[snarky]
I just hope we can all come together like we did after Sandy Hook, the Pulse nightclub, San Bernadino, etc and change nothing because that is what has really characterized the US for most of my life - changing nothing but everyone blaming the other side.
[/snarky]
Chumpy_McChump wrote:SallyNasty wrote:I mean, it isn't really a neutral position to say you feel no sympathy for a shooting victim, regardless of semantics....
On the contrary, I think it very much can be. Feeling sympathy isn't a neutral position; feeling anger/satisfaction/vindication/etc isn't a neutral position. Simply not feeling bad (or good) is practically the definition of a neutral position.
Running Man wrote:"No sympathy from me."
"I don't feel bad (or good) when bad things happen to bad people."
That's a neutral position, which to me means they're fine with it.You keep using that word... /inigo
Indeed. What is a socially acceptable default position here? I would think neutrality (absence of sympathy and/or malice) would be the preferred perspective.
The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone. But then people have to decide what is enough to make them lose sympathy for someone and then go a whole level further and decide that them dying is fine with them. Which by that point I'd describe that as hatred.
Reaper81 wrote:Chumpy_McChump wrote:SallyNasty wrote:I mean, it isn't really a neutral position to say you feel no sympathy for a shooting victim, regardless of semantics....
On the contrary, I think it very much can be. Feeling sympathy isn't a neutral position; feeling anger/satisfaction/vindication/etc isn't a neutral position. Simply not feeling bad (or good) is practically the definition of a neutral position.
Running Man wrote:"No sympathy from me."
"I don't feel bad (or good) when bad things happen to bad people."
That's a neutral position, which to me means they're fine with it.You keep using that word... /inigo
Indeed. What is a socially acceptable default position here? I would think neutrality (absence of sympathy and/or malice) would be the preferred perspective.
The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone. But then people have to decide what is enough to make them lose sympathy for someone and then go a whole level further and decide that them dying is fine with them. Which by that point I'd describe that as hatred.
I feel sympathy. Especially for the families. I also wish there wasn't so much talk of violence in the air. Mostly fomented by the right wing.
Malcom X summed it up years ago.. and we are still in the same place today. Pretty much my thoughts.. build a climate of hate and when the chickens come to roost don't be surprised.
The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone. But then people have to decide what is enough to make them lose sympathy for someone and then go a whole level further and decide that them dying is fine with them. Which by that point I'd describe that as hatred.
There are something in the region of >11,000 gun homicides per year in America. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I'm even capable of sympathy on such a grand scale. That stops being people and is just statistic, and it's hard to muster (let alone maintain) sympathy for statistics that large.
[snarky]
I just hope we can all come together like we did after Sandy Hook, the Pulse nightclub, San Bernadino, etc and change nothing because that is what has really characterized the US for most of my life - changing nothing but everyone blaming the other side.
[/snarky]
Not blaming, just neutral. Which is apparently fine as long as the victim had it coming supported/advanced polices I thought were wrong and would cause the event that I'm totally neutral over happening.
Booth wrote:The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone. But then people have to decide what is enough to make them lose sympathy for someone and then go a whole level further and decide that them dying is fine with them. Which by that point I'd describe that as hatred.
There are something in the region of >11,000 gun homicides per year in America. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I'm even capable of sympathy on such a grand scale. That stops being people and is just statistic, and it's hard to muster (let alone maintain) sympathy for statistics that large.
I also find it disingenous and short-sighted to wail about the one homicide that you read about in the news, while never even considering the other 32 that happened that day.
There's an active gunman in SFO right now where my wife is. We might have too many f*cking guns, y'all!
Jonman wrote:Booth wrote:The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone. But then people have to decide what is enough to make them lose sympathy for someone and then go a whole level further and decide that them dying is fine with them. Which by that point I'd describe that as hatred.
There are something in the region of >11,000 gun homicides per year in America. I don't know about you guys, but I don't think I'm even capable of sympathy on such a grand scale. That stops being people and is just statistic, and it's hard to muster (let alone maintain) sympathy for statistics that large.
I also find it disingenous and short-sighted to wail about the one homicide that you read about in the news, while never even considering the other 32 that happened that day.
True it's hard to feel sympathy for all of them but I can try my best. And famous/political people always will have more attention and sometimes deservedly and sometimes not. I mean we could be talking about the bombings that left 150 dead in Afghanistan instead.
farley3k wrote:[snarky]
I just hope we can all come together like we did after Sandy Hook, the Pulse nightclub, San Bernadino, etc and change nothing because that is what has really characterized the US for most of my life - changing nothing but everyone blaming the other side.
[/snarky]Not blaming, just neutral. Which is apparently fine as long as the victim
had it comingsupported/advanced polices that helped make the attack against him with a gun easier.
FTFY. Like, I deplore violence, especially gun violence... But it's hard to drum up much of anything for him when he helped create our country's gun violence epidemic that he's now a victim of.
Reaper81 wrote:Indeed. What is a socially acceptable default position here? I would think neutrality (absence of sympathy and/or malice) would be the preferred perspective.
The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone.
Note that we weren't talking about an appropriate default position; we were talking about taking a neutral position.
For example, it's unfortunate in a vague, theoretical way that someone (anyone, really) got shot, but I don't actually care. I am unaffected by it in any possible way. "Okay with it" or "fine by me" is well outside the way I feel; it's neither of those things because both of those imply some amount of caring on my part. I literally could not care any less about the fact that a total stranger in another country who is publicly notable only because of his relatively high-profile job got shot. Would it be "better" if it hadn't happened? ...I guess, in a hypothetical "it's better for the universe as a whole if less bad things happen" kind of way. In any practical way, I truly have no opinion, neither better nor worse.
You know, neutral. I have no sympathy nor bear any ill-will.
The shooter's white, so that must mean mental illness.
But the shooter also volunteered for the Sanders campaign, which means the right is going to lecture the left about encouraging political violence while steadfastly ignoring the multiple people who have been attacked and killed by Trump supporters.
Bernie Sanders on shooting: I am sickened
Apparently the shooter volunteered on Sanders campaign.
His message is clear, unequivocal and I applaud him.
*I thought about putting my next post in with this but I can't for the life of me see how Sanders' comments can be seen as trying to blame the other side or score points so I think they are separate conversations.
Didn't take long....
I could have sworn that after Giffords was shot by a right winger we were told we shouldn't politicize these tragedies to score points....
The Steve Scalise shooting has already become a political football
Rep. Chris Collins, one of President Trump's most prominent congressional supporters, insisted that the shooting was directly tied to anti-Trump rhetoric from the left. "I can only hope that the Democrats do tone down the rhetoric," Collins said on a local radio station in upstate New York. "The rhetoric has been outrageous -- the finger-pointing, just the tone and the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump, his supporters. Really, then, you know, some people react to things like that. They get angry as well. And then you fuel the fires." Collins also said in the same interview he would have his gun "in my pocket from this day forward."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, appearing on Fox News, called the shootings "part of a pattern" and blamed "an increasing intensity of hostility on the left."
He said conservative college students are afraid they'll be beaten on campus.
"The intensity is very real, whether it's a so-called comedian holding up the president's head covered in blood, or right here in New York City, a play that shows the president being assassinated, or it's Democratic leading national politicians using vulgarity because they can't find any common language to talk," he said.
I was looking at a rifle a coworker was trying to sell me yesterday and another coworker joked if I needed it to shoot Hillary Clinton. He apparently didn't know my political bent and assumed it was closer to his own because of my interest in firearms.
I told him that irrespective of my political bent, it was always inappropriate to talk so casually about political violence. He told me to lighten up.
I wonder if he connects the dots today.
Didn't take long....
The Steve Scalise shooting has already become a political football
Took about as long as it usually does.
I was looking at a rifle a coworker was trying to sell me yesterday and another coworker joked if I needed it to shoot Hillary Clinton. He apparently didn't know my political bent and assumed it was closer to his own because of my interest in firearms.
I told him that irrespective of my political bent, it was always inappropriate to talk so casually about political violence. He told me to lighten up.
I wonder if he connects the dots today.
In a similar vein I unfollowed a family member after he posted how people who "nurture and protect a society of violence" violence reap violence after the Arianna Grande concert bombing.
I somehow feel he will not believe the same is true in this case.
Didn't take long....
I could have sworn that after Giffords was shot by a right winger we were told we shouldn't politicize these tragedies to score points....
Yet, he wasn't a right-winger. In any way. Period. That this is so widely believed shows how much that tragedy was spun and exploited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_...
Acquaintances said that Loughner's personality had changed markedly in the years prior to the shooting, a period when he was also abusing alcohol and drugs.Loughner's high-school friend Zach Osler said, "He did not watch TV; he disliked the news; he didn't listen to political radio; he didn't take sides; he wasn't on the Left; he wasn't on the Right."[18] A former classmate, Caitie Parker, who attended high school and college with Loughner, described his political views prior to 2007, prior to his personality transformation, as "left wing, quite liberal,"[41] "radical."
Oddly you didn't quote the next paragraph...
The director of research on hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Loughner's political positions were a "hallmark of the far right and the militia movement."[44] In the aftermath of the shooting, the Anti-Defamation League reviewed messages by Loughner, and concluded that there was a "disjointed theme that runs through Loughner's writings", which was a "distrust for and dislike of the government." It "manifested itself in various ways" – for instance, in the belief that the government used the control of language and grammar to brainwash people, the notion that the government was creating "infinite currency" without the backing of gold and silver, or the assertion that NASA was faking spaceflights.
Why was that exactly? ....
Why was that exactly? ....
Why would you need to here from the director of research on hate groups when you had already heard from a high school acquaintance of the shooter? How much more do you need farley?
If you read the full wikipedia page it mentions the following worldviews:
1. Really anti-abortion
2. Wants gold and/or silver standard
3. Doesn't think women should be in positions of power.
You know, liberal stuff.
To cool this a bit ...
I am not trying to say Jared is any more right wing then Steve was left wing. I am saying that the reaction of Republicans to this shooting has been vastly different than to the shooting of Giffords.
To cool this a bit ...
I am not trying to say Jared is any more right wing then Steve was left wing. I am saying that the reaction of Republicans to this shooting has been vastly different than to the shooting of Giffords.
It always is.
To cool this a bit ...
I am not trying to say Jared is any more right wing then Steve was left wing. I am saying that the reaction of Republicans to this shooting has been vastly different than to the shooting of Giffords.
Agreed, I'd also say the sentiment on this board is also vastly different. I don't think anyone voiced having difficulty finding the great strength required to muster sympathy for the victim of a shooting.
Booth wrote:Reaper81 wrote:Indeed. What is a socially acceptable default position here? I would think neutrality (absence of sympathy and/or malice) would be the preferred perspective.
The default position should be to have sympathy for everyone.
Note that we weren't talking about an appropriate default position; we were talking about taking a neutral position.
For example, it's unfortunate in a vague, theoretical way that someone (anyone, really) got shot, but I don't actually care. I am unaffected by it in any possible way. "Okay with it" or "fine by me" is well outside the way I feel; it's neither of those things because both of those imply some amount of caring on my part. I literally could not care any less about the fact that a total stranger in another country who is publicly notable only because of his relatively high-profile job got shot. Would it be "better" if it hadn't happened? ...I guess, in a hypothetical "it's better for the universe as a whole if less bad things happen" kind of way. In any practical way, I truly have no opinion, neither better nor worse.
You know, neutral. I have no sympathy nor bear any ill-will.
I chose the word position carefully because it seemed to me as though some were upset that others weren't terribly upset that these people got shot.
I live in the US. Gun violence is pretty predictable albeit in a very random fashion.
Two killed in workplace shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco. If only we could do something about these mentally ill people.
Whenever a politician gets hurt or vandalized, there's a cynical part of me that thinks some people in their own camp are secretly pleased by it, because it gives validation for attacking and generalizing about their political enemies. I can see this happening again.
And to reiterate a post of my own from the Gifford thread:
For me, this is more about rhetoric than political stances. If you use violent rhetoric for your personal and political gain, you should not be surprised when some people take you seriously.There are crazies of every political stripe. However, there's an argument to be made that nobody on the US political left is inciting violence for liberal crazies to latch onto (certainly nobody with a national media presence) - or, if we want to bend over backwards, "using imagery and language that some people are misconstruing as advocating violence".
That was in 2011. The use of violent rhetoric in the US since then has escalated and has been largely (though not exclusively) on one side of the political spectrum.
All your favorite far-right nutcases and liars come out of the woodwork to blame Democrats and the MSM:
Blaming violent liberal rhetoric for Virginia while simultaneously blaming highly restrictive "liberal" gun control laws here for San Francisco.
Sounds right to me.
Oh, NOW a shooting by a white guy is a terrorist act??
Pages