Something to take the taste of wingnut stupidity out of our metaphorical mouths. Molly Roberts, at the Washington Post:
Few would have guessed the next shooting to make national news would be carried out by a female animal-rights activist enraged at YouTube for demonetizing her fitness videos. And because YouTube shooter Nasim Najafi Aghdam doesn’t fit into the familiar narratives of the gun epidemic, those on the right have taken to Twitter to create narratives of their own…
… The fact that Aghdam doesn’t match the common profile of a shooter who captures this much media attention underscores the one thing that does unite every instance of gun violence: guns.…
Aghdam stirred such a frenzy in part because she chose to attack one of the highest-profile workplaces in the country. But the FBI counts 220 “active shooter” events between 2000 and 2016; stories similar to this one simply don’t often inspire such feverish coverage or conspiracizing….
Visualize a society where “Whew, just another workplace shooting / domestic-violence situation!” would seem as barbaric as nonchalant historical notes like “This week’s public hanging drew a fair crowd” or “Souvenirs from the latest lynching are now being circulated”…
trollhattan
When I first read of active shooter at YouTube (probably here, you jackals) admit my immediate response was “at least it’s not a school.” They’ve mainstreamed murder committed in this particular fashion.
efgoldman
Well if you put it that way.
Steeplejack
I get enough of the regular wingnut bigotry without having to read up on the new, fabricated bigotry. Taking a pass for now.
Maybe I’m just tired.
rk
Are you telling me this was not a false flag operation? Impossible!
Mnemosyne
Huh. Most of the gun nuts I’ve seen addressing her rampage just say, Islamic terrorist! and leave it at that.
Wag
The most important aspect of this shooting to me is her choice of weapon and the effect on the number of casualties. She chose a handgun, not an assault rifle. Between the lower fire rate and the lower muzzle speed of th bullets the casualty figures were far lower than we have grown to expect from active shooter episodes.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Yup, except that the Ba’hai faith is as Islamic as Christian Scientist is Christian.
Way too many Dunning-Kruger Hyphenated ‘Merkins.
efgoldman
@rk:
Why not? Newtown and Parkland wereMnemosyne
@Jay:
That’s being a little too dismissive of Baha’i, IMO. More like they are to Islam what Buddhism is to Hinduism.
frosty
@Wag: I hate that we’re all becoming experts in firearms. Muzzle velocities, jacketed bullets, rate of fire, magazine capacity. Ugh.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
When I first saw her name, I did assume she was Muslim. But Nasim Aghdam’s faith is Bahaism, an Abrahamic faith that originated in Iran in the 19th century. It is an offshoot of Islam so Bahais there can and sometimes do get prosecuted for heresy. The few Bahais I’ve known in Malaysia were far from violent people.
cthulhu
Was living in San Jose and only 12 when one of the most famous workplace shootings happened “up the road.” Despite their all to common regularity, that category still bothers me every time I hear about one.
Mike J
(multiple tweets joined)
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Baha’is are not uncommon in the US — it was a popular alternative religion in the Midwest at the turn of the 20th century. The oldest surviving Baha’i temple in the world is in Wilmette, IL, near where I grew up. There are even a few famous Baha’is, like actor Rainn Wilson (who used to be on “The Office.”)
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
It’s actually meant to be more dismissive of ‘Merkin’s and Christian Scientists.
No branch of Islam claim’s Ba’hai as part of Islam, and Ba’hai itself makes no claims on being part of Islam.
The relationship is closer to that of Christianity and Momonism, except the Ba’hai claim no son of god, and no “True Prophet” except their founder,
But you know, try talking about that to any Dunning-Kruger ‘Merkin.
All the collective wisdom and knowlege of man, and Cat pictures, available at the human fingertips,
and yet, we are blessed with so many morons.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
On a related note, Huffington Post reports that homophobia wasn’t an especial factor in the Pulse shooting: Mateen actually had attempted to shoot up a mall on behalf of ISIS, but randomly chose Pulse at the last minute.
Mike in DC
My late brother was a Bahai.
Wag
@frosty:
I agree 100%. I didn’t sign up for forensic pathology
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
I’m mostly going by Wikipedia here, but it’s more like the split between Judaism and Christianity. It developed from Babísm, which split off from Islam.
Baha’is are mostly liberal and non-racist and frequently file or support civil rights lawsuits, so I tend to respect them. If you were going to compare them with a Christian sect, the Quakers would be a reasonably apt comparison.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Still bummed about the cancellation of Backstrom (Rainn Wilson) after 13 episodes. Ditto for Battle Creek. The spring of 2015 was tough on my personal mediascape. Plus I get reminded every time I see mayhem guy Dean Winters in those insurance commercials.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in DC:
So, thumbs up or thumbs down? Like I said, I’m mostly going by Wikipedia and extremely limited personal experience.
Mike in DC
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah. They struck me as a pretty peaceable, reasonable group of folks. I was a teen when my brother died, so my knowledge of his faith was pretty limited.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
We have Baha’i here as well, it’s a refugee ticket out of Iran for many, and they are good people, ( in general, like many of us),
Like you said, in many regards, it’s closer to the Judeism/Christianity split, but then again not .
But they sure ain’t Muslim’s.
Duane the dairy farmer
@Steeplejack: Here I figured I was the only person in the country who liked Backstrom and Battle Creek….
NotMax
Now want to start a jazz quintet, the Baha’i Five.
Starfish
@Mnemosyne: I posted a picture of one of the daughters of Naser al-Din Shah on Facebook, and a Baha’i friend told me how The Bab was killed by Naser al-Din Shah.
efgoldman
@NotMax:
Lead plays Hawaiian steel guitar?
NotMax
@efgoldman
Electric ukelele.
:)
Steeplejack
@Duane the dairy farmer:
Then no doubt you also liked The Good Guys with Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks, another one-season wonder.
Apparently we are a “quirky” breed.
If you ever run across it on PBS, Netflix or wherever, the Australian series Mr. and Mrs. Murder hits that same spot. Trailer here.
Jay
@Steeplejack:
Mr. and Mrs. Murder, other than her hugs, are excellent.
So’s Ms. Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.
Corner Stone
Now that I am catching up on my DVR being 3 hours behind, let me just say. Scott Pruitt is one corrupt mofo.
cthulhu
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Yes, a very worthy read.
Yutsano
@NotMax: Dizzy was Baha’i. That would be quite appropriate.
@Mnemosyne:
And some of us are Juicers.
*waves*
I don’t talk about it much on here but I have mentioned it before. And the relationship of the Baha’i faith to Islam is closer to Twelve Imam Shi’a with a lot of Sufi influence. But the laws and the faith are quite different from Islam.
NotMax
@Yutsano
Met a Baha’i family who came to the U.S. from Bulgaria.
Origuy
@cthulhu: That was the TRW shooting in Sunnyvale? I was working just down the road.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Your six degrees of separation for the day: it turns out that my shrink is a good friend of Bradley Whitford’s.
@Yutsano:
As you probably already know, Carole Lombard was also Baha’i.
joel hanes
When the name was announced, but after the some of the social media accounts went dark
I went looking for pictures
I invite you to do the same
No smiles, no grimaces, no expression in any of them
Uniformly, the same mask of focused anger
Look at the mouth
This person had been wound too tight for a long while
cthulhu
@Origuy:
No, a bit further north. Year: 1978.
And Twinkies were supposedly the cause.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Seals and Croft, the 70s duo, are also Baha’i. Khalil Greene the former ball player is as well. It would not shock me if you found quite a few Baha’i at liberal events. Just not in Democratic politics. Well officially anyway.
Corner Stone
If this is not snark, then facts not in evidence.
Origuy
@cthulhu: Oh, that one. I had just moved to the area and was living in Mountain View.
cthulhu
@Corner Stone:
Probably comes from this
But when you think about it, the crossovers in both cases seem to share the same quality: not fans of Obama. I wonder why?
Also I can see their number reducing significantly among this segment of “Dems” over 8 years.
Jay
@Corner Stone:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-those-clinton-mccain-crossover-voters/
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/08/23/wow-12-percent-of-bernie-voters-voted-for-trump-n2372351%3famp=true
16% of McCain voters said they would have voted for Hillary had she been the nominee,
12% of Bernie Bro’s voted for Trump,
But it really doesn’t matter, except to continue to stoke the fires of infighting.
We know a lot of the Bernie Bro’s online, and in the RW, were just ratfucking and were never going to vote for Hillary, and we know a lot of the PUMA’s online and in the RW were just ratfucking and would never have voted for Hillary.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
My question is, how many Bernie voters went for Stein instead? I suspect that the two numbers combined is more than the number of Hillary voters who went for McCain, but no one ever seems to ask the question.
Jay
@cthulhu:
On one hand, you have race, on the other, mysogeny, there is some overlap, and both are strong drivers.
On the otherhand,
62.3% of eligible voters, voted in 2008, and Obama got 52.9% of them.
58% turned out in 2016 and Hillary got 48.2%
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Thing is, it’s people saying stuff in exit polls. We know that a host of Hillary supporter’s in 2008, wern’t Dem’s, had never been active, and became viciously vindictive when Obama won, then disappeared completely.
Same thing tor Bernie Bro’s.
Stien got a total of 1.06%, so all her votes, not just Bernie Bro’s, sill put self professed PUMA’s over the top,
And that’s just percentages of voters, when you add in the difference in actual votes, the gap’s even larger.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
In Michigan, the number of Stein voters was about twice as many as the margin of Trump’s victory there.
2016 was won on the margins, and Stein was an important one of those margins. In a different year, those votes might not have mattered.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
In a different year there might not have been a “perfect storm”, but it was what it was.
And like I said, it’s just exit polls. We have no idea how many 2008 PUMA’s were KKK, and how many 2016 Bernie Bros. were Russian.
What we do know is turnout was down, below demographics, and all the ratfucking in the world, wouldn’t have mattered, if turnout had matched 2008.
If you are looking for “one thing” to blame in 2016, then it’s by far the MSM’s 40 year Hunting of the Clintons.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
Two words: Voter suppression.
A few more: Republicans gutted the VRA specifically to get this result. They didn’t expect Trump, but they set everything in motion to get an Electoral College victory in 2016 come hell or high water. Bernie wouldn’t have done any better than Hillary did, and possibly would have done worse.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
It wasn’t just voter supression, both technical ( VRA) and foul, ( Russians/Anal/Mercer),
A lot of people, given a choice between Treason Tribble, and Hillary Clinton, stayed home.
40 years of fake scandal’s had taken their toll, and then the MSM, like the Pavlovian dog’s they had been trained to be, went yapping after nothingburger after nothingburger of “Emails”, of which the most consequential thing, was a meh! Risotto recipie.
Given a choice, between Hillary As She Was Portrayed, and the Any Fool Could See Donald As He Was, too many people stayed home.
Mnemosyne
@Jay:
Some stayed home voluntarily, but in Wisconsin in particular, they were forced to sit it out with Kafkaesque voter ID laws that disenfranchised people who had been voting for decades.
But there are going to be entire textbooks written once the whole thing comes out. We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the Russian interference and media manipulation. No one factor would have done it, but all the factors together tipped just enough votes in just enough states that Trump could get 3 million fewer votes and still win a technical victory. That’s why he keeps claiming that there were “millions” of illegal votes in California.
Karl Rove gerrymandered the whole fucking country to get his Permanent Republican Majority, and he didn’t care who that Republican would be. We now see the result.
Jay
Over 108 million eligible voters, didn’t turn out in 2016.
Over 39 million “registered” voters, didn’t turn out in 2016.
Bill K
@frosty: This is something that bothers me about the whole debate. Gun nuts like to trot out their expertise to try to shut down debate. “You don’t know what ‘AR’ stands for!” “You can’t even distinguish between different calibers!” Etc. etc.
What I wish to emphasize is this – Guns are designed to be used by MORONS and WEAKLINGS. This is the brutal truth that gun nuts avoid. Load, point, pull the trigger with one finger. That’s all you need to know. If a one-year old child can grab mommy’s handgun and kill her with it (true story) then anyone is capable of murder given a firearm. Guns give everyone the power of life and death on a whim.
Aimai
@Mnemosyne: what?
P-Dog
@Wag:
Complete claptrap. If you remember, the Virginia tech shooter used a 9mm handgun and a 22 LR handgun to commit the worst school shooting in American history (with a higher body count than Parkland’s shooting with an AR).
Look, a 1000 fps 115 grain bullet will still kill and wound just as good as a .223 if you have shot placement. The thing you can thank goodness about is that Nasim was a highly inexperienced shooter, not that she “merely had a handgun instead of an AR”
Also, in case you didn’t realize, despite having an AWB , ARs are still legal in California — they just can’t come with the “evil” features that they do in other states (traditional pistol grips, flash hiders, collapsible stocks). The shooter could have just as easily purchased an AR and used that.
What makes more sense is that Nasim chose a handgun most likely because it could be hidden in a purse and far less conspicuous than a rifle at the low-ready.
You can be anti-gun, but at least be informed.
Duane the dairy farmer
@Steeplejack: late to reply…but yes, I did indeed like the good guys…..with foghat
Sab
@P-Dog: Another gun nut troll. “You have no right to discuss this unless you are well versed in gun techs.”
Yes actually I do. I haven’t fired a gun since I was 12 at a southern summer camp. Back then the NRA was all about safety.
When I was in high school in the late sixties/early seventies all the nutjobs had switchblade knives.
When I was in high school only the weird deerhunters had guns. And all they did was deerhunt.
That is how it should be. Deerhunters should deerhunt. I just don’t want my granddaughters to keep having to do active shooter training in school.
Also, I live in a small city although I am not much suited to urban life because I cannot imagine voluntarily living in a whiteflight suburb or exurb. Those people out there are crazy. They cannot even drive in a civil manner.
P-Dog
@Sab:
So, you first use a ad-hominem (“gun nut troll”). Nice way to be classy.
Then you delve into a straw-man (“no right to discuss unless you’re well versed in gun techs”). I never said that. In fact, only half of my complaint against WAG was about technology — the other was about knowledge of California gun laws. You as well did not address my two criticisms: #1 A 9mm can kill just as good as .223 (Virgina Tech is an excellent example), and #2 ARs are still legal in California, but WAG (And maybe you) apparently wasn’t aware of that.
So do you have anything constructive to say about my criticisms? Or are you just going to ad hominem and resort to emotional arguments that have no bearing on good policy?