Suspicious packages sent to Clinton, Obama, CNN

[_Water Dog]

How does pointing out that the Side B is killing millions, encourage anyone on Side A to kill? Makes no damned sense.

Did this actually make logical sense in your head?

[_Chap]

And I'm sure that Trump calling the media the "enemy of the people" and his tweet of him beating up a CNN logo had nothing to do with Sayoc mailing them a bomb.

And who is making and distributing the pictures of Hillary with a target on her head that he had on that van? Sure, it was the Democrat mob!

Good thing he didn't know how to make bombs that worked correctly.

Sort of like I said?

The bombs were sent by a Trump supporter and CNN-hater ... who was too damn dumb to make bombs that worked.



So now will Water Dog say sorry for blaming the left for this?

I mean, he was pretty damn sure, wasn't he?

So, does anybody believe these cartoonishly fake "bombs" are anything other than some lefty who has gifted his lefty media pals with something to obsess over at the 11th hour of the vote?

[_Res Ipsa]

There is a term that has been coined for this sort of thing: "stochastic terrorism." We know that there is a significant number of mentally or emotionally unbalanced people in our population. If some group or other amps up rhetoric that dehumanizes their opposition or gives express or tacit approval of violence against their opposition, the odds of one of these mentally unbalanced folks going off the rails and committing an act of violence increases. Maybe the clearest example is the case of Bill O'Reilly and Dr. Tiller. O'Reilly vilified Dr. Tiller as "Tiller the Killer" from his Fox platform day after day. Eventually, a mentally unbalanced individual decided that Tiller the Killer had to be put down and shot Tiller while he as attending church services.

Trump's rhetoric dehumanizes his opponents on an almost daily basis. He both expressly and tacitly gives approval to violence against his opponents. The fact that something like this happened shouldn't surprise anyone. For a president to act like this is unprecedented in my lifetime. It's not normal. It makes it inevitable that someone will get hurt or killed, and it should be rejected every time he does it.

***puts on hip waders in anticipation of the flood of whataboutism BS***

[_Themis]

Almost all of my (online) friends who support the current president are saying that this is a false flag operation.

I have to admit that it isn’t outside of the realm of left-wing extremist nuttery.

I must also admit, that was my first thought. It's pretty silly. Wasserman Shultz as the return address? ROFL. My thesis is that the question of motive will be answered by whether they find who did it or not. If real, someone dumb enough to do this will get caught, unless they only want you to think they are dumb, which makes it more likely a false flag. It seems cartoonishly dumb on the surface.

Interesting. This suggests to me extreme tribal thinking such that you first think it was maybe the other tribe you perceive as the enemy and not one of your own.

[_canpakes]

Instead of simply recognizing it for what it is, a nut. This isn't "terrorism."

What specifically could keep him from being defined as being both a nut and a terrorist?

[_grindael]

So were the 911 hijackers all not nuts? McVeigh? The Vegas shooter, etc.? They were all nuts to me.

[_Maxine Waters]

Wasn't Cesar a convicted felon back in 2014? How did Trump's election influence that? Is there some kind of backward causation in play?

And Florida doesn't automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons. So how was Cesar a registered Republican?

[_canpakes]

Bernie never advocated doing ANYTHING violent as Trump does, and Bernie doesn't have a list of people he routinely demeans and calls names either. Give me a break.

This is total horse squeeze. Trump cracking jokes about bodyslamming a reporter is no more violence inspiring than (insert any rhetoric by a Democrat or Bernie Sanders)

You say this as if Trump’s audience is comprised entirely of rational folks who don’t get lathered up at rallies, shouting stupid crap like demands to lock up political opponents on cue from the President.

Meanwhile, it’s a safe bet to assume that this purity of sanity is not the case, and that stupid or deranged individuals will interpret Trump’s enthusiasm for equating folks he doesn’t like to enemies of the people as a call for action.

Your belief that Trump cannot be seen as playing a part in inspiring the sort of stupidity that he himself shouts out to his crowds is both irrational and dishonest, especially if you’ve ever spent time living around average humans and have paid attention to how they act.

[_Kevin Graham]

Wasn't Cesar a convicted felon back in 2014? How did Trump's election influence that? Is there some kind of backward causation in play?

And Florida doesn't automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons. So how was Cesar a registered Republican?

He pleaded guilty to felony in 2002 with a previous bomb issue and served probation.

In Florida, felons may not apply to the court for restoration of voting rights until seven years after completion of sentence, probation and parole.

[_Water Dog]

Interesting. This suggests to me extreme tribal thinking such that you first think it was maybe the other tribe you perceive as the enemy and not one of your own.

Is that not true of you as well? A deluge of things, it's natural to assume it's part of the already unfolding pattern. Motive is the first thing to search for. The bombs were fake. I don't want to split hairs about whether the "bomber" thought they were real or not. As reported, the devices themselves were little more than halloween props. Knowing that, and also knowing that the timing of events doesn't help Republicans, the preponderance of evidence suggests the motive would come from the left.

So were the 911 hijackers all not nuts? McVeigh? The Vegas shooter, etc.? They were all nuts to me.

911 hijackers? No. McVeigh? No. Vegas shooter? Maybe. There has been shockingly little information about what happened there. Don't know anything about the disposition of that individual. For the most part I wouldn't describe any of these situations as being "nuts." Except maybe the vegas shooter.

Imagine if the president were to make public all the threats he receives. All the crap that gets mailed to the white house. You think fake bombs haven't been mailed? Dirty diapers? Bloody tampons? Let your imagination run wild, I'm sure none of us would even get close. The guy standing in front of the White House, stumbling around, droning on about space aliens, who's at fault for his dementia? I think there needs to be a level of competency before we can start to argue that a certain political party or ideology is inspiring [insert whatever] behavior.