Austin bombings: literal American carnage meets with Trumpian indifference

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/03/16/dt-doesnt-care-about-black-ppl.html

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Even with a profile that includes Known Member of the KKK, condemning this killer as a terrorist still wouldn’t fit the agenda of President Donald “White supremacist leader David Duke supports me? Never heard of the man, why should I condemn anyone who supports me?” Trump.

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Texas has so far been a bellwether for all things Trumpian. Texas appears to be blasé about this, so…

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Either it hasn’t blipped on his radar, or he is a little worried it might turn out to be an angry guy in a MAGA hat.

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What’s especially surprising to me is that I live in Austin and I saw zero news of the first incident from two+ weeks ago, surely that should have been newsworthy and that news may have possibly saved lives. Maybe it was reported on and I just missed it but it definitely wasn’t on the local NPR affiliate which I check in with daily.

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“Might” feels generous.

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Right. It’s not just Trumpians who basically feel that black lives don’t matter.

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The story has absolutely been under-reported. Remember how the whole country went nuts over the unabomber and the Boston marathon bombings?

I guess that could be one of the reasons Trump hasn’t said anything; if it’s not on Fox News he’s probably never heard of it.

Also: Austin police were initially working on the wholly baseless victim-blaming theory that the first victim built the bomb himself. Racism has tainted every aspect of how the media and the authorities have responded to these attacks.

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"Remember how the whole country went nuts over the unabomber "
Actually I don’t remember that. I remember him bombing for years without most people hearing about it. I remember having a mild crisis at work over an unsolicited envelope that had a reference to “wood” in the return address and people thinking I was screwy.

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Obviously there was a lull in coverage during the years between bombings but it always made the major papers and TV networks whenever he’d carry out a new attack. The Austin bomber doesn’t even have a media nickname yet.

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Fixed that for you

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Assuming you pay at least some tiny bit of attention to the news, a bombing in town should be hard to miss. Even if the idea was that a local would-be terrorist blew himself up, that seems like pretty big news: There is/was someone making package bombs in our community.

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Yeah it’s disturbing. I actually have known about it because the first one happened really close to me (not witness close though). I’ve been kind of surprised by how silent it’s been since then. As if serial bombing is “just one of those things.” Most of the reports have been on how many calls the Police are getting over packages. It’s eerie and sad. I’m just hoping at least they do due diligence and actually track the suspect down.

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After the initial boom a few minutes of sirens is the most you can expect.


(Too soon?)

:roll_eyes:

Public indifference is tacit approval, particularly if you already think there are “good people” among the neo-Nazi crowd.

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I’m also in Austin and was aware of the first one at least a day after it happened, and the second two that morning. Mainly from twitter though.

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It might be personal:

The president of the local chapter of the NAACP told NBC, “The intended target was another person who might be connected to the House and Mason families.”

The connection, said Nelson Linder, the NAACP official, was through the families’ attendance at a prominent black church congregation in Austin. “They have a long history and go to the same church,” Linder said.

Or political? From another article:

Linder said he hired House a decade ago to help build the NAACP website and knows his stepfather, Freddie Dixon. He said Dixon and Mason’s grandparents — Norman Mason, a dentist, and LaVonne Mason, a co-founder of the Austin Area Urban League — are friends.

Even crazier that it didn’t get more attention.

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Would a MAGAer be smart enough follow disparate people home from one church to establish their home address? MAGAer terrorists can’t even tell a Sikh from a Muslim

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The FBI, DOJ and NSA have been calling white supremacists, sovereign citizens and various separatist Christian groups as the largest single terror risk jn the US for decades. These are your guys who pulled off Oklahoma City. Until 9/11 the deadliest terror attack on US soil. And no president. Including Obama. Has opted to have our national security and anti-terror aparatus focus on that. Or even publicly acknowledged it much.

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Yep. Nor the corporate media.

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