In the age of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc., we're simultaneously more connected than ever and more isolated than ever. Bad ideas fester and good ideas are a meme for a week and then stumble off to die. Anger and hatred echo, growing louder day by day, each moment that nothing seems to occur to address the insurmountable wrongness of the situation deepening the idea in certain heads that the only way things will change is to put words aside and commit an act of violence that can't be ignored.
After the church shooting in Charleston, one thing that struck me is that the gunman hesitated when the members of the church talked to him. Ultimately, they weren't successful in stopping him that way, it's true. But for a time, at least, they were able to get him to stop thinking of them as abstract concepts, targets worthy of his hate, and instead consider them as human beings, human lives.
I wish someone had talked to him that way, sooner. These kinds of acts almost always end the same way- not just the victims dying, but the shooter as well. Knowing that and going on all but requires the perpetrators to not just disvalue the lives of their victims, but their own as well. To feel that they could have no possible impact, but that they burn out all at once.
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In most of these kinds of situations, it sounds like there was a great deal of confusion. I've always thought that the idea that one or more "good shooters" could bring things to a good end was born more of action movies than reality; in such situations, how are "good shooters" to distinguish each other from the "bad shooters"? How are security or law enforcement to do so? What stops the whole thing from becoming a massive crossfire, or just putting another loaded weapon in the hands of someone looking to commit indiscriminate violence?
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No matter what becomes of health care tomorrow- if every city and town in America suddenly has access to free mental health conseling- it isn't going to help that much as long as seeking counseling is stigmatized and treated like weakness. Even those who would never themselves do violence are often willing to participate in a climate that vilifies and disparages others not for what they do, but for what they feel.
I don't know that anyone ever stopped feeling something- certainly not something as powerful as rage or hatred- just for being told they should stop by someone who clearly regarded them with contempt.
Others have said as much, but if all we do is the usual "Restrict access to guns!" ("RAH!") "More access to mental health care!" ("RAH!")... And then it peters out in a month, well... What can you do but shut down your news feed, 'cuz there is going to be another shooting, you could almost set a goddamn clock by it at this point. What are we willing to do about it? Not some nebulous "we", the "someone" who should do "something" about this deplorable situation we're clucking our tongues about?
Change our Facebook photos for a week?