By Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
All that matters now is misdirection.
On the left, all major issues can be ignored by pointing
to the evils of Trumpism. Are Americans concerned about the rise of radical
Islam? Well, it’s Trumpian Islamophobia that poses the real threat. Are Americans worried about college-campus free-speech
crackdowns? Well, Trump is a threat to the First Amendment! We’re about to
bring about The Handmaid’s Tale! Resist!
On the right, all scandals can be excused by
“whataboutism” — what about Obama? Or Clinton? Where were you when the Democrats did X? And hey, if you’re worried about that
thing President Trump did, what about that far more horrific thing some leftist did?
It’s all dumb.
And it’s making us all dumber.
Last week, an Islamic terrorist in Manchester, UK,
attacked Ariana Grande concertgoers, targeting children and teenagers. The Left
quickly responded by moving quickly to tamp down worries over Islamophobia.
Their chief tool: Jeremy Christian.
Who is Jeremy Christian? The same week as the Manchester
attack, a white supremacist named Jeremy Christian murdered two men in
Portland, Ore. Christian’s Facebook page included comments about “cutting off
the heads of people that Circumcize Babies,” and sending “All Zionist Jews, All
Christians who do not follow Christ’s teaching of Love, Charity, and
Forgvieness And All Jihadi Muslims . . . to Madagascar or the Ovens/FEMA
Camps!!!” Police considered Christian mentally ill; he had a rap sheet
including robbery and kidnapping.
Christian had been berating two Muslim women, one wearing
a hijab. Three men attempted to stop him: Ricky John Best, 53, a military
veteran with four children; Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, a graduate of
Reed College and an environmental consultant; and Micah Fletcher, 21, a student
at Portland State University.
The Left called Christian an emissary of the Right: a
Trump-supporting violent maniac intent on acting out Trump’s unstated goals.
The website Heavy noted that since
Trump’s election, “hate crimes against Muslims have continued to rise.” Jill
Stein tweeted, “Another heartbreaking tragedy in Trump’s America, as a white
nationalist shouting anti-Islam slurs murders 2 on Portland, OR subway.” The
media condemned Trump for not speaking up about Christian’s attack — and after
Trump spoke up, they condemned him for not speaking out sooner.
But Christian wasn’t a Trump supporter, or an emissary of
Trump’s ideology. Trump supporters booted him from a free-speech march just a
few weeks ago. His Facebook page showed that Christian was actually a Bernie
Sanders and Jill Stein supporter.
Now, this isn’t to let the Right off the hook for its
willingness to look the other way on alt-right racist or violent rhetoric.
Turning a blind eye to bad behavior by erstwhile allies became commonplace
during the last election cycle on the right. The habit continues to this day,
with some conservatives demonstrating a troubling blitheness about a Montana
congressional candidate’s apparent body-slam of a journalist, audio-recorded on
the journalist’s phone.
But blaming the Right for a nut job who supported Sanders
and Stein is reprehensible — and it demonstrates why those on the right won’t
take the Left seriously when it comes to fighting Islamic terror. The Left grabs
eagerly at even the thinnest reeds to misdirect from the ubiquity of Islamic
terror and instead blame the Islamic-terror-hating Right for similar crimes.
Meanwhile, on the right, some sort of defense had to be
mounted against the onslaught of anonymous leaks about the embattled Trump
administration. As Americans became more and more concerned about questionable
connections between the Trump team and the Russian government, Trump acolytes
began tweeting incessantly about Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee
staffer murdered in 2016 in what police termed a botched robbery. Trump
supporters alleged that Rich was actually
murdered by John Podesta or Hillary Clinton or Huma Abedin or Bozo the Clown
for having leaked material from the Democratic National Committee to Wikileaks.
Conveniently, Rich’s body had to be exhumed, debunked evidence had to be
paraded before the cameras. Why would the media cover the alleged Trump–Russia
collusion — no evidence! — but not
Seth Rich? Why would they attempt to scuttle Sean Hannity’s television show for
covering the Rich allegations? What did
the Democrats have to hide?
Now, never mind that no evidence has yet been provided
that Rich sent material to Wikileaks, let alone that he was murdered by
nefarious Clinton henchmen — an act that would boggle the imagination of anyone
but the most ardent Clinton conspiracy theorist. Rich was a convenient
distraction.
When both sides play the distraction game, all we have
are distractions. There are no facts, merely alternative facts. There can be no
crystallizing events from which we emerge more unified — there can only be
dueling narratives. There can be no common facts for us to agree on — there can
only be a series of faux scandals, building on one another like a game of Jenga,
until the entire edifice comes crashing down.
But will we respond to the ouroboros of untruth by
rejecting untruth, or by doubling down on it? Instead of recognizing that two
things can be true at once — that there can be facts that cut both ways — will
we continue to embrace the strategy of ignoring evidence for opposing
viewpoints by presenting sketchy evidence for our own viewpoint? If we do that,
politics is bound to come to a crashing halt. Those who believe that Seth Rich
was murdered by Chelsea aren’t going to be having any useful conversations with
those who think Jeremy Christian was in the pay of the White House. They’ll
scream at one another, and eventually, they’ll get down to the business of
punching each other if forced into proximity for long enough.
So, enough of the misdirection. Not every story is good
for your side. That’s okay. The world is big enough for lots of stories. Truth
will win out in the long run, even if your cause had a bad-news day.
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