More both-siderism from Bill Maher.
This one stands out to me because the formulation is so strained, and yet so ubiquitous. The El Paso shooter took specific cues from Grand Nagus Drumpf and targeted the very people, for the very reasons, that the Nagus has been targeting, but the guy in Ohio “had left-wing stuff that we found” — Maher’s exact words — so at a very minimum, it’s not just right-wing lunatics who are violent authoritarians taking out their resentment and rage on their favorite politicians’ express targets.
Except, it is.
To be fair, Maher didn’t go any further than the phrase, “had left-wing stuff that we found,” in drawing this latest false equivalence on his show. But it’s this choice of words that is simultaneously both revealing and grating. Read it again:
“...had left-wing stuff that we found.”
I’m reminded again of the 2008 primary when one of my dear liberal friends said she couldn’t support Barack Obama because in her words, quote, “He has Farrakhan.” I never asked, or understood, what the verb “has” was supposed to have meant here; by my recollection, Obama had either once said nice things about Farrakhan, had met him once, or been seen in public with him, or talked about him in a way that wasn’t a categorical and unequivocal condemnation. Whatever it was, my friend was hanging the existence and reputation of one person around the neck of another in judging the latter, no matter how tenuous, ephemeral or imaginary the connection between them actually was.
So again, here we have a shooter taking specific, direct and explicit cues directly from a political leader, his party and the media outlets that enable both in taking an action that the foregoing people are practically encouraging him to take … and we have a shooter who happens to like a different politician/party and might have once expressed support for that politician/party.
We all understand that this is a false equivalence; we all understand also that if it weren’t for bullshit and false equivalence, Republicans and their fans would have nothing to say. And we know that inside the paracosm, no amount of congruity is enough to pin some random citizen’s horrible acts on them, but as long as that random citizen “had left-wing stuff that we found” it proves that we’re the violent ones (and they’re not), or at least that Both Sides® are Just As Bad™.
It’s the desperation to find and/or create false equivalence that the phrase, “had left-wing stuff that we found” reveals and brings into sharp focus. And it’s Maher’s continuing desperation to find and create false equivalence, to shore up his “I-go-after-the-liberals-too” bona fides, that continues to trouble me. There are things to criticize on our side — fringy left-wingers do exist, after all, and there are some pretty terrible ideas over there — without made-up bullshit and false equivalence, and without hanging that “left-wing stuff” around the neck of the entire Democratic Party whenever we “find” that someone “has” them.