Iowa woman runs over 14yo girl “because she was a Mexican”

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Don't blame drugs for people's wretched behaviour. The overwhelming majority of Americans who used methamphetamine that day didn't feel inspired to commit hate crimes. Trump's rhetoric is a lot more relevant than drug use when discussing why someone chose to commit ideologically motivated violence.

You might have a point if she claimed 'because that kid stole my meth', but not when she clearly blamed the child's ethnicity. Please stop making dishonest excuses for far-right ideologically motivated violence.

You have to wonder how many like minded people will take up the cause of civil war if Trump gets booted out of the White House, or loses the next election.

Again this is an opinion. I have posted psych articles that make a connection between both crazy and normal people committing hate crimes where the words of people in power that reinforce existing prejudice and tip aforementioned people over the edge. Trump may not have driven the car or pulled the trigger but his irresponsible words encourage such people.

You are getting sucked into the vortex created by "He who shalt not be named" whereby actual news articles related to the topic are being labeled "fake news", "spam" and "off topic" all of which I have demonstrated is patently not true.

The lady is nuts. End of story.

I don’t like Trump. I wish he’d take a long walk off a short pier.

But it’s the lady’s responsibility. She would have done this even if Obama was President.

She might have, but the number of incidents has climbed. Right-wing populists who espouse xenophobic and racist rhetoric pre-date Trump, but Trump has been an especially effective one, and once he was elected president it did legitimize those feelings for the crazies who were already unstable.

It's not that Trump or other demagogues are personally responsible for the actions of these people, but they contribute to the toxic atmosphere that causes these people to go from nutty and hateful but non-violent to violent. It's no different from the clerics and imams who espouse hateful, violent, dehumanizing rhetoric and then have students commit terror. No, it's not their fault personally but they're still part of the problem.

Sometimes I ponder if more is in play than just a few members on the board who really go out of their way to "flame the board".

1. It calls to mind the Russian Disinformation War.

Russia’s attempt to exert influence over the 2016 election was far from an isolated incident tied to one campaign, but one part of a “broader, sophisticated, and ongoing information warfare campaign” designed to divide America by inflaming cultural, political, and social tensions. The influence operations began long before 2016 and remain active today, the report says.

The report says that although the IRA’s [Russian Internet Research Agency] purchase of online ads on platforms like Facebook received considerable attention from the press and the public, the ads really weren’t all that important. The number of ads Russian operatives bought and used to target American users paled in comparison to the tweets, YouTube videos, Reddit comments, and Facebook and Instagram posts created and shared by IRA operatives posing as normal users. The group made over 61,500 Facebook posts, 116,000 Instagram posts, and 10.4 million tweets, all aimed at sowing discord and inflaming tensions among Americans, says the report.

Source: Russia's Disinformation War Is Just Getting Started
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2. Then something else struck me as strange.
goldfish21 wrote: "We as in multiple people on this forum that you are referring to, not we as in a team."
beneficial then wrote: "I hate playing around and making vague insinuations. I want concrete things. Because of that, I have a pretty good idea of who you are talking about. Me, goldfish, cyberdad, and 2 others I can't think of. But we support each other, that's it."

That caused me to ponder (using reverse logic) if there really exists a team. That brought up another recent thread. The OP of this thread was B19 and he was warning the site about a recent SPAM incursion. Fnord asked for more details and B19 responded. Here is a link to the thread: URGENT MESSAGE RE SPAM

Some of the items I noted were:
7. Look out for several brandnew posters showing up in a thread and congratulating one another on their good advice.
9. Be mindful that spammers usually lie about the country that they are in - the Ukranians say they are in the USA, the UK, one of them claimed to be in Mali...
The Russian, Ukranian and Muldovan spammers seem to be getting more numerous in targeting our social forum lately. They are producing most of the current spam, though there are some from Pakistan also posing as ordinary members who are also active. Before most of the spam of these kinds seemed to be USA based, and the change to the Russian speaking countries has happened in the past 12-18 months.

So although this particular focus was on SPAM whereas Russian Disinformation War encompasses a much broader effort, the main point is the Disinformation War is a team effort, involving several individuals working in close consort.
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Now the third point that I ponder was highlighted by Persephone29 when she said "The OP is a Canuck". It seems very strange that someone from Canada should take such a strong dislike for the USA and insert inflammatory political remarks in almost a continuous barrage over many months. Why doesn't he ever remark about Canada or Canadian politics? And it seems like at least one other that co-joins into these politically charged discussions also is not an American. But only seems to limit his discussion to American politics rather than discuss the politics of his nation.
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Why does the OP insist on flaming the board and posting in News and Current Events when these posts clearly belong in the PPR (Politics, Philosophy, and Religion) forum?

Many people identify strongly with their political and religious views. Many Aspies and those on the AS have been subjected to significant bullying over the years. Many are very vulnerable. They come to this board to meet friends and develop their social skills. They don't come here to be attacked, to be bullied, to have someone stomp on their political or religious views. They stay away from PPR.

So as the last poster wrote in his signature line, “knife goes in, guts come out”, is that really the message this board wishes to greet new members with?

What do you think Matt Groening was getting at with that?

Nutjob rule number 453 - people with IP addresses outside of the US are forbidden from criticising the US

Yep we have covered that ground before.....next

nutjob [authoritarian maga] rule 454- amuuurican citizens themselves are not allowed to criticise the US as it is perfect and beyond criticism.

ahh yes, I forgot about rule number 454

It's all a matter of circumstance. Do posters from an ally with a democratic government like Australia warrant suspicion? Probably not. Very different when you're talking about a poster from an adversary like Russia that has an increasingly totalitarian government that has a rep for interfering with the politics of other nations.

If thats your interperatation you got it all wrong.

There we go,finaly someone who actually makes sense,thank you.

Goldfish can be a bit of a pain in the butt...and sometimes quite preachy....but he’s a real Canadian, and not a troll in that sense.

Beneficii is a Yank. So is Funeral. They have political opinions which are liberal....but they aren’t that radical. They are based, somewhat, on theorized sociology.

Cyberdad is an Australian with an autistic adolescent daughter. He believes in sociological theories, too....about “white privilege” and that ilk.

In short, those people have political opinions which run counter to conservatives. And they like to emphasize those opinions. But that’s the crux of it.

They are not trolls in the sense that they are bullshitting about themselves.

I hope you had a nice Christmas.