Live and Let Die
we heard about another mass shooting in the news, my thoughts immediately went to a Joy Reid rant on TikTok. Now, I’m a bit old, so TikTok is not necessarily my thing, but the sentiment seemed so accurate that I couldn’t help but share it.
https://www.tiktok.com/@joyreidofficial/video/7164996613700717866?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7164996613700717866
For those of you that haven’t followed the news, the latest tragedy involves a LGTBQ club in Colorado Springs. As of the latest reporting, five have died with over two dozen being injured. It might have been more on both fronts if not for the heroic efforts of some inside the club.
I should point out that there are plenty of people I know that are conservative and good, decent people. This turns into one of those logical statements that we used to get on the SAT or GRE. Not every conservative is an asshole and I would surmise that most conservatives aren’t assholes. Yet, when you picture an asshole in your head you probably see a conservative.
Maybe that isn’t fair. I’m willing to concede that some liberals could be assholes. Heck, some people might think I’m an asshole. However, let’s consider the campaign we just finished. Crime seemed to be the number one issue on the ballot for them. Yet, whether violent crime really is as pressing an issue is open to considerable debate.
The Democratic brain and the Republican brain work differently. When you say violent crime, the images that pop into our head are vastly different. For many conservatives, violent crime is a dog whistle that point to certain people committing those crimes. The Colorado Springs shooting involved a young white male. Most of these mass shootings involve young white males. So, there is some cognitive dissonance going on here. There is a difference between who we think is dangerous and who might actually be more dangerous.
It would be irresponsible of me to claim that this shooter (I will not publish his name) was somehow radicalized by the rhetoric on the right. We know that was true in the El Paso mass shooting. Yet, it isn’t true all of the time. It isn’t true that they are ALWAYS white males, but that seems to be a good rule of thumb.
I suppose I risk the possibility of becoming the old man sitting in his lawn chair and shaking his fists at the neighborhood kids playing in the street. However, I don’t remember this many zealots actually representing us in government when I was younger. The inflammatory rhetoric has an effect. It ramps up the tension and widens the divide. It creates the irrational view that the other side aren’t real Americans or even real people. It becomes easier to depersonalize and shuts off our compassion when tragedy befalls us. We become numb.
I wish I had some answers for everyone. I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and make it all go away. Maybe it starts with each of us individually. Maybe each of us can make a small contribution to returning our discourse into something resembling civility. Short of that then it becomes simply a live and let die world
The shooter is confirmed to be the grandson of outgoing Republican state Rep. Randy Voegel, the former mayor of Santee, California. There were calls to expel Voepel from the state Assembly after he made comments comparing the January 6 attacks to the Revolutionary War. Aldrich’s mother, Laura Voepel, has written posts praising Randy Voepel on Facebook and confirming he is her father. Ergo, an “asshole” MAGA family. (Contains excerpt from Heavy.com)
1Colorado Springs is home to a couple of very anti LGBTQ organizations- Focus on the Family and the Family Research Institute, named by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti LGBTQ propaganda organization. One can surmise these two organizations are very conservative. Not saying the shooter was influenced by these organizations, but he lived in their area. Maybe just a coincidence. I’m guessing law enforcement will find out as they investigate his background and social media presence and posts.
2Not all Republicans are ignorant people.
All ignorant people are Republicans.
3I listened to Keith Olberman’s podcast this morning at the gym. I’d recommend listening to his opening essay on Republicans and guns. The GOP likes to say it’s not guns, it’s the mentally ill, or “criminals” but guns are so rampant that I’m ready to say, no – it’s gun owners. I used to feel fine if you had a rifle for deer or shotgun for birds, but I’m almost to the point where we need no guns, none, nada.
4Joy is right, as usual, Mean People Suck. It really is that simple and can’t be stated often enough, mean people suck.
5Apart from your quite erroneous statement “Not every conservative is an asshole…”, which if so many of them weren’t now 100% MAGAots [for proof just look at election results], might be a close approximation of the way it used to be, the perpetrator of this ‘latest’ massacre [in scare quote because by the time I finish typing there’ll probably be another one] was in fact a rather typical armed RWNJ.
He was already in the ‘criminal system’ for having threatened his –own mother– with weaponry and a bomb [it’s a bit murky if it went beyond just threats].
The minute that I heard of this incident, before any mention of a target group [LGBQs], I just automatically assumed that the perp was a ‘young white RWNJ’, as is the case in 95% of these incidents; despite all the whining that so-called conservatives do about being falsely labeled as such.
The key question is how in hell did this known RWNJ under the overwatch of the LEOs manage to get his deranged hands on at least one rifle and pistol, plus multiple magazines and ammo?
The club itself may have some culpability since it appears that there was no security present [personnel and/or process for entry].
Given today’s environment, such minor protections should be the bare minimum; a sad and expensive comment on the sorry ass state of modern life.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have never been on the same page as the rest of y’all on the subjects of gun control and illegal aliens. But a couple of years ago even I adjusted my opinions on ‘gun control’ to recognize that we had to set some parameters on the obtaining of weaponry. There are just far too many nutcases who are freely getting their diseased hands on deadly weapons.
[I myself have used and owned firearms since around the age of six [almost seven decades], when my training in their responsible handling and purposes began, advancing from there ever since [without ever going ‘ballistic’, and once supporting the NRA long ago, ceasing when they went off the rails]. IMO, most people obtaining firearms today partake in no such education. This has to change, minimal safeguards must be implemented.]
6Sandridge, the recently voter approved gun law in Oregon contains many good things including firearm training prior to getting approved to purchase and license a firearm. As you might expect, repugnanticans have filed a lawsuit to have the law declared unconstitutional. Their central beef which they have publicized is the banning of magazines over 10 bullets. I’m pretty sure they don’t like any of it, though. We’ll see if it survives.
7Sandridge,
Hyperbole aside, I know plenty of conservatives that aren’t assholes. All MAGAs I’ll give you. I think they could be labeled as cowards.
8Steve @7, Read a little bit about that, sounds reasonable, ain’t gonna happen in most other places though, no matter how many massacres.
Nick @8, A matter of semantics and definitions I guess, imo all MAGAots are assholes, so…
9And your environment is clearly different from mine, in a rabidly MAGAot rural area surrounded with the worst of the lot.
Maybe they do differ, but I doubt it, underneath they are all raving lunatics now [as election results confirm, no reasonable rational person could sanely, non-assholey, vote for the scum that they –all– blindly do…].
The Democratic Party has to regain full power in–make that –before– 2024, or we are all doomed. Not a certain outcome given the Dem ‘leadership’s’ documented incompetence in far too many areas. Yeah, I’m a perpetual pessimist…through long experience.
My biggest question, as yet unanswered:
How in the world does someone threaten people, claiming a bomb, hole up nearly all day with police outside & ignoring their commands, eventually walk out and get arrested, and jailed with an announcement of preliminary charges of two counts of Felony Menacing and three counts of First-degree Kidnapping….. and then,
* apparently NOT have any sort of trial,
* not be judged guilty of ANYTHING — not even failure to obey police,
* have whatever court records may have been generated sealed, and finally,
* call at least the local paper to ask them to take down the story, as “nothing happened.”
The local DA said
“The red flag question is something that I think none of us up here are in a position to answer,” Allen said. “Colorado has very restrictive sealing laws. What that means is that if a case is filed in a courtroom in the State of Colorado, and is dismissed for any reason… it is automatically sealed. That is a change in the law that occurred back in 2019. That same statute requires us to give very specific answers… to say in responded to questions about it that ‘no such record exists.’”
Allen was elected in 2020, and began serving at the beginning of 2021. He would have been the DA for the case of Anderson Aldrich that began with multiple felony charges in June 2021.
Several news organizations have petitioned the courts to override the seal on the earlier case.
10“…The inflammatory rhetoric has an effect. It ramps up the tension and widens the divide. It creates the irrational view that the other side aren’t real Americans or even real people….”
This is what the people want.
….The reason why they want it is the fact that they have an emotional age of three seconds.
……..The reason why they have an emotional age of three seconds is that the educational system was destroyed a human lifespan ago.
….If you are going to deplore the status quo, then you must work against letting the people have what they want.
……..If you are going to work against letting the people have what they want, then you must be prepared to explain, starting from the very beginning, why they deserve to be deprived of all authority over their lives.
The Second Amendment has not yet been construed to require that newborns be given razor blades. In the immortal words of Tom Magliozzi, “What time is it now?”
11It is not just that the right wing MAGAts are assholes. Lots of us are. They are assholes with guns, bombs and hatred. Liberal assholes do not go into gay bars and shoot everything in sight. Liberal assholes don’t flood school board meetings, threatening murder and mayhem at the people who teach our children. Liberal assholes don’t use fertilizer to blow up a building full of children along with the regular employees. Liberal assholes don’t invade schools and murder our future. Only right wing assholes do these things.
12As easy as it is, I can’t paint everyone with one broad stroke. I think I can put conservatives into three piles. The smallest pile are those that were never on board with MAGA and have spoken out against it. The problem there is two-fold. First, there are not nearly enough of those folks. Secondly, they still vote for the GOP or conservative third party candidates. They can’t see that the Democrats are the best chance they have to save their own party.
The second group of people are the silent conservatives that dislike Trump and dislike the MAGA crowd, but dislike liberals more. Not much is going to be done for them. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama governed from the center. Joe Biden is a little more progressive, but still a centrist. It doesn’t matter. All Democrats will be painted with the same brush whether they really are liberal or not. How many times do we hear “Joe Biden’s America” or “Nancy Pelosi’s America” as if either are really socialist or Marxist?
Finally, you have the MAGA people. These are the folks that have been activated. Trump and his minions have allowed them to espouse the stuff they have always wanted to espouse. They hate the people he hates. The troll the people he trolls. They will cut off their arm. nose, or nutsack if it meant that a liberal suffered.
I’ve said this a hundred times, but we are dealing with percentage points here. If you stay on message and stick to issues where the majority overwhelmingly support you then you might peel off five percent. Five percent is a revelation in modern politics. In a nationwide race it gets five more Senate seats. It gets you maybe 25 to 30 House seats. It turns the presidential race into a landslide. More importantly, it acknowledges that those MAGA folks aren’t going anywhere. Maybe it means increasing voter turnout. Maybe it means converting a few people here and there. What it means is that you go to all 50 states and you repeat your message. You don’t use terms like woke, defund the police, or gun confiscation. You simplify your message to those things we know people support. Period.
13Nick, I believe you characterized the 3 piles correctly. All 3 now hate liberals- democrats, even moderate centrist democrats. I’ve been around 72 years and have many conservative friends and former coworkers. What’s different now after the trumpf campaigns and presidency is the degree of hate they have against democrats. Despite 2 of those piles not liking trumpf- a crook, fraud, extreme liar, admitted sexual predator and an undeniable insurrectionists- they will still vote for him again when he’s the party’s candidate. I believe that even though many of his handpicked candidates failed in their 2022 campaigns. That’s hard for me to stomach when I’m communicating with my old conservative friends. I thought they had more moral character than that.
14Sorry to disagree but as a rePUKEian you are evil or you SUPPORT evil. Just as there is a small minority of Xtians that are OK, it don’t matter as they SUPPORT thru their religion & churches the chrisANALs causing so much crap. When I meet a “conservative” I ask what it means by that word. Conservative about money, then he is a deluded fool if he thinks rePUKEians don’t like spending a lot!!
15OT, but if you open up Crooks & Liars today (happy Thanksgiving), there’s a story with an interview of the Colorado mass killer’s father. It’s indescribably despicable. Read it and see. If you need an example of the magat repugnanticans from Nick’s article above, this guy is a poster monster. Image this guy is someone Boobert (and MTG) would give a thumbs up to.
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