A Hillary Clinton voter was sentenced last week to up to life in prison for shooting two acquaintances, and killing one, during an argumen...
A Hillary Clinton voter was sentenced last week to up to life in prison for shooting two acquaintances, and killing one, during an argument over the 2016 election.
John Kevin McVoy Jr., 40, of Corona, California, is set to serve 35 years to life over the death of Susan Garcia, whom he shot in 2017 along with her husband, Victor Garcia.
He was convicted of murder in November after a jury trial.
According to the Long Beach, California, Press-Telegram, McVoy and Victor Garcia played in a garage band together. McVoy had visited the Garcias’ home in North Long Beach on Jan. 10, 2017, for band practice when Victor Garcia asked him whom he had voted for in the general election.
After McVoy said he’d voted for Clinton, Garcia told McVoy to leave his house.
At this point, McVoy took out a pistol and shot Garcia in the head, according to the East Bay Times.
Prosecutor Irene Lee told jurors McVoy then turned and shot Susan Garcia. Lee characterized both shootings as “kill shots,” the East Bay Times reported.
However, defense attorney Ninaz Saffari told jurors McVoy shot Victor Garcia after Garcia picked up a can opener, which McVoy may have thought was a knife, according to the Press-Telegram.
Saffari said Susan Garcia was shot as McVoy and another band member who was present struggled for control of the gun, the Press-Telegram reported.
Susan Garcia was holding the couple’s 2-year-old child at the time, but the child was not injured, the Press-Telegram reported.
Victor Garcia was in a coma for months and underwent two brain surgeries.
McVoy pleaded self-defense, but the jury and judge clearly disagreed.
“There’s no reason to be pointing a gun,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Laura Laesekce said at the Dec. 27 sentencing. “Mr. Garcia should not bear the weight of this crime.”
I can’t speak to the heart of this clearly troubled individual, but this incident is certainly concerning in light of recent cultural trends in the years since the 2016 election.
Thanks to the polarization of politics fostered by the mainstream media, too many Americans no longer see political disagreements as the natural product of individuals in a free society — they see opponents who should be treated as enemies, and think political violence is justified.
And are we surprised? When our nation was founded, the vast majority of people still believed in a Creator God to who had established the inherent rights and natural laws of the universe that superseded the authority of earthly rulers who are so wont to try to give themselves more power over others than they are rightly entitled to.
Now, millions of Americans believe that the universe randomly sprang into existence, that morality is relative, and that it’s justifiable to hate those who have different opinions about what constitutes moral policymaking.
In a society in which unborn life is seen as disposable, traditional values are seen as unforgivable, and the existence of a Creator, in whose image we were created and who gives us our rights, is seen as impossible, is it any wonder hatred is seething in the hearts of men?
When God is removed from His rightful place as ruler of the universe in the eyes of men, they inevitably find something to fill the eminent position in their lives that He ought to take.
Far too many Americans have replaced faith in God with promises of a state that can provide citizens with all their needs, end all their inconveniences, and even claims to be able to cure the hearts of men of the sins of racism or misogyny.
Secular statism is a very scary form of idolatry that goes far beyond this one horrific instance of political allegiances gone way, way too far.
A political ideology that feeds on these desires, like Hillary Clinton and today’s Democratic Party, demands that adherents hate those who stand in the way of achieving such political goals. Hence, the twisted high-tech cultural revolution of cancel mobs and shame culture has risen to prominence in the days since Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.
The hateful, divisive vitriol about Trump and, now, the unvaccinated or COVID-skeptic, antifa-style rioting and violence, the fever pitch cries from the left about “racism” and “white supremacy” that destroy every last shred of nuance and compassion in our national discourse, it’s all a symptom of the deranged and misguided promises of modern progressive politics.
And, let’s be fair, it’s not only one-sided. Those of all political persuasions are falling victim to the tendency to dehumanize others based on their beliefs and can easily thus justify sinful hatred and animosity towards others.
The God of the New Testament does not call us to hate our enemies but to love them.
When we face political division today, we are not just facing people who vote differently from us. We face those who have been conditioned to see us as irredeemably different from themselves in light of our beliefs; those who do not even understand that it is our common Creator that gives us our shared and equal worth before both Him and in the eyes of the earthly system we have created in the United States.
We don’t have a culture crisis. We have a worldview crisis. And the truth of God’s word and what it says about who we are, and who we ought to be toward one another, is the only thing that will bring us back to a nation that fears him and trusts in his design for earthly government.
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