Can we all agree on a few “facts”?
Tucker Carlson is an unscrupulous, racist rabble-rouser.
Tucker Carlson had nothing to do with the murders in Buffalo.
Black nationalists and other “woke” folks frequently picture white, “capitalist” civilization as the worst and most oppressive in history, entirely worthy of violent overthrow and, quite possibly, only remediable by that method. This is racism as noxious as that of the right, but is seldom identified as such because so many in the chattering class either believe it or are afraid to say they don’t believe it.
The “Black Lives Matter” movement has both encouraged desirable reforms to improve policing and also encouraged demonization of the police.
Many Republicans believe that granting citizenship to the 14 million or so undocumented aliens in the U.S., most of them “non-European”, would guarantee their party’s defeat at the polls. Many Democrats believe it would guarantee their party’s victory. They are both wrong.
The “Stop the Steal” “theory” has deeply corrupted the entire Republican Party, encouraging, for the first time since the Civil War, a rejection of the validity of democratic values and constitutional procedures among a significant percentage of the American population.
Black Americans commit a grossly disproportionate amount of violent crime in the United States. In 2020, according to the FBI’s “Crime Data Explorer”, blacks were seven times as likely to be murdered as whites, and in 90% of those cases, the assailant was identified as black as well. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black men, and about 90% of those homicides are committed by other young black men.
Gun control legislation, whether “constitutional” or not, has no effect on violent crime. The “war on guns” is about as effective as the “war on drugs”, making criminals of people who have committed no injury. There are far too many guns already in private circulation to admit of effective control.
The supposed “natural right to self defense” “found” in the Second Amendment (by a 5-4 Supreme Court) is recognized almost nowhere else in the world. I suspect many Japanese feel that their gun-free, crime-free society makes them “freer” than any 9-mill packin’ American.
Murderous outrages like the recent events in Buffalo cannot be prevented by either gun control or speech control, and no attempt should be made to do so.
The pressure on public officials, particularly liberals, to “do something” about outrages like the one in Buffalo, pressure that they often place on themselves, can be overwhelming. During the first Obama administration, President Obama put gun control issues on the back burner. However, the Sandy Hook school shootings deeply moved him, and when the NRA selfishly and brutally thwarted his desire to “do something” for their parents, to let them believe that the response to their children’s deaths had changed things for the better, the desire to “punish” the NRA for its cruelty took hold of him, and many other liberals across the country as well, intensifying an already deeply emotional issue. Of course, the NRA is a bit of a train wreck these days, and the Black Lives Matter movement seems to be making an effort to catch up with them, but the momentum on both sides is there without them.
Terrorism and other forms of violence resulting from crank right-wing conspiracy theories should not serve as an excuse for further expansion of an already oppressive and self-serving federal police state via the FBI and other agencies, which frequently conspire to invent conspiracies that allow them to throw suckers in jail for twenty years for being stupid.
We can all agree on this, can’t we?
Afterwords
For thoughtful words on both sides, most of the time, try the Bulwark’s Cathy Young, who doesn’t like Tucker Carlson, and Glenn Greenwald, who does, although I don’t think Glenn worries about being replaced or diluted, which seems to be something Tucker appears to moan about a lot. (I’m not a viewer.) You can also try Kevin Williamson1 at the National Review, who, despite my unkind words, does not always froth at the mouth.
1. Kevin D. Williamson, to be precise. You know, the Kevin D. Williamson!
> Tucker Carlson is an unscrupulous, racist rabble-rouser.
On the rare instances I’ve seen him, I’ve not heard anything that seems racist, except in leftist terms which are stupid. Anyone involved with entertainment “news” is unscrupulous, and rabble-rousing is a job description.
> The supposed “natural right to self defense”
Nothing “supposed” about it. Much of civilization is about agreed rational confinement of that right in exchange for an environment where one does not need it. When the “rational” disappears, the “agreed” goes with it, & the right returns. That’s important in places like Chicago, where I have the resulting misfortune to live.