Tortured metaphor watch:
Imagine for a moment that you broke your left wrist. In excruciating pain, you rush to the emergency room for treatment only to run into a doctor who insists on examining not just your mangled left wrist, but your uninjured right wrist, rib cage, femur, fibula, sacrum, humerus, phalanges, the whole bag of bones that is you. You say, “Doc, it’s just my left wrist that hurts.” And she says, “Hey, all bones matter.”
If you understand why that remark would be factual, yet also, fatuous, silly, patronizing and off point, then you should understand why “All lives matter” is the same.
…or you’re not a doctor who knows pretty darn well that when somebody shows up in your emergency room with a ‘mangled right wrist’ then you had better make sure that the patient doesn’t, you know, have other broken bones. Or a concussion. Or internal bleeding. Or… you get the point, right? Because, yes, in case all bones do matter, including the ones that you didn’t check because somebody was screaming in your face about how you have to concentrate on cracked wrists until the end of time*.
Yes, I understand: it’s just a stupid metaphor. Indeed. It is a stupid metaphor, which is why Leonard Pitts, Jr. should have used a different one. It’s also being used to support an argument that isn’t nearly as popular as its adherents pretend it is:
Two out of three black people prefer the term “all lives matter” to “black lives matter,” according to aRasmussen poll released Thursday.
Only 31 percent of black people surveyed said that the statement “black lives matter” most closely comports to their own beliefs, compared to 64 percent who chose “all lives matter.”
This does not necessarily make the entire Black Lives Matter movement invalid: as my RedState colleague and friend Leon Wolf noted a few days ago, there are serious questions that can be and should be asked about police behavior, as well as our current criminal justice system. What it does suggest, however, is that – as usual – the Usual Suspects are busily trying to turn the whole thing into yet another way to squeeze a few more votes out for Democrats. We’ve seen this tactic before, and we’ll probably see it again.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Go ask an emergency room physician or nurse just how good the average patient is at describing how and where he or she hurts. Seriously. Go ahead. If you don’t already know the answer, you’ll probably find it rather enlightening.
/I/ think there are elements of our current system that move things in the direction of being a dysfunctional mess.
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Ultimately, we are either going figure things out and fix them, or we are going to be eating a regular cost in preventable violent disorder; riots, killings, and such.
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/That/ coming from someone who thinks Brown comes across as a violent man on weed behaving as a violent man on weed does. (I know there are folks who insist that stoners are /never/ violent. To hear those folks, weed is magic, a harmless panacea; stoners must be immortal, because they never die while high.) As for Gray, the most plausible ways for that fatal injury to have happened require his effort. ‘Cops did it’ is either a baseless argument that someone secretly murdered him with a single blow from a hammer, or an argument that all suspects should be routinely restrained in intolerable ways.
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Focusing on race and class to the exclusion of all else is going to ensure that nothing really gets fixed.
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People who only show up to the table when they want to vent outrage aren’t thinking or really discussing anything.
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Cops deal with a lot of very bad people. It has an effect on how they think. It can be demoralizing, or even make it seem like the best place for humanity is a slit trench.
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All lives mattering, not approving of murder, and every one deserving justice, is the only real basis for motivating cops. Fancy castles on clouds sentiments will not last in that environment.
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Find a street cop who is still motivated after five years and actually thinks Marxist victimhood narratives are real.
I think basic morality is pretty simple. When you have to make up little metaphors or go for extended length of time to explain your position maybe it isn’t the right position. I believe on this issue it should be simple to say that all lives do matter.
Perhaps they should consider a different name for the movement to address the policing and legal system issues that are mentioned here. I certainly want the system to be more fair, but I don’t believe that telling people you can’t say alllivesmatter is the way to Get there. You just end up alienating people that might ordinarily have supported your movement because they are not comfortable with the fact you oppose something as simple and straightforward as all lives matter.
How can “all men he created equal” apply if you cannot also say that alllivesmatter?
…. Orwell? (“Some animals are more equal than others”)
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The fail, in this cat’s opinion, is an old one – seeking vengeance rather than justice.
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Is what it is.
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Mew