The AP reported today that the U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings, with 89 people killed over the last 111 days. This includes children gunned down at a Nashville grade school and kids at a Sweet 16 party in Alabama. Mass killings -- in which four or more people were killed -- are occurring at a rate of once every 6.53 days, the news service reported, citing an analysis it did with USA Today. But that doesn’t count the incredibly sad and meaningless individual shootings reported this past week, and noted in this column. There may be some solutions, but the GOP won;t even allowed them to be considered, putting blood for all of these folks squarely on their hands.
Yes, Reg. Thank you for pointing out that connection. We turn to politics to solve our problems, and find, sadly, that it is the politicians who are exacerbating them.
So much of the population of our country has lost the ability (or believes it has) to control an upward trajectory for themselves, that it has contributed to this polarization. And it has been fed by opportunistic political hacks via social media. “Othering” is at the core of our distrust; someone different than you is getting what you are not.
The AP reported today that the U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings, with 89 people killed over the last 111 days. This includes children gunned down at a Nashville grade school and kids at a Sweet 16 party in Alabama. Mass killings -- in which four or more people were killed -- are occurring at a rate of once every 6.53 days, the news service reported, citing an analysis it did with USA Today. But that doesn’t count the incredibly sad and meaningless individual shootings reported this past week, and noted in this column. There may be some solutions, but the GOP won;t even allowed them to be considered, putting blood for all of these folks squarely on their hands.
Yes, Reg. Thank you for pointing out that connection. We turn to politics to solve our problems, and find, sadly, that it is the politicians who are exacerbating them.
So much of the population of our country has lost the ability (or believes it has) to control an upward trajectory for themselves, that it has contributed to this polarization. And it has been fed by opportunistic political hacks via social media. “Othering” is at the core of our distrust; someone different than you is getting what you are not.
Well said, Al. The hostility generated by this “othering” is so perilous. It is Fox’s stock in trade.