Media Eager to Talk About One Shooter’s Politics, But Not the Other

Well, it probably won’t be long before the day comes that the words “Dayton mass shooting” are forever erased from the mainstream media’s lexicon. While there is no current evidence to suggest that left-wing ideology was what drove Connor Betts’ to kill nine people in Dayton on Saturday, there is plenty of evidence to prove that he was no right-wing Trump supporter. Strangely enough, though, the CNNs and the New York Timeses of the world seem less than interested in digging into Betts’ social media history. Wonder why that is?

Maybe it’s because he was a huge Elizabeth Warren fan who identified his gender pronouns on Twitter and labeled himself an atheist.

Maybe because when Sen. John McCain died, he tweeted: “F*ck John McCain.”

Maybe because on the day of the 2018 midterms, he wrote: “Vote blue for gods sake.”

Maybe because, despite being into guns himself, he wrote this message to Sen. Rob Portman on the day of the Parkland tragedy: “Hey Rob. How much did they may you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?”

Maybe because he once wrote “Kill every fascist” on his social media feed, which is the kind of thing far-left nutters like Antifa say.

To make a long story short, he was a registered Democrat who was highly active on social media, where he shared his thoughts – frequently – about how terrible Republicans are and how wonderful progressives like Warren and Sanders are. Not the kind of villain that the media likes to use, now that the entire purpose of the media is to destroy Donald Trump.

And of course, since the El Paso shooter’s ideology was a little more in line with the media’s purpose, they have the perfect excuse to ignore Betts. Very convenient.

Now, did Betts grab his gun and go on a shooting spree because of something Bernie Sanders said? Probably not. But he’s the same kind of internet-obsessed, radicalized young psycho as the one who drove to El Paso. Maybe his ideas were different, but they were in many ways the same. And until we start focusing on this culture of outrage and constant hate that these young men are getting when they spend 24/7 on some obscure message board, we’re not going to get a handle on what’s causing these tragedies. It’s not TRUMP. It’s not THE LEFT. It’s an intangible kind of dehumanization process that these young men are going through; the manifestos and the ideologies only serve to stamp that dehumanization with a veneer of intellectual paint.

Alas, it’s a lot easier to just write Op-Ed #3,489 about how terrible Trump is than it is to actually scratch that paint off the surface and take a look beneath.