when he is on the back foot btw

He picked Vance which tanked his polls and then almost gets shot by a person that got suspiciously close and hit his teleprompter which was at an odd angle to be hit for someone aiming at trump

And now he gets destroyed in a debate and there is another attempt at his golf course which also failed and no one was harmed and no one saw it happen

Either people really are shit at killing in the US and all the other shootings are ordained and guided by god for some plan or they are ops and he figured almost getting shot is great for his polls

Just saying tyrants and wannabe dictators have used false assimilation attempts to gain power before (Hitler comes to mind)

[convertgrapeling]

It's pretty wild that I've been reading stuff about that assassination attempt all night and yet I've only now heard that a spectator died. Kind of grimly hilarious that the "mass shooting" part of this doesn't even register cos that's just another day in America I guess.

[aleatoryw]

I've seen some people expressing confusion that the man who shot at trump was a registered republican, but that makes perfect sense to me. he was a Right Wing Gun Guy, of course he would register as such. so why trump? just my speculation, but when someone commits a mass shooting, it's usually not because they resent schoolchildren or grocery shoppers or concert attendees, they're trying to go out big by making headlines. they're after fame in the most gruesome way possible. I think this entire incident is incorrectly framed as a failed assassination attempt when it was closer to a failed mass shooting with a famous first target.

[vague-humanoid]

Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of the AP3 Militia — ProPublica

Last February, some 20 men and their wives gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Spokane, Washington, for their annual Valentine’s Day celebration. The men weren’t just friends; they did community service work together. They had been featured on local television, in khakis and baseball caps, delivering 1,200 pounds of food to an area veterans’ center; they were gearing up for their next food drive, which they called Operation Hunger Smash. A few days after the holiday, the men went camping in the snow-speckled mountains outside Spokane, where they grilled rib-eyes and bacon-wrapped asparagus over a bonfire.

They also engaged in more menacing activities. They assembled regularly — sometimes wearing night-vision goggles in the dark — to practice storming buildings together with semiautomatic rifles. Their drills included using sniper rifles to shoot targets from distances of half a mile. And they belonged to a shadowy organization whose members were debating, with ever more intensity, whether they should engage in mass-scale political violence.

They were among the thousands of members of American Patriots Three Percent, a militia that has long been one of the largest in the United States and has mostly managed to avoid scrutiny. Its ranks included cops and convicted criminals, active-duty U.S. soldiers and small-business owners, truck drivers and health care professionals. Like other militias, AP3 has a vague but militant right-wing ideology, a pronounced sense of grievance and a commitment to armed action. It has already sought to shape American life through vigilante operations: AP3 members have “rounded up” immigrants at the Texas border, assaulted Black Lives Matter protesters and attempted to crack down on people casting absentee ballots.

Now with the presidential election less than 100 days away, AP3 members see the fate of their country turning on a turbulent, charged campaign. They’re certain that Democrats will try to steal — not for the first time, in their view — the White House from Donald Trump. “The next election won’t be decided at a Ballot Box,” an AP3 leader wrote several months ago in a private Telegram chat. “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.” He has said he is ready to force his way into voting centers if need be, or “whatever it takes.”

[mariacallous]

I was watching NFL football when the news appeared of a rifle poking through the bushes at the former president’s Florida golf course not far away from where Trump was playing golf. The Secret Service’s quick action averted a tragedy, and a suspect soon was detained.

But it didn’t take long before I saw posts on my social media sites saying, “are they just missing on purpose to stir up drama?” and alleging that Trump was “trying to get sympathy.” The shocking inference that the incident was staged reminded me of similar responses from liberal friends following the more serious Pennsylvania attempt where a shooter came within half an inch of landing a bullet in Trump’s head. The instant response on the part of some of those people was that the GOP nominee had engineered the shooting in order to increase support for his presidential bid.

Conservatives at that time also had their own conspiracy theories. They wondered out loud whether the Trump shooting was an inside job on the part of the Biden-led Secret Service to harm the leading opponent of the president’s then-reelection bid. The idea was that Biden was not doing well in the polls and law enforcement supporters intentionally let the suspect close enough to Trump in order to fire off several rounds in an effort to end that political problem.

Dating back to the John F. Kennedy shooting and beyond, assassination long has been a fertile ground for misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and wild conspiracy theories. Decades after the Kennedy murder, there remain wide-ranging theories that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, Fidel Castro was behind the assassination, the mob ordered it out of revenge for the administration’s tough actions against organized crime, and Lyndon Johnson somehow was behind the effort in order to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming president.

The persistence of false narratives around many assassination attempts shows the peculiar nature of our current political times. With its toxic combination of intense polarization, radicalization, social media frenzies, and easy dissemination of debunked theories with very little evidence, the contemporary period shows why misinformation and disinformation flourish in so many different areas and why false stories represent such a threat to democratic governance. When people have their own facts and there are wildly varying interpretations of social, economic, and political developments, it is difficult to make sense of new happenings and agree on what happened.

Without those basic ingredients, it is hard for leaders to bring people together and for individuals to see one another as sharing in a common enterprise. Instead, it is easy to divide people, pit groups against one another, and encourage people to seek scapegoats for things they don’t like. We see that clearly in the immigration area because as opposed to making meaningful efforts to address border security and long-term migration patterns, leaders blame the other side, claim immigrants are behind high crime rates, that they steal people’s cats and dogs to eat them and argue opponents are not to be trusted with the future of America.

Assassination attempts also generate wild and unsubstantiated claims because by their very nature, they are violent, shocking, and impactful events. America has prided itself on its long history of stable, democratic rules and peaceful transitions of power. Things such as the Civil War are seen as an aberration in our political history.

But we all know that beneath the surface of a supposedly peaceful country are mass shootings, violent episodes, and occasional efforts to alter the course of civic affairs through violence. Assassination is the ultimate disruption that does alter the course of history and makes people suspicious of one another. There is survey evidence that in addition to rising political mistrust in the United States, Americans no longer trust one another. Questions asking people whether they trust their neighbors show our declining confidence in one another. Adversaries know this and are quick to spread false narratives designed to intensify public passions and divide people from one another. If you can’t trust your neighbors, you can’t trust anyone.

In our new Brookings book, “Lies That Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation,” Elaine Kamarck and I argue that even in a crazy time period with mass shootings and targeted violence, we are not doomed to live in a fact-free world where lies prevail and distort our civic discourse. We can start by encouraging people to bring common sense to their interpretations of political events. For example, would Donald Trump seriously hire a 20-year-old guy who was not a very good shooter to put a bullet within a whisker of his head? Would the Secret Service deliberately allow a killer close access to a presidential candidate in order to remove him as a political competitor? No reasonable person should believe either one of those things.

People need to learn how to evaluate digital sources, spot the telltale signs of foreign influence operations, distinguish partisan from nonpartisan material, and not fall for crazy theories. Unless we do those things, America will continue to be bedeviled by blatant lies and false narratives that turn people against one another. We will lurch from one event to another and be fearful that the other side will use the most nefarious techniques to impose its will on others. We need to tame the torrent of misinformation and disinformation to address our country’s many problems.

[tomorrowusa]

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is the founder and head of Daily Kos – probably the first major liberal blog.

Soon after the Trump assassination attempt, a number of idiotic conspiracy theories sprang up in some fringe left corners of the internet. Markos editorialized about taking a hard line against such conspiracy theories.

At Daily Kos, that means all of us—staff and community members alike—must share only what we know to be true, as reported by credible sources. It also means that we reject false information or unfounded claims. This is a foundational policy for us, and one we have enforced rigorously for decades. Our Rules of the Road forbid spreading misinformation, disinformation, or conspiracy theories. The penalty for sharing conspiracy theories on Daily Kos is clear and serious: You will be banned. Daily Kos has always been and will always be an outpost of the reality-based community.

Being reality-based is a major thing which distinguishes us from MAGA zombies. People on the left who spread zany and unfounded conspiracy theories are intellectually no better than the QAnon Shaman. Many even use wording similar to QAnon wackos.

The Washington Post referred to fringe left conspiracy theories about the shooting as BlueAnon.

They claimed the blood on former president Donald Trump’s ear was from a theatrical gel pack; that the shooting was a “false flag,” perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign; that the scene of a bloodied Trump raising his fist under an American flag was “#staged.” “When did the Secret Service start allowing the President under duress to tell them ‘to wait’, then stand up to be seen by the crowd fist-pumping?” one user posted on X. “Can you blame me for thinking this is fake?” The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed “BlueAnon” — a play on the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon — that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right. “The good-versus-evil paradigm of QAnon has really taken hold of the anti-Trump movement and you’re seeing two sides that feel like they are fighting a battle between good and evil,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.” “It’s coming from major leftist and liberal ‘resistance’ influencers who believe that Trump is so devious that he’d fake his own assassination attempt in order to help his campaign.”

Anybody posting conspiracy theories is an idiot and should be blocked.

Of course I'm NOT referring to satirical references meant to make a point.

For example: Fanatical pro-gun conspiracy nuts claim that victims of mass shootings are really "crisis actors". So taking a dig at those people by referring to Trump as a crisis actor is a way to make such people eat their words.

In his editorial, Markos re-posted this information sheet from NPR's On the Media program on how to treat breaking news – mass shootings in particular. So I'm re-re-posting it.

#6 is underrated. Local journalists know their own turf and are better able to sort out a situation than those who just helicopter in to cover an event and then leave.

Of course #9 is essential. Get confirmation from reputable sources before reposting something. Don't add to the morass of disinformation.

[knuckle]

I know this could make a big difference but the right is so conspiracy poisoned already that it feels it's possible the trump assassination attempt won't have any more influence on martyring him than convicting him on 34 felony charges did. Not sure if this works with his "tough man" image either - I hope at least there's a critical mass of conspiracy that can only be whipped up every so often and that the nature of it being a gun crime makes it awkward for conservatives like the country music festival shooting. my instinct on this may be entirely wrong but I don't think the moonies got a massive wave of sympathy nor the conservatives in Japan after Abe either. I think it's just hard to smear "the left" as gun-toting bogeyman because it goes against every maga impulse so the idea that Republicans can make Democrats look like hypocrites about violence here just feels silly

[elven-writing]

seeing a lot of people saying stuff along the lines of "if it were me, I wouldn't have missed" and "he should have died" and other similar sentiments.

you guys do realize that like. these kinds of statements are just gonna make the republicans hate us MORE, right? they already have the whole "they're trying to destroy America, it's us against them" mentality and implying that someone shoulddie because they support something you don't (even if that something is a complete and total removal of civil rights-). the only thing that will come out of saying shit like "I wouldn't have missed" is that the MAGA freaks are just gonna go "SEE!? THEY'RE TRYING TO DESTROY US, SO WE NEED TO DESTROY THEM FIRST!" he's going to end up as a martyr for these people.

I hate trump as much as any of you do, if not more so. do I believe he deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his life because of his crimes? abso-fuckin-lutely. do I believe he should be murdered? NO.

not to mention, someone who was not trump DIED. it doesn't matter if they supported trump (because I know some of y'allwill try to excuse their death as "unimportant" or "for the best" or "what they deserved"), they were an innocent rally attendee who was KILLED in an assassination attempt.

some of you people need to stop hating this shitty guy for long enough to go "wow, a mass shooting is inherently bad, and so is attempted murder."

[dertaglichedan]

Assassination Porn and the Sickness on the Left

If we were leftists and we were to use leftist tropes to editorialize the recent attempt on Trump’s life, then we would frame the assassination attempt in the following way:

We have witnessed for years blatant exceptions to the once common custom that we don’t normalize the imagined killing of any president or presidential candidate and thus lower the bar of violence.

But the Left constantly makes Trump an exception. Now, it as if the imagined killing of Trump had been mainstreamed and become acceptable in a way inconceivable of other presidents.

(Do we remember the rodeo clown who merely wore an Obama mask during a bull riding contest and was punished by being permanently banned by the Missouri State Fair authorities?)

So since at least 2016 there has been a parlor game among Leftist celebrities and entertainers joking (one hopes), dreaming, imagining, and just talking about the various and graphic ways they would like to assassinate or seriously injure Trump:

By slugging his face (Robert De Niro), by decapitation (Kathy Griffin, Marilyn Manson), by stabbing (Shakespeare in the Park), by clubbing (Mickey Rourke), by shooting ( Snoop Dogg), by poisoning (Anthony Bourdain), by bounty killing (George Lopez), by carrion eating his corpse (Pearl Jam), by suffocating (Larry Whilmore), by blowing him up (Madonna, Moby), by throwing him over a cliff (Rosie O’Donnell), just by generic “killing” him (Johnny Depp, Big Sean), or by martyring him (Reid Hoffman: “Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr.”).

Or should we deplore the use of telescopic scope imagery, given that the Left blamed Sarah Palin for once using bullseye spots on an election map of opposition congressional districts, claiming that such usage had incited the mass shooting by Jared Lee Loughner?

Yet, recently POTUS Joe Biden was a little bit more graphic and a lot more literal.

In a widely reported call to hundreds of donors last week, Biden boasted, “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

"In a bullseye?”

At least, Biden did not go back to the full Biden beat-up porn of the past (e.g., “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him"/ “The press always asks me, ‘Don’t I wish I were debating him?’ No, I wish we were in high school – I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.”).

Then there is the question of the Secret Service and one’s political opponents. Given the tragic history of the Kennedys, why in the world did the Biden administration not insist that third-party candidate Robert Kennedy, Jr. be accorded Secret Service protection? Because his candidacy was felt to be disadvantageous to Biden?

And why just this April would the former head of the January 6th Committee and 2004 election obstructionist Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) introduce legislation ridiculously entitled, “Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act” to strip away Secret Service protection for former President Trump and by this April current leading presidential candidate?

Had Thompson’s bill passed, would that not have been confirmation for a potential shooter to feel his task was just made much easier?

But in a wider sense, if the common referent day after day on the Left is that Trump is another Hitler (cf. a recent The New Republic cover where Trump is literally photoshopped as Hitler), then it seems reckless not to imagine an unhinged or young shootist believing that by taking out somewhat identical to one of the greatest mass murderers in history, he would be applauded for his violence?

So is their logic, shoot Trump and save six million from the gas chambers?

After all, The New Republic defiantly explained their Hitler-Trump cover photo this way, "Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.”

Well, New Republic, recently someone took you up on your argument that Trump was “damn close enough” to Hitler and so he likewise chose to “fight”— albeit with a semi-automatic rifle.

If ad nauseam, a Joy Reid is screaming about Trump as a Hitlerian dictator ("Then let me know who I got to vote for to keep Hitler out of the White House”) or Rachel Maddow is bloviating about studying Hitler to understand Trump, then finally the message sinks in that a mass murderer is about to take power—unless....

Finally, the idea, if true, that bystanders spotted a 20-year-old on a nearby roof with a gun, a mere 130 yards from Trump, and in vain warned police of his presence, is surreal.

Is it all that hard for the Secret Service to post a few agents on the tops of a few surrounding buildings closest to the dais, or at least coordinate with local law enforcement to do the same?

That is a no brainer. Whoever made the decisions concerning the proper secret service security details for presidential events should be immediately fired.

[likeakiss]

licking blood from your teeth. a raised scar. the old east end. testing the cut on your lip with your tongue. a loud bang from somewhere in the distance. ringing in your ears. refusing to change. slicking back your hair. whiskey and cigarillos. shoot first, ask questions later. remembering where you came from. having to fight for everything you’ve got. violence as a language that everyone understands. exit wounds. the pig-headed belief that you’re always right. struggling to let things go.

statistics.

full name:  joaquin vidal nickname(s)/alias(es):  keen, the crooked hand name meaning:  established by god age:  fifty-seven date of birth:  april 16th star sign:  aries place of birth:  poplar, london (now tower hamlets) current location:  lambeth, london gender:  cis-male pronouns:  he/him sexual orientation:  bisexual religion:  raised catholic (not a very good catholic) occupation:  mob boss family:  david flores (father, estranged), alejandra franklin (née vidal, mother), bernard “bernie” franklin (step-father, estranged), ricardo “ricky” franklin and antonio “tony” franklin (half-brothers, estranged), emilia franklin (half-sister, estranged) “sweeney todd” (ex-wife) education level:  didn’t even get his o levels (old man equivalent to gcses) living arrangements:  a modern warehouse conversion in stockwell financial status:  wealthy spoken languages:  english, spanish

inspirations.

reggie kray (legend) harry (in bruges) tyler durden (fight club) euron greyjoy (game of thrones) maxwell roth (assassin’s creed: syndicate) reyes vidal (mass effect: andromeda) bill sykes (oliver twist)

biography. (tws for poverty, xenophobia, violence, unhealthy relationship dynamics)

A third generation Peruvian immigrant, Joaquin Vidal has never known any home but London. Born and raised in Poplar (a notoriously impoverished area of the city) life was always going to be a struggle for his family - for stability, for money, for respect - but struggle they did. Joaquin’s grandparents went about things the old fashioned way, sacrificing every last shred of their dignity to scrape together enough money to take over the lease on the local newsagent after the previous owner passed away. They managed it, just barely, but even at the tail-end of the sixties, Poplar wasn’t the most tolerant of places, and the shopfront was regularly graffitied or worse.

By the time Joaquin was born, the Vidals had come to realise that London’s streets weren’t paved with gold, as they had hoped they would be when they arrived in England. They had their shop, true, but it wasn’t enough - the family was still living on top of each other, three generations packed into two rooms, living hand-to-mouth. His mother, Alejandra, was only sixteen when she discovered she was expecting, and a wedding was quickly organised in a desperate attempt to hang on to the precious little respectability the Vidals had garnered within their community. It was only two years before Joaquin's father vanished into the night, never to be seen again.

Joaquin was still young when he started looking for trouble (or when trouble started looking for him, as he’d always insist). He was a handsome, charismatic teenager, with a swagger in his step and an appetite for violence that only comes from feeling like you’ve got something to prove. It seemed as if he was destined for gang life from the get go, smoothly transitioning from playground bust-ups and brawling in the streets to the well-paid world of underground fighting. Joaquin was a workhorse in the ring, a surprisingly lithe figure that categorically refused to stay down, and it made him a hugely valuable commodity as a prize fighter. He would do whatever it took to win, and then some.

It was around this time that he set his sights on a woman known to the Jolly Rogers as Sweeney Todd. The former Crooked Hand, a man by the name of Alistair Winchester, had heard of Joaquin’s success on the underground fighting circuit, and was actively trying to recruit him to his cause. Sweeney was Alistair’s niece, and had been embroiled in the workings of the gang since she was very young, meaning she was already well established as a career assassin. Joaquin was drawn to her immediately - he knew they were made for each other.

As his relationship with Sweeney developed, Joaquin became as assimilated into the Jolly Roger lifestyle as she was, working his way up from pit fighter to contract killer in a matter of years. He would always prefer working with his hands (or, rather, his fists), but he learnt to wield a gun with precision and deadly force. As a rule, Joaquin and Sweeney were not supposed to work contracts together - they were both experts in their craft, but their dynamic was volatile and unpredictable, entirely inexplicable to anyone but themselves. People used to say that one day they’d either kill each other, or end up married - they chose the latter.

Realistically, it was never going to last between them - in fact, it’s some kind of miracle (or maybe a curse) that their marriage survived the eleven years it did. After one, final, explosive argument, the Vidals separated for good, but angry as they were, they couldn’t stay away from each other for long. Joaquin started taking contracts abroad, furthering his reputation with the Rogers while doing his best to forget about Sweeney. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t move on from her. He’s never been good at letting go.

When Alistair Winchester shit the bed and got himself nicked, it was only a matter of time before someone was called in to clean up his mess. Following the customary vote between senior members of the gang, Joaquin was compelled to return from his work overseas, not so much stepping into Alistair's shoes as kicking them out of his way. He never sought the title of the Crooked Hand, and his election came as a surprise, but who is he to spit in the face of democracy? If the Jolly Rogers wanted a show of force, Joaquin Vidal would be the one to give it to them.

He's been the head honcho for coming up on four years now, driving the Jolly Rogers into an era of prosperity that puts old man Winchester's legacy to shame. The treaty is starting to chafe at him, though, his patience for niceties running dangerously thin. No, he thinks its high time his people start making some more aggressive plays - show the Jabberwocks and everyone else who really runs the streets of London.

other things.

Before he was the Crooked Hand, Joaquin was known as Sykes, after the character from Oliver Twist. Not the most flattering of code names, but he’s never been much of a reader, and didn’t understand the connotations until much later on. 

Joaquin calls in on his mother approximately once every six months. They didn’t have the best of relationships after she remarried and started a new better family, but she’s old now, and the only surviving relative he’s still in touch with.

He's not usually much of a gambler, but he goes out of his way to attend the Royal Ascot every year, delighting both in betting on the horse races and terrorising the unfortunate toffs forced to share space with him for the duration of the event.

He’s a passionate West Ham supporter, and will thank you not to remind him how poorly they’ve been performing in the premiere league.

To date, Joaquin has never seen a cow in real life.

There isn’t a single event that could convince Joaquin to wear a tie. He didn’t even wear one to his wedding.

[mercys-gut]

The doctor didn't say anything. How could they? What they say goes against all forms of possibility! Mercy...just gulped another human right in front of them! Something like that was never in a million years predicted by anyone. And if she ate them...would they be next?

The doctor blinked, and felt like now was a good time for them to leave before they join their previously devoured colleague. Take a step back, they immediately turned around and began running away.

Afraid that this would happen, the now heavily slowed down doctor felt around under her desk. Finding it rather difficult to navigate the underside of the wood with so much of, well... her around, the doctor eventually found what she was looking for: an emergency office lockdown button.

She'd convinced security that it was necessary in case of potential active shooting situations, as well as assassination attempts-- she was, after all, a brilliant mind with advanced technology. Not to mention her former affiliation with Overwatch.

So, as the doors sealed shut, and metallic shutters came down, the portly Dr. Ziegler had the doctor trapped. Huffing a sigh of relief, she arduously lifted herself up from her comfortable chair; placing the still-squirming mass hanging from her waist onto the desk itself.

"I am... truly sorry that you had to witness... this. But... perhaps we can talk about it? I can assure you, what you saw was nothing more than an experiment!"

[kaz-curlymonster]

I was actually reading a BBC article that was extremely laughable and also insulting to the American people’s intelligence.

The full article:

And the issues I noticed as I read and laughed at it:

• They regularly try to humanize the CEO with language like “the father of 2”. An attempt to illicit sympathy for the Thompson. This happens in almost every article covering this case, but I’m getting sick of it.

• People keep mentioning his family and how they are also well off. Quote from article:

“…And it has only grown since the suspect was named as Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League-educated member of a prominent Baltimore family.”

This is used as a way to try deflect the disdain towards the ultra rich from the multimillionaire to Luigi. Frankly it makes me think of CIA sabotage tactics. They know that largely, people hate the ultra rich, and to try and get people to stop supporting Luigi, they try to paint him as part of the evil group we all must hate.

However, if he was so rich, why did he feel the need to act on denied coverage? Getting into an Ivy League school can come from intelligence. Scholarships exist. Regardless, he took the action he did likely because he was in the same boat as so many other Americans.

• Quote from article:

“This fetishization was remarkably widespread, not limited to radical corners of the internet or any political affiliation, troubling many observers.”

And a few more to tie into a point I want to make on this:

“Much of this online reaction has focused on his looks, with the internet dubbing him the "hot assassin”… Americans are effectively "programmed" to trust and empathise with men who look like Mr Mangione, [Blakely Thornton] said…Public adoration for handsome men accused of crimes is not new - from Ted Bundy to Jeremy Meeks, violent men have developed cult followings.”

“Beyond his appearance, a large part of Mr Mangione's online appeal is clearly his apparent ire against the private healthcare industry and corporate elites in general.”

“Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at the NCRI, called the online reaction a "turning point" and "a catalyst for the normalisation of political violence that was once confined to extremists on the fringes". He compared the wave of comments to the online activity following racist mass murders, designed to defend the killers and signal-boost their beliefs - only more widespread, and happening across mainstream social media networks. "The dynamic we are observing is eerily similar to the activity on platforms like 4chan, 8chan, Discord, and in other dark corners of the internet, where mass shootings are often met with glee," he said.”

I’ll come back to comments on his looks in my next point. I love how Discord is listed as a “dark corner of the internet,” likely because he doesn’t know what it is, just heard the name “discord.” That’s like calling Snap Chat a dark corner of the internet. Or instant messages in general.

Anyway they try to compare support for Luigi, something that is pretty widespread I would say, to support for killers like Ted Bundy, a serial killer, and Jeremy Meeks, a former gang member. They do this to try and guilt the supporters possibly reading into “rethinking” support, however what Luigi did isn’t comparable to those two. This doesn’t seem like something he did out of psychopathic pleasure, but they want to paint it as such.

The addition of comparing this support to the support of “racist mass murderers” is so insulting to our intelligence. How is this comparable to a racist murderer? In what capacity? The CEO can change his job. I can’t syringe the half black out of my body. This is literally just blatant smearing and the comparison exists to make you question yourself with “am I a bigot for supporting this?” NO YOU AREN’T!

• Comments about his looks are meant to trivialize the support for him, make it seem like that’s a more important factor than it is. Funnily enough, I saw a wave of support before we even knew what he looked like. If he was ugly the support would still be there. The people behind this article are either choosing to misunderstand, or are genuinely in the dark, about WHY this action is so praised. It doesn’t matter if Luigi is rich, it doesn’t matter if he is handsome or not, he was not able to get coverage for a serious injury, he experienced something MANY MANY Americans go through, and took direct action over it.

• Quote from article:

“There are indications that the shooting has prompted some introspection on the part of healthcare companies. “I think all of us are taking a step back and trying to understand what's happening with patients and their experiences," Pfizer's chief sustainability officer Caroline Roan told a conference in New York on Wednesday, according to Reuters.”

This is what I point to when dumbasses say “what did he even accomplish with this.” Change. Change happened.

Because people are tired of doing what Ms Coffey has had to do.

• Quote from article:

“At the same time, much of the online discussion has effectively ignored the victim, Brian Thompson, who was 50. “It's incredibly bleak that [Thompson's death] hasn't been covered as much because, bottom line, a person died, a person was murdered," Blakely Thornton said. "The collective rage over [the healthcare industry] is really outweighing what is still a tragedy."

In his last post on LinkedIn, Mr Thompson talked about efforts to make healthcare more affordable - and was criticised in the comments. CBS News, the BBC's US partner, obtained a message that UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty sent to staff this week, memorialising Mr Thompson and calling his murdered colleague "one of the good guys".

Love how they use the guilt tactic of “Well he wanted to make things more affordable!”

But this is something EVERY rich executive says to quell enraged masses. His actions speak differently. In another article (one that also seeks to humanize a multimillionaire who profited off the deaths and illnesses of Americans) he is credited for increasing UHC’s profits by 4 billion dollars. You don’t do that by making things more affordable. I feel like the article stating he received critique for stating he wanted to make things more affordable.

Saying “he was criticized in the comments” makes it seem like his peers or colleagues were critiquing him for this, but no. I went and checked.

His last post was a year ago. A. Year. The post before that was posted a year before his last. 2 posts of “let’s make things cheaper” with what follow through? The critiques in question? Not his peers or colleagues, but people who were negatively impacted by UHC.

All that to say, they want us to stop giving sympathy and support to someone who has had a more similar experience to what we as average citizens would go through, so I can give it to an executive who made 10 million dollars last year in salary, a CEO who could afford to receive treatment for anything he wanted done. The upper class is absolutely wild for thinking proletariats would feel saddened by this.

People try to argue “he was just doing his job.” So were the British soldiers who came to collect taxes for the Monarchy before the American revolution. Americans have voiced our displeasure with the healthcare system for a long time, and now that these executives realize people are indeed that pressed about it, all of a sudden NOW they “want” to do some introspection.

NYT has been discouraging reporters from sharing photos of luigi mangione - not due to concerns for his safety but to dissuade sympathy - and refuses to post his alleged manifesto in full. and today, they published an opinion by bret stephens about how brian thompson is the "real working class hero" of this story.

reddit deleted luigi's account, which was completely innocuous and consisted mostly of him giving out advice in health subreddits. they're also deleting any post that includes his alleged manifesto and banning users for sharing it.

luigi yelled that this was "an insult to the intelligence of the american people" while he was being dragged by police and news pundits are framing it as a deranged and violent outburst. news media are picking apart details of his life to paint him as a cold-blooded and mentally ill individual. even something as innocent as playing "among us" with friends is being framed as some insidious look into an assassin's disturbed psyche, ffs.

news media are also capitalizing on luigi's supposed "bizarre and impossible to understand" politics as an obvious way to paint him as a scary individual when the guy is... a centrist, at most. whose views are similar to those of your average college-educated white guy.

multiple news media also keep harping on about how luigi comes from a rich family. an obvious attempt to break the class solidarity that's been formed around this case by continuously trying to tell us "oh he's not like you guys" while ignoring the now pretty well-documented accounts of his multiple health struggles throughout the years.

and all this, and he hasn't even been found guilty of the crime he's allegedly committed. luigi is, as of right now, still innocent until proven guilty. and the news are trying to tear him apart because they obviously fear the symbol he's becoming for low and middle class america.