Another narrative buster

The man early reports were itching to identify as some kind of alt-right NRA nut shooting up the liberal press turns out to be a shotgun-toting guy with a Hispanic surname, no obvious political connection, basically a disturbed young man with a history of scary obsessions.  Here's the lawsuit that started his vendetta against the Annapolis newspaper in 2011.  He believed the newspaper painted him in an unfair light after his guilty plea on an internet harassment charge.  His terrified harassment target has long since moved out of state and sleeps with a gun by her bed.  It's a shame no one at the newspaper office was similarly armed.
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10 comments:

  1. Grim11:23 PM

    Well, it's Maryland. Many years ago in Maryland, while responding to what sounded like a neighbor's door being beaten in, I had the unpleasant realization that my instinctive response was probably a felony. Fortunately it turned out to be the fire department beating her door in, so no confrontation was necessary.

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  2. Anonymous1:13 AM

    For another narrative buster: Anne Arundel Police Department considered Jarrod Ramos to be NON-HISPANIC. With a Spanish surname, but non-Hispanic. Oh well.

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  3. Texan9912:30 PM

    I noticed that, too. Does anyone have a clue what Hispanic means?

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  4. Assistant Village Idiot12:34 PM

    Hispanic has no set meaning. You could call yourself Hispanic if you wished, and none could gainsay you.

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  5. Texan9912:40 PM

    Exactly. I'm not sure I even know any more what it purports to mean from the vantage-point of various ideologies. At most, a latino surname seems to imply that, whatever racist alt-right privilege you may be attempting to refuse to check, you at least aren't a completely irredeemable white-bread fascist. But the fluidity with which the title "Hispanic" can be bestowed or withheld, depending on your actual politics, is breathtaking.

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  6. E Hines12:42 PM

    You could call yourself Hispanic if you wished, and none could gainsay you.

    Elizabeth Warren's new heritage--after all, isn't Elizabeth just an anglicization of Isabella--and a cruel, culturally appropriative one at that?

    Eric Hines

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  7. Gringo12:48 PM

    I see some resemblance between Jarrod Ramos and Bing search: young Fidel Castro photos.
    Fidel's father was a Gallego- from Galicia. Jarrod's family?
    The Ramos photo also reminds me of a 16th century Conquistador. A rather implacable stare.

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  8. Texan991:10 PM

    Jonah Goldberg's take is that there's a category of grievance collectors: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/annapolis-shooting-suspect-convicted-harasser-legally-got-gun/ We seem to be in a period of encouraging them, and it's not entirely a left-right phenomenon. That is, you can argue that what's wrong with leftism is an insane inattention to personal responsibility, but the disaffected right certainly has its share of furious people who believe "those people" are destroying our lives. When it comes to disaffected losers who go shoot some place up, I'm not seeing a political pattern. Their politics generally are as fragmented and incoherent as everything else about their lives.

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  9. Texan991:11 PM

    Whoops, that's Jim Gerraghty, not Jonah Goldberg.

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  10. Texan991:46 PM

    The Ramos family is Puerto Rican and seemingly extremely ordinary, pretty much the family next door.

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