Having the wrong discussion in the mass media age

As the information on the Newtown shootings remains contradictory at best, I am going to continue to refrain from directly posting about the shooting or the circumstances other than a few of the widely agreed upon facts of the case.  This post is more about our reaction as a society and is an aggregation of more than one Facebook conversation (a big chunk of it whole cloth from one post towards the end) with assorted people who, upon reading this, will know who they are.

Firstly, and by far most annoying, the immediate leap that the woo woo crowd has made trying to connect the shooting to the LIBOR scandal, second shooters, chemtrails, Venusians, and whoever else is shameful.  The bodies aren't even in the ground and already its a government plot to...what?  Also, the supposition that people were driven to these acts due to dangerous, psychosis inducing antidepressants is not only scientifically unfounded, its laughably easy to explain:  the people most likely to commit these acts are also generally extremely disturbed.  The people most likely to be on medication?  You guessed it, the generally extremely disturbed.  Rationally, this is the same argument as "John is on chemo...John has cancer...chemo causes cancer."

Multilevel conspiracies are not your friend.  Its intellectually lazy and sophomoric.  Please try harder and lern 2 google.


The second issue that has come to mind is a bit of a reflection on our modern information age.  The problem with information is that it is not necessarily knowledge, and I'm struck with the thought that though there is a vast pile of new information there is the same amount of actual real knowledge as there was fifty years ago.  The problem is now that same kernel of knowledge is obscured by a 60 foot high static wall of bullshit.  Rather than exhibit any effort to confront information with any real critical thinking people choose to allow entertainment personalities like Piers Morgan and Sean Hannity act as their thinker by proxy when those selfsame entertainers have no vested interest in dispensing truth.

They are paid endorsers of a corporate product.  They do not disseminate knowledge, their job is to shill the product that either a. their boss tells them to; or b.  the demagoguery that will sell the most ad time.  Paraphrasing a friend of mine today, "they are a bad comment thread acted out in real time."  Turning on any of the 24 hour news channels anymore is like watching a screeching house full of chimps in suits throwing informational monkey shit. 

It is perfectly acceptable to examine information, reflect on it, process it, apply your thinking cap, and come to a different conclusion than an equally educated person who has followed the same equation.  The world is not black and white and there isn't any 100% correct answer to any issue of substance.  People are supposed to think differently from each other, its a biological imperative.  Throwing overboard the back and forth of reasoned ideas that has advanced humanity to its current point in favor of allowing a stuffed shirt, vapid, bloviating shill to be your voice will never lead to real exchange of ideas, and will also never lead to a meaningful solution to any substantive issues that we face as a culture. 

The second half of this equation to me is that whenever something terrible happens like Aurora or Columbine or Newtown, people immediately jump to a band-aid fix like blaming guns or video games or Marilyn Manson.  An acquaintance of mine posited that the argument that "guns don't kill people, people do," was tired and overused.    

The reason the argument against persecuting inanimate objects is tired and overused because people continually act is if the object is the crime when the responsibility for the crime rests with the person who committed it. The ACT of murder is against the law, and should be. The tool used to commit the murder doesn't have a will of its own. More people are bludgeoned or stabbed to death every year than shot, but no one is calling for a ban on assault bats and high capacity tire irons. Its trite but its true: guns don't murder people anymore than silverware made me fat.
 
These murders are abhorrent. I can't even begin to relate to the kind of warped rationale that could make someone think this was a good idea. In the big picture, however, violent crime in the united states is at a near 40 year low.  If gun ownership is at an all time high, then it stands to reason that gun ownership cannot be the driving factor in this equation.
 
We obsess over gun control and at the same time spend trillions blowing people up overseas and billions locking up drug users at home and then wonder why there's no money left to treat our mentally ill and indigent here. Why is it that our three largest inpatient mental health centers are in Riker's island, LA county jail, and Cook county jail? I actually was talking about this with my mom night before last and she brought up a valid point: when she was in her 20's sick people could go to the mental asylum. Nowadays they have to keep dealing with them til they assault someone or break in somewhere so that she can arrest them and take them to jail where they can get medication and treatment. Is this a side effect of prison-for-profit? Why are our police functioning as a mental health admitting service? Why does the state think that murdering children by remote control airplane doesn't set a precedent for lowering the value of human life?
 
To a person, almost everyone one of these guys exhibited signs of being severely unbalanced, and every time the supposed safeguards were ignored or circumvented. What good is a background check when a judge doesn't bother to report his declaration of someone as mentally ill? How can someone have FIVE contacts with campus police resulting in expulsion pending a mental clearance and it doesn't get reported, AFTER students and teachers expressed fears that the subject was turning violent?  As a libertarian, I have serious reservations about involuntary commitments and civil confinement, but I think these are options that need to be entertained in very well defined and limited circumstances. 

THESE are the questions that we should be having a conversation about, not how many rounds are in your rifle at any given time.
 
We have been, and seemingly will continue to keep having the wrong conversation. We will continue to debate feel-good legislation that only affects the law abiding, because its much more difficult to entertain the idea that the problem is not guns, movies, or games and that the problem is really US. Our outrage is in direct conflict with our outright refusal to take a hard look at why we are so obsessed with mass violence and why we as a nation have our collective head stuck up our ass when it comes to recognizing when someone needs help, and when someone may be a nascent predator.