The Objects of Their Attention
A few weeks ago, a recidivist felon named Darrell Brooks, Jr. drove his car into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, WI. Brooks, who is black, was out on (trivial) bail after running his car over the mother of his child - bail that was granted despite his already being out on bail on a gun charge, and despite the existence of a Nevada warrant for his arrest.
Brooks killed 6 and injured more than 60. In terms of total killed+injured by a single perpetrator, this is the worst mass casualty crime in America since the 2017 Las Vegas shooting (though several since have had a higher death toll).
The political Right quickly associated this massacre with the Left's bail reform efforts, and indeed the facts as we know them at the moment suggest that this individual may have been the beneficiary of an "over-correction.”
The Left, on the other hand, covered the massacre in as low-key "matter-of-fact" a manner as possible, it seems, presenting information without the policy harping that accompanies most such stories.
This didn't gone unnoticed, of course, since dog-piling on mainstream corporate media is popular and entertaining. CNN, in particular, has been roundly mocked for appearing to blame the car, not the driver.
In fairness to CNN, its reporters do have a penchant for blaming objects rather than people. Had Darrell Brooks, Jr. used a gun to kill and injure the exact same number of people, I *guarantee* that we'd have witnessed weeks of giant-font screeds about gun violence and demands for new gun control laws. That Brooks was A - a felon and therefore debarred from purchasing or possessing firearms, and B - released on a $500 pittance of bail for gun possession, would not matter in the slightest.
Nor would the failure of those in charge of implementing existing laws point them away from demanding that the law-abiding have their rights further infringed.
This objectification, to misuse a word, is also endemic in the social justice movement. Identity politics reduces individuals to their demographic markers, their "identities," and each identity has its assigned set of expected behaviors and views. Such dehumanization serves to make it easier for the Best-and-Brightest to feel comfortable in managing the masses, in looking down upon those who don't obey or comply. It also enables their hate. Much easier to hate someone you don't see as a person. Much easier to feel entitled to impose your will on those you see as things.
The Waukesha Christmas Parade massacre has fallen completely out of the news cycle. The narrative was too inconvenient, of course: a black career criminal committed a horrifically violent act with something other than a gun. Nothing there for the Woke to leverage, and much that countervails their policy goals. Already, their coddle-the-criminals ways have backfired, with cites restoring funding to police departments and with law-and-order types winning elections. Unfortunately, admitting error is not in their playbook, so we have the likes of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg continuing this insanity even as voters elected a Mayor who promises to address crime.