Thank you, I thought I was somehow misreading it.

Republicans

Scared people for the most part. While I’m not American myself I grew up in an adjacent (Calvinistic Baptist) worldview and I cannot emphasise enough how much fear plays a role in that worldview. It’s pretty much a socially transmissible anxiety disorder in my experience, the evangelical worldview is ironically very well evolved to spread from one person to another because it directly hijacks your scepticism by upping the stakes too high for your brain to process it properly. You’re not allowed to express the fear though because that would be evidence you’re not really saved.

I’m not making excuses for them at all, I mean I’m very aggressively pro-LGBT rights and I grew up in that world so it’s definitely possible to escape it. What I am saying though in the spirit of ‘know your enemy’ is that in many cases these people from age five upwards will have been taught they are utterly disgusting in the eyes of god and deserve after they die to forever be tortured gruesomely beyond the power of English words to express because they were born human and are therefore guilty of original sin. These people see themselves as having been measured by the supreme creator of the universe and been found personally, individually beneath contempt. The only way you can escape your completely just fate of being eternally consciously tortured is if God predestined you to be saved and you’re one of the limited few that Jesus’s sacrifice actually applied to, in this world most of humanity exists only to be burned for the glory of God and if you ever fall away from the worldview you were never saved to begin with.

Again, I’m in no way excusing their bigotry which I loathe especially deeply having seen it at closer quarters than most. This is what we’re dealing with though from a purely practical point of view, if you or I are wrong then we’re just wrong but if these people are wrong then they will suffer a fate many times worse than death. This is why encounters with evangelicals are really intense for the most part, and why they’re so needlessly horrible from a secular perspective. While they’d never admit it in a million years the ideology is pretty trauma-driven for many of its adherents whether it’s the fear of hell, fear of losing their entire community even though they don’t believe any more, fear of rejection over some stupid theological difference (this lot make the revolutionary left look broad-church by comparison when it comes to factionalism) or any of the other fears that sound completely insane outside of that community but subjectively are very real.

I agree with you but technically speaking Earth from Star Trek went through very similar growing pains before finding their utopia.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/star-trek-deep-space-nine-past-tense/542280/

“It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they’ve given up.” This was how Commanding Officer Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, described early 21st-century Americans in an episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. When it aired in 1995, “Past Tense” spoke to contemporary concerns about homelessness by telling a story set in 2024—the near future for viewers, but the distant past for characters. In the two-part episode, Sisko and two of his companions from the U.S.S. Defiant find themselves stranded in San Francisco, where they’re reminded that the federal government had once set up a series of so-called “Sanctuary Districts” in a nationwide effort to seal off homeless Americans from the general population. Stuck in 2024, Sisko, who is black—along with his North African crewmate Dr. Julian Bashir and the fair-skinned operations officer Jadzia Dax—must contend with unfamiliar racism, classism, violence, and Americans’ apparent apathy toward human suffering.

A few are the people who think they'll end up near the top of such distopias. But mostly the ones being manipulated via fear into heading us towards these distopias.

It's sad people are so afraid of consenting adults loving each other. And it's worst others flame and wield these fears to gain power and wealth.

Who in their right mind chooses the latter over the former?

The people who think they will end up as Commanders and Wives as opposed to Handmaids, Marthas, Jezebels, soldiers or Econopeople. Handmaid's Tale society is a lot more reachable than Star Trek's within their lifespans.

I'm sure "no one could have seen this coming" from such an "upstanding citizen."

No one of course, except anyone who isn't willing to gloss over someone's bigoted beliefs about LGBTQIA people.

And all we needed was a "good guy"with a gun to stop him from killing her. /s

"Responsible gun owner".

As an American, it's good our worst behaviors aren't replicable elsewhere.

The summary’s second sentence should read "The man reportedly made disparaging remarks before opening fire with a handgun". The article is quite short too, so it might be better to just go ahead and read it.

You’re correct about this posts summary of the events. It confused the names and suggests that the shop owner tore down the flag and fired a handgun. The article reads better, the alleged attacker is not named.

Because naming killers in situations like this encourage others to do the same.

hes just some little man who wanted attention. never ever give it to him.

To what end? The backstory will follow the same basic pattern it always does.

Probably white, almost certainty male and definitely far-right. Increasingly radicalised by online content. Bought a gun because he legally could and carried it around everywhere for 6 months, hoping for a chance to shoot somebody. Eventually lost control of his delicate little emotions and killed someone.

He was confronted by police shortly afterwards and shot and killed. Also classic America.

Huh? Conservatives have made up tons of excuses to target the groups they've chosen as scapegoats. They say LGBT+ people are sexual predators, they're grooming children, they're "shoving it down our throats", etc.

What are you talking about?

I hadn't seen it

I had not seen it in the news nor social media, and just last night my wife told me about it. This posting was the first article I read.

As far as I can tell this is the only time this has been posted on this community or even on this instance (beehaw.org). The nature of Lemmy is that if you're subscribed to similar communities on multiple instances you're likely going to see duplicate posts sometimes.

First I read about it