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An American Madness (Part 2)
When it comes to news coverage outside of our borders Americans seem to want to know only one thing: Who’s trying to kill us and are we trying to kill them? Consequently, in this age of fractured audiences and diminishing returns American media companies have slashed their presence overseas and have entered in news sharing agreements with foreign broadcasters and newspapers to provide coverage. That means that what little foreign news that is consumed doesn’t get much of an American perspective and what it does get is usually skewed to favor some domestic policy agenda.
Let us eschew using the buzzword “bubble” here. A bubble is a fragile thing. What we have created is a bunker, a mile down and almost impenetrable. And this has created unexpected problems.
In her syndicated column this week, Mona Charen characterizes the Las Vegas mass murder as something uniquely American. “Our culture,” she writes, “for complex reasons, has given rise to a new expression of madness – the mass shooting followed by suicide.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. (Emphasis mine.)
While Vegas was consuming us here at home, Damiao Soares dos Santos, a security guard at the Innocent Children’s People Municipal Education Centre, in Janaúba, Brazil walked into a classroom, locked the door, poured gasoline on the children, their teacher and himself and set fire to the room. So far, four of the children and the teacher have died as well as the perpetrator. While it wasn’t firearms-related, it was just as horrific, if not more so.
In 1996, Thomas Watt Hamilton walked into the Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and shot 32 people, 17 of which died. Most of his victims were only five years old. This led to sweeping gun control in the British Isles. What it did not do is prevent Derrick Bird, a Cumbrian taxi driver, from using a bolt action rifle and a double-barreled shotgun while shooting 21 people (12 died) and himself in 2010.
In the last 30 years there have been dozens and dozens of mass murders overseas. And yes, many have utilized firearms and many have ended in suicide. Either we have never heard of them or when they were mentioned in passing we conveniently forgot about them because we had no plans in visiting that part of the world any time soon. But either way, through ignorance or neglect, it has given way to an emotional self loathing that is unhealthy, both to ourselves and the way we govern.
Terrible events like Las Vegas are not just terrible if the name associated with it is All-American as Stephen Craig Paddock or Adam Lanza. It’s just as horrible if the name is Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, Anders Behring Breivik, Éric Borel, Friedrich Heinz Leibacher, Ljubiša Bogdanović, or Yang Qingpei.
We need to climb out of our media and political bunkers. We have to combat the idea that America is some sort of Wild West Show while the rest of the world is this enlightened place where socialism has banned inhumanity and everyone lives free of violence and has universal healthcare.
The problem is not America. The problem is not guns. The problem is the human mind, an instrument that is both awesome and awesomely fragile. When it snaps into psychosis, terrible things happen. And as much as we want to stop these bad things from happening, we will never be able to legislate away the madness. Some times what we really need is grace and the perspective that these types of horrible incidents are not confined to our shores or our culture.
Published in Domestic Policy
It’s a burden being part of the only country that matters.
I would say human nature is universal – so the propensity to violence is a universal. So what’s the difference?
But from a Guardian article prompted by what happened in Las Vegas:
Could this be because the US is just larger, and has a bigger population?
No:
Iow, other developed countries do have gun violence (and mass killings) but they have them in lower numbers, and at a far lower rate, than the US.
Is this the price you pay for liberty, and if so how would you quantify what you get compared to what you pay?
How many do we need?
Sharpe’s Escape
Sharpe’s Gold
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_(novel_series)
Except that’s not true for “Americans overall.” The truth is that over half (54%) of America’s counties have ZERO gun deaths every year. In fact, the worst 1% of counties account for 1 in 3 gun homicides. And the deaths are even concentrated narrowly within those counties.
Crime Prevention Research Center
Now all you need is a border between those dangerous counties and neighbourhoods and the rest of the country. And then neither side ever visits or works in the other. (Oh wait, is this what Calexit is about?)
The Gun Violence Archive has some interesting stats and maps. As far as I can see it includes death and injury by misadventure but not suicides.
Great map, and strong point, EJ. I’d like to see an overlay of the Sanctuary Counties. I see Travis and Harris Counties in Texas are both very red and they are both Sanctuary Counties. Fascinating!
Yeah, Kay. Generalizations are like that. But they are still useful in making sense of events. Of course I recognize that there are exceptions. In fact, I would like to think that I am an exception. Please don’t take it personally.
It’s not a uniquely American thing and referring to the narrative as bunker mentality is absolutely more appropriate than bubble, good point. The lack of press about and interest in the rest of the world suffers a mirror image abroad as foreign media get their information about the US from our media feeds not form their own reporters which most don’t have. So they suffer the same mentality, but there it’s a bubble because it is thin and easily popped. We used to have USIA that provided a daily feed to media around the world. I imagine we’ve stoped doing that as being redundant. It wouldn’t be redundant if well and seriously done, but it would be hard to find honest news were we still in that business. As to violence abroad both individual and mass, its common, far more extensive than in the US in at least half the world and if we remove the giant Democrat run mega cities where gangs are in constant war with each other and everybody else, we’re quite peaceful. The disease is quite obviously a mental disease called liberalism and it manifests differently in different advanced democracies. It’s very different in countries we don’t consider advanced democracies, but it’s ubiquitous.
Its methodology page says,
and
It would appear that they do try to exclude suicides from their daily summary ledger. However, given the time lag in establishing what was suicide, that may not rule out incidents later cataloged as suicide being temporarily recorded under another category, like accidental death. I am not sure.
It also notes
That is, it seems, successfully warning someone off by brandishing a gun may count in that statistic – a statistic which hopefully could be broken down further. They do say,
Governing by principle is incompatible with utilitarianism, let alone the narrow utilitarianism espoused by second amendment restrictionists.
Americans are not going to be ruled by their government. Americans are the government. That’s been a pretty significant factor in making us the most powerful country in the world, and the one that most people dream of living in.
I agree.
An ideal that is not always lived. But striving for it is much better than giving up.
Clearly the best way to reduce gun deaths is to ban California.
I don’t know anything about Paddock really. However, I do know that we need a different prism for nihilism, materialism, postmodernism, etc. Concealment is not necessarily acknowledgement of evil, it could just be good sense; after all, even if one doesn’t believe in something like transcendental truth, it’s still true that others do and our laws have real consequences for those who run afoul of them. More and more, this is true: those who reject the very concept of good and evil (whether they are self aware enough to consciously admit it or not) still accept the concept of undesired punishment from those who are stronger and so will try to avoid it.
It’s still an interesting question though: reasoned choice or insanity? To me, the lack of transcendental truths like God makes it much easier to choose horrific things – because even horrific things can be rational depending on the assumptions. Then again, even insane people can act rationally inside their insanity.
Ultimately I come in over the top of it all to say that I don’t particularly care one way or the other. A person who commits these kinds of acts should never see the outside of a prison or asylum ever. Perhaps more humane, less cruel, to have a speedy and painless execution.
Neither does anyone else at this point. That confounds everyone.
I guess it’s only human nature in our modern world to expect immediate gratification of our curiosity. Lucky for us we’ve moved way past “evil exists in the world” as an explanation.
Well, we certainly want to make sense of the senseless. When an Islamicist yells Allahu Akbar we don’t understand the madness but we accept it as an answer. (If that makes sense.)
But so far we’re left scratching our heads. It’s not lack of material wealth. It doesn’t seem to be lack of a love life. Was his father? What?
That’s sorta like gouging right? Boy I bet the NYT was ticked off.