Bitterly Clinging... To The Narrative

Back in the spring of 2016, I wrote this bit in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. It illustrated, or at least I hope it did, politicians’ and pundits’ persistence in contorting new events and emergent facts, tortuously if necessary, so that they fit preferred political narratives.

The Administration’s gaslighting in the face of inflation, an economic downturn, emergent information about the effectiveness of COVID polices, the southern border crisis, and a laundry list of other current events affirms the message of the title.

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In the first (brilliant) season of the HBO series True Detective, Detective Hart (played by Woody Harrison) cautions Detective Kohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) against letting predilections or presumptions interfere with rational analysis:

> You attach assumptions to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it, prejudice yourself.

Yet, in the wake of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, that is precisely what President Obama is doing. And, in doing so, he is signaling his followers and supporters that it's proper for them to do the same.

Among his most recent comments, Obama noted that there is no evidence that the shooter was actually connected to ISIS. While true in a strict sense, i.e. there's been no evidence released that the killer communicated with anyone actually in the ISIS organization, it is an odd thing to say given that it has been widely reported that an ISIS leader called for terrorist attacks to be launched during the current Ramadan observance.

Obama followed up his observation with:

At the end of the day this is something that we're going to have to grapple with. Making sure that even as we go after ISIL and other extremist organizations overseas, even as we hit their leadership, even as we go after their infrastructure, even as we take key personnel off the field, even as we disrupt external plots, the biggest challenge we're going to have is this kind of propaganda and perversions of Islam that you see generated on the Internet.

Lets parse this. He continues to pedantically call ISIS "ISIL," he boasts about all the efforts that the government is engaging in overseas, and he uses the phrase "perversions of Islam."

What does Obama NOT do?

He does NOT reference ISIS, despite the killer's reportedly calling 911 and pledging allegiance to ISIS. Yes, the difference is merely one of nomenclature, but it's a rather stubborn insistence on Obama's part, and odd only if one doesn't factor in the President's self-professed healthy ego.

He does NOT reference the anti-gay teachings of Islam, teachings that a Pew research poll indicated are held by nearly half of American muslims, nor does he mention sharia, which itself is supported by half of the world's muslims and which teaches that homosexuality is not just a sin, but a punishable act.

And, he does NOT utter the words radical Islam, a phrase he has famously avoided using, purportedly because he doesn't want to acknowledge any connection between Islam and terrorism.

That last bit, coupled with his statement regarding "perversions of Islam," are what reminded me of the True Detective quote. Consider what Obama said while on the campaign trail in 2008:

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

It takes an extreme amount of self-delusion not to see the irony. Obama's clinging to the narrative that all the violence committed by ISIS, al-Qaeda, the 9/11 terrorists, the Charlie Hebdo killers, the San Bernadino shootings, the Paris bombings, the Madrid bombings, and literally hundreds of other terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam are somehow utterly divorced from the actual religion and its adherents is the epitome of bitter clinging to a narrative. In his bitter clinging, in his refusal to challenge Muslim leaders and imams about the violence being fomented by their brethren, in the insistent message that what's going on is just a far-detached "perversion" of a peaceful and enlightened religion, he ignores the elephant in the room. He ignores the backward march of Islam, ignores the utter incompatibility of the teachings of Sharia with the precepts of liberty that our society is rooted in. By his silence, he suggests a moral equivalence between the principles we hold dear, including the mandates that we NOT use force to impose our beliefs and opinions on others, and a religion that teaches the subjugation and subordination of women and the punishment (often by death) of homosexuality.

Obama's clinging to the narrative is a clarion call to his followers to do the same. Already, we are seeing fingers of blame pointed at "assault weapons" and at the Christian Right, rather than at the homophobia and glorification of murderous violence taught by Islam. The evidence, however, is clear. The Orlando killer expressed disgust at the sight of two men kissing, and he declared his allegiance to ISIS prior to his murder spree. Whence his hatred of homosexuals? Whence his belief that murdering them is the right thing to do? He certainly didn't get that from Christian teachings, and he certainly didn't get that from Western principles.

As for the guns he used? Gun rights advocates were accused by the President, and have been accused by anti-gun people for decades, of this "bitter clinging." The shooter was a security guard. He passed scrutiny and recertification multiple occasions. He was vetted and trained. He would be among the last people to see their access to firearms restricted. And, even if he had only used handguns, or if he had used a Ruger Mini-14 instead of a Sig Sauer MCX (functionally identical), there's no legitimate reason to think that the outcome would have been substantially different. He encountered only a modicum of resistance before the police engaged him 3 hours later. The true bitter clingers are the ones who think that banning "black guns" would make a whit's difference.

What's the answer to these incidents? I have my opinions, but I don't have all the answers. I do know that refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the room, the toxicity and virulent nature of radical Islam, is the first thing we should address. Am I among those to embrace Trump's nativist response? Not in the least, but that doesn't mean I embrace Obama's head-in-the-sand insistence on divorcing the world's reality from his views.