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You are here: Home / Gun Issues / Gun nuts / Where Do We Go From Here?

Where Do We Go From Here?

by John Cole|  November 19, 20217:17 pm| 58 Comments

This post is in: Gun nuts

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I don’t get the Rittenhouse verdict. And I doubt I ever will. I understand Wisconsin self-defense laws are a mess, but that still doesn’t change much for me, and the reason it doesn’t is because I fundamentally do not understand one key thing.

And that is that I do not now nor never will understand how someone gets to claim self defense after driving thirty miles with a loaded weapon to look for trouble. That’s what happened, with both Rittenhouse and at least one of the dudes he killed. And I don’t get it. You got all amped up, grabbed your gun, got in a car, rode thirty miles, threw yourself into the midst of a ruckus that didn’t fucking involve you, and ya fucked around and found out.

You weren’t an innocent. You weren’t on your front porch and defending your family or property from a riot. You weren’t in McDonalds and a riot broke out. You were out in the streets wilding. You were an enemy combatant. There’s no claim of self defense that will make sense to me. Period.

The other thing I do not get is just how drastically things have changed in my lifetime. When I was younger there just wasn’t this fetishization of guns. People round here had them, but they were thought of as tools. It’s weird watching pickup trucks and guns go from things you had because you needed them and used them to cultural statements of manhood. The only people who had guns were hunters and farmers and maybe a couple veterans and ex cops. Or rifles that were passed down. But they weren’t toys or shit like that.

Same with pickemup trucks. The only people who had pickup trucks when I was a kid did manual labor or owned or worked on a farm. And they were tools. It was a regular thing to see several light pickup trucks with “farm use” spraypainted across them. Or someone with an old beater with a bunch of construction toolboxes slung in the back with some ladders and other shit. But unless you were a single dude, it was not your only mode of transportation. You went to the doctor or church or to the fair or the grocery in the ford ltd or the oldsmobile or the cutlass.

But now guns and pickup trucks aren’t tools anymore, and I find that weird. I haven’t touched a gun since I got out of the army, and I’m just not in that line of work anymore. I don’t own a band saw, a jackhammer, a nail gun, or any other tool, either, because I don’t need them. And I don’t own a pickup truck because I don’t need one for work. I see people carrying around guns at the most benign level to be as weird as a craftsman walking into the grocery store with a powerdrill strapped to their hip.

At the less benign level we have a bunch of lunatics running around heavily armed with stickers all over their unscratched 80k monster truck with zero dents, and they’re just there to be menacing. And I don’t know how we unwind this insanity and change this cultural statement or if we even can. And that’s a shame, because with that nonsense comes the evil that we saw in Kenosha.

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Previous Post: « Friday Evening Open Thread: Hold On to the Good News
Next Post: The Reality of the Rittenhouse Acquittal Is the Result of Poorly Written/Worded Self Defense & Stand Your Ground Laws spy v. spy flyouts»

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    West of the Rockies

    November 19, 2021 at 7:22 pm

    Toxic masculinity. I think the 80’s spawned it via, among others, Limbaugh, Johnny Rambo, etc.

  2. 2.

    Zzyzx

    November 19, 2021 at 7:22 pm

    And I don’t know how we unwind this insanity and change this cultural statement or if we even can

    That’s where I am. The verdict? I don’t know or care that much about it because I didn’t immerse myself into the technicalities of the trial. The fact that this asshat is being treated like a hero and would probably be a martyr if he did get jail time? I don’t see how we proceed as a society with that attitude.

  3. 3.

    Ruckus

    November 19, 2021 at 7:25 pm

    John

    He wasn’t going there to kill, he was going there to protect – OK this is where it goes off the rails because what he was going there to protect was his right to kill people he doesn’t like and he doesn’t have that right, he only thinks he does. The bigger problem is that the legal system, such as it is, agreed with him, and there is no law written that says what he thinks it does.

  4. 4.

    Morzer

    November 19, 2021 at 7:25 pm

    To me, this appalling verdict helped along by a blatantly biased judge is just another stage of America’s disintegration into failed apartheid statehood with white conservative thugs thinking that they can bully, rape and murder with impunity. There are more factors pulling America apart than holding it together and I don’t see how that changes.

  5. 5.

    Belafon

    November 19, 2021 at 7:26 pm

    Every door at my elementary school open to the outside world when I was a kid, and I’m six months older than you, and we never had any shootings.

     

    Guns were not only tools, but you respected them because they were dangerous. And other gun owners would get on your ass if you misused them in any way.

  6. 6.

    debbie

    November 19, 2021 at 7:27 pm

    Well, I guess karma will see to it that Kyle Rittenhouse will end up no better off than George Zimmerman.

  7. 7.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 7:28 pm

    Great post, Cole.  Every word.

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    November 19, 2021 at 7:31 pm

    [Peter Tosh] Regulate it, yeah, yeah [/Peter Tosh]

    You want to drive a 8,000 pound pickup and don’t have a (legitimate) business license? Pay the tax for the CO2 and the wear and tear on the commonweal.

    You want to carry a firearm around in public? Pay the tax, go through the local background check, go through the state background check, go through the FBI/ATF/DHS background check, and wait for the overworked clerks at each stage to do the paperwork, and wait for your weapon to be inspected and judged to be compliant with all applicable rules, and wait for your storage location to be inspected and judged to be compliant with all applicable rules, etc.

    If Roberts’s SCOTUS disagrees, we can lobby Congress to strip the SCOTUS of ability to hear such cases, expand the court, pass new laws, and all the rest. The right of the rest of us to be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness cannot be subject to unregulated armed yahoos or the rights are meaningless. The SCOTUS was never intended to be 5-6 unelected RWNJs to rule over the rest of us…

    We must not get discouraged. Eyes on the prizes.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    debbie

    November 19, 2021 at 7:32 pm

    I don’t remember seeing any pickup trucks when I was growing up in suburbia. I do remember sometime in 1997 watching a guy parking his pickup in the apartment complex parking lot, getting out, reaching into the truck’s bed, and lifting out his briefcase. I thought pickups were silly then, and I think they’re mostly silly now.

  10. 10.

    Almost Retired

    November 19, 2021 at 7:37 pm

    Yup, everything in this post is spot on.  I guess what depresses me most about the verdict — which I think can be at least be partially rationalized by some gaps in Wisconsin gun and manslaughter law, and quirks of the local court system – is that this vile little shit is going to be lionized as a hero for defending himself against threats that he created.  There. were. three. people. shot.  All by Rittenhouse.  And the upshot is that the Right has basically prioritized the protection of property over human life.  Or, at least, certain human life.

  11. 11.

    El Cruzado

    November 19, 2021 at 7:41 pm

    The rights of certain people’s property over the rights of certain other people’s life.

  12. 12.

    sixthdoctor

    November 19, 2021 at 7:44 pm

    There is no doubt in my mind that Rittenhouse will be a guest of Gaetz or Cawthorn or one of those trolls at Biden’s first State of the Union.

  13. 13.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 7:45 pm

    @sixthdoctor:  I believe you are correct on that.

  14. 14.

    M31

    November 19, 2021 at 7:47 pm

    so weird to see a parking lot full of really expensive shiny pickup trucks that clearly have NEVER had anything tossed in the back, like DUDE what’s it FOR?

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 7:47 pm

    email from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

    A jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse today for the murders of Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum and the attempted murder of Gaige Grosskreutz.

    Rittenhouse was one of many armed civilians who came out to the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020; however, he was the only one who pulled the trigger and took lives on that tragic day.

    Our hearts are with the victims in this case – the individuals killed and wounded by Rittenhouse as well as the families and community torn apart by the consequences of this deadly violence.

    The acquittal of Rittenhouse will add fuel to the fire of armed radicalization in the United States. That a white male youth can travel across state lines, armed with an assault rifle, and engage in armed confrontation resulting in multiple deaths without facing criminal accountability is the all-too-familiar outcome in a country where systemic racism continues to rot the system.

    Far-right extremists have already published a deluge of propaganda lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse, and his acquittal is likely to further embolden them to pretend that his violent actions were somehow heroic.

    We will continue to see this sort of violence repeat itself in towns across the country unless we, as a nation, move toward greater prevention of radicalization, countering the antidemocratic hate that enabled the Kenosha violence, and ending the systemic racism that supports it.

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 7:50 pm

    @M31: I knew someone whose -ex not only had a pickup but she had a “dually” – where there are two tires on each side in the back.

    She liked her cowboys, and her license plate was “cowboy up”.

    He used to mock her in disgust, saying that she used it to “haul air”.

  17. 17.

    Skepticat

    November 19, 2021 at 7:51 pm

    Although I don’t get the “thinking” behind the verdict, I do get every word and nuance what you’re saying, J.C.

  18. 18.

    stinger

    November 19, 2021 at 7:52 pm

    Thank you, John Cole.

  19. 19.

    Skepticat

    November 19, 2021 at 7:53 pm

    @sixthdoctor: ​

    And/or an employee. That’s a painfully accurate and nauseating thought,

  20. 20.

    VOR

    November 19, 2021 at 7:58 pm

    My fear is that some right wing group decides Mr. Rittenhouse would make a better martyr than a spokesman. The Left or BLM would be blamed. The situation could become explosive very quickly.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    November 19, 2021 at 8:00 pm

    @debbie: My mom had a friend in the late ’70s that was from San Bernadino, I think, but somehow ended up in Dayton, Ohio.  She had a 1970 GTO that she sold to my mom, and bought a pickup afterwards.  She said she always wanted one, and remarked about the comments she got from the dealer and men who saw her driving it… :-/

    An electronics prodigy that I knew at WPAFB had a 6-cylinder F150 that he loved, and remarked that he couldn’t understand why people got a V-8 in them because their mileage was so terrible.

    Trucks can be very handy, and all kinds of people get them for all kinds of reasons.  And the Chicken Tax makes them extremely profitable for the auto makers, even moreso when they keep making them more and more tricked-out and expensive, so they keep building more of them…

    The new 40+ MPG hybrid Ford Maverick (front-wheel drive) might be a game changer. Honda probably should have made a hybrid Ridgeline years ago. There are rumors of one in 2023. Maybe we’ll start seeing small pickups again if those sell well and if gas prices keep going up.
    We’ll see…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    trollhattan

    November 19, 2021 at 8:00 pm

    @debbie: ​
    Same. If haulin’ was needed some dad had a debris trailer he’d lend, or they shoveled the stuff headed to the dump into the back of the station wagon. Had a few trips to the dump with dad to do just that. We flung our junk onto the (burning) junk heap.

    Now it’s what you drive to the mall and the rest of the time, infest the neighborhood street because around here at least, none of the garages fits a “full-size” pickup. Some families have three or four. It’s…weird.

  23. 23.

    neldob

    November 19, 2021 at 8:00 pm

    @WaterGirl: Yep. Listened to A1 this am to Mr. David Lightman, Congressional Correspondent for McClatchy News talking about Gosar and, I paraphrase, how violence is becoming endemic in politics and he blames it on “the times”. I wrote 1A and am about to write him some flame. Talk about cancel culture, apparently no one who wants to maintain their credibility or something can even say the Republicans are fomenting violence which is as obvious as the nose on my face, for crying out loud. Is he afraid to? Might get death threats?

  24. 24.

    gene108

    November 19, 2021 at 8:10 pm

    When I was younger there just wasn’t this fetishization of guns.

    I think what did it was conceal carry laws. I remember, when I was a kid the only people who carried guns in public were cops and people up to no good. People thought carrying a gun to the grocery store was nuts. Then conceal carry laws started passing in states through the 1990’s, the idea we need people with guns everywhere started taking hold.

    Open carry laws are less than 10 years old. But trying to overturn those will be seen as outright gun confiscation by Republicans, and fiercely fought.

    There’s no reconciliation with the gun nuts, who own the Republican Party, and the rest of society. They’ve staked out a crazy maximalist position that the only way they can be safe in public is to always be armed, therefore we need laws that enable guns to be acquired with little fuss and carried everywhere. Any hindrance to the guns everywhere creed is seen as direct proof their opponents support jack booted government agents busting down doors and arresting gun owners.

    I really don’t know what to do. One segment of society is no longer rational, and they control a major political party.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    November 19, 2021 at 8:10 pm

    @West of the Rockies: ​
     

    I think the 80’s spawned it via, among others, Limbaugh, Johnny Rambo, etc.

    Yes and no. Yes, those people were clearly involved, but no because they would have fallen flat without a receptive audience. I think there’s a lot to the idea that society used to be built around and cater to the stereotypical gun and pickup demographic, and it just doesn’t to the same extent today. They’re freaking out because they see the loss of power and prestige, and their only response is to fight it rather than to try to adapt to the new way of doing things.

  26. 26.

    M31

    November 19, 2021 at 8:11 pm

    @WaterGirl: hahaha I bet she harvested a fine cowboy crop with that setup

  27. 27.

    SectionH

    November 19, 2021 at 8:14 pm

    @M31: With you there. Generally in SE Missouri/Southern Illinois when I was a kid, people who drove pickups needed them. Same for many years when I was a teen and even later, in central Kentucky. And then they became a fashion statement for rednecks.

    And it continues. San Diego County has more farms, individually owned farms, than any other county in the country. Yet the % of pickups that clearly have never hauled anything bigger than their drivers is enormous.

  28. 28.

    Craig

    November 19, 2021 at 8:14 pm

    Yes. I’m about your age Cole, and I remember the same. My neighbors had some Savage and Marlin rifles cause deer season, they also trapped muskrat cause they sold pelts. We lived in the woods, if you walked out my backyard you could walk all day through woods, marsh and swamps that made up a couple of Civil War battles. My dad had an old beater 68 GMC pickup so we could go get a cord of wood a couple times a year, and to go to the dump. But its just weird to me that guns and trucks are people’s identity. Although I do approve of my cousin in Arkansas who got an F150 cause she wanted to be high enough to see since she’d never driven till she was 48, has a Scottish accent, purple hair, and the truck is covered in Hello Kitty stickers. There’s something good in that.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 8:15 pm

    @neldob: The Republicans have all gone mad.

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    November 19, 2021 at 8:15 pm

    @M31: LOL.  Literally.  And yes, yes she did!

  31. 31.

    delk

    November 19, 2021 at 8:18 pm

    If you are too scared to go someplace without a gun stay the fuck home.

  32. 32.

    debbie

    November 19, 2021 at 8:18 pm

    @trollhattan:

    Now it’s what you drive to the mall…

    And take up one and a half parking spaces!

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    November 19, 2021 at 8:22 pm

    @delk: 
    It’s bizarre that the same people who will ridicule someone for wearing a mask during a pandemic don’t want to go anywhere unarmed. A lot more people have died of COVID in the past year and a half than have died of random gun violence since WWII.

  34. 34.

    Ksmiami

    November 19, 2021 at 8:22 pm

    @Morzer:  we need to start blowing up their toys and taking away their technology and communication devices. They are a menace

  35. 35.

    Ksmiami

    November 19, 2021 at 8:23 pm

    Ps hoping a bunch of these cretins die in the next Covid burn through. Yes, I said it.

  36. 36.

    HeleninEire

    November 19, 2021 at 8:28 pm

    This post. Yeah. It’s making me cry. And making me angry. And making me feel exhausted.

    Imma go watch the most recent episode of The Great British Baking Show. Paul Hollywood will make me feel better.

  37. 37.

    gene108

    November 19, 2021 at 8:33 pm

    @Skepticat:

    And/or an employee. That’s a painfully accurate and nauseating thought,

    Part of the Right’s success is they have billionaires, who don’t mind giving idiots six figure jobs, just to make sure everyone stays in line with their agenda. I mean you know tax cuts don’t reduce the deficit by spurring economic growth, there’s 40 years of evidence. But they want this core ideology sustained forever, so they pay idiots to keep spouting lies, which keeps the lies going despite the evidence.

    Same thing with giving Rittenhouse a job. It keeps the lies going that we all should be armed, when we step out of the house and that BLM protests are violent destructive antifa assaults on law abiding citizen’s lives and property.

    There’s nothing so small to not reward, as long as it furthers the radical rightwing revolution conservatives have been advancing for decades.

  38. 38.

    Omnes Omnibus

    November 19, 2021 at 8:34 pm

    @HeleninEire: ​
     

    Paul Hollywood will make me feel better.

    This may be the first time anyone has typed that.

  39. 39.

    James E Powell

    November 19, 2021 at 8:41 pm

    This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we White Americans are really just a nation of 220 240 million used car salesmen with all the money we they need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us them uncomfortable

    Hunter S Thompson, with edits by me.

  40. 40.

    passerby

    November 19, 2021 at 8:50 pm

    @James E Powell:

    There is no justice. And there is no peace. And if you complain about that, white people will show up to shoot you. Just like a majority of white people want them to.

  41. 41.

    HeleninEire

    November 19, 2021 at 9:01 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: But it’s true. Watching. Good show! Who’s gonna get into the final??????

  42. 42.

    Richard

    November 19, 2021 at 9:33 pm

    I don’t understand how that stupid boy gets away with this. What is he even doing with a gun for killing  people anyway. Why does he claim to be a paramedic? He can’t even wipe his own ass.

     

    This is a bad verdict. He doesn’t even get parole or jail sentence.? He doesn’t have to say i am sorry ? He is Free As Fuck!?

     

     

     

    He went looking for trouble and he shot 3 people and killed 2 and now he is acquitted?

     

     

    I don’t understand.

  43. 43.

    Spanish Moss

    November 19, 2021 at 9:42 pm

    I am surprised at the perceptions of pickup trucks. I have owned a pickup truck as my primary vehicle for twenty years, and I don’t need it for work. We use it to carry stuff many times a week. Trash and recycling for the transfer station since we don’t have trash pickup in our town. Lumber from the hardware store. Plants from the nursery. We can easily throw 4+ bikes in the back, or 4 kayaks. Or camping stuff.  Or my kids’ stuff to/from college. I cannot tell you how many friends we have helped haul stuff.

    I had no clue that when I drive my pickup to the grocery store that people might look at it as some kind of statement on my part. It is a very handy vehicle, we don’t use it for long trips, and we don’t have money for an additional vehicle just because pickup trucks should only be for work. Wow.

  44. 44.

    Ruckus

    November 19, 2021 at 9:54 pm

    I drove pickups when I owned my first business because I had to carry stuff. Mostly metal stuff that was loaded with an overhead hoist because it weighed up to 3000 lbs, or a lift truck because it weighed up to 1000 and was on a pallet. I didn’t see any reason to own one other than that and I’d been around or driving pickups since 1961, up till 1994. And none of them were fancy pants trucks with carpets and leather seats. They were all single seat, 2 door work trucks. And looked like it. All bought new, none sold in any way which could be described as even close to newish. One I sold for $150.00 and it’s possible I may have taken advantage of the mechanic who bought it. And he drove it before purchase.

    I’ve purchased a lot of work trucks, both for my company and when I worked in pro sports. I don’t get the point of a $50K-$75K pickup.

  45. 45.

    LeftCoastYankee

    November 19, 2021 at 9:58 pm

    Too tired of the stupid.

    Maybe I’ll start carrying my cordless drill on my belt in public… and I won’t even charge it.

    I want my stupid to be safe at least.

  46. 46.

    Narya

    November 19, 2021 at 10:13 pm

    I’m on my phone so can’t find the link but tbogg nailed it in a post on him and the NRA on his old blogspot blog

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    November 19, 2021 at 10:14 pm

    @Spanish Moss:

    A working truck does not have to be for a business. And you might not live in a place like say I do, where I see a lot of very new trucks, in a very suburban area, that cost $50K and up, get better mileage than they used to but still not great with the average price of $4.50/gal and up in name brand stations and none of them are used for work, you can see that by the aftermarket wheels and tires the bed covers, the paint.

    And that’s not the point of at least my comment and that is that you actually use it for hauling stuff, on a routine basis. I drove pickups sometimes empty but hauled stuff all the time. There are millions of people who never or almost never do, who live in extremely urban areas, who wash and polish them regularly. They spend huge amounts on relatively low mpg vehicles that take up a lot of room, are often unwilling to properly share the road and they aren’t doing it to even haul the groceries. Even if they are good emissions wise per mpg, they still burn a lot of fuel and create more pollution.

    That’s the point. The F150 is Ford’s best selling vehicle. The Silverado is Chevy’s. A lot of them are not used the way you use a pickup.

  48. 48.

    Poe Larity

    November 19, 2021 at 10:37 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Yes, those people were clearly involved, but no because they would have fallen flat without a receptive audience

    Was the message of Rambo a flag waving full auto M-16 fetish, the treatment of Vietnam Veterans, or violence crazed out-of-control police?

    Yes, yes and yes. If we believe Fox has created an audience, Gliberal Hollywood hasn’t been a victim of their programming – they’ve been writing the scripts.

  49. 49.

    Poe Larity

    November 19, 2021 at 10:47 pm

    @Another Scott:

    The new 40+ MPG hybrid Ford Maverick (front-wheel drive) might be a game changer.

    I lived in the south for decades and never had a truck. Havent owned a car in 8 years, but rent a lot. Rural projects.

    I’ll own a Maverick, or a Japanese hybrid truck if they do it, within the next year.

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    November 19, 2021 at 11:13 pm

    @Narya: I remember that post. When I was reading tbogg regularly, he wasn’t  often serious or introspective so when he was, it was powerful. 

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    November 19, 2021 at 11:47 pm

    @Narya: This one? TBogg: I was the NRA

    It’s a good piece.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  52. 52.

    Geeno

    November 20, 2021 at 12:01 am

    Sadly, the only way to stop them is to kill them, but the police won’t afford protesters the same rights, so, horrifyingly, we have to kill them too, and then everyone will wonder how the left got so out of control.

  53. 53.

    Narya

    November 20, 2021 at 12:03 am

    @Another Scott:

    @Ohio Mom: Yup. I’ve shared it a lot. Thanks for finding the link Scott.

  54. 54.

    sab

    November 20, 2021 at 4:44 am

    @Narya: I learned gun safety from an NRA course at summer camp when I was twelve.  My nephew just likes to shoot things near his suburban world. Times have changed. Not for the better.

  55. 55.

    nommedeplume

    November 20, 2021 at 6:12 am

    Don’t you live someplace like Vermont? There were many gun-nut dads in the metro Atlanta of the 1980’s, and it intersected with military experience, I think. The Rambo years changed the view of it. There was always an impractical car for parading around in, but it was more for the teenagers, and some would go with Chevelles and Camaros, but plenty of people loved their trucks. You can’t write a country song with the wrong car these days.

  56. 56.

    Mo MacArbie

    November 20, 2021 at 6:59 am

    @Spanish Moss: I am surprised at the perceptions of pickup trucks.

    Yeah, it’s a snap judgement, but that’s what happens when something you share is totemized by assholes. It’s like drinking tea, or not watching football, or professing Christianity, or…

  57. 57.

    WayneL140

    November 20, 2021 at 7:12 am

    We are undergoing a debate which no one is talking about. How (White) men are being pushed to defend their manhood. Cole says he doesn’t know how we get past this.

    I believe there is only one way. Women are going to have to step forward and teach their sons how to be men. Women know. They have been on both sides of manhood for years, standing besides and being abused. Women know how men should be men, and Kyle Rittenhouse is not what a man should be growing up to be.

    To do this, women are going to have to get past men, and that is happening, but it’s going to take time. Time is something we may be sincerely short of.

  58. 58.

    Citizen Alan

    November 20, 2021 at 8:02 am

    @WayneL140:  I’m pretty sure Kyle 1Rittenhouse’s mother was a woman.

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