The Art of War by Sun Tzu is largely predicated on misdirection as a tactical strength in warfare. In it, he advises:
Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.
The attentive viewer, the careful listener can spot even the cleverest misdirection. It's that nagging feeling, that twinge in your gut, the suspicion that something just ain't right. You can sense a con and you don't like it. You can tell that something sinister is at play. The media has perfected an agenda-setting approach to news that is deception at its finest. They control the narrative, the framing, the output of information.
So when the media swarmed around the February 14th massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many of us suspected that something else was going on.
Why all the focus on this killing? Why now? Why such vigor? Why didn't the Las Vegas killer provoke the same reaction? And how did the entire thing turn into a circus of protests and outrage so intense that most of us forgot where we should even be looking?
As Sun Tzu wrote, "In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
Politicians on the Left, along with the media, have a permanent anti-gun stance that they will move mountains to promote.
According to the media, our attention was meant to be trained on two things: Guns and the teenager victims. Politicians on the Left, along with the media, have a permanent anti-gun stance that they will move mountains to promote.
Just like we've seen lately with the media suddenly caring about children on the border when it's actually been a problem for years, for the Left, the end always justifies the means. When it comes to guns, they have their "guns are the problem" story and they stick to it religiously.
The Left is motivated on all fronts to skirt the truth and broadcast their doctrine.
In the Parkland case, the media framed a group of smart, charismatic kids, who, being kids, loved the chance to be rock stars, without ever realizing that they were tools in the whole scheme — and don't balk at the term "rock star." It's not hyperbole. The group is currently on a 70-city tour, the "March for Our Lives: Road to Change."
From the start, Hogg and his classmates proved impervious to criticism. They actually thrive on it — painting themselves as victims of gun rights advocates has become part of their foundation. Using these children as representatives, the media was able to push a gun-control narrative, and accuse critics of verbally abusing children anytime that narrative was challenged. Where, then, should we redirect our gaze?
For starters, there's the mass killer himself. Since 2010, police had been called to the killer's home 39 times. Multiple requests were sent to the Broward County Sheriff's Office to have the killer's cache of rifles taken away. Online, he posted pictures of bloodied dead frogs and said things like: "I wanna shoot people with my AR-15" and "I'm going to be a professional school shooter." In another post from his now-deleted Instagram account, the shooter posted a photo of a bullet-riddled target and the caption: "Group therapy. Sometimes it works." The killer had been expelled from the campus he would eventually terrorize and teachers were told to remain alert. Even the FBI had been warned. The agency received important information about the killer but chose not to follow up.
The school district, the Broward County Sheriff's Department, the FBI — all failed to stop the killer.
The media has portrayed the killer as a product of Trump's America when in reality, he is a shining example of incompetence at every level short of the office of the President. The school district, the Broward County Sheriff's Department, the FBI — all failed to stop the killer.
It's no secret the Broward County Sheriff's Department has conducted themselves poorly from the very start. The day of the killing, police from nearby Coral Springs arrived at the school to find officers from Broward County hunkered down behind their squad cars outside the school. According to news sources, the Coral Springs officers have expressed resentment toward the Broward Country officers "about what they perceived to be a dereliction of duty."
Then there's the car. No, not the Lamborghini (which turned out to be on loan from a local dealership, in 2014, for a Toys for Tots charity). I'm talking about this car — or, more specifically, this tweet:
Our new #dodge #charger. Do you like the paint job? pic.twitter.com/l6EfKxuaru
— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) June 24, 2018
The car, like most repurposed police cars, is more than likely a confiscated car, meaning the department did not spend taxpayer dollars on it. The issue here is more about how tone-deaf the tweet is. And, honestly, given the Department's record, they probably should've gone with a Prius or even a scooter. Or, better yet, they could've auctioned the car off and donated the money to a meaningful cause. Maybe even just wait until a year or so had passed, then get back to tweeting like a teenager again.
Although, in this case, a tweeting teenager, Kyle Kashuv, made far more sense of the whole ordeal with his criticism of the Broward County Sheriff's Department:
Coward of Broward https://t.co/cItenVsRDO
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 28, 2018
Most recently, we learned about Andrew Medina and David Taylor, two security guards at the school who could have prevented the entire killing, but chose cowardice instead. One of the guards, Medina, saw the killer approaching the school and failed to phone in a code red.
"I'm telling you I knew who the kid was," Medina told investigators. "Because we had a meeting about him last year and we said, 'If there's gonna be anybody who's gonna come to this school and shoot this school up, it's gonna be that kid.'"
Regarding the killer's threat, Taylor said the same thing: "Not only me, but all of our security personnel. I would say everybody [knew]."
Yet, upon seeing the killer approaching the school in military gear, Medina radioed Taylor, who briefly encountered the killer, then huddled to safety in a janitor's closet.
To make matters worse, Medina had previously sexually harassed Meadow Pollack, one of the victims of the killing. He'd asked her out for drinks, so aggressively that she complained to the school. A report on the matter notes that she and another student "became so uncomfortable with Mr. Medina's comments and actions, they sought out different routes to their classes in an attempt to avoid him."
Why has the media largely shrugged off or ignored new details surrounding the killing? As facts continue to emerge, we gain a fuller picture of the tragedy that occurred that day, and the myriad mistakes that brought it to life. Yet the media has chosen to depict the shooting as strictly a gun-related issue.
No one is pursuing truth — everyone is just persuing victory.
It wasn't the guns — it was the combination of a mentally disturbed teenager, with city, county and school district corruption. But in order to cover their own backsides, public officials were eager to cede the spotlight to the photogenic Parkland students, who in turn provided the media with the holy grail of anti-gun propaganda material.
In the words of Sun Tzu:
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
From gun-control to border-control, the nation's over-the-top rhetoric has reached an unsustainable level. No one is pursuing truth — everyone is just pursuing victory.
Now, outside the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, Trump supporters are throwing feces at people like monkeys. I can only say "monkeys" here because I'm talking about Republicans. I'd be a racist if I said that and it was Democrats flinging poop.
At what point does this rhetoric spill over into civil war? It would be easy to do with 400 million guns out there. Even then, God forbid, it wouldn't be guns causing the war, it would be the people. Guns didn't cause the Civil War in 1861 either.
If we're going to survive, we have to stop all the instant outrage and ground ourselves in principles and in the truth.
