Resolutions Update
How am I doing meeting my New Year's Resolutions? Glad you asked.- Not to read any partisan diatribes re: the 2020 election. I haven't been doing as well.
- Add to our list of National Park visits & cross something off our bucket list. We plan to visit Teddy Roosevelt & Glacier National Parks next month.
- Lose 10 lbs. Only 8 lbs to go.
- Treat Sammy with more patience. I think I'm doing pretty well.
- Help put out ALL Christmas decorations. Waiting for November.
- Work out at least 3X per week. I got a lot of walking & hiking in last week. Otherwise, eh!
- Continue spending at least an hour of "quiet time" each day. Successful.
- Write a devotion book for the 2019 Orphan Grain Train convention. Completed.
- Receive a DNA report from Ancestry.com. Apparently this isn't going to happen, & I am dropping this off my list.
Mass Atrocities
The rush to attribute responsibility for mass atrocities to one’s political opponents is deeply grotesque. The online world the Dayton shooter inhabited is notable not primarily for its political valence, but for its distorted folkways and the sway it seems to have exerted over his psychology. On both 8chan and parts of Twitter, “sh**posting” — a means of ironically airing extreme positions on serious issues — is a common mode of communication, used by those on both poles of the political spectrum. The most active users of these sites tend to resemble addicts who become decreasingly able to make connections in the real world and use the Internet as a substitute. Studying the Dayton killer’s online behavior and learning about the opinions expressed by those he took seriously are vital to understanding his terrible crime. But the results should not be used to score cheap political points. The stakes are far too high for that. --Alexandra DeSanctis, National Review Online, 8/6
Politicians may know they’re being hyperbolic when they throw around terms like “betrayal,” “great danger,” “totalitarian,” and “dictatorial”; but not everyone in their audiences understands. There is no shortage of Americans who completely believe in an organized “great replacement” plot to wipe out white America through mass immigration. There is no shortage of Americans who completely believe President Trump is establishing concentration camps and will never peacefully relinquish power. It wouldn’t take much for some angry, emotionally or mentally troubled, isolated extremist to cast themselves in their own heroic narrative, striking down the evil that so obviously threatens the country.
22
The shooters seem to have a peculiar and toxic combination of narcissism and self-loathing. Narcissism manifests in their self-absorption and absolute disregard for how their actions affect everyone around them. Self-loathing, because they know their rampage will end when they are shot or subdued and on their way to life in prison, and this strikes them as the best outcome for themselves. They convince themselves that the only way their lives will have meaning and value is by killing as many strangers as they can — a viewpoint that must find absolutely nothing else of value in their lives. --Jim Geraghty, National Review Online 8/8It seems to be necessary to begin every discussion in America today with a reminder to show a little charity. If you oppose gun control, don’t assume that those proposing restrictions on gun purchases are merely using the latest atrocity as an excuse for confiscation. Likewise, gun opponents should rid themselves of the notion that, but for the evil machinations of the NRA, commonsense gun control would have been enacted long since and would have prevented the loss of many lives. Show some good faith. Both gun controllers and gun advocates grieve at mass murders and wish there were a simple solution. --Mona Charen, NRO 8/8
Dangerous Rhetoric
But for the Democratic presidential candidates, the El Paso atrocity was like a loose football in the Super Bowl.A mad scramble broke out over who would be first and most savage in indicting President Donald Trump for moral complicity in mass murder.
Never let a crisis go to waste is an old political adage. And this crowd of candidates was not going to let that happen. Yet the naked political exploitation of these horrific acts, before the bodies of many had been removed from the crime scene, was appalling to behold . . .
Yet, blaming the massacre in El Paso on the rhetoric of Donald Trump is a charge that can come back to bite his attackers. Neither the right nor left has a monopoly on political extremism or violence. And the hate-filled rhetoric of the left this last weekend exceeds anything used by Trump. --Patrick Buchanan, Townhall 8/6
My comment: Isn't the violent language of the Democratic candidates likely to incite violence against the president?
Toxic Social Media
One of the reasons social media is so toxic is that it is a nationalizing force; it makes us feel as if strangers thousands of miles away are neighbors — and we get mad when neighbors are living the “wrong” way. Cable news does the same thing, just with better production values, plucking anecdotal stories and making them part of a “national conversation.” The problem is that there’s no such thing as an actual national conversation. --Jonah Goldberg, NRO 8/7
More from Jonah Goldberg
What we need are communities, and the idea of national community is a myth. Conversation is done face to face and person to person, and so is community. --Jonah Goldberg, NRO 8/7
Unity
There can be no unity when one side of the political aisle firmly believes that the other side is motivated by unmitigated evil. No decent conversation about fixes can be had when you assume the person sitting across from you sympathizes with monsters who go to shoot up Hispanic Americans at a Walmart. If we can't at least assume that we're all on the same page in condemning white supremacist terror attacks and white supremacist ideology, we may as well pack this republic in. We're done.
We're fighting one another for one simple reason: Too many on the political left have become accustomed to castigating the character of those who disagree with the left on policy. Favor tougher border controls? This puts you on the side of the white supremacist terrorist. Believe in Second Amendment rights? You're a vicious, violent cretin covering for those who commit acts of evil. Cite Western civilization as a source of our common values, believe that police forces across the United States are not systemically racist, favor smaller government intervention in the social sphere -- in short, disagree with the program of the American left? Most of all, consider voting for Trump? You're an accessory to murder . . .
There can be no unity when one side of the political aisle firmly believes that the other side is motivated by unmitigated evil. No decent conversation about fixes can be had when you assume the person sitting across from you sympathizes with monsters who go to shoot up Hispanic Americans at a Walmart. If we can't at least assume that we're all on the same page in condemning white supremacist terror attacks and white supremacist ideology, we may as well pack this republic in. We're done. --Ben Shapiro, Townhall 8/7
