It was rather predictable that the Orlando shooting would devolve into an effort to further strip citizens of their rights. The Left wants gun rights infringed in various fashions, the Right wants more power granted to law enforcement, both sides want to curtail 4th Amendment protections and defenestrate due process. No surprise there – rights infringement packaged as “safety” (even though the Orlando shooter had been vetted twice each by both the FBI and the security company he worked for) make good sound bite and sell to easily-agitated voter groups.
The surprise, or perhaps not so much surprise as moment of clarity, came out of the collision of two favored identity groups: gays and muslims.
I’ve written in the past about the hierarchy of aggrievement and how political correctness has turned the concept of equality on its head and fostered a battle for supremacy among constituencies. The Left’s response to the Orlando shooting, in particular its semantic contortions to avoid any association of a shooter that loudly proclaimed his allegiance to Islam and ISIS with Islam, tells us that it is prioritizing Islam over the LGBTQ community and that community’s concerns.
We shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we’ve recently witnessed how some musicians cancelled performances in North Carolina in order to protest that state’s new laws regarding public restroom use by the transgendered, but have either performed in Muslim countries that punish homosexuality with imprisonment or worse, or are affiliated with corporations that do business in those countries. That bit of hypocrisy hasn’t gone unnoticed.
So, in the grievance hierarchy, we now know that Islam ranks higher than homosexuality. Oddly, though, homosexual Muslims don’t seem to get much play, despite their being among the most oppressed people in the world. Perhaps the dissonance is too overwhelming for the social justice warriors to resolve.
What to make of this? Why would the Left opt to ignore the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room?
It’s easy to understand why they try to paint millions of law abiding gun owners as complicit in the murderous act of an evil person – they hate guns, they hate non-liberals, and in matters of politics they have repeatedly demonstrated enough moral flexibility to never let a crisis go to waste and to embrace [ends-justify-the-means]3 dishonesty.
It’s a bit less obvious why this attack, reeking of a hatred for homosexuals taught by a radicalized religion that also preaches violence, is being heavily Lysoled. I see a couple possibilities.
First – a presumption that gays are so inextricably aligned with the Left that this abandonment doesn’t cost the Left politically. This is what happens when a constituency’s vote is not in play, when one party knows that people of a certain demographic will vote for its candidates no matter what.
Second – reflexive contrarianism. The Left knows that there is a major anti-muslim sentiment on the Right, as evinced by Trump’s success in making outlandish (and probably unenforceable and probably unconstitutional) declarations about banning muslims from immigrating and about surveilling mosques. So, perhaps, in binary contrarian fashion, they bounce to the other extreme instead of donning the mantle of rationality.
Third – fear. It is a fact that Islamic fanatics have murdered those who they consider especially offensive. Fatwas have been issued that call for the murder of certain Western writers and politicians, the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were attacked and 11 people were killed as retribution for satirical portrayals of Mohammed, and, of course, we have as examples the recent “home grown” terrorist attacks in Orlando and San Bernadino. Radical Islam has made it clear that insults to the religion will not be tolerate. It is ironic, of course, to think that the people insisting there’s nothing to fear from Islamists are deterred from speaking the plain truth about Orlando due to fear of Islamists.
There may be elements of all these, and there may also be the alternate-universe idea that President Obama suggested when he got twisted over criticisms regarding his refusal to use the words “radical Islam,” that is, that naming the aforementioned eight hundred pound gorilla would alienate the moderate muslim community and hamper counterterrorism efforts. Well, gee, whiz, perhaps the moderate muslim community should be on the stage with the president and denounce that which is being done in their religion’s name. This isn’t a Harry Potter story, this is a real problem in the real world, and it’s pretty bizarre to claim to be addressing something that one won’t name.
The reasons are secondary to the fact itself. It’s useful information, and people who lean left but are suspicious of radical Islam should be aware that the opinion makers among them have decided something they may disagree with. They should also take note of the history that suggests that, if the Orlando shooter were a Christian, the Left’s opinion makers would be tripping all over themselves to lay the blame on the entirety of Christianity. Heck, they tried to do that even though the Orlando shooter was obviously and overtly not-Christian.
What’s that old bit? If it were a movie, no one would believe it. Or, if you prefer, you can’t make this shit up.
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