The Disappearing Manifesto Syndrome

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

The recent Nashville attack by a “transgender” woman who targeted Christians in a Nashville school brings to mind a murderous attack with ominous parallels.

Some eight years ago, here in my own state of Virginia, a fellow named Vester Flanagan murdered two of his former coworkers in Roanoke and drove three hours north on the Interstate. He then pulled over to the curb and killed himself a couple of miles down the road from our home.

Who was Vester Flanagan, and why did he do it?

Flanagan had once worked with his two victims at a local TV station in Bedford County, but he left while they continued to build their careers. A black homosexual and avowed Obama supporter (he even wore his Obama pin on camera), he often worked as a gay prostitute. He clearly hated his coworkers who were everything he wasn’t: competent, happy, successful, heterosexual — and white.

Vester didn’t like whites. They had unfairly discriminated against him — by definition, apparently. He had reportedly tried suing the station on those grounds a year before, but the lawsuit was dismissed.

Flanagan carefully planned and carried out the ambush, which he carefully filmed live on his cell-phone, and then posted on social media. He mowed down victims Adam Ward and Alison Parker, both preparing to marry their prospective spouses (Flanagan envied this, having often complained bitterly on social media about his own failed love life).

Flanagan killed his coworkers because he was envious. Both of his victims were successful, happy, looking forward to a lifetime of joy with their new families, while Flanagan was a petulant loser who couldn’t get it on with any of his targets that he met in homosexual bars and on hook-up websites.

So why did Flanagan plan this ambush and carry it out so meticulously?

That’s a difficult question, because we live in an era in which we cannot call things by their proper names. The few news accounts that did appear blamed the executions on “a personal grudge.” Maybe Flanagan’s victims had made “racist comments.” And “the TV station says it has no idea about a possible motive for the killings,” one newspaper reported.

But then we learned that Flanagan had left a “Manifesto” — that’s right, a 23-page rant that was in the possession of law enforcement.

Capt. Paul Caldwell, the Bedford County officer who was in charge of the murder investigation, told me that he could not release Flanagan’s manifesto because “the case was still under investigation.”

A year later, Bedford County still refused to release the manifesto because the case was still “under investigation.” The possibility of labeling the murders a “hate crime” was never mentioned in news reports.

Unsurprisingly, coverage of the murders themselves disappeared quickly (even the bishop of the local Catholic diocese was silent. “Unfortunately, he does not have a statement at this time,” his spokeswoman told me a few days after the murders).

But that doesn’t mean the killings could not be hijacked and turned upside-down to serve the left’s agenda.

And sure enough, the grief-stricken father of one of the victims soon became a national advocate for “gun control,” repeatedly attacking the NRA and Republican officeholders in a zealous campaign that was covered extensively in the legacy media.

For any bereaved father, that task would undoubtedly be a heavy load. But to point not to guns but the gunman, and his possible motives — gay rage, racist resentment, professional envy, or outright and intense hatred — that would be a mountain too steep to climb.

We will come back to Nashville after the funerals of the victims have been held. In the meantime, if you come across a story about the massacre, bear in mind the four terms used in our introduction above: “transgender”; “woman”; “targeted”; “Christians”; and compare the frequency of their appearance with that of “guns,” which the Nashville’s major newspaper, The Tennessean, has already proclaimed as the only dimension of the massacre worth remembering at all.

And Here It Comes

Indiana’s House and Senate have passed Senate Bill 480, banning “gender transitioning procedures for anyone under the age of 18,” Fox59 reports from Indianapolis. The bill will now go to Gov. Eric Holcomb, who has not indicated his position on the bill. He will have seven days to consider it, once it is officially presented to his office.

Meanwhile, “transsexuals” and their advocates occupied the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort this week, while advocates of a “Trans Day of Vengeance” have announced a demonstration in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on April 1. “We want more than visibility,” their “trans day of vengeance” poster headline reads.

Democrats Cheer The Tranny Line

Joe Biden is pushing hard for gender dysphoria both at home and internationally. Last week “Senior Administration Officials” presented a “Background Briefing on Integrating the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons Into the Work of the United Nations” in front of the UN Security Council.

“On Monday, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will convene a historic meeting of the UN Security Council to talk about how the Council can better integrate concerns of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) persons in the course of carrying out its important mandate,” the unnamed “senior official” told members.

Members of the Security Council currently confront the possibility of World War Three on several fronts, a worldwide financial crisis, and a tilting balance of powers that affects every UN member nation.

But the U.S. must inform Security Council members firsthand of the highest priority of the United States as UN members contemplate the U.S. role as a world leader: Sex.

To drive the message home, Biden National Security Council spokesman John Kirby appeared in the White House press room last week to emphasize that “LGBTQ+ rights are…a core part of our foreign policy.” A few days later, Kirby threatened to impose economic sanctions on the African nation of Uganda if that predominantly Christian country enacts an anti-LGBTQ identity law recently passed by Parliament.

While U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power stirs up trouble in pro-family, pro-Faith Hungary, Joe Biden has barred Hungary from his annual “Summit for Democracy.”

Pro-abort Joe has raged against Hungarian President Viktor Orban for years, calling him “one of the thugs in the world” because he is pro-life, pro-family, and defies the secular agendas that the European Union attempts to force on his dynamic country.

And last, Nancy Pelosi. At Georgetown last week, she criticized the U.S. Catholic bishops over their opposition to abortion and transgender treatments for children, the National Catholic Register reports.

“They [the bishops] are willing to abandon the bulk of [Catholic social teaching] because of one thing [abortion],” Pelosi said.

Curious: The USCCB’s political agenda harmonizes comfortably with Pelosi’s, except precisely on that “one thing.”

When asked about her Ordinary in San Francisco, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who has barred her canonically from receiving the Eucharist, Pelosi said, “I figure that’s his problem, not mine.” She also criticized the archbishop for opposing LGBTQ+ ideology.

“Right now, our challenge is trans kids, that in certain states they will arrest you if you try to meet the health needs of your trans child. They will call that child abuse,” she said.

At Georgetown, Pelosi is among friends, and she received a welcome as warm as that extended to Obama in 2009 by Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, “I think I’m pro-life because I care about children,” Pelosi said. “Because I had five children in six years and one week.”

The crowd loved it.