Oh Goody...

I had just sat down to really delve into Firewall, which I had actually picked up from the library before Charles P. Pierce recently profiled the book, when I heard on the news coming from the other room that somebody just shot up a republican baseball practice.

Oh goody.

Now, I have been decrying violence on this blog since 2010, especially politically-motivated violence, and this is no exception. The first thought I had that sent a chill down my spine was that this shooting incident, unlike the 153 that came before it in just this year, will prove to be the amorphous Reichstag fire event that further enables republican tyranny. Time will tell but there has already been a 155th incident in San Francisco. America seems to be packing in a year's worth of stories into each day. Under whatever could be called normal in 2017 we, the engaged public, would have at least a few hours to reflect before the next catastrophe but alas, there is nothing remotely like "normal" in America anymore.

My second thought was "was this politically-motivated?" Then, "was the shooter partisan?" And it appears that yes to both and OH MY GOD we actually have that most rare of species, a left-wing shooter. Now, we can all do the "thoughts and prayers are with the victims" spiel but who does that actually help? Just optics. If it had been a white male baby boomer from some long-ignored heartland town right-winger who had just popped off fifty rounds at the Democratic Congressional baseball team I imagine the message boards at 4chan and twitter would be offering much more inflamed rhetoric than "thoughts and prayers." Why? Because optics only matter if you are capable of self-reflection and self-awareness, IOKIYAR.

Goddammit, the Second American Civil War seems completely inevitable now. Until this morning it has been a low intensity guerrilla campaign of "lone wolves" egged on by right wing media figures.There is a reason I blog under a pseudonym and it's not just everyday average American paranoia. If a right wing authoritarian follower can hurt someone without punishment, they will do it.

The keyboard warriors of the so-called "alt right" loved to spread this one around like herpes after the Russians stole the election for low-information authoritarianism:

 Put aside the facts that more people stayed home than voted for either candidate in that sea of red. Or that most of the people in the country live in those blue areas. This is what they want, this is the burning passion that drives certain 'wingers to spend all their money on guns, ammo, and Oxycontin. So the trick for both social dominators and the right wing followers is how to set up the dehumanized liberal that is both all-powerful and threatening but weak and helpless at the same time. All good scapegoats have this characteristic, not just the Jewish banking cabal that stole Christian children but crushed so easily under the Aryan jackboot.

So now, someone did "poke the bear", someone who has all the right characteristics of a trumper, white, male, baby boomer from the heartland. Now what? The wild card is these meme-generating 4chan trolls who certainly seem aggressive enough and autonomous enough from Central Command at Fox News to make a real mess of things. Are the trolls who made these propaganda posters brave enough to pull a real trigger?

Seriously, if you guys weren't compensating bigly, we'd know.

I especially like these two above. I'm sure the teenager on the far right is very politically motivated. And the fellas in pink, surely that is their battle dress uniform of choice. The dickheads who made these are probably guys who would say "I would have joined up but I don't like people telling me what to do."

For years now the attitude from the right is worse than the guns they wield as phallic substitutions. Today was the first time someone from the far left shot back. Will the assholes on the right finally realize that threatening and dehumanizing their fellow Americans with all of this pointless posturing and eliminationist rhetoric is not really worth it? Or will they merely ratchet everything up a notch? I didn't tell James Hodgkinson to visit the republicans' baseball field and I repudiate his every action, but that won't make a bit of difference to the man children in their mom's basement trying to incite the next guy to go down in a blaze of glory fighting the liberals.