I was forty-five years old when I quit drinking alcohol (five-year anniversary is now under forty days away), but I remember what it was like to talk to the late-stage alcoholics that gravitate to the end of the bar. They always had some off-the-wall theories to explain whatever happened to be in the news at the moment.
A lawmaker in Ohio blamed the breakdown of the “traditional American family,” gay marriage and “drag queen advocates” for the Dayton massacre in a since-deleted Facebook rant.
State Rep. Candice Keller — a Republican from Middletown, about 25 miles southwest of Dayton — listed a slew of reasons why she believes Connor Betts, 24, gunned down nine people, including his sister, with an assault-style rifle early Sunday.
“After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game,” Keller wrote in the Facebook post, which had been removed as of early Monday. “Why not place the blame where it belongs?”
Keller’s post goes on to blame “drag queen advocates,” failed school policies, violent video games and children who are raised without fathers as other reasons for the mass shooting that erupted less than 24 hours after 20 people were gunned down at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
The post also claimed that a growing “hatred of our veterans,” a Democratic Congress and a rising culture that “totally ignores the importance of God and the church” were other explanations for the shooting.
Keller then criticized state lawmakers for having what she claims is “no interest whatsoever” in learning about the Constitution, especially the Second Amendment, as well as “snowflakes who can’t accept a duly-elected President,” according to the post.
If a lifetime of alcohol abuse doesn’t explain her worldview then perhaps she’s just spent too much time marinating her brain in a swampy stew of right-wing radio and chain emails.
I also don’t know why these freaks write this stuff only to delete it when they get some criticism. If you thought the world needed to know your opinion, then why not stick by your opinion?
What’s the point in putting it all out there and then retracting it the second people offer a different view? You had to know that what you were about to publish wasn’t exactly the common wisdom.
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly.
He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
