However, what if that creates a big dumb Hitler martyr that a more effective fascist can wave as a bloody flag and things get worse due to better managed evil?

Yeah I agree, which is why I’m actually in the camp that I’m glad the_dumbass lived. If we can’t defeat this buffoon, then shit, we couldn’t defeat anyone.

Moreover I’d rather see him rot in prison. In order to set this country straight again, he has to be brought down by the Justice system.

Thanks for the response.

I think the internet is now a double-edged sword, and I can speak to this coming from a former Republican household in the 2000s.

Back then, pre-Facebook (and to at least the very early stages when it was a College-oriented platform), the internet was far less segregated into marketing platforms. You really would be exposed to anything and everything and that, combined with my parents’ upbringing in the 60s really had an impact on our family’s perception of events, including the Iraq War.

Nowadays, marketing algorithms are fine-tuned to preach to the choir and simply create massive echo-chambers. You can see this if you just create a new YouTube account and see the default content that shows up, like Joe Rogan… Just watch let alone like one of his videos, and next you’ll have Jordan Peterson clips filling your feed and as this happens any contrarian viewpoint gets marginalized.

If we had the internet of today back then, I’m not sure my family would break our rural right-wing religious pro-life bubble. It is VERY hard today unless you’re already well-versed in critical-thinking, have a major dose of introspection and humility, and are internet-savvy.

I just want to go back in history and ask at what point people would’ve considered it appropriate to use political violence against someone like Hitler, or was it never okay? Like was it post first coup? Post second coup? After invading Poland? Did they need to wait for gas chambers? I’m curious when public sentiment shifted.

The other problem with Democrats is they have terrible fucking strategy. Then they get this bright fucking idea to take a page out of Biden’s handbook. In what conceivable world was it a good idea to run an 81-year-old who all but promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation?

Yeah, guys, let’s “rally” blindly around the guy for whom 75% of the fucking electorate find is not cognitively fit to run for a 2nd term. Real genius strategy. It’s like they completely forget about low-info undecided swing voters.

It’s like they ALWAYS employ the wrong strategy 2 cycles too fucking late.

Yeah I’ll admit respect probably wasn’t the best choice for words, but as a father I respected his shielding his family from bullets, which is probably what led to use of that word.

It’s a little more complicated for me considering my family once was Republican during Bush’s first term. Rural, Appalachian, Pennsylvanian. I know some of these people most likely. Dumb people who know no better. Manipulated by rich interests. Feeling many pressures no doubt but too uninformed to point the finger at the right problem.

They Thought Were Free is a great book that explores this ignorance endemic in the Third Reich.

I’m not a Trump supporter, so yes, definitely a step above.

Granted the bar is on the floor but still.

Ok my respect is quickly dropping for these buffoons caught in the crossfire. But it’s like interviewing an attendee from a nazi rally, what should I expect? Critical thinking? Morals? Hah!

“devout Republican” haha… They’re a religious cult.

I don’t know enough to comment either way, personally. I’ve heard from military individuals that 150 yard shot is pretty easy and they’re trained to peg human targets at 300-400 yards with iron sights with the same caliber. My guess is his adrenaline was going like crazy and he was shaking.

lol:

Crooks tried out for his school’s rifle team but failed to make it because he was a “comically bad shot” and made jokes deemed inappropriate with firearms around, two former classmates told The New York Post.

He missed his target by close to 20ft, Jameson Murphy said.

“He tried out…and was such a comically bad shot he was unable to make the team and left after the first day,” he added.

You can see them really struggling with the cognitive dissonance in this moment.

Side note, but from a Telegraph article, I confess this made me chuckle:

Crooks tried out for his school’s rifle team but failed to make it because he was a “comically bad shot” and made jokes deemed inappropriate with firearms around, two former classmates told The New York Post.

He missed his target by close to 20ft, Jameson Murphy said.

“He tried out…and was such a comically bad shot he was unable to make the team and left after the first day,” he added.

Please permit me to vent for but a moment.

Enough of this fucking grandstanding.

If I have to hear one more time how this is a somber moment for the country and that this is a tragedy and both sides must make peace, my lord does that dodge the elephant in the room.

I mean, Hello, McFly!? These fuckers are out there engaging in full-throated stochastic terrorist threats on a daily basis. These right-wingers are responsible for the VAST majority of political violence both in present day (that’s per the FBI and DOJ) and throughout our fucking history. ProPublica reports these right-wing extremist groups are actively trying to instigate a civil war.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the blood of Sandy Hook and Uvalde children fall squarely on the same fuckers whose convention listed, “We Are All Domestic Terrorists.” All the trained shooters, security detail, preparedness couldn’t stop some dumbass from taking pot-shots at a President… And yet, these people try to argue that MoRE GuNz = Safer Society? Please.

They can go fuck themselves. My concern stops beyond the bystander father who protected his family. Beyond that, I have no more tears to give. While I agree the fight needs won at the ballot, and that we should always use brains over bullets — I just cannot abide by hearing the incessant BoTh SiDeS bullshit as though Democrats are even remotely responsible for the heightened tensions in this. No. This is a response to blatantly clear fascism and a threat to our Democracy as we know it. Godwin himself said that it was okay to compare Trump to Hitler because it’s fucking accurate.

I edited incorrectly. Regardless, changes absolutely nothing substantively. “looked closer to” versus “dementia-like”. Both imply the same notion.

Okay sure I’ll cede that. For your part can you go back and read that I wrote, “closer to dementia-like”? Old age, dementia… Whether it truly was dementia or not skirts bottom-line that there is no good excuse for that. The problem is Trump is old but was far more coherent (and simply his usual pathologically-lying self).

Oh please… I don’t have to be a fucking doctor to have that perception while also having gone through several of these cases with grandparents and Great-grandparents alike. Like… Are ya blind? Show me Obama doing something like that on the debate stage. Hell even show me 2012 Biden doing that.

What a weak cop-out…

This is not good news.

Reminder:

• Biden was TEN POINTS ahead of where he is now back in 2020.

• Biden ASKED for this debate because he was already trailing in the polls and not where he needs to be. At best things remain the same, which is to say poor. At worst, they are worse.

• 2020 was decided by 40,000 undecided low-info apathetic voters in 3 battleground states. If those people remain apathetic and polls remain this close, Biden will lose.

• His own campaign staff is now reportedly saying they see no viable path to victory.

Further key points raised in this poll/article:

Nearly two-thirds of the more than 1,300 respondents said they believe Biden lacks the mental fitness to be president. That includes almost 4 in 10 Democrats.

That said, politicians tend to be good political weathervanes, with their own high-quality polling, and several of the Democratic House members who have advocated for Biden to leave the race are from competitive swing districts.

Third parties pull younger voters, Biden doing better with those most likely to vote

When third parties are factored in, Trump and Biden are statistically tied, with Trump at 43% and Biden 42%.

Yeah certainly not kosher to diagnose remotely short of physically visiting with patient or reading their file; but I do suspect it can be pretty obvious for an expert to see whose symptoms are (a) largely on public display, and (b) said behaviors are pretty unique to Parkinson’s. But nevertheless, he’s the expert not me. Seems pretty obvious to me that Biden is certainly declining.

A board-certified neurologist stated on NBC the other night that “it is a fact that he has Parkinson’s” based on a variety of his behaviors, the slow and low-toned voice being one indicator of many.

As someone who is in the camp of calling for Biden to step down, if he would’ve just done this during the debate, we wouldn’t have ever had a problem. Sure, he stumbled and mixed names up… Whatever. George W Bush did far worse, let alone Trump. But that debate performance? That looked closer to outright dementia, I’m sorry. And now in the back of everyone’s minds is when is the inevitable next time he does this? For he certainly isn’t getting any younger, and that sure as shit wasn’t a cold. Meanwhile the apathetic battleground swing-voters who will decide this election and hate both candidates just got the confirmation they needed to say, “both sides / they’re all the same.”

Biden going to full-on RBG us.