When a shocking tragedy like the recent Parkland, Florida mass school shooting takes place, the media keeps it in the headlines for days. Television inundates our senses with sights and sounds that reinforce the human emotion of the calamity while the drama is relived in front of our eyes day and night. The media milks an event like this for all the ratings it’s worth, keeping it in the news-cycle for up to a week, or at least until the next natural disaster or political scandal comes along.
Our senses can easily become overwhelmed by the relentless rehearsing of the story and its horrific details, all presented in a manner calculated to elicit an emotional response rather than rational thought. If we’re not alert, and diligent to exercise critical thinking, we can quickly lose perspective and join Chicken Little in believing that the sky really is falling, that mass shootings are sweeping the land, and that if the government doesn’t do something quick, “we’ll all die!”
Mass public shootings (properly called “mass murder,” unless you’re trying to sensationalize a particular aspect of the incident) are indeed a terrible thing that we should be working to prevent. But how much of the American landscape does the phenomenon of mass shootings really take up as opposed to the amount of news headlines it’s given? Continue reading “Putting Mass School Shootings Into Perspective”
It seems to be a popular notion among the conservative right to think that hypocrisy is the exclusive domain of the liberal left. However, in recent years I have become increasingly aware of the presence of hypocrisy infecting the political right and I find it quite disturbing.
In the weeks following last year’s Presidential election, I heard members of the Christian right referring to Donald Trump’s victory as, “divine intervention,” “an act of God,” and “a miracle.” Article headlines read, “Trump: President by the sovereign intervention of God,” and “Signs Of Divine Intervention In Trump Victory.” One article ended by quoting 1 Thessalonians 4:16 “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God” (emphasis mine). The Christian right was on an emotional high that ranged from exalted jubilation to giddy euphoria.
In the wake of the U. S. missile strike on the Syrian air base believed to have been used to mount a chemical weapons attack, there is no lack of the usual debate about, “it’s right, it’s wrong; it’s good, it’s bad; we should have, we shouldn’t have.” Most of the discussion revolves around personal opinion based on either pragmatic reasoning, or emotional feelings. A few are going beyond that level of debate and actually asking Constitutional questions.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, depending whether you were receiving the “Republican 2017 Congressional District Census,” or the “Official 2017 Democratic Party Survey”; whether your party had just achieved victory, or suffered defeat; whether your party was in power, trying to defend the country against the forces of evil, or was out of power, trying to take the country back from the forces of evil. Whichever survey you received, one thing was certain: The country could only be saved if you “send us your money!”
Perspective 