First of all, did you even hear about the explosive device planted and detonated outside the Alabama Attorney General's office back in February? The 'news' media offered some perfunctory coverage at the time, but consider the circumstances and context: Just a few days prior, the state's Supreme Court had issued a highly controversial ruling involving frozen embryos, with possible implications for in vitro fertilization. The subsequent uproar garnered national attention, as many journalists were eager to jump all over a story they perceived as politically beneficial to both their preferred political party, and to their unlimited abortion agenda. The GOP-controlled state government moved swiftly to defuse the issue with legislation (which former Vice President Mike Pence has argued was rushed and ill-conceived), but the firestorm lasted several days. And during that exact stretch, this happened -- via a statement from the AG's office:
“In the early hours of Saturday, February 24, an explosive device was detonated outside of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office building in Montgomery. Thankfully, no staff or personnel were injured by the explosion. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency will be leading the investigation, and we are urging anyone with information to contact them immediately.”
It was unclear who had done this, or why, but it's a virtual guarantee that if the partisan roles were reveresed, this would have triggered a five-alarm media firestorm. Let's say a leftist court had issued a controversial abortion-politics-related ruling, causing great uproar (the media would likely have celebrated their win and moved on) -- and within a few days, the leftist Attorney General of that blue state had a bomb go off outside her office. Regardless of the yet-to-be ascertained facts, the press would have loudly concluded that it was an act of politically-motivated domestic terrorism, likely committed by an anti-abortion zealot. Mainstream pro-lifers, especially elected Republicans, would have been peppered with questions and challenges. A 'national conversation' about political rhetoric and political violence would have been demanded. The White House would have prominently weighed in, following the lead of the media drumbeat. Pro-abortion-rights groups would have been up in arms, with pro-life groups thrown on the defensive. Social media would have been abuzz.
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An even more vivid 'what-if' scenario: Imagine the response if the bomb had been placed near the office of Maine's Democratic AG, who unilaterally abused her power to try to throw Donald Trump off the ballot in her state. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, knows exactly how the resulting meltdown would have looked. But in actual reality, nothing like any of that transpired. The episode barely registered a blip on the national radar. The IVF kerfuffle was too useful to the Left, and too problematic for Republicans, to be derailed by an inconvenient domestic terrorism incident. The avalanche of blame and recrimination, the resulting 'civility' panic, the smearing of an entire cause, and the high-decibel demagoguery simply never arrived. I'm consistent on these matters, but many in the journalism profession are not. Again, did you even hear about it at all? It was gone in a flash. But now it's back "in the news," technically, though not really. Why? Well, authorities say they've caught the suspect. If journalists broadly ignored the explosion when it first happened because the initial dynamics seemed uncomfortable for their preferred narratives, and the target was deeply unsympathetic to the sorts of people who comprise most newsrooms, this story is now destined to vanish from our screens. The media wants absolutely no part of this narrative. Local crime story. Nothing to see here:
Breaking exclusive: Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, the Antifa member suspect arrested over a nail bombing of the Alabama Attorney General's office, is trans nonbinary. Federal prosecutors have requested the court detain Calvert without bond because he is extremely violent and… pic.twitter.com/TjPP5q47SR
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 11, 2024
Left-wing, Antifa 'activism'? Check. "Pro-Palestine" solidarity keffiyeh? Check. They/them pronouns? Check. They're going to want no part of this one. According to the indictment, if the suspect released, he's likely to strike again, by his own admission:
The factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3142(g) weigh heavily against Calvert. Calvert is charged with a federal crime of terrorism. Calvert detonated a destructive device outside a govemment building. That device had the charactensties ot an IED, and Calvert added a substantial number of nails and other shrapnel to increase its destructive capability. Calvert has expressed his belief that violence should be directed against the government, and he has described his inability to control his own violent, aggressive impulses. The bombing at the Alabama Attorney General's Office demonstrates that his own words and his own concerns were not frivolous. Calvert is violent, and he is dangerous, just as he said. If Calvert is released, the danger to the community from a second oftense is greatly increased.
Fortunately, he wasn't detained in a deep blue jurisdiction with a Soros-aligned prosecutor, so it's unlikely that he'll be back on the streets anytime soon. I'm interested to see how this act of clear-cut left-wing domestic terrorism will somehow be excluded from the various lists that are designed to "prove" that such incidents are always right-wing in nature (the leftist trans shooter who murdered kids at a Christian school was magically not categorized as left-wing terrorism). Will anyone in federal law enforcement try to incomprehensibly claim the motive here is an unsolvable mystery -- or even apolitical? They've tried before. Overall, much like previous incidents involving similar fact patterns, expect this one to slip away into the ether, unexamined by incurious journalists who can't understand why their credibility is in the toilet.
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