There's No Such Thing as “Too Soon”
Telling people not to politicize tragedies is just another way of politicizing them.
Conventional wisdom demarcates strict and narrow boundaries regarding how we are supposed discuss public tragedies in their immediate aftermath. In the days or weeks following mass shootings, acts of terror, riots, or natural disasters, we must limit ourselves to the expression of milquetoast condolences, meaningless “thoughts and prayers”, and impotent denunciations of the individual perpetrators involved, if applicable. More substantive critiques or commentaries about root causes or ways to prevent future occurrences are frowned upon as immoral, insensitive, and uncouth. Worse still, it would be “politicizing” a tragedy — using the dead, and especially the dead children, as pawns in one’s own political machinations “while their bodies are still warm”, like some kind of ambulance chaser or carrion bird. Anyone who violates this norm will be met with admonitions of “too soon” and “now is not the time.” This is wrongheaded, and we all inwardly know it. Telling people not to politicize tragedies is just another way of politicizing them, and what’s more, we don’t even follow our own advice.
Obviously, there are better and worse ways of speaking up in response to tragedy. There are certain circumstances that are, in fact, inappropriate, and there are certain audiences that are not productive to address. Getting into climate policy debates with the grieving loved ones of hurricane victims, or bashing one’s political opponents at the funerals of slain school children is, truly, “not the time”, and nothing worthwhile will come of doing so. We should strive never to be crass, mean-spirited, or offensive for the sake of provocativeness, and that ideal has no time limit; whether the tragedy was five minutes ago, five days ago, or five years ago. But the time to address why a tragedy happened is not when it has died down; the time to speak is when it’s at center stage.
When better to galvanize support for substantive solutions than when the issue is at the forefront of our minds? When better to strike than when the iron is hot? Far from demeaning the lives of the dead, this presents an opportunity for some good to come out of it. What greater honor could we bestow on the fallen than for their deaths to have been for something instead of the products of senseless and soon-forgotten random cruelty?
Lifting our pretend embargo on “too soon” doesn’t necessarily make it wise, however, to weigh in immediately after a public tragedy. For one thing, news reports of developing stories are notoriously spotty, and new information could later arise that casts the event in an entirely different light. Emotions can also run high in the wake of catastrophes, and, as social media can attest, people often say rash things in the aftermath of tragedies that they later come to regret. It therefore makes sense to take the necessary time, not out of a misguided social custom to somehow respect victims by “not politicizing” the event in question, but rather to collect one’s thoughts in a calm, cool, and rational manner, so as to make more effective points that are less likely to backfire.
Through all of this, the role of partisan hypocrisy is undeniable and unavoidable. Anyone who is in the habit of speaking publicly about current events is also in the habit of politicizing the issues they speak about, whether they want to acknowledge it or not. When children are mowed down in cold blood by a mass shooter, the left half of society wants to politicize the massacre by talking about enacting stricter gun laws. The right half, meanwhile, wants to politicize it by demurring that “now is not the time” because, for them, the right time to talk about tightening gun regulations is the 31st of Never. The Venn diagram of people who think it’s too soon to speak about X and people who think X should never be spoken of is a single circle.
Change the identity of the gunman from a disgruntled white incel to an Arab jihadi, however, and like flash mob participants acting in perfect synchrony, everyone does the hypocrisy shuffle. The right loses not a nanosecond in pouncing on the killing — now an act of “terror” — to push policies restricting immigration, gutting civil liberties, and maybe even creating Muslim registries. The left, meanwhile, clutches at their pearls and pretends to be mortified at this flagrant attempt to politicize the deaths of children “while their bodies are still warm.” When natural disaster strikes, the left seizes on the opportunity to tie it to climate change while the right decries such political opportunism with pompous faux-outrage. But if the Democrats are in power during the disaster, then clearly its handling was a colossal and disqualifying blunder by the blue team! So on and so forth with every kind of public tragedy. It’s politicization from every side, every angle, all the way down.
Folks sit atop their moral high horse seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are full of shit, the horse is made of shit, and the road is paved with shit. It’s time we dropped the pretense that politicizing tragedies is somehow in poor taste and admitted openly what we all already know: nothing is “too soon”, everyone has an agenda, and everything is on the table. And may the best and most manipulative bullshitter win.
See also: “Reverse Psychology Is an Untapped Political Gold Mine”
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