Angry Guy Violence at Christmastime

Just a quick observation or three about a tragedy that happened in Pinellas County on Christmas, where two brothers shot at each other arguing over which had the bigger Christmas and in the process killed their older sister (via Jack Prator at the Tampa Bay Times).

• This shooting happened because two people - young men with anger and envy driving them - had incredibly easy access to firearms, and had prodded each other to levels of rage that guaranteed someone was going to end up dead.
• None of this would have happened if either the family didn't make it so easy to access weapons, or if the young men involved had better opportunities to learn ways to avoid that anger, to avoid the rage that always leads to tragedy of some kind.
• You could wonder about the stress, anxiety, and emotional mix-ups that come about whenever Christmas rolls around, but I get the sense the filial feuding had been brewing for some time, and that anything else - a birthday, a family celebration, someone having a bad day - would have triggered the same response.

And you want to know the horrifying observation about this? There were multiple shootings across the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Much like there have been multiple shootings across the United States throughout all of 2023. We are now averaging two mass shootings per day, and nothing being done to reduce the easy access of guns to angry guys across nation.

Not the greatest way to celebrate what's supposed to be a day of peace and goodwill.

Gods help us.

Blood on the Streets of Lewiston Maine

It's been a while since I'd written about a mass shooting, even though there's been over 500 mass shootings in America this year - and the year's not even finished.

The media hasn't fully paid attention to the gun violence unless the body count is in double digits anymore. Goddamn us, but that's where we're at this week as another angry gun with a military-grade assault rifle attacked multiple places in a small Maine city (via David Sharp, Robert Bumsted, Holly Ramer, and Michael Balsamo at AP News):

Authorities searched forests, waterways and small towns Thursday for a U.S. Army reservist who they say killed 18 people and wounded 13 in a mass shooting at a bowling alley and a bar that sent panicked patrons scrambling under tables and behind bowling pins and gripped the entire state of Maine in fear.

Schools, doctor’s offices and grocery stores closed and people stayed behind locked doors in cities as far away as 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the scenes of Wednesday night’s shootings in Lewiston...

The gunman apparently planned out an elaborate escape route that involved fleeing by boat using nearby rivers, which expanded the range of the search and the need to lock down nearby communities out of fear he was still well-armed and willing to kill again.

We don't know exactly what triggered the angry guy, but he had been placed under medical observation months earlier by reservist officers who noticed troubling behavior out of him and ordered him to a mental treatment facility.

That he was still able to gain access to an assault rifle with his mental issues speaks more to a nation dominated by fringe gun-worshipping sociopaths who scream "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" as a mantra. The United States is being held hostage by a National Rifle Body Count Association that profits from every massacre and propagates an ad campaign of fear and rage, convincing their fellow gun worshippers that the Second Amendment isn't about regulating militias it's a license to shoot anybody they want.

The gun nuts "right" to own firearms that most militaries think are too dangerous has overwhelmed our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. We can't go to schools anymore without gun violence. We can't go to movie theaters or music concerts without gun violence. We can't go to grocery stores or churches anymore without gun violence. We can't go to our own homes without fearing gun violence by our own relatives or by some angry ex-husband unwilling to let a bad relationship go.

There's blood on the streets everywhere. I've been yelling and screaming and crying over that for the last 25 years. 

GODDAMMIT, WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TELL THE GUN NUTS THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO KILL US, AND DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS ONGOING CYCLE OF VIOLENCE.

Blood On the Streets of Tulsa (w/ Updates)

(Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for linking me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up!)

Because the National Rifle Body Count Association wants its blood money (via Rina Torchinsky with NPR): 

Police in Tulsa, Okla., say the shooter's doctor was among those killed Wednesday during a mass shooting at a medical building. The shooter had complained multiple times about pain following back surgery and sought additional treatment in the days prior to the attack, police said.

The shooting on the campus of Saint Francis Health System left five people dead, including the gunman, according to police. Two doctors, Preston Phillips — who had treated the gunman — and Stephanie Husen, were killed as was Amanda Glenn, an employee, and William Love, a patient, according to The Associated Press...

The gunman apparently felt ongoing back pain that the treatment didn't correct, and became angry at the doctor and the office that treated him. Driven by that anger, the gunman did this:

At 2 p.m. Wednesday — hours before the shooting — the gunman purchased an AR-15-style rifle from a local gun shop, Franklin said. The shooter also purchased a semiautomatic handgun on May 29 from a pawn shop.

Do you understand? As soon as the angry guy got his AR-15 murderstick (it's not so funny how THAT weapon is the preferred assault rifle for these mass shootings), he went on his shooting spree killing "everyone who got in his way" on his path of vengeance. No sign of a background check done, no waiting period, no cool-down, no training period, no mental health check, nothing.

He got his assault rifle and immediately became a murderer. Killing doctors, killing a staffer, killing a patient who had nothing to do with his treatment. And then killing himself knowing he was fucked forever.

One of the frustrating realizations about all of these mass shootings criss-crossing our nation is the repeating patterns to them all. It's like there's a script to this:

Step One: A guy - and it's usually a guy, often White but sometimes Black/Latino/Asian/Arab - gets pissed off about a personal injustice or perceived slight. It may involve his job, it may involve a legal dispute, but nine times out of ten it'll involve women.

Step Two: The guy comes to believe he has no legal recourse to respond to the slight, or else believes the legal system is already conspiring against him. He also refuses to seek mental help support, because he's been raised to think that's for pussies.

Step Three: The guy, getting angrier, buys a gun or twelve. If he's REALLY angry or his anger is focusing on a large group of people, he will buy an ArmaLite Rifle aka the AR-15 (the Murderstick of CHAMPIONS). This is a major problem: Nearly every firearm used in the mass shootings we keep witnessing were purchased legally or acquired legally by an ally/friend/family member, oft-times within days of the shooting events.

Step Four: A moment will trigger the angry guy into picking up his weapons - and all the ammo clips he can carry - and heading out to a place that is either the source of his woes or a place where his preferred target "audience" can be found.

Step Five: Mass shooting gets reported on the major networks. More money for the NRA!

These ongoing acts of gun violence keep involving the same three things: The number of angry guys walking among us; The relative ease to purchase and employ firearms powerful enough to kill tens of people in mere seconds; And our nation's inability to push legal reforms or public aid to solve those first two problems.

If we're going to resolve the ongoing gun violence crisis in the United States, we're going to have to come to terms with this fact: Either we get rid of the Angry Guys threatening acts of violence against us, or we get rid of the Assault Rifles that make it too damned easy for them to kill.

It's honestly impossible to get rid of Angry Guys. That would involve passing laws mandating every hot-tempered person out there check in with a psychologist or health care worker to talk them down from their rage, and that would go against a lot of privacy laws (you'll definitely get a lot of lawsuits from guys angrily disbelieving they have anger issues in the first place).

Also, to you people who would argue "Oh let CHRIST'S LOVE into your hearts" as a cure for Angry Guy Syndrome, that's a load of shit. Half these mass shooters claim to be loving Christians already when they pick up their murder weapons to kill those they deem unworthy of God's grace (just look at the so-called Christians shooting up synagogues and grocery stores). Mandatory Religion is not the solution you want it to be.

And thanks to the Second Amendment and a Supreme Court skewing to an extreme Far Right agenda, it's gotten harder to get rid of the assault weapons. Even though we've had a history of banning the AR-15s and their copycats for ten years rather effectively until 2004.

The United States is a toxic brew of fear, hate, rage, and easy access to military-grade firepower.

The shootings will continue until morale improves, or until there's no one left as target practice for the NRA to profit from.

P.S. As I type this, there's reports of a mass shooting in Racine, Wisconsin. It's at a funeral service for a Black man who was shot and killed by cops. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

P.S.S. Following the Racine shooting, there was a shooting at a church in Ames, IA. The killer turned out to be an Angry Guy ex-boyfriend of one of the two killed college women. For the LOVE OF ACTUAL GOD, PEOPLE...

Where We Stand, Where We Fall

You can stand where I stand, but you will not see what I see.

You would think, year after year of constant mass shootings numbing the national psyche, that Americans would cheer on the simplest solution towards ending gun violence: By getting rid of the goddamned guns.

After all, every other nation struck by a mass shooting tragedy went on to pass harsh laws restricting ownership, banning certain types of firearms, and limiting the lethality of both gun and bullet.

Mass shooting at Ecole Polytechnique in Canada back in 1989?  Canada required gun safety classes, 28-day waiting periods, universal gun registration, and magazine clip capacity limits. After a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in 2020, they're trying to ban 1,500 (!) models of military-style assault rifles as well.

Mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania back in 1996? Australia banned all semi-auto rifles and pump-action shotguns, and pulled off a gun amnesty and buyback program that took 250,000 guns off their streets.

Mass shooting at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland back in 1996 with semi-auto handguns using high-capacity cartridges? British Parliament passed legislation banning those types of handguns, and they maintain strict laws about the types of assault rifles allowed along with registration and certification for gun owners.  

Mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019? New Zealand banned semi-auto rifles, limited magazine clip sizes, and made modifications illegal. Like Australia, they hosted a buyback program to get as many of those guns off their streets.

Mass shooting in Ohio, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and any other Red State (or states compromised by Far Right / NRA lobbyist control) across the United States? Watch the Republicans in power pass new laws making it easier to get assault rifles and even worse avoid any certification or license.

What's maddening is how the Far Right, pro-gun politicians and pundits all proclaim how "if we ban guns, all it will do is make it so only criminals have guns." With the implication that we would see an increase of crime and gun violence because of it. However here in the United States, we get the inverse: Making it easier to get guns makes it easier for the angry guys who conform to the mass shooter profile means we still get the high body counts.

Note this: Nearly every mass shooting in the United States has been from someone who made legal purchases (or got the guns from someone who did) of those firearms. It's the legality of the process that horrifies along with the death of so many innocent lives.

Note this: We had an assault rifle ban in the United States for ten years - 1994 to 2004 - which wasn't renewed under Republican George W. Bush's administration (and maddeningly enough we never got it reinstated under Obama when we had a chance between 2009-10). It shouldn't surprise anyone that once the ban lifted, assault rifle sales went up and so did the body count (chart via Financial Times article by Justin Jacobs):

Everything from 2005 rightward to 2022. Those dots
multiply... and get bigger...

This shouldn't surprise us due to one thing: Most other nations do not have a Constitutional Amendment codifying the existence of firearms and what restrictions the states (and Congress) could impose on them. The Second Amendment is a very big reason why the U.S. can't just ban every firearm, as the Supreme Court spelled out with their Heller ruling back in 2008.

But that Second Amendment is a bit of a problem. When you read it - A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed - you'll notice the first half of the deal involves the regulation of state militias. The pro-gun forces tend to ignore that half, obsessing over the second half saying the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

They treat that "right" as an absolute, avoiding the whole part of "well-regulated" that could be used by Congress and our states into passing firearm regulations. You'll see them on social media insisting on SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED - all caps, for emphasis - as though it's a mantra, no worse dogma.

Because that dogma creates the very huge problem we have now in the United States: We have a very dedicated, very insistent, and potentially very violent minority of Americans - not even every gun owner is this paranoid and devout about the SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED dogma - who believe so much in their absolute right to own firearms that they will NEVER give them up or even allow any restriction on gun purchases to hinder their quest to buy even more weapons to an arsenal already filling up their gun sheds.

Search social media for families happily posing in their houses, driveways, back porches with every rifle and handgun they own. You will see them with hundreds of firearms they cannot possibly need. It's like an addiction, a craving to buy more weapons as though they'll be going out of fashion next week.

They buy that many because a lot of them do fear that sooner or later the federal government is going to get frustrated by all the mass shootings, and that a permanent assault rifle ban will finally get passed (and even a conservative Far Right SCOTUS would have to uphold).

And a good number of these gun worshippers buy up all these guns because they genuinely believe they will be in a shooting war - if they're not already - to overthrow what they view is a corrupt, demonic federal government.

Look at every "Come and take them," "Pry them from my cold dead hands," "Second Amendment solution" threat the gun nuts toss out there on social media. They genuinely believe they can take on a massive federal government - not just the agencies like the FBI or DEA or ATF, but the U.S. military both National Guard and standing armies if called upon to fight an insurrection - and win a "new revolution" for a truer, purer (Whiter) US of A.

These gun-worshipping acolytes can't stop because they dare not. And they're convinced a majority of "True" Americans - not the 65 percent who want a ban on all assault rifles, not the 80 percent who want universal background checks - will fight with them.

The gun nuts of America are convinced they are standing for their grand, godly cause of murdering everyone they view as a threat.

The rest of us are going to fall to their guns because of that.

This was never going to end well.

And the trigger moment - when we're no longer on the knife's edge of the Far Right's Culture War, falling into the blood-pits of insurrection and chaos - is closing in.

Blood on the Streets of Uvalde

No other country outside of an actual goddamned war zone has to go through this shit.

YET ANOTHER SCHOOL SHOOTING.

This time in Uvalde, Texas. This time with 19 elementary schoolkids and 2 adults shot to death by another angry guy with fucking guns (via Vanessa Romo at NPR): 

The number of people confirmed killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has risen to 20, according to Sgt. Erick Estrada of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Estrada told CNN that 18 children and two adults are among the dead... (Note: death toll updated to 19 children by 10:47 PM)

The suspect allegedly shot his grandmother before he entered the school. Thursday was meant to be the last day of the school year, according to the school's website.

In a brief news conference hours after the shooting, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo confirmed some of the details offered by Abbott. Arredondo called the bloodshed a "mass casualty incident" but did not specify the number of dead. The chief also told reporters that the gunman acted alone and is deceased...

The school year for those kids was going to end this Thursday. Now for 18 families those kids will never come home. All because of an angry guy who, when he recently turned 18, went and bought military-grade firearms and decided to use them on children.

ON CHILDREN. 

WHO NEVER HARMED ANOTHER SOUL. WHO NEVER GOT THE CHANCE TO LIVE, TO BREATHE, TO GROW UP AND GROW OLD.

GODDAMN THE SHOOTER WHO KILLED THEM.

AND GODDAMN THE SONS-OF-BITCHES WHO MANUFACTURED THE WEAPONS, AND SOLD THEM TO HIM AND HUNDREDS OF OTHER ANGRY GUYS WHO GO ON SHOOTING SPREES.

You know something? This is a goddamned rigged game. This is a goddamned setup. The National Rifle Body Count Association has its hands all over the gun-making industry, and so they make money off of every gun sale, and every mass shooting is like an advertisement to the gun nuts to go and buy more guns which is more money to the NRA National Body Count Association.

It's a hell of a racket. Even organized crime mobs aren't this evil. At least the Gambinos and the other Families don't make money off of school massacres.

I swear, we need to go after the NRA National Body Count Association for Racketeering, for criminal conspiracy to commit murder, because these motherfuckers KNOW that every gun - especially the assault rifles - they're selling there's a decent chance it'll get used in a mass shooting.

THEY ARE MAKING MONEY OFF OF MURDER, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

THIS WILL NOT STOP UNTIL THE GUNMAKERS CAN'T MAKE MONEY OFF OF OUR DEATHS ANYMORE.

Voting out the pro-gun politicians won't be enough (although that needs to happen too). These sons-of-bitches need to pay for all the blood spilt in the glory of their rich lives while they mock our existence.

Goddamn them. Every dead child not just in Uvalde but all across America, all across the last 30 years of their fanatical worship of their God of Death, is on them.

Blood In the Streets of Lakeland

No. No no no. This happened near here. This is in Lakeland. This is my metaphorical backyard (via Divya Kumar Tampa Bay Times (paywall)): 

A shooting north of Lakeland this morning left four dead, including a 3-month-old infant. An 11-year-old was shot multiple times. After two shootouts with deputies, the suspect is in custody after being treated for injuries.

At a news conference at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Grady Judd said Bryan Riley, 33, from Brandon, had no apparent connection to the victims...

Somehow, that shooter knew them, and knew them well enough to kill them with a firearm.

What we know about the shooter is that he served as a Marine overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, that he was honorably discharged but that he suffered from PTSD and may have been on drugs. His girlfriend talked about him providing security at an Orlando church and that he came back last week claiming "he could talk to God."

What we also know about the shooter is that he seemed armed to the tooth and body-armored for a fight, because he got into a firefight with county deputies before surrendering.

What we also know is that this sonofabitch - like so many others who committed mass shootings across this country nearly every day now - had easy access to firearms, and a willingness to use them.

We are at a point where we can't trust a single goddamned person with firearms. And yet, and yet, all because of a screeching, Russian-owned lobby group called the National Rifle Body Count Association, we live in a country that prizes the right to shoot anybody they like over the rights for the rest of us to peaceably assemble and, you know, NOT GET SHOT.

This level of violence will NEVER be normal.

This number of grieving families will NEVER be normal.

America Is Back to Daily Mass Shootings, How's THAT for F-CKED UP Normalcy

Over the weekend, it's been looking like the nation has gone back to mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting after mass s... you get the point.

• Indianapolis suffered a mass shooting incident at a FedEx warehouse, leaving eight dead, four of them Sikhs in a likely religious/racist assault. The shooter in question had worried his own family enough for federal intervention and psychiatrist detainment during which his shotgun was taken away for safety reasons... whereupon the shooter went out and legally bought two more rifles because Indiana's gun laws are lax as hell and we have no Universal Background Check or Waiting period laws in effect that could have red-flagged him.
• Saturday we had a shooting outside an Ohio shopping mall where people were honoring a one-year anniversary of a shooting death at that spot. We can't even grieve our shooting victims in peace, can we.
• Earlier this morning there's a report from Kenosha, WI of a shooting at a tavern leaving three dead and several critically wounded, so just for the record it's not safe to get a beer in this nation anymore.
• We're just getting reports today that three have been shot and killed in Austin, TX. As of 2:45 PM EDT, it's considered an active shooting situation.

We're still getting over the mass shooting in Boulder, and the one at the Atlanta Asian massage parlors, and the one in Virginia Beach, no not the one in 2019. We're at the point cities are getting repeat mass shootings. Hell, we're at the point where a school shooting involving just one death barely makes a ripple.

A sizable number of Americans have been screaming "IT'S THE GUNS, IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKING GUNS" but we are screaming into the void because the goddamned Russian-owned National Rifle Body Count Association owns enough of our government that we can't get any goddamned sensible gun safety law passed - Universal Background Checks, ban on military-grade assault rifles, limited magazine/clip capacity, licensing or insurance requirements for ownership - at all.

Anybody still arguing "that gun ownership is not a problem" in the United States is blind to the reality that we can't fucking trust gun owners anymore, you are ALL a goddamned threat to the rest of us. You are arguing for unsafe guns in unreliable hands. We keep seeing this in the news with every goddamned shooting report from the domestic violence bastards to the mass shooters blazing their way to infamy and a goddamned body count. Even the police officers way too twitchy with their trigger fingers are proof we can't trust a goddamned single person with a gun.

And the blood in our streets keeps rising and rising...

Blood in the Streets of Atlanta: Violence Towards Women, Violence Towards Asians.

Let's break this down to the most basic explanation to what happened this past week across the Atlanta metro.

An angry guy with a gun shot and killed Asian women. If that doesn't sound racist to you, if that doesn't sound misogynistic to you, then YOU have a goddamn problem because that's EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS. (To the NPR article by Bill Chappell, Vanessa Romo, and Jaclyn Diaz)

The sheriff's office said Long confessed to the crime and told officials about a "temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate." They said it is too early to determine whether he'll be charged with a hate crime.

Six women of Asian descent are among the dead, raising suspicions of a hate crime. Long claims race did not play a role in his decision to target the businesses, authorities said, relaying details from questioning the gunman.

Long is believed to have "frequented these places, and he may have been lashing out," Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said after noting that the suspect indicated to investigators that he has a sexual addiction.

Tuesday's violence has amplified fears in the Asian American community, which has already been experiencing a spike in attacks and harassment since the coronavirus pandemic began...

The murderer - do not say his name - allegedly visited the spas earlier. He knew where he was going and as soon as he got that gun (without background check, without waiting) he knew exactly what he was going to do.

No excuse he and his defenders throw out there should stick. He targeted Asian women (his rampage did include White women and two men), and he targeted women who did nothing to him except exist without his permission and outside of his dominance.

What the murderer did is no different from a lot of other murderers and purveyors of domestic violence. There is a serious problem in our nation - no, scratch that, when you consider what happened in the United Kingdom recently with Sarah Everard, when you consider how Turkey is formally removing itself from an European committee addressing violence against women (implying they no longer care and may even encourage it), when you consider rape as a war crime is happening in every civil war and border clash out there, there is a serious problem with our planet - when it comes to addressing the underlying misogyny to a lot of the violence out there.

Racism is a serious trigger for acts of violence, but the amount of violence committed against women ought to horrify you. How many mass shootings in the United States revolve around domestic abuse culminating in one final act of gunfire?

How important is it that we as a nation pass a Universal Background Check for gun purchases, and making sure domestic abusers are included in those checks? How vital is that our Congress pass a new Violence Against Women Act that should force our lax law enforcement agencies to treat domestic abuse as a serious threat to public safety?

Both of those bills have passed the House this month, thank God. But they're held up now in a Senate that debating whether or not to get rid of the Filibuster, a tool of obstructionism likely to block those bills from passing like the majority of Americans want them to.

God damn our nation's history of racism - not just towards Blacks and Hispanics but also tragically towards Asians from Chinese to Japanese to Filipino to Vietnamese and so many others - and God damn our species' history of sexist-driven violence towards women.

We need to make our laws act towards both injustices before more people - WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS DAMMIT - are killed for the rage and bloodlust of angry white men.

A Sad Story: A Librarian Killed

This is a story that has hit pretty close to home, not just in my county but in my library cooperative where I work. Per WFLA, a sad tale about a librarian taken from us in a brutal act against her family:

...According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, Elijah Stansell, 18, intentionally ran Suzette Penton over outside her Polk City home last month. She died on Nov. 25 leaving behind her four children and several grandchildren.

“Every kid in town loved Suzette because she’s just that type of person. She was flamboyant. She was just an outgoing, wonderful person,” said Ann Blethen (Suzette's friend).

“Suzette Penton helped make it a wonderful community,” said Sheriff Grady Judd. “She was known and loved by the people of Polk City.”

Penton's place in Polk City was at the community library, where she served the public and helped with children's events and literacy efforts.

What happened to make Stansell kill Penton?

On Nov. 9, Stansell, joined by Raven Sutton, 16, Kimberly Stone, 16 (who was 15 at the time of incident) and Hannah Eubank, 14, drove to Penton’s home.

There was an ongoing romance-related dispute between the group. They were there, officials said, to beat up Penton’s teenage son.

After a physical altercation between the teenage boys, Penton arrived home. She went outside to take photographs of the teens’ getaway vehicle, Stansell’s van. That’s when, authorities believe, Stansell intentionally ran her over, leaving tire tracks on her body.

“He didn’t clip her. He didn’t try to turn away from her and accidentally hit her and fell down. She was squared up and he ran over her,” said Sheriff Judd.

The van belonged to Westwood Missionary Baptist Church where Stansell’s father is a pastor, according to the sheriff...

Stansell may have been a young adult but he was answering to the rage of the Angry Guy mentality. It's that toxic bullshit mindset that pushed him to go out of his way to pick a fight with his girlfriend's ex, and it was in that rising rage that escalated the violence straight into murdering a woman trying to protect her son.

And now an entire community is reeling from the loss of a woman who served the public good, who helped families, who gave children smiles and books to read.

I may have met her, but briefly maybe once or twice, in the years since I've worked at Bartow Public Library. We're part of a county-wide Cooperative of shared library resources, but not a full county system. As such, most libraries are run by their cities and we have little interaction between our libraries. But we've been holding annual training sessions for staffers to try and get as many librarians together, make the cooperative more cohesive and understanding. Penton may have been at one of those Staff Days, I may have shared a table with her, working on team building projects or sharing stories of lurid library lore.

But that's all I can tell you, that's all I can share. Just a brief glimpse into possibility, into a life snuffed out. There are so many others - her children, her friends, the people of Polk City who visited the Library as a safe place almost like a home for them - who can tell more about her and what she meant to their lives.

All of that gone now, all because of an Angry Guy who went out of his way to express that rage without a care to the consequence. Until it was too late, until there was blood in the street.

All those stories lost now.

The Incoming Wingnut Storm

(Update 10/12: Thanks again to Batocchio, who linked this to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round Up! Please stay, I baked a cake somewhere...)

I was hoping to blog today about a fly that garnered more political support than Mike Pence, but instead halfway through the day a HOLY SHIT bomb dropped in Michigan. Some very enthusiastic Angry White Guys With Guns decided to kick 2020 up a notch, via Bill Chappell at NPR:

The FBI says it has thwarted a plot by militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and six people are facing federal charges. In a coordinated move, Michigan is pursuing state felony charges against seven people with ties to a militia called the Wolverine Watchmen.

In a statement early Thursday, Whitmer said two militia groups "were preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me."

But in a later interview on NPR's All Things Considered, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that "multiple white supremacy groups and militia groups have been acting in accordance with one another."

Whitmer thanked law enforcement officer on Thursday afternoon for foiling the alleged conspiracy. "I'll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this," she said.

Michigan has been a hot spot for disagreements over shutdowns and other restrictions Whitmer ordered to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus — actions that allegedly sparked the plot against her. The governor noted those disagreements on Thursday and called for unity.

You might recall back in April there were a number of anti-mask protestors who stormed state buildings to scream their outrage and intimidate the politicians who were, you know, working to stop a deadly pandemic from spreading. Michigan was where some of the loudest protests were, and where the Far Right had a target in Whitmer - Democratic figure, librul, woman, all the things they hate - that upped their rage even more.

The FBI said the Michigan militia group had already been on its radar because its members had attempted in March to acquire the home addresses of local law enforcement officers with the goal of attacking or killing them...

Psst: To all the cops who play nice with the Far Right wingnuts as though you're on the same side, you might want to wake up to the reality that these wingnuts will shoot you too.

The agency said it collected information about the kidnapping plot from informants and undercover agents. Over the summer, the conspirators allegedly began training for a potential attack on Whitmer's vacation home or the governor's official summer residence, according to a criminal complaint released Thursday.

A federal charge of conspiracy to commit kidnapping has been filed against six people: Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta. All are Michigan residents except for Croft, who is a resident of Delaware.

Fox discussed the kidnapping in a recording from late July, the complaint says: "Snatch and grab, man. Grab the f*****' Governor. Just grab the b****. Because at that point, we do that, dude — it's over."

After abducting Whitmer, Fox allegedly said, the governor would be taken to a secure location in Wisconsin for "trial," according to the complaint...

Some of the things you need to understand about these wingnuts: They view themselves as outside our laws and compliant only to their own (SEE: Sovereign Citizen Movement). To them, everyone else is guilty - of either being the dreaded Other or else being Race Traitors - and that all it will take is a show trial in front of a kangaroo court to force the actual constitutionally-empowered forces of law and order to bow to their will.

It's not an idle fantasy though. They've got historical precedence like breaking Reconstruction after 1877, and the Wilmington Insurrection in 1898. There's been a build-up of these acts of violence in our streets during the Black Lives Matter protests. These Turner Diaries fanboys believe they can raise up an army, blow up some shit, kidnap elected officials, and fulfill their White Supremacist destinies.

But if these jokers thought kidnapping Whitmer would bring them victory, all it would really do is highlight their viciousness and stupidity... because the next thing that would have happened after their attack would have been the Lt. Governor of Michigan - Garland Gilchrist, by the by - getting promoted to Governor, and then ordering every real cop and National Guard soldier in the state with hunting you down before you numbnuts decide to repeat your stunt on him. Wingnuts don't really think this shit through, do they. All that happens with these attacks is: Innocent people get killed in the crossfire of their schemes.

Not that these wingnuts care about innocent lives.

This is just one more day of escalation of violence in the United States, as the division stirred up by trump - "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" anyone? - and his Republican allies - hi, Fox Not-News - is working to get the Far Right angry enough to cause chaos in the face of a looming Biden popular vote blowout. 

Let's go to an expert on international - and domestic - terrorism, Mister Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

This is thwarted domestic stochastic terrorism. You have a group of people who are illegally conspiring under several Michigan state statutes and the Michigan constitution to undertake what would clearly be illegal violent actions against persons and property. They had tested improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They had planned several types of actions that would have resulted in mass casualties.

DHS finally released their October 2020 domestic threat assessment, that they tried to bury until a whistleblower made that impossible. The assessment makes it very, very, very clear that the predominant terrorism threat to Americans in the US are white supremacists and other right wing domestic extremists and that one of Russia’s major influence operations to disrupt the 2020 elections is to incite terroristic violence by these groups against visible racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.

We've been in the middle of a Second Civil War for a good while now, a culture war between the Center-Left and Progressive tendencies of the nation against the more extreme Far Right who would rather rule or ruin. It's been escalating since 9/11 when the anti-Muslim ire fueled the rage still aimed towards Blacks, Jews, Feminists, Latinos, and Immigrants, and it's been getting crazier since the self-ordained militias began standoffs with federal agencies.

It's going to escalate even more, as a sick and addled and desperate trump tries to bully and intimidate his way out of an electoral bloodbath. He's relying on these armed angry guys to show up at the polls on November 3, he's expecting these trumpshirts to be his Brownshirts when the time comes to bloody the streets and drive Democratic voters away from the ballot boxes.

He's already given them the order to "Stand Back and Stand By," a call to get them ready for the violence he expects to keep him in office to save his own ass from a future in a jail cell.

This is not going to end well for the nation. trump has made sure there is enough anger out there to erupt in violence that would harm too many innocent lives.

Not that trump ever cared about innocent lives.

trump's True Appeal to a Rabid Base

It still bothers me a little that I can never fully comprehend how ANY INSANE person let alone a SANE person would ever support donald "bankrupt failure racist pussy-grabbing vulgarity shitgibbon" trump. I kind of understand it ever since I read Rude Pundit's reveal of voter polarization back in 2014, but it still galls that there's a faction of fellow Americans who swallow the shit and call it caviar.

And as the madness gets worse during this pandemic, the real reason is all the more clear.

As Tom Sullivan notes at Hullabaloo:

No. It is not to save the country except for themselves. It is because they think they are losing their country and Trump is the only Republican who can save it for them, Limbaugh explained.

But it is also because Trump’s wanton bigotry, dishonesty and viciousness liberate them to wallow in their own. Like a medieval pope, he is selling a plenary indulgence. Go, and sin some more, says Trump in red letters held upside down and backwards. All it cost them is the surrender of whatever withered moral authority the movement had remaining...

As shared by this photo making the rounds on Twitter:

Would love to find out who originated this.

For all the worship of Saint Ronnie, for all the early passion for Dubya in a post-911 global war, the Republican voting base still expresses disappointment that neither "savior" figure went far enough into douchebaggery to become the "hero" the Far Right wanted.

trump is different. Not only is he an openly vile and vulgar life form, he constantly tweets to his fanbase to indulge in his not-so-private vices as well.

And a lot of them take him up on that offer.

Look at every Angry White Guy. Look at every Angry White Woman. Look at the Karens having meltdowns. Look at the maskless wingnuts throwing tantrums along with everything else when they're asked to wear a mask to protect other people.

All of them have a License to Asshole, signed by trump and passed around by a gleeful Republican Party wanting to "own the libs" forever.

This is where blind rage has led us.

It's up to the rest of us to call this bad behavior for what it is and vote these bastards out. For the LOVE OF DECENCY as well as GOD, we need to vote them out.

Blood On the Streets of El Paso

Goddamn us (via Reuters).

A gunman armed with a rifle killed 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday and wounded more than two dozen before being arrested, authorities said, after the latest U.S. mass shooting sent panicked shoppers fleeing.

Many of those in the busy store were buying back-to-school supplies when they were caught up in the rampage, which came just six days after a teenage gunman killed three people at a food festival in Northern California.

The suspect was identified as a 21-year-old white male from Allen, Texas, a Dallas-area city some 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso.

The sonofabitch drove EIGHT HOURS out of his way to shoot up a Wal-Mart in El Paso.

Asked during a CNN interview about reports of disturbing online posts made by the suspect, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would not be surprised in any way.

“I think those can help shed light on why he did it,” Paxton said. “They are still interviewing him.”

El Paso police chief Greg Allen said authorities had a manifesto from the suspect that indicates “there is a potential nexus to a hate crime.” Officials declined to elaborate and said the investigation was continuing.

Word is the sonofabitch shooter was a fan of the Christchurch mass killer, and the manifesto is railing against "Hispanics" invading the United States. Which is pretty much donald trump's consistent message of rage and hate on the ongoing immigration matters.

Citing a law enforcement source, El Paso television station KTSM published on its website what it said were two photos of the suspect taken by security cameras as he entered the Walmart.

The images showed a young white man wearing glasses, khaki trousers and a dark T-shirt, and pointing an assault-style rifle. He appears to be wearing headphones or ear defenders.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the images.

The assault rifle, a military-type firearm that has become the favorite weapon of choice for White boy Neo-Nazi Klan-worshiping assholes. The perfect accessory for the Angry Guy in need of a Gun.

That sonofabitch needs to be charged under terrorism laws because that's what he is.

And trump needs to go the fuck away. That Shitgibbon may not have pulled the trigger but he sure as hell loaded that gun and aimed that murderer towards El Paso and all the families living there.

GODDAMN YOU, trump. GOD DAMN YOU TO THE DEEPEST PIT OF HELL RIGHT NEXT TO EVERY GODDAMN POLITICIAN WHO DOES NOT DO A GODDAMN THING ABOUT GUN SAFETY REFORMS.

Blood On the Streets of Virginia Beach

A gunman - apparently a long-time employee of the city - attacked the municipal center in Virginia Beach VA this afternoon. Eleven dead so far, more wounded, entire community in shock.

Another goddamn angry guy with another goddamn gun.

And this one hits close to home.

My family lived in that area when I was five, six years old. Dad was still in the Navy then, got assigned to Norfolk until he retired in 1976, and we moved down to Florida after that. I have some fond memories of growing up in the Kempsville area, and those beaches were the first ones I remember going and learning to swim. I remember riding the car past all the beach venues, an amusement park with bright lights, the deep tunnels under the Bay wherever Mom drove us, the sand-filled air and sea-salt scent...

Goddammit, America.

God DAMN YOU, National Rifle Body Count Association.

We are ALL dying one mass shooting at a time.

Our homes, past present and future, all at risk.

All because angry guys have easy access to weapons like this.

I want my childhood homes safe again, America. When? When will this war on our neighborhoods end?

The Racist War Ratchets Up a Notch

I posted just last month how the more violently unhinged of trump's truest believers are ready to pull the trigger in his honor.

Just this weekend, the white supremacist violence went global when an angry White Man from Australia went on a mass shooting rampage across two Muslim mosques in Christchurch New Zealand, killing 50 (so far) and leaving tens more wounded some in critical condition.

I will not name the SOB here because the murdering bastard livestreamed his shooting to social media, submitted his racist manifesto to news outlets before he opened fire, and wants recognition as a goddamned hero to 'his people' hoping to become the spark to start the wingnut riots against The Dreaded Other.

Still, we know what he did. We know about the lives he took. Because he bought into the rhetoric that Muslims and non-Whites are conspiring to "replace" us all. Because he followed in the footsteps of the Norway mass shooter (I am not naming him either).

Because the bastard took his cues from donald trump (link to Yahoo News UK):

The suspected gunman who killed dozens of people in New Zealand is an Australian ‘racist eco-fascist’ who posted a 74-page manifesto online before the shootings and described Donald Trump as a “symbol of white supremacy.”

The man, who identified himself in a livestream of the massacre as (redacted), said he was motivated by far-right extremism he saw in the United States to carry out the attack at Al Noor Mosque...

He also goes on to rail against mass immigration and said he views Donald Trump as a “symbol of renewed white identity...”

The manifesto said he carried out the attack “to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homeland are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands and they will never replace our people...”

There is no other word for this but terrorism.

And there are no words for how trump responded to the reports... where he dismissed the rise of racist violence and then echoed the exact messages that the goddamned shooter believed in (via The Week):

Hours later, a shockingly similar phrase came from the president. Trump, after vetoing a bill that would've blocked his national emergency declaration to access border wall funding, briefly condemned the shooting before pivoting back to border talk. There are "crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border," Trump said, adding that "people hate the word 'invasion,' but that's what it is..."

trump knows. the hate-filled bastard knows his words are triggering the fearful among his fanbase.

And he knows his fanbase is ready to go on a warpath on his command (via Chait at New York):

...The specifics of the riff don’t vary much. Trump laments that his opponents are treating him unfairly, praises the toughness and strength of his supporters — a category that combines the police, military, and Bikers for Trump, which he apparently views as a Brownshirt-like militia — and a prediction that his supporters will at some point end their restraint.

He does it again in a new interview with Breitbart:

I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad...

You can argue just how far into our legal systems trump's corruption has gotten, and you can look at the demographics to see just how many trumpshirts will rise up should he face indictment or impeachment (despite Pelosi's comments, that's still on the table). trump may have gotten 62 million voters, but how many of them are actively armed and ready to go on any warpath?

Most Americans, despite our passions or politics, are not easily stirred into protest or violence. Most Americans just want to do their thing, raise their kids, find a good vacation spot, and not get bothered.

trump may be a sitting President Loser of the Popular Vote, but he still doesn't carry the direct power to control/order State, County or City law enforcement to his whims. He may think he has support of the police (at least their politically biased unions) and the military (at least some bomb-em-all generals) but current reporting suggests the hater White Nationalists types are one out of four among the troops. Yes, that still sounds scary - one-in-four - but there's three-in-four in our military who aren't assholes. If the armed forces split, the non-racists will outnumber (and swarm quickly over) the racists.

The wingnuts always assume their numbers are greater than they really are: When those jerks took over the national park in Oregon they sent out a call for support likely hoping for mass uprisings... and got joke supplies mailed to them instead (about three or four other militias in small numbers ever showed). We're talking about the same White Pride people who keep turning on each other out of greed and stupidity.

If trump does call for an uprising among the White Supremacists, the likely turnout will be mostly the neo-Nazi pro-Confederate militias dotted across the landscape... of about 20-30 wingnuts apiece who'll run into actual police and National Guard deployed by Governors of even Red States who'll realize this Second Civil War will end badly for themselves.

That's the good news if trump ever tries to go this far.

Here's the bad news: Far Right violence has still increased over the last three years, showing the willingness of how destructive the racists can get.

And we've seen how much violence just even one person can commit when dedicated to their cause. One wingnut carrying an AR-15 and enough ammo can wipe out entire city blocks before the cops can respond and stop him.

All it takes is just one gunman to throw a city - a nation - into chaos and pain.

And we're already seeing it here in the U.S. The mass shooter at Squirrel Hill just last year. The would-be mass shooter working at the Coast Guard HQ. The mad bomber of Broward County. There are more. Gods help us, too many more.

And all it takes is one. All it takes is one wingnut hanging on trump's every tweet.

And trump knows it.

I doubt trump will win this fight: he and his have proven they can't win on their own (he needed help from Russia to cheat his way to victory in 2016 damn them). The wingnuts following his every lead can easily turn on each other as much as they'll turn on regular Americans.

But this is going to get bloody. It's too late to say otherwise. The wingnuts have been chomping at the bit for decades waiting for their goddamned race war. And trump's the last one in high enough political office to let them unleash their hell on the rest of us.

Stay safe. Stay alert.

The calls for violence are coming from within the White House.

The Wingnuts Ready to Pull The Trigger

They found another trumpster wingnut ready to go off (via Spencer Ackerman at The Daily Beast):

A white supremacist Coast Guard lieutenant is accused of stockpiling weapons, compiling a hit list of Democratic senators and left-leaning journalists, and preparing for a massacre.

Prosecutors in Maryland called Christopher Paul Hasson a “domestic terrorist” in a Tuesday court filing, first reported by George Washington University’s Seamus Hughes, that argued for Hasson’s detention ahead of trial on firearms and controlled substance charges.

What law enforcement discovered during a Feb. 15 arrest and search led prosecutors to tell a federal court that Hasson “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country...”

Quick jump in here: "On a scale rarely seen"??? We see mass shootings on a DAILY BASIS NOW. /grrrrrrrr Okay back to the report:

Specific journalists and others appear in Hasson’s search history, the filing claims, including: MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes, Joe Scarborough, and Ari Melber; Sens. Richard Blumenthal—or “blumen jew,” in Hasson’s writing—Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker; Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ilhan Omar; CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones; as well as prominent Democrats Beto O’Rourke and John Podesta, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Hasson’s searches also included “what if trump illegally impeached,” “civil war if trump impeached” and “best place in dc to see congress people.”

He was basically compiling a Hit List and figuring out the easiest places to go trigger-happy. All in defense of trump and the Glorious Cause Of Making America Gross Again. The photos of Hasson's gun stash should have included every red hat I guarantee the asshole owns.

The scary part of this: Hasson is a US Coast Guard officer, working in acquisitions at the branch's headquarters, with sufficient military background to be a legitimate lethal threat to hundreds of people:

Hasson’s arrest is likely to spark additional questions to the military about the rigor with which it screens out people with white supremacist affiliations. While statistically infinitesimal, Hasson is the latest high-profile case to involve a Marine Corps veteran with white supremacist connections, such as Patriot Front’s Erik Sailors; American Vanguard’s Dillon Ulysses Hopper; neo-confederates Michael Chesny and Joseph Manning; and Atomwaffen’s Vasillios Pistolis. ProPublica and Frontline, which reported on Atomwaffen last year, identified three “members or associates” of the violent white supremacist group “who are currently employed by the Army or Navy,” as well as another three affiliated military veterans.

The White supremacist, neo-nazi, Klan-happy crowds are itching for their war. They're inspired by previous Far Right attacks against Leftists and hated minorities both here and abroad, successful or otherwise. They're terrified by the reality of how few they really are - there may be over 1,000 groups but the overall membership is in the tens of thousands compared to the MILLIONS of Americans who oppose them - and desperate to terrify everyone else of their violent capabilities.

They're motivated by the Bully-in-Chief, the rabblerouser con artist who used racist bile - and foreign aid from a Russia that traffics in racist populist movements - to trick his way into the White House. When trump faces the likely criminal charges stemming from his Russian ties that violate federal laws from Emoluments to elections, that will be a troubling moment for this entire nation.

These guys, these MAGA-hat wearing unholy descendants of the Bundists and the Klan, they're just waiting to be triggered.

And they got a lot of AR-15s with them.

Blood in the Streets: Angry Guy Compliation

While we've been distracted by trump's incompetence, this has been going on:

• In a neighboring county from me, a 21-year-old white male man stormed into a Sebring bank and executed - shots to the head - five women (one of them a customer) who were there. He had moved from Indiana to Florida to work at a prison (where he clocked in for a few months and then quit for no known reason), showed some social media interest in certain Far Right figures, but police are still trying to figure out why he stormed that particular bank and just kill everyone in the bank.
• Another 21-year-old white man gets into a bar fight in Pennsylvania and shoots a couple of people, two of them dying, and then fled and crashed into a house where he killed the 86-year-old man living there before killing himself.
• Yet another 21-year-old white man - what the FUCK Millennials, I thought you had your shit together - killed his girlfriend's family and then the girlfriend, drove over to his parents house to shoot them, then fled before getting arrested in Virginia just a few hours ago.

Remember in the United States we only pay attention to the mass shootings where the body count is three or more, so more than likely we're not even seeing the individual acts of domestic violence involving men shooting/stabbing/killing their wives/girlfriends happening on a daily basis.

It's already been an established problem with gun violence: For all the problems involving the ready and available access of firearms, the other half of the problem involves the ready willingness of Angry Guys to get triggered for some ego-busting reason and going on a goddamned killing spree.

(If you're angry I pointed out the shooters are mostly White guys, it's because I wanna give trump and his anti-immigrant Haters Brigade a nice middle-fingered FUCK YOU Salute because their goddamned Wall would not have stopped any of these attacks on women)

You wanna know how bad gun violence has gotten in the United States?

Wikipedia has started breaking down their list of mass shootings by year (starting in 2013). They can't keep the body counts to just one html page.

And while the numbers on mass shootings aren't exact - thanks to a NRA-owned Republican Party that fights any attempt to track shooting injuries or gun-related deaths - just on reading the partial list of what we know you will keep seeing the same thing: Angry Guys.

While there's a lot America can do to cut down on the mass shootings (tip: Universal Background Checks and Filtering Out Domestic Abusers would FUCKING HELP, people) one thing we should be doing is calming the crazed, blood-boiled male population out there and getting them to, you know, STOP KILLING EVERYBODY.

Okay guys? Seriously? Just watch that damn Gillette Ad and CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

Blood On the Streets Of Squirrel Hill

And today there was another mass shooting this time in a Pittsburgh suburb.

This time a Synagogue. A man with military firepower showed up reportedly shouting "Kill all the Jews" and opened fire. The body count is currently at 8 dead. At least three police officers were shot and wounded, there may well be more wounded (and dying) as well.

For what's been found about the shooter, his social media apparently marked him as a rabid Antisemitic bastard. His recent tweets were about the "Caravan" trump had been ranting against the past few weeks, and how the shooter believed "the Jews" were behind that "invasion" about to doom the entire nation.

In an odd twist, the shooter may have been a Far Right wingnut but he hated trump... because trump had Jews (his son-in-law Jared for example) on his staff. That's right. We're dealing with an asshole who thinks trump isn't enough of an asshole worth his support.

So here's your thread. This entire week (and it's not even over yet) has been one violent attack after another by angry men driven to that edge by Far Right Republican rhetoric.

• Angry White Guy in Kentucky with a history of domestic violence and signs of racism (posting rants against Black Lives Matter) goes off on Wednesday, tried to break into a Black church service, then settled on shooting dead two Blacks at a Kroger store before getting caught. Another White guy in the parking lot heard the shots and pulled his own gun on the murderer, only for the killer to beg mercy because "Whites don't shoot Whites." (THAT is the fucking White Privilege mindset in one goddamn quote)
• Angry White/Filipino Guy with a criminal history who obsesses with being Pro-trump wanted to kill everyone on trump's Enemies List, so he ships off more than a dozen bombs across the nation. Luckily most of the bombs were reportedly intentional duds (a scare tactic), but a handful of them were working when the bomb squads got to defuse them...
• Angry White Guy in Pittsburgh hated Jews, found justification in the Caravan fearmongering, and went on his killing spree.

All three of them with key similarities:

• Anger
• Fear of Diversity, or that the rights of minorities will override the rights ("the superiority of" in their eyes) of White (men)
• History of domestic violence (so far in the first two, the Squirrel Hill shooter's full background hasn't been made public yet. But I'd lay good odds he's got at least one restraining order from an ex-wife/ex-girlfriend)
• Existing within a media bubble of Far Right Narrative (the Kentucky shooter didn't show as much of it, but right now the MAGABomber and the Squirrel Hill shooter are both well-documented in social media thriving in that wingnut bubble)

Like Silverman noted before, which I quoted from yesterday: The rhetoric of the Far Right media - bashing Jews, bashing Blacks, bashing Women, bashing Gays, bashing Liberals, bashing everyone not of the Far Right Tribe - is creating a toxic environment where the most unstable and least-controller fringe members are likely to get "triggered" and turn into killers.

The leaders of the Far Right know what they're doing: they get to fill the airwaves with their Fearmongering - based more on emotional hype than on the facts or reality - to trigger enough idiots listening in, and then get to pose on the mainstream channels to beg off "oh well, it wasn't really what we said" or "free speech, bitches" or "he's just a Lone Wolf, you shouldn't portray an entire mob of Angry White Guys like that."

We have a lot of other things out there that can cause or trigger bad behavior in people: Drugs, violent video games, what have you. We take those things into context when dealing with the monsters who get triggered, and we try to keep those sources out of reach by restricting their sale or access, or at least try to counter with counseling and education.

But how can we counter this unending storm of toxic worldview? The Far Right is riling up their base to commit wholeheartedly to the final stage of a Culture War that means violence upon every minority and "non-person" on their checklist of targets.

This isn't a rehash of 1968. This is a bloody remake of 1860.

God help us.

The Far Right Boiling Of the National Mood

Told you I had an alibi:

Before he was arrested for mailing more than a dozen pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump — some of which included pictures of the intended targets with a red “X” over their faces — Cesar Sayoc lived a scattered and bizarre life in South Florida.

He was an avid bodybuilder who trained in mixed martial arts and a former exotic dancer and strip club manager who held a string of odd jobs, among them a Papa John’s pizza deliveryman and a DJ. He bought a house in Fort Lauderdale, which was foreclosed on in 2009, lived with his parents in an Aventura condo, and most recently slept in a white van papered with pro-Trump and right-wing stickers.

Along the way, Sayoc racked up a long rap sheet for everything from grand theft and battery to making a bomb threat against Florida Power & Light. He was also accused of domestic violence by a woman who appears to have been his grandmother.

So of course it HAD to be a Florida Man. But it gets funkier:

But of all of his diverse interests, 56-year-old Sayoc’s fervent support for Trump appears to have been his greatest passion in recent years. Sayoc’s social media accounts were filled with photos of him wearing a red Make American Great Again baseball cap, videos of a Trump rally he attended in 2016 and pro-Trump news stories. He also shared racist memes and spouted conspiracy theories.

His Twitter timeline was a greatest-hits collection of right-wing conspiracy theories: that Parkland survivor David Hogg is a government plant, that Oprah Winfrey wants “this whole generation of white people” to die and that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is secretly Adolf Hitler’s daughter...

He lives in a world of Far Right Narrative, a comfort zone for Angry Guys who just happen to angry at minorities, women, libruls, moderates, gays, lesbians, Sportos, Motorheads, Geeks, Sluts, Bloods, Waistoids, and Dweebies (just not the Dickheads, because that's who the Angry Guys are).

It's the same kind of fantasy world that argued WMDs existed in Iraq, that tax cuts can raise wages and create jobs, that Hillary killed a whole list of victims and that Obama was secretly born a Muslim in Kenya. The fantasy world of Fox News and Breitbart and Drudge and Rush and Coulter and D'Souza and Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and O'Reilly and Hannity and Newsmax and more. A veritable industry of conspiracy theory that feeds on itself, with each dollar encouraging a greater lie requiring more members of the Far Right to repeat that lie until it becomes a foundation on which more lies can grow.

It's the same industry that's right now trying desperately to wash their hands of any responsibility for the MAGABomber's reign of error. Either blaming the Libruls for making the Far Right go all bomb-happy, or claiming it's a Lone Wolf who has NOTHING to do with being a red-hat-wearing trumpster (even though the guy is happily posing in pictures at trump rallies and shouting "LOCK HER UP" on videoclips).

But the bomber is NOT a Lone Wolf. There's a string of Far Right actors committing violent act after violent act all tied into that Far Right Narrative of "WE are under Attack From the Dread Other," with the WE being proud Whites of the Sacred Patriarchy (if there are women in this, they support that Patriarchy because it grants only them any power).

That Far Right Narrative is not just sitting there, like a novel on a reading table. It is actively prodding a willing and eager audience to pursue these paths of violence.

If I can link to Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

...We also need to realize that what we’re dealing with is social learning driving terrorism and low intensity political violence. While Tom Nichols, who has been working through his own theory in regard to radicalization where he refers to these types of terrorists as Lost Boys, identified Sayoc’s domestic terrorism campaign without explicitly referring to it, it is actually the social learning and social behavioral drivers of terrorism.  This includes the normal four components of learning: 1) Primary associations, 2) Definitions favorable, unfavorable, and neutralizing to behavior, 3) Imitation, and 4) Reinforcement. It also includes the social learning components of neutralization (of definitions unfavorable to behavior) and drift...

What we have seen this week with Sayoc’s terrorism campaign, as well as with conservative and/or Republican elites and notables (elected officials, appointed officials, pundits, and commenters) and just supporters of the President who continue to toss around the idea that this is all a false flag or a hoax or somehow actually perpetrated by the intended targets to harm the President or the GOP’s electoral chances in two weeks, are perfect examples of social learning in general and neutralization and drift in specific. We can clearly observe:

1. Primary associations in regard to being an objective or subjective supporter of the President.
2. Learning definitions favorable, unfavorable, and neutralizing of behavior. Sayoc clearly learned from the President, as well as other Republican and conservative authority figures, that it is okay to target and vilify former and current Democratic officials or officials appointed by them, center left to left of center funders of liberal and progressive causes, CNN and other news media outlets that the President doesn’t like and often denigrates, and outspoken elite and notable critics of the President. We can also see this at play in the attempts to wave away this terrorist campaign by claiming it is fake news or a hoax perpetrated by the victims.
3. Reinforcement is also clearly present. Specifically, Sayoc received reinforcement from conservative news media and conservative social media as current and former Republican officials, news media figures, commenters, and pundits, as well as just a large number of the President’s supporters talked about and magnified Sayoc’s actions through the attempt to dismiss it with whataboutism and bothsiderism, as well as calling it fake news or a hoax or denying the legitimacy of the victimization of the actual targets.
4. While we haven’t specifically seen imitation yet, it will, unfortunately, likely appear in copycat actions over the next couple of weeks. And potential copycats do not necessarily have to copy the method of trying to make and use pipe bombs sent through the mail.

Both in the run up to today’s arrest and since Sayoc was taken into custody, all five elements of neutralization and drift that I delineated above are clearly explicitly observable. The Republican Party, especially its base membership, realigned to the perspective of the President, as well as conservative news media and conservative social media are all now a tool for radicalization. We can expect to see more Cesar Sayocs until conservative and Republican elites and notables make a stand...

The Republicans never will. They are profiting from this radicalization, and are doubling down with it - alongside voter suppression of minorities and youth voters who lean Democratic - to ensure they retain political power (because with it they can continue to shift wealth from the middle class to the rich (including themselves)).

The Republicans profit from a toxic and boiling stew of hatred, turning up the heat over the last 25 years of post-Cold-War politics to keep themselves at the top of the hill. As Silverman notes:

There are more Cesar Sayocs out there. Just as there were more Dylan Roofs as we saw in Kentucky on Wednesday (a white gunman starting shooting innocent Blacks and even tried to shoot up a Black church during services). And they’re marinating in the President’s and other elite and notable conservatives’ and Republicans’ toxic rhetoric. At some point they’ll reach the point where they have learned both enough of the definitions favorable to neutralize the prohibition against attacking other people, as well as who is an acceptable target from the President, from Republican elected and appointed officials, from Fox News, or from Rush Limbaugh or Hugh Hewitt or others on right wing talk radio, or from conservative social media across a variety of platforms, and when that happens they’ll take action. We can’t predict who the next Cesar Sayoc will be, nor can we predict who he or she, though it is most likely to be a he, will target, nor can we predict when it will happen. But unless something changes and soon, it will happen. And it will happen again and again and again...

The wingnut base of the GOP is just waiting for a sign. All trump has to do is send out the one tweet that says exactly what they want to hear - IT'S OKAY TO KILL OUR ENEMIES - and there will be blood in every street.

This is not guesswork. This has been seen in history again and again. It's been happening right now in real time in places like the Philippines. It is happening with every Angry White Guy yelling at Blacks on airplanes and in cars and at public parks and everywhere else. The anger is boiling. The mindset of violence is right there.

It is only a matter of time before the real bombs go off.

Gods help us.

My Two Cents On Kavanaugh's Performance

With regards to Mrs. Ford, I think she did the best she could and will still get pummeled by the Far Right for - seriously, going after her fear of flying as a character flaw??? - what she said today.

What really mattered was Kavanaugh's response, which Vox.com summarizes pretty well here. My two key takeaways from him was:

1) When finally confronted with personal failings, Kavanaugh lashed out with unprofessional rage and poor temperament. Exposing himself as the kind of Angry Guy who WOULD lash out at women and others who would question his behavior or try to hold him to account. I posted a Twitter thread starting here about it.

It is the kind of temperament we dare not risk having on the highest court in the land. On that alone, Kavanaugh has disqualified himself.

2) I have to seriously ask, given how quickly he turned into a yelling and almost incoherent tyro, was Kavanaugh drunk at the beginning of this hearing?

I've seen angry drunks in action. I've had someone close to me get five beers into him and pretty much turn into a rage monster yelling at me about a slight still remembered from years before. He was still high-functioning enough to drive home without me.

This is who the Republicans on the Judiciary Hearing are going to vote for tomorrow.

Gods help us.

Blood on the Streets of Annapolis, Blood In the Newsroom (w/ Update)

Jesus.

At least five people were killed and several others were “gravely injured” in a shooting Thursday afternoon at the Capital Gazette in Anne Arundel County, authorities said.

A shooter is in custody, police said. Police would not name the suspect, but said he was a Maryland resident in his late 30s and had specifically targeted the Capital.

“This was a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette,” said Anne Arundel County Deputy Police Chief William Krampf. “This person was prepared today to come in. He was prepared to shoot people...”

Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter who was in the building at the time of the shooting, said multiple people were shot, as others — himself included — hid under their desks. He said there was a lone male gunman.

“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad,” Davis wrote on Twitter as he waited to be interviewed by police.

“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload...”

This attack on a newspaper office is coming on the heels of certain Far Right wingnuts openly calling for fellow wingnuts "to start gunning journalists down on sight." It's coming after months of donald trump calling reporters "enemy of the people."

We are at a moment when every form of public discourse is tinged with violence, and anger, and frustration while civil liberties are getting trampled by an administration eager to kill off due process.

We are at a moment where every sign in this nation is that we are honest to God in a Civil War. Side vs. Side, divided not by state lines but by conflicting ideologies of Right vs. Wrong.

Human Decency versus Sadistic Brutality.

And the brutes are gunning for a body count.

This isn't about angry guys with guns anymore.

This is about radicalized terrorists - toxic masculinity males - with an agenda to make this nation theirs by the tools of violence as their means.

I would still call for everyone I know who wants to stand for the right things - Freedom, Honesty, Justice, Legal Immigration and the Greeting of New Americans, the Right to Choose, the Right to Gay Marry, the Right to be You - to keep standing, to march in protests that are scheduled this Saturday to raise alarm about the children still being held prisoner by our sadistic government. We cannot back down even in the face of violence.

Love can drive out Hate.

But for the Love of God, stay safe.

Update (6/29/18): It is turning out the gunman had a specific grievance against the Capital Gazette newspaper, so this is falling back onto the argument against Angry White Guys With Guns. Still, we are now in a situation where the first impulse about any physical attack on reporters is by someone triggered by the Far Right on trump's word. The Dread that we as a nation are in a civil war is still a valid concern...