#PizzaGate Crackpot Slain by Police in North Carolina
Once upon a time: Edgar Maddison Welch surrenders after his failed raid against a D.C. pizza parlor.
And then it was over: Edgar Maddison Welch, the #pizzagate gunman who popped off at Comet Ping Pong in December, 2016, died after an encounter with police in North Carolina. The
Associated Press↱ explains:
Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. One of the officers recognized the SUV as one he’d seen Welch drive before, police said. The officer had arrested Welch before and knew he had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation at the time, according to authorities.
When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, police said the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers. After he was instructed to drop the weapon but didn’t, two officers shot Welch, authorities said.
Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital and he died from his injuries two days later, according to the release. None of the officers, nor the driver and another passenger, were injured.
The article also recalls the #pizzagate tale, for those who might have forgotten after eight years:
In 2016, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington after believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory, dubbed "Pizzagate," began circulating online during the 2016 presidential election.
He entered the restaurant armed, and as customers fled the scene, Welch shot at a locked closet inside. After realizing there were no children held captive in the pizzeria, Welch peacefully surrendered. No one was injured.
At the time, Comet Ping Pong's owner, James Alefantis, said the conspiracy theory and subsequent violence from it traumatized him and his staff.
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Flashback,
#4↑ above:
When history pens the tale of how we went from the Party of Reagan↱ to the Party of Trump↱―nor is it easy, right now, to demarcate, except for the declaration that Republicans no longer belong to the Party of Reagan―one of the vital subplot arcs will follow what Michael Lind↱ described, over twenty years ago, as the "collapse of intellectual conservatism". And it will have something to do with the Reagan Awakening of the evangelical vote, because Republicans and the nation alike have been paying for that unfortunate bargain with less than reputable players ever since. A conspiracy theory coming through your ranting uncle is a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory coming through the pastor and his conventional quasi-divine authority is more legitimized. And let's face it, the paranoid sectors of Christian faith solely concerned with their own salvation are a fine place to breed all manner of antisocial conspiracy theory. Anti-Catholic, anti-UN, anti-science ... there is even one―I shite thee not―accusing Catholics, Marxists, and Witches of conspiring to bring about George H.W. Bush's New World Order .... At what point―and why―would this rhetoric escalate from the feverish nightmares we are to politely ignore to the feverish nightmare we should elect?
And, also,
#25↑ above:
The thing is that when all is said and done, only the bigotry and bullying will remain. This is what the Trump election is about; the bullies don't want their privileges revoked ....
.... More and more all these self-assured, smarter-than-thou tinfoils who just helped elect a president are apparently getting played by international jokers, swindlers, and psyops. And, you know, that's the thing about the whole, "We're #1 USA!" jingoism. There was this hilariously creepy moment―and if you weren't old enough during the eighties I simply cannot convey the wrecking ball to the tender places the line actually was―Betty White's character in Golden Girls had this line about her sex life with her husband that floored pretty much everybody, which resulted in Rue McClanahan, the house "slut" as eighties societal mores went, expressing her surprise that the prim and proper character had a vibrant (or, by the societal mores of the day went, dirty) sex life. Betty White responded that she always figured you didn't need to talk about it if you were busy doing it, which of course was a scandalous burn on Rue McClanahan's character.
Oh, right. Something about patriotism goes here. Dunning–Kruger in living application.
No, really. Maddison Welch claims to not be a Trump voter, but his sad tale is wrapped up in the same phenomenon, and David Dunning↱ himself looks beyond Trump voters: "The problem," he wrote earlier this year, "isn't that voters are too uninformed. It is that they don't know just how uninformed they are."
Eight years later, maybe it's just hard to imagine, or something.
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Notes:
Seminera, Makiya. "'Pizzagate' gunman killed by police in North Carolina after traffic stop, authorities say". Associated Press. 10 January 2025. APNews.com. 10 January 2025. https://apnews.com/article/pizzagat...rth-carolina-81f0383fb55587350576b8265b7b5dd5
