Considered opinion be damned

Social and political discourse has taken even more of a downturn this week, following the massacre in a gay night club in Orlando at the weekend and the fatal attack on a pro-EU MP in Yorshire yesterday. All too soon after each tragedy, blame has been heaped on people whose considered opinions go against what is being promoted by government as the only acceptable mode of thought. In the U.S. that means that anyone who supports the second amendment or does not agree with gay marriage or transgender bathroom and locker room use is somehow complicit in the atrocity in Orlando. In the U.K. it means that anyone who is for Brexit is somehow complicit in the murder of Jo Cox. This is of course outrageously wrong and profoundly insulting. Worse, the unlogic involved, held with such deep conviction, is a similar form of madness to that which animated the actual culprits.