First, I’m not acting like it has nothing to do with it, I said I can’t tell “what role, if any” it played.
HOWEVER, the reason why I’m making that point is because I think it dehumanizes the victim of a crime to turn them into a symbol of an issue, and is even more dehumanizing and ghoulish when we don’t know yet that the issue was involved.
If the facts of the crime or the perpetrators indicated some nexus to the general environment of anti-trans violence, that would be one thing. If the facts emerge that there is a nexus, the dialogue will make sense. But right now it doesn’t.
I mean fuck it, if the facts don’t matter, why not just use pick things at random? Old person gets hit by a car? Anti-trans political rhetoric. You stepped in dogshit at the park? Stochastic terrorism. It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson.
When, not if, but when right-wing political rhetoric gets people killed I’m ready to assign blame. But it’s very telling that the name of the victim, Sam Nordquist, hasn’t been mentioned since the first post on this thread, and he deserves to have his story told, not just get relegated to the role of “victim” in the story of the Trump era.