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Who is to blame for the ballfield shooting?

The media. Perhaps if they'd quit reporting on what Trump SAYS and more on what he's DONE, they wouldn't be whipping up liberal hatred to a boiling point.

Trump's hardly a "good" president, but I fail to see the catastrophe that liberals moan about. I'd be willing to bet every one of these ultra-hateful, uber-liberals on this site have the exact same lifestyle and personal dealings as they did a year ago. No one is rounding up black people. No one is detaining mass groups of people. Your god-president's Obamacare is still in place. Yet everyone pretends that Satan himself is in the Oval Office, chewing on babies while shooting black people for fun.
 
Nah, sorry, friends, but neither side gets to get off that easy. Until both sides simmer down on the rhetoric and the hateful bickering, you'll see more and more people go over the edge like that. Random chance nutters don't get their notion to shoot up a bunch of GOP politicians without inspiration from their side, and justification from the other. Definitely that was the case in this scenario. It's just lucky no one died...this time. Here's hoping you guys figure it out.
 
Yes, the shooter is to blame. The shooters in ALL of these shootings are to blame.
 
The SHOOTER. Period.

Crab people are to blame!!!!!!!! seriously though you do seem to try and shut down all dissenting opinions on the matter.
 
The media. Perhaps if they'd quit reporting on what Trump SAYS and more on what he's DONE, they wouldn't be whipping up liberal hatred to a boiling point.

Trump's hardly a "good" president, but I fail to see the catastrophe that liberals moan about. I'd be willing to bet every one of these ultra-hateful, uber-liberals on this site have the exact same lifestyle and personal dealings as they did a year ago. No one is rounding up black people. No one is detaining mass groups of people. Your god-president's Obamacare is still in place. Yet everyone pretends that Satan himself is in the Oval Office, chewing on babies while shooting black people for fun.

So the shooter isn't to blame it's the media to blame that reports on what the president says. :roll: Holy **** that is dense man.
 
People are responsible for their own actions ultimately.

However an atmosphere of division and hate has been fomenting for years. This has elevated the situation beyond the scope of discourse to where crazy is egged on closer to the edge to the abyss of violence.


The dishonest media plays a part in distributing a false narrative that contributes to the tension and violence.

"The American Left has embraced political violence. More precisely, the Left has embraced “anarcho-tyranny.” (Yes, I know what kind of man Sam Francis became; his phrase remains useful.) The anarcho part: Progressives including mainstream Democrats have embraced the sort of violence that has been directed against the likes of Charles Murray as an instrument of liberationist politics. Representative Val Demings, a Democratic congressman from Florida, shared her view that the riots greeting Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley were “a beautiful sight.” After a physical attack on white nationalist Richard Spencer, Jeremy Binckes of Salon wrote: “Maybe the question shouldn’t be, ‘Is it okay to punch a Nazi?’ but, ‘If you don’t want to be punched in the face, maybe you shouldn’t preach Nazi values to the public?’” A lively debate about the ethics of using violence to suppress certain political views ensued. Short version: Free speech did not experience a runaway victory. Things are worse on campus. The editorial board of the Daily Californian defended blackshirt violence on the grounds that, without it, “neo-Nazis would be free to roam the streets of Berkeley.” The argument that people who hold unpopular political opinions should be physically unsafe — that they should be subject not to social exclusion or criticism but to violence, afraid to roam the streets — is textbook totalitarianism. California’s political leaders did almost nothing in response to the violence at Berkeley, but when the Trump administration threatened to sanction California, they leapt to action. Nancy Pelosi claimed, with no evidence, that the violence in Berkeley was the result of peaceful protests being “infiltrated,” and insisted “the protesters have a right to free speech as well.” But what greeted Yiannopoulos in Berkeley was not free speech: It was political violence organized to suppress free speech. Representative Barbara Lee complained that the Trump administration’s insistence that Berkeley protect the safety and civil rights of its students and visitors was an attempt to “bully our university into silence” — but it was Yiannopoulos who had literally been bullied into silence — with firebombs and truncheons — along with Charles Murray, Ann Coulter, and others. A Middlebury professor had to be briefly hospitalized after being physically attacked for having invited Charles Murray to campus. That is not free speech. That is violence, and Democrats, judging by their non-response to these episodes, have more or less made their peace with it."

Alexandria Shooting & Political Violence ? The Left?s Continuation of Berkeley & Middlebury | National Review


Violence does not just start. It comes in stages.
The baby steps have already been taken and we should all wake up, take a step back, and take a deep breath.

" the Left’s blackshirts are permitted to inflict actual physical violence on people who have political opinions they don’t like, the Left’s whiteshirts — respectable Democratic officeholders and media figures — are working feverishly to inflict civil and criminal penalties on individuals and institutions that hold and communicate unpopular political opinions: “Arrest climate deniers!” Adam Weinstein and Robert Kennedy Jr. demanded, and, soon enough, Democrats were cooking up fraud cases against oil companies that had criticized climate-change proposals, and then used subpoenas and other measures to harass conservative and free-market political groups affiliated with them. Every Democrat in the Senate voted with Harry Reid to repeal the First Amendment and allow Congress to regulate political speech. The Obama administration saw to it that no one in the IRS ever faced any real punishment for that agency’s targeting of conservative groups for persecution and harassment."

"In reality, the only thing resembling a genuine totalitarian movement in American politics is the progressive camp from which emerged the man who shot Steve Scalise. Once you’ve accepted political violence as a legitimate tool in the context of American democracy — once you have concluded that the decision to use violence is only a matter of strategy, as Slavoj Žižek insists — then progress from pepper spray and bicycle locks to rifles and bombs is neither very long nor very difficult to anticipate."


If we want to have a good future we need to lighten up...a lot.
 
People are responsible for their own actions ultimately.



The dishonest media plays a part in distributing a false narrative that contributes to the tension and violence.

"The American Left has embraced political violence. More precisely, the Left has embraced “anarcho-tyranny.” (Yes, I know what kind of man Sam Francis became; his phrase remains useful.) The anarcho part: Progressives including mainstream Democrats have embraced the sort of violence that has been directed against the likes of Charles Murray as an instrument of liberationist politics. Representative Val Demings, a Democratic congressman from Florida, shared her view that the riots greeting Milo Yiannopoulos at Berkeley were “a beautiful sight.” After a physical attack on white nationalist Richard Spencer, Jeremy Binckes of Salon wrote: “Maybe the question shouldn’t be, ‘Is it okay to punch a Nazi?’ but, ‘If you don’t want to be punched in the face, maybe you shouldn’t preach Nazi values to the public?’” A lively debate about the ethics of using violence to suppress certain political views ensued. Short version: Free speech did not experience a runaway victory. Things are worse on campus. The editorial board of the Daily Californian defended blackshirt violence on the grounds that, without it, “neo-Nazis would be free to roam the streets of Berkeley.” The argument that people who hold unpopular political opinions should be physically unsafe — that they should be subject not to social exclusion or criticism but to violence, afraid to roam the streets — is textbook totalitarianism. California’s political leaders did almost nothing in response to the violence at Berkeley, but when the Trump administration threatened to sanction California, they leapt to action. Nancy Pelosi claimed, with no evidence, that the violence in Berkeley was the result of peaceful protests being “infiltrated,” and insisted “the protesters have a right to free speech as well.” But what greeted Yiannopoulos in Berkeley was not free speech: It was political violence organized to suppress free speech. Representative Barbara Lee complained that the Trump administration’s insistence that Berkeley protect the safety and civil rights of its students and visitors was an attempt to “bully our university into silence” — but it was Yiannopoulos who had literally been bullied into silence — with firebombs and truncheons — along with Charles Murray, Ann Coulter, and others. A Middlebury professor had to be briefly hospitalized after being physically attacked for having invited Charles Murray to campus. That is not free speech. That is violence, and Democrats, judging by their non-response to these episodes, have more or less made their peace with it."

Alexandria Shooting & Political Violence ? The Left?s Continuation of Berkeley & Middlebury | National Review


Violence does not just start. It comes in stages.
The baby steps have already been taken and we should all wake up, take a step back, and take a deep breath.

" the Left’s blackshirts are permitted to inflict actual physical violence on people who have political opinions they don’t like, the Left’s whiteshirts — respectable Democratic officeholders and media figures — are working feverishly to inflict civil and criminal penalties on individuals and institutions that hold and communicate unpopular political opinions: “Arrest climate deniers!” Adam Weinstein and Robert Kennedy Jr. demanded, and, soon enough, Democrats were cooking up fraud cases against oil companies that had criticized climate-change proposals, and then used subpoenas and other measures to harass conservative and free-market political groups affiliated with them. Every Democrat in the Senate voted with Harry Reid to repeal the First Amendment and allow Congress to regulate political speech. The Obama administration saw to it that no one in the IRS ever faced any real punishment for that agency’s targeting of conservative groups for persecution and harassment."

"In reality, the only thing resembling a genuine totalitarian movement in American politics is the progressive camp from which emerged the man who shot Steve Scalise. Once you’ve accepted political violence as a legitimate tool in the context of American democracy — once you have concluded that the decision to use violence is only a matter of strategy, as Slavoj Žižek insists — then progress from pepper spray and bicycle locks to rifles and bombs is neither very long nor very difficult to anticipate."


If we want to have a good future we need to lighten up...a lot.

You mention blackshirts but I doubt the vast majority here knows what a black shirt is, oh screw it they will use google to respond to me and pretend they knew it the whole time.
 
The shooter.

I may not like what a politician says or does. It does not make me think I should conduct a violent act.
 
Nah, sorry, friends, but neither side gets to get off that easy. Until both sides simmer down on the rhetoric and the hateful bickering, you'll see more and more people go over the edge like that. Random chance nutters don't get their notion to shoot up a bunch of GOP politicians without inspiration from their side, and justification from the other. Definitely that was the case in this scenario. It's just lucky no one died...this time. Here's hoping you guys figure it out.

Exactly, but this is something neither side will grasp.
 
Nah, sorry, friends, but neither side gets to get off that easy. Until both sides simmer down on the rhetoric and the hateful bickering, you'll see more and more people go over the edge like that. Random chance nutters don't get their notion to shoot up a bunch of GOP politicians without inspiration from their side, and justification from the other. Definitely that was the case in this scenario. It's just lucky no one died...this time. Here's hoping you guys figure it out.

What exactly is that supposed to mean?
 
What exactly is that supposed to mean?

That means you, me, and anyone else that differs in idea or refuses to be tyrannized softly or blatantly can be dehumanized and killed. we did not learn from the past so we will rinse off the blood and repeat..
ugh.
 
The SHOOTER. Period.

The shooter should have been in jail for a violent gun crime he committed not too long ago. Menacing, domestic violence, threatening, illegal discharge of weapon while threatening...20 years worth of charges for sure, if we treated violent gun crimes like we do selling a few rocks of crack.
 
The SHOOTER. Period.

Right. Unless of course the shooter had been a Trump supporter taking aim at a bunch of democrats then you would be singing an entirely different tune. But that just comes with the territory. But is it really that difficult to imagine that a person might actually take the hate filled rhetoric of the left seriously? After all, Republicans are racists and homophobes and traitors and Nazis and Klansmen who hate women and want to starve the poor and let the sick die agonizing deaths and love dirty air and polluted water and want to destroy the planet. (Did I miss anything?) Why would someone want to take pot shots at people like that?
 



But, seriously, the shooter.
 
What exactly is that supposed to mean?

That means when you act like a super aggressive asshat towards the left because of your partisanship (you in the universal sense, of course, not calling you out, I'm sure you're super polite and civil in all your debating), you become the enemy the nut jobs expect you to be. Two sides of the same coin.
 
That means when you act like a super aggressive asshat towards the left because of your partisanship (you in the universal sense, of course, not calling you out, I'm sure you're super polite and civil in all your debating), you become the enemy the nut jobs expect you to be. Two sides of the same coin.

So are you somehow implying it would be "justified"? Because that's the word you used.
 
So are you somehow implying it would be "justified"? Because that's the word you used.

Don't try to twist my words, I was speaking of in the minds of the nutters who are on the edge already...nice try though...
 
the shooter was obviously a few fries short of a Happy Meal ............... BUT the politics of DIVISION has been sown by Donald Trump, and of course by the brainless masses that were fool enuff to vote for such weakness .........

Trump bares some responsibility here; the bombastic bull****, lying, over the top con-man, broken promises, absurdity of absurd, ***** grabbing, irrational, idiotic, delusional, egomaniacal, unreal reality show .............. yeah, that **** could drive some whacko to the brink ............

Trump bares some responsibility here ...............
 
Right. Unless of course the shooter had been a Trump supporter taking aim at a bunch of democrats then you would be singing an entirely different tune.

I would have the EXACT same feeling regardless of who the shooter was, or who he was shooting at. I don't base my convictions and morality on party affiliations, nor do I change my position on issues when it is simply convienent to do so. Wrong is wrong REGARDLESS of who is doing it.

The shooter is to blame for the shooters actions. Period. To try and place blame elsewhere is simply a pale attempt at "political grandstanding".
 
The people who blame liberals when some left wing nut kills people and the the people who blame conservatives when some right wing nut kills people.
 
Don't try to twist my words, I was speaking of in the minds of the nutters who are on the edge already...nice try though...

I wasn't trying to twist anything. Perhaps you should be a little more specific in the future, lest people misunderstand your meaning. :shrug:
 
I wasn't trying to twist anything. Perhaps you should be a little more specific in the future, lest people misunderstand your meaning. :shrug:

You know, my first response to this was something like "Anyone without their head up their ass would have understood what I was saying"... However, in the spirit of "reaching across the aisle", I'll provide a little more explanation, since you seem to have struggled with what I was saying. Let's go through the example you provided in your answers to me, shall we?

By using tired hair splitting tactics to deflate my post, and insinuate that I'm advocating for anything that the shooter did, you were being a troll. (I'm giving you credit here, the only other option is that you actually believed that's what I was saying, in which case you probably don't have the intellectual wherewithal to lead out as strongly as you do...in which case this applies as well, though I might have to explain it a few more times).

Now, as a normal person, I can either say "Meh", and move on with my day, or I can give you a snarky response, which is my usual go to when presented with jackassery. But that's it. End of the day, I think a little less of the Right because of your "contribution", and that's that.

If I'm part of a smaller demographic of hot heads, and we have this same exchange in person, and I've been hearing folks on the Right go off like you for a while, then perhaps I take a swing at you, feeling justified because of your jackassery. But that's it. End of the day, you go home with a bloody face (I'm a pretty big guy), I think a lot less of the Right because of your "contribution", and that's that... Well, maybe I go to jail, depending on if the police get involved.

But, if I'm part of a very small percentage of people that are truly nutty, and on the verge of committing violence, your decision to be an asshole, making you perhaps the last in a long line of right wing assholes I've had to deal with, combined with reams and reams of pushback from "my side" that support my dark thoughts, I now feel fully justified to pick up a rifle and head out to a baseball field.

See how escalation works? Is this a little clearer for you? And by the way, if the shooter had been a right wing nut instead of a left wing nut, I'd have exactly the same thing to say, with Right and Left reversed.

Does the responsibility lie with the shooter? Much of it, of course. However he was enabled and justified (in his messed up, confused and addled mind) by the out of control polarization and unrepentant jackassery both sides continue to engage in and accelerate.
 
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