A tip o' the hat to Stilton Jarlsberg (obviously, a pseudonym) for his insightful comments on last weekend's mass shootings. Here's an excerpt.
These gruesome murders are not about, nor caused by, politics. Rather, they are the unavoidable and perhaps unstoppable product of a deeply diseased culture. A culture which has become the perfect growth medium for psychopathy.
. . .
After all, who's going to notice or care about garden variety insanity in a world which routinely describes everyone as murderous: baby killers on one side, Earth-destroying Nazis on the other. The stakes are absolute, the "other" is the enemy, and words are just words . . . until they become actions.
The social mechanisms which formerly prevented these massacres have crumbled. The bonds of family, friendship, and faith. A shared sense of community. Optimism about the future. Moral certainty and personal responsibility.
Instead, we now live in a crowded world of communal loners, all staring at their phones instead of the world and people around them. Politicians and media figures preach an unsubtle and dangerously divisive message of absolutes: you are either on this side or that, either all good or all evil. There is no middle ground - only calls for action. Calls that the wrong people are hearing.
There's more at the link.
I highly recommend clicking over to Stilton's place to read the whole thing. It's worth it.
Peter
3 comments:
As always, the losers hear what they want to hear and are easily led astray and hate seems to drive them when they lose their way. Demonizing one's political opponents is a bad idea. Giving voice and tongue to every new racist bit of bile is a bad idea and yet there seems to be no way to stop it. We are all citizens of Albi just before that crusade. I don't much like the people who rushed out to destroy. I only see one side doing that now but as we see lately, some of the Albi are giving vent to the rage that follows demonization.
Actually, I would have to disagree. America has gone through many periods, with ever shifting lives of adherence to faith, family, and so on, and so far as I can tell, this mass shooting business is relatively new.
Needless to say, I have my own list of contributory causes.
1)A combination of many, well know, gun free areas and the unlikelihood of capitol punishment.
2) The 24/7 news cycle, which virtually guarantees that a White shooter will be a national sensation.
3) The teasing squeamishness of the news sources, that attract attention without actually showing the perp's shot-to-doll-rags or executed body. In short, potential copycats are bombarded with the temptation without being exposed to any downside.
4) The absolute determination on the part of a class of political opportunists to use any and all possible cases to promote their political agenda. Frankly, the Left's panting excitement over mass shootings is reminiscent of the KKK's slavering over black-on-white rapes...not incidentally another example of Democrat perversion.
Thanks so much for the share! I appreciate your kind words.
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