Inconvenient Truths
The current liberal answer to America’s epidemic of mass murder is to further restrict the availability of guns. Although the feasibility of such a strategy is questionable, it’s easy to see that this strategy is untenable on its face. The availability of firearms, of and by itself, simply does not explain the high frequency of mass shootings that America endures. There are many societies in this world with gun possession and availability comparable to ours that have little or no mass murder what-so-ever(Switzerland, Sweden and many others). A recent poll showed that 80% of American adults believe, rightly, that mental illness is the major factor. However, since the incidence of psychopathology is expected to be rather similar across many societies, there must be something else involved. As described in a previous essay (An Epidemic Of Mass Murder, 8/6/19) there is another major factor that you will never hear mentioned by liberal analysts and commentators. That factor is: DIVERSITY. It is an “inconvenient truth” that the extremely high level of diversity that we have in America is one of the most important factors in the causation of our epidemic of mass murder. Extreme cultural diversity brings people of different nationalities, beliefs, faiths, cultures, creeds, allegiances and habits together in a cultural “stew” that sometimes engenders distrust, suspicion, and enmity. The result is a situation where “fringe” individuals, almost invariably with psychopathology of one form or another, develop violent fantasies, inclinations, plans, and, in some cases, resort to violence itself. Although America has a proud tradition of acceptance and even protection of diversity, it’s role in explaining America’s epidemic of massacres is an “inconvenient truth” that should not be ignored.
Although anthropogenic (man made) greenhouse gas emissions is the explanation du jour for global warming, the role played by other factors must not be discounted. It turns out that one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases is… the termite! Some estimates of termite greenhouse gas production have them emitting 10 times the amount produced by the yearly combustion of all the world’s fossil fuels combined. Some estimates have termites producing 150 million TONS of methane per year. Although these facts are seldom discussed today, awareness of them goes back quite a ways. A headline, for example, in the New York Times, published on October 31, 1982 read, simply: “TERMITE GAS EXCEEDS SMOKESTACK POLLUTION.”
And that’s not all. Although, again, not mentioned much today, the intensity of sunlight has been inexorably climbing. The following is a graph of the intensity of solar radiation over the past 400 years as calculated by researchers at the University of Colorado:
As one can see, solar irradiance has risen steadily since a minimum value in 1700. The “inconvenient truth” (for global warming alarmists, that is) is that non man made factors can easily explain the rise in global temperatures we seem to be experiencing. Also inconvenient for the alarmists is the fact that for the past MILLION years, our planet has alternated between cold glacial periods lasting about one hundred thousand years and warm interglacial periods lasting about 10 thousand years. If this pattern holds, we may be entering another ice age soon.
Although today’s hypersensitive and aggrieved youths (sometimes referred to a “snowflakes”) professes to abjure “hate” and “micro aggressions”, they appear to have no problem with the existence of the political activists known as “Antifa.” The extremely hateful rhetoric that Antifa protestors espouse online, on placards and in interviews, apparently, does not faze our youth. Nor does their violent demonstrations (MACRO aggressions, I’d say), face masks, crowbars and baseball bats, seem to impress them either. The inconvenient truth of the matter is that Antifa is a hate filled and violent group, that, in ironic juxtaposition to their claimed moniker, are the true face of fascism today.
Despite the repeated claims from politicians, religious figures and the media that Islam is “a religion of peace”, horrific violence committed in its name continues. In Africa, the shocking Islamic genocide of Christians continues in full force. The International Red Cross recently reported that there are TWENTY TWO THOUSAND Christians killed or missing in Nigeria as a direct result of Islamic Jihad, MOST OF THEM CHILDREN.
Despite indignant howls of “Islamophobia”, the “inconvenient truth” is that brutally genocidal violence by Muslims against Christians in Africa continues at a furious pace.