Random Thoughts on Yesterday’s Left-Wing Political Violence
billj 06.15.17
So, a disgruntled Bernie Bro shot up some Republican lawmakers with an old SKS (the media has confused it with an AK), wounded five people, killing no one (so far, thank God). Going by his feeds and profiles, he hated Trump, hated Republicans, and was determined to fight back against the perceived threat to his ability to get free stuff.
I’m going to take the contrarian position and say that it’s a shame he’s dead. If this guy had lived, in a few decades he could’ve become a beloved university professor and possibly launched a successful presidential candidate’s campaign in his living room. One of my kids could’ve grown up to take a class with him! Or, maybe he could’ve gotten free tickets to Hamilton.
Oh wait, he wouldn’t have qualified for either of those honors with a body count of zero. You’ve gotta actually kill some Americans to rate with the left. As I told someone this afternoon, only a Democrat could manage a body count that low with a .30-cal rifle. But for real, the heroic work done by the Secret Service and Capitol Police was no doubt the deciding factor, the perp’s obvious lack of skill with a long gun not withstanding. Those guys train for exactly this, and that training paid off.
All sarcasm aside, the real problem with this guy for the left is that he was a lone wolf. What the two left-wing terrorists alluded to earlier had in common, apart from an actual body count, was that they were a genuine part of organized violent movements that had sympathizers in core US cultural institutions like the press and the ABA, to name two.
There is an organized violent leftist group that has a massive amount of cred with the #Resist crowd: Antifa. But this goon wasn’t antifa, just a sad old angry domestic abuser. Also, he was a white hetero (presumably) male (again, presumably– you never know these days). So the usual suspects aren’t going to come out of the woodworks to apologize for him. They’re just going to try to shift the blame back onto the GOP by talking about the gunz.
It’s worth mentioning that this jackass has probably derailed the SHARE Act (the big ominbus pro-gun bill that the House had been scheduled to have a hearing on today). Things are going to have to cool off a bit before this can regain momentum. Luckily for us, though, Twitter will move on completely from talking about this in about 12 more hours, and the media will follow in a day or two. So maybe we won’t have to wait that long.
Before signing off, I should say in all seriousness that our prayers are with Rep. Scalise and his family, and with all of this goon’s victims, tonight. May they pull through and come out stronger than ever.
