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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37693 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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It really doesn't look like the usual suspects understand that shutting up would be prudent. I think their social media instincts are very poorly calibrated for such extreme events.

Some highly liked reactions:

https://x.com/davidhogg111/status/1812320926240764072

If you keep talking about the assassination attempt don’t you dare tell the kids who survive school shootings and their families to “just get over it”
What happened today is unacceptable and what happens every day to kids who aren’t the president and don’t survive isn’t either.

https://x.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1812290878167281860

Politicians on the left are calling for unity and no violence. Politicians on the right are stoking things further.
Voters in the center: Join with those wishing to turn the temperature down, not crank it up. For all our sakes.

https://x.com/keithedwards/status/1812284437092307015

Paul Pelosi survived an assassination attempt, Trump mocked it.
Biden called Trump to make sure he's ok. That's the difference.

Reddit is linked below, you can get a load of what's happening there.

I am no Trump fan as you perhaps remember. He is graceless. But gracelessness is the default today, and it's very easy to stoop lower than a man who has just survived an assassination attempt – with these cringeworthy, mother hen attempts at narrative control.

With that said, apparently the Biden campaign itself was very quick to pull all of its ads attacking trump.

The lack of self-awareness in that george takei tweet is so galling I almost think it's a joke. You can't claim your tribe is calling for unity while in the same tweet stoking division.

Since I've seen his public statements Takei has always been utterly full of himself. (So was Sulu, so maybe he wasn't acting)

What happened today is unacceptable and what happens every day to kids who aren’t the president and don’t survive isn’t either.

Confusing. Does he think that kids are getting shot to death in schools every day?

I am guessing he means at home or in general

'don't survive' makes it hard to take that interpretation.

Technically by the rules used to track school shootings, they are. Any shooting within X-feet (300?) of a school, at any time of day or night regardless of if the school was in session.

Naturally this lumps in a lot of common urban shootings stemming from 2AM drug deals gone bad.

Does it also include bullets fired by police officers?

I believe so but haven't confirmed. Blip on the chart regardless.

Kids aren't usually shot in drug deals gone bad. I remain skeptical.

16-19 year olds are also "kids" if you look at the statistics, and also near the peak demo for gang shootings. It's procedural manipulation all the way down

This has always annoyed me. I know a few people even IRL who say with a straight face they are afraid to send their kids to school because of not just gun violence but mass shootings specifically. I'm incredulous. First because it remains rare enough that reacting to it, especially in an area as important as basic childhood education, is illogical. It's like developing agoraphobia from lightning strikes, as a lazy example. There are some fears that are unhelpful. Second, by legitimizing this fear, we actually propagate it. Kids are especially sensitive to these kinds of signals from adults, and may go on to develop real, illogical, and damaging fears and phobias based on their legitimization. Which is extra frustrating because some on the left seem at least aware of this on some level, because we are pretty sure that the way the media treats mass shootings is a self-fulfilling prophesy because of the increased number of copy-cat shooters.

According to the Washington Post there have been 413 school shootings since 1999.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/

I would expect that the Post would use the broadest feasible definition. I'm calling this one thoroughly deboonked - it's a regard on twitter, trying to rationalize a non-existent statistic is a waste of time.

No, the Washington Post is actually the most reasonable and conservative school shootings database. It's the one we always point to when the rest of the press use absurd numbers like "over 500 this year!!!"

Jesus Christ this is unpleasant.

Here's CNN quoting 34 school shootings this year.

https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html

Obviously we are more than 34 school days into the year.

I have not seen any statistic even close to one school shooting per day. It is pretty strange to insist repeatedly that this statistic exists without evidence - just link it if it's so obvious.

I'm pretty sure that statistic derives from this joker

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