MarxMadness

If you can't handle a kid yelling at you, you shouldn't have a gun

a racist firefighter standing behind Trump caught one of the strays and died.

Maybe you have a second shooter and give your patsy blanks.

I'm not saying no bullets were fired. I'm asking if we know the bullet that killed the firefighter were from Crooks' gun.

It's no sillier than any other false flag attack. They might not have cared if they killed him, either. Trump as a martyr and a more predictable guy in charge has a lot of appeal for many on the right.

Do we know he shot real bullets, anyway? If you're planning on your patsy getting shot, one of the many benefits of that is that you might not get the type of investigation you'd have if you're going to charge the guy with a crime. Maybe you have a second shooter and give your patsy blanks.

"Staged" could mean:

1. They planned to let the guy get a gun close then nab him without shooting, but fucked up.
2. They planned to let a bad shot take a shot and then execute him.
3. They had a patsy on the roof and a real shooter elsewhere, who planned to either miss (and succeeded) or hit (and fucked up).

All of which would involve a real bullet actually killing someone, just not Trump.

I'm skeptical of it being staged, but at some point incompetence is so extreme it becomes too suspicious to take at face value. How do you let a guy with a rifle park on an open rooftop anywhere near a presidential speech?

The comparison to Churchill (or FDR) is a good starting point. When libs talk about these "heroes," their positive accomplishments are what's important, and any genocide, segregation, forced displacement, etc. that they had a hand in is a mere uncomfortable blemish on a generally good record. They were products of their time working in imperfect systems, they made some progress in some places, their replacement would have been worse, etc.

I say that's about how I view Stalin -- 70% good, 30% bad -- except his state was generally pursuing worthy aims instead of Churchill or FDR, who were presiding over and expanding exploitative empires.

There are usually two directions the conversation goes from here:

1. Specific, objectionable Soviet practices. Internal deportations of ethic groups, for example. Getting into the weeds is almost always useless, because unless you and the person you're speaking with sit down and read some books together (and unless they accept that those books are accurate), you're going to get lost in disagreements about what actually happened. Best to stick with pointing out that your Churchills or FDRs did the same stuff (Japanese internment, for example), and that at worst they are viewed as flawed, not the worst dictator ever.
2. "You're doing some kind of fallacy by comparing the USSR to other countries." Here, I usually point out that comparing state actions is a foundational part of what passes for international law. We're not judging states against the People’s Republic of Heaven, we're asking if one system is better than another. Comparisons to other countries are also inherent in any discussion of international relations, which definitionally involve other countries.

This is your response when you see facts you don't like? Here's a 2021 article on Biden's support for Ukraine before Russia invaded:

Zelensky observed that Biden “knows Ukraine better than the previous president” and “will really help strengthen relations, help settle the war in Donbas, and end the occupation of our territory.”

Note the acknowledgement that there was already a war on.

While Zelensky’s comments may prove overly optimistic, there is little reason to doubt that the Biden presidency will be good for Ukraine... Whether Biden, who will face many demands on his time, will choose to engage personally is a different question. He knows Ukraine, having traveled there six times when he served as vice president.

To be fair to rank-and-file Democrats, I'm sure they largely didn't know about the Banderite problem in Ukraine, if only because they probably paid little attention to the country as a whole. But the presence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine was certainly no secret. The Biden administration definitely knew the situation.

If you see a fruit fly in your kitchen, do you jump straight to calling the exterminator and moving out for a few days while they fumigate your place?

Cops don't break out their full suite of investigative tools on every single crime, and prosecutors need at least a few facts to hang their hat on if they're going to overcharge you. Cops don't even fingerprint on many burglaries in bigger cities. The greatest possible response is not the likely response.

I'm glad you got better responses in this thread than that person.

a misguided attempt to offer empathy to those who have already forfeited theirs

If the attitude towards imperial core citizenry who don't already agree with us is that they can go to hell, there is no way to build an effective resistance to imperialism from inside the machine. That's forfeiting a lot for... what gain, exactly? The best way to demonstrate solidarity with the struggle against imperialism is to oppose empire, and in the imperial core that first means growing a movement big enough to make a difference. Can't do that if you call every potential new leftist a fascist.

I long ago gave up on feeling empathy towards these people

Most of my movement left was due to just being a person with empathy

You said yourself why this is a bad take: basic stuff like "empathy, morals, and a sense of logic and understanding of the world" is how a lot of people move left. If you compromise those things to too great an extent you can get lost, or you stop being a person who's able to convince non-leftists to come around to our side. And without millions of people who currently aren't leftists coming around, we're going nowhere.

Hard to imagine the cops arresting her at 4:30 in the morning without getting special direction to do so.