Saturday, November 03, 2018

Saying That Things Would Have Been Different Had The Victim(s) Been Armed Is Not "Blaming The Victim(s)"

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Obligatory: Trump's got no business being within a parsec of the presidency. But here we are.
Criticize away. But stop making shit up.
Saying that things would have been different had the Tree of Life synagogue been armed is not "blaming Jews for violence against them." That's a despicable, loathsome suggestion. Accusing someone of something like that is repulsive. It's morally wrong. And it's stupid. And, though I dislike counterproductivity arguments, it's part of what gave us Trump to begin with.
   Obviously one could say what Trump said in order to "blame the victims." But that's a special case of such an utterance, and it requires the intention to do so. Without that intention--an intention Trump obviously didn't have--the utterance more-or-less just states a fact. Though, actually, it also gestures at a political view that gun control isn't the solution to such problems.
   Now, I don't think Trump should have said it, because I think it's too much like politicizing the tragedy. But that's a different thing entirely.
   Also--Second Amendment fan thought I am--I don't find such claims all that plausible/relevant. It's hard to envision a nation in which we're basically all armed all the time. That's not how I want to live. Not because I don't want people to have the means of self-defense handy...but, rather, because carrying a gun is a pain in the ass, and I think it would radically diminish our quality of life to have to do so all the time. I'm not sure laziness qualifies as Constitutionally-relevant, though...
   Anyway: as I've said before, the right and the left each have a flagship dumb argument in this vicinity: the right's is: If only everyone were armed all the time... The left's is: Armed potential victims will make the situation worse... IMO the right's argument is basically fantasy. And the left's is approximately an order of magnitude more delusional. In fact, it's characteristic of the politically correct left. It takes a real effort of political self-delusion to convince yourself that, were you to be cornered by a psychokiller, you'd be better off if you were unarmed--better off throwing the gun away than trying to shoot him. (What...because if, in the fifteen seconds before FreddyJason cuts you in two, you might accidentally shoot yourself in the head, thus robbing yourself of 5 seconds more life?)
   Anyway.
   For the love of God.
   Stop with the fervid fantasizing about Trump, and the groundless attempts to make him have the worst conceivable intentions every moment of every day.

1 Comments:

Blogger Pete Mack said...

At the very least it is morally questionable to expect people at religious services to go armed.

3:21 PM  

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