PA Bill Number: HB2311
Title: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program.
Description: Establishing the School Mental Health Screening Grant and Development Program. ...
Last Action: Laid on the table
Last Action Date: Sep 23, 2024
The Unintended Consequences That Follow From False Narratives :: 07/12/2016
Governments like to create narratives. Some of the narratives we are exposed to on a daily basis are that guns are responsible for mahem and need to be banned; because there is racism, blacks deserve favored treatment; and the police target and kill blacks because of their race.
“Like the president, these protesters [Black Lives Matter] maintain that the police are motivated by racial prejudice, not by the behavior of suspects. They insist that a biased criminal justice system explains the black crime rate, not anti-social behavior. By indulging this narrative, Mr. Obama and his fans in the liberal media [are] playing with fire.” Jason Riley, “Healing After Dallas, Without Obama,” WSJ, July 12, 2016.
These narratives have led to a number of unintended consequences, among them the recent sniper killing of five police officers in Dallas and the police shooting in Minnesota where a police officer shot a black male, still seat-belted into his seat, as he reached for identification.
What progressives don’t seem to realize is that the stories you tell yourself and the stories you broadcast to the world can have unintended consequences.
When you throw into the pond the stone labeled “guns should be banned,” a number of ripples float across the surface. One ripple is the subconscious idea that guns are the instruments of murder and are to be feared, loathed and avoided. What if the cop in Louisiana was affected by this false narrative? What if he was the kid in grade school who got expelled because he shaped his breakfast roll into a gun? Being expelled would be an event that in Pavlovian terms would reinforce even more the idea that guns are to be feared and avoided.
Combine the gun narrative with the race-related narratives mentioned earlier and imagine that lethal mixture and the resentment it might cause sloshing around in the cop’s – or anyone’s -- head. It would not be surprising if the white cop thought, “this privileged black guy who hates cops and is trying to rip off the system by constantly claiming unfair treatment is sitting in front of me threatening me with a gun.” In short, it would not be surprising if this Minnesota cop, in the context of that situation, were not rendered insane by the false narratives that we all have in our heads. The black guy wasn’t threatening or a killer just because he had a gun, and he wasn’t responsible for the cop-hating narratives that have been floating around for fifty years. But if you were inundated by these false narratives, you might think so.
The Minnesota shooting is not the only ripple that might have come from these false narratives. After the police shooting in Louisiana, a black sniper started killing police. He killed five and wounded six more. Is this surprising? Once you get the entire population to believe guns are bad, whites are bad, police are bad, blacks are the victims, isn’t it likely that at least one black person in the nation will be overwhelmed by this narrative and pushed over the edge, just as the white policemen in Louisiana may have been overwhelmed by the narratives he carried around in his subconscious, and shot an innocent motorist? The remarkable thing is not that the sniper started killing police, but that it doesn’t happen more often.
If we had leaders in government rather than politicians intent on getting votes, these narratives would not exist. The gun narrative would be replaced by the narrative that owning a gun for personal protection and protection against a renegade government is a constitutional right that is not to be abridged for any reason, let alone for the reason that a criminal segment of the population decides to use guns for their murderous purposes.
The race narrative would be replaced by a narrative that people of all races are to be encouraged to succeed and to become a part of the mainstream community. All people are to be given as much assistance as they care to work for. Those who don’t care to participate will be left to their own devices. So wear your pants around your knees at your own peril.
As for the narrative that police hate blacks and target them for murder, that would be replaced by the narrative that the police job is to protect the community, but also to interdict criminals of all races, and if criminals happen to be disproportionately more of one race than another, that it not the fault of police.
When you change the narratives, you change what happens. Almost no one criticizes our present false narratives because criticizing them gets you labeled a racist, murderous bigot. But these false narratives and their first cousin, political correctness, are the root of much that is evil in our daily lives.
There is one more point to make about the Minnesota shooting. It need not have happened even in a malicious-narrative-soaked culture. Police stopped the black victim’s car because of a broken taillight. Obviously, that was an excuse. The cop had no business stopping him at all. The black driver was a danger to no one, and left alone, he would have discovered at one point or another that he needed to fix the taillight. Meantime, his other tail light was working.
Progressives never met a government intrusion they didn’t like, and governments they like best are governments that intrude more rather than less in people’s lives. Progressives notwithstanding, the first rule of government should be “never get involved unless the national security or imminent disaster is at risk.” The rule of government under which we actually operate is that it is good for the government to get involved in everything and once it is involved, all that is needed is the “morally” correct policy and intrusion.
So when you are looking around for someone to blame for the present turmoil between blacks and whites, the police and citizens, blame the government’s false narratives and the government practice of intruding where there is no need.
Rather that manipulating the population by false narratives and intervening more rather than less, government’s priority should be: first do no harm and stay the hell out of it.
