Where the rubber meets the road

Where the rubber meets the road

When will the Left finally get with reality?


Opinion

By Tyler Pruett

tyler@southerntorch.com

As more details emerge in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting and the FBI unravels the connections of another mass-shooter with ties to radical Islam, will reality finally sink in on the Left?

While the Left fights fictitious social wars to win elections and secure campaign contributions, will they finally acknowledge the actual war where people actually die? Will they continue using words like war, hate, or bigot while talking about laws that require everyone use their proper bathroom as an extremist pushes members of the LGBT community into a bathroom to be held hostage at gunpoint and killing fifty people?

My simple answer is, “no.” Delusion has become a virtue on the Left, with those best at promoting a false reality rising to the top, and those who live the deepest in delusion contributing the most. The Leftist elites have a warped view of what constitutes war and repression. This rhetoric stems from an inability to find real solutions to real problems. Politicians are expected to change things for the better. When their out-of-touch-with-reality beliefs won’t allow them to seek real solutions, they find a scapegoat or even create problems to throw legislation or executive orders at.

Those that thrive on the Left are those who can also most quickly present a false reality in the wake of a tragedy. While details of Saturday night’s shooting in Orlando were still becoming known, President Barack Obama and presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton both used the hateful massacre as a platform to push for regulation of the second amendment—regulation that has time and time again failed at preventing tragedy.

This delusion has become so evolved that, not for the first time, but for the second time this administration has used terrorism as an excuse to push firearm legislation. After the San Bernardino attack of late last year, the president seemed to have a list of executive orders ready to issue without the consent of any other branch of government. One of these orders the president deemed as “common sense” banned anyone on the federal no-fly list from buying a firearm. While this may have been a good idea on its own, it came with several other directives that were neither common sense or related to the recent attacks, none of which would have prevented Sunday’s tragedy.

The coward who attacked the Orlando nightclub was never on a no fly list. The FBI investigated the shooter, but didn’t deem him worthy of any more attention. This was also the case with the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino shooters.

Today one Democratic congressman took these asinine delusions to a whole new level. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) declared that he would be boycotting any future moments of silence on the house floor taken to honor victims of mass shootings, because congress refuses to pass any meaningful firearm regulations to prevent such tragedies. This is what it’s coming to: a U.S. Congressman dishonoring victims of a tragedy because he can’t get legislation that he wants, legislation that has time and again failed to prevent anything. Rep. Himes would do us all a favor if he would take as many “moments of silence” as possible. Unfortunately, on his side of the aisle, his actions should catapult him to the short-list for vice president.

I think it’s safe to say now that no matter what statistic or reality with which the Left is hit, they’ll simply ignore it and continue on with the delusion that banning a type of firearm will somehow change mental illness, hate, or radical ideology. Some have even mentioned bringing back the 1994 ban on “assault” weapons, a ban that expired and did not change anything. Remember the shooting at Columbine High School? Those events unfolded a full five years into one of the most restrictive firearms bans in U.S. history. It’s a waste of time to point this out to the Left however. If it doesn’t fit the delusion, it’s “hate” or “bigotry.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the other Democratic candidate for president, already exists in his own state of delusion in even believing he can somehow come away with his party’s nomination. To no one’s surprise, he also took the stance that firearms legislation would somehow stop these tragedies and condemning “automatic weapons” would somehow save bloodshed. Automatic weapons have been illegal since the 1930’s and may only be owned with permission of the federal government after an extensive background investigation.

To date, not a single legally owned automatic weapon has been used in the commission of a crime in the United States. The weapon used in Orlando was likely semiautomatic, meaning only one round is fired with each pull of the weapon’s trigger. If the weapon used was “automatic,” a ban on the weapons would be proven pointless, as they’ve been tightly controlled for for the last 82 years.

The Left’s delusion is even going as far as to try to redefine human suffering. Taking the position that a man who prefers to dress like a woman should be required to use the men’s bathroom is portrayed as Nazi-type hate. Meanwhile, people in all corners of the world are being enslaved, abused, and slaughtered because of their gender, skin color, religion and yes, sexual orientation.

Children routinely go to bed hungry and are abused right here in America. Often on the Left, “suffering” and “discrimination” are only recognized as such if a lawsuit can be filed or an executive order can be issued. Problems like ISIS aren’t as important because the Left does not have a reasonable solution, therefore they cannot raise money or votes by politicizing it.

We can only hope as a nation that at some point the rubber will finally meet the road. We can only hope that through this tragedy, delusion will hit reality like a brick wall. That reality is that we have a war to fight. It’s against an ideology that executes thousands of men and women yearly across the globe because of their gender or sexual orientation, and as they have just proven, they want nothing more than to do it right here. The Left is making it easier and easier for those of us living in reality to vote for Donald Trump. While he certainly has his faults, faults that I have routinely pointed out in past weeks and months, his position on this issue is at least within the realm of reality. At the end of the day, acknowledging and attacking the real problem is the only solution. If the Left can’t get with reality, then hopefully they will be forced to face it when Americans go to the polls this November.