Sanders supporter shoots Congressional Republicans

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/06/14/breaking-congressman-scali...

Republican Congressman and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot early Wednesday morning in Alexandria, Virginia while practicing for the Congressional baseball game at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park. A number of staffers and Congressmen from the Republican team were targeted. Scalise was shot in the hip and is reportedly in stable condition. His staffers and two Capitol Police officers were also shot. One of the officers was shot in the chest. At least five people were hit.

...Rep. Ron DeSantis, who was at the practice this morning, said a man asked him in the parking lot whether they were Democrats or Republicans. Republican and Democrat teams practice separately.

http://forward.com/fast-forward/374696/scalise-shooter-was-passionate-bernie-san...

As details have begun to emerge from this morning’s shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and several others in Alexandria, Virginia it’s been revealed that the shooter, James Hodgkinson, was an avowed supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. He also volunteered for the Sanders campaign in Illinois.

In the last year, Hodgkinson had made several posts expressing displeasure with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and, in recent months, the current Republican administration. On March 22, he posted Change.org petition calling for the impeachment of President Trump, adding: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

There's a thread about this already:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/259541

Highlight:

Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
.@Judgenap: Why do we have a Second Amendment? It's not to shoot deer. It's to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!

12:48pm · 23 Jun 2016 · Twitter for iPhone

Sow the guns, reap the bullets.

"Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values." -- Bernie Sanders

Yeah, sure. Right. If only there were even a tiny bit of truth to that statement. Unfortunately, it's utter bullshit. Violence is absolutely routine in American life and it usually falls with overwhelming disproportion on those who are poor, defenceless or least able to defend themselves. This includes women, children and, not least, men, too. There is no point in playing a game in which we separate and count violent incidents according to age, gender, race--since poor and disabled people of all ages, both sexes, and all "races" are the routine victims.

"Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society..."

During the Occupy movement, there was a lot of violence and it was not denounced as "unacceptable." Peaceful protesters were assaulted by police with batons, with mace/pepper-spray, they were thrown to the ground, shoved, manacled, and dragged off to vans. Their property was seized and destroyed--violently--by the police authorities.

But, as bad as that is, it doesn't even rise to the level of noticeable. (ETA) (if compared to) the daily-life of millions of poor Americans is routinely violent and there is little or nothing in protection for these people from the police--who don't want to know.

>4 proximity1: Well put (though the second part of Bernie's statement should still stand, even if the first seems... aspirational.)

See also: http://www.chron.com/houston/article/Occupy-Houston-assassination-plot-records-w...

David --

"our most deeply-held American values" ?!?

No.

That is the part which is aspirational:

"Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values."

In fact, history doesn't show this. Rather, it very often--indeed, more often than not--shows that some use of violence, more or less protracted, is a precondition to many so-called examples of peaceful, "non-violent" change. Labor laws and working men's and, later, working women's rights, child labor laws, pure food and water regulations, women's sufferage, child-protection laws, school desegregation--none of these were without important incidents of violence--from one or both (or more) of the parties concerned.

In addition, the state rules by violence. It's the underpinning of all the pious talk of fairness, openness, democratic methods--behind all these myths is very clear, very direct and very ready resort to violence.

Scrawled on the walls in urban areas where poor people live-- "Police everywhere you look--Justice nowhere." In France, where I first saw it in graffiti, the expression is, "La police partout, la justice nulle part." a phrase by, it would appear, "Banksy" Vctor Hugo, no less!*


France

__________


Britain

________________________

* Correction, thanks to Krolik (see post 8, below) "La police partout, la justice nulle part," from Victor Hugo:

Sur le coup d’État du 2 décembre 1851 / "On the coup d'état of 2 December, 1851"

" Ce gouvernement, je le caractérise d’un mot: la police partout, la justice nulle part."

"This government, I characterize it in a few words: "the police everywhere, justice nowhere."

"Choses vues" (8 avril 1851) / "Things seen," a journalistic diary (later published as a compilation)

I wonder who has more guns, and who is more willing to use them: Bernie Sanders supporters or Donald Trump supporters? Just a thought...

You can't blame Sanders for one lone nut. He might 'support' Bernie, but Bernie very obviously doesn't support him-- or at least, he doesn't support his violence.

>6 proximity1:

"la police partout, la justice nulle part" goes back to Victor Hugo.

>8 krolik:

Thank you!

>7 madpoet:

"I wonder who has more guns, and who is more willing to use them: ..."

The government has the most guns and is the most willing to use them.

#4--which is a great point. Not just at Occupy though--at Ferguson and at Standing Rock as well. The Police have a way of turning peaceful protests into full scale riots. And Occupy, Ferguson and Standing Rock they're all during Obama--where the federal authorities coordinated with local authorities to do their best to quell the protests with whatever violence they deemed necessary. And the violence went further at times than macing and beating protesters with batons. One Occupy protester was shot in the head with a beanbag projectile that left him in a coma for several days. He was a young man and an Iraqi war vet--if that had been an older person or a young child we might have had a dead person. A girl at Standing Rock had most of the skin and muscle of one of her arms blown off with a flash bang grenade and these two people were deliberately targeted. Rubber bullets, flash bang grenades and bean bag projectiles have often been used fairly liberally by law enforcement. These crowd control armaments are considered 'non-lethal' but any of all that can be very lethal. What do we think Trump will do if Obama could get away with all that?

>11 lriley:

"Not just at Occupy though--at Ferguson and at Standing Rock as well."

Indeed. There are quite simply too many examples to list and that is really the point. You've pointed out cases of organized protests and of course it's common to find authorities readily resorting to unprovoked violence in such cases. But I'm interested in pointing out that literally millions of people who are poor and very marginalized socially live with daily abuse which ranges from verbal threats to physical violence--from all sorts of authorities, whether armed with a lethal weapon or some other non-lethal weapon; they can and do harass, intimidate and verbally threaten people who are destitute--and, yes, for that reason, frequently, themselves too often ill-behaved. But the vicious cycle is a short one and quick to run and repeat.

Violence--practiced by officialdom, so far from "run(ing) against our most deeply held American values"--is the American way of life and it's not much different in the overwhelming part of the rest of the world. Official violence, civil and martial combined, I believe, dwarfs all other for its severity and its frequency. We should remember, too, that officials use the threat of violence--overtly or implicitly--more than anything else.

Government has made those living in the depths of poverty criminals-by-default. In many places, it is simply not possible to live in extreme poverty and avoid the necessity of committing minor misdemeanors practically daily. This routine experience of needless, pointless everyday violence is what leads me to denounce Sanders for his comments--they're so far removed from what many people live with.

Imagine the difference in the statistical odds of a Congress-member's being shot with a firearm by an assailant versus the odds of a person living on the street in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. or Miami.

#12--well it's not going to end with Trump. In a way Obama set up the protesters at Standing Rock to be moved out forcefully by Trump's white house. Obama's 'we'll see how it all plays out'--while behind the protesters backs he allows the NSA, FBI, US Marshall's Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs amongst others to coordinate with law enforcement thugs really gave those protesters no chance when the new administration came in. But this is again a critique of Trump as well--all the lies that he was on the side of the people and not of the rich and the corporations should be more than transparent for anyone to see. This is every bit as corporate friendly and tone deaf to the public of an administration as any that have come before it. In my eyes we've replace a phony with an outright liar.

And nearly all republicans believe in police force whenever and for whatever--there may be a few libertarians who don't but they are a tiny minority. Most people on the left---though their elected officials tend to be fine with police violence--do not. You very rarely hear politicians of any stripe these days critiquing the militarization of police. And I'm not going to lose any sleep over Scalise getting shot than Pelosi or the republican congress lost over what happened to Sophia Wilansky.

>13 lriley:

"In my eyes we've replaced a phony with an outright liar."

In certain respects, I consider that we're better off with the latter than the former. Things are clearer. Not that, for pity's sake!, Obama was other than a very practiced and shameless liar.

I would not change the outcome if it were up to me to do so and the election were re-run. My greatest regret shall be watching the Democrats fail to seize the opportunity to reform root and branch their utterly corrupt and disgusting neo-con party .

A nutjob republican racist shoots nine black people dead in a church. He is taken into custody.

A nutjob liberal shoots a senator in the hip and shoots a couple of policemen. He is shot dead.

That all seems about right.

This is the U.S.A, 21st century style.

Shit happens. It happens a lot. Though the odds of any randomly chosen law abiding citizen being shot by an ideological nut of any kind is less than being hit by lightning, dying from snake bite, or way, way less than dying in a vehicular collision.

And time marches on and waits for no man - or woman - or child, for that matter.

Some black child somewhere on earth will die today from some type of congenital disease. Is god a racist? Fuck if I know.

The revolutionary mind always leads to violence.

>16 barney67:
Barney, are you down with that 1776 thing? Or do you think we would've been better off going the Canada route, for instance, being part of the Commonwealth?

#15--I agree with you. This is the world we have. That congress people should be exempt from the violence somehow seems wrong as many of them have in any case done much to create the situations that the rest of us have to live with. Why should they be exempt then? You live with certain odds. Scalise should consider himself lucky.

>15 JGL53:

That nutjob racist surrendered to police when he was pulled over.
That nutjob liberal was an active shooter who had to be taken out in order to stop him.

So, not really comparable.

But to hell with them both.

>2 LolaWalser:

Fact: Sanders-supporting socialist attacks Republicans.

Analysis: It’s Rand Paul’s fault!

Let's ask Bernie Sanders who he thinks bears responsibility when an assailant supports a certain politician:

Sanders tweet:

“The politics of division has no place in our country. Trump should take responsibility for addressing his supporters’ violent actions.”

>21 Carnophile: Take a look at that tweet again, Carny. Sanders said that Trump should take responsibility for addressing his supporters' violent actions. He wasn't blaming Trump for the violent acts but for not doing anything about it. And as soon as Sanders heard that the shooting was done by one of his supporters he denounced it on the floor of the Senate.

>20 Carnophile:
Nah, it's Obama's fault.

A politician might or might not, depending on the circumstances, be liable to just criticism for having urged, incited, his own supporters to acts of spontaneous violence. It really does require a case-by-case review and analysis.

As a general rule, in the same or nearly the same sets of circumstances, what couldn't be fairly charged against Sanders as incitement to violence also can't be charged to Trump--and vice versa.

>17 krolik: I'm reluctant to answer a post that's written in hipster slang and that derails the thread. But I've gone over this point so many times that it's easy to summarize.

American's revolution wasn't a revolution as historians understand it. Revolutions sweep away the past (or try to) to start fresh. America's was a War for Independence. People like John Adams were trying to remain loyal to an English Consitution that the English weren't even loyal to. Ought to sound familiar, eh? Adams et al were trying to out-English the English.

But that was the 1700s. Times have changed. Regardless, there does seem to be a revolutionary gene in the American DNA, which is one reason Trump won the election, because it was a power to the people, anti-Establishment election. Not my kind of thing, but all Democrats, if they had any sense, should have been in favor of it. Some were. You see, liberals don't even know how to be good liberals. I can educate them, but why would I do that?

If you see no value in the past, you are a revolutionary. If you dream of a utopian future, if you believe progress means tomorrow is always better than today, then you are a revolutionary. If you absolutely must have the new iphone because it is new...

This thread is about a fanatical leftist. I hope (but doubt) that this incident will reduce the corrosive and hysterical rhetoric fired off by the talking heads in media and on this web site. Look, folks, there's a liberal here in this forum who doesn't even live in America and she can hardly write a sentence without dropping the f-bomb. If anyone is prone to violence, that's the kind of personality who will wind up on a roof someday with a shotgun.

And about that person, let me say: It is against the law to threaten any elected person in the federal government. Trust me. I know people who worked there. If you write a letter to your Congressman, say, and threaten to punch him, for example, you could wind up on a list of people to be watched. So calm down. It's just politics. Don't make life more complicated.

The election is over, kids. It was close, but it's not the end of the world. You can watch for the end of the world if you want, but to me that's a waste of time.

Here's a vital point. Many people care more about what Trump SAYS in a Twitter post than what he DOES. I know some of you conflate words and actions, and that's too bad. But you're going lead a much happier life if you respond to action rather than mere words. It's Twitter, for crying out loud. Twitter. Don't expect seriousness from it. Words, words, words. Talk is cheap.

>25 barney67: Many people care more about what Trump SAYS in a Twitter post than what he DOES.

Including Trump.

>25 barney67: 'dropping the f-bomb'

Is that an elevated slang, something more elegant than hipster slang, or just a fucking cliche?

And when are you going to learn to tell a fucking liberal from a fucking radical?

>22 jjwilson61: Take a look at that tweet again, Carny. Sanders said that Trump should take responsibility for addressing his supporters' violent actions.

Split that hair a little finer. I think there may still be a couple of femtometers of width to it.