Why did seven people die in Santa Barbara last night? It would be wrong to pin the crime on Internet forums that indulge in self-hatred, then project it on to everyone else. But they’re certainly not the solution. Misogyny and violence against women is a social problem as well as an individual one. The fact that these men see “game” as the remedy to all personal and social ills is perhaps the greatest indictment of the way they view the world.
The fact that anyone sees violence as a remedy to all personal and social ills is a problem, but how many times a day do we hear about somebody keeping the white man down? It's always the chicks who aren't sleeping with you, the minorities taking your college scholarships, the foreigners taking your jobs. It's always somebody else's fault you're not where you thought you'd be with who you thought you'd be with, and that someone else is always somebody just a little bit poorer, a little bit smaller, a little bit less powerful than you.
The greatest trick our Republican politicians ever pulled was convincing us they didn't exist.
So don't look at the people who really keeping you down, keeping you poor, keeping you back. Don't ask why the rich are getting richer if there are no jobs for you. Don't ask why college is more expensive than ever when the administrators' pay has never been higher. Don't ask why you can't be happier, why life can't be easier, if you did everything right. Don't ask why your mortgage is underwater and there are unfixable potholes in your street.
Just get mad, preferably at somebody less than you, and pick up a gun.
A.
Our popular media, all our fictional narrative in movies and TV, depend almost exclusively, 99% of the time, on plots predicated in violence, and resolved only by violence in the end. We have taught ourselves well, and clearly, we have learned the lesson. But this happens in an odd vacuum. All of the people who watch these violent movies and shows, and vicariously thrill in the release and justification of violence, have for the most part never experienced the aftermath of a real inter-personal violent act. They judge only from fantasy of our media, which never shows what the real aftermath is like. The blood. The suffering. The heartache. The judgement on those who have committed violence. I am reminded of the gun nut who recently set a trap for two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who were breaking into his house. Then proceeded to execute them. The girl was still alive after first couple shots. So he put a bullet carefully through her head “to end her suffering.” I am sure he was motivated by some movie plot he had seen, after all, we know the hero always has cool words to say before he blows the bad guy away. Right? We are poisoned by our popular culture. And violence is a key ingredient of that poison.