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So when someone torches an under-construction upscale housing development, I just assume, without evidence, that that someone was from ELF. When someone releases a bunch of lab animals into the surrounding environment (which usually means most of them are dead within a few days), I usually assume, without evidence, that someone from an ALF-ey type group was involved. These are plausible assumptions given what I know about these two groups based on prior activity and rhetoric. These are leftist groups. Despite the fact that I typically fall on the left side of things, I have no problem denouncing their tactics and rhetoric.
When someone mows down a group of people in an attempt to kill a congressperson who had previously been targeted with death threats due to her "tyranny", I just assume that it was some right wing lunatic, because there is a fair amount of talk amongst some very prominent folks on the right that politicians engaged in tyranny need to be shot. Sorry if that hurts the feelings of some of the more reasonable conservatives folks around here. Part of having a named political philosophy is that you get identified with the loudest folks who share that philosophy. Get over it. Perhaps if you spent more time denouncing the gadflies on your own side and less time getting all whimpery whenever someone hurts your feelings by associating you with those gadflies, this type of thing would be less of a problem.
This is wholly separate from the actual motives of the actual shooter. However, when the political rhetoric your side employs starts to resemble the behavior of violent lunatics (regardless of their actual, lunatic motivations), perhaps its time to take a step back and think about how fucking ridiculous and out of place your rhetoric is.
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