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The Most Active Threads Since Friday

by Jeff Steele last modified Sep 16, 2024 03:14 PM

The topics with the most engagement since my last blog post included another attempted assassination of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, secret Trump voters, J. D. Vance's false allegations about Haitians, and Taylor Swift.

The most active thread over the weekend was one that was just created yesterday. Titled, "Shooting at Trump’s FL golf course while he was there" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, the thread was created just after reports that there had been a shooting in the vicinity of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. The first news of this shooting came from a report by Trump's communications director who simply said that there had been shooting near Trump but that Trump was safe and unhurt. A New York Post tweet soon circulated saying that the shooting occurred outside Trump's Florida golf course and involved two individuals shooting at each other and was unrelated to Trump. This caused a number of the early posters to suggest that Trump was attempting to milk an unrelated situation to generate sympathy and redirect attention from his anti-immigrant remarks involving Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. However, officials soon held a press conference in which they described what had happened as a planned assassination of Trump. A U.S. secret service agent had discovered an individual hiding in bushes with a rifle aimed toward the golf course at which Trump was golfing and opened fire. An individual had later been arrested and a semi-automatic rifle had been found at the scene. Once the name of the individual arrested was publicized, posters engaged in a desparate contest to determine his political leanings and blame the opposite political party. In the case of the earlier shooting of Trump, the shooter had unclear political leanings and had researched the whereabouts of political figures across the political spectrum. Trump appears to have been nothing more than a target of opportunity with no particular partisan political significance to the shooter. The individual involved in this incident has a similarly confusing political identity, though one that was much more public. The attempted assassin previously tweeted that he had voted for Trump but then become disenchanted with him. He also tweeted support for former Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. But, reports showed that he is a registered Democrat. The earlier shooter was a registered Republican but posters devoted pages of posts insisting that party registration was meaningless and that, in fact, people register for a party they don't support all the time. However, in this case, posters insisted that party registration was definitive. The individual in the lastest incident clearly is obsessed with Ukraine, having traveled there and attempted to recruit foreign volunteers to fight against Russia. If he has any political motivation to shoot Trump, it is probably related to Ukraine and its conflict with Russia. However, it is most likely that the man who was arrested suffers from mental health issues. As such, it may be difficult to find logic in his actions. Regardless, posters of all political persuasions in this thread seem entirely uninterested in facts other than using them to support their personal political arguments, even if that meant twisting them or ignoring unwanted information. Very few posters are willing to wait to see what the facts reveal but, instead, simply want to score political points. The result is the thread getting bogged down in disputes over meaningless minutiae such as whether liberals or conservatives are more likely to build sheds for the homeless.

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