Monday, June 13, 2016

Adventures in Narrative Evaluation

The establishment narrative following the Orlando murders is out and about:
We will not know all of the facts surrounding the unfathomable tragedy in Orlando for some time - perhaps, many days [false claim because establishments refuse to learn about cultures and behavioral genetics]. 
But one thing is certain: intolerance and hatred inevitably lead to violence and death [self contradiction]. 
That is why our primary response to the horrific massacre at the Pulse nightclub must be to rededicate ourselves to creating a culturally diverse society that is based on tolerance and respect for other religions, sexual orientations, races and life styles [false claim and self contradiction].
In America the one thing we must never tolerate is intolerance itself [false claim and self contradiction]... 
The shooter, Omar Mateen, sent messages indicating that it was his allegiance to ISIS that lead him to murder fifty of his fellow human beings. Whether he was motivated by ideological commitment or his own hatred of gays and lesbians, or both — that motivation can never trump the fundamental sense of human empathy that provides the foundational principle of a civilized society [false cause and false dichotomy]... 
And we dare not allow the forces of intolerance to exploit the Orlando mass shooting and throw gasoline on the fire of intolerance itself [self contradiction]... 
But let’s remember, that the data shows that in the United States itself you were more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right wing extremist than a Muslim terrorist in the 13.5 years following 9/11 [ad hominem, false statistic, unrepresentative sampling, and failure to compare population sizes]. 
The New York Times reported that a study by UNC Professor Charles Kurzman and Duke Professor David Schanzer, showed that Islam-inspired terror attacks “accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years.” Meanwhile, “right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities [ad hominem, false statistics, straw person, and unrepresentative sampling, Muslims in America are 60 times more likely to pursue terror plots than white, conservative, Americans--nonwhites and non-conservatives are far more likely to engage in terror than white conservatives].”
In point of fact, there is no fundamental difference between the murders by Islamic extremists, or white racists, or anti-abortion extremists [ad hominems and false claim]. They are all acts rooted in intolerance and bigotry and we must create a society that refuses to tolerate those acts - or the intolerance and bigotry that lead to them [false cause and self contradiction]. 
For much of the last year, many on nativist right - particularly Donald Trump - have spewed out hate-filled, intolerant rhetoric like a geyser [ad hominems and false analogy]... 
In particular, Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric legitimates the narrative that groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda use to recruit impressionable young people [self contradiction and false claim].
Make no mistake, both the murders and the establishment narratives are despicable stuff.

Establishments seldom let a crisis go to waste and neither should we.

White liberation and self-determination, now as much as ever. We are conscious, respect deserving beings, too.

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