Tag: Shooting

Citizens are not meant to be vigilant

“It’s quite the event to see local news and governments give citizens ‘tips’ on surviving mass shootings and see them met with ‘Thank you’ rather than ‘What do I need this for?'”

The Black Vera Wang

Season 3, episode 21 of NBC’s hit drama The West Wing features Special Agent Simon Donovan. He enters during a period of heightened security, in the wake of a presidential assassination attempt. Donovan escorts C.J. Cregg, White House Press Secretary, shopping with her niece Hogan to buy a dress for her junior prom.

While shopping, C.J. leaves to try on a dress and her niece asks Donovan what he looks for as a Secret Service agent. He replies: “You know it when you see it.”

The rest of the exchange goes like this:

Donovan: “Look this way…now look this way…now look this way…now look at me. What did you see?”

Hogan: “Over here, there was a mother with two kids. Over here was a man with a coat, I don’t know what else…over here I can’t remember and over here was a checkout counter, and there were some people over there, and I can’t remember one of those.”

Donovan: “Anything bother you?”

Hogan: “No?”

Donovan: “What about the guy in the coat?”

Hogan: “What about him?”

Donovan: “It’s May – why’s he wearing a coat?”

Hogan: “I don’t know.”

Donovan: “I don’t know, either, but until one of us leaves the store, I’m always gonna know where he is.”

This scene is designed to highlight the hyper-vigilance with which Secret Service agents are to conduct their business of protecting assets from all imaginable threats.

Citizen vigilance

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Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O’Flynn
In the wake of the attacks on concert-goers in Las Vegas, Nevada, local news has kicked it up a notch. A local news station in my home town ran a piece called “What should you do if caught in a mass shooting?”, which begs the question….”Umm…will I be?” Monroe County Sheriff Patrick O’Flynn says well…maybe.

“There is going to be a certain level of potential threat no matter where you are so to have a plan [for] yourself is key,” says O’Flynn.

I understand what O’Flynn’s saying, as he is the overseer of the things that are, not the things that should be.

(I mean, honestly, Matt, you could try.)

Our acceptance that these things must happen or even that they do happen points to a level of normalization that should outrage us. It’s quite the event to see local news and governments give citizens “tips” on surviving mass shootings and see them met with “Thank you” rather than “What do I need this for?”

The numb response to things like Las Vegas reeks of the tacit cultural admission that it is the responsibility of concert-goers to map out a crisis scenario in their minds before going to see Jason Aldean.

Only Special Agent Donovan is supposed to be that vigilant.

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The brutal indifference of tolerance

“Any bonds of humanity, citizenship, or love that he is referring to in this speech, he clearly does not believe in.”

#Trump #LasVegas #Shooting

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made it very clear that he doesn’t care about words. So much so that CNN Host Fareed Zakaria said this about him on fellow anchor Don Lemon’s show:

“I think the president is somewhat indifferent to things that are true or false. He has spent his whole life bullshitting. He has succeeded by bullshitting. He has gotten the presidency by bullshitting. It’s very hard to tell someone at that point that bullshit doesn’t work, because…look at the results.”

The media already knows this about Donald Trump. The New York Times reported that Donald Trump told the public lies every day for his first 40 days in office. And it is with that context that I present to you his comments after a domestic terrorist opened fire on 50+ concert goers last night in Las Vegas, outpacing the Orlando Pulse Nightclub massacre for “deadliest mass shooting since 1949.”

“It was an act of pure evil. In moments of tragedy and pure horror, America comes together as one, and it always has. We call upon the bonds that unite us: our faith, our family, and our shared values. We call upon the bonds of citizenship, the ties of community, and the comfort of our common humanity. Our unity cannot be shattered by evil, our bonds cannot be broken by violence, and though we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today, and always will.”

On a normal day, the media is doing its job. It’s slamming Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders for outright lying to the American public without a hint of remorse. It’s literally guiding the president through the intricacies of institutions he has no hope of understanding. But they regularly lose their footing with tolerance.

In the absence of context, these words seem fine. They seem like a call for unity, peace, and love. However, they only work if we forget everything we know about the person saying them.

How can a man who, days ago, attacked a mayor grieving for the people of Puerto Rico as having “poor leadership” be fit to call for unity?

How can a man who yesterday again actively discouraged American citizens from exercising their constitutional rights at a football game ask for peace?

How can a man who insisted, in the wake of white supremacists running multiple people over with a car, that “Eh, there was violence on both sides” call to our common bonds of humanity?

“What do you know of love? Who have you ever loved?” – The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Tweeting a GIF of hitting Secretary Clinton with a golfball? Banning transgender troops from the military? Rescinding the DACA program to deport children brought here illegally? Suggesting that Second Amendment supporters murder Secretary Clinton? Inciting violence at his rallies? Running an entire campaign based on the preservation of the supremacy of the white race? Do any of these ring a bell?

Any bonds of humanity, citizenship, or love that he is referring to in this speech, he clearly does not believe in.

He lies to the media because he knows they’ll believe it, desperate to retain the sense that all hope is not lost, and that there may lie a person capable of the smallest amount of introspection or goodness underneath the horrific mask. (Remember Van Jones drooling over him because he spoke full sentences once?)

But it’s not a mask.

And Donald Trump twists, bends, and shatters even the idea of the truth because he preys on the left’s insistence on tolerance. He preys on the fact that most liberals are committed to “having dialogues” and “reaching outside their echo chambers” and “listening to the other side” which he is wholly unwilling to engage in, and he knows it. He knows that they’re afraid to outright say that he’s wrong and that they’re right.

Pretending that there is some other Donald Trump lurking in the shadows of his ghostly heart represents a brutal and craven indifference to fact, or the communities harmed by his actions, and to portray him as just another viewpoint is the height of irresponsibility.

We should not exalt him for paltry and easy words that he neither means nor exemplifies. And we certainly shouldn’t praise him for hollow words with no commitment to do anything about the violence he decries.

He has no courage or empathy, he has neither sacrificed nor given anything, and he cares not for anyone but himself.

Donald Trump is not a leader, and it’s long time that liberals knew they have no responsibility to call him one or pretend he can be.

Thanks so much for reading – subscribe and come back regularly for more posts! Follow me on Facebook or Twitter, and if you’d like a great read, you can buy my book here.