WINNING THE JUMP TO CONCLUSION OLYMPICS

 

In case you’ve been under a rock, President Obama just traded a soldier who is probably a deserter and possibly a collaborator for five top-level Taliban commanders. Think 4 star generals. The left says “shame on you for rushing to judgment!” I wonder: Did they wait for the facts on George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin?

 

What we know about Beau Bergdahl is that he wrote letters to his father sickened by his fellow soldiers and expressing disgust at being an American. He left his post. When his comrades searched for him, two children said they saw an American walking around asking if anybody speaks English so he could communicate with the Taliban. Knowing this, they still searched desperately and six American soldiers may have died because of it. Six platoon mates were interviewed by Fox’s Megan Kelly and none doubted that he intentionally deserted. They held their opinions on whether he collaborated but all said he should be court-martialed. Even so, there are many prominent voices on the right such as Charles Krauthammer, Hugh Hewitt and others who agree the President was right to at least try to get him home.

 

How does the left respond to something that smells bad? In the Jump-to-Conclusion Olympics, the left takes the gold, silver, bronze, and the next 19 runners up. Spike Lee tweeted the address of a terrified older couple he thought were Zimmerman’s parents, knowingly inviting violence upon them. NBC news doctored Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him sound racist. Al Sharpton used his national news program to advertise his protests and pressure the Justice Department to press federal charges. Despite the fact Zimmerman had lacerations to the back of his head and a broken nose, Florida was so scared of riots they prosecuted him anyway, arguably knowing he would be acquitted. Liberal uber-attorney Alan Dershowitz said the prosecutor should have been disbarred for moving on such flimsy evidence.

 

Zimmerman, who is as white as Barack Obama, never came off very well. But what wasn’t reported is that he mentored black people and once advocated for a homeless man who had been beaten by police. Media also ignored the fact that when Trayvon didn’t come home, his dad’s first call was to local juvenile detention centers. Trayvon had defaced school property, been caught with burglary tools and had marijuana in his system the night he was killed. Also, the iced tea and Skittles he allegedly had was actually Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail, the favored drink to combine with Skittles and cough syrup to produce a drug known as “lean” or “purple drank”, also known as “poor man’s PCP”. On his Facebookpage, Trayvon Martin had discussed making “lean”.

 

Before Trayvon, there was the Jenna Six. The left held the biggest civil rights rally since the sixties after six young black men ambushed and nearly killed a white man. Congressional hearings were held on the unfairness of their convictions. Two of the perpetrators presented at the BET Hip Hop awards to a standing ovation. This was all based on the belief that just prior to the beating, nooses had been hung on a tree to intimidate black people from sitting under it. It turned out to be false.

 

We can’t forget the Duke Lacrosse rape case. A lynch mob of 88 Duke professors signed a letter presuming guilt and lamenting the “social disaster” of ubiquitous racism on campus. Of course, the black accuser made it up. Because she was crazy.

 

Anyone remember Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley? They lost a defamation lawsuit for knowingly falsely accusing a white man of brutal rape. A few years later, a black kid was accidentally run over by some “diamond merchant” Jew. Sharpton incited riots that ended in the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum and another while rioters yelled, “Kill the Jews!”

 

Then there is this fake racism scandal, and this one, also this fake hate crime. This was a good one, and these, so many, in fact, that this database of fake hate crimes has almost 200 entries. Are liberals ever skeptical when something like this happens? Of course not. These things are usually accompanied by some kind of unity rally, weeping and gnashing of teeth because jumping to conclusion is a cottage industry. Too bad apologizing isn’t.

 

When San Diego Democrat mayor, Bob Filner, was accused of serial groping and being a dirty old man, the Union Tribune was flooded with letters scolding everyone for judging too quickly. Turns out he was, in fact, very, very naughty.

 

Identity politics, the left’s bread and butter, is abhorrent and stunningly obtuse. But if you are male, white, rich, Christian, or worst of all, conservative, as sure as the sky is blue, you are suspect. Is this a caricature or a straw-man argument? No. The constant rhetoric about the 1% and “white privilege” says otherwise. Didn’t Martin Luther King Jr. say we should judge people on the content of their character and not the color of their skin? I think he also meant their bank account and their gender, too. Or maybe he just didn’t get it. One of Omnipotentblog’s professors stated one day, “We don’t judge the poor”. Why not, I said.  “We don’t. Judge. The poor.” Can’t argue with that. When you view everything through a lens of oppression, when you yearn for a sense of community but are unable to see people outside their identity groups, when you have a faulty view of human nature to begin with, you get it wrong. Every time.

 

But when you believe that all mankind is flawed and that praise or condemnation belongs not to groups but to individuals making individual choices, then everything in the world makes sense. When you have the correct view of human nature to begin with, you don’t have to jump to conclusions, the conclusions jump to you.