CSotD: No simple answers

I’m glad Signe Wilkinson (AMS) got out in front of the pack on this one, because it’s a good take and there aren’t a lot of those right now on social media.

The first take on the Atlanta murders was that he was a racist singling out Asian women, and there’s no doubt that bigotry and violence against Asian-Americans is a significant problem.

 

And there’s no doubt about the source, as Chris Britt (Creators) points out, a factor made worse by the fact that people warned the president that his rhetoric would incite hatred and his response was to double down.

It’s concerning that, while we seem to be entering a period of civil war, there are no geographic boundaries and, worse, no responsible parties in command.

We shouldn’t have statues honoring Robert E. Lee or holidays for Jeff Davis, but we also shouldn’t have Louis Gohmert (Whoops, no: Paul Gosar) skipping a crucial vote so he can address a white supremacist convention, and I don’t see Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert as leaders of anything resembling an organized Confederate government.

It’s impossible to champion those who fought to preserve slavery, but at least they weren’t a pack of gibbering lunatics.

OTOH, social media is currently packed with self-righteous raving based on assumptions not yet borne out, and, while I’m very happy to see Wilkinson focus her anger on the basic, underlying issue, I dread the cartoons to come.

At first it was a racial crime and then it got more complicated, and now it appears to have been a crime against sex workers, which is a whole other branch of lunatic violence except that Elizabeth Spiers points out that it’s not.

It’s just another case of people being dehumanized by self-righteous groups, as this site points out:

When you start to explore the sex worker angle, you find an additional complication of who is most active against porn and what their posturing adds to the “China Flu” hatemongering and the glorification of pussy-grabbing and extra-marital payoffs.

They typify magical thinking, a belief in a binary world with Wrong and Right fully divided, a guilt-inspiring vision which explains why a criminal or a sexual assaulter or simply a hypocrite so often seems to be a self-righteous extremist who claims a pipeline to God.

And how often other, equally self-righteous people who believe in a similarly but secularly binary world declare religion to be the cause, or that the “enemy” is white men, or men in general.

And are part of the lynch mob now gathering on social media.

But, hey, let’s add another level of complexity:

Whether this particular horror was directed at Asians, at women, or at sex workers, it was — even if you don’t believe in “sex addiction” — surely the work of someone with serious mental health issues.

I’d like to know who knew he had these problems, how it was dealt with, and, specifically, why his family continued to have guns in the house. (Plus this.)

Who do you lock up and medicate, and who do you simply execute?

Adding it all up, this isn’t the case I’d want to use as an exemplar of any one of those problems, but it is one that shows the toxicity of the brew we have assembled.

Which Spiers managed to encapsulate in fewer than 140 characters, which is better than I did.

And I further admire her for not having come up with a pat answer.

Though I’m sure we’ll be hearing them.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Kirk Walters -KFS)

(Steve Sack)

I’m tempted to simply leave this as “Asked and answered,” but even Sack’s wordy caption doesn’t sum it all up.

F’rinstance, I’d add that, with Limbaugh gone, I don’t know who is serving as coxswain, but there are suddenly a whole lot of cartoonists rowing in perfect rhythm, praising Trump for solving the crisis and attacking Biden for taking credit.

To which I would add that Trump and FLOTUS got covid vaccines quietly — one might say “secretly” — and only later did he suggest perhaps others should also get them. A real president, in his role as national role model, would have made it a live, televised event.

Which may be the only time the words “Trump” and “role model” have ever appeared in the same paragraph.

Anyway, Moderna was developed with Warp Speed money, but the Pfizer vaccine was not, though Warp Speed money was then used to purchase quantities of the resulting vaccine.

For a disease that would go away all on its own, he promised us.

 

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

 

(Joe Heller)

(Mike Smith – KFS)

(David Horsey)

Florida has not only declined to cancel Spring Break but did away with statewide mask mandates and, further, banned local fines for the unmasked.

Heller and Smith both point out the folly of going unmasked, though only Horsey depicts the risk of the crowded masses.

Still, Heller suggests the danger of bringing the virus home, while Smith bluntly states the overall stupidity of going there in the first place.

And there’s a certain blend, in that, while the Spring Break age group may be less likely to die from covid, those who think having had the shots makes them immune are foolish, and the kids will be redistributing the virus to a nationally scattered group of vulnerable folks, on campus and off.

Not that I ever held up Spring Break as the model for higher education, but the “Get off my lawn” factor is that, goldurn it, the college kids I admired went South on Spring Break to register voters.

Then again, it seems to be my generation that’s intent on undoing all that.

Probably the ones who’d gone where the boys are.

(Note: I mistyped it as “where the goys are” and was tempted to leave it as a comment
on the disparity of who did which.)

Plus this related quibble:

I realize Michael Ramirez (Creators) is only downplaying the issue of keeping people from voting, but, come on: The drinking age across the nation has been 21 for 33 years, and for 88 in his home state of Nevada.

Not that Florida (Blame Reagan) will be mandating that either: