Don's Tuesday Column

       THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   12/08/2015

    Violence, some causes and excuses

Some have asked, “What did Planned Parenthood do to bring violence and death upon that Colorado facility?” You could also ask: “Given the controversy over practices they engaged in, shouldn’t they have made an effort to both stop those practices and publicly distance their organization?” or “Now that their own actions have invited such a violent attack, shouldn’t they stop the objectionable actions?”

I don’t seriously propose the above queries; there have been, however, numerous similar questions and answers offered by the left after other deadly incidents. When a “Draw Muhammad” event put on by Pamela Geller was violently targeted by Islamic terrorists, the left rejected free speech arguments and held Geller up for culpability because “it was an exercise in bigotry and hatred (and she had a) provocative goal.”

After the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks, there were many on the “blame America” left—and some on the libertarian fringe—that quickly rolled out long-held narratives that assigned legitimacy to the grievances of Islamic radicals against America. To wit that America brought it on itself.

It could have been our support for Israel (Muslim hatred for Jews predated the United Nations creation of a Jewish homeland); or American—i.e. infidel—military troops stationed in Saudi Arabia (America’s military has repeatedly liberated Muslims from despotism); or the America-inspired westernization of countries like Iran, Iraq, Egypt, etc. Our own Secretary of State, John Kerry, let a verbal gaffe slip when commenting on the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris wherein he contrasted those supposedly senseless attacks with “defensible” jihadist attacks over the Charlie Hebdo Muhammad cartoons.

Again, I consider those who inflict violence on any innocent victims, no matter the political context, to be solely responsible for their actions, even when found mentally unstable. I am pointing out that there is a history of liberals in politics and the news media jumping to almost predetermined conclusions and “talking point” propaganda. I am calling hypocrisy where I see it. When the left and the media run with a similar narrative before the facts are established and any genuine causality or motivation is proven, it must be exposed and refuted.

For instance, now that a nearly hysterical movement over perceived racial injustice has been fomented on college campuses, the incidents of hoax hate crimes has proliferated. Misguided fanatics among the African American activist groups have reported racist incidents that, when investigated, ultimately turn out to have been made up or staged for publicity in support of their cause. Threats, swastikas, nooses and violence are among the hoaxes.

Even worse, the left adamantly refuses to accept that the Black Lives Matter movement has any responsibility for the killing of law enforcement personnel after marchers chanted “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon,” and other calls for dead cops. Irony and hypocrisy abound.

In “Behind the Left’s Selective Treatment of Tragic Violence” (search and read it), Paul Mirengoff deconstructs, together with Jim Geraghty’s help, the “suggestions that harsh criticism of Planned Parenthood is to blame for the attack on a PP facility in Colorado. Pointing to the attack on the Family Research Council two years ago, [Paul] noted the selective nature of this type of argument.”

He refers to a shooter that was motivated by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of the Family Research Council as a “hate group” for their adamant support of traditional marriage; he carried a map printed from SPLC’s website. That killer certainly intended to “terrorize” the FRC over gay rights issues. He even brought Chic-fil-A sandwiches (a Christian-owned chain that supports traditional marriage) to shove in the mouths of those he murdered. He was killed by an armed guard before carrying out his ghastly deeds.

We were told that “we may never know what motivated a 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez to kill four Marines and a sailor in an attack on Chattanooga’s U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center last July.” I think I know. Likewise, “there’s little reason to ask whether the Oregon shooter’s decision to target Christians reflects a broader, societal hostility to Christians, or whether it reflects his personal allegiance to demons.” I can ask and I can answer.

“Of massacres and media myths” (G. Malor, New York Post, 7/24/2012) gave almost a dozen examples, from 2009 to 2011, of how “media assumptions that violence is right-wing are routine—and routinely wrong.” (Both articles recently posted at donpolson.blogspot.com.) The hanged census-taker, the small plane flown into an IRS building, an Alabama professor that killed three people, the shooting of two Pentagon security officers, a Times Square car bomb, a stabbed Muslim cab driver, hostage-taking at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters, Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting rampage—all chocked up to “right wing violence” and all utterly wrong.

Asking if this “selective treatment of tragic violence” really makes sense, Mirengoff says, “It does to me. It’s part of an attempt by the left and its allies in the mainstream media to put conservatives on the defensive and to discourage them from speaking freely. We see the same phenomenon on college campuses and in efforts to curb speech by climate change skeptics. The authoritarian tendency of the modern American left is hiding in plain sight in the news and editorial pages of our major newspapers.”

Malor: “The media’s habitual blaming of the political right is endemic and incurable.”