Thank God the Minnesota Shooter Wasn’t an Illegal Migrant

Exploitative reaction to the tragedy exposes how far the political Right has sunk

Just hours after he was identified as a murder suspect, Vance Luther Boelter had already been given a title by media outlets on the political Right.

“Tim Walz appointee.”

Without a clue as to what they were reporting, news media such as the New York Post —and the avalanche of reposters that followed—felt empowered to let their readers know the leftist connection to the apparent assassinations that had just taken place. Or were still in progress.

As you can see above, the Post astutely went a step farther —based upon a trickle of unconfirmed details—to implicitly connect the shooter’s purely speculative (and, as it turns out, utterly false) association with Walz to still another patently false premise: that it must be related to “a vote with the GOP.” Some scoop.

Within seconds, enraged followers of at least two major Twitter influencers (handles hardly getting repeated here) alleged that Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman “had been killed because of a recent vote on ending undocumented adults’ ability to enroll in MinnesotaCare.” Another raised the burning question “Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”

All this depth and insightful analysis while the search dogs were just loosening up.

Here’s a wild guess. For every person on the Far Right lazy enough to wait for facts to arrive, there are probably 1,000 still going with the Walz mob-hit conspiracy theory.

It wouldn’t have been spicy enough just to refer to Boelter as a suspected political assassin given that he was known to have shot at least two Minnesota state legislators at separate homes on the same night? Or perhaps STFU until more facts arrived?

But don’t dismiss this as fringe stuff. Among the most compelling takeaways from the tragedies in Minnesota was the shocking need—even among many mainstream Republicans—to fit what happened to a preordained political narrative. That it’s a batshit narrative is beside the point.

From Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah): “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

From Elon Musk: “The Left is murderously violent.”

From former Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker: “If the gunman were a liberal upset over the immigration vote, Democrats would be hypocrites.”

This is where we are. These vile and false assertions didn’t receive a bit of pushback, much less condemnation, from fellow Republicans. No apologies or even retractions were forthcoming, nor will they be.

That alone exposes a sickness to the body politic that bears consideration. I’ll leave it to others to analyze the crimes and their aftermath in the context of rhetoric, hyper-partisanship and the scourge of political violence. I’m not moved to do so at the moment.

I’ll refer to you that time in 1804 when our then-sitting vice president murdered by duel the fellow whose face adorns our 10-dollar bill (although he’s more famous now for the Broadway musical bearing his name). None of this is new, nor is it necessary worse than it has ever been.

In a better world, national unity might have followed the cold-blooded murder of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark and the attempted murder of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Instead of spinning this trauma for whatever purpose, this should have been the time to honor and pray for them.

The moment should have been regarded with enough universal horror to cause U.S. politicians to lay down their assault weapons, chainsaws and blowtorches for a nanosecond, or maybe long enough to come together in grief. And resolve to do just a little better tomorrow.

Didn’t happen.

At least, in a macabre sense, it’s best that the alleged murderer is white, 57 years old, a straight male and a U.S. citizen.

Just imagine what the national conversation might be today were he Black.

Just imagine what the national conversation might be today were he a teenager.

Just imagine what the national conversation might be today were he a trans person or other member of the LGBTQ community.

And, especially, just imagine what the national conversation might be if Vance Luther Boelter were an illegal migrant from south of the U.S. border.

The only thing worse than seeing Boelter’s monstrous visage everywhere would have been having Stephen Miller’s monster visage practically jumping out of every digital device in America to describe how we were officially at war over the Minnesota slayings.

Had this, God forbid, been the work of a person living in this nation illegally, the government violence that would have followed would have dwarfed the tragic political violence that was just experienced.

Think about that. And be glad, one supposes, that the nightmare of what happened in Minnesota could have had even a worse aftermath.

Still, don’t be surprised though if Boelter doesn’t become a cause celebre on the far Right, or maybe even some in the mainstream. There’s potential here for the guy to become a ghoulish Halloween version of Luigi Mangione.

Let’s just hope Trump doesn’t pardon him.

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