The tragedy in Buffalo over the weekend is the result of human sin, and the depravity on display shouldn't be used as a political talking point. This is truly a deranged young man whose mind has been warped into the darkest of places.
Yet this was Rolling Stone reporting on the story:
Many of you reading this are "mainstream Republicans," so I assume y'all are bloodthirsty murderers, right?
Here was former Obama press secretary Joe Lockhart:
And Georgetown professor Don Moynihan:
Think through the logic here. We have a government labelling half the nation "domestic extremists," an ideology in our military and public institutions that says that anything resembling Judeo-Christian belief is "white rage," and a media that equates insane psychopaths with the "mainstream" of a political party that has the overwhelming control of governance in 23 states.
If you were listening to the talking points, what would you think should be done to control these would-be mass murderers?
From the Rolling Stone article:
The gnawing fear of a minority-white America has utterly consumed conservative politics for the past half-decade, creating a Republican party whose dual obsessions with nativism and white fertility have engendered a suite of policies engineered to change the nature of the body politic. What unites murderers like Gendron, and the long list of white supremacist attackers he cited with admiration, with the mainstream of the Republican party is the dream of a white nation.
The problem, of course, is that this is patently false. I don't know a single conservative or Republican personally that wants a "white nation." I assume what Rolling Stone is referring to here is that conservatives want "whiteness," which to the lefties now includes respect for the Bible, logic, math, science, the Constitution, objective truth, the fear of God, Natural Law, and George Washington.
Of course, Rolling Stone has to go 5 years back to Charlottesville to prove their point, invoking the "very fine people" lie about Trump for funsies, because the reality is that actual white supremacists are a tiny, fringe minority that is rejected by everyone everywhere.
Far from being a registered Republican who attends Turning Point USA seminars, the shooter's own manifesto notes that he became COVID obsessed during the lockdowns, when he turned to 4chan and other message boards that put racist hatred in his head out of "boredom." He also noted that he describes himself as "authoritarian left" and "populist."
Wrongheaded Twitter and Google policies prevent us from gaining easy access to the Buffalo attacker's manifesto despite the fact that analysis is necessary to gain insight into his — and likely others' — twisted view of the world.
In defiance of those foolish policies, a few brave folks managed to post screencaps of different portions of the manifesto, and they reveal what begins to look exactly like what conservatives and select, honest liberals have been warning about for a while.
The Buffalo shooter wrote that he wasn't born or raised to be racist. From the scraps I read, he doesn't seem to have been particularly engaged in much of anything, other than an enthusiasm for guns (which I share, but since I haven't shot up any grocery stores, it's safe to say the issue is the person, not the gun).
If I'm right, he was something of a blank slate — the kind that today's world excels at creating. "Men without chests," CS Lewis called them.
He directly said in the manifesto that he wasn't racist at all until he had nothing to do due to COVID beginning (ie the lockdowns) and began perusing 4chan due to "extreme boredom."
"Men without chests" is the perfect way to describe this young man – a hollow shell lost in a sea of irrelevance, with nothing and no one to fight for, being told to shut up, say that 2+2=5, and numb himself through addiction.
Lockdowns were so devastating because people fundamentally need to stay busy, otherwise we wither and die. Look at alcohol abuse and deaths, prescription abuse and deaths and suicides during COVID. Look at what happens to retirees when they stop doing anything. They lose hope and die. Idle hands truly are a dream come true for the Devil.
We don't talk about this enough. We should.
Now for the smoking gun from the shooter's own manifesto:
He was entrenched at age 12 in Marxist ideology, then mellowed out after his initial cage stage to become a "mild-moderate authoritarian left[ist]."
This is not a young man who would agree on a constitutional republican form of government, in the federalist system or the Electoral College, the right to life for all people, preborn to old, or a Judeo-Christian focus on the health of the family centered around faithful marriage between one man and one woman.
In fact, as a populist, I suspect he would agree with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the left's obsession with the mob rule of the majority, abortion rights, the "tax the rich" movement, much of the racial screeds of the BLM movement (just with the script flipped), and other liberal positions!
Good portions of this young man's manifesto seemed copied from the Christchurch shooter's manifesto from 2019. He criticizes the left, but much like Antifa and its allies often criticize the left – with hatred of the current milquetoast leaders in power.
Later in the manifest, the shooter insists, "I would prefer to call myself a populist. But you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want, I wouldn't disagree with you." He also repeatedly attacks capitalists, and rejected the conservative label because, he wrote, "conservativism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it."
Of course, here's the part where you expect me to own the libs.
No. Like I said above, this is not a moment to score political points. The reality is that our political diagrams and grids fail to account for the fallenness of the human heart. It is true that when it comes to political action, the far-left and the far-right are often close in thought processing and violence, like the two ends of a horseshoe that almost touch.
But none of these charts account for, say, the "far-right" Christian who wants society to be ordered according to God's Word and design, whose political action does not include violence but radical self-sacrifice and personal suffering in order to live out the way of the Cross and show the hope of the Gospel.
What we are dealing with is not a left-right issue. It is an up-down issue. If you do not believe in God, then what bonds need connect us as human beings? Pick your ideological tribe, then destroy those who oppose you. Might makes right.
These woke platitudes of "tolerance" mean absolutely nothing in an evolutionary world where life is meaningless and void. The young men who have given fully into the violence of fascism or Marxism are opposite sides of the same hopeless conclusion that a reality without God gives.
Perhaps the Apostle Paul had more wisdom than any politician today when he said "our struggle is not against flesh and blood."
Maybe, just maybe, humanity's fight is against "the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness" in the spiritual realm.
Twisting the truth to attack political opponents, or taking away our inherent right to self-defense because a psycho used the tools of our age to unleash his hell-driven insanity, will never win the war.
There is only one way out of this mess – only one way to become men with chests again.
'So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God's law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!' - Romans 7:21-25a
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
