Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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Nodack
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Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

Post by Nodack »

No thread about this? I know most here are Democrat leaning but, it's still a big story and we should talk about it. A Bernie Sanders supporter went postal with a rifle and shot up a Republican baseball game critically injuring Congressman Scalise and wounding several others before being shot and killed.

He was James Hodgkinson, a white guy 66, of Belleville, Illinois.
Hodgkinson's Facebook page is largely political, and his profile picture is a caricature of Bernie Sanders as Uncle Sam.
The Facebook feed is filled with anti-Trump sentiments such as "Trump is guilty and should go to prison for treason."
He also "liked" a political cartoon that suggested that Scalise should be fired. On March 22, he posted "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."

I am worried that this kind of violence is only just getting started and will be taken up by both sides in greater frequency. This guy' wasn't fresh out of the nut house. He was a married 66 year old white guy with four adopted kids who was was a Bernie Sanders volunteer.

What do you guys think? I think this is a powder keg. I think our politicians and the media are mostly to blame in this partisan war. Politicians get elected by stirring up divisiveness. The media isn't news anymore. They chose sides in the partisan war and have racheted up tensions and divisiveness. Trump certainly hasn't helped matters. People are sheep and are heavily influenced by all of the partisan crap. I don't know what the answer is. I am just as partisan at this point as anybody but, violence solves nothing.

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Superbone
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

Post by Superbone »

More senseless violence. I liked at least that both parties came together against the act. We're all Americans before we're Democrats or Republicans or whatever.
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Mori Chu
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

Post by Mori Chu »

Very sad to hear about the shooting of several GOP Congressmen in Virginia today. Thankfully, no one was fatally wounded, if I understand correctly. Thoughts and prayers to them and their families. The shooter has been killed. Unfortunately Congressman Scalise is still in critical condition; I hope he will be okay.

As for the shooter being a Sanders supporter, I think that is mostly a red herring. I don't think it is right to lump somebody in with a big group of people when they do something horrible. Just as I don't want to demonize Muslims when one crazy person commits an evil act and claims to be Islamic, I don't want to demonize Bernie Sanders and his supporters just because one man who identifies as a Sanders supporter commits a shooting. Bernie is the last person who would condone something like this.

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Nodack
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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Bernie is the last to condone something like this. People do lump the actions of one guy to an entire group all the time. No doubt that Bernie Sanders supporters aren't happy with Trump and Republicans but, not to the point of randomly killing them. I just got another anti Muslim email my mother passed on to me this morning from some relative.

Subject: Fwd: Fw: PREPARING THE KIDS FOR THE FUTURE.....SAD!....ED

This is the ugly truth of what YOUR SONS are going to face in the decades to come.

The advantage we have in this era is that of instantaneous information proliferation. Why is that an advantage? We know what to prepare for in the upcoming conflict! That's paramount to knowing the moves of any enemy BEFORE the move is executed!

OK, now that you know; will you trash this information or use it to preserve the life and dreams you were handed by your ancestors...seriously? (If you think this video is BS and orchestrated for inflammatory purposes; you live in LaLa Land!)

The future of the United States of America and your family/legacy is looking you in the face!!! What have you to say?

God Bless the USA and God Bless Christians! If you don't know; this is an ancient battle that recurs in intensity every few hundred years. Here we are AGAIN! (Check your history.
)

The video is an Al Queda video showing kids on a bus lead by some terrorist guy chanting anti Jewish and anti West songs and talking about how they are soldiers of the future with the blessings of their parents. To my mother this is proof that all Muslims are terrorists who's only purpose in life is to kill us.

Al Queda makes these videos for promotional purposes. The fact that is scares people like my mother is just a bonus to them. The video ratchets up the hostilities. Right wingers sending the video out to all their friends and relatives ratcheted ups the hostilities. Everybody hell bent on ratcheting up hostilities. I think hate is something people crave. I think it's part of our makeup. We all need an enemy to fight against. If we have none we find a way to find one. You can't see a movie without a villain. Even G rated movies have to have a villain to hate. In WWII we had Hitler to unite against. I don't think there will ever be peace in the world. We wouldn't be able to stand it.

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ShelC
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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I think our politicians and the media are mostly to blame in this partisan war. Politicians get elected by stirring up divisiveness. The media isn't news anymore. They chose sides in the partisan war and have racheted up tensions and divisiveness. Trump certainly hasn't helped matters. People are sheep and are heavily influenced by all of the partisan crap. I don't know what the answer is. I am just as partisan at this point as anybody but, violence solves nothing.
Agree 100%, especially with the pols and media being to blame. The news stations are about ratings so they stir the pot, rile up the masses and pass it off as journalism. There needs to be some kind of reset, but I'm not sure there can be at this point because for the media, it's about ad revenue (ratings and clicks) and for politicians it's about be re-elected.

What's funny (or sad) is that it took one of their own getting shot for them to try and calm things down. People are shot every day, there's been violence and killings because of the political and media-related rhetoric but no one stood up and said anything. Only when they became the target did the Pols finally say "We need to settle down as a country and stop this". More hypocrisy, but if it does the job then all the better. Hell, even Ted Nugent said he was going to stop the rhetoric and talk of violence towards those he has problems with. Which also just goes to show you that a lot of these Pols and media types are just performers speaking to their audiences. Even Alex Jones is running for cover now and trying to turn the tables on Megyn Kelly over his interview that's going to air. For years he's fanned the flames, made outrageous accusations and promoted conspiracy theories (while making a lot of money mind you), and now when they're going to shine a light on him, he's trying to play the victim card by saying he's being misrepresented with the interview. It's sad that we've come to this.

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Nodack
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

Post by Nodack »

It is sad. Our system promotes "competition" and in competition "winning" is everything. It's not about doing what is right, it's about winning and that doesn't help our society as a whole. If one side is in control the other side is doing everything in their power to see that they fail. Both sides do it relentlessly. I wish it was more like sports in that the whole team works together to win. In our system we elect starters and the losers get to be the bench. The starters take credit for the win and the bench tries to lose the game on purpose so that the starters don't get to win.

I don't know what the answer is. I guess there is no perfect system.

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Nodack
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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I have seen these kinds of things before. They will talk about uniting for a day, maybe two before the gloves come off and we are back to hating each other.

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ShelC
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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I don't see any positives in swinging from one extreme to the other every few election cycles. How can we settle on a middle of the road, centrist philosophy that's sustainable over the long term? It can't be 4 years of Trump then 4 years of Sanders then 4 years of Pence then 4 years of Elizabeth Warren....it's too extreme and they'll just keep undoing what the previous one did and the other side will do everything to obstruct. Now I understand that's an exaggeration but that's how it feels now with Trump and those in his administration undoing (or trying to undo) everything Obama did.

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Superbone
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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ShelC wrote:I don't see any positives in swinging from one extreme to the other every few election cycles. How can we settle on a middle of the road, centrist philosophy that's sustainable over the long term? It can't be 4 years of Trump then 4 years of Sanders then 4 years of Pence then 4 years of Elizabeth Warren....it's too extreme and they'll just keep undoing what the previous one did and the other side will do everything to obstruct. Now I understand that's an exaggeration but that's how it feels now with Trump and those in his administration undoing (or trying to undo) everything Obama did.
I'm totally with you! It's ridiculous with each regime undoing what the previous regime did. We're not going to go anywhere with that behavior. This is not good for America. These politicians need to start thinking about the whole of our country if we want to continue to thrive going forward. We can't just keep churning like on the current path.
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jonh
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Re: Sanders Supporter Goes Postal on GOP

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ShelC wrote:I don't see any positives in swinging from one extreme to the other every few election cycles. How can we settle on a middle of the road, centrist philosophy that's sustainable over the long term? It can't be 4 years of Trump then 4 years of Sanders then 4 years of Pence then 4 years of Elizabeth Warren....it's too extreme and they'll just keep undoing what the previous one did and the other side will do everything to obstruct. Now I understand that's an exaggeration but that's how it feels now with Trump and those in his administration undoing (or trying to undo) everything Obama did.
In my fairly ignorant opinion, I think that there are important factors that are inhibiting centralist candidates from being able to gain traction (such as the money/attention that come from focusing on socially-driven issues rather than other policy-driven issues, the prominence of superpacks, and the value of free-airtime in a 24/7 news cycle). Ultimately, our current approach to politics seems to suggest that centrist policy wonks are not going to get the necessary air-time on the major cable networks or drive sufficient excitement to get people to the polls.

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