You might want to ask yourself how an Air Force veteran ended up in a mob storming the Capitol, though.

What - and who - pushed her into thinking it was the right thing to do.

You might want to consider that many people like her are still out there.

Crazy thought, but what if we started focusing our efforts on fighting the sources of disinformation that pushed Ashli over the edge.

What if we taught people how to spot propaganda -- especially from their own political side?
If you're left leaning - like me - consider left wing propaganda.

(What? There's no such thing!)

Sure there is. The left scares its voters, same as the right.

(Yeah, but we scare them about REAL crises, not racist nonsense.)

Hmm.
The core idea isn't about left vs right. It's about power, and manipulating people to obtain that power.

And no, I'm not saying that #BothSides practice this to the same degree.

I'm saying we all have blind spots when we agree with what's being said and who's saying it.
When you're inclined to believe some thing A, it might be easy to get you to believe a related thing B. Then thing C, and D, and so on.

Until eventually you believe thing Q.

And as crazy as thing Q is, there are a disturbingly large number of letters that come after it.
Ashli didn't start her life planning to smash through a window at the Capitol while cops were screaming at her to stop. Something like that might have been unthinkable to her as little a five years ago. She might even have envisioned herself on the other side of that gun.
So maybe we should ask ourselves what went wrong. Why she Fucked Around and Found Out. Who or what might have pushed her, by degrees, from A to B to an early grave at Z.

It might be a bunch of things. PTSD. Lack of purpose after a military career. A complex marriage.
Some of those things might not be preventable. Sometimes dogs bite kids.

Sometimes, though, there's a manipulative fucker in the shadows holding a stick and a picture of a kid with a target on it.

Those are the ones we have to look for. Those are the ones who need to Find Out.
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More from Government

Long thread: Because I couldn’t find anything comprehensive, I’m just going to post everything I’ve seen in the news/Twitter about Trump’s activities related to the Jan 6th insurrection. I think the timing & context of his actions/inactions will matter a lot for a senate trial.

12/12: The earlier DC protest over the electoral college vote during clearly inspired Jan 6th. On Dec 12th, he tweeted: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.”


12/19: Trump announces the Jan. 6th event by tweeting, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Immediately, insurrectionists begin to discuss the “Wild Protest.” Just 2 days later, this UK political analyst predicts the violence


12/26-27: Trump announces his participation on Twitter. On Dec. 29, the FBI sends out a nationwide bulletin warning legislatures about attacks https://t.co/Lgl4yk5aO1


1/1: Trump tweets the time of his protest. Then he retweets “The calvary is coming” on Jan. 6!” Sounds like a war? About this time, the FBI begins visiting right wing extremists to tell them not to go--does the FBI tell the president? https://t.co/3OxnB2AHdr

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