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As a US citizen, I’m required by law to post an opinion about the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
So here it is:
1. I don’t approve of shooting cartoonists and journalists – partly because of free speech, but also because I don’t approve of people shooting other people regardless of ideological considerations.
2. The reaction has been entirely predictable (to include the one I just typed), starting with the free-speech angle. We've been here before, and the arguments we had then – free speech, the right to make fun of religion, extremism bad, etc – apply now.
3. Just as predictable has been the reaction from select politicians and pundits who are determined to use the attacks as another excuse to whip up fear of Muslims and/or immigrants and push for the most Draconian measures possible to deal with both.
4. Also predictable is that the same people are either ignoring or downplaying the fact one of the police officers killed by the gunmen was actually a Muslim – as was this employee at the Hyper Cacher supermarket who helped customers hide from another gunman.
And that’s just in Europe.
5. In America, meanwhile, it was always a sure bet that someone would find a way to blame the whole thing on Obama, and use the attacks as evidence that if anything, the US police don’t have nearly enough military equipment.
6. Not that all of the reactions have been predictable. I wouldn’t have guessed you could have used the Paris shootings to dump on Bill de Blasio. But apparently you can if you really want to.
Etc and so on and things of that nature generally.
Yeah, that’s all I got.
Here we go again,
This is dF
So here it is:
1. I don’t approve of shooting cartoonists and journalists – partly because of free speech, but also because I don’t approve of people shooting other people regardless of ideological considerations.
2. The reaction has been entirely predictable (to include the one I just typed), starting with the free-speech angle. We've been here before, and the arguments we had then – free speech, the right to make fun of religion, extremism bad, etc – apply now.
3. Just as predictable has been the reaction from select politicians and pundits who are determined to use the attacks as another excuse to whip up fear of Muslims and/or immigrants and push for the most Draconian measures possible to deal with both.
4. Also predictable is that the same people are either ignoring or downplaying the fact one of the police officers killed by the gunmen was actually a Muslim – as was this employee at the Hyper Cacher supermarket who helped customers hide from another gunman.
And that’s just in Europe.
5. In America, meanwhile, it was always a sure bet that someone would find a way to blame the whole thing on Obama, and use the attacks as evidence that if anything, the US police don’t have nearly enough military equipment.
6. Not that all of the reactions have been predictable. I wouldn’t have guessed you could have used the Paris shootings to dump on Bill de Blasio. But apparently you can if you really want to.
Etc and so on and things of that nature generally.
Yeah, that’s all I got.
Here we go again,
This is dF
