One of my reliably liberal Facebook friends just posted the following. While it doesn’t specifically mention the Boston bombers, I can’t help but suspect that’s what prompted her post:
I can’t stand ignorance! You can’t punish a whole group of people based on the actions of two. Get over yourself!
Is it wrong that I thought, “And gun owners across America say, “Preach on, sister!'”?
Ace made related observations yesterday.
Let me note the pattern here, because we’ve seen it now seven times straight. In the aftermath of a tragedy, the media freely speculates that the perpetrator was most likely someone on the rightwing– usually a Tea Partier, always a rightwing extremist of some kind.
When the culprit turns out to be a member of the Coalition of the Left — for example, as in the case of the Discovery Channel shooting/attempted bombing — we’re informed that political motivations and implication don’t matter.
The connection is left as an exercise for the student.
I encountered a typically poorly-thought-out Facebook meme today. It was about the immigration bill. It showed the surviving Boston bomber followed by all of the major white, homegrown shooters and terrorists of the past 20 years, ending with, “so keep nationality, ethnicity, and religion out of it, mmkay?”
But what is immigration about if not nationality, ethnicity, and religion? Diverse groups ranging from CAIR to La Raza to the Catholic Church openly base their advocacy and lobbying on those factors. There’s a creepy tendency in these FB memes to appeal to emotion and shut down debate on terms the meme-makers don’t adhere to themselves.
On the up side, I’m getting very good at using Facebook’s “hide” option.