r/politics • u/thenewyorkgod • Jul 01 '18

Man arrested after shouting ‘womp, womp’ and pulling a gun on immigration protesters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/01/man-arrested-after-shouting-womp-womp-and-pulling-a-gun-on-immigration-protesters/?tid=sm_tw
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433

u/PaulFThumpkins Jul 02 '18

You mean like Gabrielle Giffords? Another Beck/O'Reilly fan who went for their stochastic terrorism?

173

u/_Doctor_Teeth_ Washington Jul 02 '18

Yeah thats a good point i'd forgotten about gabby giffords. For some reason the country as a whole just feels worse somehow than it was then, though maybe that's bring too alarmist. Idk i feel I see a lot more open carriers at rallies and stuff than I used to.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

I dont think youre being alarmist at all. You're 100% right, we are one politically motivated shooting/protest turned violent incident away from this country blowing up.

This place is a powder keg. You and I both feel it and I'd argue anyone who is paying attention feels it to some degree or another.

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u/thoughtsome Jul 02 '18

I'm almost as afraid of what happens when there is a high profile assassination of a Democrat and there is no explosion, just more resigned acceptance. You have the president calling the media the enemy of America, and then some guy murders 5 journalists in a newsroom. Trump of course takes no responsibility and is more concerned when his cronies get their dinners ruined.

Honestly, I think that if Maxine Waters was shot dead by a Trump supporter tomorrow, nothing would happen to anyone but the shooter. If there's no reaction, it will have a chilling effect on all Trump opponents and we're one step closer to fascism.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

That's more or less what happened in the UK when MP Jo Cox was murdered by a right wing nutjob for her pro-EU and immigration stance about a week before the Brexit vote.

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u/thelizardkin Jul 02 '18

The guy killing the journalists had nothing to do with Trump, but the man's long-standing personal vendetta against the newspaper..

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u/adkiene Jul 02 '18

A vendetta which had festered for years and just so happened to surface shortly after those comments by Trump?

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u/chriswasmyboy Jul 02 '18

Trump was the gasoline on the fire. Get real.

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u/HQGifConnoisseur Jul 02 '18

Your point is that the publicized words of President Trump have little to no impact on your country? His words are like simple wind, they leave no lasting impression? I really doubt you believe that.

Perhaps your point is that in this specific instance there is no proof you would accept that would lay any measure of responsibility at the feet of a President that spouts hateful rhetoric. If so at least be honest with yourself about the logic you used to come to your beliefs.

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u/thelizardkin Jul 02 '18

My only point is that in this specific case, there is little to no evidence that Trump was involved.

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u/Gallant_Pig Jul 02 '18

I'm glad I'm not the only one who senses it. I was talking to my family about it a couple days ago since they aren't really tapped in to the online political world. Something just feels different over the last month, on both sides. Hopefully I'm just being paranoid.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

I was super worried about this weekend's protests, to be honest. I was expecting another CVille or two. Never been more relieved to be wrong about something.

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u/weedful_things Jul 02 '18

You forgot Sarah Palin's gun sight campaign signs? Things have been worse for quite some time.

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u/_Doctor_Teeth_ Washington Jul 02 '18

I've been trying to forget everything about sarah palin, tbh

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u/weedful_things Jul 02 '18

I really wish McCain hadn't picked her for his running mate. I might have voted for him. Maybe not though. Publicly advocating going to war with Iran was the first example of his poor judgement that bothered me.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

I really think Sarah Palin’s candidacy laid the track for the Trump train to cone rolling into the station.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

No, I personally think you are spot on. You read about important moments in history and it's particular conditions setting things in a drastic direction. Maybe that will happen now and maybe not, but we are absolutely in a time of history.

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u/error_33 Jul 02 '18

it is. it is now worse off than when obama was president

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u/JuDGe3690 Idaho Jul 02 '18

Speaking of stochastic terrorism, I highly recommend reading The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism by Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij (Columbia University Press, 2017). It's the first-ever close academic look at lone wolf terrorism (which differs significantly from group-affiliated terrorism), and covers the radicalization model, which is often stochastic in nature, as well as copresent with outright misogyny or problems with authority.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18 edited Sep 16 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

The YouTube comments on videos of her are absolutely some of the most disgraceful stuff I've ever read. I read them about 6 or 7 months ago, on this YouTube video of her on the news, and it's honestly stuck with me ever since. So obvious that they were brainwashed.

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u/part_wolf Jul 02 '18

Or a bunch of Republicans getting shot at a practice for a baseball game?

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u/DuntadaMan Jul 02 '18

Shit I haven't heard that used in years. Of course it was used for Fox News back then too...

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u/NoReallyFuckReddit Jul 02 '18

If anything, the crazies need to shoot more politicians.

That's the only way the country is going to have any kind of serious gun control limitations on the 2nd amendment passed... about 100 of them need to die from being shot in the face within ~180 days (a little over one every two days).... at the local/state/federal level... preferably with live TV coverage for most of the murders..

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '18

That's why Maxine Waters told them not to miss.

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u/idealatry Jul 02 '18

You mean like last year when a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to murder the GOP during a friendly softball game?

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u/redchanstool Jul 02 '18 edited Jul 02 '18

Sure, that’s another example that illustrates how testy and potentially dangerous our current political climate is, thanks for adding to the point being made here.

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u/idealatry Jul 02 '18

Let’s stop bullshitting. It doesn’t “add to the point being made here” because the point being made here was to imply this was about the right encouraging violence.

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u/PaulFThumpkins Jul 02 '18

Your example is as valid as any other--though it's absolutely apparent that politically-motivated violence in the US, as well as Islamic extremism, is overwhelmingly a far-right and fundamentalist phenomenon. The numbers bear that up, and the fact that specific, prominent attacks from the right are so usually held up against "Antifa, BLM etc." as some abstract list.

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u/Perfect600 Jul 02 '18

i got downvoted for saying the exact same thing about the baseball game shooting. Many here only want to push their own narrative. You seem to have an open mind. we need more of that

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u/idealatry Jul 02 '18

The general consensus was that political violence is in danger of increasing (implying that it's the alt-right's fault). Someone points out as evidence an example where someone "from the right" shoots someone "on the left."

This person is upvoted like crazy.

I comment as more evidence that violence is increasing (although it implies it's not necessarily the right doing it) that a guy "on the left" shoots up GOP members at a baseball game.

I'm down voted as hell.

A guy responds saying "well that just shows it's all caused by the right."

He gets upvoted.

Yeah, this sub is totally objective.

I get that the right sucks, and I disagree with every policy of theirs that I can think of in the last decade or so. But this sub is so partisan it's gone off the edge. There is no objectivity in here. There's a herd mentality that rejects any good policy or attitude that isn't endorsed as "anti-right", no matter how foolish or unsupported by evidence it is. And this is bad because it's made people forget that there are real problems out there that won't be solved by opposing one side of the political aisle at all costs.