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On Tuesday’s Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham trotted out one of many Fox Information viewers’s fave golden oldies: Reefer Insanity, child!
One can think about your typical Fox Information viewer watching the section late into the evening, leering within the course of his sixth Busch Mild with one thing approaching feral concupiscence. The bleary define of blonde American banshee Laura Ingraham fires up his once-languorous rods and cones.
“Shut up. Shut up!” he bellows to nobody specifically. “Shut up. Laurie Inglemanson is discussing the very actual and not-at-all-controversial connection between weed and mass shootings! I knew it. Now go fetch my beer!”
Certainly, whereas Republican politicians’ and pundits’ superpower stays the flexibility to stroll amongst us with an utter lack of disgrace, Fox Information viewers seem to have developed a preternatural expertise for lacking irony. Or for failing to know that they’re nothing however credulous marks, whose willful naiveté regularly will get spun into gold by means of an countless sequence of MyPillow and Trumpy Bear adverts.
However earlier than it will probably promote extra right-wing tchotchkes, Fox first should regale its viewers with its personal number-one product: sedatives for getting older white people frightened by a altering world.
After taking a number of jabs at President Joe Biden (Fox hosts repeatedly mock him for his talking model and the issues he says, in some way neglecting to notice that The Former Man regularly acted like a glitching Furby and had an encyclopedic data of issues that weren’t true), Ingraham received into the meat of her section on the uniquely American epidemic of mass shootings. Predictably, that meat was loaded with goopy fats and gristle—and nonsense.
Elie Mystal is on Day by day Kos’ The Transient podcast right now
The gist? It’s not the weapons. No, it will probably by no means be the weapons. It’s the weed, man! It’s all the time the weed. Seems the Uvalde shooter’s grandma didn’t let him smoke weed, so clearly which means the weed—and never the AR-style rifles he purchased on the tender age of 18—brought on the bloodbath. I imply, how might or not it’s any clearer than that?
Ingraham then went on to debate some correlations that instructed a hyperlink between hashish and violence—with out really proving something.
Watch:
(Partial) Transcript!
INGRAHAM: “Former New York Instances reporter Alex Berenson has written extensively on this topic. ‘A 2012 paper within the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, inspecting a federal survey of greater than 9,000 adolescents, discovered that marijuana use was related to a doubling of home violence within the U.S.’ Then there’s this, the Nationwide Library of Drugs. ‘Current illicit and medical marijuana is of a lot greater efficiency and extra prone to trigger violent conduct. Excessive-potency marijuana is a predictable and preventable reason behind tragic violent penalties.’
“My query tonight is, why isn’t there a nationwide dialog occurring proper now about this? Why aren’t reporters doing extra to demand info on this potential drug use, on this case and others, each illicit medicine and pharmaceuticals? Antidepressants have lengthy been recognized to be an issue for some younger individuals. Or are all of us simply going to faux that Joe confiscating all of the 9 mms or Beto operating a gun buyback program goes to heal and shield our youth? Is that what we’re hoping?
“You see, I’d slightly function in the true world, and that world is much more difficult than the anti-Second Modification, anti-gun activists would counsel. At any time when there’s a societal, cultural, familial, and non secular deficit, dangerous issues are going to hurry in to fill it. Weapons, gangs, medicine, then there can be hurt to others or self-harm. And till we’re trustworthy about all of this, younger individuals will proceed to be pawns in a political sport.”
Now, at this level, your bullshit meter ought to be clanging and flashing crimson. If hashish is behind this rash of gun murders, in spite of everything, shouldn’t we be seeing waves of mass shootings in Amsterdam? Isn’t it odd that the homicide price has dropped precipitously because the early ‘90s, at the same time as each day hashish use amongst younger adults—one of the crucial crime-prone inhabitants cohorts—has shot up?
Contemplate this “blunt” conclusion from a 2017 College of Washington research that examined the influence of hashish legalization on violent crime.
Outcomes point out that the legalization of marijuana, each leisure and medical, doesn’t enhance violent crime charges. In distinction, marijuana legalization might result in a decline in violent crime similar to murder, theft and aggravated assault.
Wait, the researchers decided hashish legalization might really result in a decline in violence? How come they by no means point out these research?
In the meantime, you’ll be shocked to study that the previous New York Instances reporter Ingraham constructed her argument round has been trotted out by Fox Information earlier than. In fact they’d solely point out The New York Instances if they’d fuck-all past this dude’s already debunked blathering.
Following two mass shootings in 2019, Fox host Tucker Carlson interviewed Berenson on his present—again when he was nonetheless form of pretending to care about human lives sufficient to not inform individuals to forgo their vaccinations.
PolitiFact was swift to take a machete to Carlson’s anti-cannabis hatchet job.
“That is absolute nonsense,” stated Katherine Newman, interim chancellor on the College of Massachusetts, Boston and the creator of a e-book on college shootings. “There is no such thing as a hyperlink in any way between marijuana and excessive violence.”
Different specialists advised us there merely isn’t sufficient of a scientific consensus to attract Berenson’s conclusions.
In the meantime, a number of researchers have taken situation with Berenson’s conclusions.
However [Berenson’s] e-book has been a supply of controversy because it was printed in January. A public letter signed by 100 students and clinicians refuted a few of its central findings and accused Berenson of cherry-picking information and presenting correlation as causation.
Ah, sure, correlation and causation. The legendary double-headed hydra of rank bullshit. One might additionally say hashish use is strongly correlated with my sitting on my patio, by no means going wherever, and by no means bothering anybody. It’s a correlation that’s held regular for years now. What does all of it imply!?
Republicans are bending over to this point backward to pin these shootings on something apart from weapons, their heads are lastly inside attain of their pure docking stations. But it surely’s all—fairly predictably—nonsense. The Japanese love video video games, however Japan’s gun homicide price stays vanishingly small. Different rich nations have excessive charges of single parenthood, however mass shootings stay uncommon all over the place however right here. And, sure, the Dutch have tolerated hashish use for many years, but our price of gun violence deaths is almost 18 occasions theirs.
In fact, Fox Information isn’t all that within the fact—or in fixing seemingly intractable issues. No, together with Mike Lindell’s quotidian foam sacks, they’re promoting their viewers hulking laundry a great deal of cozy affirmation bias.
It’s straightforward sufficient to see by means of, however sadly, it really works. Ingraham is aware of that higher than most. And that, expensive people, is why she does it.
Take a look at Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, together with the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this hyperlink. Or, for those who choose a take a look at drive, you possibly can obtain the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low value of FREE.
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