comment: >
  
  I saw a guy today driving around with a 2A sticker (spelled with guns) and a republican elephant sticker. 
  Show me democrats driving around with donkeys on their car. Maybe you’ll see a Bernie sticker here and there. Or the remnants of an Im With Her sticker. But proud party affiliation like that is weirdly for republicans and it’s all about weapons.
  Edit - I’m just gonna address this here since there’s a lot of what-aboutism in the replies…I’m not denying that liberals have bumper stickers. But you don’t see extremist liberals (if that’s even a thing…) openly aligning themselves with a mainstream political party the way you do on the right.
context: I don’t get it. Even if you buy the fucked up ideology, how are you proud of attempting an attack, screwing it up, and then settling for hitting an 80 year-old man over the head with a hammer? I mean, even as a bottom-feeding fascist, you should be ashamed of yourself. >
  
  Having listened to the 911 call and his interrogation by police… the guy is exceptionally stupid. >
  
  Most of them are.  It's much easier to swindle stupid people.
  They also do pretty much anything you tell them to do if you promise them something they want. >
  
  It's easier to fool people than convince them they've been fooled. >
  
  Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again. >
  
  I can't even remember the correct saying anymore. All I remember is Bush's fukken face and this beautiful nonsense. >
  
  "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."  
  Republicans have ALL forgotten that second part, and live for being fooled over and over again. >
  
  I’m convinced that W’s fub of that adage was intentional. He was speaking unscripted, got halfway in, realized he was about to say “shame on me” on record, and found a way to deny the media that soundbite. He looked foolish doing it, for sure, but it was really quite a savvy ‘mistake’. >
  
  Ever see bush speak before he ran for president? It's like a night and day difference. He was actually very well spoken and articulate.
  Either he quickly became dumber or he was putting on a "average Joe Texas" persona to win over the blue collar crowd. >
  
  Larry the Cable Guy is in Mensa >
  
  Last year at CPAC they had a big ass banner saying "We Are All Domestic Terrorists". Of course the GOP supports him. >
  
  Wait, seriously? >
  
  Yeah it was an attempt to take back the narrative that they are terrorists after January 6 in a tongue and cheek sarcastic kind of way. Conservatives are not all that good at humor. >
  
  My takeaway from that little stunt was less with what the words were and more that they have completely dropped the pretense of pretending there are things off limits anymore. >
  
  I think the main point was to deflect what liberals are pointing out.
  "gee, I guess everyone is a Nazi these days, huh"
  "oh, you think that's racism?  ok buddy everything's racist, huh"
  "sure liberals, we're just domestic terrorists.  Yup, we're aaallll domestic terrorists."
  It's a way to handwave away legitimate criticism by saying that liberals are just mouth-foaming illogical idiots with no nuance, and the conservatives eat it up. >
  
  It also demonstrates how comfortable they feel. They really are talking out both sides of their mouths.
  More like this:
  
  "gee, I guess everyone is a Nazi these days, huh"
  "oh, you think that's racism? ok buddy everything's racist, huh"
  "sure liberals, we're just domestic terrorists. Yup, we're all domestic terrorists."
  
  jk...unless?? >
  
  I just can’t with the stupid anymore. Haven’t been this depressed for so long ever, and it sucks it all comes down to these ass clowns ripping my family apart. It’s been at a personal level for me and my cousins since day 1 and it’s only gotten worse. Feel like we won’t see any significant change in a positive direction for quite some time either. >
  
  I feel you, this week I hit a new level of depressed. Hung out with my parents & sister for the first time since Christmas. Went to church with them, got lunch, it was almost nice, then they starting complaining about the "terrible progressive liberals" with me right there, knowing I'm pretty liberal. The amount of hate & ignorance they displayed was so depressing. Then my dad said he knows his political views are aligned with God because the progressive liberals want all humans to be dead and have the planet free of us, but God told mankind to have "dominion over the earth". It was just a new level of low for them, and sooooooo fucking stupid too. I guess conservative media is telling them all liberals want them dead so the environment can be better, not surprised Fox News is pitching that, but the fact that my family buys into it.... so sad, I think they are fully lost at this point. They were well educated and mild mannered people, were....
  I've just curled up on the couch after work the last 2 days. Any time I've ever tried to have a calm discussion about it, they get enraged
  I just want my family back... >
  
  
  I just want my family back...
  
  Blood relatives are not necessarily family, nor is a family static. Torturing yourself to accept people when you're at fundamental odds because of the past and/or "family is the most important thing no matter what" being drilled into your head is never going to be worth it.
  My advice is to move on and learn to not feel guilt about doing so. If you don't burn bridges on your way out, you can always reconnect later if things change. In the meantime you can choose who or what you'd like to consider family. >
  
  'He was only going to hammer her knees if she lied to him.'
  No matter what she would have told him, he would have called her a liar and hammered her knees...and then her head.  
  He was there to KILL her and the Right is still making jokes about it. >
  
  I like how conservatives think that instead of just admitting he was his gay lover having a spat, his go-to alibi was that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and potentially murder her for her lies instead, as if that makes any sense. >
  
  Think about the people making that claim - for them, being publicly known to be gay is still the more damning of the two options.  In 2023. >
  
  CBS News in Chicago named News radio 780 engaged in the most outrageous and irresponsible reporting by a major outlet I think I've ever heard a couple of days ago regarding this issue
  First they announced with great fanfare that Mr Depape was speaking out from jail. First of all, who "speaks out" from jail? You're in jail. You have to intentionally reach out to a prisoner if you want to hear what they said. The question that needs to be asked is why, when there have been a grand total of zero jailed mass shooters opinions and motives aired on this channel throughout the years, would you want to know what made this particular criminal tick? The only possible answer is to advance political violence
  Next, they went on to announce that we should all be grateful for his actions. Then something about warning others about more like him or something like this. They then went on to happily announce that this guy would be posting his thoughts and motives on social media so, stay tuned to Newsradio 78!!!
  What the absolute fuck. I've opined on propaganda lite before and it's so prevalent these days, we can't even spot it most times. But this, THIS is what they do, in a nutshell. This is the terrifying stuff. This is what will turn good public servants away from public service where they will be replaced with the next fascist. This is what motivates the subset of the most angry kool-aid drinkers sharpening their spears in the darkest corners of our society because they now know, their thoughts and motivations will be amplified by mass media if they take the big step. They don't provide any context to airing these motivations like Salon did in their writing for reporting on the same thing. They just left his words hanging out there in the breeze then moved on to whatever else their sold out writers came up with
  I can't even believe what I'm hearing from our mass media lately. They most obviously have seemed to have picked a side and in this case, it was not the side of an attempted murder victim but rather, the attempted murderer along with the long and growing list of GOP political violence apologists >
  
  Conservative violence has always been there the open support of it is new. >
  
  Which is a sign of future transgressions like Jan 6. No one learned anything other than you can sack the capitol and walk away. The 900 no names they have currently prosecuted are not the leaders, organizers or even a high percentage of those involved. A joke really, and you best believe our enemies abroad were and still are taking many notes. >
  
  Seriously, r/capitolconsequences has become a sad joke at this point, you get reprimanded for pointing out that none of the people responsible have faced any consequences and that the clock is running out for the DOJ to do anything. “The wheels of Justice turn slowly!” Yeah, well that doesn’t matter if they move so slowly that the offending party is able to reclaim power and effectively wipe the slate clean, does it? >
  
  Yup. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt but this is beyond reproach, since the top orchestrators are still in positions of power and seemingly emboldened since. Add in what happened in Brazil, and how swiftly they acted, and we are truly a joke when it comes to accountability and protecting our democracy. >
  
  Or look at what just happened in Germany: they had a right wing coup attempt and they didn’t waste a minute rounding up everyone involved. It’s almost like they know what happens if you let these things fester! >
  
  "Live in fear and do what we tell you or we will kill you". That's the World the Republicans want you to live in. That's their only policy in Washington. That's their vision of 'America'. The Bullies have taken over. >
  
  The bullies have always been in control, except for a few brief periods of progress over the years. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt are revered for a reason, they each presided over a period where we beat the darkness back a bit. But the darkness is always waiting, always ready to do harm. And this is not a new thing in human societies, it is the norm. We could be better, but broadly speaking, we aren't. The people with the most will seem to be the ones most willing to do harm to others for personal gain. The gentle souls who want the world to be a better place are generally too easily distracted, too easily discouraged. >
  
  Roosevelt was great for the american working class...not so great for native americans though. >
  
  Or Japanese Americans. >
  
  Now? >
  
  They dropped all pretense of civility 7 years ago. >
  
  Nixon's pardon fifty years ago is a straight line to the Republican party today. >
  
  
  Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon." >
  
  Fun reminder that Ford is the only President never elected since he was appointed his VP role and wasn’t elected as VP in an election. 
  The only President not picked by the electoral college pardoned the person who gave him the presidency >
  
  Also the president who had backdoor meetings with the DeVos family to stymie FTC proceedings against Amway, opening the door for MLMs in our economy, just a fun little fact from podcast The Dream. >
  
  Stochastic terrorism, they paint society as being over run by a bunch of random psychos and then work up, enable, and unleash the psychos on the public >
  
  This is such a bizarre turnaround. 
  Conservatives are literally the entrenched representatives of regression or perpetuating the status quo. They are the rich elite, often privately educated, Ivy League attendees, the landed gentry, a group vested in crushing the common man and keeping their club exclusive…
  And yet they have managed to paint themselves as some kind of radical movement - a group of ‘anti-establishment’, ‘anti-government’, ‘anti-elitism’, ‘pro freedom’, ‘pro worker’ underdogs that elicit fervent devotion from people they would have imprisoned in an instant if they had the audacity to turn up at their country club gates. 
  It is turkeys voting for Christmas, grabbing a chicken and throwing themselves in the oven in a gleeful, frenzied effort to burn themselves to death, so long as the chickens get cooked too. 
  All the while the farmer is sitting back telling the turkeys they’re going to be dinner, but be sure those chickens don’t get away with not being cooked as well. >
  
  Faux populism is one of the main tenets of fascism >
  
  The definition of terrorism is using violence to accomplish political ends.
  He is a terrorist. The proud bois are terrorists. The Republican party is a terrorist party. >
  
  If you feel compelled to go back to the numerous threads where they all crawled out of the woodwork to proclaim he was Pelosi's gay, liberal lover, don't bother. They've already moved on to new talking points and probably don't even remember saying that.
  That's the magic when you never actually believe anything -- you can say whatever you want from one minute to the next, and none of it has to make any sense. >
  
  Conservatives celebrated the attack and have continued to use it to take both Pelosis as well as liberals in general. Conservatives are the enemy of the American people. >
  
  Don't forget that, while celebrating it, they're also claiming the attacker was a staunch liberal and any talk of it being a right wing attack is purely lies by the main stream media.
  Same old same old...  "We take no responsibility" >
  
  Don't forget that weird claim it was a gay lover. Because throw in a little homophobia for a treat. It's like a little spice for conservatives. "Oh this is looking like some good hot and ready propaganda, but can we throw in some fear mongering and shame towards a persecuted group?" >
  
  It was comical reading the “thoughts” of all the weirdos in the conspiracy subreddit. 
  When the video came out, it was just people saying things like “Looks suspicious,” without explaining why. 
  Because their narratives were disproven, and they were looking for any reason they could to validate them. They weren’t finding any, so there were just vague complaints. 
  Then it turned into “Why was Pelosi holding a drink” or “Why was he sleeping in a dress shirt.” >
  
  I came here to say this! I was on r/conservative last week and there were at least four front page posts about how the video was going to be released… the next day, after the release, there was only one. Every comment was how it looked like a “lovers quarrel” or how suspicious it was that a man would be in his underwear in his own home in the early morning hours. It’s funny because I see commenters there hocking stoicism all the time but their takes are what Zeno of Citium would say is like a dog tied to cart: it goes wherever the cart goes, not by will, but by necessity. They are tied to their own disgust/dislike and will let that compel their beliefs without shame or self awareness. The “facts over feelings” crowd have never met a fact they won’t deny in favor of a feeling. >
  
  My FIL is a HUGE MAGA supporter. The jokes were flying when this news came out. Since he's seen the video, silence. No response. Also, he's a devote Christian. >
  
  Aren’t they always devout “followers” of Christ? If i were Jesus i would be fucking livid. >
  
  They'd string Jesus up in a heartbeat as a brown socialist. >
  
  After reading the first three New Testament books, mostly about Jesus, I realized an inmense majority of Christians have no idea of who Jesus is. It's exactly the person they most hate. >
  
  What's crazy is how fast the Nazi party started implementing obscenely oppressive laws against Jews. Within just a few months. That's how fast it can happen.
  Getting real tired of conservatives who zoned out in history class and never bothered to pick up a history book as an adult telling people they are overreacting when we compare the current Republican party to fascists.
  All it takes is complacence for a very short period of time for things to get real dark. >
  
  You know who else was an imperfect vessel? Hitler.
  The evangelical churches in Germany tried to make a deal with the devil, prostrating itself and allowing Hitler to appoint politically the leader of their religious confederation.
  They justified it for all sorts of reasons. Hitler couldn't be that bad. Besides, we're talking about salvation and saving the soul of an increasingly secular Germany here; hellfire and damnation is a low price to pay if it means saving the souls of millions.
  Unfortunately, the devil snubbed them. Hitler had no intention of honouring his end of the deal; initially, he couldn't move against the church due to the war effort, but he had every intention of wiping out religion in Germany if he won the war. It was a dark stain on their history after the war and the churches lost much of their remaining credibility. >
  
  Has he been invited to speak at CPAC yet?? >
  
  Did anybody on the planet think that this moron on his own came to the conclusion that he needed to attack the Pelosi’s? Of course not, of course he was emboldened by the Republican Party >
  
  People commenting on my local news station's Facebook page are saying the attacker is Paul's gay lover and they were partying it up in their underwear and the video was doctored. The republican base is not tied to reality anymore. There is no saving them. >
  
  Kavanaugh gets interrupted while having a high end steak dinner; Conservatives lose their minds over the transgression. 
  Mentally ill man that their party leader whipped into a frenzy attacks an elderly man with a hammer with the intent to assassinate the Speaker of the House with said hammer; Conservatives say they deserved it. 
  I am and have been an Independent my entire life. Voted for both main parties and some third parties over the years. 
  The current GOP scares the shit out of me. In part for their rhetoric but primarily because after 1/6 they didn't learn a lesson. >
  
  I think real problem is they actually did learn a lesson after 1/6: we would rather follow the rules than stop them. >
  
  If you know a republican you either know  violent domestic terrorist or a complicit asshole. >
  
  Agreed.  Uncle in my family.  So far just a complicit asshole but I fully believe he'd be a violent domestic terrorist if he wasn't so poor and lazy.  100% he wanted to be there January 6th but it involved getting off his ass. >
  
  Just compare and contrast Republican and Democrat reactions on political attacks. When Steve Scalise was shot at a Congressional baseball game practice, no one said it was a jilted gay lover. No one cheered the attack or called the mentally unwell man that did it a hero. No news networks gleefully showed footage and photos of it over and over, speculating on what really happened, wink wink. 
  The GOP is a party of violence and unchecked, unwarranted hatred. >
  
  This is terrorism btw. 
  But they’re still more worried about men wearing dresses. >
  
  Oh I’m glad they told me that the GOP has become the violent party only recently. I never would have thought that the last 7 years of constant political violence and acts of terrorism coming from their constituents would qualify them as the party of political violence until Salon told me about it! >
  
  Say the words:
  Radical Republican Terrorism >
  
  Elon did as well when he tweeted out a conspiracy theory. >
  
  
  a judge ordered the release of video footage that appears to show DePape beating Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer after refusing to listen to police orders to drop the weapon. The video is hard to watch, showing the suspect tackling Pelosi to the ground and viciously pounding him with a hammer while the police attempt to pull him off the 82-year-old man.
  
  Not that the point needs more illustration, but this sequence of events just underscores how fucking useless police are. 
  You can be the husband of the Speaker of the House - a pinnacle of privilege, - have the cops respond to an intruder call before the violence starts, get there, confront the suspect, armed, who refused to comply, and they will STILL FAIL to protect you from being beaten within an inch of your life. >
  
  Have you seen the video? It all happened within like 3 seconds, the police responded pretty appropriately imo >
  
  I have; scene opens on Fuckface holding Pelosi's arm and gripping a hammer, which is very clearly not a good thing. The cop tells him to drop the hammer with the same urgency tone of voice as you'd tell a dog to drop a shoe, and he chuckles and says "uhhh nope lol". Cop asks "what is going on in here," with again, nowhere near the urgency you'd expect, not "DROP IT NOW, HANDS ON YOUR HEAD", but just dicklessly asking what's happening, like he can't fucking see what's in front of him. 
  The cops look like fucking morons. >
  
  It's not a joke when they're called the American Taliban >
  
  Conservativism is a mental illness. >
  
  Something I've been wondering about.  At what point do I switch my public voter registration to Republican, so that I don't have to worry about people hunting me down in the future, Mcarthyism style? >
  
  “Don’t be silly be a smartie come and join the nazi party!”
  extended musical number >
  
  Thankfully you can still vote, privately, however you want.
  I'm just worried about some vigilante looking up voter reg and going door to door. >
  
  Right wing extremism is on the rise globally.  Chaos is fuelled by their media ecosystem 
  Once the president was out and attacking entire portions of the population for NOT BEING IN HIS POLITICAL PARTY that should have been what made people wake up.
  They won’t wake up.
  They want their dream and they’ll kill to get it because they see themselves as heroes of virtue.
  It’s twisted to the core.
  There is no hate quite like American Christian love >
  
  Damn that last sentence was too real >
  
  Republican politicians (save for a precious few who have mostly since been purged from the party) turning a blind eye to, if not outright supporting or participating in the violent overthrow of democratic government on Jan 6, was probably bit of of a hint. >
  
  He and Rittenhouse could do a road show. >
  
  Sorry Kyle Rittenhouse. Party’s over. 
  There is a new criminal POS for the GOP to worship. You’re yesterday’s news. They’ve moved on to DePape who they’ll lift up until these cops in Memphis go on trial then they’ll rush to get behind them. 
  There will always be new human garbage for Republicans to defend and support. >
  
  
  Pelosi's attacker is proud of himself. 
  
  Of course he is. DePape believes he has a good shot of getting a role in a 3 Stooges movie. >
  
  Should make sentencing a lot easier when he openly admits he did the crime. >
  
  It’s weird that things like this are still presented as outliers and considered shocking. The GQP has made the turn to full on terrorism/fascism. This is the only platform they have left to stand on. >
  
  There are a lot of uncanny similarities to the rise of the Nazis... Calling the political leader a clown, a failed coup (and they kept trying) worshiping the leader, political violence.... >
  
  the word is "Terrorism"
  They're the party of terrorism. >
  
  Do we wait until they start proudly calling themselves Nazis before we fight them like the Nazis they are? >
  
  Fucker probably thinks he’s the next rittenhouse >
  
  When his trial judge walks up to him, kisses his hand and tells him what a wonderful defendant he has been, he will be the next Kyle Rittenhouse.  When his trial judge cries as he is sentenced to short time, he will be the next Kim Potter.