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Moral panic in the culture of fear

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This is big story right now on most of the mainstream national news sites, (although to its credit at least the Times isn’t treating it like the outbreak of World War III):

 

An Ohio State University student plowed a car into a campus crowd, then jumped out and started stabbing people with a butcher knife before being shot dead by police Monday morning, officials said.

Ten people were taken to hospitals after the ambush, but none of the injuries were considered life-threatening. The incident was initially reported as an “active shooter” situation, but the suspect did not shoot anyone.

A police officer was on the scene within a minute and killed the assailant, likely saving lives, university officials said. “He engaged the suspect and eliminated the threat,” OSU Police Chief Craig Stone said. [emphasis added]

This actually sounds quite a bit like something that happened down the street from me just last month, which I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard about unless you live in the Denver-Boulder area, and maybe not even then:

BOULDER — A man wielding a machete on the University of Colorado campus was shot and killed on Wednesday morning after ignoring orders to drop his weapon — becoming the third person killed by Boulder law enforcement officers this year.

CU and Boulder police defended the use of deadly force inside the Champions Center on the north side of Folsom Field. Officers shot the man inside a stairwell after responding to a report of a man inside the building armed with a machete.

“Given the weapon the suspect was armed with, given the statement already made to our initial victim and given the nature of how he was maneuvering through the Champions Center, we believe it was in the best interest of the university that it was a deadly-force situation,” CU campus Police Chief Melissa Zak said at a news conference.

At 9:15 a.m., a patient who was being treated at the sports medicine facility at the Champions Center encountered the suspect in the parking lot outside the building, Zak said.

The suspect made harassing statements and followed the patient, who was not identified, into the building, Zak said. Officers from CU and the Boulder Police Department arrived and confronted the suspect on a stairwell between the fourth and fifth floor of the Champions Center.

“They ordered the individual to drop the machete,” Zak said, “and he did not drop it, at which time an officer-involved shooting occurred.”

Obviously other people suffered injuries in this morning’s incident, although none of those injuries are apparently life-threatening, while the CU incident merely involved threatening behavior.  But it would be safe to say that in a country in which 45 people are murdered on an average day, neither of these incidents would seem especially noteworthy or of more than strictly local interest.

Hey, but what if we’re talking about a terrorist attack of some sort?

Officials said the former Marine shot and killed by police after entering a University of Colorado building wielding a machete displayed character “incongruent with Marine Corps’ expectations and standards,” but his friends said he was a “goofball” at heart who had overcome a rough upbringing to excel as a drill instructor. . .

Officials have not revealed any possible motive for the incident, but a source close to the investigation told the Daily Camera the suspect was a “religious zealot of some kind” and who had been overheard talking about “looking for sinners.”

The source said the suspect approached a woman sitting in her car in the parking lot outside the Champions Center and wrote a message referring to the Ten Commandments on the vehicle before he entered the sports-medicine facility.

In a video posted on his Facebook page, Simmons speaks out against the “Black Lives Matter” movement.

“Get the (expletive) over it,” Simmons said in the video. “They want the human population to stop focusing on all the money and the conflict, they want you to focus on the racism and that stuff.”

Looks like we’ve got another mentally disturbed white guy on our hands.  Not a story, in other words.

Meanwhile, Twitter has some thoughts on today’s incident:

You insisted Ohio take in Somali Muslims knowing the inevitable terrorism they’d bring Ohio State University is on you

Looks like Kasich will eat any and everything.
Idiot John Kasich shoves pancakes down his throat while shoving terrorists down Ohio’s.

John Kasich’s comments all about him. No mention of Somali Muslim Terrorist. Just “we may never know why”. I know why. Duh.

Thanks John Kasich for inviting 45,000 Somali terrorists to Ohio. We will R.E.M. her this at your next reelection

John Kasich speaking – STFU – You asked for this!

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