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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I think it is a cultural thing. Almost all of the members of all the political tribes (myself certainly included) are at most armchair activists who mostly post on social media. The people who are willing to use gun violence to further their political aims are always a tiny minority, but the size of that minority differs very much dependent on the tribe.

In a bizzaro world where Trump dropped out of the race and Adolf Hitler became the replacement candidate, the blue tribe would certainly feel that Hitler needs shooting. But the average coastal city-dweller who puts their pronouns on twitter is certainly not going to snipe Hitler. On the other hand, if parts of the red tribe feel that Hitler needs shooting (which they would), a small fraction of these actually have the capabilities to carry out a serious assassination attempt.

So if say 10% of the blue tribe think that the US would be better off if someone killed Trump, and if 1% (Lizardman constant and all that) of the red tribe also thought that, I would expect most serious attempts to come from from the people at least vaguely associated with the red tribe.

This is not universal, but specific to the US. Gun culture, 2nd amendment (violently resisting tyrants) and all that are very much red tribe coded. In post-war Germany, the highest profile assassinations (such as the RAF killing an AG) were carried out by left wing terrorists, who picked up gun handling skills over a few years in the underground.

There is certainly the possibility that some fringe left people decided to get really good at long distance shooting in 2020 for the specific purpose of murdering anyone who would in their eyes turn America into a fascist dictatorship. But that is a very lonely path, you would have to tell all your blue tribe friends "I practice rifle shooting because it is fun" which would be received about as well as "my hobby is tuning my diesel engine so that it emits as much smoke as possible". From the state's point of view, keeping tabs on a few blue tribe activists who own long arms is much easier than figuring out who among the zillions of rifle-owning red tribe activists is actually likely to climb on some roof and shoot a candidate and who is only cosplaying with their tactical vests.