Following Wednesday’s San Bernardino shootings was a gut-wrenching experience. Fourteen innocents dead, 17 wounded.
Shocking doesn’t even begin to explain those events. Making matters worse – or more unbearable, I should say – was the way so many people disregarded the tragic loss of life, opting instead to immediately plug the shootings into pre-existing political conversations.
While events unfolded, speculation about the names of the suspects mushroomed across social media channels. If the names had an Anglo Saxon ring to them, many on the left were more than ready to fit the shooting into the gun control argument. If the names sounded Middle Eastern, a chorus on the right had the terrorism card ready to roll out.
As this column is being typed, there are plenty of questions still unanswered, and what we’ve learned of circumstances has led to a boatload of confused reactions. The full motive behind the violence is far from being understood, but there are elements to the story – such as the fact that the shooters, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were a married couple who left behind a 6-month old child – which make it difficult at this point to fit it neatly into a pre-packaged narrative.
Of all the reactions to the tragedy, though, the most troublesome was published by The New York Daily News. Even before authorities announced the names of the shooters, the Daily News released its Thursday headline: “God Isn’t Fixing This.” It was a sharp dig at Republicans for their refusal to enact stricter guns laws. The (lengthy) article subtitle included, “cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.”
So what are those platitudes they’re talking about? Prayer.
Alongside the splashy article title was a collection of cropped Twitter posts from Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan, each one offering “prayers” for the San Bernardino victims and their families.
Message to Republicans: Prayers to your God aren’t working.
There are two primary reasons this was a troublesome take. First, it was unnecessarily divisive. When harsh jabs like that are thrown, it only encourages both sides of any debate to dig their heels in more firmly. Good luck winning any converts, Daily News.
Second, it infers that God’s will is weaker than man-made law – that government is a more powerful agent for good than is the Almighty.
It’s impossible to ignore the increasing role government plays in the everyday lives of Americans. A perfect example of this was the “Life of Julia,” a storybook advertisement that Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign launched, highlighting the cradle-to-grave benefits the president’s policies would bring to the fictional star of the series.
As CNN put it, the aim of the story was to show how “Obama’s policies, from Head Start to Obamacare to mandated contraception coverage to Medicare reform, would provide Julia with a better life than Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan could.”
Julia was meant to be a sales pitch to voters – Obama will give you all this if you vote for him. But it also showcased a desire from the left to be the remedy to every earthly need. Absent from Julia’s life were her parents, a spouse, friends, or anything not supplied by the federal government.
In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, now we’re seeing an impulse for our policymakers to take the place of the divine.
While lunatics with guns are certainly terrifying, so is a government with a legitimate God complex. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m going to stick with the now-unfashionable: trusting the Lord and praying for the victims.
Contact David Allen Martin at davidallenmartin423@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @DMart423.