Robin Westman, Minneapolis transgender shooter<\/p>\n
Last year when I was asked to write a chapter for a US book on the incredible inroads and attacks on our civil liberties during the thuggish Covid lockdown years I decided, in part, to rank the worst offending groups.\u00a0The lawyerly and doctorly castes were bad. They were woeful in fact.\u00a0But the politicians as a class, the ones who ultimately made the calls, were worse \u2013 and there were very few exceptions to that generalised claim, as any Australian knows who looks for politicians who, say, resigned from Cabinet on principle (nada, zero) or who spoke up publicly and loudly against the massive authoritarian over-reach and aping of the policies of the Chinese Communist Politburo (a mere handful at most).\u00a0So I gave the silver medal for thuggish lockdown commitment and stalwart thuggery to the political class.\u00a0However, in terms of letting all of us citizens down I reserved the gold medal for the journalists of the legacy media.\u00a0As a class they exhibited no scepticism.\u00a0No thinking for themselves.\u00a0They were fearmongers and PR agents for the modellers, public health gurus, \u2018nudge\u2019 manipulators and politicos.\u00a0Yes, there were some brave exceptions. But very few.\u00a0What we got from the legacy media was a sort of attempt to play the type of media you\u2019d see in George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em>, dealing in Big Brother doublethink. And all of that is on top of the verifiably huge drift towards the political Left of the legacy media over the last few decades.<\/p>\n Well, if you were hoping things would get noticeably better after the lockdowns ended, they haven\u2019t.\u00a0For just one instance, let me take you to the murders of two young children and the wounding of at least 17 others in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week.\u00a0It took place at a Catholic school with the murderer shooting at random through a stained-glass window during the first school mass of the academic year.\u00a0The legacy media embarrassed itself reporting on this because it went against all the progressive class\u2019s and legacy media\u2019s (but I repeat myself) deeply held shibboleths and Left-wing bromides.\u00a0You see the murderer was a man, Robert Westman, who back in 2020 had changed his first name to Robin and come out as transgender.\u00a0He said he was now a female. And he hated Donald Trump. And he left behind a sort of manifesto that oozed antisemitism along with other bits of nastiness.<\/p>\n How to report this? How to report this, while still genuflecting before the progressive worldview? Life for the legacy media is just so much easier when a multiple shooter is a white, heterosexual male, preferably with conservative leanings.\u00a0Then the details can be reported pronto.\u00a0And the label \u2018white nationalist\u2019 will just be begging to be used. Alas, it was not to be.\u00a0So on the transgender front the legacy media tied itself in knots.\u00a0NBC News described the shooter as \u201ca person in her<\/em> early 20s\u201d.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em> also used \u2018she\u2019 to describe the murderer.\u00a0CNN talking heads worried about \u2018misgendering\u2019 the person who had killed two primary school kids and wounded 17 others, some severely.\u00a0These journalists definitely know what\u2019s important in a story, don\u2019t they?\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em> got itself in a bit of a conundrum because, as it reported, \u201cit is unclear how the shooter identified at the time of the incident\u201d.\u00a0Likewise, the NPR that President Trump has just defunded wrote that we \u201cdo not know how the person currently identified\u201d while the very Left-leaning Associated Press told readers \u201cthe shooter\u2019s gender identity wasn\u2019t clear\u201d.\u00a0Oh, and on CNN the former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man embroiled up to his neck in the Russian collusion scam against Donald Trump, made a point of calling the trans murderer by his preferred identity: \u201cI\u2019m sure [the killer\u2019s mother] is grieving for her daughter\u201d \u2013 also somewhat misdirecting the first port of call for sympathy you might think.<\/p>\n Meantime no legacy media outlet that I know of mentioned the fact that an awful lot of recent mass school shootings have been committed by transgender murderers \u2013 in Denver, Nashville, Uvalde, Georgia, Aberdeen, Philadelphia, the list goes on.\u00a0In fact, it is a massively disproportionate number of such crimes being committed by transgender school shooters, a point I make for all the identity politics Lefties out there who insist on seeing the world in terms of groups.<\/p>\n I agree with the growing numbers of people who say the two most likely reasons for this are a) gender dysphoria is a severe mental illness which right now is not being treated as mental illness, but instead is being humoured and encouraged.\u00a0Or, b) transgender people who transition are being subjected to intense doses of drugs that may be having an unpredictable effect on their behaviour or aggravating their pre-existing mental illness.\u00a0Because let\u2019s be honest.\u00a0If you told someone you were Napoleon Bonaparte trapped in the wrong body that person would not make empathy his main response and cater to your self-delusion.\u00a0He would try to explain that there is a mind-independent truth about the external, causal world.\u00a0Likewise, the 47 year-old cannot identify as a 13 year-old to win some sporting competition. Because however he feels or whatever his preferences, he is not 13 years old. Again, the white woman doesn\u2019t get to be black just because that\u2019s what she would like and is how she sees herself.\u00a0As one US commentator rightly noted after this Minnesota tragedy, \u201cThe trans movement has been a disaster in every way and should be re-examined from the ground up.\u201d\u00a0 And the higher up the socio-economic ladder you go, the more sympathy you find for this toxic empathy.\u00a0Rich, white women seem to be the most in its thrall.<\/p>\n The other big difficulty for the legacy media in reporting this shooting was the fact that the shooter hated Trump and wasn\u2019t all-in on MAGA.\u00a0Indeed, this shooter, Robert Westwood, had written \u201ckill Donald Trump\u201d on his gun.\u00a0Now, how could they report that without pushing a characterisation that would help the current US President (a.k.a. \u2018Hitler\u2019)?\u00a0Well, one of the terrestrial, longstanding main US TV networks tried to square that circle by reporting that the murderer had \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s name on his gun\u201d. Yes, you read that sleight of hand correctly.\u00a0Still want to know why the legacy media is dying and why conservatives, especially, no longer trust anything that they are being told by these partisan hacks?\u00a0Why supposed Right-of-centre politicians pay any attention to these legacy media journalists is beyond me.\u00a0Just look and see how Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre treat them with disdain and copy that.<\/p>\n