An exhaustive new study from the CDC reveals that the leading cause of gun violence in America is your political opponents. Researchers looked at a number of potential causes of gun violence such as mental health, family situation, cultural shifts, gun laws, rap music, videogames, sugar consumption, and the actual gunman, but by and large, the most prominent cause of gun violence was what most already suspected. The fault lies with those who you disagree with politically.
The Babylon Bee
August 5, 2019
Study Shows Leading Cause Of Gun Violence Is Those You Disagree With Politically
[Yes, it’s satire. Still, a disinterested observer could listen to both sides of the issue and arrive at the above conclusion.—Joe]
That doesn’t necessarily mean that both sides are wrong, however. In fact, one side is right, and the other side is mocking the right side.
This is similar to what I remember from the late 1960s and early ’70s when we were suddenly being told, by our Progressive-Marxist-indoctrinated school teachers, “It takes two to make a fight.” The assumption there is that all violence is equally bad, and that both parties in any fight are therefore equally culpable and justly subject to the same discipline. In fact it only takes one to make a fight; the perpetrator.
That the perpetrator’s chosen victim should choose to defend himself should be taken as a given. In fact if such were always the case, there would be vastly less violence in the world, and so it is that anyone who fails to defend himself is not only securing his own doom but that of others as well. If anything, the coward and the weakling therefore can be said to share in some of the perpetrator’s culpability, which is a totally opposite concept to the one’s being public ally asserted.
Also similar is the common if not universal assertion that “More violence has been done in the name of religion than in any other cause.” While that may be true it is nonetheless used to disparage religion, ignoring the fact that primarily one or two religions and their off-shoots and allies (the papacy, Jesuits, Muslims, et al) are responsible for all the violence, and those are the ones trying to disparage all the others thus insinuating themselves into “equal” company. This is all very leftist in style. All schoolyard bullies, common street criminals, alcoholics, etc., do it also. It could be considered quite clever for its frequent success, that is, if it weren’t so thoroughly predictable.
The main point is this; always be on guard for these kinds of “We’re all in it together” ruses. They will become more and more frequent and more and more cleverly constructed. It’s when you start believing them yourself that you know you’re in serious trouble.
Yeah, I’ve never understood that, “It takes two to make a fight,” line of reasoning. Ask the guy who got sucker-punched if he was “making a fight”. (The only exception I can think of is mutual combat.)
It’s a perversion of the (100% true) adage that says peace requires two willing parties. If you leave it there, then it kinda-sorta makes sense, but that’s only half the line: “Peace requires two willing parties, but war requires only one.”
As for the “More violence has been done in the name of religion than for any other cause” bit, it’s probably true. However, it’s misrepresented to the point of outright falsehood, by pigeon-holing all religions into the same ideological mold. The reality is, they are far from equal. More violence very likely has been done in the name of certain religions than for any other cause, but you could also credibly claim that more peace, goodwill, and tolerance (real tolerance, not Leftist “tolerance”) are created in the name of certain other religions than for any other cause. There are two sides to that coin.
Extend that type of reasoning far enough — and really not that far — and you get to a place where a violent criminal is no longer responsible for his own actions. Instead, it must be his race (but only if he’s white), or his religion (but only if he’s Christian or Jewish), or his political affiliation (but only if he’s conservative), or his parents and upbringing, or his economic hardship, or his quality of education (or lack thereof), or the inanimate objects he owns…
… or the inanimate objects we own.
To some extent we are “all in this together”; we all share the planet, we all share in our communities, we all breathe the same air, we all take more-or-less the same risks when we step off our front porches. We all have a dog in this fight (that only takes one aggressive canine to start).
But saying “We’re all in this together” is NOT the same as saying “We’re all equally responsible for the bad things that happen,” any more than we’re all equally responsible for the good things that happen (only politicians can take that credit, amirite? [/snark]). The former is mostly true, the latter is a perversion so extreme as to become a lie.
“It takes two to make a fight” makes sense if the fight itself is what speaker is opposed to. The reasonable, though not immediately obvious, conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with unprovoked aggression until the innocent victim defends themselves.
Heh! Half right, though i’m certain Chicago’s root causes can be found somewhere here in the mountains.
Well, they say the best satire has just enough truth to be believable.
In this case, I think the reality has just enough unbelievability to be satire itself.