JOHN KASS IS UNSPARING: Weaponizing the dead of El Paso and Dayton.
Those angry loner white boys with guns, this time in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, have again erupted on the body politic.
And those with eyes to see are reminded that the American culture is ill.
But what of the mass shootings in Chicago, the 55 people shot over the weekend, with seven hit near a park and then eight more not far away?
You might think these are “mass shootings” too, but, in political/media terms, they’re not treated as such. The victims, and in all likelihood the shooters, are black. And Democratic politicians find no political advantage in weaponizing the victims of everyday street violence in a Democratic town. So Chicago’s dead are stepped over by national media and national Democrats on the way to 2020. . . .
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, flailing and desperate for attention, eagerly picked up on the prompts given him by former Democratic political staffers turned TV news anchors. He blamed Trump for El Paso and pronounced the president a racist. Other Democrats denounced him as well, even Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist of Vermont, who should know better.
Because it was also a crazy white madman who stalked those Republican Congressmen as they played baseball in a park in 2017 and tried to massacre them all with a rifle. He was a Sanders supporter and the cry went up wherever we talk politics, in the common square and in newsrooms, that blaming the left for the insane actions of an insane man would be unthinkable.
The shooter in Dayton was, reportedly, of the political left and a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but you don’t hear much of that, do you?
In other, saner times, leveraging the political persuasions of absolute madmen against a political opponent would be a signal for a gentleman to rise from the table and leave the room without comment. But now it is the blood of our politics.
And remember, these are the people constantly lecturing Republicans about decency.
Plus: Kamala Harris Is Already Fundraising Off the Mass Shootings.
UPDATE: From the comments: “The Democrats became Fred Phelps so easily they never noticed. Perhaps they should hold rainbow signs at the funerals saying ‘God hates MAGAs.'”