A Deeply Violent Culture

The cartoon We Come in Peace by Ted Rall writes,

“After mass shootings, liberal opponents of gun rights love to say that violence is never the answer. But their messaging on war, violence, militarism, even assassinations, sends a completely different message about their hypocrisy.”

This one got me thinking that America’s refusal to pass gun-control/background-check measures to stem the violence is one place where we’re not hypocritical! We are the world’s largest arms merchant, flooding one disadvantaged nation after another with high-powered weapons. It only stands to reason that what we do to them, we should do to ourselves. At least with violence at home, we can pretend that we think gun violence is ok — which is why we export it. Does that give us an ethical leg to stand on? Of course not. But, it allows us to pretend that we do.

I’ve seen cries for new gun-control laws. Honestly, though, I think it should be “improve your care for the mentally ill, and also take measures to address the toxic nature of your culture that leads so many people to become mentally ill in the first place.”

I know we’re not supposed to blame the shooter, we’re supposed to blame the gun. I don’t blame the shooter. I blame the culture that was the petri dish in which he grew. Did you read any of his manifesto? He was 18! He was so far gone already. It would have been a long road to reintegrating him into anything resembling a normal society.

You have to understand that, from the viewpoint of a society in which these things don’t happen all the time, pretty much most of the population seems mentally ill or ill-adjusted or morbidly unhappy and, therefore, strongly susceptible to the kind of toxic stew of hare-brained ideas that this guy had.