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Why They’re Not Telling You

Glenn Reynolds [1] quotes Stacy McCain [2] this morning:

There has been a remarkable failure of journalism in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. The gunman, 46-year-old Robert Bowers, remains a cipher. Except for the fact that he posted anti-Semitic rants on the Internet, worked as a truck driver and lived alone in an apartment, we know nothing about Bowers. Who are his parents? Does he have any siblings? Girlfriends? Did he have any hobbies other than hating Jews?

We know none of the answers to such questions. The guy’s a complete mystery. If there are any reporters trying to fill in the background on this guy, so far they have produced nothing, and so the question of why and how this guy turned into a mass murderer cannot be answered.
This bothers me, for some reason. Think about any previous mass murder or terrorist attack — the Boston Marathon bombings, the Parkland massacre, etc. — and remember how within 72 hours we had a vast pile of biographical background on the killers. Obviously, we want to know this information, since it helps us understand the motives. What created the monster? What are the warning signs? Who is vulnerable to online appeals to hate? But in this case, we’ve got nothing.

Three reporters for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette worked on a profile of Bowers, who dropped out of Baldwin High School sometime after his junior year. His photo appears in the school’s 1989 yearbook, however: “He is not listed as taking part in any clubs or activities, and classmates reached by the newspaper said they had no recollection of him.”

A total blank — a neo-Nazi NPC, you might say. The blankness of Robert Bowers should disturb us.

Evidently, any random loner — the quiet, nondescript high-school dropout with no friends or family — could log onto the Internet, find some kind of hate that appeals to him, and become a mass murderer. And in all the world of journalism, nobody except some reporters for the local newspaper will expend any effort to figure out what went wrong in this guy’s life. Why? Because they can explain it all with one word: Trump.

That’s the answer, you see.

Reynolds agrees, saying:

If they’re not telling us anything, it’s because they’re afraid anything they told us would hurt the narrative.

More correctly, it’s probably because they know whatever they told us would hurt the narrative. And that’s really what this is all about.

To show this, we move to the National Review, where we find Karol Markowicz: [3]

After every horrible mass shooting, when we should be mourning together, looking for solutions to stop future attacks, consoling the families of the victims, there’s an immediate rush to make sure conservatives know they do not belong to that wider American community feeling the pain. Worse, there’s a constant allusion to the fact that those on the right are responsible for the slaughter. Republicans spend the time following these attacks not in mourning like they should be but beating back the sickening idea that they inspired the shooter.

With the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the message from the Left is that it’s President Trump’s rhetoric that is to blame. While Trump indeed uses irresponsible language and inflames the country’s division with his words, blaming him for a crazed shooter is one step too far.

As James Robbins pointed out in his column in USA Today, the shooter actually believed Trump was part of the Jewish conspiracy he imagines controls America. “Bowers was explicit in his dislike of the president, saying he did not vote for him and had never ‘owned, worn or even touched‘ a (Make America Great Again) hat.” Challenging the media narrative that President Trump praised Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017, Bowers agreed with another extremist that the president had “betrayed” right-wing radical protesters by “comparing them with a violent mob.”
That he hated Trump is irrelevant to the accusers harping about Trump’s rhetoric. Trump is still to blame.

So, first of all I have problems with the claim of “irresponsible language…”

(If Trump doesn’t stand up for Trump, who will in the Press? Nobody, and that’s exactly what’s behind the call for him to be silent on Twitter. )

But what Karol Markowicz shows at least is that Reynolds is precisely right when he says that anything they might come up with would hurt the narrative. My assumption here is that Robbins investigation just barely scratched the surface of this guy, and already cracks are beginning to show in the leftist narrative on this business.

It seems clear that any further serious investigation on the matter would blow The Narrative wide open which is something the left is press dare not do.

Withholding the truth is in fact a lie.

There can be no argument here that the truth is being withheld from us, and we are being lied to so as to support a narrative.

What is the purpose of the narrative? I suppose we can best answer that particular with the question, ” What is it that they actually want us to unify with?”

Billy Beck points out, and I think correctly:

People keep crying for “unity”. There is never going to be “unity” over the categorically-opposed principles of collectivism and individualism.

And so it is that we see the Left pushing anyone that doesn’t agree with their collectivist agenda out the door while calling for Unity. Unity, (to the surprise of absolutely nobody) behind them and their agenda.

At the end of the day, so far as the left-wing in this country is concerned, (and in this I include the Press) …the shooting at the Tree of Life was just another event to be used toward a political end. Toward collectivism.

Shameful? Hell, yes. But after watching the left for the last 40 years and most specifically since Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the presidency, would you really put it past them?

Addendum: Eric

I note with interest this morning that the rabbi at the Tree of Life who came out publicly and stated Donald Trump was welcomed in Pittsburgh is getting death threats.

Absolutely disgusting.

Related: Monica Showalter [4]