this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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Wtf he just graduated high school a couple years ago? When I think of an attempted assassin, I don't picture someone who can't go into a bar to buy a beer.
Going by social media, it appears to me the young have nothing to lose and everything to gain in today’s America. They‘re backed to a corner in a country with extremely loose gun laws.
That is a very good point...
America.... Fuck yeah!
Coming again to save the motherfuckin’ day, yeah!
It's a pattern that befalls most pre-fascist states, that pattern being swaths of young men become disillusioned with the state of their country. Most of them will seek out and side with the fascist side, hence the overwhelming majority of young men voting red. But sometimes that disillusionment can turn to things like this.
The dude lived out in Butler country, which is basically middle of nowhere PA. Pittsburgh is close, but a country like that just generally will only have shitty jobs, exacerbating whatever pre-existing feelings of existential doom the shooter had. So the shooter probably said "fuck it, my life isn't going anywhere, may as well do something useful".
Gavrillo princip, the guy who shot Franz Ferdinand and started WWI, was only 20 when he did it. In fact he was too young for the death penalty so he got to live through most of the war in a cell seeing the destruction he had brought.
If you're a depressed teenager and don't think you'll amount to anything, killing a politician seems like a great way to get your name in the history books if your brain hasn't fully developed yet.
This was my first thought.
Also the French resistance group The White Rose (Sophie School and siblings) in WWII who were hanged by the Gestapo for handing out pamphlets.
The young'ns also have more at stake. The longer Trump influences policy, the more damage those policies will do. So, the younger the person, the more of a mortal threat Trump is. Dunno if that's where the shooter's head was at, but if it was, I kinda get it.
One could argue he didn't start it. But the event precipitated many other events that were ready to go.