There may be no place so dispiriting after a mass shooting as Twitter. It’s a little digital analogue of hell. In Real World, the bodies have yet to be cleared away and our countrymen on the scene are only beginning to deal with their unimaginable trauma and grief. But on Twitter, everything is cruelty, insults, accusations and rage. You can almost see the flecks of spittle flying as the gun-grabbers shriek at the constitutionalists and the constitutionalists shriek back. The phrase “blood on your hands,” is so overused it becomes a kind of meaningless hum.
My sympathies are with the constitutionalists, sure, but any valid point anyone has to make is drowned out by the nearly demonic nastiness with which they make it. If the point is to convince your opponents, how can such malice help? And if your point is not to convince them, why say anything at all?
According to the Pew Research Center, only 22 percent of American adults use Twitter, and less than half of those send almost 80 percent of the Tweets. What’s more, these Tweeters tend to be younger and more Democrat than the general population. So essentially, the atmosphere of rage and unkindness on the social website is created by only 10 percent of the people, and those are not representative of the other 90 percent.
Yet this tiny, left-leaning little clan wields tremendous power. They inspire the news media to echo their opinions and rage — opinions and rage which journalists largely share. By the end of this week, all the media world seemed to be Twitter at its worst as supposed journalists and commentators absurdly declared President Trump a white nationalist and likewise absurdly opined that the shooter in El Paso had been inspired by his “rhetoric.”
Perhaps even worse, in Twittery fashion, the news media manipulated the facts to serve its political purposes. When Trump spoke words of healing, journalists dismissed them as hypocritical. And when the president responded to the vicious, dishonest and hate-filled remarks about him by his Democrat opponents, journalists condemned him for “lashing out.” What’s more, because the El Paso shooting was committed by a white bigot, news outlets acted as if that were the only shooting that had taken place. The Dayton shooting, perpetrated by a left-winger, was played down. The equally deadly shootings in Democrat-ruined Chicago were barely mentioned at all.
But once again, this vitriol, this hatred, these lies and distortions, are coming from a tiny portion of the American populace, and that portion is non-representative. Their power comes from two sources: one, the dominance of the Left’s ownership of these powerful communications outlets, and, two, the cowardice and dishonesty of those whom they attack.
Incoming Access Hollywood host Mario Lopez recently apologized after he was Twitter-mobbed for saying that 3-year-olds should not be allowed to determine their gender. This is undoubtedly true. To mutilate or hormone-dose so young a child because of his passing opinion on such a matter is an atrocity worthy of a Nazi torture doctor. But a tiny, vocal minority — in sympathy with the leftists at Access‘s network, NBC — meant Lopez had to cave or lose his job.
Compare Chick-fil-A, which has long withstood a firestorm of media criticism for its founder’s support of groups opposing gay marriage. There have been protests, boycotts, bans. The chain was even labeled a hate group by the hate group Southern Poverty Law Center. But Chick-fil-A did not back down and has now become the third-largest fast food chain in the country.
The outrage mobs — and the hate-speaking journalists who echo them — do not represent the opinions of the majority of Americans. They gain their power from their masquerading as the vox populi and from our unwillingness to openly oppose them.
They work hard to create the impression that if you disagree with them you will pay a price. And maybe you will pay a price. But people have died for your right to speak your mind and they have sent their sons to die for it. To lose your platform, your popularity, some money or even a job is not the greatest sacrifice you can make. The outraged minority should not be allowed to determine the future of the nation.