F*** Your Ballroom

 The single most idiotic thing to come out of the  half-baked assassination attempt on Trump's life were the immediate - and I mean immediate - calls to drop all opposition to Trump's ballroom.

First of all, security worked exactly as it should. The security perimeter held and no one was killed, including the would be shooter. There is at least some rumors swirling  that the Secret Service agent who was shot in the vest was shot by another agent. 

Second, the WHCD is not a presidential event. This is the first time that Trump has gone, in fact, because he's a WATB whose skin is so thin a gnat could pierce it.

Finally, what they are proposing (it's not really a serious proposal) is that presidents no longer interact with the public. Like the Japanese emperor, he should hide away in the imperial compound like a distant god. 

Basically, Trump will turn any random event into a way to sate his impoverished ego.

Broken Politics

 The...whatever it was that happened at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night...is yet another simply bizarre moment that have become common place since Trump came down the escalator. Yes, I'm "victim blaming." Trump has been targeted previously by people who fit more in the school shooter or John Hinckley/Charles Guiteau category of assassin. Disturbed men who found meaning in killing someone famous or simply wanting to "die famous" themselves. We don't know anything about the motives of the man in custody, but he went to Cal Tech, wasn't a registered Democrat, but gave money to Harris' campaign. He was apparently staying at the hotel, which suggests a degree of planning. Yet the actual attack was hardly a well-thought out plan.

Lots of online voices have suggested that this - like the Butler attempt - were "false flag" actions designed to bolster Trump's sagging popularity. As Paul Campos argues, that's highly improbable. Some of this is post hoc ergo propter hoc, in that the Butler attempt really did give him a boost, and might have tilted the election in his favor. As I said at the time, his defiant fist as he was being rushed off stage was the only time I could see him behaving in a way that would suggest an actual virtue. From the effect, the cause is assumed that the shooting was staged.

Trump never goes to the WHCD because he hates the press. He decides to go, and there's a shooting attempt. This naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories. I would argue that his plan was to pick a nasty fight and give a vitriolic speech as a way to divert attentions from his cratering approval. Picking fights with the press is red meat and it always plays well with MAGA. That makes more sense than some sort of staged attempt on his life.

I think we have to consider two things. The first is that this is an administration that invited a reporter into a war planning chat. It's a president who launched a war against Iran without considering what Iran might do in response. It's an economics team who seems to think foreign countries pay tariffs, especially those damned penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands. The idea that these clowns could pull off three false flag attacks and the meticulous attention to secrecy and planning that this would require strains belief.

The second is that Trump is a chaos agent. That's a large part of his selling point to the disgruntled people who adore him. They don't care if he can build a better society, they just want the old one torn down. That sort of personality will inspire violence. He will inspire to people to kill him. He will also inspire his followers to assassinate Minnesota legislators, to beat Paul Pelosi nearly to death with a hammer and to stage an insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States. 

Violence - political violence - is a sign that our politics are completely broken. It doesn't mean irrevocably broken, but currently very much broken. Again, we don't know if the shooter was thinking clearly, but he could very well be in the Luigi Mangione camp of a radicalized person who simply snaps and resorts to violence. We know death threats against public officials are on the rise, and we know that Trump uses dehumanizing language to speak about anyone who stands against him. Stochastic violence leads to actual violence, including violence directed against himself.

One more reason this is unlikely to be a false flag, besides the difficulty and danger in pulling it off. This story will largely disappear by Wednesday.  Quick, who was the guy who laid in ambush for Trump at his golf course? What was his name? Hell, I'm only vaguely sure of the name of the Butler shooter. Crooks, I think?

The dysfunction of our political life -  a dysfunction that Trump took and dialed up to a hundred - has led us to this point, where violence is more and more common, and will remain that way until we finally put the era of this malevolent orange creature behind us.

ICE Just Executed A Man On The Streets Of Minneapolis

 You can find the video if you want. It's disturbing. If you can stomach it, watch it. Bear witness. ICE tackled a guy to the ground, beat him ruthlessly and then one guy shot him multiple times as he was lying on the ground. 

If I were Walz, I would be faced with an impossible dilemma. My gut would say that I need to mobilize the National Guard and bring them onto the streets of the Twin Cities and interpose themselves between ICE and the populace. My brain would recognize that as soon as I do that, Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act. 

If this act stands, if ICE is not removed from Minnesota, then we are reasonably looking at the end of America as an idea. The idea that consent of the governed matters, that civil liberties matter, that the Constitution matters is on a knife's edge and this event could tip if off. 

We are approaching a place where "Blue" states need to seriously consider whether remaining in a polity with the states that are OK with "comply or be shot" is tenable. If America "pukes up her ancient soul" then it is no longer America.

UPDATE: Good take from Josh Marshall, as always.

King Donald The First

 The atrocious murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by masked agents of the state has been likened to the Orwellian line of  "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." This connects - and rightly so - the actions of the Trump administration with 20th century totalitarianism. I don't think they've achieved it, but that is clearly their goal.

However, in describing Trump himself, I think Krugman is correct here and here. Trump clearly sees himself as a monarch, a sovereign. His actions work to blur the lines between the state and his person. He sees the achievements of the state as HIS achievements and the resources of the state as HIS resources. This is why dissent of any kind is "treason," because the king is the sovereign. 

The basic, foundational idea of America - the thing we are celebrating this year's 250th anniversary - is that the people are sovereign. Trump's "L'etat cest moi" bullshit is deeply, deeply Unamerican. The raid to get Maduro was a very impressive bit of work by the extraordinary professionals of Joint Special Operations Command. Trump thinks he did it. He crowed about watching it on TV, like he was playing some sort of video game and the controller was in his hands. His desecration of the East Wing of the White House is reminiscent of some fading potentate building a palace in his own honor to stave off the looming reality of his own mortality. 

I honestly am not going to predict the fallout from Good's murder or Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela. I've been humbled trying to predict things where Trump is involved. Still, shooting a white mom in the face is not likely to increase support for his internal deportation policies. Those policies were never popular, as people wanted more border security, not attacks on their schools and neighborhoods in an effort to deport some roofers, line books and housekeepers. Before these events we had two polls on Trump's job approval. CBS had 41-59 or 18 points "underwater" and Rasmussen (Rasmussen!) had him 45-53 or 8 points down. 

ICE itself has seen support collapse, from +16 to -14 in November. That number is sure to fall further. People want the border "secure" but they don't want raids on apartment buildings, they don't want masked goons provoking confrontations on American streets. Support for abolishing ICE entirely has reached 42%, up from 29% in 2018. Not yet the majority position, but this was before ICE start shooting people in the face and then being held unaccountable for their actions.

I've been learning about pre-Norman Britain, and it is striking how the character of government often depended so completely on the character of the king. Trump is a man of low character, and his administration reflects this. I was reflecting on the fact that "shame" isn't actually a bad thing, if it serves a moral code. Relentless shame is debilitating, but if you wrong someone and feel shame, that's actually good. It allows you to make amends and rectify your behavior.

Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and that extends to his courtiers, who smear Renee Good rather than reflect on their actions that led to her slaughter in the streets of her hometown by agents of the state that are not welcome there. Their king revels in the blood on his hands, he bathes in it.

But hopefully, America remembers that we are not a nation of kings.

Thanks, SCOTUS

 The Kavanaugh Stops - Brown skin is probable cause - are having exactly the sort of effect that one would imagine. Bovino is one of the full on fascists that Trump has empowered through Stephen Miller. I wish I was sanguine that these blatantly unconstitutional efforts would actually move voters, but maybe it will only be when so many Brown people stop coming work that the country slides further into recession that people will realize that terrorizing people is economically counterproductive. Enough people clearly do not care about the human suffering involved.

Speaking of Brown people, glad to see that there are no negative consequences to letting any asshole own weapons of war.

The Shooter Was Turned In By His Family

 The FBI didn't "get him" because they were running around spreading false shit about trans stuff on bullet casings. 

There will be a lot of bullshit, lies and misconceptions in the next 24 hours as they piece this guy together and figure out why he did it. The early returns appear to show at...wait for it!...highly confusing set of beliefs and actions. There are rumors he's a registered Republican who donated to Trump's campaign. There are rumors he's a groyper, which is a fringe neo-Nazi group led by Nick Fuentes and famous for the Pepe the Frog meme. Fuentes and Kirk were enemies for a time.

We see all the usual signs: excessively online, too many guns and a valorization of gun culture, at least a little alienated.

What we do not see is a trans person, a blue-haired bisexual barista, a cringey liberal wine mom, a Democratic official, an immigrant or a racial minority. 

I would not be at all surprised if we find out he had some left wing views on something like wealth inequality. Horseshoe theory and all that. However, the disgusting smear by just about every member of the Trump Administration that this was "radical left lunatics" is - at first blush - completely untrue.

UPDATE: It seems that there's a very, very good chance that this guy was indeed a Groyper. My worry is that a politicized FBI will not allow that conclusion to reach the living rooms of the average American.

Not The Same

 We still don't know who assassinated Charlie Kirk, and given the rank incompetence of Kash Patel's FBI, we might not catch the guy. At this point, we have to hope some local police make the case. The leak of lies that there were "trans markings" on the bullets shows where the priorities are from the top of the FBI and whatever remains of the rank and file after Trump's purges.

As Marshall points out, the simple fact is that the MAGA Right is deeply steeped in and tolerant of violence. The obvious example is January 6th, but Trump's language is always infused with violent imagery and threatening language. That does not limit his appeal in certain segments of the Right, but increases it. The poll Marshall cites says that only 39% of Trump supporters agree with the statement that political violence has no place in American society. For non-Trumpers, that number is 66%. 

There have obviously been cases of left wing violence, but the volume and intensity from the right is higher across the board. The Butler would-be assassin was not apparently driven by political beliefs, but the whacko in Florida who tried but never got off a shot has some amorphous left wing views but is mostly just nuts. (He's representing himself in his trial that just started and it's going about as well as you might expect.)

Just recently, we had the assassination and attempted assassination of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota and the fire bombing of the governor of Pennsylvania's house. 

Because the appeal to violence is so much more prevalent on the right, we really do have to hope that Kirk's assassin has either crazy views or far right views (but I repeat myself), not so much for partisan advantage, but because it will derail (though not end) the calls from violence on the right. 

It's Utah. It's not just Utah but Provo, which is REALLY conservative. Idaho ain't that far away. The shooter clearly was adept with a rifle to hit Kirk in the neck from that distance. He's a white dude. The only clear sign that he might be to the left is the target. Kirk, however, had enemies to his right. 

In much the same way that Butler was perpetrated by some cookie cutter school shooter type which led to Trumpists being somewhat impotent in their anger, we had better hope that whoever shot Kirk is not a dyed in the wool leftist, because Trump and his myrmidons are baying for blood and perfectly willing to engage in slaughter in their holy war against pronouns and windmills.

Livelsberger's Manifesto

 Josh Marshall runs through the manifestos of the man who killed himself in front of Trump's hotel in Las Vegas. He was one of a new brand of violent extremists who seem to proliferate around Trump, including both those who idealize him and those who wish him harm. I do not include the kid who shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania, who appears to be more a "famous suicide" than anyone with an ideological motive.

Instead, we have the guy who loaded up his van to attack DC; obviously January 6th and now Livelsberger, who appears to be something of a mentally disturbed man prone to violence and extremist views. 

His plan was roughly similar to Aaron Bushnell's, the man who lit himself on fire over Gaza. Bushnell was also a veteran, though he did not serve in an active war zone like Livelsberger, who appears to suffer from PTSD and possibly CTE. Basically, these were men who thought that a dramatic suicide would spur some sort of reckoning. 

Livelsberger wanted to foist some sort of anti-Democratic insurrection along the lines of January 6th. He was also obsessed with the sort of empty, performative masculinity that revolves around Trump. Here are some excerpts:

Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

Focus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders. Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.

Stop obsessing over diversity. We are all diverse and DEI is a cancer.
Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.

Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

This is the stuff of cults. 

Bushnell grew up in a Christian cult, but Livelsburger appears to have joined Trump's. A cult mindset can make acts of suicide into acts of devotion. That Trump and Musk are the lodestars of this act of self-destruction is crushingly sad.

Marshall and others have written about the disinhibition in Trumpistan - how we are moving towards an odd culture of violence that is slightly different from our usual culture of violence. It is political but not exactly ideological. It serves not a coherent ideology like fascism or communism, but "Trump" as an avatar of disruption and destruction of the status quo. 

The world, it turns out, isn't designed to make you happy. In fact, the apps on your phone, the low grade enshittification, consumer culture...they are all designed to leave you unsatisfied, while showing you a world where everything is great. This hopelessness, I think, breeds the sort of vaguely political violence of Luigi Mangione and Matthew Livelsberger. 

The fact that Livelsberger was a fan of Trump - same in some ways as the Butler shooter - means that the narrative of these violence events does not comport to easy and premade media narratives. So we ignore them.  

Thoughts and prayer, I guess. 

America The Bloody

 Josh Marshall has a really important take on the recent spate of violence that seems to stalk our land. We readily remember the 1960s as a violent time, because of the high profile assassinations. Those assassins were a motley blend of horseshoe theory ideologies (except for King's assassin). State violence was mirrored by protest violence. The 1990s are not as remembers for being violent, yet that was the era of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement.

What Marshall points to is a comparison with the late Gilded Age period. That was a time of real violence. Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were assassinated, but Garfield assassin was just a lunatic. There was labor violence and violence against labor. There was the Klan re-establishing white supremacy in the South. There was the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (Marshall forgot this one). 

That violence was traced to America's first real exposure to wide disparities in wealth among free White men. Institutions were perceived as corrupt, the promise of reform that came out of the Civil War - Free Labor, Free Men - was dashed against the concentration of extreme wealth and monopoly. The violence was not a left or right wing insurgency, but rather anti-status quo. It was less purely ideological - or rather much of it lacked a programmatic agenda - and more a violent lashing out against a society that seemed to be changing faster than people could cope with.

Violence is bad, by the way. Lauding Luigi Mangione is the sign of a sickness within our overall polity. There might be a link between the two vehicle based attacks yesterday.

We seem headed not for a Civil War or even a broad based reign of terrorism, but rather the slow steady drip of these random acts of violence that - by their accumulation - are no longer random. The anti-politics of Donald Trump seems to feed into this.

As I said, violence is bad, and I wonder if there comes a point when people remember this.

Come See The Violence Inherent In The System

 What happened yesterday - perhaps less an assassination attempt than the CONCEPT of an assassination attempt - is yet to play out politically. The alleged potential assassin - presuming that was what he was doing, the guy is nuts - does seem more likely to have a political motive than the Butler shooter. The kid in Pennsylvania was looking to kill and die famous, in the manner of Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza. He was at the very least Right Leaning, if not an outright Republican.

Ryan Routh, the suspect in custody, seems to be more "political" but his politics are a mess. If his Twitter feed is to be believed, he voted for Trump in 2016, then supported Tulsi Gabbard and maybe Elizabeth Warren in 2020. This past winter, he was supportive of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. That's...eclectic. 

The through line for me is that he is clearly mentally unwell. His previous history suggests someone with obvious mental health issues. He said he travelled to Ukraine to help organize Afghan fighters to fight for Ukraine. Ummm...what? He seems to be opposed to "the Man" in whatever form that takes for him in any given moment. Who's the outsider? The plucky underdog? 

That's how you support Trump in 2016, but Gabbard and Andrew Yang four years later. It's not ideological, it's about the person who's outside "the System" even if they are ideologically opposites. Once Trump becomes President, he IS the System and needs to be opposed. I would be shocked if Routh wasn't a huge fan of Joe Rogan's and that sort of glib anti-government posturing. I am shocked that wasn't a huge RFK Jr fan.

The fact that the Secret Service actually did a pretty good job yesterday seems lost in the inevitable posturing by Trumpists and others. Routh was a quarter mile away from Trump when he was discovered and didn't get a shot off. There was no dramatic image like in Butler.

How will this play out? I don't think it will have much impact, for the simple reason that the first one didn't exactly upend the race. That attempt was dramatic and TV-ready. The blood trickling down his face, the "fight" moment. That was Trump's best moment in 9 years as a political figure.

And it didn't matter. 

In fact, here's what I think the political fallout from this will be:

- Trump will go berserk trying to fundraise off this. His minions will try and shut down any criticisms of Trump as being incitement. That will fail.

- A lot of people in the middle will look at this and sigh, more drama. Trump is exhausting. It's always something with this guy: indictments, impeachments, insurrections, assassinations attempts. Can't we just move on? 

- We were not that far from Trumpists committing acts of terrorism anyway, so there is going to be something tragic in the next few weeks, I fear. A school or government building will be shot up or bombed. It just feels inevitable. Trumpists will try and bothsides it away, but it won't work.

- In the end, Routh himself will fade quickly from the news, unless there is some other major shoe to drop. Look, this is America. Of course we let a mentally ill man with a criminal record get his hands on an AK47. Will this change America's gun laws? You're hilarious. (Although Democrats should 100% introduce the Protect Donald Trump Gun Safety legislation tomorrow.) We let lunatic slaughter school kids and a few days later we've moved on; Routh never even got off a shot. 

Part of Donald Trump's "appeal" especially in 2016 was as a chaos agent. "I alone can change it." He was the disrupter for a corrupt system. That's why Routh (allegedly) supported him back then. People are tired of the chaos, tired of the dysfunction. Biden's signal "failure" as president was his promise to make politics boring again, without taking the steps to remove Trump from the political stage. Of course he was going to run again; fuck Merrick Garland for dragging his feet.

I don't see this accruing sympathy to Trump, and sadly I think Springfield could get even more scary. 

The New School Year

 After a year's sabbatical, we start classes today. It feels simultaneously familiar and strange. The same can be said for the horrific rite of passage for America's school children: another shooting. What's becoming especially tragic is that law enforcement are being tipped off about these kids who ring alarm bells among peers and teachers. There's this graph from the Post:

Police identified the suspect as Colt Gray, a student who attracted the attention of federal investigators more than a year ago, when they began receiving anonymous tips about someone threatening a school shooting.

The FBI referred the reports to local authorities, whose investigations led them to interview Gray and his father. The father told police that he had hunting guns in the house, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them. Gray denied making the online threats, the FBI said, but officials still alerted area schools about him.

The problem these LEOs have is that Republicans - both in the courts and in the legislature - have stripped them of the ability to actually do anything about the easy access to guns Americans have, even emotionally disturbed ones. The father said he had "hunting guns" which in the twisted world of modern gun ownership includes AR-style weapons of war. Even if the local LEOs had known about the AR style guns, there's nothing they could have likely done about it.

I'm weirdly more optimistic about the world than a lot of people I know. I think Harris wins and it might not be close. I think Democrats win the House. The Senate is tough, but I'm not giving up hope yet. 

I am not optimistic about guns. I see no reason to be. After Sandy Hook, why should I be?

Called It

 A few days ago, I posited that the young man who shot at Trump had more in common with school shooters than ideological political assassins. 

Seems that's looking more and more like the case.

Have We "Moved On"?

 Paul Campos ponders whether we have simply moved on from the shooting in Pennsylvania because frankly everything surrounding Trump is always so unhinged, so scripted from pro wrestling forms, that we all sort of looked at that, went "holy shit" and then went back to our lives.

Trump has always been a chaos agent. That has been part of his appeal to a certain nihilistic person (usually male) who just wants to watch the world burn, because they lack the imagination to think about warmth. Like many a neurasthenic Democrat, I wondered if the photo of him raising a fist to the crowd was the final nail in the coffin of America's long experiment in democratic governance.

However, I'm not so sure. (Hell, I'm not so sure about anything anymore.) I do wonder if the swirling chaos around this man will inure people to this recent event, especially since the shooter seems to be cut from the same cloth as Dylan Klebold or Adam Lanza rathe than John Wilkes Booth or Gavrilo Princip. 

Maybe I'm wrong (again, I feel unmoored from decades of study of this shit by the uniqueness of this moment, these moments), but I my gut says that whatever bump Trump gets from being shot at will be indistinguishable from the same bump he might get from the convention.

Yes, he should build a bit more of a lead after the convention (unless it becomes the MAGA freakshow), but whose mind - again - was changed who had voted for Biden in 2020? Who looks at the chaos that swirls around Trump and wants to return to that?

We Shouldn't Pretend We Know What Will Happen

 When I saw the image of Trump, blood trickling down his face raising a fist to the crowd, my first thought was: "Fuck. He's going to win." Why I thought this was because there is no logical reason for Trump to even be close to winning since January 6th and Dobbs.  My default position is that politics for that critical slice of the electorate that swings back and forth is informed by irrational things, and that picture couldn't have been staged any better from the Authoritarian Populist Playbook.

Then, I did myself a favor and logged off and didn't watch the news. My blood pressure has been high since that fucking debate and I didn't need to doomscroll my way into a heart attack.

After reflection, I think a few things are true.

- This, along with the convention next week, will give Trump a polling bump.
- However, there's equally a chance that next week devolves into "American carnage" and the Cult of Personality around Trump that people will be turned off by. My worry about the convention was that it wouldn't be a freakshow, but I don't see how it can be anything other than one now.
- It's a long way to the election.

Events have certainly conspired against those of us who wish to avoid a second Trump Administration bent on vengeance and suckling at the dark heart of his perpetual grievances. The debate, the debate about the debate and now this. As soon as polls started returning to baseline and giving Biden a shot at winning again (he held the slimmest of edges in 538's model on Friday), something happens to throw everything up in the air.

However...

I'm uncertain how getting shot at helps Trump win over voters who didn't vote for him in 2020. I will say that I'm relieved that the shooter is almost certainly some marginalized young man with incoherent political views and a likely death wish. I am also relieved that more people weren't killed, given the weaponry the man had. 

The obvious parallel here is less John F. Kennedy and more any of the school shootings that plague our land. If he was - as it initially appears - someone motivated by a nihilistic vision of his own extinction; if he was is an Adam Lanza with a different target; then the discussions around this could very quickly change.

I was struck by how quickly Democrats all said exactly the right thing about political violence (more on that in another post) and how Republicans want to use this to quash criticism of Trump. I really don't think that will work. Democrats will, likely, go somewhat dark during the convention, unless something really nutso happens worthy of jumping on. 

If I was advising Democrats, I would urge them to introduce an Assassination Prevention Bill that would ban AR style weapons. Then, watch as Republicans filibuster it or let it die in the House. 

The thing about Trump is that he brings the crazy with him. He is a summoner of dark spirits. I have to wonder if this really helps him, but time will tell.

If, by November, we have returned to the idea that a presidential campaign is a job interview rather than a WWE cage match, I can't see how "getting shot at" is a positive bullet point.

Vive Mexico

 Mexico is suing American gunmakers and it might work to change the way they do business. The immunity gunmakers have from law suits is absolutely sickening and perverse. Hopefully this stands and they are finally held liable.

It's The Goddamned Guns

 And the fact that Second Amendment fundamentalists and absolutists won't let us keep guns from people with mental illness.

Death By Actual Death

 After yesterday's post about the economic inequality that blights so many lives, it's worth noting that young people being anxious and depressed might have something to do with mass shootings.

When we were dropping our youngest off at college, I actually pondered if someone would do exactly what happened at UNC the other day. It was a long drive out to Colorado, and my mind wandered about until it landed on "Oh, yeah, I wonder if there will be a mass shooting." That's not a topic that students in other countries have to deal with. 

There have been stories about how the war is creating long term trauma in Ukrainian children, but something similar - if at a much smaller scale - is happening here.

Yes, Hispanics Can Be Nazis

 We have had a spate of mass shootings in Texas where the shooters have Hispanic surnames. Needless to say, if you're an odious piece of shit like Marjorie Traitor Green, you ascribe this to the mass flood of "illegals" flooding our borders.

The Mall Shooter (as opposed to the Backyard Shooter) was apparently both Hispanic AND a Nazi Curious type. This has confused some people who apparently forgot Nick Fuentes exists.

There are a number of reasons that you can have Hispanic White Supremacists that have to do with the complications of ethnic identity in Latin America and the weird dynamic of race in America itself. A quick glance at history books will let you know that quite a few Latin American countries welcomed fleeing Nazis after World War II, and the record of fascism in Latin America is...not good. Military dictatorship were very common and remain "the good old day" for many. The term "death squad" originated in Central America, for crying out loud.

The racial caste system of Latin America was much more nuanced than Americans realize, as our caste system tended towards "White" and "Non-White". But there are Latin Americans who see themselves as "White" and superior to more mestizo-type populations within their borders. 

When this idea is translated to America, you have people who are drawn to solidarity with the dominant racial caste - in this case, White America. They were the dominant caste at home and they want to be allied with the dominant caste here. What's more, the natural psychology of fascism is bullying and bullies look towards other, stronger bullies. If you're already drawn towards that psychology it's a short walk. 

Even more importantly, Hispanics sit in a racial no-man's land in America. They aren't Black and - in the eyes of most White Americans - they aren't exactly White. Hell, even if they are indigenous Americans, they aren't seen as "Native Americans" but rather "Latin". For those who were part of a dominant caste system at home, this dislocation is disorienting, so you rush towards the movement that seeks to shut out people who look like you and claim allegiance to them, in the same way an abused person seeks the approval of their abuser.

All of this is a long way of saying something that is undeniably true. There is no Hispanic or Latine Polity in America. There are multiple identifiers and ethnic differences that tend to get ignored when White people lump all these disparate groups into "Hispanic" or "Latinx". 

Oh, and it's the fucking guns. Never forget it's also about the fucking guns.

Fox's Other Crime

 Faux News is taking a beating the past couple of weeks. I think their greatest crimes might be unpunished - because we can't punish them for it. Faux is an accessory to murder.

The nightly stew of fearmongering about urban crime has left those who imbibe Rightist media terrified of the world outside their doors. So, when a Black kid shows up on their doorstep or an unknown car pulls into their driveway, they empty a clip against the threatening hordes. Their quaking fear of the world is stoked and manipulated by Faux, which leads to these incidents, which make the news, which make other people afraid, which accelerates the descent into more fear and more guns.

So, the solution is that it's the guns. It's always been the guns. Get rid of 75% of the guns and keep them out of lunatics' hands and that helps bleed the tension out of American society. The First Amendment is (and should be) stronger than the Second when it comes to regulating behavior.

Faux has blood on their hands, but they honestly don't give a shit.

It's The Guns

 Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, a friend of mine's son was wounded by what appears to be just another angry, random shooting. 

It's the guns, it's the guns, it's the guns. Their ubiquity and the psychology that gives you the power of death in your hands. That this psychopath was shooting off a weapon of war in his yard should be enough. That he then went into the house and executed the people there no longer surprises.

We aren't a sicker society because these people exist. They exist everywhere. We are a sicker society because we don't do a damned thing about it.