This meme is a fascinating look at how the modern left’s mind works.
▪️For years, it’s been known that the Matthew Shepard (not Shepherd) murder was over drugs, not a random anti-gay hate crime. Both of Shepard’s assailants were on a week long meth bender prior to the murder, Shepard himself was a meth addict and dealer, and reportedly had a sexual relationship with one of his attackers, who was bisexual.
▪️After his brutal murder, the assailants headed to Shepard’s house to finish the robbery, but got sidetracked and ended up brutally assaulted two other young men, which is where they were arrested.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1
▪️Yet the initial hate-crime narrative stuck in left-wing activist’s minds, and they never updated their priors, like in so many similar cases. They still think the Shepard murder was a result of some rednecks attacking a kid because he was gay, so this meme make sense in their minds.
▪️Even though Laramie isn’t a small, conservative town. It’s the 3rd largest city in Wyoming and the most liberal, the University of Wyoming is there. Which doesn’t exactly make it Berkeley, but it’s not your stereotypical small town.
▪️Additionally, Laramie residents were horrified at the murder and the assailants were immediately arrested and convicted of first degree murder. The defense even tried using the gay panic angle in hopes of finding sympathetic jurors (which helped fueled the false hate crime narrative) but it backfired. Later, one of the murderer’s girlfriends admitted it was false, she only said it because she thought it would help his case.
▪️So the “small town” of Laramie acted with swift justice against the murderers. This meme makes no sense on any account if you know the facts, but it does make sense in left wing activist’s heads because of the narratives they’ve constructed. It’s instructive to understand this.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
