>The rules are "I can think you are crass, wrong, bigoted, geriatric, etc., but if a majority of my countrymen think otherwise, we accept we are not successful in the battle of ideas, and fight another battle of ideas in 4 years".
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.
> The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
This whole retelling of history exclusively through the lens of the slavery is getting super old. It is divisive, it’s a form of revisionist history, and it’s wrong.
Read about the Northwest Ordinance, the provisions in it banning slavery in the 1780s were ultimately adopted verbatim into the Thirteenth Amendment. Or the actions of the founders including John Adams who put their lives on the line to fight against slavery. And the numerous states that made it illegal at the time of the nation’s founding.
There’s a lot more to history than the over-simplified retelling about how the radical pace of social change in the 18th century wasn’t somehow fast enough for our 2024 sensibilities.
Your history is wrong. The French Revolution did not begin until May 1789. The US Constitution had been adopted in March 1789.
Even if there had been instantaneous communication (and we’re talking a 2+ month communication lag), the framers were not influenced by the French Revolution at all.
When looked at in terms of actual writings from the time, the protection of property owners — including enslavers who claimed humans as property — was a key part of how the US Constitution was ultimately accepted.
Looks like you're getting down voted a lot for this but it's all true. Trump only became president because the electoral college weighs geography higher than population. So does the senate.
Election system that give weight to geography is generally done so to encourage cooperation where people otherwise would prefer going alone. Both EU and US have large historical reasons to unify low population regions with a lot of natural resources with high population regions. Same is true in Germany, Iceland, Sweden and so on, all with varied degrees of giving weight to geography.
> Notably the shooter was a right-wing Republican wearing a shirt with a gun channel logo on it.
Curious to know why you think the shooter was right-wing?
My limited understanding is that he was a registered Republican who was wearing a shirt with the logo of a shooting range/video channel, had donated to a political campaign supporting the Democrats, and attempted to assassinate a popular right-wing politician.
Only the first of those would suggest to me that he might be right-wing.
On the other hand, I think it is entirely possible (and likely, given the donation activity) that he was registered as a Republican only to influence the Republican primary elections (not an uncommon practice as far as I'm aware).
The key point here is that gun nuts have been told for decades by the NRA and right-wing groups that their right to bear arms is critical to stop a "tyrannical government". This is commonly used to defend the right of every "patriotic" American to bear arms.
When the right keeps using rhetoric like this (after school shootings no less!) they shouldn't be making the shocked Pikachu face when one of their own takes potshots at Trump. Or anyone for that matter. It basically doesn't matter if the shooter was a tree-hugging gay democrat at this point. The message that encourages and enables this kind of violence is almost entirely coming from the right.
Speaking of the shooter's motivations: Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists", so it's entirely conceivable that a "true patriot" conservative decided to utilise his second amendment rights to stop what he felt like was a betrayal of his party and country by an openly anti-democratic autocrat.
The other key part of what I said in my GP comment is that the propagandists on the right immediately jumped on the opportunity to blame the left and the Democrats before the political affiliation of the shooter was even known.[1] Thousands upon thousands gave this the thumbs up, re-tweeted it, shared it, etc...
A right-wing congressman blames Biden personally, but he's not the only one. Here:
[1] This reminds me of when that hospital was bombed in Gaza and then palestinion authorities had an exact body count (in the hundreds!) mere minutes later and blamed Israel. Never mind that few if any died, and the bomb was one of their own missiles. That's not on message. This is precisely the same scenario. The second there's a shooting of a Republican candidate, it surely must be the Democrats doing it, that's on message.
> Keep in mind that "the right" is now split into pre-Trump conservatives and "Trumpists"
Trump has been leader of the Republicans since the shooter was twelve years old...
In any case, you've weakened your claim from the shooter being right wing to it being "entirely conceivable" that he's right wing. Well, fine, many things are conceivable, but what's the positive reason for thinking that it's true? And does it outweigh the reasons against thinking that it's true? The fact that he registered as a Republican for reasons we don't know, and that he's wearing a gun-themed t-shirt (I hink we can assume he's not against guns on principle), seem to be substantially less weighty data points than the fact that he's just tried to kill Trump.
Libertarians would be pro-gun, Republican registered, and feasibly hate Trump.
Not saying this guy was Libertarian mind you, but... its not very hard to come up with Right-wing people who match this profile. Maybe with a bit more data / investigating we can come up with more information.
But the left is not exactly known for being gun nuts or bringing AR15 rifles to places.
I don't think there is value in this kind of argument.
Yes, some folks on the hard right in the US like to brandish weapons as political speech and use the implied threat of violence to make people around them feel intimidated.
However, this has nothing to do with one attempted murderer or the political party he most associates with.
I find this kind of finger pointing speculation unhelpful and divisive and I think we should be more actively aligning on "people shouldn't murder people they disagree with" which is a value everyone should be able to openly agree on.
If this were a leftist, the Right would be talking about the evils of the socialists or something.
Its all cute and "please don't talk about the Republicanness of this guy" the minute people realize he was Republican and a gun-nut.
I don't like leftists or socialists either mind you. But its pretty despicable to expect Americans to rise to the challenge. Americans failed to rise every other time, its not fair for Republicans to get a free pass on this one.
I think it's fine to attack a group's ideology but I don't think it's fine to say "that group I don't like does this so that person who did the same thing probably is in that group"
The original arrangement was that the seperate and independant States|Colonies were seperate and independant States|Colonies working together in a collective Union that wouldn't overrule or take away from the seperate and individual State|Colony part.
Like a neighbourhood action group, or twelve distinct farming families working together on an agricultural Bulk Harvesting collective, etc.
The decisions of the collective were to be made (hey, check the paperwork, it's still around) on a weighted vote per State basis .. it was never the case that if one member bred exponentially and had way more kids than all the others put together then that member State would get all the decision making power.
Clearly time has marched on and people now think of The United States of America as a single country .. it's not, nor is the European Union.
But maybe it is time to update the paperwork and common rules?
The original arrangement was the articles of confederation, and explicitly weak federal government which was made as a loose federation of fairly powerful states, each allowed to mostly do their own thing, with a federal government that did as little as possible.
It didn't even make it ten years before it would have died.
The Constitution of the United States was written entirely to give the Federal government actual power and control and teeth. It was very clear that signing up to the United States meant individual states significantly giving away their power. That's why the constitution had so many extreme compromises, especially to slave states.
The US constitution entirely exists to codify the US being one nation.
The paperwork and common rules were updated after the dissolution of the Continental Congress in 1789. But it seems a few people still haven't gotten the memo.
> They should get to influence national decisions based on their population
That is exactly mob rule. Why should any group of people be allowed to enforce its will on another group simply because they are more numerous? If there are no systems put into place to limit and balance the will of the majority then they are perfectly capable of running amok. How do you think things like lynchings and pogroms happen? A majority decides the minority is to blame for some evil and they happily ignore laws and morals because they have come to a unanimous decision. The same thing can happen at national scale.
Imagine if you applied your population rule to the U.N., what a farce that would be.
A simple majority vote only works in relatively small groups where all of the participants are on roughly equal standing and even then it's a good idea to have some secondary authority re-evaluate the decision and ensure everyone is acting in good faith and not simply forming temporary alliances in order to rob some weaker group and divide the spoils.
Trump was never supported, much less elected, by a majority of Americans. He didn't even get the majority of votes in the election he won. The American political system was explicitly designed not to empower the will of the majority, because that would have been an existential threat to the status quo (slavery) at the time.
And while it might be nice to claim that we should be civil participants in a battle of ideas, it would be naive to ignore the effect of centuries of gun culture and polarizing neo-reactionary rhetoric on American politics. Regardless of what the founding fathers may have intended (and notwithstanding that they disagreed on many things) a lot of Americans believe political violence is a necessity and a virtue. They lecture people on the virtues of guns after every school shooting, and speak wistfully about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants."
America has been edging itself with talk of a "cold civil war" for years now. It's like a morbid game of chicken.