The first pinned post can be found here:
https://lemmy.world/post/17530961
That’s where all the engagement and comments can be found, and I’d encourage everyone to participate there.
The reason for THIS post is to direct everyone there.
I’m getting multiple reports that some people can’t see it for some reason. Could be Federation, could be they blocked the user who posted it.
Here’s hoping you all can see THIS one and move over to where everyone else is engaged.
Chris Hedges tweet…
My thoughts on the assassination attempt on former President Trump:
The assassination of Trump would not remove the yearning of tens of millions of people, many conditioned by the Christian right, for a cult leader. Most of the leaders of the Christian right have built cult followings of their own. These Christian fascists embraced magical thinking, attacked their enemies as agents of Satan and denounced reality-based science and journalism long before Trump did. Cults are a product of social decay and despair, and our decay and despair are expanding, soon to explode in another financial crisis.
The efforts by the Democratic Party and much of the press, including CNN and The New York Times, to discredit Trump, as if our problems are embodied in him, are futile. The smug, self-righteousness of this crusade against Trump only contributes to the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. This crusade attempts to reduce a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It is accompanied by a refusal to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. This collusion with the forces of corporate oppression, which have impoverished the working class, fostered endless war, militarized our police, created the largest prison system in the world, licensed corporations to exploit the most vulnerable and transferred wealth upwards into the hands of a billionaire class, neuters the press, Trump’s critics and the Democratic Party.
Our only hope is to organize the overthrow of the corporate state that vomited up Trump. Our democratic institutions, including the legislative bodies, the courts and the media, are hostage to corporate power. They are no longer democratic. We must, like resistance movements of the past, engage in acts of sustained mass civil disobedience, especially strikes, and non-cooperation. By turning our ire on the corporate state, rather than Trump, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, liberals, feminists, gays and others. We give people an alternative to a bankrupt Democratic Party – whose presidential candidate is in clear cognitive decline – that is a full partner in corporate oppression and cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society. If we fail to embrace this militancy, which alone has the ability to destroy cult leaders, we will continue the march toward tyranny.
source: https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1812526737982726267
At best it might’ve given us a win for the White House but this is just one election. Even if Donald Trump wins and voluntarily leaves office afterwards his GOP successor will be even worse I’m sure. The best thing about Trump is how much of a lazy grifter he is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if barely anything changes at the federal level because he’s too busy trying to line his pockets with taxpayer money. The DeSantises and Ramiswamys of the US want to hand over the country to the corporations and churches and they’re fine doing it for pennies on the dollar.
So how does this megathread work, do we all pitch in and buy a shooter or?
You can start by sending $10 to the Progressive Turnout PAC.
Of course they have to identify the shooter with his First, middle, and last name, as is tradition… and it was a 20 yr old registered Republican? Wonder what the story on that will be?
That’s it.
It’s either a trump election win and civil war from him dismantling one too many of the elements of US government.
Or trump looses the election, incites a civil war, and the craziest actually do it.
Either way, as this even proves: Get. Your. Guns. Whilst you still can.
Okay, Tim Pool. Whatever you say.
Whelp… Biden was insistent on running, now the Monkey’s Paw has answered. All the other plausible Dems who could have stepped in to replace Biden will be running for the hills, and being the Democratic nominee is gonna be the worst job in politics for the next four months. And at the end of the campaign he gets to be remembered by history as the loser in the worst landslide election since Reagan-Carter.
Also:
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Sonia Sotomayor’s decision not to retire during Biden’s term is looking like yet another D own goal. Very real prospects for a 7-2 Supreme Court.
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We’re going to be seeing an orgy of foreign governments jockeying to cultivate relations with Trump. Official US foreign policy is going to be dead in the water, and NATO and G7 will be leaderless, until next year.
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Trump is going to have an iron grip on the Republican party now, to an even greater extent than before. On various issues where other Republicans held positions contrary to Trump’s, they’re going to be brushed aside.
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For the above two reasons, Ukraine is pretty well fucked.
All the other plausible Dems who could have stepped in to replace Biden
STOP with this stupid rhetoric. If Biden steps down, it will be game over for the Dems.
And no, Trump has no real chance to get back into the White House. Trump will lose. He already lost as a sitting president while trying to illegally stay in power. The fact that people keep forgetting this is beyond stupid.
This incident will just encourage more people to vote. Good.
Trump lost by around 50,000 votes in swing states, in the middle of a bungled pandemic response. In 2020, Biden was polling significantly higher than Trump; today he is polling significantly lower.
All this before that picture of Trump fist-pumping after being shot, which is going to be widely juxtaposed against Biden’s inability to walk down 2-3 steps.
I don’t know where this idea that Trump has “no chance” comes from.
It comes from the fact that he lost to Biden while trying to cling to power illegally. And I didn’t say “no chance.” I said “no real chance.”
People will vote in droves and Biden will win. And I don’t even like Biden. Come back here and mock me if that doesn’t happen.
I give 50/50 odds that Harris can do about as well as Biden, the more I think about it.
But there’s very few Democrats who can reasonably replace Biden today. And most of those do not have access to Biden’s fundraising (Harris does have access to that and gives her a huge leg up).
I still think that Biden staying on to serve as a political shield for Harris… and then resigning in January is the best path forward for Democrats. Harris still has to deal with womanizers and racists. All the adults recognize that she’s the real President Candidate moving forward already, so its not like she needs to actually step into the political firezone.
I’m leaning to 50/50 now because Harris feasibly could benefit from some kind of VP pick herself to shore up support. Or she could go down in flames as the racists / anti-women vote turns out against her. Hard for me to say, but its a feasible path IMO, if people really want to replace Biden to replace him with Harris.
EDIT: However, the idea that Biden should resign for some no-name / non-existant Democrat who hasn’t stepped up despite 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, now 2024 elections is fucking nuts. Your mysterious secret savior doesn’t exist, and they’d never step up 3 months before the election to ruin their chances at 2028 anyway.
I give 50/50 odds that Harris can do about as well as Biden
Those odds are terrible.
“Hey, take this gun. Point the gun in between your eyes, then pull the trigger. If the gun doesn’t fire, I’ll give you a million dollars. The gun has 50/50 odds that it will fail. Wanna play?”
Yeah, which is why I prefer if Biden stays running. I honestly think he’s our best shot at defeating Trump. Even today.
Do you think anyone else has a chance this late in the game? Has support begun to coalesce at any replacements yet? Its been a few weeks since the first debate. Who is stepping up?
Harris is stepping up. I can say that, and there’s some favorable polls right now for her. And I think the Democrats can spin the story of “You’re worried about age, so we listened and gave our best / most reasonable response to the worries of the public”. I’m not sure if it’d work mind you, but its better than nothing and I judge it to be about the same as Biden finishing this campaign (then resigning after the election), which is the default choice.
Harris could surprise me with a very good VP pick. Harris can inherit the entirety of Biden’s campaign as well. The unions likely aren’t going to be as happy with Harris as Biden but it’d be too late for them to withdraw their support. Etc. etc.
I always used to wonder how the Weimar Republic fumbled the ball so hard. Now I know.
Also, in Christian eschatology, isn’t it a big deal that the Antichrist suffers a near fatal head injury before his ultimate victory?
To be fair this wasn’t near fatal. This was a graze at best.
Its not even a graze.
It turns out it was glass that exploded somewhere and shards that hit Trump. The bullet never got close. The kid was a terrible shot (thank goodness for that. A Trump martyr would be even worse than the current situation IMO).
300m with an AR15 isn’t too difficult, but it does take training and practice to consistently hit at that range. And the relative speed at which secret-service killed the kid proves that (the Secret Service marksmen returned fire accurately and precisely. A job well done on that front).
We’re incredibly lucky this was a punk ass kid who didn’t know how to use his new toy. Then again, this all is much worse for Democracy anyway.
Democrats aren’t just jumping ship over this bullshit. The actual voters, the people, not the talking heads, are pretty entrenched in Not Trump. Votes aren’t changing over this, and the Democrats know what’s at stake. At the end of the day there’s more blue than red and it was an L for Trump as soon as he said he was running.
And the end of the day I dont give a shit that he got shot. So did 50. Its not changing my vote. He’s been calling for violence and got some. I worry this will cause more political violence.
This is absolutely going to yield more political violence. And that’s something Trump has been trying to make happen for a while now.
In that context, and also considering he was deep into the professional wrestling for a while, I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if at least some of this was staged. This whole bit in particular seems super fishy. Like… how in the fuck did the secret service detail not coordinate overwatch with the cops, or just do it themselves?
Urban warfare is well known to be incredibly complicated for this reason. There’s just too many buildings (and even if there’s just one building: too many windows a shooter could be looking out of).
We’re lucky that this punk-ass kid wasn’t a trained marksman. 300 meters isn’t an easy shot, but its something a trained person would do regularly with an AR-15 and the right equipment. (Even on the first shot: today’s rangefinders are very good and its not so hard to compensate for bullet drop and other effects).
In any case, the range and difficulty of the shot makes it unlikely that this kid was going for anything aside from a straightforward assassination attempt. You’re just aiming for center-of-mass at these ranges.
We’re unlucky that this punk-ass kid wasn’t a trained marksman.
FTFY
Lucky.
A martyred Trump only makes the MAGA movement bigger and stronger than ever before. Trump is just a symptom of this problem, and I worry about the coming years. I look forward above and beyond just one 78-year-old loser dumbass.
The MAGA threat is here and persistent. Its better for us that MAGA is still coalesced around Trump today and that we can still fuck up Trump’s reputation / ideology before he dies.
But actually killing Trump? That gives the movement the momentum they need to carry on for decades. A grazed piece of glass on Trump’s ear is fine. We can still politically work with this, though the MAGA has gained an edge this week in politics, this sort of thing can be forgotten before the election (much like Pelosi’s hammer attack or Gabby Gifford’s headshot).
Trump will likely milk this situation for all that its worth and exhaust the oxygen in the room.
The real issue is that Democrats haven’t solidified upon a plan yet. I suggest we either support Biden fully or we push for Harris. The sooner we push for a choice the better things are for our votes.
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Please please please can we stop the conspiracy theories from blowing up in this thread? Can we not act like them?
Conspiracy theories aside, I’d like to see people mocking the injury with little red ear clips, just like these assholes mocked John Kerry with purple heart band-aids:
Nah, man. Why step down to their level?
Because “when they go low we go high” was a stupid strategy, and not only did it not work, but it paved the way for Trump to win.
Making rhetoric that connects with the idiots and bigots in America who are old enough to vote is, annoyingly, a required part of political campaigns here, especially if your intent is to peel any of those votes away from populist candidates. It’s just social engineering.
Why?
Because they need to be mocked.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to think that the actor turned politician decided to act like he was getting shot for attention. He’s a reality show host that says shocking things. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say he would fake an assassination attempt when it’s in every other movie in Hollywood. This is in his wheelhouse.
This is literally a conspiracy theory.
Uh huh. You are selling that he’s that important and that people care that much. I don’t buy it. Go forth with your blind eyes. Mine see a better truth ;)
You sound like a QAnon grifter.
How? I’m bitching about how someone else has control over my life? No. I just don’t believe some event is shaking out the way they wanted it to. It’s what half of America has been asking for. Including him.
NYT photographer got the photo of the bullet, it seems that TMZ’s reporting that it was glass from the teleprompter is not correct:
https://x.com/spectatorindex/status/1812293722832318726
There very well could be bullets. One person died. However, I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say he would sacrifice someone to gain what he wants to gain.
He has been proven to manipulate with the Russians for the last election. Is it that big of a leap to think he would stage a dramatic scene for sympathy? Plus he walked away without any harm.
So walk me through how that conversation goes in your head. Trump is just this side of senile, so he definitely couldn’t have come up with a convoluted plot involving his attempted assassination, so it 100% would have had to be a suggestion of someone else. So let’s walk through the conversation that must have happened for this to have been a fake assassination attempt.
“So Mr. Trump, I think that the best thing to do to ensure you’re going to win the next election is to have someone shoot very near you. Maybe the bullet will graze you, maybe it’ll hit the teleprompter and send shards of glass your way. But either way, it’ll be a very close thing, and you’ll suffer a minor injury along the way.”
Do you honestly think that Donald Trump, the guy who got out of the draft because of bone spurs, the guy who gets queasy at the sight of blood, the guy who has spent the last 2 months talking about how he’d cling to a battery to get electrocuted instead of taking his chances with a shark, would be ok with being shot at? Seriously?
Because if that’s what you think, you and I don’t occupy the same universe.
I would think the smartest play would to be near him say 10 yards where it would “look” close enough. Actually take out the sacrifice. But then go down and act as hit with a blood pack or cut himself on the ear when he was on the ground. The graze is just an illusion. Kind of like the bullet catch trick if you are familiar with magic tricks.
I blame the news media. After years of fear mongering. Will make a crazy parson act up. Sadly it did. But they not going to change. They’re not going learn from this. The news media are do what they been doing. Like nothing happened.
