The Fixation on Narrative
Steve Blizzard. Ronald Jeffers. Scott and Shirley Leavitt. All were killed by a random man suffering from mental issues in Hampton, GA,
You probably have not heard about them.
As the nation turns its attention to the three victims tragically killed in Jacksonville, FL, just consider those four names.
Unlike the situation in Jacksonville, FL, those four individuals were white, and the shooter was black. It did not make the national press.
It reminds me of the dozens shot and six killed at a birthday party in Alabama. The shooters were black, and the victims were black. No AR-15 was used. The same weekend, a white girl was shot and killed turned around in a man’s driveway in New York. The press and President, though, focused on a black boy shot by a senior citizen in Missouri. The boy, thankfully, survived.
It was all about the narrative. The dead were either black victims killed by black shooters without AR-15’s, or a white victim killed by a white shooter. They could not be used to amplify racial divisions and tensions. But the boy who survived the senior citizen trying to kill him through a door could fit the narrative and, unlike the people in East Palestine, OH, after the train derailment, the boy and his family got lots of presidential attention. I’m glad for the family and happy the boy survived, but let’s not pretend there was no narrative setting attempt in that.
Now, we turn to Jacksonville. A mentally deranged white guy with a manifesto killed three black victims at a Dollar General. The shooter had swastikas on his gun. We still don’t have the manifesto of the transgender shooter in Nashville, but we have this one.
It is a tragedy. It is senseless. It is part of the ongoing national spiritual collapse. But it is also deeply relevant to note which stories get the coverage and which manifestos get rapidly revealed.
It is also why fewer and fewer people are willing to believe what they hear, and so many prefer conspiracies to truth. After all, so many of what were presumed to be conspiracy theories seem to come true these days. Wuhan lab leak, anyone?
Every single week in Atlanta, and many days during the week, a black person will kill another black person. This is without fail, and I’ve lived here almost 30 years. The media is 🦗. Also, don’t you dare state the obvious because BLM or something like that. It seems BLM only matters when the narrative plays to sow strife. All lives matter! I’m sick of the nonstop violence throughout the US, but when there’s no truth and morals are looked down on this is the end result and nothing changes…
WE know this is ultimately a spiritual battle but as people drift further and further away from God, Christians are seen as crazy and the secular world rises. God says to continue to share His Word and the Gospel of Christ no matter what the world says about us so that is what we do. It is hard to see and hear but God is not done with us yet so keep preaching, teaching, and reaching. There was a prayer vigil last night for those who died in Jacksonville. We need to continue in prayer but we also need to use our voices, our feet, our hands and our vote to draw people together and not apart. Morals, ethics, values, and character do matter. Also, let’s focus on the real issue of mental illness whether the media wants us to or not. We have accepted their slanted approach to events for too long. We can demand better but not if all we do is sit in the living room and yell at the tv news.