Sniper Stuff
Jim Henley is doing some good stuff on the sniper shootings in Maryland. He points to A Cut on Bias who does some great postings on the likely motivations for the sniper.
Henley answers the question by Andrea Harris about what is so bad if she is wrong about it being Islamist terrorism by saying he’ll answer it afterwards.
The problem is it is a bad conclusion. It is possible, but that doesn’t make it likely. The war bloggers’ culture is one of assuming everything is related to their obsession. Not all senseless violent acts are perpetrated by Islamist terrorists. Their obsession with terrorism causes them to fit square pegs into round holes. All bad in the world isn’t tied to radical Islam.
The shootings in Maryland fit a pattern much closer to that of a spree killer trying to get attention. While it might be possible that this is a terrorist incident one doesn’t look for the less likely scenario and go on and on about it.
Worse, Katz (see below), Dipnuts demonstrating why he deserves the name, and (surprise) Bill Quick all want to claim the media is avoiding the use of the term because they are treating people like sheep. It never seems to cross their mind that they aren’t doing so because it is the less likely scenario and without evidence of it being a terrorist attack, the media is not bound by war blogger obsessions. Katz even makes the claim that the media is purposely looking for a white guy because of some politically correct bias.
What is she hurting? Rational thought. Fortunately the police don’t share the war bloggers’ obsession and have instead focused on likely scenarios.
The underlying claim is that they are being hyper rational beings using logic to deduce that a horrible act 1 year ago means that any horrible act now is suspect. This is assanine though because they are afflicted with hypervigilance that keeps them from making rational deductions depending on the evidence of a particular case.
And race does play a role in this process. I’m pretty damn sure they weren’t running around 1 year after Oklahoma City trying to blame all suspicious acts on irish boys from upstate New York.
Of course, to them, Oklahoma City was covered up by the Powers That Be TM.