Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise and others shot at GOP ballgame

If Scalise dies then there’s a chance, however small, that a much better person would be elected in his place. One that actually cares about people and not just the shitty GOP agenda. So I don’t feel too bad for him right now.

Why did he capitalize that annoying word?

Punctuation is not his strong suit.

I’m not sure how I would react to a lawmaker whose change in the law would make it impossible for me to access or afford life-saving treatment.To Armando’s point, in that situation is it okay for me to engage in violent response, because effectively you’ve killed me with a stroke of the pen? Are you allowed to exercise that kind of “self-defence” on behalf of others? It’s a troubling question but I can see why someone might become angry enough to kill.

How far is it to go from tacit approval of the actions of a crazy man with a gun to actually advocating such action. It seems several here are dancing around that concept. Others are not even bothering to deny that they approve of his actions. I am uncomfortable with that idea.

Granting someone you agree with that power is also granting those you disagree with that power.

As someone who remembers the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, the shootings of Wallace and Reagan, and the attempts on Ford, I don’t want to go back to those days.

Literally no one here is approving of the shooter’s actions. Everyone thinks that if he had been caught alive, he should be punished to the maximum extent for his terrorist acts.

I’d argue we’re already there. The Secret Service/FBI are just better at their jobs and technology makes it more likely these people are detected before they act since social media tends to be a siren’s call they can’t resist.

Giffords and now this a huge spike considering that basically nothing happened since the 70’s as far as Congress members, but Presidents have always had this going on. Don’t forget there were 2 attempts on Obama by American citizens. Clinton also had a few. And those are just the attempts, if you add in plots and threats Obama alone breaks a dozen.

Members of Congress don’t have that level of protection for the most part.

Edit: Hell I can go on Twitter and probably find someone threatening to kill any given elected official/political figure with a dozen people or more cheering them on with likes and retweets.

People threaten people like Rick Wilson dozens of times a day.

They just find the victims actions to be worthy of them.

Yes. He a shitty person. I do not feel pity for him.

This is different than supporting the shooter’s actions.

And again I find the public broadcasting of that lack of pity to be a strange choice. Like trying to have a little vengeance cake while eating it too. It’s a thin moral justification. Glad I’m not the only one.

If one of the bullies which beat me up when I was a kid had suddenly died, I wouldn’t have shed a tear despite the actual horror this would have caused his family and loved ones. At no point did I make plans to make such an event happen, although I admit to occasionally fantasizing about a dinosaur or a squad of marines with guns blazing coming to my rescue. Did I actively want him dead? Not really, although I wouldn’t have overly complained. I felt he deserved whatever bad stuff came his way.

I don’t view the above as a moral failing, and not because I was a kid with limited perspective on the world and life. Rather, because I didn’t and never would consider taking an action that would lead to such an end, and not just because of fear of getting in trouble; I believe that causing someone’s death is one of the greatest wrongs and tragedies that can happen, and as such should only occur when it’s absolutely necessary. If a dinosaur had actually popped into existence and gobbled the bully up, I would have felt guilty for having the fantasy and somehow seemingly willing it into existence.

However, this leads to another issue; vitriol, when taken at face value, has an undeniable and seemingly inescapable consequence; death and destruction.

I’ve long wondered how, on the political Right side of the aisle, that people purport to believe that abortion is murder. If you (general you) truly believe that it is and yet aren’t up in arms to stop it, what would that say about your own morality? “Oh, hey - there’s a murderer killing children down the road. I won’t actually do anything to stop it because jail sucks.” While some health care workers have been killed, the actual number is much smaller than one might imagine when hearing the screed of some anti-abortion activists.

On the flipside, we have many who state that people such as Scalise are for all intents and purposes putting thousands to death by advocating for changes to health care. Thus far, we have the example of one person who seems to have potentially taken that view as literally as possible and decided to take action. Given the number of people I hear say such things, again it’s remarkable that it doesn’t seem to happen more often.

So why the discrepancy between advocates and violent action? Could it be that people aren’t inherently violent? Our history seems to belie that, yet perhaps that’s overblown. Could it instead be that people advocate a stronger position than they internally hold, essentially staking out stance that gives them some wiggle room as needed? Maybe. Could it be that people are cowards and afraid to sacrifice? Nah, we sacrifice and willingly face horrors far too often.

I really don’t have the answer, though; just guesses. However, I have gained enough of a perspective to not get riled up when I hear vitriol from any given quarter until I start to feel it’s a genuine threat. I don’t think anyone in this forum is a genuine threat. But there’s a lot of noise, both within and without these forum walls. That noise feeds some of the mechanisms of our societies, and can lead to change. I just wish I had a clue as to what that change will be, because the status quo isn’t overly awesome at the moment.

This one.

A lot of this is just venting too, I imagine. Like talking about telling off your boss over beers after work, but realizing that is actually a bad idea.

Yeah, that’s probably a good analogy. It’s certainly forgivable, but not all that wise.

I’m encountering a lot of horribly immature people while playing Overwatch these days, plus I’m raising a teenage daughter so I’m very preoccupied with the difference between thoughts you should just think vs. thoughts you should express. And it’s all tied into the current political moment.

Political assassination is a radical form of voter nullification. With millions of guns out there, if there are extremists willing to murder political opponents, the whole system falls apart. It’s the perception of political opponents as enemies of America/democracy/humanity, and inability to conceive of any politics except domination, which leads to such extreme responses.

Here’s my (probably underdeveloped) answer.

There is a limited amount of change an individual can effect. In a country our size a lone individual has exceptionally limited capacity to alter the system in such a manner. The abortion clinic example, one person may shut down a clinic, but not the system. For the congress shooter they can, at best, take out a few individuals but the shock of such attack is highly unlikely to result in anything but a sympathetic wave replacing them with more of the same. As such, even to an individual who believes that the person represents such a violent force that any action is needed, they realize that they can’t hope to effectively change that through individual action.

So instead they get angry, and riled up, and work to change the system through collective outside pressure. Not incorrectly assuming that this is more likely to lead to their desired outcome in a democratic system. What causes an individual to flip is the belief that, truly, such democratic systems are so fatally compromised that no amount of collective effort can change things. That the system is no longer workable. Such as if they believe that those in power would nakedly and literally steal the means of change in order to enshrine their own power.

And you look at North Carolina and what the GOP tried to do there, and the margin to push someone from one extreme to the other has been dangerously thinned. As time, and action, goes by at our current course, it would not shock me to see more people conclude that the system has been usurped, and more extreme measures justified.

Which brings me to the word cuck and that time when our future president mocked Ted Cruz’s wife during the campaign. What a truly disgusting, revolting, abhorrent person we have in the White House.

I’d like to go back in time and have Hillary lean into and double down on her deplorable comment rather than back off of it. That wasn’t a gaffe, it was the fucking truth and there’s demonstrable evidence of it everywhere we look.

What do you mean if? This is always the case. It’s been happening for years, will continue to happen for years and the whole system didn’t fall apart. Despite how the GOP is reacting, this is not the first nor will it be the last time someone has been shot in politics.

For me, the issue is that while it may be fine for an individual like this to suffer for being a shitty person, society as a whole is better off by outlawing such vigilantism. That is, if people were allowed to just murder people who they disagree with, while some of those victims would be deserving of such things, others would not.

This is why the term “deserves” is perhaps wrong.

Society would not be better if people like this were shot. But I still do not feel bad that he was.