The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fact-Based Argument Is Denounced as ‘Common Right Wing Talking Point’

Posted on | June 10, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

As every progressive knows, facts are “hate” and logic is “racism.” So when Jake Tapper asked a Democrat politician an obvious question — which proposed gun-control laws would have prevented a recent mass shooting in Virginia? — the Scanners-style head explosions commenced:

New York Times columnist Charles Blow went off on what he called a “horrible question” that CNN’s Jake Tapper asked of Senator Cory Booker this week about the gun massacre in Virginia Beach, a question that is frequently asked in the wake of such tragedies.
On this week’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, host Bill Maher noted that “Cory Booker was on with Jake Tapper, and Jake Tapper asked him, a couple of times, what in your plan would have stopped the massacre that we had last week at Virginia Beach, and Cory Booker took a very long time to not be able to answer that question.”
Can I just say this? Journalists have to stop asking that horrible question,” Blow said. “That is a horrible question.”
“Because what we’re doing is picking out one incident out of 30,000 deaths per year and saying ‘How could you solve this one thing?’” Blow continued.

Since the New York Times columnist evidently wants to make this a question of arithmetic, let’s talk about The Law of Large Numbers. In a nation of 325 million people, it’s always possible to find a handful of examples anything, e.g., people arrested for having sex with dogs, or children being raped by transgender perverts. Yet we do not see any talking-heads on CNN discussing these phenomena as a tragic “epidemic,” because there are no non-profit activist groups compiling reports about dog rape or LGBT sex crimes and advocating new laws to combat these problems. Mass shootings are, from a statistical perspective, very rare events in the United States, but in a nation of 325 million people, if a half-dozen kooks go on rampages every year, these statistical outliers are making national news every eight weeks or so.

Unless we are willing to absolutely prohibit private firearms ownership — not just limiting future sales, but confiscating the many tens of millions of guns already owned by Americans — there is no possibility that we can eliminate the danger of mass shootings. So when Jake Tapper asks whether the gunman’s rampage in Virginia Beach could have been prevented by any law advocated by Cory Booker, it’s a legitimate point. Democrats who advocate new gun-control laws do not wish to admit that it would take very drastic measures to substantially reduce the risk of mass shootings, because to make such an admission would give credence to claims by First Amendment activists that the Democrats are secretly planing to confiscate everybody’s guns. Whatever gun-control “plan” Booker proposes, therefore, is likely to be ineffective, a more or less symbolic gesture, and Tapper’s question pointed this out, prompting liberals to shriek: “FACTS ARE HATE!”

 

Speaking of facts, we know almost nothing about DeWayne Craddock, the Virginia Beach gunman, except that he had given his two-weeks’ notice of an intent to quit his job before going on a workplace rampage. Police say Craddock evidently wasn’t targeting anyone in particular, but was firing randomly at his former co-workers. You might think journalists would have been able to dig up some clue as to why Craddock killed 11 people, but they don’t seem very interested in his motive.

This evident lack of curiosity is odd, isn’t it? Like, if this guy was a Trump supporter, I’m sure journalists would have mentioned that, but instead we’ve got silence, and nobody seems to be asking, “Why?”



 

Category: Crime

Comments

One Response to “Fact-Based Argument Is Denounced as ‘Common Right Wing Talking Point’”

  1. News of the Week (June 16th, 2019) | The Political Hat
    June 16th, 2019 @ 7:09 pm

    […] Fact-Based Argument Is Denounced as “Common Right Wing Talking Point” As every progressive knows, facts are “hate” and logic is “racism.” So when Jake Tapper asked a Democrat politician an obvious question – which proposed gun-control laws would have prevented a recent mass shooting in Virginia? – the Scanners-style head explosions commenced: […]