Connor Betts, the alleged Dayton shooter, had left-wing political views, believed in socialism, supported Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, and regularly inveighed on Twitter against various personages on the right (including, it turns out, me). This has some conservatives fuming that liberal media is conveniently ignoring the progressive ideology of one shooter while obsessing over the far-right ideology of another — Patrick Crusius, who posted an anti-immigrant manifesto shortly before police say he murdered 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso.Sorry, but the comparison doesn’t wash. It’s idiotic.The Dayton victims did not fit any political or ethnic profile: They were black and white, male and female, an immigrant from Eritrea and Betts’s own sister. Crusius’s victims, overwhelmingly Hispanic, did: They were the objects of his expressly stated political rage.What happened in Ohio was a mass shooting in the mold of the Las Vegas massacre: victims at random, motives unknown. What happened in Texas was racist terrorism in the mold of Oslo, Charleston, Pittsburgh, Christchurch and Poway.The former attack vaguely implicates the “dark psychic force” that Marianne Williamson spoke of in last week’s Democratic debates. The latter directly implicates the immigrant-bashing xenophobic right led by Donald Trump.
This needs to be said not because it isn’t obvious, but because too many conservatives have tried to deny the obvious. It’s not about ideology, they say: It’s a mental-health issue. But that’s precisely the kind of evasive reasoning many of those conservatives mocked in 2016, when the mental state and sexual orientation of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen was raised by some media voices to suggest that his attack had not really been an act of Islamist terrorism.Alternatively, conservatives have cited the decline of civil society, the effects of the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, the paucity of prayer and the ubiquity of violent video games — in sum, the breakdown of “the culture” — as explanations for mass shootings. This is the right-wing equivalent of the left’s idea that poverty and climate change are at the root of terrorism: causes so general that they explain everything, hence nothing. Why not also blame Friedrich Nietzsche and the death of God?
Get real: The right’s attempt to downplay the specifically ideological context of the El Paso massacre is a transparently self-serving effort to absolve the president of moral responsibility for his demagogic rhetoric. This, too, shouldn’t wash. The president is guilty, in a broad sense, of a form of incitement.
As for his reaction to Trump's use of "infestation" when decrying illegal immigration:
In today’s America, the dissemination of the idea, via the bully pulpit of the presidency, that we are not merely being strained or challenged by illegal immigrants, but invaded and infested, predicated the slaughter in El Paso.Quite right.
It’s worth noting that the Walmart massacre is, as far as I know, the first large scale anti-Hispanic terrorist attack in the United States in living memory. On current trend, it will surely not be the last or the worst. The language of infestation inevitably suggests the “solution” of extermination. As for the cliché that sensible people are supposed to take Trump seriously but not literally, it looks like Patrick Crusius didn’t get that memo.The main task for Democrats over the next 15 months won’t be to convince America that they need yet another health care re-invention, or that the economy is a mess, or that the system is rigged, or that the right response to Trump’s immigration demagoguery is an open border. It’s that the president is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union, and a danger to our safety.
You should read more of Brett's work. I disagree with him on a few things but he's mostly right. You could also ballast some of your MSNBC and CNN views by reading more of him.
ReplyDeletePoliticizing this issue runs the risk of failing to understand why mass murder is specifically a USA problem. It's not a matter of Dems or GOPs so much as why is the USA creating so many sick puppies. The arguments of some about computer games and mental illness are stupid because those are ubiquitous throughout advanced nations. That alone should disqualify both as causing mass murders. I don't pay much attention to manifestos or who is targeted because human beings nearly always have a strong aversion to killing yet in the USA killing strangers is the new norm whereas typically murders are committed by people the perpetrator knows.
ReplyDeleteIf the USA has reached the point where mass murders are used to advance political agendas the USA is in a very bad place.
Well how about agreeing to ensuring border security in the south of the country. That may make people less extreme. Oh, the D'rats won't do that because it means more vote fodder in the future.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how about not calling people vile names like, racists and bigots because they may think having people streaming in through the south is terrible.
ReplyDeleteThe border has been porous for decades. Not the cause.
ReplyDeleteBoth Left and Right consistently ridicule each other and that has become increasingly worse in recent years. The racist charge has become ridiculous, so has the fascist card. But what about "lock her up", "send her home"? That's far worse than name calling. Trump is easily the president who issues more insults and expresses more contempt for his political opponent than any other in the last 50 years. He'll get a second term because Biden should be retired but will probably win the nomination. Dems don't have a clue but then the GOP has no substitute for Trump.
Hatred is increasing across the spectrums. The left hates the right, the coasts hate the midlands, the north hates the south, Mexicans are rapists and murderers, Jews are hell bent on world domination, all men are toxic, anyone with any environmental concern is a nutjob.
John, the fact that the border has been "porous for decades" doesn't mean people shouldn't finally get pissed off with it now.
ReplyDeleteAustralians have no right to judge. we have a natural wall called the ocean. we have islands to put illegals on to discourage them coming in through unauthorised channels.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised when I first learnt people were allowed to come into the US on the basis of a lottery. immigration is not anything to be afraid of but it should be like applying to join a golf club