Virginia shootings: History repeats itself again

News On Wednesday of a disgruntled former employee shooting and killing an on-air reporter and her cameraman, both of whom used to work with the killer, while on live TV should not surprise us. Neither should the rehashing of discussions about guns and violence in our society. How to identify the mentally deranged before they strike are bound to persist. You see, history has a way of repeating itself to those who fail to learn from it and our society is doing a fantastic job of failing to learn from recent history.

Currently, the United States makes up a mere five percent of the world’s population. However, since 1966, we have accounted for over 30 percent of the world’s mass shootings. We have also been involved in more wars and military incursions than any other nation.

It should not come as a surprise we still kick ass over our reliance on violent solutions to our problems, even when they result in mass shootings of innocent people. What should surprise you is these shootings have little to do with guns so let’s put a stop to all the talk about abolishing the Second Amendment. It’s never going to happen. Guns always have been a part of our culture and a look at what goes on in our inner cities should convince you they cannot be legislated out.

If the problem is not with guns, then what has changed over the last 50 years to turn us into such a violent nation?

Before 1966, blatant violence was not portrayed on television or in film. his began to change with the way the media covered the Vietnam War. The showing of the horrific images of war briefly turned American stomachs and helped launch the anti-war movement. However, it also had the opposite affect as well on the entertainment industry.

In the 1970’s, television transitioned from the campy fisticuffs of shows like Batman to displaying and glorifying violence in police, private detective, and military programs. We began to see the news become more sensationalized as they pursued ratings at the cost of journalistic integrity. For the first time, concerned groups began to voice what they believed would be the long term results of exposing our children to a greater amount of violence only to not be taken seriously.

By the 1980’s, the news was filled with “The bubble headed bleached blonde” glorifying an increasing number of violence-based news stories to draw in more of an audience.

We loved watching fights break out on worthless shows like Morton Ddowney, Jr or Jerry Springer. The film industry went all in and profited greatly from an increase in graphic violence which resulted in a new PG-13 rating that went largely ignored by both parents and movie theaters.

Americans loved their action heroes and could not get enough of Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and a guy named Arnold. Add to this, the action-based buddy flick became hugely popular and often centered around a couple of shoot first and frisk later cops who ignored police protocol to no end while making us laugh.

When the 90’s rolled around, we added violent video games, rap music with violent lyrics, and CG in films for even more graphic and realistic violence.

The sporting world saw a big change as well. Baseball, once a thinking man’s game, was supplanted by football as our national sport of choice. Offensive linemen were now 100 pounds heavier than they were in 1966. Running backs had legs like tree trunks, necks as big as my chest, and ran as fast as an Olympic sprinter. Today, fans complain about rules designed to make the game safer. Seems they prefer violent hits over strategy.

Americans have also fallen head over heals in love with MMA and now embrace female fighters as much as their male counterparts in this blood thirsty sport in which pay per view customers want to see participants beaten into a bloody submission.

Fueling this thirst for violence has come at the same time Americans have seen an increase in sales and consumption of alcohol. It should also be noted, since 1966, we have seen a steady increase in the variety and potency of illicit drugs, many of which increase violent tendencies. Go into any local gym and if you can not score some testosterone or HGH in five minutes, you will at least have the contact information of a half dozen guys who can take care of you.

Still, we continue to blame guns and the lack of services available to the mentally ill for our mass shootings primarily because since 1966, we have become a nation of simpletons and are either unable or just too lazy to take the time to really examine the root cause of our love of violence.

But we can no longer ignore study after study that shows the harmful results of exposing our youth to the world we have created. The constant exposure to violence, the reliance on it to make quick decisions in the form of video games, and it’s continual use as a solution to governmental problems has brought all of this on us.

When we mix this with the ease of availability of alcohol and drugs, we end up creating monsters with screwed up brains, a lack of empathy, and a willingness to resort to carnage as a way of righting a perceived wrong.

Electronics manufacturers do not care if your little Johnny is turning into a future killing machine nearly as much as they do turning a profit from the sale of violent video games.

Hollywood could care less who pays to see a violent film, or even if a nut job shoots up a full theater, nearly as much as they care about their profit margin. We are sickened by a film depicting the treatment of whales living at Sea World more than we are about the one that kills more people in two hours than there are actual whales living in captivity.

The simple arguments over the Second Amendment or the mentally ill will continue simply because we, as a culture, want the best of both worlds. We want to see an end to all our senseless bloodshed and violence in the real world, but we are unwilling to part with it in our private world. And sadly, most do not see themselves as having a problem with violence, just as most do not see when they have a problem with alcohol, drugs, credit card debt, porn, sex, and you name it.

Until we see the problem as it really is, we can never go about fixing it. It has little to do with guns or the mentally ill and far more to do with our insatiable thirst for violence in many forms. Consequently, we can and should expect more mass shootings.

At a time in which many citizens have expressed their concerns and fear over the bloodshed and violence depicted by a group like ISIS, we remain blind to the poison we inject into the developing minds of our youth and continue feeding throughout adulthood. Until we do, history will continue to repeat itself.