Okay, Rowan, what you said is great, except for the part about 'hate crimes'. There's no such thing as a 'hate crime'. If someone commits an act of violence against someone else, it's a crime, full stop. Motivation is irrelevant. The whole idea of 'hate crimes' is a very slippery slope because it has been used against those who preach the law and the gospel to anyone who disagrees with it, especially in the LGBTQ crowd.
Very fair point. Although it could be said that any murder is a "hate crime", because the Bible closely associates hatred and murder. When I think of the phrase "hate crime", I tend to consider it as an act of assault or murder motivated by hatred of someone's skin colour or nationality. However, the words "hate" and "hate crime" have certainly been used and abused by the MSM, and I do agree that the concept of "hate crime" is a slippery slope, so let me see if I can word that specific part of my post in a somewhat better way:
A white person may assault a black person, and this might be a true event. The mainstream media report it accordingly, and describe it as a "hate crime". But if a black person assaults a white person in the same town on the same day, it's crickets from the MSM, even though that is just as true. Or if they do report it, they don't call it a "hate crime", even though it may have been carried out for exactly the same motive (let's assume hatred based on skin colour, which is what racism actually is). Both are equally evil acts, but the MSM only care about the one that will "prove" their narrative. So they might spend hours or even days reporting on the first case, and devote a few minutes at most to the second. The conservative media will probably give a bit more time to the second case though.I hope that works better. I'm still using the phrase "hate crime" in this rewrite, but talking about how the mainstream media define it as opposed to using it directly myself, which was a bit sloppy on my part, actually. Their definition of the phrase certainly differs from my own, but I should probably restrict it or eliminate it altogether from my personal vocabulary. The main thing I'm trying to get at is their double standards. They'll call one thing a "hate crime", but refuse to label the other the same way, even though they should if they wanted to be consistent.
Speaking of the mainstream media, and getting back on the topic of this thread, I came across
this interesting article on the BBC News site. (Just a warning to those who might read it: one of the photos in the story contains some female immodesty, although it's somewhat blurry. The rest of the article is fine. But if you don't want to be exposed to that one picture, avoid clicking the link.) What's intriguing about this item is how some people opposed to the COVID vaccines are forming their own communities and supporting each other. Telegram gets a mention (and not in a positive way, which is hardly surprising given the source of this article). There will likely come a day when Christians will have to do something similar. Of course, being an MSM article, there is naturally a lot of negativity about "anti-vaxxers", but it's more the idea of people creating their own separate communities and networks to work around discrimination against them that intrigued me.
