A guy we went to school with just posted this…
We’ll never learn anything about the shooter because he’s a democrat and the media will cover it up.
His friends collectively went “huh” to which he went into an antifa rant. But he thinks for himself and does his own research so he knows.
i feel like the “it’s just a joke” crowd overlaps with bullying: people in a subgroup using force or humiliation to set up a dominance hierarchy. while it’s not exclusive to white supremacists, it fits with it well, and they help breed each other
this is what i take issue with re: that expert. they’re pushing a moral panic that “both sides” the problem.
even though it seems this guy was in fact a trump supporter, you could imagine an apolitical shooter radicalized by violent memes… but critically those memes wouldn’t exist without the right wing communities that create, adopt, and spread those memes
they wouldn’t gain traction without the white supremacists. to leave that out of the equation is to miss the rotten core altogether
this is so key. words ( memes ) matter. words change minds. people aren’t born killers. they grow into it. taking slow steps in their brains to get to that point.
and because i can’t say it enough. guns also matter. they provide a focus on which the fantasy can crystalize. without the guns, a person might hate deeply. have deep violent feelings. and in time, they might still climb out of that well. access to guns allows people to pull the cover over and seal themselves in by actually committing violence
without the mind virus of white supremacy and without the guns, there’d be different outcomes. america doesn’t have uniquely evil people. it has uniquely empowered people.
( eta: guns are part of that empowerment. institutionalized white privilege is another part as well. )
Is it my imagination, or have there been more news stories about the gunman and his family than about the many people he shot?
Yeah, I thought that we had turned the tide on this, with a greater focus on the victims, but for some reason, this shooting has brought that BS roaring right back.
reporters are tired - probably - reporting about how guns kill people.
intentional or not it seems exactly what fox news does whenever there’s good news about the economy. they throw up a wall of fud: what about this, what about that, what about absolutely anything else
people are looking for a “reason.” the only reason is the guns. they can’t admit it, so they keep looking
The thing is, that there absolutely IS a discussion to be had about why mass shooters are doing this, but as you note, when it’s all about deflecting from gun control, it’s not actually trying to help, it’s just that, deflection.
But I was more focused on the fact that we’re focusing on the shooter rather than the victims, when it seemed like we were actually getting better about that in the media. For some reason, this incident is seeing the media backslide on this.
I also thought the media tide had turned when reporting these incidents. I can’t even remember the name of the Uvalde shooter or what he looks like because the focus had been on the victims and their families.
There is a CNN reporter (Shimon Prokupecz) who has been steadfast in his reporting of the Uvalde shootings, and as of yesterday he’s still there speaking with the families who have been impacted. I’m not saying that he’s a victim advocate, but he has been relentless in his coverage of the inaction taken by the local police and the lack of transparency by local and state officials over the shootings.
It’s good to know at least some of the reporters in corporate media are doing their jobs!
I wonder what the numbers would be if “mass shooting” included at least 6 shots fired at one time by police at unarmed people.
Oh my god. Today’s Doonesbury.
The other country on this planet that has a serious gun problem. Serious racism problem, too. Couldn’t possibly be a connection. 
That’s OK, I’m sure the GOP states are working on making selling tacos as easy and regulation-free as for buying instruments of death pest control.
Republicans know what the real threat to Murka is.
Ah yes, I’d heard about the Boebert Slider Statutes.
Re: Fashwave
This work could be the most original cultural product of the alt-right.
What a load of BS. It’s Vaporwave. Every synthwave album has a cover that looks like that. They’re copying, not creating. As usual.
This is a random screenshot of a synthwave playlist on Spotify I’m listening to right now.
Like the aesthetic styles of white nationalists throughout history, from Hitler’s manufactured Aryan mythology to the appropriation of punk rock by skinheads in the 1970s, fashwave is stolen. The style amounts to a racist clone of vaporwave, the visual and musical aesthetic born on the internet in the early end of this decade.
There you go, they got there in the end.
Of course it’s harder to get a taco vending license, you have no amendment rights in the constitution to sell tacos. If the thing is not mentioned in the constitution you have no rights to do, use, or sell that thing and the government can regulate the crap out of it.
Sheesh, try and keep up.
