Despite all those who are denouncing the idea of prayers for the victims (do a Google search for “Thoughts and prayers are not enough” and see how many hits you get), I will continue to pray for the victims and their families and for an end to this mindless violence, and I hope you will, too. In fact, amid all the finger-pointing and blame-laying and repulsive attempts to turn these tragedies to political advantage before the bodies are even cold, I would posit that the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them.
I mean where the f*ck do I start to unpack this shit?
You get sooo many hits for “Thoughts and prayers are not enough,” that must be the problem. Guess what? If you google “thoughts and prayers,” you are going to get a whole lot more hits, since that seems to be the standard.
As a side note, I’ll let you in a little secret Huckster. The searches for “Thoughts and prayers are not enough” will also come up under “thoughts and prayers.” That’s how the Interwebznettubes works.
Also, who capitalizes the first word in a search?
“Beto” O’Rourke immediately tried to blame President Trump for the El Paso shooting, accusing him of being an “open, avowed racist” and “white nationalist” who is inciting racism and violence. For example, he said Trump called Mexicans “rapists and criminals.” Except that Trump didn’t do that. That story has been debunked repeatedly. Trump called MS-13 gang members rapists and criminals, and that’s true. I also don’t see how someone who has repeatedly denied being racist can be an “open, avowed racist.”
Ok, so this is what Trump said:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Not really seeing an inaccuracy in Beto’s statement.
With regards to your last sentence, one thing I have noticed about Republicans/Conservatives is that part of their culture of aggression and authority dictates that the louder, more emphatically, and more often you say something determines the truthiness of the statement. You hear this stuff from conservatives all the time. “Tax cuts work!” “I am not a racist!” “I’m smart!” among others.
Media outlets such as the A.P. and Newsweek also resurrected known fake news to push the “Trump is inciting racist violence” theme, like the claim that he said there were “fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville riots, implying that he said there were fine people among the white supremacists. He was actually talking about both sides of the debate over removing Confederate monuments, as he made clear to a reporter at the time. I could argue that these cynical attempts to interject divisive racial motives into comments where they clearly weren’t intended are worsening race-based violence, but the people who do that never seem to notice it in themselves.
Again, Trump:
Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
Yes, there were people there to protest taking down a statue, etc. THOSE PEOPLE WERE NAZIS!!!
So, were the killings motivated by President Trump’s rhetoric? The El Paso shooter (I refuse to mention their names and glorify murderers) reportedly wrote a deranged “manifesto” in which he predicted the media would blame his actions on Trump, but he said he’d been angry over illegal immigration for years before Trump ran for office. He wanted to segregate America by race, which is something the left is bringing back. And he thought illegal immigrants were using up resources that should be spent on universal health care and a guaranteed income, hardly issues favored by Trump supporters.
This is just asinine. Ok, so he was angry over illegal immigration for years before Trump ran for office. Which party incited that rhetoric before Trump? But most importantly, should this person have had access to a gun then too? Notice that question is completely unanswered.
I’m sure there is more to unpack there, please feel free to do it below.