Sometimes there is no understandable reason
Terrorists and shooters aren't always driven to violence by politics or religion.
Twitter is usually terrible, but it’s never more terrible than during the aftermath of a mass shooting or apparent terror attack. Since that cursed social media platform was invented, a lot of people have decided an unfolding tragedy is the perfect opportunity to attack your political enemies.
That was certainly the case after a man apparently tried to crash his car into the grounds of the Capitol Building, claiming the life of a Capitol Police officer before he was shot dead. Admittedly, it wasn’t long after an overwhelmingly white crowd of Trump supporters stormed the building, but that doesn’t make the rush to judgment any less irresponsible.
The turns quickly tabled when the attacker turned out to be an African-American member of the Nation of Islam, and it became right-wingers’ turn to assume his religion and ideology inspired his actions. But, so far, the evidence suggests that if he was incited by anything, it was his inner demons:
The man who rammed a car into two officers at a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol, killing one of them before he was shot to death by police, had been suffering from delusions, paranoia and suicidal thoughts, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. Investigators believe it was an isolated incident from a disturbed young man.
Video of the Friday afternoon attack shows the driver emerging from the crashed car with a knife in his hand and starting to run at the pair of officers, Capitol Police acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told reporters. Police shot the suspect, 25-year-old Noah Green, who died at a hospital.
Investigators are increasingly focused on Green’s mental health as they work to identify any motive for the attack, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on Saturday on condition of anonymity. The official said investigators had talked to Green’s family, who spoke of his increasingly delusional thoughts.
In online posts since removed, Green described being under government thought control and said he was being watched. He described himself as a follower of the Nation of Islam and its longtime leader, Louis Farrakhan, and spoke of going through a difficult time when he leaned on his faith. Some of the messages were captured by the group SITE, which tracks online activity.
“To be honest these past few years have been tough, and these past few months have been tougher,” he wrote in late March. “I have been tried with some of the biggest, unimaginable tests in my life. I am currently now unemployed after I left my job partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey.”
Green supported an extremist movement, but that’s not necessarily what made him carry out this attack. Correlation is not necessarily causation.
Some atrocities are indeed carried out in the name of a religion, a political ideology, or some combination of both. We usually know this because the terrorist isn’t shy about saying so. But there are also many cases where a would-be mass shooter or killer is drawn to murder for the same reason he may have been drawn toward a radical ideology or fundamentalist religious movement.
In addition to social media misinformation and conspiracy theories, hate speech and - in the United States - easy access to firearms, we should also be looking at the availability of mental health services for people who desperately need them. But that isn’t nearly as much fun as looking for ways to use terrible crimes against the people you already didn’t like.
As the producers of 60 Minutes are forced on the defensive for what looks like a shoddy hit job on Florida governor Ron DeSantis - you know CBS News done messed up when even Democrats are coming to his defense - I was reminded of an earlier incident when this long-running news program was caught blatantly stretching the truth in service of a political agenda.
I don’t mean Rathergate, though that was embarrassing enough. I’m referring to an earlier incident when 60 Minutes almost destroyed one of the world’s great car companies based on deeply dishonest bullshit:
Let’s set the scene: it’s 1984, and Audi sales had shot up 48 percent on the strength of their new aerodynamic 5000, the latest hot weapon in the perpetually-escalating suburban driveway status war. It was a stunning slick piece, and Audi was on a roll.
Suddenly, the war turned bloody. Moms in runaway Audi 5000’s were mowing down their little kids in the driveway and pinning granny against the far garage wall with the four-ringed front of the Audi.
This had never happened with the Olds Cutlass Supreme Brougham Coupe, the previous “hot” suburban car Mom traded in for her Audi. The German car certainly felt different. Unlike the Olds’ wide push-bar brake pedal – that some Americans still operated with their left feet – the Audi had that weird, small brake pedal, set kinda’ close to the gas pedal.
And these Audis had a mind of their own. No matter how hard Mom pushed on the brake pedal, the Audi kept on charging, right through the garage door with granny on the prow. This despite the fact that the little five-cylinder mill only cranked out 130 horsepower. And the top-notch four-wheel disc brake system probably could generate well over 600 equivalent horsepower.
Apparently, the brakes were failing at exactly the same moment that the gas pedal decided it had a mind of its own. Perfectly plausible, at least to the 60 Minutes crew, the Audi (non)drivers, and much of the media and public.
About as plausible as ignoring the police report of the most dramatic victim on the show, Kristi Bradosky, who ran over her six year old son. That report said “Bradosky’s foot slipped off the brake pedal onto the gas pedal accelerating the auto.” Denial isn’t just a river.
Ed Bradley’s 17 minute “investigative report” aired on November 23, 1986. Between interviews of the teary-eyed “victims” (drivers) of unintended acceleration swearing their feet were on the brake pedal, CBS showed a clip of a driverless Audi lurching forward on its own.
Viewers didn’t get to see the canister of compressed air on the passenger-side floor with a hose running to a hole drilled in the transmission. An “expert” had rigged the Rube Goldberg device to shift the big Audi into drive and, like any automatic-equipped car, move forward (unless the brakes are depressed).
The clip was blatantly deceptive AND totally irrelevant. Nobody claimed driverless Audis were taking off and killing kids and grannies. Mom was always at the wheel, pushing the 5000’s “brake” pedal with all her might.
In 1989, after three years of studying the blatantly obvious, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued their report on Audi’s “sudden unintended acceleration problem.” NHTA’s findings fully exonerated Audi and some other implicated foreign makes”.
The report concluded that the Audi’s pedal placement was different enough from American cars’ normal set-up (closer to each other) to cause some drivers to mistakenly press the gas instead of the brake. 60 Minutes did not retract their piece; they called the NHTSA report “an opinion.”
And this wasn’t the last time a network news program got caught embellishing a story about auto safety:
It was a story that literally blew up in NBC’s face. On Nov. 17, Dateline NBC aired a report titled ”Waiting to Explode?” questioning the safety of some General Motors trucks. To try to ensure dramatic footage, the show’s producers allowed incendiary devices to be strapped to trucks for a crash-test demonstration. When GM discovered the setup, the carmaker sued NBC for defamation and temporarily removed its ads from the network’s news programs. Then came the ultimate embarrassment: Dateline anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips were ordered to read a 3.5-minute on-air apology to viewers and GM.
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TV’s need for sensational images, however, seems to have been the driving force in Dateline‘s case. To get a picture of an exploding truck, the show broke basic journalistic rules against staging events. ”Producers are under phenomenal pressure to illustrate everything with strong visual images,” Katz says. ”Ironically, they had a fairly substantial story — they simply illustrated it inappropriately.” (In fact, four days before GM sued NBC, the automaker lost a $105.2 million suit brought by the parents of a Georgia teen who was killed when his pickup exploded.)
There are many reasons why trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. Some of it is because of malicious actors trying to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation. But some American major media outlets’ wounds are self-inflicted.
Speaking of cars (though not necessarily safety), weren’t American and Canadian roads supposed to be packed with Chinese vehicles by now?
From BYD to Zoyte, just about every large Chinese manufacturer has issued a deluge of promises about breaking into our market over the last decade — including most of the names we’ll be mentioning below. Consider this sort of the “Where Are They Now?” of evergreen automotive content about regional disparities. Because very little has moved in regard to China’s involvement with the North American auto market and the current geopolitical climate doesn’t make us think that’s likely to change anytime soon.
But it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.
Zotye Automobile International was last recruiting U.S. dealers in 2018 and even had a couple of importers on its payroll to help it figure out how to start shipping vehicles to the West. It even had a distributor set up in California with HAAH Automotive Holdings helping to build its sales network. Everything looked great and Zotye USA was supposedly months away from opening its first batch of franchised dealers, all of which had been right-sized to cater to a small Chinese brand with a highly limited lineup.
The company’s first entrant for the North American market was to be the T600 — which happened to be a doppelganger of the Volkswagen Touareg and should not be confused with the similarly named Kenworth Class 8 truck. Retailing in Asia for as much as a secondhand Honda CR-V in good condition, the T600 looked as though it could take the credit risk segment by storm and was supposed to arrive in 2020. The brand had also stated that is had been making major strides in electrification in 2011, vowing to deliver one to the U.S. by 2015. But neither showed up.
What happened instead was Zoyte Autos’ controlling shareholder declaring bankruptcy in September of last year and Ford Motor Co. dissolving its planned EV partnership with the brand in China. However Blue Oval claimed the decision was made due to CCP government policies having changed to a degree that it no longer felt confident it could adhere to regulatory measures under the existing plan.
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We’re obviously still waiting and I think that’s ultimately what we should take away from all of this. Chinese brands aren’t universally up to the challenge of delivering the kind of vehicles Americans are accustomed to. Most of these SUVs are already derivative in their designs and too meek in terms of the powertrains and features being offered (though not always by that much, if we’re to be objective). Consumers who just want an affordable crossover would probably be well served by a GAC or Zoyte product. But those accustomed to more of everything might find them lacking in too many areas to make the almost assuredly lower MSRPs feel sensible.
You’re probably wondering how that’s any different from what happened with Japan or Korea, both of which broke into our market selling products far below the typical size and engine displacement at prices well under the typical exchange rate. While there are plenty of similarities, Japanese and Korean automobiles arrived long after their relationship with the United States had bottomed out completely (war). Meanwhile, the Chinese opinion of the West continues to degrade, and survey data here would suggest the same thing has been happening on our end. Throw in the trade war and China’s extremely vocal commitment to expanding its own global influence and it’s genuinely difficult to imagine there being enough enthusiasm to see Chinese cars being sold in sufficient numbers to warrant the international commitment.
There is one Chinese car company active in North America - Geely, which now owns Sweden’s Volvo and the British sports car maker Lotus. Meanwhile, Shanghai-based SAIC is selling cars in Britain and Australia under the revived MG brand.
Maybe others will arrive at some point. So far, though, the Chinese automaker invasion looks like one of these things that is right around the corner, and always will be.