No doubt you’ve heard or read about the White “lone wolf” who opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Friday, killing one TSA agent and wounding two others before police ended his shooting spree.
Incidentally, what are we to make of the fact that, like the Boston Marathon bomber who survived a fusillade of police bullets, this SOB did too – despite being shot in the face and neck…?
I don’t know why the media always reward these psychopaths by giving them the fame they covet; that is, by plastering their pathetic mugs all over television and reporting pop psychology about why and how they did their dastardly deeds.
You’d think that – given the record of these psychotic and vainglorious episodes since Columbine – we would have figured out by now that the best way to discourage them is by focusing our attention on the victims and limiting what we say about the shooter to: May God have mercy on your soul as you burn in Hell!
(“Massacre in Omaha,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 7, 2007)
More to the point though:
It must be understood that no matter their collective resolve, there’s absolutely nothing law enforcement officials can do to prevent such attacks.
(“London 7/7 terrorist attacks,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 8, 2005)
Except that I resent the way reporters are buying into the narrative that Whites who commit terrorist attacks are just neglected mental patients. This, despite evidence showing that this White-American gunman planned to kill TSA agents in LA for many of the same political/ideological reasons Muslim jihadists planned to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
‘A note found on Ciancia indicated that he wanted to kill Transportation Security Administration employees to ‘instill fear’ in what the suspect called the agents’ ‘traitorous minds,’ FBI Special Agent in Charge David Bowdich said.
(CNN, November 4, 2013)
This stands in stark contrast to the way these same reporters blithely label virtually every non-White who perpetrates similar crimes as a terrorist … period!
Whereas:
What far too many forget is that long before al-Qaeda terrorists struck the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in DC, a good ol’ American boy named Timothy McVeigh struck a government building in Oklahoma, making it painfully clear that, when it comes to terrorism, we have as much to fear from foreign fanatics as from native sons.
(“Norway’s Timothy McVeigh Perpetrates National Massacre,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 23, 2011)
Which of course means that terrorism in America is defined not by what crimes terrorize people, but by who perpetrates those crimes. There’s no denying, for example, that if this LAX gunman were a Muslim, not only would the media meme be all about terrorism, but President Obama would be leading a chorus of politicians damning this shooting as a terrorist attack on America.
Frankly, this double standard is not only patently racist; it reflects a self-immolating delusion that will enable and embolden other Timothy McVeighs….
Meanwhile, I feel obliged to repeat my wonder that such attacks are so relatively rare. Not to mention my oft-stated and abiding fear that only God will help if/when al-Qaeda deploys not a lone wolf, but packs of wolves to open fire at airports, shopping malls, and/or sports stadiums in the United States (a la Westgate shopping mall in Kenya).
Related commentaries:
Norway’s McVeigh…
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