Heather Cox Richardson summarizes statements made in two letters of Green Beret Master Sergeant Matthew Alan Livelsberger before he died by suicide with his explosion of a Tesla truck in Las Vegas on New Year's Day.
He wrote that the US is "headed towards collapse" due to moral loucheness, diversity programs, and policies promoted by the Democratic party.
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger
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His solution was to '[f]ocus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders,' he wrote. 'Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.' He called for '[w]eed[ing] out those in our government and military who do not idealize' that masculinity and strength, and urged military personnel, veterans, and militias to 'move on DC starting now.'”
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger
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“Occupy every major road along fed[eral] buildings and the campus of fed[eral] buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete. Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dem[ocrat]s out of the fed[eral] government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”
"Five days later, it’s clear that the roots of this latest spasm aren’t found in the deserts of Syria but ingrained in the modern demons of American life, in both our excessively militaristic culture and also in the overlapping crisis of male anger and rage that arguably also put Trump back on top in the November election."
~ Will Bunch
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger
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https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/new-orleans-las-vegas-attacks-causes-20250105.html
As Will Bunch notes, though Livelsberger and Shamsud-Din Jabbar did not know each other, "their common bonds are striking." Both did military duty in Afghanistan. "And both, in their so-called minifestos of murder, sublimated their rage and feelings of misogyny to adopt a veneer of political rationalization."
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger #Jabbar #misogyny
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"It feels like if people are truly determined to find the political links to mass murder, it is hiding in plain sight — misogyny, and the role that a long overdue assault on the contradictions and unfairness of modern patriarchy is now playing in the current backlash of right-wing, populist and testosterone-laced political movements, and not just in America."
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger #Jabbar #misogyny
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"Our lack of honest conversation about the combustible interplay between America’s militaristic culture and personal machismo and their inherent contradictions means it won’t be long before we wake up to the next New Orleans."
#violence #Republicans #masculinity #ToxicMasculinity #MaleEntitlement #Livelsberger #Jabbar #misogyny
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@wdlindsy I think about this every time another putrid Trump lie gets retweeted/boosted to every eyeball on Earth. My fear is some are actually taking instruction from the sentences that most of us are correctly horrified by
We create copycat bigots and fascists as surely as the rabid click-driven media covering every grisly detail of a murder 24/7 makes copycat killers more likely
How bad would it be to just say the soldier was obsessed with a toxic masculinity? I don't know
William Lindsey 
SherBeareth
David J. Atkinson
Platypusman
LisaH