I need to talk about something other than my baby for a change. Don't get me wrong, he's adorable and I could talk about him for hours, but today something else is really eating at me.
On Saturday, October 20, Megan and I were in Squirrel Hill for a training session to upkeep our foster parent resource certification. That training was held at the Children's Center, directly across the street from the Tree of Life Synagogue. A week later, a man opened fired in that synagogue and killed 11 people. This is being described as possibly the deadliest attack on Jewish people in the US since its founding.
My department brought in a temp the following week to help with some data entry work. She personally knew a lot of people that were in that synagogue the day this happened.
Personally, I didn't know any of the people, but I still have a visceral response to the story. These people were in a sacred place, and a man filled with hate and rage entered their place of worship and shot at them. It's terrifying just to think about. I can't imagine just being in the situation, let alone the pain those whose family members were killed must be feeling.
I would have expected most people to have reactions like me. Reactions that ranged from gut wrenching pain at thinking about what these victims must have gone through, to an overwhelming desire to help them in any way possible.
I certainly didn't expect the log onto Facebook less than 12 hours later and see that most of the posts about the event were either talking about how the synagogue should have had private security, or how guns should just be banned so things like this can't happen in the future.
I was so disgusted with the idea that these innocent people's fear and death should be politicized, and so quickly. Can't we give the community a chance to mourn before we starting calling for political action? I almost deleted my Facebook account right then. Even though I didn't, I did log out and not return for two weeks. It didn't matter, though. Everyone was talking about it at work. It was all over the news. Everyone wanted to weigh in on whether someone carrying a gun on the premises could have saved those people or if banning guns would have saved those people. Even President Trump and Governor Wolf were arguing (through the media) about how this should have been handled politically. I was sick from hearing about it; the conversation rarely covered the actual people involved (except the shooter, and his motives, and his actions leading up to and after the event). People weren't discussing the pain and terror and mourning this community and these people must be facing. I couldn't believe it only took a few hours to completely dehumanize all of those victims, their friends and family, and the rest of that community.
Things got worse when President Trump decided to come to Pittsburgh to honor the dead and mourn with their families. You'd have thought that Satan himself was flying into town to belittle this horrific event, but though I do believe the action was somewhat politically motivated, President Trump did not go out of his way to comment on the action or make any political comments while he was here. In the end, he acted more respectful in that day than basically every media outlet I came across, as he arrived to pay his respects, then left without comment. News sites were screaming about how this was basically his fault and how he was just doing this to garner votes for his candidates. Governor Wolf refused to support President Trump's visit and avoided the area altogether. It was disgusting. If this shooting had occurred during President Obama's (or any other president for that matter) tenure, everyone would have expected him to pay his respects. President Trump has no history of anti semitism, but somehow this is his fault and he shouldn't come to town to pay his respects. Disgusting.
Just when I thought it couldn't get worse, the focus on the shooter caused another outrageous thing to happen: Gab, the social media platform preferred by this shooter, was taken offline for "supporting" anti-Semitic views and actions. Just when I thought I couldn't be more angry about the politicizing of this whole shooting affair, I heard some smug reporters talking about Gab being a "bastion of alt-right hate groups," and how it was good that the site's host and Paypal refused to continue service to the site.
Now, I'm honestly incensed. I don't know much about Gab, but a cursory search online shows it to be a small competitor to sites like Facebook and Twitter, and claims, much as they used to, to be a free speech platform. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, it appears that Gab has stood against public opinion, and refused to censor any speech by their users that was not outright threatening. For that reason, many users from Facebook who have been banned since 2016, when the site really started cracking down on alternative voices, have moved to other services like Gab. The fact of the matter is, Gab is just a website that allows people to communicate, and does not have any culpability in the murder of those 11 people. Just because this particular shooter was a user of that website, does not mean that the website is promoting that kind of action. There are plenty of criminals who use the web; do we need to shut down every website that every criminal has ever been a member of? I'm sure there are murders with Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, Google accounts, etc. Do those services support and encourage behaviors like bigotry and murder? The fact remains that, had Facebook not begun purging users with what can only be described as political motives, sites like Gab would never have gained any major support, and this shooter could have posted the same things on Facebook instead. These are platform sites that purport to allow users to post anything, and allowing public dialog is a good thing.
Even if Gab really is a "bastion of alt-right hate groups," do you really think shutting it down is the answer? I think the answer is allowing these people to be as open and honest with their views as possible. Allowing them to express bigotry on sites like Facebook and Twitter means their friends and families are more likely to see those opinions and talk to them about change. Forcing them further and further underground (first sites like Gab that are open but only really used by specific groups, then into closed and hidden sites that won't attract any attention from groups outside of those who the site is specifically targeting). All we're doing by pushing these people underground is secluding them, and further polarizing them. We're making them angrier, and further closing off their echo chamber. We're not making public dialog better by removing hateful speech by force; dialog improves by working through those hateful thoughts and removing them from the minds of the people who have them. Pushing them out of public discourse only deepens and expands those hateful thoughts.
I've been meaning to write this for a few weeks now, but never had the motivation until I heard of another shooting, this one in California. Apparently this is the 11th mass shooting since the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue, though it's the first one I've heard about. This shooting just happened this week, but already I'm seeing people get political about it in the news (as I said, I've been avoiding Facebook). Can we take a moment and stop talking about gun rights or banning guns, and just mourn for these dead people?
Can we maybe step outside our polarized echo chambers, and come together as people, and consider that the victims in these shootings were people, and maybe start to learn from them? If all we do is argue politics, we're never going to resolve the issues that lead to these shootings, because we're never going to know what the real causes are. All we're going to do is learn to hate each other more and more because we disagree politically.
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