An ultra-conservative's views on this and that

07 December 2015

Prayer-shaming, empty-platitudes, or whatever you want to call it

For years, I've noticed a pattern:  Leftists tend to love to exploit tragedies for political power.

On 31 July 2007, I returned from a trip and drove over the I-35W bridge on my way home.

The next day, as I headed home from work, the radio relayed terrible news:  The bridge had collapsed into the Mississippi River.

Like any compassionate human being, I kept the victims in my thoughts.  And like any spiritual and religious human being, I kept them in my prayers as well.

Other than wondering if the bridge had been brought down in an act of terrorism, I didn't speculate as to the cause. Because that's what compassionate human beings do:  They don't start pointing fingers of blame while bodies are still being fished out of the river.

Nick Coleman, of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, is not an example of a compassionate human being.  Within hours of the collapse, with no facts or data to support his arguments, blamed the bridge collapse on Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty's veto of a gas-tax increase about two months earlier, "reasoning" that, had the increase been approved, Minnesota could've started spending money to maintain and improve "our crumbling infrastructure."

A couple of points:
  • Construction equipment was present on the bridge to resurface the roadway in one direction, resulting in a lane closure.  It also resulted in an additional 100-ton static load on the bridge.
  • When the bridge was originally designed and built 40 years earlier, it had been built with gusset plates about half the thickness they needed to be to sustain the contemporary load it was carrying.
  • The gusset plates had been subjected to the forces of erosion for those 40 years, a time when the DFL had controlled both the legislature and governor's office for a majority of the time.
  • Public funding may be allocated for something, but politicians often will spend elsewhere.  Case in point:  New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin misspent funds slated to shore up the levies around New Orleans in the years before Hurricane Katrina.  Even if the tax increase had passed, and money had been allocated for the bridge immediately, and a contractor had offered a reasonable bid right away, and gotten to work right away... If. If. If.
So when I see lefties criticizing GOP politicians for offering thoughts and prayers, criticizing the gestures as "empty platitudes", it's nothing new.  Just the same creepy trolls lusting for political power, and willing to play on the heightened emotions of people at a time of crisis or tragedy to effect their policy, lest a cooler, calmer populace might dispassionately object, especially if it could result in the curtailing of the populace's freedoms.

Question for the anti-"thoughts and prayers" crowd:  What makes the gesture an empty platitude?  Who makes the decision that's it's a platitude?  The recipient(s)?  Or the very people presuming to speak for them?  A platitude is defined as "a remark or statement, especially one with a moral content, that has been used too often to be interesting or thoughtful".

Well, wait a minute, is there an accusation that the statement isn't thoughtful?  Again, who makes that determination?  Who determines the frequency at which the phrase is too often used?

The flip side is that the gun-grabbers offers no new solutions.  Just more of the same:  Take everybody's guns away, constitutional rights be damned.  Yet the spree shootings happen in the "gun-free" zones.  Correction:  Some spree shootings are attempted outside gun-free zones, yet they are thwarted by someone with a concealed carry permit and a willingness to use deadly force to protect themselves, their loved ones, and even complete strangers around them.

The problem is the gun-rights advocates are beset by two challenges:  Keeping the people who are too enthusiastic about the exercise of their Second Amendment rights from discouraging or even terrifying the uninformed and misinformed from tuning into a different viewpoint, and a sense of decency that the gun-grabbers aren't encumbered by.  In the wake of the shooting, the gun-rights advocates remain quiet, preferring to allow time to heal the wounds before pointing out the logical conclusion to be drawn from the tragedies:  That gunmen seeking infamy prefer to do so in an environment where their odds are good.  Nothing discourages even the most unstable person from committing an act of terror more than the haunting fear that a law-abiding citizen will cut short their pursuit of fame and turn them into just another easily-forgotten crime statistic.

The would-be-gun-grabbers insist, in the wake of gun violence, that we must "do something."  I agree:  Stop disarming the would-be victims.  Acknowledge that trying to get seize and get rid of 200-300 million guns in this country is a Herculean effort that is not without the risk of bloody conflict, considering the government will have to use its guns to seize everybody else's.  Acknowledge that repeal of the Second Amendment will require getting through Congress and being ratified by 3/4 of the states, either via state legislatures or state conventions.  In other words, good luck.

And that's a good thing.  The Framers understood how volatile the notion of a republic is, and the best way to ensure its longevity is to make it slow and difficult to change the fundamentals of the Constitution.

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