The assailant who attacked Paul Pelosi was searching for Nancy
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Funny how that headline falls apart if you read enough of the story (which most people will not).
mac_in_tosh
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I don't know who this person is but, really now, how can anyone be that deluded to actually believe such nonsense or is this just intentional misinformation? And she's not alone. If you enter the cesspool of Fox News on Youtube, you can read more comments like this. It's just astonishing how people will defend and believe Donald Trump, a lifelong con artist, cheat, admirer of autocrats and pathological liar.
rdrr
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Yikes! I got to admit it is hard not to believe in the worst in the other side. Sometimes it does blind you, but I haven't been so far gone that once I gather myself, reflect, and at least tried to understand the other position. I want to hope that she has settled down and realized that maybe that is just too crazy.
I think Musk should design a Twitter feature where you post what you want to say and 24hrs later it sends you a notification “are you sure you want to post this”. Or maybe it posts to your friends first who approve or disapprove before going fully public. He could really use such a feature for himself.
It’s amazing how many conspiracies are popping up based on bad information. Like any tragic event, some to much of the first information that comes out is usually wrong.
Tucker Carlson seems to not do subtly promoting the theory this was some grand conspiracy on behalf on Nancy Pelosi to make republicans look bad before the elections.
Apparently at the expense of her husband nearly getting killed having his head bashed in. Right.
Clearly there is much more unknown than known. There are reasonable questions to ask, how’d he get in, why were there no guards, why is the glass broken outwards from the house. I’m sure we’ll find out. And I’m sure the unknowns are not nearly as exciting as they appear.
Maybe I don’t get out enough but I’ve literally never met a person who believes in QAnon. I have little trust in the articles that claim some huge percentage of people believe QAnon conspiracies (especially when 2 months earlier PEW reports 75% people never heard of it). I’ve never met one of those crazy militia people or proud boys. I’m not saying they don’t exist, obviously they do, I’m not saying they’re not dangerous, but I doubt they exist at the scale the media claims. But when Tucker Carlson pushes garbage like this, it makes me quite concerned. It’s quite disgusting.
There is extensive research that shows there conspiracy theories arise at the extremes of the political spectrum. Our country is only getting more divided and for some reason the most extreme voices are getting the most amplification.
And left wing conspiracy theories exist too. How about invading Afghanistan for oil? Where is it? The whole USPS mailbox removal fiasco of 2020. That the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis was impossible and Trump trying to blame China- the jury is still out on the origin but my have the tides change. That a Vaccine developed under Trump could not be trusted without independent research. The extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. That the outrage over the “Disinformation Governance Board” was “coordinated”. That Hunter Biden’s laptop was most definitely Russian disinformation. The left has its own flavor of Jewish conspiracies, like AIPAC controls the government or that Israel is an apartheid state. Michael Moore’s 9/11 movie. The Koch brothers are essentially the George Soros of the right. That GMO’s are “bad” for you and others. That it’s various forces in play preventing the world from adopting 100% renewable energy. That the pro-lifers motivation is strictly to “control women”. That “natural medicine” is superior and loads of other ideas about the pharmaceutical industry- like it’s Big Pharma that’s preventing marijuana legalization and marijuana cures everything. Weirdly the anti-vaxx movement was largely a left wing thing up until COVID, now it’s embraced by many of the right.
Or that Lindsay Graham is gay. That one might be true, but it’s rather offensive to use homosexuality as a means to try to humiliate someone which is how it’s almost always intended with him. I assume he’s against gay marriage but that doesn’t make it okay to use it as slur.
I find it troubling how the media reacts differently to the Pelosi situation to the near assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. I recognized he was not harmed, but still I didn’t hear the amount of outrage. There should be legitimate concern about right wing violence, particularly after 1/6, but there was no concern in 2020 when cities were burning down.
The amount of rationalization and justification on both sides is disturbing. The more this goes on, the worse it will get. Sadly I think there are a lot of people who don’t really care so long as they can use it to promote their agenda.
It’s amazing how many conspiracies are popping up based on bad information. Like any tragic event, some to much of the first information that comes out is usually wrong.
Tucker Carlson seems to not do subtly promoting the theory this was some grand conspiracy on behalf on Nancy Pelosi to make republicans look bad before the elections.
Apparently at the expense of her husband nearly getting killed having his head bashed in. Right.
Clearly there is much more unknown than known. There are reasonable questions to ask, how’d he get in, why were there no guards, why is the glass broken outwards from the house. I’m sure we’ll find out. And I’m sure the unknowns are not nearly as exciting as they appear.
Maybe I don’t get out enough but I’ve literally never met a person who believes in QAnon. I have little trust in the articles that claim some huge percentage of people believe QAnon conspiracies (especially when 2 months earlier PEW reports 75% people never heard of it). I’ve never met one of those crazy militia people or proud boys. I’m not saying they don’t exist, obviously they do, I’m not saying they’re not dangerous, but I doubt they exist at the scale the media claims. But when Tucker Carlson pushes garbage like this, it makes me quite concerned. It’s quite disgusting.
There is extensive research that shows there conspiracy theories arise at the extremes of the political spectrum. Our country is only getting more divided and for some reason the most extreme voices are getting the most amplification.
And left wing conspiracy theories exist too. How about invading Afghanistan for oil? Where is it? The whole USPS mailbox removal fiasco of 2020. That the COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis was impossible and Trump trying to blame China- the jury is still out on the origin but my have the tides change. That a Vaccine developed under Trump could not be trusted without independent research. The extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. That the outrage over the “Disinformation Governance Board” was “coordinated”. That Hunter Biden’s laptop was most definitely Russian disinformation. The left has its own flavor of Jewish conspiracies, like AIPAC controls the government or that Israel is an apartheid state. Michael Moore’s 9/11 movie. The Koch brothers are essentially the George Soros of the right. That GMO’s are “bad” for you and others. That it’s various forces in play preventing the world from adopting 100% renewable energy. That the pro-lifers motivation is strictly to “control women”. That “natural medicine” is superior and loads of other ideas about the pharmaceutical industry- like it’s Big Pharma that’s preventing marijuana legalization and marijuana cures everything. Weirdly the anti-vaxx movement was largely a left wing thing up until COVID, now it’s embraced by many of the right.
Or that Lindsay Graham is gay. That one might be true, but it’s rather offensive to use homosexuality as a means to try to humiliate someone which is how it’s almost always intended with him. I assume he’s against gay marriage but that doesn’t make it okay to use it as slur.
I find it troubling how the media reacts differently to the Pelosi situation to the near assassination of Brett Kavanaugh. I recognized he was not harmed, but still I didn’t hear the amount of outrage. There should be legitimate concern about right wing violence, particularly after 1/6, but there was no concern in 2020 when cities were burning down.
The amount of rationalization and justification on both sides is disturbing. The more this goes on, the worse it will get. Sadly I think there are a lot of people who don’t really care so long as they can use it to promote their agenda.
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Maybe this intruder was a popular prostitute among downlow GOP officials. Projection is so strong amongst republicans that anything they make up about the other side makes me immediately believe it’s what they are up to.
Their conspiracy theories never make much sense in the long run. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he was interviewing people at a Trump rally, and he was speaking to a guy thought Trump was still running the government and military, so he asked this MAGA fan “So Trump was to blame for what happened in Afghanistan?”
And the guy just went silent and couldn’t form an answer.
These conspiracies that run among stupid republicans is going to cause them a lot of problems. They will probably self-destruct as a party at some point and then have to figure out a way forward. They are not immune to these attacks, and the never ending lies and kowtowing to men like Trump isn’t sustainable. Look at how low we’ve gone since Trump took office. Imagine telling people in 2015 or 2016 that Trump would refuse to concede, foment a mob to storm the Capitol to stop the transfer of power and steal classified documents after hammering Hillary for an e-mail server. They’d call it TDS, but TDS is actually what they have.
Each time an event like this comes out and republicans lie about and mischaracterize what happens, they’re all but guaranteeing the next terrible event. The right also loves to pretend this is a random, unprovoked event. Laura Ingraham and many others are quick to point out that this was a man acting on his own and we shouldn’t pin his misdeed to the whole party, they sure have no issue doing that to BLM when a mob of criminals take advantage of thousands of peaceful protesters to loot and riot.
The double standards, lies and pure hate from right wing echo chamber is breathtaking.
This is “both-siding”, and some of the conspiracies you mentioned gained no steam at all. Some of them I’ve never heard of. The ones I have, can you honestly say they’ve gained even a tenth as much weight as stuff like the Big Lie, or any conspiracy around the Clintons?
I’m in no way saying the left has none of their own, or aren’t privy to misinformation. But when you play the “both sides” card, you dilute the more severe issue. I got a no seatbelt ticket, this clown broke into someone’s home to kidnap someone and bashed someone’s skull with a hammer. I guess we’re both law breakers?
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shadow puppet
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There are some truly sick people on Twitter.
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1586899639831171072/
https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1586899639831171072/
shadow puppet
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mac_in_tosh
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A distinction is how high up the leadership ladder the conspiracy theories go. Most if not all of the ones attributed to the left are not echoed by a Democrat of any significance whereas multiple GOP candidates are pushing the rigged election nonsense and/or refusing to outright denounce it. And it's interesting that "the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election" is brought up as a conspiracy theory. Manafort recently admitted that the Trump campaign exchanged polling data and strategy plans with Russians.
shadow puppet
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There are so many sick and dangerous people out there. And it was trump who gave them the oxygen to crawl out the ground. What a mess we're in now.
mac_in_tosh
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Disgusting. And if the guy had a gun rather than a hammer, the outcome would have been much worse but such logic would escape these nuts.
Mmmm yes I was waiting for such a response.
That kinda my point. Most normal people don’t believe in most conspiracies.
Where things go off the rails is when you have people like extremely powerful and influential politicians peddling conspiracy theories. Most certainly Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election a voter fraud. Apparently 60% of republicans think Biden was illegally elected- I’m not convinced it’s that high. A lot of this depends on the questions asked and their framing, but what is certainly true is many republicans were upset about changes to voter laws due to COVID they deemed as illegally enacted.
Similarly, when you have a bunch of high powered democrat politicians pushing stories about Trump’s deep collusion with Russia, Russia’s tremendous social media influence, etc under the pretext there is no way he could have been fairly elected, to the point in March 2017 57% of people aged 18-30 believed Trump was an “illegitimate president”. Now it’s unclear what exactly that means- referring to my previous comments, but Russia is mentioned in quotes of participants. This of course did not result in the Capitol being attacked, but it result in years of nonsense.
(Frankly, I think Trump was an illegitimate president because he delegitimized himself and his office countless times, culminating on 1/6, making a mockery of what it means to be POTUS.)
And this is the problem with the worst conspiracies. Many politicians and social leaders have no problem spreading conspiracies when it’s convenient for them, which typically means maligning the their opposition. The public far too often are more than happy to believe in a conspiracy if it supports the narrative they want to believe it’s true.
Perhaps I am pointing out sides because I think both sides participate in this reprehensible behavior. And whenever I do this there there is often this conspiratorial feedback from the left that I’m actually supporting Trump or from the right that I’m a democrat. I don’t love labels but I’m probably mostly an independent moderate/centrist. I suppose throwing me in one pile or the other is just a way to write everything negative I say about one particular side is just unfair bias… often completely ignoring everything negative I said about the other party.
What’s also is unfortunate are the inevitable “yeah but” comments. I will say the right is responsible for X Y Z bad behavior / decisions / actions / beliefs and the left A B C. And then then the response is “but the right are worse” or the “the left is worse”, accepting validity in my comments and then absolving one side of any responsibility. Sorry, but that is not excuse.
———
And you know what else is probably driving people straight into conspiracy theories? The rapidly diminishing trust in government and government agencies. And perhaps even more impactful, the nearly total loss of trust in media. Not surprising when you have Fox, CNN, and MSNBC shoveling varying degrees of horseshit down viewers mouths 24/7. To a large degree I don’t think that this mistrust is society’s fault, many-most if the problems the entities have brought on themselves particularly over the past 20 years. So people just follow the bias that’s most comforting to them.
Eric
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Still going alive and well on FB, and they wonder why they're sinking like the Titanic.
mac_in_tosh
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I'm surprised you keep bringing Russia up after the Mueller report provided significant evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated with, cooperated with, encouraged, or gave support to Russia/WikiLeaks election interference activities, as Manafort recently admitted. There's also Trump's obsequious behavior toward Putin, saying he believed Putin's statements of innocence in election meddling over those of our own national security experts. Compare this, what you dismiss as "stories" and "nonsense," with Trump's conspiracy theory about the rigging of the 2020 election. He lost dozens of court rulings and every recount and was told by his top aids that he really lost, yet he and his pals in the conspiracy industry keep pushing the big lie. There is simply no comparison.
And yes, there are a lot of negative Trump stories on MSNBC while Fox either remains quiet about it or spins it to be positive, but I don't think MSNBC outright lies and they tend to have respected contributors plus some of their hosts, e.g. Joe Scarborough, are Republicans even conservative. Fox on the other hand appears to be a voice for unqualified commentators and conspiracy nuts, e.g. Tucker Carlson. Again, no comparison.
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I’m extremely critical of the Democrat party, but the both sidesism isn’t comparable. It’s like having somebody firing an “AR-15 style” gun at people and another firing rubber bands and saying their both “shooters”. Both sides used to lie to protect the donor class. Now Republicans lie almost exclusively to make people paranoid and unhinged.
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And it all started in December of 2016 after trump "won" the election (but before he was inaugurated). With Jared Kushner and Ret. General Mike Flynn (trump's pick for national security advisor) meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in trumpTower. Where Kushner and Flynn made a pitch to Kislyak to set up a secret secure communications channel between trump and Moscow, using Russian communications and encryption equipment at a Russian diplomatic facility.
The purpose of which was so that trump could communicate with Russian leadership privately without being intercepted by the FBI, NSA and other US intelligence agencies using US government systems. That is effn astonishing!
The good news was when Kislyak reported that proposal and meeting to Moscow from a Russian facility in New York, the FBI and NSA were on the job intercepting/decrypting Kislyak's communication and alerted the Justice Department and President Obama.
Acting AG Sally Yates wanted to push forward with an investigation and interview Kushner and Flynn. At the end of January, not long after trump's inauguration, he fired Yates ostensibly for not enforcing his executive order blocking Muslims from seven countries from entering the US. And that was that. trump appointed Jeff Sessions as the new AG, and he did not pick up Yate's Kushner/Flynn/Kislyak investigation.
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On the subject of the Mueller Report referenced above, here's a copy for reference.
Clearly there was involvement between the Trump campaign and Russia. And that Trump encouraged illegal behavior (par for the course). No one denies that. The biggest question is whether or not oppo research constitutes something of value and how to assess its value. If you as a citizen had dirt on Trump and gave it to Clinton, does that now count on a political contribution? Or getting the questions before the debate?
Clearly foreign government interference should not be tolerated, including providing opposition research. But how do you stop foreign actors from not just publishing it anyways? Russia didn’t want Clinton elected and would have probably done the same whether regardless of Trump’s involvement.
And as bad it appears, establishing backchannels to communicate with Russia is not illegal, granted what is said may not me be. Transition parties communicating with foreign governments is common.
Regardless, my point is about the outcome of the election and Russia Beijing response for the outcome. I believe the Russian’s interference, while totally inappropriate, did not meaningfully sway the election.
As I said, I think the Comey situation. had the greatest impact. In Clinton’s own words:
And according to Fivethirtyeights ananlysis:
fivethirtyeight.com
I don’t think Comey made the right call releasing that letter, especially when it turns out the FBI had enough time to investigate prior to Election Day.
Clearly foreign government interference should not be tolerated, including providing opposition research. But how do you stop foreign actors from not just publishing it anyways? Russia didn’t want Clinton elected and would have probably done the same whether regardless of Trump’s involvement.
And as bad it appears, establishing backchannels to communicate with Russia is not illegal, granted what is said may not me be. Transition parties communicating with foreign governments is common.
Regardless, my point is about the outcome of the election and Russia Beijing response for the outcome. I believe the Russian’s interference, while totally inappropriate, did not meaningfully sway the election.
As I said, I think the Comey situation. had the greatest impact. In Clinton’s own words:
And according to Fivethirtyeights ananlysis:
They have an interesting argument about how the media chose to portray the story.
The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election
So why won't the media admit as much?
fivethirtyeight.com
I don’t think Comey made the right call releasing that letter, especially when it turns out the FBI had enough time to investigate prior to Election Day.
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