Reviewing the details of school shootings, the other day for an online conversation, I was struck by how clearly banning a particular style of gun or access-related regulations will not solve the problem. They may or may not be justified on their merits, but to treat such policies as if they are obvious fixes is simply a mania. All sorts of weapons have been used. Some were taken from parents. One was taken from a former cop. Sometimes the shooter murders the person before taking the guns.
That being the case — particularly in context of the many references to how this is largely an American phenomenon — makes clear where this is going. First, the gun controllers push national policy banning particular weapons and ancillaries, while adding restrictions for accessing other guns. When shootings continue, they move to ban all weapons. When that proves impossible, they’ll go for other freedoms.
The reality is that the United States is not like those other countries. We’ve always put more emphasis on individual freedom and the right to be different. A society like that will always be more dangerous. The important part (increasingly missing) is the moral foundation to encourage self-control and mutual care.
We can have a conversation about reasonable gun restrictions, but the problem is that the rhetoric of the advocates does not inspire trust that they’ll stop there.
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The problem is that they’re not founded in reason, but emotion. I’m not interested in developing solutions to our problems through the method of emoting alongside others. Emotion supplies motivation; it is not the process for finding answers. Yet, without fail, when progressives (or “moderates,” for that matter) articulate their emotions in the guise of reason, they respond to reasoned answers emotionally… or by pretending the contrary point has not been made.
This is the methodology of children and will only lead to ruination.
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When I returned to college in 1996, after two years of difficult, low-paying labor, I pledged a fraternity, and one of the brothers asked another pledge and me to remove a triangle rainbow sticker that somebody had slapped on the rear bumper of his truck. I had to ask what the sticker meant, and the answer — that it had something to do with homosexuality — seemed incongruous.
Back then, the Rainbow Coalition was about race (that is, people of different colors), and the rainbow as a set of colors was mostly associated with childhood and innocence. Being irreligious, back then, I did not know that the rainbow was also a sign of God’s covenant with Noah not to wipe out sinful humanity again. In the years since, the rainbow has become almost entirely coopted for activism around the many variations of sexuality that can emerge when sex becomes wholly a matter of pleasure and self-expression, rather than the biological propagation of the species. Subtle stickers have become waving flags.
To some, they appear as conquering flags, proclaiming that an organization or institution has been captured by an ideology that takes full advantage of the fact that (so far) God has remained true to His covenant in order to ignore His corresponding emphasis on humanity’s fertility.
It’s a clever marketing scheme that steals a number of intellectual bases. Adult themes are wrapped in a cloak of youthful innocence. Symbolism of diversity becomes a tool of intolerance. Just so, the mainstream in Rhode Island has been simmering in controversy over the decision of the Little Compton Town Council not to fly a “Pride flag” (note the incorporation of one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the marketing) on a government flagpole.
As is apparent everywhere in our society, these days, the revolution must always be churning. Local governments can’t simply strive to accommodate the community needs of the people and help us work together where interaction cannot be avoided. Where once progressives might have won support for the argument that flying a Christian flag was a source of discomfort for non-Christians, who should feel included in their local government, they now demand that the flag of another belief system be flown so that anybody in the community who disagrees will feel receive the message that their beliefs are done and fading.
One council member explained the “no” vote by pointing to the multiplicity of “Pride flags,” which might leave some identity group out if not included. The point captures the mechanism of the scheme. The rainbow implicitly includes the full spectrum of colors in light: ROYGBIV. The symbol’s emphasis in its modern usage, however, is that every band remains distinct. Red is not orange is not yellow is not green is not indigo is not violet. The challenge, then is to have the social leverage and political power to have your chosen color included on the symbol, not so that it represents everybody as a unitary whole, but so that each identity group can point to its own representation on the flag.
If you’re not included, you’re not fully human, and your rights are not covered by the covenant as you’re subsumed by the social flood.
Featured image by Mick DePaola on Unsplash.
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Especially when done with calculation for political gain.
When our nation experiences another school shooting, advocates — right up to the White House, at this point — refuse to give us so much as a day to process the emotions and gather information. They insist that they have the solutions, that they’re easy and obvious, and that anybody who does not immediately advocate for them is simply looking the other way, probably deliberately and probably with evil intent.
We can see what a ghoulish, ugly impulse this is by imagining how those advocates might behave differently if they were genuinely affected by such incidents and did not dehumanize their opposition and belittle their rights. Typically, people with that sort of attitude don’t demand that their allies rally and ram through the policy they want. Rather, they recognize that it isn’t merely fifty Senators and a lobby group standing in the way, but a very sizable percentage of their fellow citizens, and they ask themselves what it is those people see differently. Their goal shifts from bullying to persuading, and in the process, they can’t help but form a better understanding of different views.
Human nature being what it is, this has always been a challenge, but without question the mechanism of social media has catalyzed the noxious fumes of progressivism throughout our society into a dangerous, volatile atmosphere.
The news out of Texas, yesterday, was horrifying, but the impulse we should elevate isn’t the one to divide and agitate for political advantage. Rather, the impulse we should elevate is the one to hug our own children. We should expand its application to our neighbors and our communities. If we put our emphasis on getting to know those around us and better understand them, we might spot those in crisis; we would certainly foster an environment in which they’d be less inclined to extreme action and more likely to seek and to receive help.
And where our embrace of our communities must be political, we would recognize that the purpose of politics is to draw us into debate and toward compromise, not to impose our simplistic solutions on others through raw power.
In short, we’d act very differently than the way we’re acting now.
Featured image by Gary Bendig on Unsplash.
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Over the course of a day, readers of Twitter brush off many such tweets, but in this case, the writer is Ross Cheit, a political science professor at Brown University who was, until recently, the chairman of the state Ethics Commission:
I imagine that anything that a GOP operative has in their possession can also be obtained some other way, if that’s your question.
Anyway, I don’t recall ever seeing a story where a partisan is credited like that. Still seems very strange.
Cheit is referring to a Providence Journal article in which Katherine Gregg credits Steve Frias, “a lawyer, state GOP delegate to the Republican National Committee and historian,” for the contribution of his political-historical research to her summary of balloting history in Rhode Island.
Pause to allow the significance of Cheit’s comment to sink in. Gathering historical information takes work. Frias does that work out of his own interest and offers it as a contribution to public discourse and information, and journalists frequently make use of it. His political priors are transparent and well known, and to my knowledge, in decades of reviewing his research, not one journalist (or Democrat, for that matter) has found (or even claimed) that the historical information he provides is not accurate.
Meanwhile, Cheit is a political science professor at an Ivy League University. If any role in our society should be filled by somebody who appreciates the work of gathering information and has full perspective on people’s political engagement versus their personal and professional interests, that role is it. Yet, here, he ignorantly attempts to discredit Frias and chastises one of the state’s top political journalists for utilizing his work and giving him credit, while she’s careful to inform readers about his political bias. Worse, Cheit is implying that ordinary people going about their lives can’t become engaged in the political process, themselves, without being written off in their other work… at least if they’re Republicans.
Take particular note that Cheit does not suggest the history Gregg provides is colored by Frias’s political leanings. He simply doesn’t like that a Republican should be treated as a legitimate participant in the process of information gathering.
Finding that a Brown professor is basically a Democrat ideologue wouldn’t be as disturbing if we could assume that he was offset by an equally ideological Republican on the Brown political science faculty. Unfortunately, his own attitude suggests that we can make no such assumption. Sharing a department with somebody like that would surely provide Cheit with the perspective he so obviously lacks.
The absence of such perspective is yet more evidence that Brown University is less about education and more about maintaining an ideologically pure aristocracy. Be warned when you see its name listed as a credential, particularly in political science.
Featured image by Rudolf von Alt on WikiArt.
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On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Who rigged the Census?
- What is does polling say about the electoral landscape?
- How many illegal immigrants are in Providence?
- Will other districts follow Central Falls in masking students again?
Featured image by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.
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There is no question that this young man, who is apparently on his way to a cushy six-figure job in the near future, has learned how to leverage his power and privilege to muster a defense of his personal honor:
The Graduate Center Bar apologized on April 27 for removing three black students who were roughhousing in line, after one of the students, Okezie Okoro, confronted the bouncer who told them to knock it off. The confrontation took place on April 7 and occurred after the bouncer let them inside. When Okoro gave the bouncer grief for reprimanding his friends, an argument ensued, culminating in the students’ ejection from the bar.
A week later, Okoro posted on social media a 2,000-word denunciation of the bar, replete with a “content warning” and a list of demands. The post accused the bouncer of racism and attacked the bar’s manager, Susan Yund, for dismissing that accusation.
Let’s summarize the incident, distilled from the Ivy League student’s linguistic obfuscation. A few college kids were horsing around while in line in a narrow hallway. A bouncer attempted to keep order, and one of the privileged students decided to make an issue of it. The bouncer asserted his authority in the situation, and now Okezie Okoro has leveraged his influence, prompting a boycott, to hit the working people where it hurts in order to prove who’s the master.
By all appearances, it’s a disgusting display that a truly reasonable institution would be ashamed to have facilitated. Don’t miss the distilled essence of the story:
The bouncer’s reaction, [Okoro] said, “was a manifestation of respectability politics and shows how black people often have to withhold from expression in order to comfort and conform.”
Translation: Enforcing rules against black people (at least highly privileged Ivy League black people) is an assertion of white supremacy, so they must be permitted to behave however they want if they assert that it is a genuine expression of their identity.
Reality: This is a long-running scam taken to the level of absurdity. If you enroll or take a job at Brown University, or if you hire one of its graduates, you have been warned. The students are armed with all the latest jargon that money can buy, and they will deploy it in ways entirely disproportionate to the situation in order to force you to bow before them. No doubt, there are good, smart students continuing to graduate from the university, but you’re better off not taking the risk. Your odds of actually finding a good, smart young adult are probably better with other sources.
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Guest: Bud Cicilline, Mental Health Practictioner-Retired, bud@cicliilne.onmicrosoft.com
Host: Darlene D’Arezzo Time: 30 minutes
Description: Following a brief review of past changes in mental health practices in R.I.,Cicilline discuss current matters facing Rhode Islanders. The discussion includes changes in process at the Eleanor Slater Hospital and mental health issues and concerns facing law enforcement and other first responders. The latter addresses the Policeman’s Bill of Rights; the different circumstances where police are called to respond; changing expectations of police; mental health first aide training; mental health care for police and fire personnel; crisis intervention training; further development of risk team and crisis intervention for first responders along with increasing sensitivity training for these.
Naomi Wolf talks about across-the-aisle investigation of the “biggest corporate coverup of all time and a crime against humanity” in COVID vaccines; Cox Communications talks about Get Started RI; and Zarina Chambers and Kasim Yarn discuss veterans affairs.
Featured image by the CDC on Unsplash.
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Is anybody surprised by news of a problem with the U.S. Census finalized under the leadership of Secretary Gina Raimondo and her boss, Joe Biden, that appears to have erroneously salvaged one of Rhode Island’s Congressional seats and a bunch of federal funding? The imbalance of the results is not, let’s say, what one would expect from a random sample:
- The five states with the highest overcounts all have Democrat governors:
- Hawaii (6.79% over)
- Delaware (5.45%)
- Rhode Island (5.05%)
- Minnesota (3.84%)
- New York (3.44%)
- With the exception of Illinois, which has a large gap in the percentage from the others, the five states with the highest undercounts have Republican governors:
- Arkansas (5.04%)
- Tennessee (4.78%)
- Mississippi (4.11%)
- Florida (3.48%)
- Illinois (1.97%)
It’s worth remembering that some of the same states (and those next on the list) were among those that stood out a year ago with Census revisions in the same partisan direction just after the Biden administration took the White House. Hawaii, Rhode Island, New York, and others had surprising upward revisions, apparently (at least in part) because they were being overcounted. Meanwhile, the same revisions kept Florida and Texas (also now thought to have been undercounted) from gaining as many Congressional seats as expected.
Featured image by Thomas Dumortier on Unsplash.
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