Oh no, not politicizing tragedy
Fox News declares in a headline:
Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke slam Trump in wake of El Paso massacre, face backlash for politicizing tragedy
I stare, I blink, I stare some more.
For politicizing? What, because in fact it was just a random natural event, like a volcano burping? It was a Tragedy but not at all a political act?
Come on now.
The “tragedy” is political in so many ways. It’s political because the NRA is political, and the NRA is why we can’t have any restrictions on gun ownership. It’s political because El Paso is on the border, and mostly Hispanic. It’s political because the US grabbed Texas from Mexico in 1845. It’s political because Trump has been spewing racism at Mexico since the day he announced his candidacy. It’s probably political because the suspect is alleged to have left a racist manifesto to help us understand his reasons. It’s political because Trump is deliberately and with maximum venom and ill will verbally attacking every brown person he can think of. It’s political because Fox treats Trump as the best thing since lynchings. It.is.political.
Also, this was not a “tragedy” in any sense of the word—not in the Greek sense, the Shakespearean sense, or even the watered down modern sense. This was a deliberate, heinous act of terrorism.
I’m all for semantic rhetoric, but …
So yeah, anyway … I’ve never understood this “don’t politicize X” line. If X is a thing that is a relevant subject for the application of political power, then politicizing it is proper.
Like, I seriously don’t understand what the line is supposed to mean.
The problem I have with the use of “tragedy” in cases like this is that it focuses on the effects of the shooting on the victims; from their perspective, and the perspectives of their families and loved ones, this may be a tragedy in the modern sense. But the shooter didn’t commit a “tragedy”; he committed an act of terrorism, and the actions political and law enforcement leaders take in response should focus on that perspective.