HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! Be safe if you’re out Trick or Treating tonight, with or without kiddos!!!
To completely mess everyone up, it’s already Wednesday, but today we bring you Stephen’s post, which as you know, usually happens on Monday. So if while you read this, for a moment you think it’s only Monday, but then you remember it’s Wednesday, you’re welcome. :-D
One of the great advantages of having company for the weekend is that you manage to entirely miss the tragedies of the day, in particularly the mass shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue and the naturally ensuing aftermath. So, I have taken a day to absorb all of the usual and anticipated various vitriol, hatreds, and presumptions.
As regular as clockwork, the same actors were out claiming that tragedy, murder, hatred, insanity, and so forth would never exist if we would eliminate those people, that ideology, certain politicians, and an elf to be named later.
Amusing as the various temper tantrums are to watch, sometimes a little perspective is in order.
Eleven innocent people were murdered at a house of worship celebrating a typical rite of religious life. There were blatant statements of racism, in this case that the murderer was specifically targeting Jews, which was rather obvious even without his statement to that effect, after all, who else would you expect to find at a synagogue.
The killer expressed the usual conspiracy rationality that they were rich and running the world. Well, perhaps not these specific innocent individuals, but they are all in on ruining the world together.
One has to ask: Does this really defy our expectations of humanity? Are we really as shocked as we all pretend to be? Does this one instance, however tragic, exemplify a sudden and dangerous departure from the norm?
Statistically, about 11,000 people are killed in homicides by firearms every year in America, most being criminals killed by their fellow criminals, too many of them innocent victims, some by the innocent in self defense, and some few by law enforcement as an unfortunate consequence of armed and violent resistance.
Jewish people make up approximately 2% of the population. Mathematically, one would anticipate about 220 Jewish people being murdered in a given year on average. So, in comparison, this horrible crime accounts for only about 1/20 the expected murder for that particular minority in America for any given year.
It strikes us as tragic for different reasons, that it was concentrated in one area, that the act was targeted at a specific group, that the location was not a high crime area, and that people fear it to be somehow emblematic of a larger and growing problem.
It is for these emotional strings of this and similar tragedies that political forces circle around such events like vultures over a fresh carcass, and yes, the vulgarity of that image is fully intended to be as vile as you imagine, because it is a horrible yet common practice to politicize evil to exploit it for crass political gain.
This is not the first and will not be the last such tragedy to be so exploited, but some care ought to be paid to the nature of such exploitation itself.
This tragedy appears to be tailor made for such political exploitation. Except that it is not. Such tragedies are placed behind special lenses to highlight and amplify the political nature of the horrors; promoted, repeated, and conjectured upon in a very systematic and so obviously predictable manner.
We hear a cacophony of cries of “anti-Semitism”, followed by finger pointing at people like Pres. Trump, even though the murderer said he did not support Trump and did not vote for him. Or they point to an internet platform like Gab.com, because the murderer used that internet service; he used other internet services as well, but they are not the targets of the villification.
What we don’t hear is that this was in an affluent neighborhood, and that the victims were, as they say, not hurting financially. The political proponents of “eat the rich”, are not cheering that the victims were rich; that would just make them look like ghouls. No, what is highlighted is the sympathetic minority status of the victims as Jewish, and not the unsympathetic minority status of the victims as affluent.
I recall a similar tragedy involving one Dylan Roof murdering a similar number of black Christians in their church. What the media highlighted was the sympathetic minority status that the victims were black, and that they were targeted for that status. It was not portrayed as an attack on Christians because that is an unsympathetic majority.
The truth is that with homicides of 11 thousand people in a nation of 320 million, statistically speaking, some number of those homicides will be on a larger scale, or mass shootings, if you prefer.
The reason for such mass shootings will always be some rambling hatred of those who are the victims of such wanton and willful violence. No body goes on a mass shooting of groups of people they like and admire.
Some of those mass shootings will be ignored, or quickly swept under the rug, if the circumstances surrounding such tragedies do not foster and support the political agenda of those promoting the horrific events.
What makes a good horrific event for political exploitation purposes? What really sells a tragedy?
The more innocent the victim, the better the story sells; that is why pictures of a young, smiling 12 year old Trayvon Martin were broadcast rather than the angry looking 17 year old he had become.
The more minority or oppressed the victim, the better the story sells, particularly if you can play up the past misfortunes of that minority; which is why racism against black people sells tragedy but racism against white people doesn’t really sell as well. The smaller the minority the better, Jews and homosexuals are less than 1/6 the population of black people; trans are even a much smaller percentage of the homosexual population.
The cuter and prettier the victim; while this often goes along with the innocence, it is a biased part of human nature that we do not like to admit that we feel greater sympathy for people who are pretty and cute than we do for people who are homely. This is why the JonBenét Ramsey and Elizabeth Smart stories were such a smashing hit in the media. The same is true for animals as well, it is not limited.
Tragedy sells politics, whether that politics is gun control, speech censorship, regulatory expansion, open borders, disaster relief, climate change taxation, or simple old fashioned vote drives. Horrific events create a wellspring of emotional energy, and there are many who will harness and direct that energy to further their political aims.
Feigning sympathy for the victims they place their hand upon the victims’ shoulders and point their accusatory fingers at their political enemies saying, “it is their fault that this tragedy befell you, make them suffer as you are suffering.”
I remember when there was a “rash” of black church burnings in the media years ago, and a gnawing fear expressed by the media that nefarious “right-wing racist hate groups” might be percolating out in the shadows. Of course, the number of church burnings was actually pretty much unchanged from years before, and the proportion of those which were black churches had not actually changed significantly, but there is no fear to be generated in reporting that nothing was happening out of the ordinary, no political gain to be had from normalcy.
You can only witness so many of these hyped up, overblown media dog-and-pony shows before you really become incensed and offended by the media process itself and the fools who keep falling for the emotional manipulation and exploitation.
For those victims and their families of this and every tragedy, I wish you comfort and peace, you have my utmost sympathy. For those who feel anger instead of sorrow; who seek to blame innocents to advance their politics . . . for such people, I have but contempt.
After every such horror story, there pour forth pundits and commentators who have absolutely no connection to the events or emotional connection to the victims to emit blame towards those people who had nothing to do with the events or things which had no impact on the tragedy.
People with no stake in the outcome blaming people who had no part in the events.
