It\u2019s no wonder that the Obama administration wants to rewrite the present by excising from the transcripts of Omar Mateen\u2019s exchange with police the former\u2019s Islamic-centered reasons for the massacre in Orlando that was about to occur.<\/p>\n
Better instead, as far as the Democrats\u2019 political fortunes are concerned, to assimilate the second deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9\/11 into narratives about \u201cguns\u201d and \u201chomophobia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The left\u2019s agenda is well-served by both lines. Consider, first, the benefits of focusing on guns:<\/p>\n
(1) If Orlando is a manifestation of a gun problem, then \u201cgun-control\u201d can be proposed as the \u201csolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
(2) If this attack on American soil is ultimately nothing more or less than a problem with guns, then it is America\u2019s <\/em>problem with guns. In other words, in the final analysis, it would be Americans, <\/em>particularly those white, Christian, Second Amendment-loving, bitter gun \u201cclingers\u201d\u2014NRA-types, say, and not the son of radical Afghan Islamic immigrants\u2014who must shoulder the lion\u2019s share of the blame for the bloodshed.<\/p>\n (3) In this heated election year, if the Orlando massacre can be made over into a gun problem, then Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their fellow Democrats can escape being saddled with the burden of having presided over not just a terrorist<\/em> attack on American soil, but the<\/em> worst case of Islamic terror in 15 years. Let\u2019s call it \u201c6\/12.\u201d<\/p>\n The gay angle is no less empowering to the left:<\/p>\n (1)The Orlando massacre can now be transformed into the classic textbook case of the most virulent \u201chomophobia.\u201d<\/p>\n (2)Since the \u201chomophobe\u201d is American-born and, presumably, a \u201cself-hating\u201d gay man himself, the mass assault against an exclusively gay population can be explained as a function of American-<\/em>style \u201chomophobia,\u201d i.e. Americans<\/em>\u2019 horrific mistreatment of gays.<\/p>\n (3)If the problem is American \u201chomophobia,\u201d then the \u201csolution\u201d can be depicted as but more legislation<\/em> of precisely the sort of which Republicans and Christians have been skeptical.<\/p>\n Thus, it is the Democrats\u2019 enemies\u2014Republicans and traditional Christians\u2014on whose shoulders the blame for 6\/12 can now be placed.<\/p>\n (4)If the problem is \u201chomophobia,\u201d then Obama, Clinton, and Democrats can dodge the ignominious distinction of having presided over 6\/12\u2014the deadliest Islamic terrorist attack on American soil since 9\/11.<\/p>\n But we must call things for what they are, for unless \u201clanguage is\u2026correct,\u201d as Confucius taught, \u201cmorals and art will deteriorate\u201d and \u201cjustice\u201d will go \u201castray [.]\u201d<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just leftist Democrats who need to be reminded of this. Whenever Republicans and others refer to 6\/12 as \u201cthe largest \u2018mass shooting\u2019\u201d in American history, they lend legitimacy to the left\u2019s spin on things. The same effect is realized when the left\u2019s opponents insist upon focusing on the homosexuality of Mateen\u2019s victims, or when they repeatedly stress the inhumane treatment to which Islamic governments throughout the world subject gays.<\/p>\n First, whether 6\/12 really was the largest mass shooting is both morally and metaphysically irrelevant. From the time of Plato and Aristotle through the middle Ages to the Catholic Church in the present, a distinction has been made between the \u201cessence\u201d of things and their \u201caccidents.\u201d<\/p>\n It is of the essence<\/em> of a knife, for example, to cut<\/em>. That a knife can be used to pick locks; that it can come in handy as a paper weight; that it is six inches, eight ounces, black, white, manufactured by this company or that\u2014these are accidental<\/em> features or characteristics of a knife.<\/p>\n The Orlando massacre was <\/em>a mass murder. <\/em>That is, it was, essentially<\/em>, a mass murder. It was, though, only accidentally<\/em> a mass shooting. <\/em> Guns happened <\/em>to have been the means <\/em>by which the murderer pursued his end\u2014and acts are defined by their ends.<\/p>\n To see that this is so, consider, say, 9\/11. The latter was a mass murder, the murder of 3,000 innocent Americans. No one has ever so much as thought to describe 9\/11 as a \u201cmass airplane\u201d or \u201cmass box cutter\u201d attack. No one ever tried explaining\u2014explaining away\u2014<\/em>9\/11 in terms of a problem with planes or box cutters.<\/p>\n And this is because\u2014besides the fact that no political program is served by personifying and demonizing planes and box cutters\u2014it\u2019s recognized that these inanimate objects are the mere means by which terrorists chose to wreak the destruction that they did.<\/p>\n They are, though, no more essential to the mass murder of 9\/11 than guns were essential to the mass murder of 6\/12.<\/p>\n Secondly, while 6\/12 was essentially a mass murder, though not a mass shooting, it was a particular type of mass murder. It was terrorism<\/em>:<\/p>\n (a)The mass murderer was a non-state actor<\/em> (he was not acting on behalf of any government);<\/p>\n (b)Insofar as he explicitly identified the United States\u2019 government\u2019s intrusions into the Islamic world as his reason for murdering en masse<\/em>, Mateen disclosed his aim: He wanted to affect changes in government policy<\/em>;<\/p>\n (c)The mass murderer indiscriminately slaughtered non-combatant civilians<\/em> in the private sector as the means by which he sought to retaliate against and change American policy.<\/p>\n These are the conditions that must be met for a murderous act to become a terrorist act.<\/p>\n Mateen met them in spades.<\/p>\n Thirdly, this terrorist attack is an Islamic <\/em>terrorist attack. Yet it isn\u2019t Islamic terror just because Mateen was a Muslim. If he was an anarchist or communist, but happened to have had an Islamic background, 6\/12 would not <\/em>have been an instance of Islamic terror.<\/p>\n That Mateen was an Islamic terrorist, and that 6\/12 was an Islamic terrorist attack, is borne out by the following facts:<\/p>\n (a)The terrorist followed jihadi protocol and informed the police that he pledged his allegiance to the Islamic <\/em>State (ISIS);<\/p>\n (b)The terrorist did indeed pledge his allegiance to the Islamic<\/em> State (ISIS);<\/p>\n (c)The terrorist shouted praises to Allah <\/em>as he shed the blood of civilians.<\/p>\n Finally, from what we can gather at the moment, the sexual orientation of this Islamic terrorist\u2019s victims is as irrelevant or non-essential to the act itself as is the sexual orientation of the victims of 9\/11 is irrelevant or non-essential to that day of infamy.<\/p>\n In fact, Mateen, besides being a homosexual himself, left behind no evidence indicating that he chose his victims because they were gay. <\/em> To repeat, all psychologizing aside, there is zero <\/em>evidence that Mateen had anything against gays per se.<\/em><\/p>\n All of the available evidence is clear as to his motives: Mateen committed mass murder in a crowded nightclub\u2014a nightclub with which he was intimately familiar (and a gun-free zone at that)\u2014in response to an American foreign policy that he believed was unjust toward Muslims, his brethren in the faith.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s no wonder that the Obama administration wants to rewrite the present by excising from the transcripts of Omar Mateen\u2019s exchange with police the former\u2019s Islamic-centered reasons for the massacre in Orlando that was about to occur. Better instead, as far as the Democrats\u2019 political fortunes are concerned, to assimilate the second deadliest terrorist attack…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n