Blame the Right

If a person of the left who "has strong opinions with respect to those he believes do not treat homosexuals in a fair manner," and "had been volunteering recently at a community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people," shoots innocents at a politically active organization of the right then the shooter is acting out frustrations and we should try to compassionately understand what may have driven a person to commit such a heinous act. Or he just "expressed a disagreement with the group's conservative views" during a "scuffle". For sure, it is "an anomaly, something very rare and very random." But you really can't know for sure if ideology motivated the shooter.

Similarly, if a man shoots fellow members of the military in cold blood while shouting "Allahu Akbar", then the shooter is possibly suffering from "secondary trauma", was sadly "swept up in patients' displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury," snapped in advance, perhaps had a “toothache” that set him off and "It's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting." But you really can't know for sure if religion motivated the shooter.

However, if we know nothing about a person and that person opens fire on innocents and nobody can figure out why he may have done what he did, the shooter must be a right-wing wacko who is deeply disturbed as the result of right-wing hate. Because "violent acts are what happen when [Republicans] create a climate of hate" and the fomenting and agitating by right-wing wackos like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck. Research consists of Googling shooter's name and the words "Tea Party" while forgetting to search for the name and "Occupy Wall Street". Tweets from those on the left tell us it is OK to score political points by connecting the Tea Party, Republicans and anyone close to the right to murder sprees, whether perpetrated by those on the right or not, because the "Bottom line is that policy decisions are driven by scoring political points."

I guess they didn't read the last paragraph of Michelangelo Signorile's, Editor-at-large of HuffPost Gay Voices, column wherein he admonishes, "What no one should be doing is exploiting this tragedy to make political points or to attack an entire group of people because of the actions of one man."

Strangely missing are the lectures about polarization, heated rhetoric or overdue conversations. No connections to those on the left who share the rostrum with the President and with fist-pumping fury tell the audience that "There can only be one winner", "And, let's take these son of a bitches out..."

The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. The double standard is, well, standard. And all of this from those who fancy themselves to be psychologically sophisticated and uniquely able to see nuance.

Link, link.