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Home Front: WoT
Orlando
2016-06-14
There have been so many "sensitive" responses to the nightclub massacre in Orlando, that I should like to add an insensitive one, for the sake of variety. I note that the pundits -- and every amateur politician is a talking head these days -- divide roughly along party lines on whether the shooter was an Islamic fanatic, or a generic madman. This strikes me as a "both/and" proposition, rather than an "either/or".
This is a key point. Whether or not the Orlando killer was truly bipolar (he grew up in an Afghani household, where behaviour that seems insane in the West is expected), the diagnosably dangerous follow fads -- identifying as Napolean one decade, raped by aliens another, killing at the order of angels or now picking up the gauntlet of jihad. And in terms of jihad, both Al Qaeda and ISIS have been sending orders through the internet to "kill the unbelievers where you live." Muslim jihad has always made use of the unbalanced as well as of the trained warrior to spread terror and speed conquest. The current age is no different, for all that to us living in it it's modernity.
Yes, Florida gun laws seem a bit lax, perhaps they should be tightened. But then I held this opinion before the massacre, keeping it to myself only because it was none of my business. Perhaps I am over-Canadian, for I tend to think the open sale of battlefield weapons such as the semi-automatic assault rifle this Omar Mateen was carrying, a little over-the-top. I presume that, "even in America," the citizen’s right to bear arms does not extend to, say, nuclear weapons. Reasonable men might decide upon some reasonable limits; but between the current spokesmen for the respective political parties, I do not detect much reasonable manliness; only a propensity to grandstanding.

..."Let us be clear," as the Obama loves to say, in his station as talking-head-in-chief. Grand displays of public grieving are invariably fraudulent. Those who knew none of the victims are faking it. Those who encourage them are morally disordered.

As a customary principle of politics, whether "electoral" or "appointive," I think it unwise to adjust legislation, or offer to adjust it, in response to behaviour by the criminally insane. This confers too much power on them. Verily, it is a mark of our present social condition that "reforms" are guided more and more by the hardest and strangest cases. (Dare I mention the word, "trans"? Was there really a continuing national crisis in the designation of toilet facilities?)

...Which points again to the deeper "problematic" (one tires of the misuse of this word) in politics as practised today. We not only legislate in response to the transient behaviour of the criminally insane. Worse, our legislators, though arguably sane to start with, get in the habit of indulging insanity, even within themselves.
Posted by:g(r)omgoru

#7  No one doesn't.

Actually, yes - if one is looking for degrees of political opportunism and alignment with "personal values."
Posted by: Pappy   2016-06-14 20:38  

#6  Just so. Again you have the information I need, Dave D. Thank you.
Posted by: trailing wife   2016-06-14 12:33  

#5  "...that Muslim military psychiatrist whose name escapes me."

Maj. Nidal Hasan.
Posted by: Dave D.   2016-06-14 11:48  

#4  One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, ...

No one doesn't. One recalls President Obama, et al not responding in the same way after San Bernadino, or more pointedly the "workplace violence" label of the mass murder of his fellow troops by that Muslim military psychiatrist whose name escapes me.
Posted by: trailing wife   2016-06-14 11:04  

#3  "One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, or Mormons, or Masons, or Knights of Columbus, or petroleum executives, or dry cleaners, or..."

...or global warming deniers.

Actually, in the latter case, I don't think any wondering is needed; I'm sure the near-universal reaction on the Left would be approval bordering on jubilation, with self-righteous declarations of "they had it coming."
Posted by: Dave D.   2016-06-14 10:49  

#2  I concur with your analysis, except for the following sentence:

"Perhaps I am over-Canadian, for I tend to think the open sale of battlefield weapons such as the semi-automatic assault rifle this Omar Mateen was carrying, a little over-the-top."

The term "semi-automatic assault rifle" is an oxymoron: assault rifles are, by necessity, full automatic, and mere semi-automatics (a.k.a. "autoloaders") would be useless (these days, anyway) as a battlefield weapon. The autoloading AR-15 used by the Orlando shooter is no more lethal than an ordinary utility rifle such as the autoloading Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle-- it just looks more badass, due to its visual resemblance to the military full-automatic M-16, which is an assault weapon.

Democrats like to blur the distinction between these two fundamentally different types of rifle, because doing so helps them further their goal of banning all firearms. Those Republicans who go along with the Democrats, usually do so out of simple ignorance.
Posted by: Dave D.   2016-06-14 10:43  

#1  Grand displays of public grieving are invariably fraudulent. Those who knew none of the victims are faking it. Those who encourage them are morally disordered.

One has to wonder if the reaction, especially Mr. Obama's, would have been different if (with a suitable change in venue) the victims had been Baptists, or Mormons, or Masons, or Knights of Columbus, or petroleum executives, or dry cleaners, or...
Posted by: Pappy   2016-06-14 08:56  

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