nate33 wrote:fishercob wrote:nuposse04 wrote:This may sound terrible, but when I first read about the SC church shooting, outside of sadness, I thought "I guess we were due for another huh?" I'm not surprised by these anymore. A culture that is as violent as ours and allows access to violence makes me think these massacres are somewhat normal for the US. So when people on FB say, they can't believe it, or something of the like... I think..."Really? Cause it seems to be common place these days." Its sad, worse that I expect this level of appalling behavior to manifest yearly. Doubt we see any real change for the next 10 years. I'm hoping education will eventually teach people to hate less...but you can't really fix pyschosis that easily (previous massacres).
I don't think that mental illness is any more prevalent in our society now than it was 100, 200, or 500 years ago. I just think people have easy access to high powered weapons. You are right, this will continue to happen.
Furthermore, I don't think mass violence, hate crimes and social injustice are any more prevalent in society today than they have been in the past. Indeed, I suspect that, statistically speaking, things steadily improved a great deal up until the Zimmerman/Martin incident. But once that happened and the media determined that they could make a lot of money selling hate and racial animosity, things have gotten worse.
I don't know how one quite draws a line between the media determining that they can make money and something being an increasingly prevalent topic of conversation. See, people have always had crazy ideas. But isn't 1965 with three news networks and no internet. New media has provided a platform for people with those ideas -- aliens living among us, 9/11 was an inside job, the government is trying to control us with vaccinations -- take your pick.
Ideas have been democratized; the good and important ideas and conversations flow to the top. George Zimmerman became a "marketable" conversation, to borrow from your term, because it resonated with people. The Caitlin Jenner and Rachel Dolezal stories are interesting because people can't relate to them for the most part, so they have/will have relatively short shelf lives. But people talk a lot about Zimmerman and Ferguson and Eric Garner and #BlackLivesMatter because it's deeply relatable to them and it seems that things are not only getting better (when we as a society should WANT for these thinsg to get better), but they are getting worse.
I am curious about your hypothesis that mass violence isn't more prevalent now than in the past. Certainly mass shootings are, right? When was the last one before Columbine? Now they're almost regular occurrences -- Newton, Aurora, Oak Creek, VA Tech. If something big happened again next month or next week, would it surprise anyone? I don't think so, and I think that's a big change from 30 years ago.
At quick glance, this article would appear to support that:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/18/11-essential-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/I don't have a solution. As Induveca has said, the horse it out of the barn and guns are everywhere. If the government tried to outlaw guns like Japan or Australia, hundreds if not thousands of lives would be lost in the subsequent enforcement battles. I know there are LOTS of people in this country who would sooner die then allow the government to take their assault weapons.
Things will continue status quo because they aren't bad enough. Maybe if the economy collapses or the income gap continues to grow and poor, armed militias start killing wealthier people to take their stuff, the military will intervene and we'll have a god old-fashioned chaotic civil war.
Enjoy your Friday, everyone!
