Is “Significance” of Orlando Shooting Really Being Aired?
Max Boot is a military historian of guerrilla warfare (I have two of his books in my home library) but more recently he’s tried to make the tie-in to terrorist shootings.
His recent Wall Street Journal article “After Orlando, a Long War” argues that “To stop future terrorist attacks, we need solutions from all sides.”
ALL is the key word. Most sides aren’t even allowed consideration. Meant to protect the status quo, establishment viewpoints are narrowly selected, Boot says. “As usual, the political class divided into competing camps, with liberals predictably claiming that the real issue is gun control and conservatives just as predictably claiming that the real issue is radical Islam.”
Orlando actually brings the rawest and darkest cultural problems facing America to a head. Historically speaking, we are at a dangerous crossroads. Even the shallow Disney World experience designed for children must share venue with “Disney Gay Days at Walt Disney World.” According to Wikipedia, “Gay Days Orlando is an annual event held every June as a vacation celebration for the GLBT community.”
News coverage, of course, won’t allow any opposition from the political right, though American society never voted to approve civil rights status for radical gay lifestyles. As we’ve seen, those with legitimate contrary concerns are branded mentally ill or full of hate. The Southern Poverty Law Center always has the last word.
The words liberal and conservative and moderate are nearly synonymous these days, implying an acceptable cultural stance that never thinks about or challenges anything at all from news sources.
Conservatives want to embrace “the support of Muslim moderates everywhere,” Boot’s article says, because all radicals are dangerous. So is all deep belief, even faith-based thinking.
The lone wolf shooter or bomber can easily be vilified and ridiculed, but those purporting to act in the name of religion or politics might have chosen their violent path because they feel boxed in, disenfranchised, with no other way to express their outrage over having their heritage and values betrayed. Or should we quickly hate men like Omar Mateen or Anders Behring Breivik?
Boot is correct when he argues that we can save ourselves “By adopting the best ideas from the left and the right on how to improve security at home and by going after terrorists abroad. In dealing with such a complex threat, no part of the political spectrum has a monopoly on the truth.”
