I've gotten sick of hearing accusations of "whataboutism" over the past few years. For anyone lucky enough not to have heard the buzzword, in Anglophone media this refers to public figures (especially Trump apologists in recent years) replying to any accusation by shifting the conversation to "what about" the others' faults. In other words it deliberately invokes the Biblical mote in another's eye. In all fairness it is often abused as a cheap rhetorical cop-out, but the label has increasingly grown just as ludicrous.
For one thing, it's called deflection, and leave it at that. It's not a new invention. For another, the accusation of whataboutism itself can just as easily be a form of deflection. Attempting to keep the public's attention focused on only one issue serves the same purpose as fabricating a distraction. This has become especially obvious in the media's unwillingness to condemn the massive amounts of opportunistic violence, vandalism and looting at Black Lives Matter riots, as any criticism is quickly claimed to merely distract from the real issue of police brutality.
Well, thirty people killed, billions of dollars in damages, countless businesses crippled and jobs lost, not to mention the less tangible social costs, has all been looking like a pretty damn captivating distraction, and "look in exactly that other direction while I rob you and torch your house" is not a moral high ground.
So yeah, what about your domestic terrorism?
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