Chattanooga Times Free Press

WEARING THE DUNCE CAP

Bradley Gitz Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The problem for column-writers in the age of Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that each says and does so many idiotic things that it becomes difficult to devote an entire column to just any one; hence the following array of recent (Biden) head-scratchers:

› The president claiming that “white supremacy” represents the most serious terrorist threat to the country during his address at Howard University.

White supremacy thus becomes the most dangerous ideology to which no one of significance openly subscribes and for which no one can provide a definition so we could know it when we see it. That absence of specifics or definition reveals the manner in which the term has become nothing more than an all-purpose epithet used by leftist demagogues to smear anyone who disagrees with them.

› All politicians try to “spin” when it comes to mistakes and deflect blame onto other parties, but the Biden administration’s efforts to do so when it comes to our Southern border go beyond parody.

Whatever one thinks of Trump, no honest person would deny that when he left office the border was largely under control and that it was Biden’s abrupt and unnecessary reversal of his policies that produced what we are now (and have been) witnessing.

So what was that sign that a previous Democratic president had on his desk? The one about how the buck stops somewhere?

A plausible explanation for the administration persistently putting forth absurd claims regarding the border (and much else) is that it believes the mainstream media will faithfully convey its talking points and preferred narratives.

Evidence that this belief is justified came yet again with an array of media reports on the latest migrant surge coinciding with expiration of Title 42.

This is too cute by half, for unless we somehow lack the physical ability to prevent masses of people from crossing our borders, the number doing so is entirely up to us.

While it is certainly true that many factors might contribute to people showing up at our borders, it will always be our decision whether to let them cross it or not.

We don’t lack the ability to stem illegal immigration — we lack elected officials at the highest levels who lack the will to.

› We’ve become drearily accustomed to leftists using euphemisms to fool the gullible and pursue their objectives, but perhaps the dumbest euphemism of all time has to be “gun violence” (“I’m doing everything I can to reduce gun violence,” as Biden recently put it in USA Today).

The increasingly ubiquitous term has become official leftist speak and a means of ducking Democrat culpability for rising crime rates in American cities long governed by Democrats.

Referring to violent crime committed with guns of various kinds as “gun violence” is thereby akin to referring to the scourge of war as “tank violence” or “howitzer violence.”

We don’t blame Budweiser for fatalities caused by drunk driving or Whole Foods for obesity, but basic logic and causal relationships seem to fall out of the picture for people who detest both guns and the kind of people who tend to own them.

Reason suggests that, if violent crime rates climb over time (as they have), but the percentage of American households with firearms holds constant, as it has for the past 50 years or so, factors other than the guns are likely responsible for the change.

That those factors might include the emergence of woke Democrat prosecutors and the post-George Floyd demoralization of police forces is what Democrats like Biden don’t want you to contemplate.

If you’re “soft on crime,” you have to be hard on guns.

In short, it is the definition of analytical failure to blame the consequences of voluntary human behavior upon nonhuman variables (in this case weapons that fire projectiles at things, including other human beings, but only after a human being pulls the trigger).

Bradley R. Gitz lives and teaches in Batesville, Ark.

OPINION

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2023-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-28T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.timesfreepress.com/article/282518662876626

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