[Disclaimer: This is a rant. I don't know Adam Lanza or his mother. I don't know anyone's motives; the latest I've heard is that Mr. Lanza killed his mother and wanted to destroy everything that she loved (more than him, presumably.) Facts are unknown and there are many missing pieces which may require changes to this story. I'll post a corrected story in due time if anyone is interested, but for now this is a rant.]
I get annoyed easily; news reports of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut not excepting.
News is always asking people what they think about the events, and many people seem to have responses at the ready. I haven't heard it yet, but I fully expect words like "evil" and "coward" to be bandied about by the same people who say there's no need for stricter gun control laws.
This is where I get most annoyed and want to put the blame for the shooting - this shooting and arguably every mass shooting for the past decade - squarely on Fox News.
You may consider this a logical incongruity but in the past few years and especially in recent weeks there have been a lot of shootings. Of the most recent, people are drawing parallels to the Columbine shooting, of which there are none. But there was a recent mass shooting at a mall in Portland, Oregon and not too long before at a movie theatre in Colorado. I've heard mention of the Virginia Tech shootings. Oddly, the one shooting I haven't heard about again is the massacre of a group of Amish children in Pennsylvania. This is the only shooting even remotely similar to the one in Connecticut.
Meanwhile, Florida has issued it's one-millionth concealed firearm permit. The nation is, in my opinion, now officially gun-crazy.
But why? From where does this insanity originate?
The only news broadcasting station that I hear repeatedly harp on about guns is Fox News. Their incessant message about Obama taking away people's guns is absolute baloney and a present danger to American society. I'm not going to say that only crazy people listen to Fox, but crazy people listen only to Fox. Fox helps this along by repeating that everyone else is lying to them. It is the central repository for conspiracy theorists and paranoid schizophrenics in mainstream society.
And it's all lies. The only gun law Obama has signed has been to expand the ability of people to carry firearms into national parks. And now, because of the rash of shootings, there will come a serious effort to bring about changes regarding gun ownership in America.
I do not support additional gun control laws, but it's going to happen, and it's going to happen specifically because of Fox News and their appeals to the insane.
I briefly happened to catch the local Fox News broadcast coverage of the Connecticut shooting as well. I watched less than three minutes before the anchor suggested that public schools are too dangerous for you to send your kids there, thus promoting their alternate views of private, at-home, conservative education over, you know, actual knowledge.
Meanwhile, I think of the girl in Pakistan who was shot in the head for the sole reason that she was a girl and she was in school. I think of all the shootings over there where girls' schools are routinely shot up because their religious education teaches that women are not to be informed. And I think of all the parents that send their daughters to school anyway because it's the right thing to do. And I'm saddened for the future of America.
I'm sad because our society tolerates this Fox nonsense. I'm sad that Fox is encouraging us to be more like Pakistan: to fear public schools and turn into ourselves - just our families and our guns and our tribes and our ignorance and superstition; to believe that anything we try to do together as a society is a failure. I'm sad that there is no meaningful distinction between Fox News and the Republican Party and I'm sad that either of them still exist.
And so I wonder.
Would we be better off without guns? Do they serve a role in society? Why does a female substitute kindergarten teacher feel the need to own a Glock, a Sig Sauer, and a .223 Bushmaster M4 carbine rifle?
Can we rely on our second amendment protections to make us a more thoughtful society: not to rush to say that guns must be banned, but to peer into society itself to see the diseases within. Can it be argued that the tumult of gun violence augers a early-warning signal that society itself is deteriorating? That the deaths of a few innocents, as tragic and incomprehensible as they are, are sirens warning us to take heed, and save us as Americans from the deeper, truer threats to our civilization?
Or are we content to just say that this is what evil cowards do and that guns are both the problem and the solution?
Well said
ReplyDeleteI don't understand your suggested link between Fox News and mass shootings. I have seen no data that suggests anything other than simply accessibility.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your last question, call them evil or cowards, I think it is simply what PEOPLE do. The same thing happens in China, frequently. There is no Fox News. Perhaps there is NO news. People have a lot more to be depressed about there. But the end result is less severe when you have to attack with a hammer instead of an assault rifle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010%E2%80%932011)
It's a tautology to say that if guns magically disappeared from the world that gun violence would end as well. And I'll certainly grant that accessibility to more dangerous weapons necessitates more violent capabilities. But that seems different to me from what I can only describe as mass hysteria.
ReplyDeleteThere's always going to be the odd duck who goes on a rampage: the soldier returned from war with brain injury; the radical religious activist; the mentally unstable with tendencies towards violence. But it's the cult leader who persuades and corrupts who present the greatest threats.
But unlike Jim Jones or David Koresh, these killing sprees aren't localized like most other cults: these events are occurring nationally. So make no mistake: I am calling Fox News and their on-air personalities and their advertisers our generation's Manson Family. I don't think it matters who the specific shooters are - we know who they are: the gullible and infirm, the paranoid and passionate, the oppressed and powerless and programmed. And they're not the problem: all they can do is kill people, but the propagandists can destroy civilizations.
I haven't watched the news since last night because the details will eventually come out and I don't need to listen to the nonsense spewed by the talking but otherwise vacuous heads. However, I did hear that the shooter was being home-schooled (this from the news) and that the mother "probably" needed the guns "for protection" (this from the shooter's aunt). These are very specific indicators I think supporting my thesis.
So I heard about the shootings Friday at lunch, and I immediately blamed Fox News. This seems completely irrational so I had no choice but to hold my tongue. But there comes a point where these things are no longer mere coincidence. Direct evidence? No, and probably not ever.
I don't know what's happening in China. I would expect, at a minimum, 4 times the amount of violence there as an American Columbine. Columbine was kids-on-kids and China has 4 times the population so the rest is just math. Your Wikipedia article mentions property disputes, other general disputes, and lack of social security and health insurance (of all things). In those cases gun access certainly supports your point; but I think we're talking about completely different things.
I don't watch FOX news, so I really can't comment on how I feel the channel has influenced American behavior. I am pretty sure that millions of people do watch that channel, and considering there have only been a handful of mass shootings, it would be a really tough correlation to prove, even if all of the gunmen involved were regular FOX viewers.
ReplyDeleteI do feel that, as Americans, we are becoming desensitized to violence, and more disturbingly, less concerned with the welfare of our fellow human. We could blame violent video games, movies, two simultaneous wars, the media, access to guns or lack of mental health care. I think this problem is fed by more than one hand.
Or perhaps psychopathy has nothing to do with our exposure to violence, maybe it's just the way some are wired. Some people think nothing of taking human life and some will lay down their own life to save others. While that mad men was firing at will, there were women sacrificing their own lives to save those children. The heros still out-number the monsters. And while the nation tries to figure out why some lunatic threw a tantrum and murdered 20 babies, maybe we should be more focused on the women who stepped up in a time of utter chaos and fear, and protected those children with their own lives. Let's celebrate the heros who made sure the remaining children survived, and maybe the next cry-baby with mommy issues will think twice about getting more attention for the good-guys.
I know I said don't watch FOX news, but I've seen enough of the Daily Show to get the gist of what Rupurt Murdoch is doing there. And the avid followers are most likely mis-informed and self-loathing and whatever...but I can't say there are many news channels that I watch with confidence. I can't put any of the news channels on while the kids are awake, because I never know when a story about a horrific event will pop on the screen. There is so much sensationalism all around, it is disturbing.
Maybe we healthy-brained folks are the problem....maybe WE have become too desensitized to violence that we can no longer recognize a psychopath before he strikes.
Thanks for the comment, Christina. My mind is all-a-muddle with different tacks to reply, so I think I may just ramble a bit.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, yes, the world is predominantly made up of good people, though you won't hear about it on the news unless there's a church nearby. And while my vitriol is directed towards Fox News specifically, I've always abhorred the news here in Florida. My only other reference for local news is in Maine, and here's what happens when reporters from Florida show up in Maine: http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/raw-cop-confronts-wftv-reporter-in-missing/vGD9T/
The comments are split 50/50; I'm not sure towards which opinion you lean.
And I'm not talking about Fox News viewers specifically either. If Fox News is the harlot, their viewers are those too weak to resist the temptation, but bring their diseases back into their families. (And please note that wile I use this example intentionally, I do not mean to disparage prostitutes.)
I also do not believe -- though I do not know -- that this shooter was crazy, or evil. I believe he was a child. I do not believe that violence in video games or violence in movies or violence on TV news inspired his action. His first victim was his own mother. I do not believe it had anything to do with "desensitization" or anything of that ilk. I suspect the problem is something more insidious, more dangerous.
So instead, I'm going to breach Godwin's Law and invoke names like Joseph Goebbels; I'm going to invoke books like Animal Farm and Mother Night; I'm going to draw parallels to the Hitler Youth (only because my knowledge of history is limited, but so are most others'). And this is why I say we already know the shooter in my first comment, and why the shooter is virtually irrelevant.
Instead, I tire of things like this, which I read today in USA Today:
Yet, the National Rifle Association and other gun owners' groups have claimed for just as long that Obama has some sort of secret plan for more gun restrictions.
In February, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said: "All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term."
Perhaps this is sufficiently subtle that most people don't pick up on it, but it's a virulent little brain worm that wriggles it's way into the subconscious and eats at the soul of society. This is the danger; and while all news shares culpability in their mimicry and cowardice to refute such nonsense, Fox News provides the breeding ground where these lies evolve into pandemics.
[Publishing quickly because power is flickering...]
UPDATE: In my original post, I wrote:
ReplyDeleteOddly, the one shooting I haven't heard about again is the massacre of a group of Amish children in Pennsylvania. This is the only shooting even remotely similar to the one in Connecticut.
Allow me to breach my otherwise impeccable modesty, and point out the following:
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/raising-adam-lanza/report-newtown-shooter-researched-several-mass-murderers/
Update 3:00 pm: A source told the Stamford Advocate that state police discovered that Lanza had collected information on ”virtually every mass murder” in the U.S. and abroad, and had exhibited a particular interest in an October 2006 shooting at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Penn. that killed five school girls and the gunman. “There was a lot of material on the Amish case,” the source told the paper.
I'm not even sure what to say at this point. Why is it that shooting appears so immemorable?