Trump injured but ‘fine’ after attempted assassination at rally
apnews.com
apnews.com
At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years". Unless this is a lone, unstable individual, it is more evidence that our system needs more balance.
Truly sad that we've descended to this level
> Four sitting presidents have been killed: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A. Garfield (1881, by Charles J. Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F. Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald). Additionally, two presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations: former president Theodore Roosevelt (1912, by John Schrank) and Ronald Reagan (1981, by John Hinckley Jr.)
If anything we’ve been “overdue”.
Today that number is 7/45
So it went from 13% to 15%. Not only that, but firearms technology has advanced considerably. If anything, statistically speaking we've been incredibly lucky in the past 30 years
Firstly needs to learn how to engage in politics w/out a gun. Also needs to practice.
Meanwhile, next door in Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEY00iJv4CQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6KJM-MODME but we're just farmers.
Person aimed for the head, seems like he wasn't trained how to kill people.
Anyway, the person knew they would die seconds later, heavy breathing makes it is massively harder to aim when you are nervous, then it is easy to miss a moving head at 140 yards.
Hopefully I'm not giving useful tips to future assassins. :P
You know he wasn't that well trained when you see that he killed a bystander.
The general pop culture opinion cultivated by movies, shows, video games, etc. seem to mislead a lot of people towards the idea that guns are just a "point and shoot" type of deal at any range in any situation. When the reality is like any other hobby it takes many many hours of practice and lots of $$$ worth of ammo to get to the point where you can consistently place shots on target at decent ranges and even then that's in a controlled environment with a paper target that doesn't move, no pressure on you, you're probably not firing standing up without a support etc.
Mind you, that former sniper was also a Republican congressman so I would not be surprised if he was just using the opportunity to build the Trump Messiah narrative.
The real mistake was not going for center mass on someone over 70. A gut wound or lung or even a sizeable chunk from meaty tissue anywhere on the body could put down someone that age from blood loss. There's no achievements for head shots in real life.
I do not know what it would take to do that, but even if it needs AI it doesn't sound too far off.
<https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a37708762/...>
it is NOT hard. whats hard is from-the-hip shooting like you see in movies.
i dont mean to be (too) rude, but if you have problems hitting accurately at 25 meters with a rested rifle, you have some serious problems that you should probably get looked at (im thinking inability to hold steady etc)
In addition he knew that snipers and police were constantly watching roof tops, and if he poked his head out he may not have many seconds to actually raise his gun, aim and shoot.
I am not an expert, but I doubt you can compare your experience on the range to a kid full of adrenaline trying to take a shot at one of the most protected persons in the world. It's a completely different situation.
Hell, many commercial and surplus rifles you buy will straight up NEVER shoot 1 MOA on their own as is even assuming you've clamped them perfectly to a table with no human input for error due to their construction.
my rifle is a 3006 with a cut barrel, and it is extremely precise. There are a couple of guys at my local range that can consistently(aka generally 4 out of 5) put hole-in-hole (with slight enlarging)
Most people aren't buying a $3-4k optic (you mentioned Zeiss in your other post) + what I assume is a (at minimum) $1-2k precision rifle + a fancy rest + I'm guessing match grade ammo and having someone set it up for them the first time they go shooting.
Majority of new hobbyists are buying an off the shelf budget AR15 or surplus rifle around $300-600, using irons or cheap ($100-200 range) optics, and whatever box of factory grade cartridges the guy at the store shoved at them first when they asked for ammo for their rifle, and grabbing the wood block or small sand bag rests the range hands out for free when they shoot. I think that's more fair to judge initial progress/consistency off of a common real world scenario- it's what most new shooters will experience, either at home or in military service, most newcomers aren't instantly splurging on the nicest gear money can buy.
Most rifles straight up can't consistently (and I mean consistently, I don't mean like those guys online or at the range that will shoot 20 groups and cherry pick the 1 lucky group under 1 MOA when the rest are all 2-4 MOA and claim they shoot sub-MOA, or shoot a group of 5 and only mark 3) unless you specifically shopped around for one or made the necessary adjustments (new barrel, etc.) either and know that good ammo can make all the difference.
as for ammo, i Used the cheapest training ammo the store had (Sellier & Bellot fmj), which many people complain about not being super good, but works extremely well for me. I have noticed that some different boxes has a SLIGHT offset in where the hit is, but groupings are more or less equally good.
edit: I should note that the rifle manufacturer gives a 1MOA garantuee, but most are way better, and for about $1000 more they would take like 10 barrels and test, and give you the best of them. I choose NOT to pay the extra fee
I definitely feel that. My father in law is a bit of a precision nut, he has a Zeiss he let me use a few times, I don't know the exact model though. Very nice stuff, always found it hard to justify for myself, haha. Ammo prices nowadays are starting to make range days pricey enough where I look at the cost of nicer equipment and think, man, I can get this or get X more trips worth of ammo instead :)
also this is not superhuman, there are other guys at the range WAY better than me.
the caliber is 3006spr, with a cut barrel, nothing special. zeiss victory 2.8-20 56mm scope.
One ex-USMC commentator on Bloomberg said that the shot wouldn’t have been very difficult at that range. As to why he missed, maybe the shooter had to rush his shots since he was spotted. Maybe he was just a bad shot. It was explained that he wasn’t accepted into his high school shooting team.
This is what I remember hearing while doom-browsing YouTube, so take with a grain of salt.
Compared to other places (like ancient Greece that switched rulers twice a year).. I guess it's a risky job, but someone's gotta do it.
I guess my point is: if anyone thinks their grievances justifies violence, remember that the other side has grievances too.
We have free speech in the United States, so we are free to say things like “Biden is senile” or “Trump is anti-democratic.” But if we can’t exercise free speech and disagree without descending into violence, then it will be our downfall. Xi and Putin will be delighted. Maybe they’ll take over and we’ll have a system where saying the wrong thing gets you disappeared, strapped to a tiger chair, or thrown out of a window.
Shots have been fired at FDR, Truman, Kennedy(†), Ford, Reagan, Clinton, and yesterday.
Bombs or explosives have been placed or deployed against Hoover, Truman, Kennedy, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...>
Unsurprising for a man who styled himself a yeoman farmer but had slaves and children do all of his work for him.
The rhetoric by both "left" and "right" platforms pitches a divided America, and a "battle for the soul of the nation." Battle against whom? My own countrymen? For what? For my vision for America? I was unsettled when I heard this (but maybe I'm just too sensitive.)
When you combine this kind of inflammatory speech with blanket group classifications like "liberals" or "MAGA" or "democrats" or whatever, you've now identified an enemy in this "battle", and as I've seen lately, can completely lose sight that these people are our countrymen too.
Well, if you call it a war enough times, sooner or later somebody will take you literally.
It makes my stomach turn that people - and I - can be susceptible to this, and furthermore that it's taken advantage of. Politicians are skilled hackers, too.
> Henley's own arrest in 1980 when he was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and possession of marijuana, cocaine, and Quaaludes after a 16-year-old girl overdosed at his Los Angeles home
Unskilled and unaware of it categorization is a major component of the collective hallucination we've been taught to call reality.
That said: I do not disagree with you. This planet is out of control.
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.
Election system that give weight to geography is generally done so to encourage cooperation where people otherwise would prefer going alone. Both EU and US have large historical reasons to unify low population regions with a lot of natural resources with high population regions. Same is true in Germany, Iceland, Sweden and so on, all with varied degrees of giving weight to geography.
This whole retelling of history exclusively through the lens of the slavery is getting super old. It is divisive, it’s a form of revisionist history, and it’s wrong.
Read about the Northwest Ordinance, the provisions in it banning slavery in the 1780s were ultimately adopted verbatim into the Thirteenth Amendment. Or the actions of the founders including John Adams who put their lives on the line to fight against slavery. And the numerous states that made it illegal at the time of the nation’s founding.
There’s a lot more to history than the over-simplified retelling about how the radical pace of social change in the 18th century wasn’t somehow fast enough for our 2024 sensibilities.
Within a few years of the drafting of the constitution, the reign of terror began.
The majority isn't always right.
Even if there had been instantaneous communication (and we’re talking a 2+ month communication lag), the framers were not influenced by the French Revolution at all.
When looked at in terms of actual writings from the time, the protection of property owners — including enslavers who claimed humans as property — was a key part of how the US Constitution was ultimately accepted.
I said within a few years of being drafted. That's accurate.
Instability was apparent before the blood actually began flowing.
We literally almost had civil war or at least a real insurrection today.
There are a substantial number of people on this forum who sincerely believe that if Trump is elected there will not be another election. If enough people sincerely believe that, one of them will eventually decide that it's worth it to sacrifice their own life to ensure the survival of democracy in America.
Trump regularly behaves completely irresponsibly and is a terrible loser, and Trump is definitely capable of (intentionally and otherwise) inciting violence, but if you compare the actions of the Democratic leadership to their rhetoric you can clearly see they don't believe the full extent of their own rhetoric about him.
They play up the apocalyptic fears for democracy itself because they know it's the only card they have left after nominating Biden. If they were serious about protecting democracy they'd have kicked him out last year when there was still time to build momentum for an electable candidate, rather than continuing to protect his ego. If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have tried harder to court the moderate voters (who are very courtable right now if anyone cared to try). If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have done anything other than focus exclusively on how terrible Trump is for the last four years, because they know that you don't beat a fire by fanning it. They would have deescalated, but instead they escalated, and they absolutely share responsibility for this.
I guess, for people whose world view is so malleable that they can look at an attempt to overthrow the government and say "Some people walked into a government building," it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for Trump being demonized by the Left.
Let me turn this around - why lie about such an easy-to-check fact? Even RFK has stopped pushing this, why do you continue when it's trivial to disprove?
As far as what was brought into the building I only see mention of a potential concealed carry handgun or two? The only person shot was a unarmed woman who apparently caused the capitol police to fear for their lives. If they had guns as you claimed then they forgot to use them?
Sort of sounds like they forgot the guns, make sense given so many of them were elderly.
I mean, why do you think guns were stashed close by? Just for fun? Do you do this as a hobby as well?
I expect many own firearms for hobby purposes.
I'm sure you are aware that I didn't ask whether you own weapons as a hobby. Since we're interacting in good faith and you're surely not attempting to derail the conversation with unrelated remarks, I'm interpreting your answer as affirmative.
If an "attempt" is so far flung from reality as to be impossible does it actually make it an attempt? If the mob had been half its size, or a quarter its size, or even one person, is that still an "attempt to overthrow the government"?
Even if they'd literally walked in with their guns blazing and killed every single politician they could find, while it'd cause a ton of chaos, the government would still have elections to replace those people killed and government would continue.
But in order to win people have to agree that the act is profoundly antidemocratic and a punishable offence.
It becomes more problematic when a sizable part of the population dismisses it as a non-issue. That very fact raises the level of concern several orders of magnitude. The more people dismiss the level of severity of an act of subversion the less faith you can have that the problem will just fix itself.
So yeah, it's not a big deal, provided that we all agree it is a big deal. Otherwise it becomes a big deal.
That is correct. Massacres of politicans are generally followed by military factions taking control of a country, also generally a military faction that participated in the massacre. Those are coups.
When we have massacre of politicians like the 2011 Norway attacks, we call it a domestic terrorism and throw the guilty into jail, and then everything goes mostly calmly back to normal. The risk that those actually succeed in changing the government of a democracy is thankfully very slim. Obviously they are still very horrible acts.
And yeah there would probably be some nation-wide violence in response and some laws passed that would push the limits of what the Supreme Court would allow.
It doesn't mean that people would follow the idiots who did the shooting.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/02/jan-6-pol...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/
These conversations (this entire thread and all(!) others like it, with perhaps a few exceptional comments here and there) are like listening to my uneducated family members discussing AI at my last family reunion.
Noteworthy: they show no signs that they realize the predicament they are in.
Why are people like this?
How can there be no exceptions?
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy...
The 22nd amendment is the only thing that gives me confidence, but it won't be for lack of trying on his part.
We’ve got a SCOTUS that says he can be King. Surely he won’t use it, because…
They're both wrong on that front and both need to stop and actually try to understand each other before we see more violence.
The assassination target promised loudly and repeatedly, it would not adhere to that. This a vote for him would be the last vote. Guy may as well have be another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser if trump gets to power against the mummified establishment figure.
Someone should shoot "democracy" itself. It's 2024, why are we still driving a political system with training wheels that always takes us to places other than where 90%+ of people want to go?
Could it maybe be in part because we are immersed in pro-"democracy" propaganda from the day we are born, and are denied the educational curriculum (set by "democracy") that would give us the tools to think and engage in discourse at a level that would allow us to realize it, or at least consider the idea without everyone losing their cool?
Now, sticking with convention: has anyone any epistemically unsound memorized memes and catch phrases for me, to "prove" "democracy" is the ~best we can do, and that ideas like replacing it with a more sophisticated, non-deceptive implementation shan't be discussed among "the adults at the table"?
Inb4 "this isn't what HN is for".
Protip, fellow Humans: it is possible to think your way out of this simulation we are in, at least substantially (at which point you can rest, regroup, and plan for the next stage of ascent). And it isn't even very hard. It is little more than doing just what we Humans have proven ourselves excellent at, most of the time:
1. Identify a challenge.
2. Solve it.
Heck, this problem is actually mostly far more trivial[2] than things we do every day without thinking twice about it. It's mostly just not on our radar, and heavily psychologically protected territory[1]. But religion was this way once also, and science handed it an ass whooping, didn't it?
[1] Simple experiments can be run on social media or IRL to demonstrate this: specific prompts will produce highly predictable responses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
[2] Irony noted lol
By the way, sorry that this comment is so long.
This level of violence isn't new. This has never been new. There's always been stuff like this. Yes, today's era of political polarization is bad, but the US seems to go through cycles of great polarization and regrettably frequent violence followed by fairly calm periods - at least by one metric (e.g, by 'civil wars' 1860-65 was the worst, but if you measured by violent labor strikes the late 1800s-early 1900s were). Thus you get the American Revolution, then a period of relative calm, then the years leading up to the Civil War and the Civil War itself. Then a period of relative quiet, followed by the much smaller strikes, which often turned violent, as well as pogroms against blacks. Then relative quiet, then Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc.
Summary of the data following: Proceeding in fifty-year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024, ending at 1770-July 13, 1774, this era placed #2 in civil unrest, but #4 out of 6 - ie, below average - in a broader category, counting coups, massacres, civil unrest, rebellions, worker deaths due to labor disputes, and racial violence.
For a sense of the persistence of it, look at Wikipedia's page[1]. In fact, if anything, it seems to be slowing down; Wikipedia (thus far) lists 17 incidents from 2020-2024 (inclusive). Scrolling 50, 100, 150, 200, etc. years back shows the following:
50 years ago [1970-July 13,1974]: 28 (!)
100 years ago [1920-July 13,1924]: 9.
150 years ago [1870-July 13,1874]: 10. Again, possibly an underestimate.
200 years ago [1820-July 13,1824]: 0. This is almost certainly an underestimate, but it's how many Wikipedia lists.
250 years ago [1770-July 13, 1774]: 5[2]
So, we're the second-highest. However, Wikipedia also helpfully has lists of coup attempts, massacres, etc. So! [Note that this includes things that partially include that time period, e.g., the American Revolution, and larger things, e.g., the Black Panthers. This is from Wikipedia; you can edit it if you want. The version I'm using is accurate as of when I'm writing this]
Combined number of coups[3], massacres[4], civil unrest[1][2], rebellions[5], worker deaths "from labor disputes"[counts incidents, not individual deaths] [6], and racial violence[7] [may have some double counting], moving in 50 year intervals back from 2020-July 13,2024:
2020-July 13,2024: Coup attempts: 2, massacres: 3, civil unrest: 17, rebellions: 2, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1 [it lumps police brutality together; you're welcome to object]. Total: 25.
1970-July 13,1974: coups: 0, massacres: 1, civil unrest: 28, rebellions: 5, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 15. Total: 49.
1920-July 13,1924: Coups: 0, Massacres: 6, Civil unrest: 9, rebellions: 1 [Coal Wars], worker deaths: 14, racial violence: 7 [doesn't count KKK as overarching thing]. Total: 37
1870-July 13,1874: Coups: 1 [state], Massacres: 3, Civil unrest: 10, rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 1, racial violence: 12, Total: 27
1820-July 13,1824: Coups: 0, Massacres: 0, Civil unrest: 0 [somehow], rebellions: 0, worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 1, not including slavery. Total: 1
1770-July 13,1774: Coups: 0, Massacres: 1, Civil unrest: 5, rebellions: 2 [includes American revolution], worker deaths: 0, racial violence: 0, not counting slavery. Total: 8.
So we come in at position #4 out of 6. A reasonable argument could be made that we're actually BELOW average currently.
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States.
[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_Colonial_North_America
[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_and_coup_attempts_by_country#United_States [this counts state-level attempts]
[4] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_United_States. Erratic about which mass shootings it includes.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_Unit...
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_racial_violence_in_the_Un...
Painting an election by popular vote as a “battle of ideas” is falling into the all-too-common trap of thinking that we are rational agents. I can’t even begin to expand on how incorrect that is.
Even a little bit of candid consideration would uncover the truth of this. Political ads aren’t logical arguments. They’re emotional appeals. Hell, “he should be in charge because he’s most popular” is itself an ad populum argument. It’s nonsense to begin with.
Journalists: We are Americans.
Soldier: What kind of American are you ???.
Since 2016 about half the country has been fed a steady stream of rhetoric that seeks to define Trump as a literal - not figurative or metaphorical - existential threat to "our democracy". A Hitler 2.0 or worse, and the mark of Fascism finally coming to the United States.
If you take those arguments at face value, and really and truly believe they are true, then it is unsurprising that someone took a shot at "New Hitler". Because why wouldn't someone do that if it was true?
Of course it isn't true, and even the people who say this stuff don't believe it[1].
War on christmas? War on Christianity? Obama isn't even a real american so he is an illegitimate president? "They're coming for our children"? Christ that one regularly gets drag story time cleared out due to violent threats. How dare someone read a book to a child while wearing a dress.
Or maybe you forget the decades of bombing abortion clinics?
You know we USED to have violent hard left organizations like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground. Now the right has to wave vaguely at "auntie fa", a "group" as real as "anonymous".
We can’t know for sure who will become a monster when handed unfettered power, but we can take a pretty good guess. And there are few people in American politics who are as hateful, vindictive, and anti-democratic as Trump.
Lets go backwards.
Messaging from the democrat side has been that trump is a threat to democracy, he's a fascist nazi, etc etc. You've seen the vilification. Days prior Biden literally said to put Trump in the bullseye and 'elimination' is necessary. Biden has withdrawn all these ads.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-politic...
Political polarization is primarily derived from the democrat side.
Echo chambers are mostly democrat sided. Reddit for example having banned r/thedonald for example. Each side now lives separately and aren't talking to each other except to dunk on each other's dumbest candidates. John Stewart's fault.
The fix here has to come from the democrat side, end the identity politics, and start preaching unity, democracy, and everyone is on the same team. It does seem that they have shifted their messaging, but to change your messaging strategy 3 months before the election is rather election ending.
Say what? (Even the article you cite does not support your claim.)
> Echo chambers are mostly democrat sided.
Double what?
There is plenty of villification coming from Trump and the right. (Read his speeches.) There is plenty of violent rhetoric on the right. There is a big echo chamber on the right. If you don't see it, maybe you're in an echo chamber?
You're really going to say that, while Trump sends out campaign emails like this?
> BIDEN'S DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING
> He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me ... BUT HE FAILED.
> He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force... BUT HE FAILED.
> He tried to bury me with so many witch hunts that I'd be forced to quit... BUT HE FAILED.
> STAND WITH TRUMP
> 34 RIGGED FELONY CONVICTIONS calls for an unprecedented response.
> And if our response to his tyrannical regime isn't MASSIVE, Biden will move onto his next target: YOU!
> THEY WANT TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH!
> You know they’d do it if they could, but Crooked Joe’s team of lowlifes and radical left thugs will settle for a LIFE SENTENCE. ...
> Remember, it’s not me they’re after…
> THEY’RE AFTER YOU - I’M JUST STANDING IN THEIR WAY!
> But with your support,
> I’ll NEVER give up.
> I’LL NEVER SURRENDER! ...
> Your support is the only thing standing between the Biden regime and their ultimate goal of DESTROYING AMERICA ONCE AND FOR ALL.
This sort of rhetoric is standard. Seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
All of your examples are actions against him or completely reasonable things to say like "STAND WITH TRUMP"
> THEY WANT TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH!
Not prophetic, the number of people who see Trump as a fascist threat that needs to be stopped is huge.
>This sort of rhetoric is standard. Seems like everyone has just forgotten about it.
The end of my post was the important one. The Biden team has changed their messaging. I guarantee the media will do the same. But this isn't the group im talking about who has to change.
Given your response here and I'm guessing you're average... so the democrats won't be. So what's the consequences?
You're going to take this position, whatever. But nothing said about Trump has been false. Democratic leaders shouldn't be apologizing for anything, but I'm sure they will.
What are your thoughts on Qanon and Pizzagate?
Echo chambers exist on both sides. It's human nature to align yourself with a tribe and denounce everything that goes against it. Most people just don't have the self awareness to notice when it's happening to them.
Social Media has added a layer of deep disinformation & divisive ideological bubbles that are all largely going unchecked as well, where anyone can be anyone, and where it can be quite profitable for personalities to become incendiary... We're really not holding anyone, nor the bodies managing social media and news media accountable for their actions at all, which opens the doors to sensationalism, and even to embellishment on issues which are normally meant to be commonplace and handled professionally.
I think everyone has had fair warning that the rhetoric would lead to more drama, and the country has ignored it in a quest to line pockets. Politics are meant to be boring, and in order to serve Democracy, it simply can't ignore and even encroach on basic rights of others it represents. We have gone too far in political extremes, and this is the end result, slowly getting worse over time.
It's clear that we need to stop making personal servants celebrities, and to stop watching and pushing politics as if it's a TV drama or Football game, otherwise it's only going to get worse... That being said, there is a lot more organization and agendas involved in politics now than in the past.
Technology now is widely being used against everyone to achieve and monitor goals and progress in capturing profit... Sometimes as tech insiders, we have to be careful about what we implement and even say "no" as a response to being asked to do things that undermine people and the ethical balance of the world.
Profiting off of tech is not good if it makes the world we all live in deeply unstable. There's no castle, even in Maui, that anyone can build to survive political and economic collapse of the country nor the world. There is a better way to do all of this.
Too many guns ? Too much interference of the CIA ?
> At a fundamental level, we seem to have lost our sense of what Democracy means.
What means democracy ? Rich people buying politicians to promote laws which will make them richer ? A bunch of "citizens" sending other "citizens" to die "for their country" so some assholes can increase profits ?
When is it ever not? A lot easier to believe than a bunch of handwavey "across the aisle" garbage
It might just be a bias from me, but it feels like a double standard that the media that are known for irresponsibly rushing stories out and issuing retractions after the fact might be trying to wait and see for the facts to come out this time.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/07/13/donald-trump-...
I’ll note that the current WSJ story doesn’t state he was shot, just that he stood up with blood on his ear. Hell, even Fox News isn’t claiming he was shot when I wrote this comment. They’re all handling the chaos and lack of information the same way: report what little you know, point out that it’s a breaking news story, and that there’s a great deal of uncertainty. They know he was bleeding from photos and video.
Political violence is horrific and unacceptable, and assassinations are even worse. News organizations are, so far, seemingly handling this dark moment well and will hopefully avoid making it worse for Americans.
That would still qualify as “being shot” to use the technical term. You can hear the secret service talking about the shots being fired on the literal hot mic on a YouTube stream minutes after you can clearly hear a discharging firearm. And then Trump released a statement saying he was shot.
Despite this it still took several hours for some prominent media outlets to report what happened.
Happy to hear that you have better sources than I do, that doesn't make my claims false though.
People claiming he was cut by his secret service detail or by glass (from where the fuck?) are spinning an odd little story despite excellent visual evidence to the contrary. Possibly to play down how close he came to being shot dead right there and then.
Either all the visual evidence (including live video and photos by seasoned, respected third party photojournalists) was somehow amazingly falsified, or Trump literally used fake blood to make it seem like he got injured by the bullet (an incredible assertion even by Trump standards) or he really was shot just as has now been widely reported.
Also, that he would grab that specific ear just as the shot went by, and moments later suffer an injury completely unrelated to a bullet in that exact ear, would be an extraordinary coincidence. Caused by what else?
Its something the USA has dealt with many many times.
I’m not sure how to tell you this, but going back to what we used to do is not a good sign. Just because there’s precedent doesn’t mean it’s fine.
For e.g. Obama there's an entire page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_B...
and Bush: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_G...
And Trump: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_D...
And I'm sure there's tons more events we never heard about. Or people prevented from doing something just because there was enough security (who only needed to be present to prevent any attack).
1) Trump would sign onto a plan involving someone shooting him damn near his face
2) As if just barely grazing someone's ear is something you can plan in advance and get right often enough to not accidentally kill the guy it's supposed to benefit
3) As if it's impossible for a young man in America to be utterly disconnected from reality enough to shoot at a politician.
It made it very very clear that 90% of the posts on ANYTHING even remotely interesting are either explicitly bad faith actors trying to push divisive narratives, or worse, stupid sycophants repeating anything they see on the internet.
I'm genuinely glad he survived.
I don't know why people are trying to make this a sign of a big societal trend about media outrage, etc.
Relatedly, the US election timeframe is ridiculous.
If a party can’t get its voters to come out - especially reluctant voters, that can make a big difference. If you are a Democrat but aren’t that keen on Biden and you think he’ll win your area anyway, you might lot bother with the half hour trip, and that might swing the election.
Trump proved in two minutes that whatever else you can say about him, he's very capable of responding well to pressure.
Unfortunately, the election was absolutely decided today.
What capability he showed? Knowing you are guarded by tens and hundreds of officers, anyone would raise a fist.
No, it would not be easy and far from common to take that in apparent stride so quickly as he did. It was indeed impressive regardless of what you think of Trump the candidate in all other regards. You saying anyone would raise a fist is absurd.
Come on, it's not like the world hasn't watched Trump's tweets in the past eight years.
Trump was unable of decisive action between 12noon and 5pm on January 6th, despite being commander in chief of the Army, the National Guard, Air Force, and all the powers that be.
He was so unable of decisive action, it was Mike Pence who eventually made the call to ask for National Guard for help.
4+ hours of inaction. And you call a fist-pumping photo-op to be the thing you care about?
Had Trump done what you have suggested here, it could have been easily construed as a coup, the real kind.
The Joint Chiefs had publicly announced 6 months prior during BLM riots that if Trump would issue such an order to the Sec. Def., the generals and staff officers of the COCOM wouldn't execute it. And that was not two weeks before investiture of the new president.
If he'd tried it, that would be a very short lived coup of the real kind.
I don't disagree with you. I merely wanted to add that whatever anybody is saying left or right, it probably wouldn't have worked had he tried an actual coup. From a rational POV I don't really understand all the brouhaha.
Compared to a lot of other situations elsewhere, Jan 6th was a minor spectacle, nothing serious (see Yellow Vests protests in France).
But instead, Trump gave us hours of inaction. Precious hours wasted during the time we needed leadership most.
I'm not planning on voting such an indecisive man into office.
You know, long after Pence authorized the National Guard units and activated them?
Shaky Trump had his chance to prove he was a decisive leader back then. He failed the test in the most spectacular fashion.
Really not wanting to defend Trump here - a dictator in the making - but you should be aware of your own biases. Elections are mostly not decided on rational choices _you_ would make based on _your_ perspective and _your_ logic, any of which might have many failings.
So yes, that fist pumping photo is _that_ important and will probably get Trump a 10+ percentage points of vote, and the win, because unless the DNC pulls a rabbit out of their hat, OTOH you have an elderly tired old man with terminal Parkinson's whose own party is trying to get rid of at the last minute.
Otherwise, there's not much point in discussion or truth discovery.
When has any scandalous Trump story damaged him? The access Hollywood tape came out weeks before the 2016 election and he still got elected.
[1] https://manifold.markets/jack/who-will-win-the-2024-us-presi...
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I'm here browsing the thread out of curiosity but I'm also onboard with it being flagged. There's not going to be any shortage of other places to discuss this (historic) event.
I think younger people are mostly all aware of the assassination of JFK in 1963 but probably lots are not aware that there was an attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 (which also came close to succeeding; closer even than this recent event). That's because the attempted assassination of Reagan had far less contemporary and historical impact than the successful assassination of JFK.
If the attempt on Trump's life had been successful a thread probably would stay up (my guess only). That's because there would have been HN on-topic things for us all to consider after such an event, including possible further crackdowns on internet privacy, further restrictions on free movement, free speech, etc.
He would have unflagged it manually, because in his view it is significant enough a political story to be discussed here. The reason he didn't was he was away and so didn't know about the story or its flagging. He has manually unflagged it now
Trump won election: yes. Trump survives attempted assassination: no.
Obviously it would be historic if the outcome of assassination is different.
@dang does not work, there's no notification, "hey dang" equally doesn't work and there's no guarentee that every comment or even just the replies to dang comments will get read.
(defrost is correct about how to contact me but I did see your message semi-=randomly)
How can you compare? Biden hasn't been shot in the ear...
[I'm an EU person. No skin in this game.]
You, my friend, are an Ostrich.
I'm an EU person. Lots of Ukranian and Russian skin in this game.
But given some of the dead comments on this thread, I might not let people vouch for it either...
----
IIRC, people have never been able to vouch for flagged articles, only for flagged comments. You gain your ability to vouch for flagged comments once your reputation hits a certain cutoff; rarely, you might lose it if dang feels you are abusing your vouching ability.
I believe the only way to vouch for flagged articles, is an informal vouching process in which you email dang and try to convince him to turn the flag off manually. Sometimes, that works.
Since this site isn't open source (except for a very old version) we can only guess at how it works. But my guess is it might work like this:
1. Every time someone flags an article, it increments the "flagged" counter
2. Once the flagged counter reaches a certain threshold, it becomes flagged – but vouched is displayed to eligible users
3. If an eligible user vouches it, the "flagged" counter is decremented again – if it falls beneath the threshold, it is automatically unflagged
4. However, there is a second threshold, and once the "flagged" counter reaches that, then nobody can vouch it any more
And that's not mentioning the ability of admins to manually override, either by forcing an article to flagged (so vouching isn't possible), or by disabling flagging on it (so votes to flag it are ignored)
Looks like we're misunderstanding vouches, I guess when we recall seeing a flagged article with a vouch option, it was because it was both flagged and dead, if it's only flagged, there wouldn't be a vouch option since the main counter to flagging is upvoting.
If you are logged-in, https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched shows articles you have vouched – I can see I've vouched three.
In fact if you go to https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched?id=USERNAME it shows you what that user has vouched – but unless you are a moderator/admin (like dang), you get a "Can't display that" error if aren't USERNAME yourself. Whereas, for a non-existent user, it displays "No such user" instead
I definitely remember vouching comments too, but I can't find any similar link that records what they are.
Either the FBI is withholding information or the shooter didn't leave a trace. If it's the latter, there could be other parties (e.g. foreign governments) involved
The fact that they can't find a motive is very fishy. This isn't just something someone can do on a whim, the guy must've planned this out months in advance. He must have some documents somewhere
Somehow, nobody from the security team thought to keep an eye on the most obvious spot for a sniper.
I don't know about that, he probably had to scout the area and find a line of sight. Also he got a bunch of bombs from somewhere
If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll see that massive topics like that are intentionally kept off the front page for a while so that it doesn’t overwhelm everyone
Frankly, I’m glad that’s the policy because Reddit (and I assume all other media) yesterday was just completely covered top to bottom in the story
A simpler solution would be to ban political news no matter where they came from, even if they are historical. I prefer the first choice about innovation.
It's easy to see that past articles about "JFK Assasination" are not flagged at all [1]. Is the present the problem?
BTW, I tested ChatGPT time accuracy for news [2].
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=jfk+assasination+site%3Anews...
[2] https://chatgpt.com/share/6f918b0a-7d28-4405-8826-87becf5079...
Right up there at the top:
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
"The JFK Assassination" as a discussion of politics would be immediately flagged. Your linked [1] search is almost entirely comments and not a topic of discussion, which you would've realized quickly had you clicked through any of the results.
HN tried this once, like 8 years ago. Every single thread was overwhelmed with discussions about whether an article was "political" or not so people could get things memory holed when they didn't like or care for them.
It was a short and abortive experiment because it betrayed reality: Everything is political in some way. There is zero legitimate way to say something ISN'T political.
Dang went back to the status quo of "just pretend we don't talk politics here, and I will weigh the scales with a heavy hand when it is needed". As dang is only human, and HN is a site made by humans and filled with user submitted content, hopefully it isn't controversial to point out that all the rules are done based on the judgements of those humans, which is influenced by their personal beliefs, and are a "best attempt" system.
No. If someone posts a link to code or an article that's strictly about code, nobody actually considers that political
For example, lobster.rs actually censors political content. People only try this "everything is political" argument when they want to proselytize
The reporting that followed that post suggests the shooter donated $15 to Act Blue when he was 17 and registered as a Republican at 18. All of this within the context that this young man is from a very rural town in Pennsylvania that Trump easily won. The whole situation is just odd.
The best thing for everyone to do is to do nothing, because nothing good comes from this point. No point in making things worse.
But I wouldn't be surprised if he was just some lone nut who fell down some conspiracy rabbit hole, or if some history of drug abuse and psychiatric problems is unearthed.
It's just as easy to surmise that this is a conservative who would rather have anyone but Trump. What I dislike is that immediately there was a reaction to kill liberals. Anecdotally, I have group text messages with my friends from the military and the theme was similar to what it was on HN last night.
Hence, people should probably hold their horses.
"ActRed" isn't a thing, and the shooter didn't donate to "ActRed".
> it's equally possible that he's just a conservative never Trumper
Of course it's possible, but it's more common for someone to register as the other party to vote against them in the primary than it is to donate money to a PAC of the other party.
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-donald-tru... https://www.newsweek.com/democrats-crossover-voting-gop-prim... https://www.reddit.com/r/SaltLakeCity/comments/o2yiyq/should...
> the great work of the Lincoln Project
No.
The Lincoln Project was incredible, especially once you take events like January 6th in context. The kind of Republicans that made The Lincoln Project and investigated the actors behind January 6th are what our political system needs more of.
> A study conducted after the 2020 election found that the group’s effect on the election’s outcome was trivial to non-existent — not surprising given its penchant for spending money on ads that aired in electorally irrelevant places such as Washington, D.C. or which circulated almost exclusively in liberal cable news and social media venues, and thus had no purpose other than to enable its consultants to take large commissions from the ad spending. They were producing ads solely for liberals, with the overriding intent not of defeating Trump but inflating their net worth. And it worked: until they were no longer needed.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-lincoln-project-facing-...
Sounds like their grift worked on you.
The rest is well documented in the news.
Not taking people's alt accounts that are also spamming this and other Trump related posts seriously is dangerous at best. There's a pattern here that's not hard to see.
As a democracy we must hold ourselves to the highest standards, anything else is a slippery slope. Look at the assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020, ordered by president Trump. Or the numerous innocent victims of long distance drone strikes in Afghanistan during Obama’s presidency. Or the current strikes on refugees in Gaza. I really don’t like the Taliban or Hamas; Soleimani was a horrible person, an oppressor and war criminal.
However, as a democracy, we just can’t just go and kill people we don’t like. Taking "collateral" victims for granted. We can’t ignore international law and human rights. We didn’t really care because, meh, bad guys in foreign countries.
But at some point, this mindset comes home and erodes our moral thinking: "It’s okay to eliminate someone I consider to be a bad guy. It’s okay to insult, harass and attack someone who doesn’t share my righteous values and beliefs. Who needs (international) laws, a juridical system and human rights when you can do it yourself?" It’s poisonous and it’s getting worse. I wish I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I really don’t see one at the moment.
Actually no, just stop this evil driven by politics. When we learn and abandon concept of voting for politics that drives this evil among citizens?
Edit: this article did not specify that he was shot. Other articles showed that he was.
Looks like maybe a piece missing from the top rear of his right ear?