Racist vs. Racial

Has there been a moment over the past two years where Donald Trump has not dominated the headlines? Usually it is for stuff he has said rather than stuff he has done, but the most common refrain over the past two years has been something along the lines of Donald Trump and racism, it has been the favored attack strategy by the Left. His recent tweets about Baltimore, specifically the district under Congressman Elijah Cummings, have seemingly pushed the cries of "racism" to a new level. First, let's look at what he said:

"Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA...[...]....As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place. Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!"

The media and politicians on the Left have all jumped in to decry this series of tweets as racist. While certainly not nice, and perhaps not fitting of how a President should communicate, it's hard to find evidence of racism here. For review, racism is defined as:

"prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior." - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

The key element of that definition is the part about 'superiority'. In fact, if you look at any functional definition of 'racism', they all contain that very key element. For someone to be 'racist', they have to be espousing beliefs that either a) they are superior to others because of their racial background or b) some segment or group is lesser-than because of their racial background.

The important distinction I'm trying to make here is that there is a HUGE difference between something having a racial element, and something being racist. If you're looking at Trump's tweets, that I quoted above - it's hard to find even a racial element to what he is saying. At no point does he mention race, and these tweets are actually in response to Rep. Elijah Cummings' critical comments regarding the conditions at the Southern US border. What Trump seems to be highlighting here is that Rep. Cummings perhaps ought to be focusing his attention on fighting for the people of his District, and helping to improve their lives, rather than focusing his energy on fighting the immigration policies of our country, an issue that likely does not directly affect many of his constituents in any meaningful way.

But of course that isn't what this outcry is all about, right? Folks like Al Sharpton will jump at any chance they get to inject race into a situation in order to push their agenda...and that's exactly what has happened here. As they believe it, Trump using the words "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess" is evidence of racist attitudes on the part of Trump because Cummings' district is a primarily African American community. In other words, because there is a RACIAL element (perhaps) to this story, that necessarily makes Trumps comments RACIST...which is flat-out ridiculous. The two things are completely separate, most of the time.

The larger point here is that the media and those with a racial agenda on the Left have made and are making a concerted effort to change the definition of words. You can't label someone a 'racist' just because you don't like them. You can't label someone who talks about racial things as a racist. The only times you can label someone a racist are a) when they say racist things, which indicate that the beliefs they have are, by definition, racist, b) when they do racist things and c) when they label themselves as a racist (David Duke would happily be labeled a racist). In other words, the 'racist' label is not arbitrary - it has an actual definition. Just because President Trump thinks the Elijah Cummings' district of Baltimore is a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess", doesn't make him a racist. It is, in fact a very poverty-stricken, high-crime area. That is factual, based on any set of criteria you would want to look at. There are many other areas of the country that are like it. His point in his tweets was not that this area is somehow lesser, or that the people in this area are lesser (which would be racist), but that the people in power, Rep. Elijah Cummings especially, who are supposed to be fighting for the interests of this particular area and who are supposed to be the ones trying to change things for the better, are not doing their jobs. Instead, those people are engaged in other areas of the country, fighting for causes that their constituents probably don't believe is a high priority (I obviously don't know about that last part, for sure, but I'd be willing to wager a large sum of money).

I'm not fighting for Donald Trump here - he's not a great person, he has made a habit of stooping to low levels of communication that are unhelpful and petty - and on top of that, it's arguable that he has said racist things in the past (I would make that argument). What I'm fighting for is the meaning of words. Al Sharpton, and others like him, have already done enough damage to the word "racism", rendering it an almost useless label because of how often they use it. When the Liberal media then doubles-down on it, it will only serves to make the term obsolete.

I do believe that there is systemic racism all over the place, but thankfully, the number of people who are actually racist is minimal. Most of us love people of all kinds, regardless of their racial background. Is Donald Trump a racist? Maybe, but these recent comments are not proof of that. Other things he has said and done in the past are much stronger indicators of how he feels.

It's Not Guns - It's The Template

The thing I find most disturbing about the recent news of two mass shootings in a matter of hours, is that I feel nothing inside. These tragedies have been repeated so many times in different combinations and for so many different motives, they barely register anymore...and that is really, really sad. In an of itself, that is a sad commentary on where we're at as a society, because I know I'm not alone in my reaction. The other thing I've become completely desensitized to is the ginned-up outrage that occurs after almost every one of these incidents. The same talking points come up every single time - about the etiology of these tragedies, about how we should ban this gun, or that accessory, or that gun, and on and on. The needle moves slowly over time (maybe?), but the tragedies keep happening, year after year after year.

And yet, I'll go there, I'll bite one more time: I don't think guns are the issue. Many states around the country have very strict gun control laws. California, in particular, has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and yet they haven't been immune to this sort of thing. No, I think the true root of this stuff, is something far more insidious, and something very difficult to reverse. No one wants to hear that though - because things that are hard to do take serious effort over long periods of time. Some issues are so deep, they cannot be fixed...and I fear that mass shootings in America may be one of those things that doesn't have a solution.

Some of the first widely covered incidents of mass gun violence in our country were the school shootings in the '90s. Columbine, in particular. My argument is that incidents like that (which was, in an of itself an attempt to emulate Waco and the OK City bombing) created a template which has now been used over and over, so many times now that it is the standard for the unhinged in our society when it comes to making some point, be it racial, political, or sociological. It gets a predictable reaction and really, that reaction is what ensures that these episode of mass gun violence will continue. In other words, it's not the guns, or access to guns, that ensures that these things will keep happening, it's the coverage that these incidents get.

I've seen a few folks in the media talk about this - they talk about not publishing the shooter's name and suppressing any coverage about their background...but obviously that hasn't been seriously attempted. Even if it were, in many cases, these shooters have killed themselves (or been killed) and therefore wouldn't live to know whether their name was published or not. It's all a delusion of theirs anyway.

With that being said, what cannot be underestimated in these incidents, is the desire of the shooter (very commonly) to have some degree of notoriety. Dave Cullen, of the FBIs lead investigators for the Columbine School Shooting, talked in his authoritative book on the those vents about how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were fascinated with having this macabre legacy - that they were going to "out-do Timothy McVeigh". Look at the news that comes out about these people afterward (again, speaking broadly): so-and-so had ranted on Facebook, or they left some sort of manifesto behind or they were out-spoken on ____.

Recently, folks have been quick to try and place political blame, attempting to tie these shooters to people or ideologies on the Left or the Right. Any beneath-the-surface analysis of this and that whole line of thought quickly falls apart. Take the shootings in El Paso and Dayton last weekend for example - the shooter in El Paso identified as Republican (by all accounts) and the shooter in Dayton identified as Democrat (again, by all accounts). The pipe bomber from Florida was a self-proclaimed "Bernie Bro" and the guy who shot up the Congressional softball game was a Democrat. Politically, there is no determining factor in who these people end up being. They are mentally unhinged folks who have watched the news over the past 20 years, who have seen the kind of press and reaction that these incidents get and they have come to the conclusion that this is the way to make their voice heard. This is the root of the problem - that someone would become fixated on making their voice heard in this way.

Look, these are my thoughts on this issue, obviously this is a very complex topic. It's not just ONE thing. There are certainly common sense gun laws that could be enacted to try and help, but in the end, new laws alone aren't going to stop this stuff from happening. What we need is a multi-faceted approach that is willing to take an honest look at all of the contributing factors - mental-health, the role of the media, our cultural attitudes about guns, our cultural attitudes about life itself, etc. If we, as a people, truly want to stop this stuff from happening, we have to be willing to work together and actually put in hard work, not just regurgitate some tired talking point. Even if we do th

If you're interested in the perspective of others who have thoroughly considered this scourge on America and who have thoughtfully put 'pen to paper', might I humbly suggest reading the following two pieces, plus a third bonus article because, David Foster Wallace:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/youngfogey/2019/08/the-boys-are-not-all-right/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/gun-control-republicans-consider-gvro/

Doesn't necessarily directly tie to the epidemic of gun violence, but is a great thought-provoking article on the cost of "freedom, by David Foster Wallace: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-asking/306288/