Don's Tuesday Column

                    THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/19/2019

               Meet Tehama County Republican Women

This Thursday, March 21, anyone wanting to either find ways to help the Republican Party in our fair county, or meet some of the local women that dedicate their time to that cause, can simply show up at The Enjoy Store, at 615 Main Street, 5:30 to 7:30 PM. The Enjoy Store is on the west side of Main Street in the first block north of Oak, a few doors up from the Re/Max office.

A free “coffee lovers” basket will be given away to one person out of those who sign up to enter. It will be a great opportunity to share camaraderie among fellow conservative women, as well as find out what local events they support: the Republican booth at the fairgrounds this May, the table at the Olive Festival in Corning, and others that allow Tehama County residents to mingle, collect flyers and share thoughts, concerns and support for our candidates and issues. You’ll be welcomed into a cheery, vibrant group.

What I see in the New Zealand terroristic mass murder of Muslims: It is particularly tragic at a time when religious tension among the major faith denominations is as high as most people can remember. There are founded and unfounded rumors, plots and animosities—tempered by good-hearted spiritual sharing of best wishes among Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders. Expressions of violence and intolerance are spread among the fanatical in all faiths; let’s not dwell over who’s most at fault.

I see an overwhelming desire to “live and let live,” or worship and let worship. A minority of any religion’s adherents, wishing evil upon another faith’s followers, don’t represent the majority of any faith. Allowing past atrocities—the historical quantity of aggressions by Muslims against Christians, Hindus against Muslims, or any group against Jews (or vice versa for the above)—to limit current tolerance and warm intentions is to be caught in the past.

What is disappointing, even despicable, is how such violence is used for partisan, ideological warfare. At a time when logical, dispassionate analysis and common decency should temper judgements and conclusions, the talking points and buzz words of insincere finger-pointing prevail. In the New Zealand mass murder, the news media seized on “right wing” and “white nationalist” terms to engage in what I see as preemptive efforts to define, even stop, any further debate. Once the perpetrators are so labelled, Trump and his supporters must answer one-sided accusations, absent any evidence of racism. Charlottesville, redux.

The names of, and “manifestos” by, psychopathic mass murderers should be given no publicity. Their self-described causes count for less-than-nothing. It can, however, inform our understanding of the psychology of terrorism to examine the delusional, as well as the rational. Critics of that statement would do well to remember how we were endlessly told to acknowledge the “root causes” for Al Qaeda and Muslim fanatics: Crusades, colonialism and resource appropriation were lifted from their statements. Democrats like Sen. Patty Murray defended Osama bin Laden’s good deeds.

Islamic terrorist justification served the larger anti-Western cause of the progressive left. “We have to understand” the angst, pain and injustice that drove, not just the poor downtrodden masses to hate us, but also doctors, lawyers or other accomplished Muslim fanatics to bomb us. Well, the New Zealand murderer likewise had what to him were rational complaints among his insane, irrational motivations. You wouldn’t know that from the media herd that—before bodies were cold or blood dried—found their collective voice in a “gotcha” question by an ABC reporter to President Trump about “white nationalism.”

It didn’t matter what Trump said. Really, it didn’t because it was going to be interpreted and spun into the media’s chosen “Trump’s a racist, this we know” narrative; the one-time “need to understand the terrorist” is an inoperative, even retrograde approach. You see, it was a sign of Barack Obama’s sophistication and far-sightedness when he dismissed America’s “exceptionalism” because the Greeks and British certainly felt exceptional. Only hypocrisy explains criticism of President Trump for touting American “nationalism” while he encourages other countries to pursue their best “national” interests. The media/Democrat cabal attaching “white” to “nationalism” without one single use of the term by Trump, proves nothing beyond the disingenuousness of the accusers.

While media Democrats-with-bylines reduce the NZ terrorist to “white supremacist/nationalist” for the crass, phony purpose of besmirching Trump and his supporters, the terrorist’s excuses/complaints/beliefs portray very mixed motivations—while still falling far short of justifiable causes. From “Radicalization & Degeneration,” by Ron Dreher at The American Conservative, you can gain an accurate picture of the man’s self-description:

He “identifies himself as an ‘ethno-nationalist eco-fascist.’ He says he was first a communist, then an anarchist, then a libertarian, and finally an eco-fascist. He’s 28. This is not a stable person. He despises conservatives for having conserved nothing…’corporatism in disguise’…despises France’s [right wing] National Front…praises the emergence of Trump as a sign of hope, but mocks Trump too. His ideal leader is Oswald Mosley, the 20^th century British fascist. Point is, the idea that (he) has any meaningful connection to the mainstream right is nonsense. The man is a true radical.”

He wants to frighten people and create conflict, cause the US to take away guns, causing gun owners to become violent; wants the US to be balkanized into warring factions, destroying American projection of power; he’s emotionally distraught over the numbers and crime of European Muslim immigrants, as well as the dying, dispirited native people. A national socialist, he hates capitalism, loves the environment and praises the People’s Republic of China as his ideal state.

His radicalism is driven by “Degeneration”: declining and disempowered European people (and in America), widespread drug use, environmental degradation, the collapse of Christianity and rampant hedonism. Many are likewise disheartened by much of the above but choose engagement, not violence, to advance their goals, which are undeserving of demonization just because a psychopath kills people.