Still Able to Grieve?

It seems almost certain that our ability to empathize or experience emotions of any sort can be gradually sanded down with repeated overuse.  I can't help but think that the extreme version of that phenomenon is likely a major factor in the syndrome afflicting many troops returning from horrific battlefield experiences now designated as PTSD.

The fear-mongering that was so much a part of the Cheney white house zeitgeist (and has continued courtesy of the numerous terrorism-mongers still sadly in positions of "authority" and "esteem" in this country) likely has had that effect on many of us to varying degrees.  Should you be so unfortunate as to attend with any regularity to conservative talk radio or faux news, the chances seem quite high that actually having normal sympathetic reactions to the misfortunes of others has at least been crippled, if not disabled for you, and you should seek professional help.

While I admit to feeling overwhelmed by the shooting in Connecticut, possibly partly a result of emotion overuse, there's still enough left to be fully PO'd that these things continue to happen.  The routine tendency to resort to violence in this country, far above the level in almost every other at least 1st or 2nd world country, is truly appalling.

Obviously I am not equipped with answers or solutions.  But I still have strong feelings.

I get almost all of my news from the Net these days, as well you may.  We do subscribe to the one remaining local daily newspaper, and television news does crop up here at least briefly several times a week.  But neither of those tends to be timely or worthy of high ratings on sourcing or actual journalistic qualities as I judge them.

It's hard to deny we have a serious gun problem in this country.

Yet there are many who reject that assertion rabidly, to the point that even mentioning the topic of gun control has for years routinely garnered a withering NRA-driven (and presumably -funded) blowback.  It has been many years from what I can tell since it was even possible to engage in an adult-level discussion on the topic of "gun control" (yikes, I can almost feel the radiation those words are likely to attract) and what sorts of options might be available.  A rational considering of restoring the ban on assault weapons does not seem like it deserves an absolute conniption by the ted nugent sycophants.  But that's the way it has been for ever so long.  Please may this awful latest episode help to open some dialogue on that topic as well as our horrific increasing tendency, at both the federal and even more the local level, to fail to provide care for those with mental health issues.

Morgan Freeman makes an excellent point, highlighting the media's total obsession with sensationalism, frequently to the exclusion of all else.  Our society is so disgustingly fame-obsessed that of course there are those who will do "almost" anything to get media attention:

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You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? 

Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

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You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.

I definitely take exception to that "instead of pointing to gun control," but otherwise point very well taken.  Of course there is far more that is needed in terms of gun control, merely beginning with actual enforcement of laws already on the books.

As far as the freezeout on any real discussion of the gun issue:

How many right-wing media voices were citing the shooting in Portland, Ore., this morning to trumpet the sanctity of gun rights and say we shouldn’t even talk about gun control? How many of them were making this perverse argument at the very moment the Newtown, Conn., shooting was taking place? And how many of those voices are the same ones who, when it comes to other issues, decry “political correctness”?

The answers to these questions should be obvious: almost certainly, a lot of them. And that is a sign that for all the conservative histrionics decrying liberal “political correctness,” the most powerful and most committed “p.c. police” in America are on the right — specifically, those on the right who claim that any critical discussion of the limits of the Second Amendment must be suppressed because they insult the political ideology of conservatives.

This form of “political correctness” is so routinized that we barely recognize it as the censorship system that it truly is. And as mass shootings become a staple of American life, this system is now ubiquitous.

We saw it after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., when conservatives rolled out their hallowed Now Is Not the Time talking point to insist that it was inappropriate to even discuss limits to assault-style weapons and ammunition magazines. We saw it last week with the over-the-top reaction to Bob Costas daring to suggest that America have a tempered discussion about gun control in the wake of the Kansas City Chiefs murder-suicide. We see it once again here in Colorado, where Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is today facing withering criticism for merely floating the idea that his Legislature debate gun control in the upcoming session. And, no doubt, we will see it in the wake of the Newtown shooting, when the right will inevitably insist nobody has any right to criticize existing gun policies in America (except, of course, to criticize them as somehow too restrictive).

The message here is simple: to even raise tempered questions about gun regulations is to risk not merely being exposed to a barrage of substantively misguided pro-gun rhetoric — but to almost guarantee that you will be told you have no inherent right to make the queries in the first place.

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Regardless of where you come down on the gun control question, that truism shouldn’t be debatable — that is, unless you are somehow so afraid of a mere conversation about gun regulations that you have joined the right’s p.c. police.

And our stumbling, fumbling national leadership certainly warrants corrective action on this topic as on numerous others.  You only need to know where to look (let us hope they do):

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney may wish he could take back these words. But pressed at a press conference to talk about whether the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy would motivate President Obama to push to renew the assault weapons ban, Carney replied:

It does remain a commitment of his. What I said is, today is not the day, I believe as a father, a day to engage in the usual Washington policy debates. I think that that they will come, but today is not that day, especially as we are awaiting more information about the situation in Connecticut.

I beg to differ. Today is precisely the day. It’s true, we still don’t know details about the weapons the school shooter, or shooters, used in Connecticut. But we know that there are too many guns, and that the gun lobby fights all efforts to regulate them. The grief and outrage sparked by the Newtown tragedy ought to strengthen the arguments of those who fight for sane restrictions, as well as broader mental health services.

Guns in national parks. Guns in church. Guns in schools and day care centers. All over the country, the spaces that used to be gun-free zones are now open to them. According to Mother Jones, in 1995 there were an estimated 200 million guns in private hands. Now there are about 300 million, a 50 percent jump. Yet BuzzFeed found that President Obama only mentioned gun control three times in the last campaign.

It’s not just the NRA who are political villains in this story: the right-wing Koch-funded ALEC has been pushing to weaken gun laws too. In fact, the lame-duck right-wing GOP-controlled Michigan Legislature just passed an ALEC-backed bill allowing concealed loaded guns in schools, churches and day care centers, and abolishing the county panels that controlled concealed-pistol licensing.

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Jay Carney’s a decent guy, but the notion that we can’t politicize tragedy, and we can’t let a horrific act like a school shooting immediately galvanize action, contributes to paralysis and impotence. As Colin Goddard, a Virginia Tech victim, noted on MSNBC Friday: “We see these tragedies, we express our condolences, and that’s where it ends.” It can’t keep ending there. Leaders need to lead.

There is more at each of those three links.  Homework, you might call it.  Yeah, yeah, eatcher broccoli.