Good guys versus bad guys – that’s a story – especially when the good guys win even with the odds overwhelmingly against them. But the stories we get anymore are not so structured. Our good guys are flawed (think drunken, fat Thor in the the Avengers movies) and our bad guys are victims somehow (think Darth Vader or the Scarlet Witch in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.) Anymore no one is good, no one is bad, circumstances just put two parties at odds with each other and we are supposed to enjoy the fight. I wrote the other day that Our Myths Matter because they should reinforce what is good, but anymore our myths are not about right and wrong, probably only better or worse. Apparently the news media thinks the same way….
Let’s consider the entire Minnesota thing. This story broke yesterday, “The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week experienced internal bleeding in the torso after he was hit by her vehicle during the incident, a Department of Homeland Security Official confirmed to National Review.” To my mind any possible controversy ends at that point. Renee Good clearly assaulted the officer, resulting in his injury, her motives notwithstanding, and the officer was therefore justified in his use of force. He had no way to read her mind nor time to contemplate her motives. He was under assault. That should end the story, but it doesn’t.
There was another clearly justified officer involved shooting in Minneapolis yesterday that I have only found, at the time of this writing, covered on local news and in the NYTimes. And, of course Minnesota Governor, and former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz used the occasion to go after Trump even while ostensibly calling for peace in the streets. All while media is making the protests look bigger and more menacing than they are. And so we find efforts by the media to make this story morally ambiguous while continuing the fight. On one level, of course they want to help Walz misdirect from his utter failure as governor amidst the social welfare fraud scandal. But on another level they want a morally uncertain prolonged fight to comport with the narratives of our current stories because that draws eyeballs and clicks. Sadly, in doing so they provide cover for more fraud in other places.
Yesterday, I made the case that the Islamic regime in Iran lead by Ali Khamenei, given the level of killing it has committed in the last few days is the greatest evil currently on the planet and as such deserves destruction. And yet, they are trying to appear sympathetic, all the while threatening the President’s life. They are playing into the current morally ambiguous narrative, quite possibly with intention. They are clearly making an effort to deenergize the anti-regime sentiment that was growing hourly around the world.
I see only three possibilities here. One the killing in Iran was not as bad as reported and the anti-regime forces were exaggerating. I personally don’t care if the numbers were inflated, a regime that kills any of its citizens purely for the sake of holding power is illegitimate and evil. Two, the lack of reporting of killing since the president’s announcement that they have ceased indicates that Iran has managed to stop the flow of information altogether, raising their evil to new levels. Three, they have in fact quit the killing, at least temporarily, to avoid an attack. To my mind, too little too late. There is no moral ambiguity here, and yet our media seems to want to find it. And many people in this country are buying into it.
Our news media seems set on telling stories, not merely presenting facts. I get it, stories sell, reports, not so much and they do have to pay the bills. But I dearly wish they would drop the morally ambiguous narrative. There is right and wrong. Renee Good clearly acted wrongly and as tragic as her death may be, it was justified. There is good and evil. The Islamic regime in Iran is pure evil. Time for it to die.
