…the alleged “manifesto” of the El Paso shooter, by which the entire atrocity is being blamed on Trump, Republicans, conservative, border hard-liners and gun owners, was kinda fraud-y?
It’s a stretch.
[“8Chan” owner Jim] Watkins posted a video on his YouTube channel on Tuesday, saying the manifesto was first published on Instagram and not on his site. He said the document was then uploaded to his site by another user and that law enforcement had been “made aware” of it.
“First of all, the El Paso shooter posted on Instagram, not 8chan,” Watkins said. “Later, someone uploaded the manifesto. However, that manifesto was not uploaded by the Walmart shooter. I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but it was not uploaded by the murderer that is clear.”
Is it true?
The only way to find out from the mainstream media will be if the El Paso shooting disappears down the memory hole just as fast as the Dayton shooting (by a very strident leftist) seems to have, or the Colorado School shooting, by a trans…person did.
Because as Jim Treacher points out, the media’s job is to cover stories that discomfort Big Left. With a pillow. Til the convulsions stop.
It’s always a good thing to include a conspiracy theorist section in a blog.
How long before Trump complains that all these dead people are cutting into his approval ratings?
Ask anyone who identifies himself as a progressive whether JFK was killed by an American Communist or a right wing cabal.
Curious.
Will SITD someday face criticism and de-platforming some day because Mitch allowed the ravings of cognitively challenged, leftist lunatics on his blog?
Look at it from MBerg’s perspective: every click counts….
It’s always a good thing to include a conspiracy theorist section in a blog.
Then you should get your own blog, Emery, because you’ve got a lot of material you can copy-and-paste from others’ for that section.
MBerg walks into the Woodbury Cabelas
“My good man . . . I say, shop keeper! I wonder if I could trade these 742 clicks for that antique 17 caliber ‘dog gun’ in your window. No? Then perhaps you will accept my 742 clicks in exchange for that tube of mustache wax?”
Right, because Bergs in it for the Benjamins.
Jeezuz.
Rex Tillerson’s description of Trump could equally apply to some of his supporters, including you.
People who believed the Steele Dossier was a legitimate investigative document have no business complaining about other people’s belief in “conspiracy theories.”
If you’ve been keeping track, I identified the “Russian Collusion” story as a conspiracy theory back in 2017. I based my belief on objective, non-partisan facts: the “Russian Collusion” theory didn’t go anywhere; the suspicious activities never coalesced into a person or persons conspiring to commit, or actually committing an illegal action. Instead we got indictments of people who would never see trial, or convictions for doing things that had nothing to do with “Russian Collusion.”
The investigation began without a crime to investigate and concluded that, in fact, there had been no crime to investigate.
My record on spotting baseless conspiracy theories is pretty good compared to some other SITD commenters.
I use a simple technique: use your powers of reason, and check your epistemology.
Rex Tillerson’s description of Trump could equally apply…
And we are all confident you’ve applied it as your own several times, ya ignorant twaat. <—-my own description of you, my man.
Maybe I’ve been reading too much Taleb lately (_The Black Swan_, _Antifragile_), but I started thinking about what the results of truly effective “Red Flag” law would look like?
First, it would take guns away from people. Those people, it can be assumed, would say that the seizure was unnecessary and unfair. They weren’t going to use their gun to hurt anybody.
But in every case where a person killed another person, it would be seen as a failure of the “Red Flag” law. I.e., Dad kills his wife and kids, the “red flag” law did not stop him, because he displayed no “flaggable” behavior.
No “red flag” law would have prevented the Vegas mass shooting.
So, over time, the “Red Flag” law would be seen as being ineffective — even if it was 100% effective.
Peter Hitchens has the most interesting (if eccentric) take on last weekend’s mass shottings: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2019/08/inconclusive-musings-about-two-mass-killings-in-the-usa-.html
Hitchens believes drug use is the preventable cause of most mass murders. He believes that psychotropic drugs, including prescription anti-depressants and marijuana, drive “borderline” psychotics into full-blown psychotic breaks. Hitchens is sometimes considered “soft on Islam” because he blames drug use for most Islamic terrorism. He believes that these “borderline” people, pushed over the edge by drug use, seize onto whatever political affiliation they may be attracted to and incorporate it into their violent fantasies.
It’s an interesting idea. We are told what the mass-murderer wrote on the internet, but we are not told about the perpetrator’s use of legal and illegal drugs.
Omar Mateen (the Pulse Nightclub shooter) seems to be a typical case. He was in and out of trouble since he was a teen. He was just this side of being jailed several times.
The old MSD scored things like this highly. If you had been involved with the justice system a half-dozen times, this was a warning sign, even if you had never seen the inside of a jail cell.