2011-01-10 15:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldiscipline[from a reply to a locked post I made else-LJ]
I caught a bit of NPR's discussion of the question of whether or not he had seen a mental health professional, and if so, whether there had been any kind of diagnosis or whatever, but it was being framed in the context of firearms-purchase background checks (the NIX system, etc).
Michio Kaku put it this way on his Twitter feed:
"It's tragic that it is easier for the severely mentally ill to get a gun than adequate mental care."
People are complex, situations are complex; sound-bite reactions to them are not, and that's where the media that covers and surrounds politics and related issues makes its hay right now.
Sex sells; so does anger.
Passion = dollar signs.
"Us vs. Them" has been amped up to become "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists." The screeching disconnect caused by calling what happened this weekend an act of domestic terrorism (leaving aside whether that's an apt label for it, at least for the moment), and the recasting of folks of a certain political stripe in the role of Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 (as the Rude Pundit did this morning)... it causes an uncomfortable moment of self-evaluation that people who are invested in being solidly and stolidly "right" in their thinking are not necessarily willing to engage in.
Politics has become dodgeball, when it should be more like othello.
Do I blame the media? Indirectly.
Do I blame one political side more than the other? Yes.
Do I blame the shooter? Absolutely. Nobody else pulled the trigger, even though they may have wanted (and, heck, may still want) to.
An event like this presses so many hot-button issues that it's easy to get riled up (and, hey, at my place? there was quite a spirited discussion yesterday). I'm not sure that it's even possible to talk about a lot of the particulars without taking into context the inflammatory environment on both sides; there's Keith Olbermann's mea culpa from yesterday, though there has not been anything similar from the other side of the commentary spectrum...
... and that last sentence illustrates just how quickly that even calm discourse is almost impossible to divorce partisanship from a full conversation, because we ARE in a highly politicized society now (and a discursion and discussion on the roots of that would make for a wall o' text all their own).
It's donkeys, and elephants, and turtles, all the way down.
I caught a bit of NPR's discussion of the question of whether or not he had seen a mental health professional, and if so, whether there had been any kind of diagnosis or whatever, but it was being framed in the context of firearms-purchase background checks (the NIX system, etc).
Michio Kaku put it this way on his Twitter feed:
"It's tragic that it is easier for the severely mentally ill to get a gun than adequate mental care."
People are complex, situations are complex; sound-bite reactions to them are not, and that's where the media that covers and surrounds politics and related issues makes its hay right now.
Sex sells; so does anger.
Passion = dollar signs.
"Us vs. Them" has been amped up to become "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists." The screeching disconnect caused by calling what happened this weekend an act of domestic terrorism (leaving aside whether that's an apt label for it, at least for the moment), and the recasting of folks of a certain political stripe in the role of Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 (as the Rude Pundit did this morning)... it causes an uncomfortable moment of self-evaluation that people who are invested in being solidly and stolidly "right" in their thinking are not necessarily willing to engage in.
Politics has become dodgeball, when it should be more like othello.
Do I blame the media? Indirectly.
Do I blame one political side more than the other? Yes.
Do I blame the shooter? Absolutely. Nobody else pulled the trigger, even though they may have wanted (and, heck, may still want) to.
An event like this presses so many hot-button issues that it's easy to get riled up (and, hey, at my place? there was quite a spirited discussion yesterday). I'm not sure that it's even possible to talk about a lot of the particulars without taking into context the inflammatory environment on both sides; there's Keith Olbermann's mea culpa from yesterday, though there has not been anything similar from the other side of the commentary spectrum...
... and that last sentence illustrates just how quickly that even calm discourse is almost impossible to divorce partisanship from a full conversation, because we ARE in a highly politicized society now (and a discursion and discussion on the roots of that would make for a wall o' text all their own).
It's donkeys, and elephants, and turtles, all the way down.
