• jeffw@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Wild. The victim’s wife took the seat and held it until 2015. She won a write in campaign by a landslide after the murder. But still… some voted for a murderer instead of a Democrat?

    Weird how the article feels the need to say the murderer was a “Democrat turned Republican”. People change their registration? Look at Trump… do we call him “former Democrat”?

    • copernicurious@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 months ago

      I kinda think it’s interesting to know about politicians who change their party, since usually they do it because they decide they just care about winning. Trump and McCarthy are both prime examples.

      • jeffw@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Not really, no. The idea that Trump changed his party to prey on dumb republicans is funny but it’s not based in reality. If you show me 1 candidate who changed parties just to win (Lieberman maybe, but even that’s a stretch), I can give you 5 who changed for other reasons (including Trump). Not sure what you mean about McCarthy.

    • antidote101@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s a certain mentally that sometimes makes that change. Lyndon Larouche made the change and became a conspiracy theorist, as did Jordan Peterson.

      It’s an interesting path, but sometimes it’s expressive of someone who feels betrayed by Western Democratic Liberalism as a whole (aka society). That kind of person is often an outsider, and outsiders can do some strange and sometimes even dangerous things.

      • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Whose reelection? The former democrat Donald Trump, who was determined by a judge to have committed rape and who cheated on his wife with a porn star?

    • Snooks@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I thought the same, then read the wikipedia article on Looper:

      Other political candidates and public personalities have emulated Looper’s adopted name or have independently adopted similar names. Among these were Something Awful founder Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka, who adopted his nickname as a reference to Byron Looper, for whom Kyanka nearly worked as an intern in the summer of 1997.[28]

      hehe

      • WarlockLawyer@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I was surprised to then read his Wikipedia and discover how short it was just quickly mentioning boxing Uwe Boll and selling the site. Seems like with how influential somethingawful was there would be nerds to expand it

        • ladytaters@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          People don’t want to talk about Lowtax after the domestic violence that was reported. He sold the site after reports from his wife and daughters.

        • decadentrebel@lemmy.worldOPM
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          6 months ago

          It used to be longer and included details about PayPal flagging the Hurricane Katrina donations, references in pop culture media pertaining to him, and about the forums requiring a $10 signup fee.

          Now it’s short enough that it makes you wonder if a Wiki page is even necessary.

  • atocci@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    I absolutely misinterpreted the title. He quite literally murdered his opponent. Before reading the article, I assumed it meant like, he murdered him at the polls, ya know, politically destroyed. I thought “With a name like Low Tax on the ballot, I guess he won by a landslide or something.” Nope, he actually killed a guy.

    • kindenough@kbin.social
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      6 months ago

      Wuch…I hear you….the “slammed, blasted, murdered, nuked, destroyed” in the headlines when some person has a civilized worded counter opinion to whatever somebody else said for instance.

      We need outrage, every night and day, every minute and second we need to be engaged. It is war people…

      …on our mental health really.

  • Kalothar
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    6 months ago

    What an absolute psychopath, he planned to murder his opponent before he even started to run in 1998

    He stalked his opponents farm, shot him in the head and then decapitated him.

    A farm hand had seen him earlier driving near the farm, and later after the murder saw a picture of him on the news and identified him as the killer.

    He went through 6 lawyers trying to delay the trial.

    Was sentenced in 2000, and then died in prison in 2013 after beating on a pregnant counselor.

    He was found dead in his cell two hours later, autopsy report listed it as a heart condition.