On violence and civil society, part two

Three reactions. Beth thinks hard about what went wrong:

Of course gun control is part of it, but easy access to guns in America is not new. Unless we look at what makes America a society so in love with violence - as reaction, as solution, and as entertainment - there's no hope for change. Furthermore, who were the other people killed yesterday, or the day before, their deaths financed by my tax dollars? Is any one of those deaths a lesser tragedy? And who were the young American men or women who witnessed or caused those deaths, sent into war at 18 or 20, emotionally and psychologically unprepared, ignorant about the people and country to which they were going, yet heavily armed, and placed in a position of fear and, sometimes, chaos? What is the damage being done, in my name, to countless people who, if they survive their tour without physical damage, then return to a society which has, meanwhile, been websurfing for Prada knock-off handbags and worrying about whether Jennifer Lopez is getting a divorce?

and Rana picks up on the entertainment value of violence (in reply to Beth):

I do find personally compelling the argument that part of this is due to a culture of violence in this society, a culture that is taken as normal and unremarkable. I still remember, when I was an undergraduate nearly two decades ago, this one incident that sums it up well for me. At the time I was living in the Russian-speaking dorm, along with several other students and a native speaker visiting from Moscow. They were showing "The Shining" one evening, and I invited this woman to attend with me. She was horrified and terrified by the violence in the film - and the implied violence - and was even more astonished and disturbed by the fact that many of the people in the audience were laughing at Jack Nicholson's behavior.

while the Rockstar Mommy rages against the sensationalizing, rude, crude, intrusive media coverage:

Showing these things over and over and over again is doing absolutely nothing but finally giving this kid —this psychopathic mass-murdering cowardly crybaby little fuckhead— the attention and fame that he wanted. Did they learn nothing from Columbine? Did they not hear him reference Columbine in his video? Do they not realize that all this over-saturation will only put more ideas in more kids' heads? ...

I'm sick to death of this kid getting this kind of attention. He was a coward. He was a pussy. He was a self-centered, schizophrenic freak. No wonder he didn't have any friends. A good kid with issues doesn't turn into a psychopath, it's born into them. There is no glory in what he did. What he did does not make a statement. We are not in "The Matrix." This is not "Natural Born Killers." Killing people because you're sad does not make you cool. And killing yourself so that you don't have to deal with the consequences makes you the lowest scum of the earth, just below the news media.

Quite right.