Statement by the Secret Service:
An incident occurred the evening of July 13 at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. The Secret Service has implemented protective measures and the former President is safe. This is now an active Secret Service investigation and further information will be released when available.
Statement by the Trump campaign:
President Trump thanks law enforcement and first responders for their quick action during this heinous act. He is fine and is being checked out at a local medical facility.
Live Coverage: ABC CBS NBC FOX
Sources: shooter is dead, one attendee is dead, blood on bleachers, blood on t-shirts, medical helicopters on the scene
Well I think we can all be certain there won’t be any huge downwind effects from this 😐
Yup they’re going to try to rally around this. His stupid little fist thing he was doing while the secret service was around him is scary. It’s plays right into the fascist playbook and his narrative as a victim/brave knight enduring arrows for his common people. I’m sad to say this, but it probably would’ve been better for democracy if they had succeeded. I think he would be easier to handle as a martyr than this tough guy act he’s going to assume after this 😩
It may bring MAGA nuts a few steps closer to the violence they’re eager for an excuse to unleash. If they believe they’re under immediate attack they will feel entitled to attack back. That said, I’m not sure how much difference this will make in the end. Eventually they’ll get violent anyway because they’re fascists.
Then where was the gunfire during their attempted coup at the senate building?
I think the level of threat has been greatly exaggerated by those who stand to profit from the chaos and division.
114 officers reported injuries as a direct result of their attempted coup. 5 later died from injuries they had sustained.
And he’ll overplay his hand, freak everyone else out which drives voter turnout and he loses. Hopefully.
Maybe he’s going to be pro-gun control now.
That’s what happened with Reagan.
The MAGA crowd would have a dilemma.
Trump as president even if he wants to take my guns?
No they went, he’s never been pro gun he’s just been paid not not say what he actually means. He’s the president who on tape said no no I believe in taking the guns first and his base didn’t blink an eye.
Yeah he banned bump stocks after the Las Vegas shooting, but then the supreme court found in the text of the constitution the part where they say you can’t ban bump stocks and reversed it.
Ye olde musket bump stocks
He is already, but he learned not to speak his mind on that.
sounds like the best way to ensure a Trump rally is safe is to ensure every single person there is armed.
God dammit, they had to fucking miss
Part of me wishes they didn’t, part of me wonders who would use his martyrdom to do even worse.
That last part is the terrifying bit, honestly. Trump is an egomaniac with the attention span of a toddler. He’s an unguided projectile of spite and vanity.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
The potential for lasting damage goes (even further) off the scale. I shudder to think what that might actually look like.
Honestly, in the event Biden loses, the best hope the US has is Trump’s general incompetence.
Imagine someone competent filling his shoes with the unprecedented powers that were recently granted by the supreme court and the rabid MAGA fanbase behind them.
During the early pandemic, I was 100% convinced he was going to declare a national state of emergency as a pretense for a kind of coup. It would have been easy to have disproportionate military occupation of population centers like NYC, enforcing curfews, enforcing distancing and masking, while generally fomenting unrest through non-military groups. Throw in some old-fashioned resource scarcity by restricting shipping in the name of quarantine and, baby, you have a stew going. Once people are incited to riot, martial law is easy to justify.
Instead, the Republican party doubled-down on the dumbest plan possible - literally betting on the stupidity of their base - to secure political power. The sheer greed, ego, and narcissism in the upper echelon of their leadership has them stepping on their own feet half the time, and I’m convinced we’re lucky for that.
It’s a good thing the Republican leadership is as incompetent as they are morally bankrupt, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t managed to stumble their way into pushing the US to the brink of a dictatorship. As the KGB used to say, a lot of them are “useful idiots” which can be orchestrated by careful external manipulation.
This is the same line of reasoning that created the “Allies actually didn’t try very hard to assassinate Hitler, because they realized he was a really bad tactician” conspiracy theories. Basically, the reasoning is that while Hitler was charismatic and had a massive cult following, he wasn’t actually that good at making tactical decisions in war. So the allied powers didn’t really try very hard to assassinate him, because they feared an actual competent ruler who would potentially take his place.
Basically, “never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
I’m not onboard with that conspiracy, as there were certainly attempts on his life throughout his reign. But I do agree with the relevancy of that Sun Tzu quote.
By 1943 Hitler was making such poor decisions it would’ve actually benefited the Nazi war effort if he had been removed from power.
A head that size is a sniper’s wet dream.
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I’m a flaming liberal, but I’m honestly revolted that, as I write this, your comment has a bunch of upvotes and no downvotes.
This man wants to do things that will make me and many people i love dead or suffering. How do you not understand how we could feel this way?
Because if you start justifying these kinds of things, they will eventually be turned against you and next you know it, your own political representative is being shot at because their opponent’s supporters are feeling threatened just as you are (whether they are truly justified in feeling threatened or not, doesn’t matter).
Democracy does not work with violence.
EDIT: I’m really curious about the downvoters: do you really think murdering your political opponents is justified? The goal is to vote out the fascists, not become fascists.
Because if you start justifying these kinds of things…
Republicans have already been justifying it. It was only days ago that a Republican said [paraphrasing] “theres a revolution already going on and it will be bloodless if the left doesnt interfere”.
Republicans have already been justifying the death of BIPoC, trans kids, the queer community, Palestinians and anyone who opposes their genocide… the list goes on. And its mealy mouthed liberals that always say shit like “oh but we shouldn’t start justifying using violence, even in defence” from their positions of privilege.
WTF do you think is going to happen after November, whether Trump wins or not? They have been laying out the justification for using violence for 4 fucking years and you’ve slept through it, hoping its just some nightmare you’ll wake up from.
Democracy does not work with violence.
How do you think your form of ‘democracy’ was achieved? You ballot box is awash with so much fucking blood that you would piss your pants if you had a tiny inkling. And most of it is from those who your country mercilessly crushed for you to have it. You dont live in a democracy. You live in a military/prison/pharma industrial corporatist state that masquerades in a trenchcoat as a democratic Republic
I’m not sure what you’re saying - since they are justifying violence, you should too? That doesn’t seem sustainable, unless your goal is a civil war.
EDIT for your edit: I am not from the US so I’m not sleeping through anything, I’m just watching from the sidelines. My form of democracy was actually introduced quite peacefully, all things considered. But that’s neither here nor there.
Any bloodless revolution is done through an implicit threat of violence. It is just the losing side being smart about how they lose.
I tillegg om du er dansk, vil eg påpeike at Danmark mista eineveldet sitt då dei tapte Napoleonskrigane i 1814, som også var grunnlaget for Noreg sin uavhengigheit og demokratiske grunnlov.
Let’s say you’re in school, and you’re assigned a lab partner and told the requirements of your project and that you need to compromise both individual’s ideas to make it happen.
Every time you try to make a suggestion, they immediately say no and suggest something that isn’t even graded for the project, and refuses to budge until you compromise. When you don’t compromise, they threaten to tell the teacher that you’re not compromising. As you try to hold your ground trying to get a good grade for both of you, they just keep doing whatever they want and making more threats to you: they’ll take your lunch money, they’ll beat you up after school, they’ll pop your bike tires, etc.
When you tell the teacher, they tell you to stop overreacting and you need to learn to work with others. After school, your science partner punches you and says you better agree to XYZ tomorrow. You tell the teacher they hit you, and you’re told you need to stop exaggerating and learn to compromise and work together. Every day that week, your science partner makes good on each threat after school, and every day you tell your teacher, they tell you to stop exaggerating and learn to play nice.
On the last day, you punch the kid back, really hit him, break his nose kind of punch. And you’re punished: the teacher says you shouldn’t have resorted to violence, your partner says they were the true victim in the project arrangement, you get a failing grade because everything you compromised on didn’t meet the requirements, but your science partner still got an A and wasn’t punished for anything he did all week because “the rules don’t apply to them the same way, they’re troubled/have a lot going on at home/whatever excuse.”
That’s the current state of US politics: Republicans are justified in any and everything they do because they’re “special,” but Democrats have to follow all of the rules, all of the time, even when the other side of the aisle refuses to even listen to them or the centuries/decades of legal precedent. And they, the Republicans, still win because that’s just how the fucking system works.
Dude, who are the ones actually shooting at people? You so worried about what might happen that you can’t see what’s going on right in front of you.
The guy doing the shooting was a registered republican.
Yeah that’s an interesting development. I have more questions now than I did before.
It doesn’t work if all parties aren’t participating in good faith, either. What then?
I don’t think that’s true. Obviously you need elections that can be trusted (and despite everything I don’t think elections results are being tampered with too significantly) but if there are bad faith actors (like Trump) then just… Get people not to vote for such an actor. Should be easy enough seeing as they’re a bad faith actor right?
Well no, because people are poorly educated or brainwashed or scared or bigoted or hateful or afraid or all the other reasons that people in the US might vote for Trump. The problem is not Trump, the problem is the people voting for him. That’s also why shooting him is a bad idea, it only entrenches his supporters even further (aside from the fact that shooting anyone is generally a bad idea).
Democracy requires nonviolence and an educated and informed population. The US fails on both accounts.
Democracy requires nonviolence
HAHAHAHA oh damn my dude go and read any history book.
Our “democracy” IS violent, it just isn’t the ruling class experiencing the violence. Every day our society is upheld by violence. Violence over seas (231 years of war, support of genocide, coups, and interventions) and violence at home in the form of an increasingly more powerful police state.
This is just the direct forms of oppression like guns, bombs and jackbooted thugs. There are also sanctions that starve people and IMF loans that impoverish people. These all uphold our standards of living, the united states cannot exist with the impoverishment and exploitation of others.
Political violence ≠ fascism. Violence is what people turn to when they can’t achieve what they need by merely talking and voting. Cf. every revolution, ever. Including the American one.
Violence is what people turn to when they can’t achieve what they need by merely talking and voting.
The fact that this is the state of things is the bigger problem. That’s the problem that needs to be fixed and sorry, but violence is not the solution to that, it only makes things even worse.
Killing fascists makes you a fascist?
Murdering your political opponents is a fascist tactic.
Lol that minimizes what fascism actually is. Assassinations have happened throughout history, including before Capitalism and before the crisis within Capitalism that created fascism.
Lol
That “lol” is quite unnecessary. There is no need to ridicule me. I would expect better from a mod of a community like this.
minimizes what fascism actually is
I didn’t say that is all fascism is, just that it is a tactic within fascism. It can be a part of it. But anyway I don’t want to argue what is and isn’t fascism, my point is just that political violence and murdering your political opponents does not work with democracy and shouldn’t ever be hoped for or wanted, even if it is your political opponent being targeted. I want Trump gone as much as the next guy on the fediverse but I don’t want him killed.
I dont think you know what fascism means
The other man already does, for two years, things that made hundreds of thousands people die, get wounded, suffer, etc.
You are asking how people do not understand that you want Trump to be dead because he might hurt people you love, surely with your empathy skills you will be able to understand how people might hate Biden (and perhaps even want to see him dead as well) for what he did (and continues doing)?
Or is it only sad when the people you love are suffering? The other people do matter, right?How you could hate him? I understand. I have a nonbinary kid, and I’m against what he stands for. But advocating for political assassination is just wrong. We don’t punish people for crimes they haven’t yet committed, and we don’t support vigilantism.
We need to vote out fascist Republicans, not kill them.
You know Trump was already president once, right? It’s not like it’s a secret that he’s anti-LGBTQ people.
We Made A List Of All The Anti-LGBT Stuff Trump Has Done As President from 2018, it includes
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Saying it’s legal to fire workers for being transgender.
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Arguing that it’s legal to fire workers for being gay.
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Making transgender female prisoners live with male prisoners.
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Telling the Supreme Court that shopkeepers can turn away LGBT customers.
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Withdrawing protections for transgender students.
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Refusing to investigate anti-transgender discrimination complaints in public schools.
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Trying to kick transgender people out of the military.
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Issuing a religious liberty policy.
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Starting to rescind protections for transgender patients.
and their list goes on.
I’m not sure it’s possible to get a full picture of everything Trump did wrong, even if you narrow it down to specific topics like LGBT rights. A lot of these things aren’t crimes, but that’s only because he was the one writing the laws and policies.
And the solution to this problem is to murder him? That is not how democracy works. Besides, the problem is not Trump per se, but the people voting for him. That won’t change just because Trump is dead. They will find some other bigoted candidate that will be just as bad if not worse.
People need to be educated and informed and know why it’s a bad idea to vote for someone like Trump - that is the only sustainable way to fix things if you ask me. Murder and violence will only entrench people further on either side and drive people to even more extremes.
I honestly understand all that, and believe it’s vitally important that he’s defeated. But assassinating political rivals is literally a characteristic of fascism.
It literally isnt: fascism is capitalism in crisis and assassinations have gone on for most of human history, before the development of capitalism in the first place
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Ah ok trolling. Nevermind. Move along.
Trolling?
It is sad to see this state of the divide in the US. Even if you are against Trump, you’re not against him enough unless you want him dead. If you don’t want him dead, you must be a troll. What a sad state this debate has reached.
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This man wants to do things that will make me and many people i love dead or suffering.
I keep seeing this repeated. What stopped him his first term and where are the corpses of the dead he is responsible for? Legitimately, link me to shit.
Likewise, if his side really were going for an overthrow of the government with the invasion of the senate building, why were there not more instances of gun violence? The republicans are more likely to own guns right? If they really wanted to overthrow shit, why didn’t they come strapped? If they came strapped, why was the only police death from a thrown fire extinguisher causing a brain bleed that killed the victim later that night?
There’s shit that doesn’t add up all over the place, and it bothers me that no one discusses it because they seem afraid to touch anything that might challenge the narrative of Trump’s terribleness and Biden needing to be infallible to win. Trump is more than reprehensible enough without hyperbole.
2020 COVID deaths are on his and his sycophants shoulders.
Not his first term but Trump seems ready to let Israel really take its gloves off and probably let the war expand into Lebanon and maybe Iran. Biden hasn’t really done shit but at least Israel seems somewhat afraid he might pull funding enough not to expand the war too much, trump will probably just give them a blank cheque.
If they really wanted to overthrow shit, why didn’t they come strapped?
Multiple people had firearms at the 1/6 coup attempt, this is well documented. I’m not sure why they never shot anyone, but it wasn’t for lack of firearms.
Do you not realize how terrible it is that he missed? You of all people as a “flaming liberal” should be the most angry. This essentially secures trumps presidency, its the best thing that could have happened to his campaign.
First of all, that’s bullshit. As I said in another thread:
The electorate is viscerally polarized, and very few people are on the fence about who to vote for - maybe some undecided about whether they’ll vote at all. I can’t imagine there are many people who are going to switch from Biden to Trump because of this, or who will even go from undecided to Trump. It makes no sense.
Second, my political activism stops short of murder. Apparently that doesn’t go far enough for you. That doesn’t make me a troll.
Dont get me wrong, assassinations are stupid and rarely accomplish much of value. No single human is responsible for the state of our society, it is much more institutional than that. Only a dismantling of the current systems could actually inact change. HOWEVER, if trump was murdered I would gloat and I feel no shame in that.
Also them missing is gonna make MAGA people really annoying for a while
Yeah you are definitely a lib alright.
This comment section is so fucked!
You libs drone all the time in every media how the guy is an enemy of democracy, second coming of Hitler and needs to be stopped for any price. Yet you are “revolted” when someone taken it seriously.
The problem is not Trump, the problem is the people voting for him. Trump should be stopped through educated and informed voting, that’s how democracy works.
Unfortunately the US is not known for its education and good unbiased information. But that is the underlying problem that needs to be fixed, and shooting Trump does nothing to fix that and will only serve to replace Trump with someone equally bad (or even worse).
Are you saying people should start shooting trump voters instead of trump?
What a way to deliberately misread what I am saying. Obviously not and I won’t waste time on such a purposeful bad faith reading of what I said.
Democracy needs to be saved through democratic processes, not a lawless assassination attempt, otherwise it would be disingenious to want to protect it and its values.
I didn’t even suggested you people should murder him*, just pointed how calling him enemy of democracy, second coming of Hitler and constantly droning about having to stop him is a call for stochastic terrorism, but you clearly understood it like this so the feedback checks out.
Also lmao fucking hell you call US president election mechanism “democratic”? And i won’t comment on US “democratic values”.
Wait
you aren’t even Usian lmao you absolute clown.*FYI Marxists-Leninists usually think political assassinations are futile adventurism, since it won’t change the conditions that created people like Trump. Which won’t mean we wouln’t be glad if some ghoul get offed.
Haven’t seen any prominent lib even use violent rhethoric in connection with pointing out Trump’s dangerous plans for his second term, so I was surprised you bring up stochastic terrorism. The fact that Democrats are running a horrible candidate against him just shows that they don’t take this seriously at all. Maybe that’s what you tried to say in your first message.
I agree that democratic processes have little to do with US politics these days, but are you suggesting you can promote democratic values with anything outside living them (not that US politician do that, but in principle).
And it shouldn’t matter where I’m from. The disaster that is the US empires fall is of global interest.
Haven’t seen any prominent lib even use violent rhethoric in connection with pointing out Trump’s dangerous plans for his second term, so I was surprised you bring up stochastic terrorism.
That’s precisely how stochastic terrorism works, the big wigs never straight up call for it to have their hands clean just in case, for that they have their tabloids, their agitators, their media heads, their internet trolls. And btw Biden did said they need to put Trump into the bullseye (though he most likely didn’t meant it literally, but on the other hand he promised to get rid of Nordstream back in the day and it happened).
I agree that democratic processes have little to do with US politics these days, but are you suggesting you can promote democratic values with anything outside living them (not that US politician do that, but in principle).
In principle i do but i don’t see liberal democracy as desirable version of it due to it being in service of the small minority of capitalists and their stooges exploiting workers, and as such the system works exactly according to its values. I just think those real values behind that system are abhorrent.
And it shouldn’t matter where I’m from. The disaster that is the US empires fall is of global interest.
What SUPAVILLAIN said. If you’re not part of the abovementioned minority or their stooge you should be dearly interested in end of the US empire.
I’m a flaming liberal
tell us something we don’t know
Remember that Biden is immune thanks to the SCOTUS.
Not from the voters. This picture will get used to sway votes.
Gotta love it
Seems appropriate to drop this here:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-reichstag-fire
On February 27, 1933, the German parliament (Reichstag) building burned down. The Nazi leadership and its coalition partners used the fire to claim that Communists were planning a violent uprising. They claimed that emergency legislation was needed to prevent this. The resulting act, commonly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree, abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.
Man, this is gonna make things a lot more interesting in the US
I can’t take anything more interesting
I think you have a different meaning of the word interesting than I do. Then again I live in this shit hole.
“May you live in interesting times” generally isn’t said with good intentions; interesting can be bad.
We’re so fucked.
The final season of burgerland is wild.
doohickey remains undefeated
It’s not like the Japanese Prime Minister (and former Prime Ministers) don’t have security, but the disparity of security compared to US Secret Service protected individuals is huge.
The fact that the killer managed to get so close to Abe without being screened is indicative of the fact that such an attack was so unexpected in Japan.
I mean they guy grazed Trump, so it’s not like secret service prevented the shooting.
True, I’m just saying that if someone wants to assassinate a current or former American President, that would be a massively more difficult hit.
The Abe killer was unscreened (like everyone else in attendance), and managed to walk directly up to Abe from behind and fire shots from 7, then only 5 metres away.
Regardless, meme funny.
I’m hoping for the best. For the United States, that is.
There are moments in history that completely change the course of events for decades to come. We just witnessed literal inches between two possibly extremely different futures. Very strange feeling.
As much as I loathe the guy, I think we all dodged a bullet.
If he died of natural causes last month I don’t think the MAGAts would have rallied behind Desantis, or whomever got the nomination. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have voted for them, just that the excitement wouldn’t be there.
If this has succeeded, the supporters would have transferred and been even more pumped up. And sympathy from those weird fuck undecideds could make the difference, not just in the presidency, but both chambers of Congress, and for their policy goals too.
Riding the wake of an assassination the draconian shit they would push through could have been far worse than anything Trump would have been able to accomplish in a second term.
Take civil rights legislation in the 60s; a lot of what LBJ accomplished was credited to the national feeling after the Kennedy assassination. Would JFK have been able to accomplish all that if he had served eight years with public sentiment toward civil rights being divided?
It sucks that this is boosting his chances in November. But a martyr, a new figurehead, and a more energized base could have been far worse.
Take civil rights legislation in the 60s; a lot of what LBJ accomplished was credited to the national feeling after the Kennedy assassination. Would JFK have been able to accomplish all that if he had served eight years with public sentiment toward civil rights being divided?
I think the same thing about the Apollo program. Kennedy gave that speech and then died, and now not only did we have to beat the Russians we had to do it for a beloved slain president.
There’s also an episode of Red Dwarf where they go back in time and convince Kennedy to be the second shooter on the grassy knoll, because his survival would have started WWIII.
Big W for the Trump campaign…
Well, that’s America buggered.
do you mean anything by this beyond his election chances? i’m failing to imagine what policies would change based on this
If there were any security/civil rights/general spying on people bills that were floating around but were too unpalatable to push through, those are most likely going through now.
Also if the shooter turns out to be anything other than a straight white cis male, then whatever group they were part of is probably gonna have a bad time for the foreseeable future.
Let’s be honest, even if its a good ole boy, the nutters will find a way to blame it on minorities and/or the “left”.
The election chances have just shot up.
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He is like a fucking hundred so yeah that makes sense
I was freaking scared when I saw lots of people in my country was cheering Trump’s ralley. It’s not even the old people, they were in their 20s-30s. If Trump succeeds, I don’t see it going well in my country as well… How do I survive in a fascist country? Sad.
Don’t worry,its’s not just the US. Many 3rd world countries are dealing with the same problem if not worse. Otherwise why would so many migrate to US despite it’s healthcare prices and the growing gap between the wealthy and poor?
I’m pretty sure he will succeed, unfortunately.
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The word “privatization” originates with describing the economic policy of Nazi Germany
Does it sound like a suppressed .22 to anyone else?
Hard to tell because it’s a recording, but yeah I was thinking something very small like a 22 short or a high powered BB gun.
Apparently the shooter was in the crowd, which means it wasn’t a long gun of any kind. Probably a pistol, something small enough to conceal. 22 makes sense.
.22 is small caliber, even for a pistol.
The speed at which he was turned into a hero and merchandise was made is a testament to the efficiency and responsiveness of capitalism.
Yep, the person who did this is an idiot. They don’t realize all they did was help his cause and give him that much stronger of a chance of winning presidency.
I mean, they probably don’t realize anything anymore given that they had bullets actually go through them.
Liberals still believe in Great Man Theory.
If he died, another would take his place and wins for sure as revenge.
Now that he lived, he has excellent PR.
Biden is constantly taking Ls with his voterbase, like pursuance of Genocide and general brain melting.
Trump is constantly on the rise with his voterbase.
This is why Adventurism doesn’t work, and why Leftists need to join an org like PSL and work towards building dual power.
Sure but his replacement wouldn’t be him, so at least some harm would have been avoided that way, but you’re right. It would have been much better if this never happened.
Yes and no. We have no crystal ball, ultimately the material conditions for fascism are still present in the US, and they will not go away even with 10 straight DNC victories. America is a dying Empire, so reactionary thinking, trying to turn the clock back, is on the rise.
Leftism must become the status quo to survive fascism.
There would be some harm reduction, yes, and I would have probably celebrated had Trump been popped, but his replacement would be just as bad, merely delayed.
If they wanted to help the democrats, they shot the wrong candidate
Literally true, Trump was handed the best PR on a silver platter, and even if he croaked his replacement has a sure win.
Not if he didn’t miss.Actually, I guess the democrats would lose either way. It would have only prevented Trump from winning (which many people would probably say is a good thing, but for many it would still not be enough of course), not ensuring the democrats win. So yeah, you’re right.
Alibaba has already gone crazy with it lmao it’s so funny
Are you kidding? The only things in this universe capable of superluminal speeds are a good rumor and merchandising opportunities
Also monarchy. You guillotine a king and the monarchy instantly jumps to the next one.
That’s probably why being a crown prince in medieval times was more hazardous than a bering strait crab fisherman running for president of the United States
Actually it was very very safe, if you compare it with peasants or burghers with occupational hazard being very low. Well, unless you were an Ottoman prince.
