Last week we were face with two shootings, one in Dayton, Ohio and one in El Paso, Texas with a combined total of roughly 30 dead. The tragedy of this event is hard to put into words, two shootings back to back in the same weekend. The question I always ask myself after these is "why?" Unfortunately, this often the question that often gets thrown aside in favor of the knee-jerk reactions that sprout after these disasters.
The last few mass shootings across the world have targeted minorities, spurring the cause of these tragedies as "white supremacy". It's a start in the right direction, now we need to start asking ourselves why there is a rise in this kind of racism and prejudice. It may lead us to asking questions about current society and culture, hard questions we need to address; however, these questions that are almost universally avoided.
We hate to look inward as a society because we might like what we see, an ugly face looking back at us, push those demons as far away as we can. Instead we blame gun, and now for some reason, video games; and media (music, movies, games, books, ect...) has always been one of the easiest targets, despite being around for centuries. Ban or restrict one of those items, pat yourself on the back with a job well done, you might even get a statistical decrease in violence; but does it really solve the problem?
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Rand Paul's Blunder?
A few weeks
ago, on the floor of Congress, the bill extending healthcare to 9/11 First
Responders was to be voted on. The Senator from New York asked for a unanimous
vote, however, Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky) asked for an amendment to offset
costs. Considering this would be a fund that would continue for nearly a
century, discussing what can be done to offset it seems like a logical idea;
and it would be if politics weren’t completely dominated by emotional uproar.
Senator
Paul’s suggestion for an amendment to offset the costs quickly exploded into a
fire storm of anger and disgust. Though one would agree that perhaps now wasn’t
the time to bring up this subject, considering the controversial nature that
surrounds it, especially after Jon Stewart’s fiery rant in front of Congress
and the death of the 9/11 first responder who joined; but that doesn’t make it
anti-American or hate filled idea. Well not according to twitter where the tag
“#RandPaulHatesAmerica” is trending, being roasted by throngs of reactionary
people.
This goes
into issues with Politics in the age of Social Media, instead of a more
thoughtful process of reviewing what happened, it is easier to simply react
than to think and especially to join the crowd that has already grabbed their
pitch forks. A sheepish mentality wrapped in the white cloak of moral
self-righteousness with a pat on the back from the elites. It is an age-old model in the history of
political discourse, and so easily used to galvanize people against the other
side.
Rand Paul’s
record isn’t perfect, the controversial Tax Cuts he voted for in 2017 and the
increase in military spending in 2016 are a few blemishes on his record. Though
the Tax Cut Bill, he voted in favor while a provision known as “Pay-Go” (info
linked below) was in the bill, and later removed in a subsequent bill. This
little detail is often left out, skewing his image and pushing a narrative of
him as a servant of billionaires; recent Twitter trends have even tried to push
the idea that he is a Russian asset in our modern version of “McCarthyism”.
Most of his record, however, shows
him as a defender of Constitutional Rights, ant-war and interventionalism, and
a fiscal conservative who has given numerous rants on the wasteful spending by
Congress. When Jon Stewart says Sen. Paul is hated by other members Congress,
this is the reason why, he is one who actively stands against waste, and stands
for our rights.
On a final
note, the central part of this narrative is that Senator Paul “Blocked” the
bill, he didn’t, and this where I have to discuss how language is best weapon
of them all. Headlines after this story broke should have read “Rand Paul seeks
to add spending Amendment to 9/11 bill”; however, that’s not sexy enough, it’s
sensational. Using the word “Block” is enough to stir up controversy and
increase click count. And while the press has the right to use such language,
it’s dishonest and clouds the truth that they say they so profoundly defend.
Links
Historical Definition
The easiest comeback in our current political lingo is to call
someone or a group, Nazis, I don’t think I need to much more detail. Recently,
Senator Ocasio-Cortez referred to the Customs and Border Patrol camps at the
U.S. – Mexican border as Concentration Camps. While the dictionary definition may
simply be a place where a large amount of people are concentrated in a single
area, it’s the historical definition that matters here, that these camps are
being equated to the Nazi death camps operated by the SS during World War 2.
Not only is calling your opponent a “Nazi” an easy insult,
it’s also the easiest way to widen the political divide. In order to solve
these issues, we need to be willing to come together and access the problem
with clear minds. Taking self-righteous stands does nothing but perpetuate the
“us vs them” mentality and listening becomes ancient history. Very little will
be accomplished with this, political rhetoric gets harsher and Congress will
suffer nothing but gridlock as the blame game becomes the norm over debates.
The statement from the Holocaust Memorial Museum (linked
below) provides an exceptionally good reason why these analogies are not
healthy for our already polarized society. And while I do respect Sen. Ocasio-Cortez’s
efforts to rectify the horrible situation at the border, she might find herself
with more enemies than allies. Rhetoric that is self-righteous and tries to
shame the other side does little more than harden their resolve.
The situation with our southern goes back as far as I can
remember, and I started following politics under Pres. George W. Bush’s
administration. The continuous banter has resulted with little to no change at
all. How a subject so simple as policing our own border had become such
divisive and even a racially driven topic is beyond me. If we could affirm that
illegal immigration is “illegal” and that immigration is the life blood of the
United States, we could move on to streamlining of immigration system. Instead
it remains an underfunded bureaucratic nightmare simply remain a political
talking point that will never be fixed.
I’ll conclude here with a quick explanation on the concept
of his “Historical Perspective”. It is this method in which we study history
without imposing the views of our time on events and people of the past, it
helps create context. And it is with that context we can take lessons from, so
that we understand people and events within their own timeframe and hopefully
not repeat the same mistakes. This is a concept that is often ignored, often
producing revisionist history (a subject for another time) and creating erroneous
comparisons.
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