Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Come on, man.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

When we show up, we win.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Gun nuts / Updated Information on the Smith Mountain Lake Shooting

Updated Information on the Smith Mountain Lake Shooting

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This post is in: 

Not to step on Zandar’s post, but there’s now updated information on the Smith Mountain Lake Shooting – as several commenters have indicated. The suspect’s name is Lester Lee Flanagan and he reported for the station under the pseudonym Bryce Williams. He seems to have started tweeting about the attack around 11:00 AM this morning. His tweets include his list of grievances, which include an accusation that Ms. Parker made racist comments:

Bryce-Williams-Twitter

He also posted his own smartphone video of him attacking and shooting Ms. Parker, Mr. Ward, and Ms. Gardner. Like Zandar, I’m not going to embed the video, but you can click over to Raw Story as they have it up there. As is the case with all of these types of situations – it is incredibly fluid and I am sure that the information is going to change several times until they bring Mr. Flanagan in. Here’s the link to the Roanoke Times ongoing coverage (warning: autoplay video of the shooting at the link), which Cheryl from MD put into the comments in Zandar’s post.

–UPDATE–

As Waynski just indicated in the comments, as I was composing the post, reporting came out that Mr. Flanagan killed himself around 11:40 AM. Also, there’s some confusion as to whether his first name was Lester or Vester – my apologies for that.

Reader Interactions

152Comments

  2. 2.

    Lee Rudolph

    All the (few) reports I read, before heading back to Balloon-Juice, had his first name as “Vester”, not “Lester”.

    And the last of those reports, a Twitter feed, had all the disgusting trollery I could stand for the rest of the week.

  3. 3.

    Culture of Truth

    Of course we live in an age where workplace shooters posts video, updates on Facebook, and the whole thing is covered live on twitter and blogs

  5. 5.

    Brandon

    There is no news value to directing people to the shooters video. It is an execution and as others mentioned, a snuff film.

  8. 8.

    ShadeTail

    @Waynski: Did he? I wish I could say I was surprised. It’s practically a cliché at this point: an attention-whore with a list of grievances causes a lot of damage and then uses suicide to escape being held responsible.

  12. 12.

    donnah

    Cynical me says add the names to the list of innocent victims and watch the news for the outrage. And then it will all be over until the next one. Because there’s always a next one.

    Heartsick me says her thoughts and best wishes go out to the families and friends of the victims.

  13. 13.

    Robin G.

    His tweets include his list of grievances, which include an accusation that Ms. Parker made racist comments

    Oh, this is going to be fun. “When white people shoot black people EVERYONE cares, but when a BLACK man shoots a WHITE woman, NO ONE says ANYTHING” in three, two, one…

  14. 14.

    BruinKid

    You know what? If you go and murder two people in cold blood, maybe they were RIGHT to report you to HR, you motherfucker. Fuck this motherfucker.

  17. 17.

    Hal

    Oh lord. How long before the “where’s Al Sharpton now?!?!” comments start? Also, thanks Obama.

  19. 19.

    kc

    @Brandon:

    The snuff film was at the top of the page of every news report I’ve tried to read. Autoplaying.

    Maybe in a few days it will be safe to read about it.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    This set of gun murders has seemed more like “Movie of the Week” than real life to me.

    It’s just a variation of what happens every single day, in Guntopia.

    Look! TRUMP!

  27. 27.

    Robin G.

    @JPL: It was. And the fact that the right-wingers will run with it as an equivalent to police killing black people is going to eclipse that entirely.

    A homicidal black person callously gunned down two white people against whom he had a personal grudge. That’s not the same thing as the institutional violence that’s led to the deaths of so many PoCs and spawned the BLM movement. But because he said in his tweet that “Alison made racist comments”, when BLM and others don’t prostrate themselves at the feet of FOX News and take personal responsibility for ‘inciting’ this guy, talk of hypocrisy will be the entire news cycle. The next time a PoC dies in police custody, the kneejerk response will be “Sure, BUT DID YOU CARE WHEN FLANAGAN KILLED THAT NICE WHITE GIRL JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS WHITE NO YOU DID NOT” and that will be the answer to basically everything from here on out.

    Or maybe I’m a cynic. I hope so.

  29. 29.

    NotMax

    @gnomedad

    Not all that unusual for radio and TV personalities to use a professional name on air. Less so in the news division, but not unheard of.

  32. 32.

    CaseyL

    OK, Seattle has lots of problems, but breaking off from the rest of the country and floating away across the Pacific is looking better and better to me.

  33. 33.

    randy khan

    @gnomedad: It’s pretty common in the business to use a different name on air than the one on your birth certificate. You would do that, for instance, if someone already was using your name or if your actual name was difficult for some reason (say, for instance, you were named Ermintrude Quackenbush-Cristopoulus). It’s getting a bit less common than it used to be because “ethnic” names are more accepted now, but it still happens all the time.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @randy khan

    Precisely.

    “Ignatz Lipschitz reporting. Back to you, Biff” lacks a certain gravitas.

    There are also reverse cases, such as Mr. Rivera going from birth name Gerald to Geraldo.

  38. 38.

    Derelict

    @gnomedad: Many (perhaps even a majority) work under a pseudonym. Ethnic-sounding or difficult-to-pronounce names alienate White viewers–they like WASPs enunciating from the screen.

    I have a friend who’s a major voiceover talent. When we were in high school, his last name was Irish. Now it’s a very generic English WASP name. He changed it when his agent said he’d risen as far as he could with his original name.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    Headline: Suspect’s use of social media to broadcast shooting akin to ISIS, expert says

    Well there you have it. Not clicking, or linking.

    From the Richmond Times Disgrace. No idea who the “expert” is. (John Bolton?)

  40. 40.

    Keith G

    It’s beginning to feel a lot like the end days of the Weimar Republic in this country.

    This represents a type of quote I have seen at least a dozen times in the previous thread, and now above.

    What utter nonsense.

    Yep, this is a horrific event. Yep, we need more effective controls on gun possession.

    And yet, crime rates are much lower than they were two decades ago. Cities have gotten much safer – even factoring in the fact that the police seem to be a bit trigger happy.

    Nope, it’s not more dangerous now, it’s less dangerous. Even our economic situation has shown improvement, though not nearly enough. There is a lot of work to be done, but we are not the friggin Weimar Republic.

  42. 42.

    ? Martin

    @randy khan: For many news celebrities and such, it’s often just a way to make the name easier to say and clearer on-air. Bryce Williams is clear and memorable (Williams easier to associate with an african-american than Flanagan, even). Slightly uncommon first name, common last name, strong syllables, no confusing transition between the two. The names have a strong lead-in syllable that is easy to call out in in your lead-in “Your Action 2 News Team! Bryce Williams…”, etc.

  44. 44.

    someguy

    Shoulda known white racism was the precipitating event. It underlies most violence in this country.

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Marmot: The shooter allegedly faxed (faxed!) a 20-something page “manifesto” to an ABC News outlet, so I guess we’ll know soon enough. Unless they have the murder victim on tape uttering a slur, I’m going to assume the deranged murderer is lying. The snuff film undermines his credibility in my book.

    @someguy: What a moronic thing to say.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @JPL:

    No worrries, if he survived I’m sure the state of Virginia will give him the death penalty and finish the job for him.

    What a stupid fucking waste. But, no, we can’t talk about workplace violence and easy access to guns because the crime rate is down overall, so we just have to accept that occasionally our coworkers will decide to shoot us in the head. No big deal.

  49. 49.

    Archon

    @Keith G:

    It should be noted that the Weimar Republic had found some semblance of postwar economic and political stability until the Great Depression hit.

    If we get hit with another major recession or financial crisis all bets are off.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Keith G:

    I agree with you on the Weimar Republic part but, no, I’m not going to accept that it’s okay to be shot in the head by a disgruntled coworker because overall the crime rate is down. That’s bullshit.

    The problem isn’t the crime rate. It’s guns.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @Elizabelle:
    Given that nowadays everyone but me uses social media, it is flat-out impossible to draw any conclusions about a shooter who uses social-media — except, of course, that he is not Amir Khalid.

  52. 52.

    Marmot

    @Betty Cracker: Agreed. Crazy killer is crazy. WDBJ7 Station manager Jeff Marks says Flanagan was always looking to take offense, and the hothead angle sure looks compelling right now.

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    @Marmot: I have some experience with workplace shootings, having witnessed one more than 20 years ago and paid a survivor’s close attention to similar stories ever since: It’s almost always a whiny, crybaby man who blames everyone else for his problems and decides to settle scores and go out in a blaze of glory like Rambo.

  59. 59.

    median

    @Archon: Hooray! We’re talking about the Weimar Republic!

    I don’t know what this one-off shooting has to do with the Weimar Republic. My favorite parallel today (and all week) is how unresponsive politics has become — not surprising considering a) the impossibility of getting anything through the Republican legislature and b) there is no correlation between what we want and what gets passed — money is represented in congress (and the Supreme Court), not people.

    If you read pro-Trump comments, that is the overwhelming theme — the system is broken — expressed in various ways (they’re all corrupt, they are all liars, they are all bought and paid for, their balls aren’t large enough, or (and this one warms the heart of all Weimar-dreamers) “they stabbed us in the back.”)

    Anyway. Don’t get too hung up on Weimar Germany. Fascism is adaptable to the landscape.

  60. 60.

    catclub

    @? Martin:

    You didn’t really think every TV weatherman was actually named ‘Storm’ or ‘Sunny’ right?

    Of course not. Some are named Windy/Wendy.

  61. 61.

    Zinsky

    Important open questions: Did the shooter have prior mental health issues? If so, how did he get a gun?

  62. 62.

    Helen

    My sister lives a few miles from there. She started posting this on FB early this morning. I’ve been to Bridgewater many times (although I’ll never be there again. I’ll never go back down there).

    5 years ago my sister’s 19 year old son was shot to death by his “friend” in Moneta where Bridgewater is located.

    She is still avidly pro-gun.

    Dunno why I even posted this. Just very sad.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    Bryce/Vester might have believed what he wrote on twitter, but it doesn’t mean that it is true. It bothers me that the victims are being labeled without proof.

  65. 65.

    Another Holocene Human

    ETA: Never mind. Misunderstood. Comments were very tone-deaf. I’ll shut up now.

  69. 69.

    median

    @Archon: Hooray! We’re talking about the Weimar Republic!

    I don’t know what this one-off shooting has to do with the Weimar Republic. My favorite parallel today (and all week) is how unresponsive politics has become — not surprising considering a) the impossibility of getting anything through the Republican legislature and b) there is no correlation between what we want and what gets passed — money is represented in congress (and the Supreme Court), not people.

    If you read pro-Trump comments, that is the overwhelming theme — the system is broken — expressed in various ways (they’re all corrupt, they are all liars, they are all bought and paid for, their balls aren’t large enough, or (and this one warms the heart of all Weimar-dreamers) “they stabbed us in the back.”)

    Anyway. Don’t get too hung up on Weimar Germany. Fascism is adaptable to the landscape.

    @Robin G.: OMG! You are SO right! Black men shooting white women is America’s most under reported crimes!1! http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/03/23/report-new-york-city-television-stations-contin/202553

  70. 70.

    Marmot

    @Betty Cracker: That is harrowing.

    I worked with an off-kilter guy who settled an EEOC complaint against my employer for $5K. Ex-military, not that that describes his motives, just his facility with guns. Scared me shitless.

    Anyway, he’d been fired for suggesting that potential advertisers could get boycotted unless they did business with us. In an apology email to those potential advertisers, one higher-up said, “I don’t want you to think we’re all yahoos here!”

    Crazyman believed this to be an anti-German slur by Jews who control the organization.

    Haha. But I’m glad it stopped there.

  71. 71.

    Mandalay

    @Brandon:

    There is no news value to directing people to the shooters video. It is an execution and as others mentioned, a snuff film.

    Exactly right. Anyone who feels the need to view the incident can go google it, but the OP loftily stating “I’m not going to embed the video, but you can click over to Raw Story as they have it up there” is just pious hypocritical bullshit.

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud:

    if this hadn’t on live TV, it would barely be news.

    True. In the US, true.

    In most other countries, not true.

  73. 73.

    Digger O'Dell

    As Waynski just indicated in the comments, as I was composing the post, reporting came out that Mr. Flanagan killed himself around 11:40 AM.

    Not sure Flanagan deserves to be called “Mr.”

  74. 74.

    Robin G.

    @median: See, there you are with those silly facts. Facts have a well-known liberal bias. FOX News and the GoP presidential candidates will tell me that black-on-white crime is never discussed, and I know that to be true in my gut.

    /colbert

  75. 75.

    raven

    Yea, if a tv reporter and cameraman were killed while taping instead of live no one would ever know. Jesus, get a fucking grip.

  76. 76.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Marmot: “Crazy killer is crazy.”

    This.

    Craziness is neither explanatory nor predictive. There is far too much of it about, but no matter how much there is, it will never be either explanatory or predictive.

  77. 77.

    Betty Cracker

    @Calouste: You left out an important clue in the credibility assessment chain: the man making the accusation went on to murder people on live TV. We know he’s a raving lunatic, so pardon me if I don’t automatically take his word as the gospel truth and assume the people he murdered in cold blood are racist villains.

  79. 79.

    Chris

    @Robin G.:

    You’re not a cynic: this already happens all the time.

    Back when Trayyvon Martin was a thing, Facebook conservatives I’ve since blocked or unfriended thought it would be clever to report every crime committed by a black man and append a “hey OBAMA/SHARPTON, why don’t you care about THIS, huh?” In literally every single case they linked to, the black man who committed the crime was either apprehended immediately or was actively being hunted – in contrast to Trayyvon Martin’s killer who was turned loose with no investigation until the public outcry.

    The fact that that was the double standard being protested – well, let’s not acknowledge that. Because then we might have to forego the usual ritual performance of “both sides do it”/”what about all those poor, poor WHITE people? Who’s defending them?”

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @raven:

    You not seeing the connection to Weimer Germany?

    For me, the correct parallel is to the Mongol invasion of Eurasia.

  82. 82.

    Elizabelle

    I barely remember these vics’ names.

    Ashley Parker — EZ cuz sounds like “Ashley Madison”, very whitebread name. Kinda news reporterish. Could be fancy stationery too.

    ETA: It’s Allison Parker. Oh well. RIP.

    Some guy in a Virginia Tech sweatshirt. (Virginia Tech says: we had a massacre of 32 people! And the very next Republican governor repealed our one gun a month law. But he met with families of the victims first.)

    The shooter being named “Vester” and calling himself Bryce is kind of memorable.

    Otherwise, roll on. Anyone remember the name of nuclear scientist killed by her own toddler in Wal-Mart, using her own gun from her own little mompurse, keep the gun close pouch?

    Can you name ANYONE, anyone at all murdered in a theatre? (A few points if you can name one of the shooters — they get more airtime.)

    How many school shootings since Newtown?

    Is that gunman’s house still standing?

    Do you remember name of the guy who was killed at a desert gunrange/amusement park, by schoolkid girl wielding a semi-automatc? Her name was never released, because she was a vic too, and whoocouldaknowed?

    Roll on, roll on, roll on.

  84. 84.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @median:

    I haven’t read a huge amount about Weimar, but I’m not seeing the parallels either just from the small amount I have. IIRC, a lot of the complaints at the time were about “decadence,” ie things like gays and lesbians being uncloseted. A big part of what brough fascism in was their promise to make Germany moral again.

    Oh, wait, Rick Santorum has something to say …

    (Kidding — the moral scolds on the Republican side don’t seem to be getting much traction this time around.)

  87. 87.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    A big part of what brough fascism in was their promise to make Germany moral again.

    Fascism cheated, too. Hitler made a run for office and let’s just say he was no George W Bush.

    The willingness to do basically anything, violent, reckless, is what makes people like Hitler so scary.

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I’m sort of new(ish). I’ve done some guest posts, as BettyC has said, which led – after I sorted a couple of things out – to me being a regular. I’m trying to do at least one, if not two posts a week on areas that I have some knowledge of, but I’d just gotten off a conference call and saw the update to the breaking news and decided I’d take the initiative.

  89. 89.

    Gravenstone

    @Elizabelle: I would suggest that the “expert” isn’t exactly wrong. ISIS uses social media as a force multiplier, increasing the reach and impact of their atrocities. That sounds very much like what the killer intended here.

  92. 92.

    Helen

    @Helen:

    Also – my sister owns a restaurant on the lake. She personally knows Vicky Gardner, the exec at the Chamber of Commerce who was shot, but survived.

    People keep posting on my sister’s facebook page about how they are “confused” and “how can this happen?” Jesus.

    I am, for the first time in my life (well the second – the first was when my nephew was killed) going to keep my mouth shut.

  94. 94.

    gian

    @Betty Cracker:
    Thank you. If I’m deciding who to trust I tend to think a person willing to assassinate three people in cold blood is probably willing to lie as well

  95. 95.

    median

    @Robin G.: It took some fine tuning on my google search to find that article. Everything else was “black on white crime is being censored by liberals.” That’s assuredly what most people believe.

    And now this breaking news story about a white blonde girl in Trinidad who hasn’t called her mother in over two hours.

  96. 96.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: Hello Baud. Yep. Trumped out, but good. Non-readership capture, for me.

    @schrodinger’s cat: Still need to read the East India Company post, and look forward to doing so. Soon. Will comment when I do.

    And raven has good advice about a walk. Should take it. And step away from the internets. (TV off for hours, by now.)

    Although; we still have two panda cubs in DC. They’re on my mind.

  98. 98.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Another Holocene Human:

    IIRC, until Hitler was handed power by the German conservatives who thought they could control him, the Nazis never held more than one-third of the seats in parliament. They only got a majority by outlawing all of the other parties.

    So, yeah, the Weimar parallels are pretty much non-existent, and probably not useful anyway.

  100. 100.

    median

    @Gravenstone: I assume we all know that’s what the author meant, but the headline could just as easily have been “akin the Chick-Fil-A” or “akin to the Kardassians.” It’s needlessly inflammatory and contributes to the siege mentality.

  102. 102.

    median

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I don’t know much about the Weimar Republic, or, if I do, it’s the kind of knowledge I’m not sure I made up, read, was told, or saw in the movies. It is, in short, unsourced and therefore unreliable.

    But I’ve heard “Swing Kids” is a great movie.

  103. 103.

    samiam

    What exactly is the rationale for not posting links to the videos? If you think that somehow absolves you from using someones murder for your own gain in your breathless posts, or if you are somehow doing your part not to draw attention to the perpetrator well guess what. You already are. You posted tweets from the shooter, you posted links that link to the video. You posted others comments.

    So why the silly games how you are not posting links to the videos because you are better than that or whatever? How is it any worse than posting links to videos on Politico or Fox or some other right wing bullsheit factory? They destroy more lives every day than this guy did.

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    To me, the most interesting point of comparison between Weimar Germany and modern America is something Robert Paxton noted with regards to the rise of fascism – “political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner.” So, instead of sitting down and dealing with the left, they call on help from populist far-right movements.

    The unprecedented lengths our conservatives have gone to to create deadlock in Washington in reaction to Obama’s election, and the rise of a far right mass movement that’s soured on the conservative “establishment” and increasingly refuses to take orders from anyone but that the “establishment” nevertheless sees no choice but to deal with, are definitely something to talk about.

    But to me, the biggest problems with fascist analogies and with asking (as Neiwert’s blog did), “fascism: are we there yet?” is that it seems to ignore the fact that the “unacceptably bad” threshold is crossed long before the “fascism” threshold.

  106. 106.

    WaterGirl

    @Helen: I remember you telling us about your nephew at the time. What a terrible tragedy, such a complicated situation. My heart goes out to you today with your connection to this violence. Hard to believe it wouldn’t stir everything up again, but I hope I’m wrong.

  107. 107.

    Cacti

    @Elizabelle:

    The shooter being named “Vester” and calling himself Bryce is kind of memorable.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the station made him go by Bryce, because Vester sounded too “ethnic”.

  110. 110.

    ? Martin

    BTW, assuming today is just an average day in America, 28 more people will be victims of a gun murder, and 53 (or 54 if he survives his injuries) more people will commit suicide by gun.

    This is only an outrage because it happened to pierce our bubble. This basically happens about every hour of every day – frequently enough that the national media couldn’t possibly report on it all.

  111. 111.

    sigaba

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    I haven’t read a huge amount about Weimar, but I’m not seeing the parallels either just from the small amount I have. IIRC, a lot of the complaints at the time were about “decadence,” ie things like gays and lesbians being uncloseted.

    It wasn’t all smiles and chocolate. The government was still archly conservative and it was semi-routine for members of right-wing militias to not be prosecuted for committing murders or acts of terrorism, or, like Hitler, they’d be convicted and sent to a Club Fed where they would write their manifesto. Hitler literally led an insurrection, got a bunch of people killed, and the courts just wrote it off as Boys Will Be Boys. People, even the liberals of that time, just didn’t take violence seriously, if the perp wore a uniform and was just acting to “restore our national honor.” Such was the humiliation of the Germans of that time.

    Also the entire country was living under crushing economic sanctions and reparations. I think after the renegotiation of the WW1 reparations under the Dawes Plan, Germany finally got their bills down to a manageable amount, but they’d be in hock to France right up to 1985. Also parts of Germany were under military occupation by the French through some of the 20s, there were thousands upon thousands of young men running around with guns, crack military training, and no job, and the country had only barely avoided a communist revolution. Comparisons between the US and Weimar just don’t hold up.

    Britain after WW2, on the other hand… someday, China’s going to send ships to invade Taiwan, we’re gonna say “NO WAY!” and China’s going to say, “Alright, but maybe we have to sell all our T-bills,” and that’ll be the end of the American century (basically the Suez Crisis with us as Britain.)

  114. 114.

    ? Martin

    @sigaba:

    Britain after WW2, on the other hand… someday, China’s going to send ships to invade Taiwan, we’re gonna say “NO WAY!” and China’s going to say, “Alright, but maybe we have to sell all our T-bills,” and that’ll be the end of the American century (basically the Suez Crisis with us as Britain.)

    1) China couldn’t even remotely invade Taiwan.
    2) Apple holds 10% as much in US treasuries as China does. You seriously overstate China’s influence here.

  115. 115.

    celticdragonchick

    @Chris:

    To me, the most interesting point of comparison between Weimar Germany and modern America is something Robert Paxton noted with regards to the rise of fascism – “political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner.” So, instead of sitting down and dealing with the left, they call on help from populist far-right movements.

    Add in the scapegoating of (insert ethnic group here) and calls to “Make our homeland GREAT AGAIN!” with working class populist appeals and stir thoroughly before baking.

  116. 116.

    gus

    How bad is it that when I heard there was a shooting, and I saw only two (now three) people dead, my reaction was “oh, that’s not so bad.”

  118. 118.

    Cacti

    @sigaba:

    It wasn’t all smiles and chocolate. The government was still archly conservative and it was semi-routine for members of right-wing militias to not be prosecuted for committing murders or acts of terrorism, or, like Hitler, they’d be convicted and sent to a Club Fed where they would write their manifesto. Hitler literally led an insurrection, got a bunch of people killed, and the courts just wrote it off as Boys Will Be Boys. People, even the liberals of that time, just didn’t take violence seriously, if the perp wore a uniform and was just acting to “restore our national honor.” Such was the humiliation of the Germans of that time.

    Also the entire country was living under crushing economic sanctions and reparations. I think after the renegotiation of the WW1 reparations under the Dawes Plan, Germany finally got their bills down to a manageable amount, but they’d be in hock to France right up to 1985. Also parts of Germany were under military occupation by the French through some of the 20s, there were thousands upon thousands of young men running around with guns, crack military training, and no job, and the country had only barely avoided a communist revolution. Comparisons between the US and Weimar just don’t hold up.

    Britain after WW2, on the other hand… someday, China’s going to send ships to invade Taiwan, we’re gonna say “NO WAY!” and China’s going to say, “Alright, but maybe we have to sell all our T-bills,” and that’ll be the end of the American century (basically the Suez Crisis with us as Britain.)

    Hitler’s rise was also abetted by the Communist Party of Germany. In the last free elections from 1930-1932, the Communists held 77 to 100 seats in the Reichstag, and were in a position join a governing coalition with the center-left parties. They declined to because they wanted the Weimar Republic to fail, and figured the ascent of Hitler would hasten its demise. Their grievous error was believing that Hitler would also fail, and it would pave the way for a Marxist workers revolution.

  120. 120.

    Chris

    @sigaba:
    @Baud:

    What do you think would happen to us if they did that?

    What would happen to them if they did that? My impression of our debt to China was that it was somewhere along the lines of “if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank has a problem.”

  121. 121.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    IIRC, we don’t have debt to China. We have debt to whoever happens to be holding our Treasury bonds. China happens to hold some.

  122. 122.

    Keith G

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    ….but, no, I’m not going to accept that it’s okay to be shot in the head by a disgruntled coworker because overall the crime rate is down. That’s bullshit.

    And who, pray tell, is asking you to accept that?

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    @median:

    But I’ve heard “Swing Kids” is a great movie.

    You were sadly—no, criminally—misinformed. The pitch meeting probably went something like: “It’s Footloose in Nazi Germany!”

    Try The Harmonists (1997; originally The Comedian Harmonists) instead.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone):

    But, no, we can’t talk about workplace violence and easy access to guns because the crime rate is down overall, so we just have to accept that occasionally our coworkers will decide to shoot us in the head. No big deal.

    Hadn’t this man been fired? Did he stalk the reporter, follow her and the cameraman?

    This is not a co-worker sitting next to somebody and going nuts.

    I agree with you that we have a problem with guns and people using them insanely to settle grievances (and is anything known about how this guy got his weapon?), but apart from this, there doesn’t seem to be much actually known about this particular tragic incident, no matter how quickly people Tweet and post about it.

  125. 125.

    A guy

    I think if Barack Obama had a son who was a news reporter he’d look a lot like Vester Flanagan and Bryce Williams

  126. 126.

    Mandalay

    @? Martin:

    China couldn’t even remotely invade Taiwan.

    Well it could, but the costs of doing so would severely outweigh the benefits. Eventually Taiwan will be part of China again, but it won’t be because it was taken by force.

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Keith G:

    People who say stuff like this:

    And yet, crime rates are much lower than they were two decades ago. Cities have gotten much safer – even factoring in the fact that the police seem to be a bit trigger happy.

    Shorter me: The Weimar Republic argument is stupid. The but crime rates are down! argument is also stupid. Spree killings don’t really correlate with the overall crime rate, because they happen for other reasons.

  133. 133.

    fuckwit

    It’s amazing to me here, and elsewhere, the ridiculous urge to jump to conclusions and make broad pronouncements based on those erroneous conclusions. Yeah, I used to do that a lot, but now I see how stupid it is. Nobody yet knows the full story.

    First it HAD to be a right-wing white guy. Then it turned out to be a black guy. Then it turned out he’s a left-wing guy who was radicalized by the SC shooting. Then it HAD to be a disgruntled lover and more example of violence against women. Then it turned out he was gay and if there was any bad relationship it would have been with the male cameraman.

    And then of course guns guns guns, which I can’t argue with– this country fetishizes guns way too much– and then someone helpfully chimes in from Canada reminding us that, no, they have plnty of guns in Canada, but they don’t run around shooting each other for no reason either. And then oh the crime rate here… and then we get reminded that crime is way down from what it used to be. But you’d never know that from the media or the general mood here.

    King Crimson had a great song called “Neurotica”, their take on America being just a roiling bowl of anxiety and terror and panic. I really think that’s what this all is. Why the fuck is everybody running around terrified, jumping to conclusions, being shown snuff films by our media, scared of our own shadows, endlessly nattering about things in the 24/7 know-nothing news cycle, experiencing periodic moral panics about whatever is the latest thing… maybe because there’s no social safety net, everyone is living in terror of losing their job, there’s hundreds of years of racism we haven’t yet dealt with, terrified people cling to their guns…. this stuff is complex and its root if anything is a general culture of fear and reactivity and anxiety and panic that permeates everything we do and say.

    It’s really hard to point out causes and effects, it’s all intertangled. Fear-mongering media, guns, racism, income inequality, patriarchy, no social safety net, at-will employment, no unions, it’s all one big problem and to solve it we need to solve them simultaneouslly.

  134. 134.

    median

    @Chris: “Currently unacceptably bad” vs “on the path to fascism.” This is a weird conflict to have. We’re all discussing the same issues and agreeing it’s unacceptable bad/ Do you think the fascism discussion is counter-productive? If so, how?

    I’m entranced by the discussion for its explanatory power. We are all caught flat footed by Trump, and I think “it’s racism lol” is a very narrow way to see Trump’s block party. It’s racism in the context of economic stagnation combined with political frustration, expressed with policy-free expressions of strength and national greatness, with an internal enemy, and etc. etc.

    I think you’re right to be irked by facile comparisons to Weimar Germany; that’s weak sauce, but the discussion of fascism in the abstract seems perfectly appropriate here.

  135. 135.

    Calouste

    @Betty Cracker: There is a spectrum between “racist villains” and “treat everyone totally equally”. Obviously the shooter had issues, but that doesn’t mean nothing at all happened, and just because what the shooter said isn’t true doesn’t mean the exact opposite is true.

  137. 137.

    median

    @fuckwit: Now I want to hear Woody Allen cover King Crimson on clarinet.

    @Steeplejack: I did really like the Harmonist. I’m not sure which version I saw. Since my girlfriend in college was a German major and she worked at blockbuster and I spent a semester in Berlin. I don’t remember much about it, except a small apartment with a piano, (and how much better it was than Life is Beautiful).

    @Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’m not sure how productive it is to compare Weimar Germany so directly with America right now. Weimar Germany had crushing inflation, not just a bad recession. They had a huge national debt they were paying to the Allies for WW1. The world was in turmoil and people were fighting in the streets for political ideals — unions, Bolshevism had taken over an entire country and people were scared. There were a lot of military territorial ambitions underlying the mood there.

    Even the things we have in common with Weimar Germany are qualitatively different. The Weimar economy was bad. Our economy is bad. But the Weimar economy was much worse. Factories and trains had quickly laid off large swathes of skilled and semi-skilled laborers. America has factory workers that have been in steady decline for decades. Weimar had crippling inflation, we do not. Weimar had huge debts, America has huge debts. But Germans had debts to pay allies which were surrender conditions for WW1, we have debts to pay that we freely incurred. And we hold the world’s reserve currency.

    Germans were militant. We are militant. But Germany wanted to rejoin German-speaking parts of neighboring countries. America wants to hassle middle eastern countries for no particularly good reason.

    Weimar Germany had immigrants. We have immigrants. But Weimar Germany had a glut of Eastern European immigrants rushing to their shores, some of whom were highly skilled — this was the same wave that washed over our shores and inspired the State of Liberty. Our present immigration in the United States are day laborers from Mexico — hardly a threat to the middle class (which is threatened in other ways).

    The fascist overtones to Trumpism are definitely there, but looking for a one-to-one correspondence with the Weimar Republic isn’t quite right and isn’t quite helpful. Fascism was in Italy, it was in Spain. There were hundreds of fascist movements all over the world, each different, some successful, most not. Fascism is more than just “anything that happened in Weimar Germany.”

    I recommend “An Anatomy of Fascism,” by (not Bill) Paxton. There’s a lot of good information there and a distillation of all the separate fascisms into a coherent, general working definition.

  139. 139.

    Elizabelle

    Heard Hillary Clinton make a humane and forceful statement on the ridiculous toll gun violence is taking, that we need to get a handle on it. Happening too much. She was speaking from Iowa.

    And: if you did not happen to be watching CNN those 3-4 minutes (they might have tuned in cuz emailghazi!!), it’s down the memory hole.

    They’re sticking with their nonstop anesthetizing repeat of details known for hours.

    If you hear anything about Hillary this afternoon, it will likely be that she’s off vacation and out on the trail again, because Biden!

    And nothing of her response about gun violence.

    Shabby and lazy. (Describes me too — should not have turned CNN on for background noise …)

  140. 140.

    Marmot

    @Calouste: So your position remains that the killer may not actually have been quick to anger?

    Or are you now talking about a different topic?

  141. 141.

    Elizabelle

    @fuckwit: Yours is a great comment.

    Even explains, to some extent, the Trump voters that so badly scared (right) Frank Luntz this week. Although those fools cannot trace the reasons for their apprehension, and are jumping feetfirst in to the wrong boat. Again.

  142. 142.

    Betty Cracker

    @Calouste: I think it’s generally better to let the victims’ blood dry on the sidewalk before taking a madman’s word that they were complicit in their own targeting, but hey, speculate away. It’s all the rage.

  143. 143.

    BobS

    @median: “An Anatomy of Fascism” is great. Two other scholarly books on the subject are “Fascism: A Very Short Introduction” by Kevin Passmore (like the title says, considerably shorter than Paxton’s book), and “A History of Fascism” by Stanley Payne (somewhat of a tome).
    I’d also recommend “The Beast Reawakens” by Martin Lee — it’s more journalistic than the other books mentioned (which might be somewhat expected as Martin Lee was one of the co-founders of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, producer of the CounterSpin radio show).

  145. 145.

    A guy

    Really pretty news reporters lives do not matter to gay black disgruntled former employees

  146. 146.

    LanceThruster

    In keeping with today’s senseless slaughter, it also marks this one year anniversary (much ignored on all fronts).

    50 Days of Death & Destruction: Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge”
    8 July – 26 August 2014
    (1 month, 2 weeks and 4 days)

    “I look at the pictures of Palestinian dead and injured, mangled almost to a point beyond recognition, suffering in agony and grief and terror if alive, the children without any understanding as to why…as I would seeing high beams on the road at night while driving. Looking directly at them for any length of time would burn their images into my retinas forever. I need to remain able to function, that I might reach my destination. Palestine will be free.”

    ~ LanceThruster

  148. 148.

    sigaba

    @Cacti:

    Hitler’s rise was also abetted by the Communist Party of Germany. […] They declined to because they wanted the Weimar Republic to fail, and figured the ascent of Hitler would hasten its demise.

    But Hitler did fall and the Communists did end up controlling half of Germany, so they were right to an extent, Hitler hastened a communist takeover of Germany — the Communists would then control eastern Germany for about 4 times the duration Hitler did.

    It was sortof a monkeys-claw wish, but they got it, good and hard. They just misjudged how much abuse Germany could take before it hit bottom.

    On a more serious note, it’s clear that the actions of Thalmann and KPD clearly had the result of bringing Hitler into power, I don’t know if this is good enough to attach any sort of moral responsibility to them. In any case, if the KPD had tried to join the SPD in coalition it simply would have precipitated a coup and probably the assassination of Thalmann by the military and forces loyal to Hindenburg — he would never have allowed the communists into the government even if they were willing, he appointed Hitler to the chancellorship as an end-run around this. Thalmann preferred strife to governing, but it was Hindenburg who preferred Hitler to Thalmann, and not only did he prefer Hitler, he gave Hitler the job. Who is the worse?

  149. 149.

    sigaba

    @? Martin:

    Apple holds 10% as much in US treasuries as China does. You seriously overstate China’s influence here.

    They couldn’t bankrupt the US government to anything but It would be enough to invert the yield curve and possibly trigger a recession.

    Anyways it wouldn’t be about actually doing it; Eisenhower didn’t actually call our loans on the UK, he only threatened to do so, and that was enough.

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Cacti: Well, the eastern third or so of Germany did end up Communist for a good long while there! It just took fascist dictatorship, a world war, millions of people murdered in murder factories and the whole country being bombed into rubble and invaded to get there.

  151. 151.

    Matt McIrvin

    @fuckwit:

    It’s really hard to point out causes and effects, it’s all intertangled. Fear-mongering media, guns, racism, income inequality, patriarchy, no social safety net, at-will employment, no unions, it’s all one big problem and to solve it we need to solve them simultaneouslly.

    That’s impossible.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @fuckwit: Anyway, I think it’s true that people slot events they see into the stories they have and expect to see. We’re a bunch of liberals here who have seen a bunch of spree-shooting stories and we have a narrative about loser white guys that we’ve taught ourselves to automatically apply to them. Inevitably some of them are going to not fit the pattern.

    And on the other side of the coin, there are people like our trolls here who automatically needled us by fitting it into the ready-made “black guys are scary criminals” story.

    It’s human nature to think in terms of stories like this, and we’re not going to change it any time soon (only the stories change). In the United States there’s been very little radical-left-wing political violence since the Sixties or early Seventies; it’s very unusual to see it, which is why it’s so weird for anyone in a younger generation to see conservatives obsessing about Obama being somehow connected to Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. Domestic political violence here is almost always right-wing in some way. But it’s quite possible that as the political situation here rebalances we could actually get more left-wing violence, and people on the left are going to have to deal with that story coming back again.

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