UPDATE, FRIDAY 10/26: They’ve nabbed a suspect, a 56-year-old Florida man whose van is covered with pro-Trump stickers, alongside “CNN SUCKS” stickers and pictures of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats depicted in crosshairs. Somehow I don;t think this is going to stop these people from crying “false flag.”
By David Futrelle
At yet another of his endless series of rallies this Wednesday night, Donald Trump responded to the news that pipe bombs were sent to the homes and offices of a number of his top Democratic bete noires, as well as to CNN, another favorite Trump target, by offering only the vaguest possible condemnations of these acts of terrorism.
He decried the current poisonous state of political discourse, without acknowledging himself as the prime poisoner, And then he launched into a tirade blaming the news media for its alleged “endless hostility and constant negative and oftentimes false attacks.” It’s almost as if he were suggesting that CNN deserved to receive the bomb found in its mailroom today.
The White House reportedly has not reached out to any of the Democrats targeted in the bomb attacks.
Trump’s graceless and self-serving response to this attempt to kill many of his most hated political opponents speaks volumes about the man. And so do the responses of many of his biggest fans online and in the right-wing media world. I’ve spent much of the day scanning the responses to the bombings amongst the MAGA crowd on Twitter and Gab, and let’s just say it hasn’t been pretty.
Most of the devoted MAGAheads seem to be going with the claim that this was all a “false flag” by the Dems — possibly paid for by George Soros, who was himself targeted with a mail bomb only a few days ago.
Quite a few of the false flag theorists appear unaware that caps-lock can be turned off.
Other conspiracy theorists constructed their tweets almost entirely out of hashtags.
For this fellow, the only real bomb is that … caravan of Honduran refugees.
A few ingenious tweeters even managed to work the NPC meme into the mix.
This guy thinks it’s all an elaborate plot to distract from … tech companies reporting strong earnings.
Some of the false flag theories have gotten fairly baroque already:
Only some of the “false flag” criers tried to offer any proof to back up their claims. As for those who did, let’s just say that their arguments are a little less than airtight.
Some think it has to be a liberal/lefty plot because if right-wingers had sent bombs in the mail, the bombs would have worked.
Some suggest that it has to be an inside job on the part of the Dems — because Florida Dem Debbie-Wasserman Schultz put her return address on the bombs!
THEY LITERALLY THINK THE FACT THAT WHOEVER SENT THE BOMBS PUT HER (MISSPELLED) NAME ON IT … PROVES IT WAS REALLY HER.
One of the many pushing this particular angle? Sarah Palin. But there were many more.
My favorite galaxy-brain version of this argument? That Wasserman-Schultz put her own address on the bombs … to draw attention away from her!
Wheels within wheels.
After the crowd at Trump’s rally today started chanting “lock her up” — this was before Trump himself went onstage — many liberal and lefty observers wondered aloud if that chant might change to “blow her up” (or “blow them up”) later in the evening. It didn’t, but some in MAGA-land clearly think that prospect is hilarious.
Of course, many of the MAGAheads insisting that they would prefer locking her up to blowing her to bits say it’s because they want the chance to watch her suffer … before she is executed. 
We’re down the rabbit hole now. And the rabbit hole is full of shit.
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I just can’t even.
This bullshit is incredibly terrifying. These people are so far detached from reality that they’re capable of believing anything or doing anything.
Much as I hope that your Democrats down there pull their thumbs out of their asses and actually vote some of these assclowns out, I’m worried about what’s going to happen down there with these hot messes when they start losing.
“Are we the NPCs?”
I see that the person saying “Too bad they didn’t blow them up!!” is Carol Ayers@godislove524.
It’s almost as though those who embrace the alt-right feel absolutely no need to connect any one of their deeply held values with their other deeply held values.
Almost as though they don’t bother to think things through.
Almost as though they operate solely on emotion.
They think this is all an attempt to “ostracize MAGA”?
oh well, I guess they’re on to us.
we’ll just have to drop nukes on them and have the soldiers from Jade Helm collect the remains and send them on to FEMA camps.
remember: just don’t take their guns, leave them where you find them.
I love the one declaring “that’s not how Reichstag fires work.” If we’re going with a Reichstag fire analogy, Trump would be in the role of Hitler, the Republicans the Nazis, and the Democrats the communists.
The one about how it has to be Democrats because of the misspelling is also precious. It is right wingers who historically have the atrocious spelling. Including their leader, Mr. Covefe himself.
@skyla They believe that the parents of murdered children are ‘crisis actors’. This isn’t that much of a stretch for them.
Ok, just when I thought the world couldn’t get any weirder…
Apparently* Richard ‘Punchable’ Spencer has a new girlfriend; and she’s a hardcore lefty. Anyway, here’s the happy couple.
I think I’ll just hibernate. Could someone please wake me up when we’re back in the timeline where Prince is still alive?
[*I’ve not been able to verify this, but as it’s all the right wingers up in arms about it, it might well be true]
I’m particularly impressed by the poster who suggests that poor spelling points to a Democrat source. Almost every time I’ve read a comment thread supporting Trump, it has included some commenters whose level of literacy would shame a ten-year-old. Or are all of those false flags?
Clearly a false flag operation to distract from their involvement in the child sex slave pizzeria that is sending the kids over to Benghazi to mine uranium.
@ Alan Robertshaw:
I’m thinkin not….
Off-topic TRIGGER WARNING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND CHILD ABUSE!!
This says a lot
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/10/hedda-nussbaum-joel-steinberg-abuse-trial-anniversary.html
Actually, in my experience, if right wingers are up in arms about something, that’s a pretty clear indication it’s complete bullshit.
Weird –
Ugh, the bit about the abuser’s parents sweeping in to bully and pressure her into staying with him hits hard for me this week. I met up with my partner’s parents for the first time since I stopped living with him and made him go to abuser counseling and such two years ago. I knew things were going to be awkward, but I wasn’t expecting these people I’ve known for twelve years, loved and seen as surrogate parents, to just rip into me and call me “vicious.” My big sin? Talking publicly about the abuse. With their son’s blessing and encouragement.
Once again I find myself wondering whether there is any atrocity, any death, any human suffering that cannot be dismissed as a “false flag” if it looks a bit politically inconvenient.
What would a “true flag” operation look like?
TRIGGER WARNING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
@ LG:
That’s one of the plot points in the movie “The Burning Bed“, cited in the article. It’s a manifestation of the triad of denial: “If it’s wrong, it’s not happening; if it’s happening it’s not wrong; if it’s wrong and it is happening it’s someone else’s fault”
This right here is the intersection of conspiracy theory thinking with absolute cartoon imagination. One of the dangers of conspiratorial thinking is that suddenly you can imagine people being capable of anything. If these people really believe that there is some kind of Deep State Soros Illuminati Rothschild cabal out to “get” their precious Trump, then sure, they’ll have some specialist rig up a few pipe bombs or get a few false accusers for Brett Kavanaugh. Why wouldn’t they?
But I’ve watched enough episodes of Forensic Files to know that the knowledge required to construct devices like that is pretty specialized. It takes both construction and electronic skills. Hillary Clinton or George Soros or whatever Democratic stereotype they imagine is not reading up on how to build these things, testing several methods to ensure they don’t blow themselves up, wiring the detonator, filling the pipe, welding the end-caps, then phoning up the other five people who also constructed these devices to send them all out simultaneously, completely willing to sacrifice any number of postal workers and Secret Service agents who will be handling the packages.
And it’s not like stuff like this hasn’t happened before. The Austin bombings happened earlier this year, and I recall one episode of the aforementioned Forensic Files focusing on a serial bomber who targeted the Alabama NAACP in the 70s: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/19/603883731/alabama-serial-bomber-walter-leroy-moody-83-to-be-executed-thursday
The ATF are pretty good at their job and they’ve only gotten more tools to work with since the 1970s. They’ll track the perp down quickly (especially since these are high-profile targets) and I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts it won’t be the Soros-backed Deep Stater they think it is.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that you have to be the one already in government to enact the emergency powers that a Reichstag Fire scenario might prompt and therefore assume totalitarian control. I’m not sure what an opposition party would be supposed to do in that situation.
(Also there’s far from a consensus amongst historians over whether the actual Reichstag Fire itself really was a false flag attack or not. Plenty of historians think that the Nazis were just taking advantage of a situation that they had no hand in creating and that Marinus van der Lubbe, the Dutch communist executed for starting the fire, actually did do it. A lot of the time malicious opportunism is a more likely explanation for events than grand conspiracy.)
@ Weird –
“If it’s wrong, it’s not happening; if it’s happening it’s not wrong; if it’s wrong and if it is happening it’s someone else’s fault”
Yeah, that’s…pretty much exactly been their playbook on this whole thing from the beginning. They started out by denying that the violent threatening behaviors were really abusive (because he didn’t actually hit me), and he’s had to repeatedly tell them about the sexually abusive behaviors because they’ll just pretend they haven’t heard it. And now that they’ve finally come around to accepting that it happened, and it was wrong (which they say they accept), I suppose they just *had* to find some way to make it all my fault.
Sorta like Trump attacking CNN when he was supposed to be condemning the violence.
@Katamount
But that won’t stop them from saying its a Soros-backed deep stater . When the ATF do find the guy I just hope they take them alive and they are so convinced of their righteousness they don’t even try to deny what they did.
@ Fabe:
give it up… NOTHING can dissuade the fantasy fans from their foolishness… not just today, not just 9/11, not just the moon landing, not just the Holocaust, they say the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a false flag… THE TITANIC SINKING WAS A HOAX FOR AN INSURANCE SCAM
when you believe in invisible helicopters, a flat earth and reptilian aliens are not out of the realm of fantasy….
On a better “note”, my Folk Music Channel just played this gem from my childhood… the first song I learned on my harp (of course!!)
@ Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie:
Wait, is this an actual conspiracy theory some people have? I, um, wow. (Thinks about this):
1. People killing family members/business partners for the life insurance happens, but they tend to kill one individual at a time.
2. People setting fire to their own business for the insurance happens, but I think they usually do it while no one’s inside, partly so they can live with themselves, but mostly so there’s no witnesses.
3. People not caring much for their customers’/employees’ lives happens, but usually that requires the customers/employees to be poor people without much clout whose deaths won’t cause that much of an outcry.
Basically if your insurance swindle involves sinking a ship whose passengers include some very wealthy people (who are also the ones with the best chance of surviving to tell the tale and possibly recalling some suspicious detail, and if not, whose deaths would likely investigated) – ALL the surviving passengers and crew would have to be in on it, and you’d have to be certain that ALL of them were dishonest enough to join the scheme, yet honest enough not to sell out the scheme, AND competent enough to carry out their part in the scheme perfectly.
Then again if you believe the thousands of people who’ve worked for NASA over the decades are all in on a giant hoax…
As I recently saw somebody post, conspiracy theorists have evidently never had to manage a group project.
@ weird eddie
The Titanic conspiracy theory was one of the more plausible ones; and was doing the rounds within days of the sinking. Swapping vessels is a still not uncommon maritime fraud even today.
What mitigated against it though was that, due to their particular insurance arrangements, White Star wouldn’t have actually benefitted that much. Also items recovered from both the Olympic and Titanic have the correct serial numbers on; so we know it’s the real Titanic down there.
ETA: @ mooncustafer – the conspiracy theory only needed the officers. I don’t have time with the edit window to go into details, but it relied on everyone being rescued by the Carpathia. Which also belonged to White Star and was carrying a cargo of blankets.
“Too bad they didn’t blow them up”, says (checks notes) @godislove524.
Do you even irony, sis?
And speaking of irony, courtesy Alan:
I somehow doubt that very much.
Whoever she is, though, I fear for her, because Punchable Dowdy Dickie is a domestic abuser. And yes, it’s down on public record in his divorce filings.
That anyone would even WANT to date him in the first place is simply incredible to me.
@Alan: The Carpathia was with the Cunard line, so that blows THAT theory out of the water. Still, it was one of the more interesting ones while it lasted.
@Bina “Oh, she was was bitch, he’ll be nice to me – I’m one of the good ones!” perhaps? 🙁 Otherwise, I got nuthin’….
@Alan Robertshaw
You know “conspiracy gone wrong” explains a LOT of things better than “conspiracy planned everything and the bits that don’t make sense are just further evidence of how extensive and clever the conspiracy is,” but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it pitched; I suppose because the classic explanation for conspiracy theories is “to avoid having to confront the possibility that *no one’s* at the wheel,” and incompetent conspirators don’t help with that.