These kind of things get press

It's news

But for now we wait for the professionals to investigate

@barcotics , actually the worst offense of that NYT short story is that it had no imagination. It sounds like a remake of a Harrison Ford flick from 20 years ago.

This is perhaps the exact flip side of the GOP baseball shooting last year. A lone actor inflamed by rhetoric. This is nothing to get political points for. It's time for partisans on both sides to figure out how to keep from getting so personal.

I wish the charcaturing of fellow Americans would stop.

The left charcature fundamentalists christians and Appalachia

The right charcatures trans and brown people

Can we please recognise we're all Americans

I am so naive

I'm 47 years old so I very well remember life before ubiquitous internet

I cut my teeth on Fidonet

I remember watching Tianenmen Square happen in near real time from reports at the source.

I honestly thought the internet would bring us all together since we'd all have access to the same information and could all talk it out in one big forum.

But instead of people taking all this information and forming similar conclusions. People instead took thier conclusions and formed similar information.

I'm still feeling gobsmacked at how it happened this way

I think what keeps that happening is the fact the US is so evenly split down the middle that no one can agree on what speech to discourage

I think we're seeing in the US just how successful that would be

Not very

The president of the United States is essentially wearing the badge racist as an honor...and therefore essentially denying such a thing exists anymore

Whether you agree it does or not is another matter, but that he is killing the term is pretty evident

Who do you think is doing the cleaning?

So the right or the left? Which agenda is being advantaged in your hypothesis?

But that doesn't answer what the point would be of such cleaning then

Who is pulling the strings?

I'm really trying to follow you

Oh, so no one is in control?

It skews randomly?

I think it highly likely to be as you say, @Beemann , but China is a cautionary tale of what can happen if one party gets absolute power. The Great Firewall.

Yes the CCP did

And they did what was considered impossible. They actually put the internet to harness.

I agree with you

But it has been shown to be possible

Ambien is not mind control

That last is true

We saw that with the Giffords shooter and the Scalise shooter

I actually think the best thing for markets is split control

I think the chaos of late is in part because the Red Wall might be stronger than the Blue Wave

Dems in control of just the House won't lead to impeachment

Why does it have to be reactionaries and "regressives" who win? What about the middle?

I care. Isn't this whole place about people on the middle who care?

Why does the left have to be so bitter? Why dies the right have to have those not like them? Why can't we look at issues and address them as issues and not as strawmen for tribal ideologies?

I feel like the last moderate left on Earth

So no one cares about issues anymore? It's all about power, not governing?

Since when is a random Twitter user a reputatable source?

Okay, then that means something

It becomes evidence

This is no more the broader Republican Party fault than Scalise was the Dems fault. The fault is our tribalism and need to win and therefore our dehumanizing the opponent.

@Bookworm , I don't think I named anyone. Do you disagree that polarized people on both sides are dehumanizing the opponent?

Comparing Pres Trump to an orangutan or Pres Obama to a chimpanzee?

I'm referencing the United States as a whole. Would you disagree that we're forming tribal units on both political poles?

Our side right or wrong

They are evil

What about those on the right that dehumanize black people? Trans people? "Fags"?

What is a traditional family?

I have two wonderful kids.

With two moms

And very active grandparents

My wife and I have been together 27 years. We went to prom together and at my 20th high school reunion we're the only couple who went that were still together.

But there are those who say our love is untraditional, evil, and bad for the country

I think there are too many confounding factors to apply this statistics

And in any case, those statistics would play out if the people involved were in "traditional" relationships. Relationships are just the human beings involved.

The problem I see with a lot of posts above is that there are many on the Left who have a bona fide reason to fear the right just as you all rightly point out the opposite is true. When the opposition is characterized as evil and inhuman, people in the same populations as those maligned feel forced to join coalitions unnatural to them for literal self protection.

For example, when I look at a candidate my first criteria is whether they a family friendly. All families. If they are anti family, meaning they reject some definitions for arbitrary reasons, I cannot support them.

I've had to vote for candidates I don't necessarily believe in because the opposition wanted to reject the basic legitimimacy of my family.

I'll protect my family before anything else.

Again, the Right owns this guy exactly as much as the Left owns the Scalise shooter.

The right has thier own thugs

You don't notice them unless they are targeted at you

The President himself has advocated repeatedly for violence against those who disagree with him

Rally after rally

"I'll pay your legal fees"

Shouldn't I take the President of the United States at face value?

He's my President for heaven's sake

Because he's President?

And Tom, there are right and left groups fighting every night in Portland right now. The mayor had to declare a state of emergency.

I'm not willing to accept that all members of those groups are violent. BLM started because of the killing of blacks.

The Republicans had a resistance movement during Obama. The Dems have one now. Resisters are praised until it gets violent. Then they are (or should be) condemned

Anyway, I don't condone violence or threats of violence on any pole. Which is why I feel distressed when my own President advocates for violence.

I can't name any because there are no "mainstream" ones. Just like there aren't on the left. When they get violent, they aren't mainstream anymore.

Yes. And there is nothing wrong with resistance to fascism.

But violence is wrong

That's what they represented to me, but perhaps I am naive

Tom, I don't believe the vast, overwhelming majority of either Dems or Reps believe that violence is a legitimate tool.

There were bad fascists

And bad Communists

No, fascism per see isn't evil

Nor is Communism, although the latter is irrational on an sizable scale

I would argue punching anyone isn't appropriate

Well, except in self defense

@JustTom , yes, I know what you're after. The left, of course.

But we have a President who decides those who disagree with him

@JustTom , I wouldn't be here if I didn't think the Dems hadn't gone Looney Tunes

No, they don't hate Jews

They just feel threated at what Shapiro is saying. They react to thier fear.

Every example of fascism has been founded on deriding minorities

Not all to the extent of Hitler of course. Mussolini was just a thug until he got coopted by Hitler.

I never said the left hates Jews.

I said the left is the first to try and suppress opposing views

The two are very different