Politicizing violence

Mass shootings should not be manipulated for political gain

There were three killing fields in America last weekend: El Paso,Dayton and Chicago.

You can’t help but know that the young man who killed 22 people in El Paso was driven by hatred for immigrants. You may be less aware, though, that the Dayton killer was a leftist, a fan of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and “antifa.” And you may not have heard at all that in Chicago the same weekend, 32 separate shootings left seven dead and52 injured.

Your relative awareness of these threetragedies is directly tied to where youget your news or which politicians youprefer.

All the weekend’s deaths should cause grief. Some have provoked outrage.Some have not. Why not?

It’s because not all the grief and outrage we’re witnessing are authentic. Some springs from hearts genuinely broken, but some is manufactured by those seeking to further their own agendas.How to tell them apart?

A fair assessment depends, at least in part, on which facts the outraged — whether protesters, politicians or reporters — choose to acknowledge. Selective outrage expressed by those not directly bereaved usually signals disingenuousness.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., provides an almost ridiculous case in point. Within hours of the El Paso massacre, Mr. Booker said President Donald Trump “is responsible because he is stokingfears and hatred and bigotry.”

Last Monday, the senator, who is running for president, announced a Wednesday speech at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where a white supremacist murdered nine blackcongregants in 2015.

A New Yorker writer (much impressed that Mr. Booker, off stage, “allows himself to be sombre [sic], sad, even”) asked the candidate what he plannedto say at the sudden event. Mr. Booker’s reply? “It can’t just be easy political speak, where you’re pointing fingersof blame.”

In Wednesday’s speech, Mr. Booker focused on white supremacy. It “allows politicians to promise to ‘build the wall,’”he said, thus pointing no fingers.

One problem with his thinking — which could just be clouded by grief — is that white supremacy didn’t cause the killings in Dayton or in Chicago. The Dayton shooter was a white leftist; half his victims were nonwhite. Chicago’s crime was, and is, overwhelmingly black-on-black. These victims — dotheir lives matter?

In disregarding certain types of violence, political opportunists demean its victims and undermine the search foreffective remedies.

Politicians aren’t alone in disrespecting deaths that don’t fit the whitesupremacy narrative. “Gun violence in Chicago,” The New York Times noted in a brief story, “tends to peak during the summer months, when school is out, the temperature is high and residents spend more time outside atsocial gatherings.”

Sono worries, then. People mired in such circumstances year-round? Too bad for them. Their plight does not meritour angst. (What disdain!)

But which kind of trauma is worse — sudden violence disrupting an otherwise peaceful life, or constant shooting in the streets of your neighborhood? And who is responsible for whichtype of deplorable violence?

It is the implacable desire to find fault with Mr. Trump that blinds some politicos and journalists to inconvenient truths. We saw it after Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life slayings: Loud voices claimed the president had stoked anti-Semitism, when in fact the murderer was enraged by Mr. Trump’spro-Israel policies.

On Wednesday, the president said, “I’m concerned about the rise of any type of hate. I don’t like it. Any type of supremacy, whether it’s white supremacyor antifa.”

Though we may question how much he dislikes “hate,” the president is correct in his moral logic here. The Times faults him, however, saying he was “echo[ing] his ‘both sides’ comments after the neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville in 2017” and thus implying that he is making a false moral equivalency.

But this is a valid moral equivalency. Hatred and violence can arise from almost any ideology. All of it destroys. By ignoring this, Mr. Booker, The Times and their ilk are the ones turningviolence into politics as usual.