MAGA Christianity hits Las Vegas

[Tigers!]

Hmmm. Subject yourself to a fiery explosion that may subject you to extreme pain before you die or a quick bullet to the head?

I know which one I'd choose.

As any ER surgeon will tell you, neither is a surefire quick ticket to the Styx. My work has taught me to distrust many other common methods as well, as many of my students are survivors thereof, and many are badly maimed or inpaired by their attempts. There are many exits from this life, but they are all messy and unreliable.

I always thought dying of old age in my sleep in a good way to pass on.

 

[unapologetic]

I always thought dying of old age in my sleep in a good way to pass on.

Between 2013 and 2020 I was living 5 miles from Palmyra NY. Location of Joseph Smith's family farm.
Where Smith met god and an angel, found gold tablets, and dreamed-up formed the LDS.
I briefly thought that poisoning myself at the foot of the statue of the angel Moron would be fun. Get my death in the local papers.
I am now 160 miles away, and my head is in a better place too. So it's not gonna happen.

 

[ZiprHead]

I always thought dying of old age in my sleep in a good way to pass on.

Between 2013 and 2020 I was living 5 miles from Palmyra NY. Location of Joseph Smith's family farm.
Where Smith claimed to have met god and an angel, found gold tablets, and dreamed-up formed the LDS.
I briefly thought that poisoning myself at the foot of the statue of the angel Moron would be fun. Get my death in the local papers.
I am now 160 miles away, and my head is in a better place too. So it's not gonna happen.

FTFY

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I briefly thought that poisoning myself at the foot of the statue of the angel Moron would be fun. Get my death in the local papers.

The ambulance comes and saves your life, "Wow, it's a miracle! the angel Moroni saved him!" Alternatively, you wind up dead on the statue, "Look the infidel died at the foot of the angel Moroni!"

 

[Toni]

Seems a little weird that there are a lot attempts here at rationalizing the mislabeling the cybertruck bomber as a Christian, yet the New Orleans terrorist was mislabled as an illegal immigrant, and there seems to be no wiggle room for trying rationalize that lie. If we get facts wrong, can't we just step up and admit them?

I find the entire project of finding some outgroup to dubiously blame for the event to be shameful in the extreme. Bad things are already bad things, you don't have to add racism, classicism, or religious bigotry to make them more bad. Caring more about hurting the people you hate than about solving the problems you both share is an adolescent mindset, and it's gotten our country into a horrific mess.

I think that people attempt to find answers when something bad happens. Sometimes people believe that belonging to or being excluded from certain groups offers some clue into whatever caused the bad thing. People reach to look for reasons they were spared or why they were victims or someone they loved or knew or met one time at that thing was.

Also news coverage is usually only very surface and is not always accurate. Often called see by the race to be first to report something.

 

[unapologetic]

The ambulance comes and saves your life

I thought of that. 4 miles out of a small village, wooded area, after dark. I wouldn't be found till morning.
(Actually 2 miles from the Smith family farm)

Covid killed off the annual Hill Cumorah Pageant at the site.

​

 

[unapologetic]

In case I gave anyone bad ideas: Don't go here:
Moronic statue

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I just read over 5 articles about the man and not a single one mentioned any affiliation with any kind of religion. He was married and divorced 3 times and his most recent girlfriend broke up with him because she suspected he was cheating on her. I think he was just a fucked up person, and possibly a victim of being in combat. While we all know there are plenty of White Christian Nationalists who support Trump, I personally don't think it's right to equate religious beliefs with this particular person, since there is no evidence that his religious beliefs or lack thereof had a thing to do with his suicide and blowing up the Tesla. Shit. There are even a small percentage of atheists who voted for Trump, but many atheists are in the closet about their atheism. I personally know some who have never told their Christian friends that they are atheists, so the assumption would probably be that they are Christians. Friends say that he voted for Trump, but it's also possible he was angry about voting for Trump. We will never know.

Doesn't even need to be combat. Being close to explosives isn't a good thing, brain damage adds up. Same as sports like football and boxing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This isn't evidence of anything--not guilt by association, but I had to share this picture from his father's facebook profile.

View attachment 49019

Kitty, be useful. Pounce!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

"the coroner’s office found that Livelsberger “had sustained a gunshot wound to the head prior to the detonation of the vehicle.”
“the level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience.”
On CSI this would suggest he was killed somewhere else and the 'suicide' was staged.

When asked, most people would automatically spout the religion they were born into. For most people religion is not a belief but an identity.

A Dead Man switch is easy to create.

And it doesn't even need one--a fuse will do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Granted, shooting yourself prior to it going off really does make that hard to ensure.

I am still not convinced it was suicide.

Think about it. If it weren't a suicide, it'd have to be a massive conspiracy theory. Faked ChatGPT questions, faked video of him filling up gas etc, fake camera footage of arrivals, serious massive coordination of deep state and then on top of that, disappearing thousands eyewitnesses who saw an arrival and whatever happened next or at least the Men In Black showing up with one of those sparkly things to make everyone get amnesia.

It wouldn't need to be massive. Make up some pretext, hiring him to do what the cameras caught--he just doesn't know the car has a bomb. But faking the shot to the head would be quite hard.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Doesn't need to be faked. None of that shows him, or somebody else, pulling the trigger. Blowing himself up doesn't require shooting himself first. So why would he? You would expect the explosion would destroy the bullet-to-the-head evidence. But it didn't. It's a failed conspiracy.
(Maybe. I'm not invested enough to care if I'm right or wrong.)

Why would it? The skull is pretty tough. The charge does not appear to have been all that powerful, nor all that close to his head. When a not so smart bomb goes off the torso is often obliterated but not the head.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hmmm. Subject yourself to a fiery explosion that may subject you to extreme pain before you die or a quick bullet to the head?

I know which one I'd choose.

Depends on the power of the bomb and whether there's potential for a poor yield.

Given how little his bomb seems to have accomplished he would be right to fear that it might not be an instant death.

 

[ZiprHead]

Hmmm. Subject yourself to a fiery explosion that may subject you to extreme pain before you die or a quick bullet to the head?

I know which one I'd choose.

Depends on the power of the bomb and whether there's potential for a poor yield.

Given how little his bomb seems to have accomplished he would be right to fear that it might not be an instant death.

Yup. Slow burning death compared to brain obliteration with a bullet.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hmmm. Subject yourself to a fiery explosion that may subject you to extreme pain before you die or a quick bullet to the head?

I know which one I'd choose.

As any ER surgeon will tell you, neither is a surefire quick ticket to the Styx. My work has taught me to distrust many other common methods as well, as many of my students are survivors thereof, and many are badly maimed or inpaired by their attempts. There are many exits from this life, but they are all messy and unreliable.

Certainly a bullet to the head is better than fire, but many people aim the gun at the wrong part of their head, and end up with a slow death or surviving with serious brain damage. Supposedly, the best way is to open your mouth and aim the barrel at the roof of your mouth./PSA

I kinda like the way Ripley ended it all in Alien 3. Fall back into a pot of molten steel. Kinda hard to fail once you let go, and it will be over so quick you won't know what happened. Its a little problematic finding an unsecured giant pot of molten steel, though.

Disagree on Ripley.

1) It's the equivalent of jumping--and from that height it's unlikely to be deadly, almost certainly not immediately deadly.

2) Now she's floating on a vat of molten steel. That's basically death by fire--reportedly a very painful way to go. It will not be over so quick you don't know it.

Furthermore, it wasn't really a suicide at all. She had the alien queen in her, she had to do something that would be deadly to said queen. The fact that it also resulted in her death was inevitable but not the objective.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hmmm. Subject yourself to a fiery explosion that may subject you to extreme pain before you die or a quick bullet to the head?

Then why both?

He didn't build a percussive bomb, he made a fire bomb.

Why? Not enough damage. What's the point? Destroy evidence? Why does no one question the irrationality of a double suicide?

It's not irrational. It's a precaution against the first attempt not finishing you off. The term is "complex suicide", I'm not succeeding in finding any numbers.