Yet another terrible stain has blighted the state that I call home. Unless you, my esteemed reader, have been hiding out in a cave without any access to news for the past several days it is highly unlikely that you are unaware of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona, the deaths of so many innocent bystanders including a 9-year-old girl with a promising future, and the heroism of the people who rushed to the aid of the injured and to apprehend the killer.
My heart and hopes go out to Gabrielle Giffords, her family, and to the families and loved ones of all of the other victims of this tragedy.
Since Saturday there has been no shortage of blathering from the talking heads on television, in the papers, and on the blogosphere. Some fix blame on Sarah Palin and her gun sights ad. Others have quoted "friends" of the shooter as calling him a "left-wing lunatic." Still others are blaming Arizona and its overly permissive gun laws. There have been calls to tone down the rhetoric on both sides. Everyone claims to know what was in this kid's mind. The mountain of verbal Bandini that has piled up is so great that we ought to be able to fertilize the Mojave Desert and, with a little water, grow pretty pretty flowers. None of these people know this guy. I don't know this guy. I can only speculate and opine on what we do know and what it means to me.
The shooter was 22 years old and already mentally unbalanced -- at least if we can trust the background reporting on him (I have learned not to take anything that the corporate controlled media reports at face value), but from all accounts, including an interview with a good friend of his posted at Mother Jones.com -- http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1 it would seem to be the case. My life experience tells me that most people become politically aware somewhere in their early teenage years. Assuming this to be the case with this individual, he would have been waking up just about the time that Fox News was coming into its own as a 24/7/365 arm of the Republican party leading up to or during Bill Clinton's impeachment, just as the political landscape in the US was becoming more polarized than at any point in the nation's history. Since then we have seen a broadening and deepening of this polarization, led mostly by corporately owned right wing media outlets who effectively have managed to shut out any kind of rational discourse or debate in this country. It is in this environment of one-sided infotainment masquerading as news that Jared Loughner formed his twisted vision.
Assuming he paid much attention in school, his history classes would have been somewhat dumbed down, thanks to the careful ministrations of the right-wing TX Board of Education, who from its sheer buying power tends to control what goes in textbooks (and has for some time), and he very likely would not have had to have taken a genuine civics course, which was a requirement when I was in high school, but is no longer in most places. From what we read in the media, however, Laughtner was a self-styled historian, drawing his own conclusions from his own reading of such works as "The Communist Manifesto," "Mein Kampf," "Animal Farm," and "1984" to name but a few. The Mother Jones interview suggests that he was apolitical, but for some reason had a pointed dislike of Gabrielle Giffords in particular and an overall distrust in government. Nothing in the mainstream media over the past 12 years or so would dissuade a person who was already predisposed to this kind of thinking. In fact, the media, particularly the right wing corporate-controlled media, has been remarkably good at encouraging rhetoric against more moderate points of view. This disturbed young man was a time bomb created not by a political ad or one particularly ugly electoral season, but by over a decade of vicious attack politics that seek to do nothing but demonize anything but the most hard right corporatist line.
How many more time bombs are out there waiting to go off? Hard to say. Can we stop training our young folks to hate, yes we can. How do we do it? Well that's a great question without any easy answers. To me it would start by breaking up the corporate media conglomerates who control the flow of information to the vast majority of this country. There are approximately 6 corporations who control directly or indirectly about 90% of the radio, television, and print media that is in general publication in the US. That would be 6 boards of directors who ultimately decide what over 300 million people get to see, hear, read, and how the information will be presented to them. These individuals are not necessarily servants of any one political party. Rather, they are servants only of themselves and their shareholders. Scared people tune in. Fear sells subscriptions. High ratings means high advertising revenue. The truth is not important. What is important is profit, and where it brings in more profit, control of individual liberties.
While we're breaking up media monopolies, we need to bring back real history and civics education to our public schools and stop letting the Texas Board of Education tell our nation's young people that Tom DeLay, who was just sentenced to three years in prison for his corruption while in Congress, was a great statesman while leaving out important historical contributions from people such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. We also need to bring back a spirit of genuine critical thinking and rational debate. The media can set the example here. Perhaps it is not as flashy as having people yell at each other from debate dungeons where they can't actually see one another, but it is far more effective at getting a point across.
We truly do not have a great deal of time to turn this around and it is critical that we do so lest Saturday's isolated tragedy become an all too common occurrence.
My heart and hopes go out to Gabrielle Giffords, her family, and to the families and loved ones of all of the other victims of this tragedy.
Since Saturday there has been no shortage of blathering from the talking heads on television, in the papers, and on the blogosphere. Some fix blame on Sarah Palin and her gun sights ad. Others have quoted "friends" of the shooter as calling him a "left-wing lunatic." Still others are blaming Arizona and its overly permissive gun laws. There have been calls to tone down the rhetoric on both sides. Everyone claims to know what was in this kid's mind. The mountain of verbal Bandini that has piled up is so great that we ought to be able to fertilize the Mojave Desert and, with a little water, grow pretty pretty flowers. None of these people know this guy. I don't know this guy. I can only speculate and opine on what we do know and what it means to me.
The shooter was 22 years old and already mentally unbalanced -- at least if we can trust the background reporting on him (I have learned not to take anything that the corporate controlled media reports at face value), but from all accounts, including an interview with a good friend of his posted at Mother Jones.com -- http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message?page=1 it would seem to be the case. My life experience tells me that most people become politically aware somewhere in their early teenage years. Assuming this to be the case with this individual, he would have been waking up just about the time that Fox News was coming into its own as a 24/7/365 arm of the Republican party leading up to or during Bill Clinton's impeachment, just as the political landscape in the US was becoming more polarized than at any point in the nation's history. Since then we have seen a broadening and deepening of this polarization, led mostly by corporately owned right wing media outlets who effectively have managed to shut out any kind of rational discourse or debate in this country. It is in this environment of one-sided infotainment masquerading as news that Jared Loughner formed his twisted vision.
Assuming he paid much attention in school, his history classes would have been somewhat dumbed down, thanks to the careful ministrations of the right-wing TX Board of Education, who from its sheer buying power tends to control what goes in textbooks (and has for some time), and he very likely would not have had to have taken a genuine civics course, which was a requirement when I was in high school, but is no longer in most places. From what we read in the media, however, Laughtner was a self-styled historian, drawing his own conclusions from his own reading of such works as "The Communist Manifesto," "Mein Kampf," "Animal Farm," and "1984" to name but a few. The Mother Jones interview suggests that he was apolitical, but for some reason had a pointed dislike of Gabrielle Giffords in particular and an overall distrust in government. Nothing in the mainstream media over the past 12 years or so would dissuade a person who was already predisposed to this kind of thinking. In fact, the media, particularly the right wing corporate-controlled media, has been remarkably good at encouraging rhetoric against more moderate points of view. This disturbed young man was a time bomb created not by a political ad or one particularly ugly electoral season, but by over a decade of vicious attack politics that seek to do nothing but demonize anything but the most hard right corporatist line.
How many more time bombs are out there waiting to go off? Hard to say. Can we stop training our young folks to hate, yes we can. How do we do it? Well that's a great question without any easy answers. To me it would start by breaking up the corporate media conglomerates who control the flow of information to the vast majority of this country. There are approximately 6 corporations who control directly or indirectly about 90% of the radio, television, and print media that is in general publication in the US. That would be 6 boards of directors who ultimately decide what over 300 million people get to see, hear, read, and how the information will be presented to them. These individuals are not necessarily servants of any one political party. Rather, they are servants only of themselves and their shareholders. Scared people tune in. Fear sells subscriptions. High ratings means high advertising revenue. The truth is not important. What is important is profit, and where it brings in more profit, control of individual liberties.
While we're breaking up media monopolies, we need to bring back real history and civics education to our public schools and stop letting the Texas Board of Education tell our nation's young people that Tom DeLay, who was just sentenced to three years in prison for his corruption while in Congress, was a great statesman while leaving out important historical contributions from people such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. We also need to bring back a spirit of genuine critical thinking and rational debate. The media can set the example here. Perhaps it is not as flashy as having people yell at each other from debate dungeons where they can't actually see one another, but it is far more effective at getting a point across.
We truly do not have a great deal of time to turn this around and it is critical that we do so lest Saturday's isolated tragedy become an all too common occurrence.
No comments:
Post a Comment