February 11, 2016
Source: Shutterstock
In a wonderfully ironic twist, the government’s video about defeating a rapist with humor was itself defeated with humor. In March 2013 I produced a parody video (in association with Eric Porvaznik of Threedonia) demonstrating exactly how it would look if a bystander stumbling upon a violent rape-murder in progress tried to use the government’s “nine points” to defuse the situation. The parody video was carried far and wide by sites like The Daily Caller and Independent Journal Review. Within days I was contacted by “Equal Opportunity Leadership Instructor” SFC Michael Patterson, who scolded me for producing a satirical video that harmed “an organization that promotes dignity and respect for all” (especially serial rapists who enjoy hearing jokes while they work). Due to the response to my parody, DEOMI pulled the original video from public view. Fortunately, one or two folks saved copies before it vanished down the memory hole (a spokesperson for DEOMI refused last week to comment on whether the video is still in use privately).
I”m not a terribly optimistic person, but I do think it’s a good sign that the makers of the DEOMI video felt pressured to pull it, unlike the Finnish TV station, which continues to stand by its production. The U.S. is not yet Finland. We”re not yet Scandinavia or Germany. We still have the ability to create enough vocal outrage that the government will back down. That’s good news, and it offers at least a sliver of hope for the future of this country.
But even after I deep-sixed the video, I was still plagued by the nagging question that I expressed earlier in this piece: Why did the powers-that-be choose to dramatize the Genovese/Moseley crime? Why a black-on-white rape-murder? Why not a crime perpetrated by the kind of white redneck Billy Bobbin” bad guy the government always loves to present as the face of American violence and villainy?
Late last year, I think I might have found the answer. Simone Sebastian, an editor at The Washington Post, penned an op-ed about Black Lives Matter protesters in which she claimed that “aggression and violence” are “necessary for progress” in the fight for “racial equality.” In one of the most amazing examples of pure bullshit phraseology I have ever encountered, Sebastian, who is black, wrote that the civil rights movement has demonstrated that, for blacks, “nonviolence was useless without violence.” That’s like saying veganism is useless without meat-eating. If you eat meat, you”re not practicing veganism, and nonviolence accompanied by violence is”by definition“not nonviolence.
Social justice warriors are advocating two completely different definitions of nonviolence”one for nonwhites, for whom nonviolence can totally include violence, and one for whites, for whom nonviolence means absolute, complete passivity even in the face of a monster like Winston Moseley. And that’s why Moseley was used as the example in the Department of Defense video. The SJWs wanted to present the exact scenario that their nonviolent instruction was intended for. As Black Lives Matters protesters are being told that they can be as aggressive and brutal as they want while still claiming the moral high ground of “nonviolence,” everyone else is being told that to use anything more than “humor, dialogue, and body language” in the face of the Winston Moseleys of the world is a violation of “allowable” behavior.
The Finnish SJWs still feel the need to couch their demand for passivity in unrealistic images of marauding rapists who resemble Ricky Schroder. Our SJWs are confident enough to be a lot more honest in their imagery: Winston Moseley is the man you”ll meet in that dark alley, and you better not respond with anything stronger than careful humor.
The Department of Defense, and”by extension”the Obama administration, may have lost a round when they were forced to pull the video, but the sheer amount of audacity it took to produce it in the first place is cause for serious concern.
I may have to take back that thing I said about a sliver of hope.
