Is the message being defended by the press. Yes, the press has found an out. An out, in terms of the news media, is when a story happens that must be covered, but in some ways upends or threatens established media narratives. Such as a young radical leftwing activist murdering a conservative. Or a young white woman stabbed to death by a black man. Or a transgender activist murdering children in a Church that does not officially endorse transgender activism.
Sure, you can make it about guns. That worked in Minneapolis as Christians and Christian leaders rushed out to assure the world that trusting in politics to ultimately solve our problems is the smart way to go, as opposed to just thoughts and prayers. But despite some Church leaders saying Charlie Kirk's assassination was about gun violence, almost anyone beyond paramecium level of intelligence knows that there are few gun laws in history that would have stopped most of history's assassinations.
So look for - anything else in order to deflect attention. Now we have it. As leftwing activists have taken to their social media accounts to laugh about his death, rejoice in his murder, insist he had it coming, and call for it to be only the beginning, many have found themselves losing their jobs. Which would normally happen. If after the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting anyone said they had it coming for being gay, that would be the last day that person worked in 99% of our country's institutions and companies. Most would understand that response from most companies for such a heinous thought.
Heck, if you were found to have dropped the N-word (note I can't say it) in a 20 year old email, the press would happily report on the outrage and stand back while you were chased out of your position. Or anything regarding feminism, the LGBTQ community, Covid responses and vaccines, Muslims, you name it. We've watched for 20 years as the cult of George Carlin has faded away and we've recalibrated our approach to free speech in a manner that would make Joe McCarthy quiver.
But not now. Now the press has rushed in to defend those rejoicing in the death of Kirk and calling for more of the same, by framing their removals as a potential attack on free speech. You know, the same media that had news anchor Margaret Brennan lecture Marco Rubio on the dangers of free speech. The same that saw Lesley Stahl's 60 Minutes segment that taught us we sometimes need to rejoice in the government censorship of clearly dangerous and threatening speech.
Now, the press is making it clear: We're once again all about Free Speech full stop. Which strongly suggests either they were lying before, or they're OK with those who hate non-leftists and want them dead and murdered. Because apparently that is what free speech is all about. They certainly shouldn't be punished for merely expressing an opinion (which obviously isn't a deal breaker for those press outlets).
Insisting that what is clearly happening isn't happening is a bit like Chamberlain flying back to Munich in 1942 and hoping it might work this time. The emerging Left, utilizing Trump as a living Death Star that must be destroyed at the cost of freedom, democracy, and life itself, is making it as crystal clear as it possibly can: You bow a knee to the Left, or you are the enemy. And while some Christian leftists have said that still means we love our enemies like Charlie Kirk, even if the hatred and violence against him is understandable, they've made it clear they won't stand up to those who prefer their enemies of the Left dead and buried.
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteAn opponent wants to defeat my ideas or policies, an enemy wants to defeat me personally. The boundary is somewhat grey, of course, but the Left has insisted "the personal is the political" since the 1960s, so that an opponent can't help becoming their enemy.
Jim Geraghty at NR observed that social media allows us to externalize inner thoughts (often outrageous) that we would have reconsidered, kept inside or taken to a shrink (or the confessional) in previous decades. Now we can vent them instantly and anonymously.
All of a sudden, my head started replaying "Forbidden Planet".
Well, they tried to make us shut up by cancelling, blocking and deplatforming us [I'm looking at YOU Greydanus, and your buddy Shea], but since that didn't work they are now going to kill us. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThey go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how if we all just gave up our guns then all would be pink unicorns and flowers. Yet they NEVER address the elephant in the room, which is that guns in the hands of governments killed upwards of 100,000,000 people in the last lamented century. Governments kill at a rate exponentially higher than do private criminals, rejected lovers, and ordinary psychopaths. So how, I ask, are we going to disarm the government? In comment threads that question usually causes my opponent to stop posting.
And the irony of these gun haters - hoplophobes - taking guns away by sending out men with guns to do it! Do the EVER look in a mirror?
A 2023 study from psychologists Christopher D Petsko and Nour S Kteily uncovered something troubling about how Americans see one another. Conservatives tend to view liberals as “immature” —irresponsible, gullible and irrational. Liberals, in turn, tend to see conservatives as “savage” —aggressive, cold-hearted and barbaric.
ReplyDeleteThe researchers also found something even more revealing: liberals overestimate how dehumanized they are by conservatives (they think conservatives view them even more negatively than they do). But conservatives underestimate how dehumanized they are by liberals (they think liberals view them more positively than they actually do).
But of course that's not too surprising. Liberals project - but since they assume they are good people and the other side is so much worse than them, we see all the time them assuming way worse about conservatives than is actually the case.
They don't kill you because you're a Nazi, they call you a Nazi so they can kill you -Elon Musk.
ReplyDeletePraying for our enemies doesn't mean being stupid about the fact that they are our enemies. It means that we are praying for people who want to kill us and dance and sing in our blood, but also that our God is infinitely bigger than our pipsqueak enemies who live in fear and darkness.
I'm thinking, strangely perhaps, about Hernando Cortéz, who when he ran into the Aztecs, he didn't only want to conquer the land for the Spanish crown, but he also wanted to convert the bloodthirsty murderous human-sacrificing savages to Christianity. I find Hernando more inspiring today than I did yesterday, strangely enough.