Opinion: The shooting of Donald Trump wasn't politically motivated

The reason I think that it wasn’t politically motivated is because, we have this poor kid that has been bullied every day for years.

In the usual run of things in the US this would just be another school shooting. But those are so passé now days.

To be truly remembered and immortalised you shoot the loudest bully in the world.

This got deleted from unpopular opinions, reason is justifying violence. Just a note, I'm not trying to justify what Thomas did, just speculating on his motivations.

robocall ,
@robocall@lemmy.world avatar

I think this may not be the right community to post this in, but your theory is interesting and possibly has truth to it. Law enforcement is still investigating, and there may be some curve balls that we don't anticipate in this young man's motivation.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

I agree, tried to post in unpopular opinion first...oh well.

After reading about him (from the other side of the world), I felt sorry for him. He was by reported accounts a nice young guy but was bullied all the time at high school. That is really sad.

The fact that he is no longer at school does put a hole in my theory, but just because you leave school doesn't necessarily mean that the hurt has gone away.

robocall ,
@robocall@lemmy.world avatar

I'm surprised this was removed from unpopular opinion, but I haven't read their rules, and some people do not tolerate nuanced thought.

It is unpopular to express sympathy for the young man, and even for his parents, but I agree with you it is very sad that he felt like he had to do this (for whatever reason he believed). And hearing that anyone was described as a loner, and severely bullied in school is very sad.

I see parallels with school shooters that we have in America. People generally don't empathize or mourn the school shooter. The shooter lashes out in a violent way, but we don't spend a lot of time asking why, or digging into the root causes. They are mostly dismissed as monsters of society.

I don't condone the violence, and don't wish to see it replicated. But I assume that most people are multifaceted, and aren't one dimensionally good or bad.

absGeekNZ OP , (edited )
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

I empathize with Thomas, because that was my experience of school. I was bullied every day for basically my entire school career. I was the weird kid, who didn't understand people and was smarter than average.

I fantasied about killing my bullies, but in NZ we don't have access to guns or the fucked up relationship with them that the US does.

I feel sorry for the kid. What he did wasn't right or good in any way. But I assume the school shootings and this act come from a place of great hurt. The world has shat on them for their whole life and they don't see it ever ending.

To go further, it took years (many years) after I left school to come to terms with who I was and how to change to be a well adjusted member of society. If I had the kind of access to guns that you seem to in the US, I don't know what would have happened, I was an angry hateful person who blamed others around me (rightfully so in a lot of cases, but not always) for all my troubles.

A_A ,
@A_A@lemmy.world avatar

"this may not be the right community" ... and :
"I’m surprised this was removed from unpopular" ...

... so you see, this is the problem. Many moderators will think : oh I don't like this post probably it shouldn't be here anyway in case of doubt let's just delete it we have too much work already !

Clent ,

Yep. I would jump at the chance to be in a forum that didn't have moderation. The early internet did just fine without moderation.

Learning to ignore the crazy person on the street corner is a life lesson. Having them arrest or otherwise disposed of because, "it's wrong because..." is not workable approach. No one has executed it successfully, even billion dollar companies fail at it.

Carrolade ,

Pretty sure that's exactly what 4chan is.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Yep 4chan is a cesspit of hatred.

Learning to ignore the crazy person on the street corner is a life lesson.

While I agree fully with your sentiment, the internet brings all the crazies of the world to the same street corner and emboldens them. They think their views are the norm because everyone around them is spouting the same shit, whereas in times gone by the crazies were isolated and the shit didn't leach from them like a cracked sewer main.

Clent ,

4chan is anonymous. That leaves only the turds that can handle the stink.

Things like Usenet were only semi-anonymous.

I actually think the internet works better with personas that stick to the person. There are issues there but they are solvable.

A forum where anyone can spin up new accounts is closer to anonymous/4chan than Usenet was.

Carrolade ,

Fair. Another difference with the early internet was the self-selecting population though, just a whole bunch of nerds. Now it's everybody.

morphballganon , (edited )

Your post title is phrased definitively. That's not speculation; it's misinformation.

Edit: edited title is better than the original

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Good point, this is the title I used in Unpopular Opinions. I'll update it.

Carrolade ,

We actually don't know. We're all assuming it is, but the shooter made no official statements one way or another it seems. For all we know he didn't like the color orange.

This is a legitimate, if highly unlikely, opinion.

edit: Oh, wait, nevermind. Didn't realize the OP title was edited.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

For all we know he didn’t like the color orange.

Made me laugh

Enkers ,

I'm not entirely sure this reasoning makes sense. Take, for example, a politician that is only motivated to be in politics because he wants fame. Does this mean that none of his actions are politically motivated because his true motives are apolitical?

It seems to me that the act of choosing a political target, in and of itself, is a political motivation, as the political landscape has been the main informant of their decision.

I can see some merit to your argument, though, and perhaps I'm being overly focused on semantics?

MagicShel ,

John Hinkley wasn't politically motivated, he was just trying to impress Jodi Foster (If I remember right - whoever his Hollywood fantasy crush was).

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

I get what you are trying to say; even if it is not political, it ends up being political just because of the target. The motivations of Thomas no longer matter.

The media is screaming at the top of its lungs that this was a politically motivated shooting, I'm just not convinced that it was.

Where is his unhinged manifesto posted on 4chan, or anything overtly political about this guy? I saw @Zerlyna posted a screenshot from reddit/twitter about "ending Epsteins' evil empire"; that could very well be his entire motivation.

Enkers ,

Yeah exactly.

I guess the implication of my argument would be that you couldn't have a nonpolitically motivated assassination of a politician unless the motivations were purely on a personal level, and in that case we'd just call it a murder anyways, not an assassination.

It'd make the whole concept of a "nonpolitical motivated assassination" an oxymoron, and I'm not sure that makes much sense either.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Assassination in my view is non-personal killing.

e.g. you hire an assassin to take out someone for a personal reason, the assassin does the actual killing as a business transaction, nothing personal about it.

bobburger ,

My head cannon is he tried to shoot Trump because he was bitched up about not making the rifle team and wanted to prove to everyone what a great shot he really was.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

If he didn't go for the glory shot and instead went for center body mass, we would be having a different conversation!

Zerlyna ,
@Zerlyna@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d216a8b6-f50a-42e2-8aa4-a22a33c350f0.jpeg
Seems to me he was targeting a rapist and pedophile, not the politician.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Well that adds some context to the conversation.

gAlienLifeform ,
@gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world avatar

Apparently no one has been able to confirm this screen shot is legit. I could believe Meta would sweep something like this under the rug and make it impossible to prove, but as it stands we don't have any evidence to support the conclusion that Epstein was the motivation.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Thanks, I was wondering weather it was legit.

It wouldn't be hard to fake!

norimee ,

Don't use his name. This is the glory people like him are striving for. No matter if they are shooting up a school, a gay night club or a president, they want to be imortalised by the media and social media so their name is forever remembered.

If we anonymize shooters there will be one less incentive for future shooters.

absGeekNZ OP ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

Fair call.

But that boat has sailed my friend. There are 100's of news articles blasting his name across all media.

I'll not use his name again.

jordanlund Mod ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Removed, text posts not allowed.

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