Caring deeply about my message exactly every 4 years is truly inspiring

  • mommykink@lemmy.worldEnglish
    965·
    4 months ago

    Everything to me just points to this being a very confused and disaffected kid who wanted to do something memorable with his life. I genuinely don’t think there was much consideration beyond that. He was 20 years old, were your political beliefs as concrete and nuanced when you were that age as they are today?

    • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
      522·
      4 months ago

      I was 19 for 9/11. It solidified where I stood pretty well. I’d say 20 year olds today could easily be just as galvanized, especially with the way social media has changed things since then.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        4 months ago

        Hey we’re the same age! I remember when 9/11 happened and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, that I didn’t really know the main differences of news sources and fully understand how they leaned one way or another. I remember watching Fox News at the time, but didn’t really realize that it was blatant propaganda. It wasn’t until I started looking into other news sources and then looked into media biases that I started to realize just how fucked up Fox News is.

        So I don’t really expect most 19 or 20 year olds to really know what’s trustworthy and what’s not.

        • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          4·
          4 months ago

          Just curious, were you from a conservative family? Or was it just out of the natural political ignorance of youth? I only ask, because my parents were mildly progressive, and I feel that I was sure Fox News was propaganda about as soon as I learned it existed in high school.

          My parents never told me this explicitly, either. I just remember Fox News being very pro-Bush at the time I discovered it, and immediately knew it was garbage. I was maybe 15 or so.

          Not saying this is you, but I can only imagine how hard it must be to break out of that spell, when it’s been force fed to someone by their parents for their whole lives. It’s similar to religion in that way.

          • jballs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            4 months ago

            No, not a super religious or conservative family. My step-dar was ex-military and eventually went down a Fox News hole later in his life that he will never climb out of. But at the time, it was just ignorance on my part as what was considered “news” and what wasn’t.

    • makyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      312·
      4 months ago

      He’s the prototypical American lone wolf shooter, it’s not complicated

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      4 months ago

      Everything to me just points to this being a very confused and disaffected kid who wanted to do something memorable with his life.

      Used to be, a guy like this would simply shoot up a school. But now that he’s shooting at our Dear Leader, its time to get serious about gun control mental health violent political rhetoric Tankies.

    • Korne127@lemmy.world
      184·
      4 months ago

      were your political beliefs as concrete and nuanced when you were that age as they are today

      …yeah. To be fair, I’m 22, but I’ve been in the board of a local political party for over 3 years now. You could maybe make that argument for 16, but honestly, even then I was at political demonstrations.

      • ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
        244·
        4 months ago

        I’d argue that your experience is an exception and not the rule. Most teenagers aren’t nearly so politically involved. And at 29, I’m a very different person than when I was 20.

        • whoreticulture@lemmy.world
          5·
          4 months ago

          Many teenagers are though, it’s not rare. I was in JSA in high school and went to conventions full of political teenagers.

          And honestly, the average teen/young adult is likely more politically engaged than the average adult. I find older adults give up as they get drained of lifeblood by capitalism. Not to mention, the most exciting political discussions tend to happen on whatever popular app hasn’t been corporate-washed to death yet.

        • kautau@lemmy.world
          3·
          4 months ago

          Yeah until I went to college, and then met very diverse groups of people compared to who I grew up with, wasn’t super involved with politics. I then volunteered to do cold-calling for obama’s campaign, and getting perspectives from Americans all over the nation and what was important to them, (most of these were on the fence voters) and then explaining to many of them how they did in fact align much more with obama’s policy than they thought, was a really challenging and rewarding experience to me as a 19 year old. Everyone’s experience is difference, and I’m thankful to have experiences early in my life that have set up what I believe in

        • III@lemmy.worldEnglish
          33·
          4 months ago

          I’d argue that maybe the world for kids today isn’t the same as it was for you 10 years ago and maybe you aren’t the authority on it.

          • ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
            51·
            4 months ago

            Does the comment I replied to’s personal anecdote make them the authority on the political involvement of teenagers? Did I ever claim to be the authority? We’re having conversation, relax

            • whoreticulture@lemmy.world
              23·
              4 months ago

              You relax, they were just making a point too. You did use your anecdote in a way that implied a broad sweeping point. Calm down.

    • aseriesoftubes@lemmy.world
      6·
      4 months ago

      Yep, this is it. Before, he was an awkward kid from a backward place with no friends and no prospects. Now, his name is forever associated with Donald Trump.

  • udon@lemmy.world
    374·
    4 months ago

    It IS weird though that he tried to shoot the Rep candidate and I can’t really see why, yet. We will probably hear a lot of explanations for this and I’d be curious about yours.

    So far I have heard rumours about a possible inside job/secret service involvement as an explanation, because they should have been aware of him. Might be, but I personally haven’t seen anything too convincing to verify or falsify this.

    Another one I could see is that he wanted to vote Republican but at some point realized that Trump sucks ass to put it mildly. So he tried to somehow push the Rep party to at least get back in touch with the idea of sanity by killing him?

    Other than that… make Trump a martyr somehow? Have a plot to blame it on the Dems? Mental issues?

    • Phegan@lemmy.world
      281·
      4 months ago

      I feel like he was unwell, and trying to apply reason to his motives will be a fool’s errand.

      • Wilzax@lemmy.world
        12·
        4 months ago

        Just because someone is unwell doesn’t mean that reason can’t be applied to his motives. Most mental illnesses still follow some (twisted and perverse) logic

    • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      4 months ago

      There are two explanations which I don’t find ludicrous, if you assume the shooter to be far right:

      • He was a Qanoner who bought the “we’ve gotta hunt the pedophiles” but didn’t develop the cognitive dissonance to also think “but that doesn’t mean Trump obviously”.

      • He was angry about Trump trying to distance himself from Project 2025 (even though that was merely rhetoric, but an angry and radical 20 years old may not understand that).

      • udon@lemmy.world
        9·
        4 months ago

        This is quite a significant incident in the middle of an important election campaign. While some reasons for the attempt may seem insignificant (e.g., mental illness), others could turn out to be quite important moving forward (e.g., involvement of secret service, faked attempt by Trump’s team etc.). Any evidence for or against any of these could have political implications and effects on the election results.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
      82·
      4 months ago

      There are three theories

      1. Trump had people hire him to pretend to assassinate him, and he went along with it thinking it’d boost Trump’s ratings (Kinda dumb and conspiratorial)

      2. He wasn’t aiming for Trump, but someone in the crowd, and Trump was hit by mistake (Given that he doesn’t aim for center of mass, this makes sense)

      3. He wanted to kill Trump, fearing he wasn’t Right Leaning enough (There are already people bashing Vance not for being racist, but for not being racist enough)

      Also wasn’t the payment to the Biden campaign found to actually be someone else with a similar name?

      • evidences@lemmy.world
        9·
        4 months ago

        Also wasn’t the payment to the Biden campaign found to actually be someone else with a similar name?

        The donation was to ActBlue not Biden and the FEC filing was his name at the house he lived at. It’s unlikely it was someone else unless he was named for his grandpa or something and he lived with them

        You can view the FEC filings yourself by going to the FEC website and search his name and zip code in the individual contribution search.

      • udon@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 months ago

        Ah, I didn’t consider the other side of the spectrum that maybe Trump isn’t fascist enough for him.

      • blueeggsandyam@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        Another theory is that he might have thought it would accelerate the right leaning movement by killing or wounding Trump. It is also possible he liked the movement but not Trump.

        Theories 1 and 2 don’t make any sense. Trump has too much of an ego for 1 and 2 would be weird. If you aren’t going after Trump, anyone else would be easier to shoot when not next to Trump.

    • Bertuccio@lemmy.world
      82·
      4 months ago

      Trump is a fascist and some small portion of Republicans still don’t support fascists.

      • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        22·
        4 months ago

        some small portion of Republicans still don’t support fascists.

        Lmmfao, if that were the case, they wouldn’t still be republicans

    • Syrc@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 months ago

      Another one I could see is that he wanted to vote Republican but at some point realized that Trump sucks ass to put it mildly. So he tried to somehow push the Rep party to at least get back in touch with the idea of sanity by killing him?

      I could see that happening. While I still dislike it, conservatism by itself is a valid ideology. Maybe he believed in the core principles of the party (small government, free market, christianity, etc.) and was sick of the main candidate being a lying fascist that is the spitting image of the biblical antichrist.

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
    29·
    4 months ago

    I’ve seen actblue ask for money for literally everything. Likely they were advertising for something conservative.

    • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
      47·
      4 months ago

      Summary since I haven’t seen it in the comments yet: they cracked his phone. There was some sort of high level briefing and some info got leaked:

      1. He either had or just googled some kind of depressive disorder (could potentially relate to motive if he was bipolar and having a manic episode or something).

      2. He had pictures saved of the schedules for both Trump and Biden’s national convention appearances. So he could have been trying to go after both of them, potentially.

      • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
        191·
        4 months ago

        Usually after 18 is when most bipolar people have their first major episode. There’s really no access to mental healthcare for someone like him. You’re lucky if you can see a p-doc for ten minutes. Usually you’ll see a primary care physician first and there’s a good chance that they’re going to prescribe you antidepressants, which is like throwing gas on the fire. It takes months or years of trying different medications to find a combo that works for you and that requires a support system of people who can tell how you’re doing and you have to have a willingness to be miserable for an indefinate period of time. Certain meds will make you feel better for a month or two and then they’ll gradually stop working. People get frustrated and stop taking medication because it makes them feel like shit. Dropping meds completely is the worst thing, it’s like dumping a 100 lb backpack that you’ve been carrying for months. You feel like you can jump ten feet in the air, nobody can stop you.

      • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        71·
        4 months ago

        He had pictures saved of the schedules for both Trump and Biden’s national convention appearances. So he could have been trying to go after both of them, potentially.

        That’s the kind of bipartisanship that I can support.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
    52·
    4 months ago

    Last I heard from the rumor mill is that he was right leaning but showed signs of disapproval of Trump specifically after he was elected the first time. Something about activism engagements related to stuff that was pretty opposite of whatever Trump wanted.

    I dunno, I haven’t fact checked anything, but I don’t care to. Everyone is already picking his life apart (law enforcement and the public), which IMO, is pretty invasive.

    If the LEOs wanted to know why he did what he did, I’m sure their sharpshooters could have found a way to not end his life in the process of stopping him. IDK, I’m not a sharpshooter either.

  • Eol@sh.itjust.works
    762·
    4 months ago

    It’s funny, I tend to fixate on shooting events when they happen and follow the news and dig into it. But I didn’t even hear about this till days later.

    My conspiracy is that this kid got groomed or extorted by stronger sovereign types to do this. Basically all politics use youth. Youth are the ones fucked over because adults want to get something. Business marketing to youth to make money etc… America’s youth are puppets. Shit, it’s the same reason why conservatives say colleges are indoctrinating people. It’s the same dumb bullshit on all sides of pop politics… Market to and use the youth to advance your ideology while killing innocence of just “existing” and “being” so that one can feel some fake security and solidify their perception of reality.

    • stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
      182·
      4 months ago

      If by using the youth you mean discussing very prevalent political items that they will absolutely need to deal with in a time where they are forming their perception of what reality is actually like… then yeah…

      When else would be an appropriate time to discuss current standings, issues, and opinions than during the dawn of adulthood? We vote at 18 in the US… it’s absolutely acceptable to be talking about this stuff when teens are starting highschool. And of all the political sides, try as the republicans may, democratic/liberal policies are generally based on how things are affecting everyone from the richest of rich down to the smallest minority demographic.

      Sure there’s crazies on both sides, but trying to find a Republican who’s open to different ideas and concerns is a lot harder than finding a dem. One is based on modernization and societal progress while the other just points to any problem and suggests regression and suppression. Pretty simple imo

    • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      97·
      4 months ago

      My conspiracy is that this kid got groomed or extorted by stronger sovereign types to do this.

      I’ve been having similar thoughts. It seems much more likely to me that a trump fanboy could be convinced to take part in a convoluted plan to stage an assassination to create the hero/survivor/martyr/victim narrative for not much at all (but including the false promise that he would make it out alive, and maybe a free shot in to the crowd, as a treat), and that the christofascist police would look the other way (or just be their usual incompetent selves), than that one would not only get disillusioned to the point of wanting to kill him, but also being able to pull off something like this unnoticed (and we already know he was noticed).

      Though the truth is that whatever really happened, if we ever find out, one thing’s for sure - being a trump supporter he definitely was, to one degree or another, groomed by stronger sovereign types, there’s a whole pipeline dedicated to it…

      • Eol@sh.itjust.works
        96·
        4 months ago

        People underestimate the underground in terms of their play in politics. It’s gotten to the point that our system is fully intertwined with illegal and corrupt lifestyles.

        Pop politics is just giving false hope to a class of people that don’t understand war and crime. The civil war has been here for awhile but people are too naive, even the cops and politicians, to understand. The deaths get passed off as accidents and suicides or blamed on mentally ill. It’s part of the game to make someone go crazy and do shit like this. It’s a common play. It’s to the point I question mass shootings. Are these kids getting used by stronger people? I see a lot of “regular” people played out doing work for stronger people. They are to naive to know what’s happening and how strong people around them can be. There’s players in the game everywhere. From the low streets to the big business and people get so blinded by the false market virtuosity of politics. It’s finished already. Shit our country would collapse if we took out the black market and dark money.

        • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          91·
          4 months ago

          Oh, absolutely, take it even further

          It’s gotten to the point that our system is fully intertwined with illegal and corrupt lifestyles.

          I’d say it was designed that way.

          Capitalism is immoral. It encourages greed and corruption, and requires exploitation and oppression to survive, as do those who benefit from it most and make sure it is maintained, which is why it will always decay in to fascism, and all of the violence and manipulation that come with it, including what we’re seeing unfold in front of our eyes…

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        4 months ago

        I wonder if he was involved in those pedo hunting groups, and the realization that Trump is a rapist pedo with that 13 year old girl caused his GOP brain to malfunction.

          • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
            1·
            4 months ago

            Possibly, but you take someone who is already pretty mentally imbalanced and this is the kind of thing that happens.

            Normal people, even when enraged, don’t take to shooting other humans. It takes someone who is in a bad place to try and pull this off.

            • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              11·
              4 months ago

              Gtfoh with your “normal people” ableist nonsense. Never mind that the guy was as average white American man as you can fucking get…

              White supremacist christofascist patriarchal ableist capitalism did this, not mental illness. Privilege and entitlement, and the ability of those in power who manufactured them to use them to control and manipulate certain groups under threat of losing their superiority over others, did this.

              I’m so sick and tired of this fucking “mental illness did it” obtuse bullshit.

              I’ll just leave this here, and I’m out I’m not “debating” this:

              “Are you saying that murderers are right in the head??”

              No there’s definitely something wrong with someone’s way of thinking if they can justify killing innocent people, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a mental illness.

              Extremist beliefs isn’t a mental illness.

              Bigotry isn’t a mental illness.

              Entitlement isn’t a mental illness.

              Hate isn’t a mental illness.

              Having a dysfunctional moral compass isn’t a mental illness.

              We need to stop categorizing all these things as some undefinable “mental illness” and start looking at what we do as a society to develop and justify these things to a degree where people use them to justify killing.

              Yes!

              Dehumanization is something you Have to look for. If the murderer doesn’t see the person they killed as a person, then mental illness is probably not the main factor there.

              Plenty of people murder women, poc, lgbt people, people of other religions etc. because they don’t see them as people.

              Think about genocides - they aren’t perpetrated by big group of people/a government who all got mentally ill together the same way at the same time somehow, they just didn’t consider what they did murder because they didn’t see the victims as people.

              source

              • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
                1·
                4 months ago

                Yeah, your source is bullshit and you have no experience with this stuff. This is some hardcore quit your bullshit stuff. This entire post of your is nothing but luxury beliefs. Nothing you say is grounded in actual psychology, it’s all a bunch of privileged trash. I can’t believe someone would cite that drivel and act like it’s fact, you are right up there with the MAGA flat earth people.

                Have you see someone descend into the madness of schizophrenia? Nope, you sure have not. How about real depression, not your first world “I am so sad” type that people like you languish in and spout crap of just-feel-better.