On May 24, an 18-year old young man murdered 21 people, 19 elementary school students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. This particular mass murder is actually 21 family tragedies, a community tragedy, and yet another national tragedy of a type that has become commonplace in America. The horror and grief associated with frequent and seemingly random mass murders in public spaces has become a terrible new normal in the United States of America. Contrary to statements by many politicians, bureaucrats, and pundits, America's mass shootings and mass murders are neither incomprehensible nor inexplicable. Nor are most Americans unable to understand why they occur. They happen again and again and again because our so-called leaders are unable or unwilling to take the necessary actions that would substantially reduce their number and frequency if not prevent them altogether.
For all they may have in common, each shooting is unique and so too is the life and experience of each shooter. The young man, a boy really, who became a mass murderer in Uvalde is widely reported to have been bullied in school and in social media fora because he had a lisp and a stutter, and it is likely that he dropped out of school at least in part for that reason. Studies have shown a reciprocal relationship between bullying in school and exposure to violent media product. Regarding the Robb Elementary school shooter's possible motives, Steven McCraw, Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said during a press briefing on Friday, May 27, "OK. we know the individual was also into cyber gaming in that regard." The Uvalde shooter was an avid video gamer and had engaged in self-harm, cutting himself with a knife. Was the troubled young man's bloody rampage at Robb Elementary motivated by a desire for vengeance? Was he a copy cat killer, imitating other young mass murderers? Was he acting out behavior of a type he had experienced and enjoyed vicariously in violent video games? If he left no manifesto, unlike so many other young mass murderers, or if writings he may have left are withheld from the public, we may never know the answers to these and other questions. Even so, that growing up in a violent culture has negative effects on children becomes ever more painfully obvious with each such tragedy. But of course we already know that or we should because doctors and social scientists who study violence in popular culture and its effects on the young and not so young have been warning about the harmful effects of violent media product for decades, to no avail. The evidence, thousands of peer-reviewed studies, a body of work that is overwhelmingly persuasive, is readily available for public review. Brave souls, many of these physicians and social scientists who study gun violence: often they become the targets of video and cyber game industry public relations flaks who cite industry-funded outlier studies and deny that there is any relationship whatsoever between violent media product and gun violence. Gamers themselves often react by issuing death threats against those who study the effects of violent media product and attempt to educate the public about the associated risks. Here are links to two papers, the first a comprehensive overview, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics:
https://publications.aap.org/
Ours is a society in which mass audiences including naive and impressionable children have long been systematically conditioned, taught by the entertainment industry, aka Hollywood, and the gun lobby, to suspend disbelief, to turn off their critical thinking ability regarding the use of violence in order to experience catharsis and enjoy violent and hyperviolent entertainment fare featuring guns, gun violence, violent criminality, and torture. Inundating popular culture with violent and hyperviolent depictions of gun violence as entertainment has what you might call a Variety of negative effects.
The unsurprising results of decades of war, war propaganda, and constant exposure to fictional violence glamorized and glorified in lucrative and socially-destabilizing entertainment fare freighted with political messaging are everywhere evident in American life and are proving to be disastrous. Last year, our country experienced 692 mass shootings and 28 mass murders and other gun violence incidents in which 1,560 children (313 ages 0 to 11 and 1,247 ages 12 to 17) were killed, among more than 45,000 gun violence deaths and more than 24,000 suicides by gun. Suicide by serving and former military personnel is another ongoing national tragedy. So too is the ongoing epidemic of opioid addiction mortality caused by illicit drugs and by FDA-approved pharmaceuticals manufactured, marketed, and distributed by American corporations under the wandering eyes of a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy and inept or corrupt elected representatives who cater to super-rich criminals.
Did you know that Abbott Nutrition, now in the news for having failed to responsibly operate its baby formula plant thus causing a nation-wide shortage of baby formula, is a division of Abbott Laboratories, a multinational corporation with revenues of more than $43 billion last year? Between 1942 and 1999, Abbott Laboratories was one of the nation's largest if not the largest producer of methamphetamine hydrochloride, a potent central nervous system stimulant with such a "high potential for abuse and dependency" that "many doctors are either unwilling or unable to prescribe it." Abuse of the drug has been associated with violent psychotic episodes including murder and mass murder. Abbott halted production of its dosage form of methamphetamine in 1999, citing "manufacturing difficulties" as the reason for discontinuation. Still approved by the FDA, the drug is legally manufactured and distributed in the USA, while the illegal manufacture and distribution of the drug is common.
Our nation's law enforcement officers face increasing risk and stress in an increasingly violent and drug-addled society awash in semi-automatic weapons. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), undiagnosed and untreated, has long been epidemic in America. Learning how to cope with PTSD and deal with it in ourselves and in others is an essential life skill. That is but one aspect of the blowback of perpetual war, the ubiquitous prevalence of violence in popular entertainment fare, and war propaganda.
Reports of the death of the anti-war Left in the United States have been greatly exaggerated. Some may say anti-war sentiment is dead in America, but that is yet another lie in the long litany of falsehoods that so regularly come rolling off the tongues of well-heeled War Party propagandists. The War Party? That's spelled MICIMACC.
Big media moguls, as they have for decades, are busy studiously ignoring or censoring almost all serious critics of US militarism run amok. Among those voices are widely respected retired diplomats, foreign policy experts in academia, accomplished journalists, distinguished retired intelligence professionals left and right,
With a hawkish bi-partisan majority in the Congress now falling all over themselves in the mad rush to allocate billions of tax dollars and authorize the immediate shipment of the latest high-tech US weaponry to Ukraine in support of the Biden administration's proxy war against Russia, what little dissent does get noticed by mainstream media outlets often comes from the Right side of the aisle and far-Right media commentators. While Western media outlets peddle stories about Russian soldiers raping children, Ukraine's President Zelensky, suddenly a media darling, meets with Western leaders in his country's besieged capital and speaks via video feed to distant legislatures demanding more and heavier weapons to wage war against the Russian invaders. Lost in the mainstream media cacophony along with the voices of the anti-war Left are inconvenient questions about broken promises about NATO expansion made to Russian leaders, Western provocations including the violent 2014 coup instigated by the National Endowment for Democracy that deposed a democratically-elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, the role of Ukrainian Nazis and other extreme-Right militants in attacks on Russian-speaking Ukrainians primarily in the easterns provinces of the country, and the all-too-real risk of a disastrous nuclear hot war between the US/NATO nations and Russia. The editorial board of the nation's newspaper of record recently changed its position on the Biden administration's proxy war against Russia, and even Henry Kissinger is now suggesting that Ukraine cede territory to Russia in exchange for an end to hostilities.
A great many Americans are at wit's end. Is it anxiety occasioned by the all too apparent evidence of climate change? Is it the shock and grief associated with a pandemic that has killed more than a million of us? Is it the most recent mass shooting in an American school, grocery store, movie theater, newspaper office, or place of worship? Is it the growing risk of a nuclear holocaust? Is it fear of a looming economic depression or even economic collapse? Is it disgust at the feckless incompetence and blustering of corrupt elected officials and bureaucrats who should know and do bettter? Is it sadness bordering on despair at the realization that the quality of life we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren is something for which we should be deeply ashamed, if indeed they are fortunate enough to survive their school days and inherit a planet on which life is possible. Is it anger or rage at the cavalier self-aggrandizing arrogance of the richest among us who have arrogated unto themselves the power to profit from the human suffering attendant upon disease, war, and other disasters often of their own making? Is it all of the above?
It can hardly be surprising that some accomplished public figures abroad are extremely concerned that, as George Galloway recently opined, "America has become an orgy of violence at home and abroad." The terrible gravity of this moment has thoughtful activists including Russell Brand reflecting on the past, reexamining priorities, looking both within and beyond themselves in search of answers, reasons to be hopeful, and something like an appropriate and reasonable response going forward. Both Galloway and Brand live in a nation that has had no school shootings since 1996 and only a handful of mass shootings in the past quarter century, fewer than America sees in the course of a typical week or weekend. “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion.” -Robert Burns, 1786
If we are minded to provide a bright future, a tomorrow worth living, for our children and our grandchildren, would we not do better to devote less time and energy to fear, loathing, war, and violence as entertainment today, and turn our attention instead to creative and nonviolent productive endeavors while we focus on our common goals and pay more attention to the wisdom of physicians and other healers?
Big media moguls, as they have for decades, are busy studiously ignoring or censoring almost all serious critics of US militarism run amok. Among those voices are widely respected retired diplomats, foreign policy experts in academia, accomplished journalists, distinguished retired intelligence professionals left and right,
With a hawkish bi-partisan majority in the Congress now falling all over themselves in the mad rush to allocate billions of tax dollars and authorize the immediate shipment of the latest high-tech US weaponry to Ukraine in support of the Biden administration's proxy war against Russia, what little dissent does get noticed by mainstream media outlets often comes from the Right side of the aisle and far-Right media commentators. While Western media outlets peddle stories about Russian soldiers raping children, Ukraine's President Zelensky, suddenly a media darling, meets with Western leaders in his country's besieged capital and speaks via video feed to distant legislatures demanding more and heavier weapons to wage war against the Russian invaders. Lost in the mainstream media cacophony along with the voices of the anti-war Left are inconvenient questions about broken promises about NATO expansion made to Russian leaders, Western provocations including the violent 2014 coup instigated by the National Endowment for Democracy that deposed a democratically-elected pro-Russian president of Ukraine, the role of Ukrainian Nazis and other extreme-Right militants in attacks on Russian-speaking Ukrainians primarily in the easterns provinces of the country, and the all-too-real risk of a disastrous nuclear hot war between the US/NATO nations and Russia. The editorial board of the nation's newspaper of record recently changed its position on the Biden administration's proxy war against Russia, and even Henry Kissinger is now suggesting that Ukraine cede territory to Russia in exchange for an end to hostilities.
A great many Americans are at wit's end. Is it anxiety occasioned by the all too apparent evidence of climate change? Is it the shock and grief associated with a pandemic that has killed more than a million of us? Is it the most recent mass shooting in an American school, grocery store, movie theater, newspaper office, or place of worship? Is it the growing risk of a nuclear holocaust? Is it fear of a looming economic depression or even economic collapse? Is it disgust at the feckless incompetence and blustering of corrupt elected officials and bureaucrats who should know and do bettter? Is it sadness bordering on despair at the realization that the quality of life we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren is something for which we should be deeply ashamed, if indeed they are fortunate enough to survive their school days and inherit a planet on which life is possible. Is it anger or rage at the cavalier self-aggrandizing arrogance of the richest among us who have arrogated unto themselves the power to profit from the human suffering attendant upon disease, war, and other disasters often of their own making? Is it all of the above?
It can hardly be surprising that some accomplished public figures abroad are extremely concerned that, as George Galloway recently opined, "America has become an orgy of violence at home and abroad." The terrible gravity of this moment has thoughtful activists including Russell Brand reflecting on the past, reexamining priorities, looking both within and beyond themselves in search of answers, reasons to be hopeful, and something like an appropriate and reasonable response going forward. Both Galloway and Brand live in a nation that has had no school shootings since 1996 and only a handful of mass shootings in the past quarter century, fewer than America sees in the course of a typical week or weekend. “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion.” -Robert Burns, 1786
If we are minded to provide a bright future, a tomorrow worth living, for our children and our grandchildren, would we not do better to devote less time and energy to fear, loathing, war, and violence as entertainment today, and turn our attention instead to creative and nonviolent productive endeavors while we focus on our common goals and pay more attention to the wisdom of physicians and other healers?
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