Time for a new "Yet Another Mass Shooting Thread"

Interesting Shapiro who is one of the bigger influencers on the right, is going around saying Trans should not be allowed guns

So effectively they should be denied constitutional rights enjoyed by other Americans

It is pretty obvious where even the supposedly 'more moderate' GOP are going with this

 

Absolutely--just to keep beating the drum, genocide is a crime of INTENT. A campaign of intimidation, legal and social pressure, etc. can be considered a genocide before the killing starts. Or even if it never starts--as noted earlier, merely inflicting harm (even emotional harm) on members of a group meets the definition.

There are some people who think we should define genocide rather narrowly, only for very extreme cases; and for many people (I suspect superdave is one of them), the term only applies when there is an highly organized campaign of systemic murder on an industrial scale. I am not one of those people--not just because I think it's more moral to identify systemic persecution of a targeted group before things "get out of hand" but also because having genocide as a distinct category of crime in international law really only makes sense if you apply it broadly.

For example, if the people responsible for taking Ukrainian children from Ukraine and sending them to Russia to be adopted by Russian families and raised as Russian are ever brought to justice (big hypothetical, I realize), I would strongly argue they should be charged with genocide. Because the intention of their actions was much more ominous than merely, say, mishandling/abusing the adoption process--much more ominous than kidnapping, even.

 

He's also adamantly refusing to engage with the substance of the arguments in favor of regarding 'genocide' in the broader terms which Raphael Lemkin initially laid out and which are spelled out explicitly in the UN Convention.

Meanwhile, in some states, laws are being passed which allow the state government to use Child Protective Services to investigate families for "abuse" simply because the parents allow their children to pursue gender affirming care. There is ample statistical evidence that demonstrates that trans kids are under a much higher risk of physical violence.

Taking children of a targeted group from their families, and deliberately causing harm (either physical or emotional) to members of that group both qualify under the UN Convention.

Yup. Hell, click on MSN.com and you'll see stories feeding the narrative that trans people are a violent threat.

 

Since you are being reactionary, everything is unrealistic until it happens (in your eyes).
But, that is quite alarming since you have been given ample evidence that those in power want them to happen (an even evidence that it has happened in the near past).
Given the evidence, I'm not sure how you would define the genocide (executions) happening in the future, but not the present.

 

I get your overall point, but I want to quibble with this a bit. This, here, I see as doing 2 things. The first is that it is looking at grouping from a biased perspective of religion (as a driver of procreation) as well as looking at the harm coming from the perpetrator. If we look at it from these perspectives, we inherently leave out groups like farm workers or unions or the disabled or LGBTQ+. But if we look at this from the perspective of those being harmed, then that changes how we can look at genocide. Which, I think was bigred's point. At least that is how I'm reading it, and how I'm interpreting it. (Of course, I've also never looked at the definition of genocide in any depth.)

 

The frustrating part is that it will take years. The hopeful part is that, like the students from Parkland, the years to when they make a difference will be short.

 

"60 Minutes" allowed MTG to stand by the "Democrats are pedophiles" slur--which is a thinly veiled attack on LGBT people and especially on trans people--with only a little bit of "oh GOSH" pushback, and zero challenging of the extremely dark subtext.

It's MUCH closer to being possible here than any of us should be comfortable with. The idea that we should wait until it's likely is worse than merely complacent.

 

It's already started!

 

Being possible? Sounders has laid out a very convincing case that it has been occurring since the 1980s, in the genocide discussion upthread.

 

Putting here because of the discussion, but going to cross post this. And, in reality, this could go in at least 5 threads.

https://wpln.org/post/republicans-b...gun-control-protest-on-tennessee-house-floor/

Three Democratic lawmakers who took part in protests on the House floor of the Tennessee statehouse will face expulsion later this week.

Earlier Monday, the three lawmakers were removed from their committee assignments and had their badges to the capitol deactivated.

Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville; Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis; and Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, are facing discipline after supporting protesters pushing for more gun control at the capitol, days after the Covenant School shooting. ​

Do I really need to comment further?

 

I was part of that discussion, and I was largely in agreement. To repeat the point I was hammering--it's a "genocide" before the killing even starts; in fact, there doesn't necessarily need to be any mass killing to qualify.

I'm trying to address those complacent liberals who hold to a much narrower and more exclusive definition of what constitutes a genocide; one where there needs to be a coherent, somewhat centrally-directed campaign of mass-scale violence directed at the target group. I want them to accept that even by their own high bar, we're getting close. The preconditions--and there HAVE to be preconditions, genocides don't just flare up out of the blue--have been in place for a while; the rhetoric, the steady drumbeat of dehumanization combined with the accelerating language of being under threat and increasing incidents of stochastic violence should trouble the complacent.

 

Okay, I got ya.

 

I remember some discussion in 2020 or 2021 that newsrooms were not able to effectively report on the George Floyd murder and the subsequent BLM protests effectively because, in part, the people who were in charge of what and how to cover, where older, Whiter, and not in tune with what was actually happening. And what it seems is that those who are older and Whiter are still not able to accept that what people like MTG says are only partially performative, but also quite a bit what they believe. Stahl can be good, and was interesting back in the day, but other than the occasional report, she is not longer the journalist she once was.

And for that matter, 60 minutes has drifted to the middle. They used to be challenging, but not very much any more.