-snip- Nowadays, watching the news, and reading social media, I feel a bit like Tony Soprano myself.
A story breaks a prominent person dies or there's a mass shooting, for instance and the exact same reactions appear on news media discussion panels and social media as the last time such a story occurred. Then these reactions fade away as we grow weary of hearing about the event. Then a similar event occurs and we all become embroiled in the exact same conversation. We never learn. We never change. We just do it again and again and again....
So, for instance, Senator John McCain dies...
...Either pay tribute, say Rest in Peace, or keep your mouth shut. Nothing else is required.
...[but] By the sixth minute, however, the reactions on the news channels and social networks have turned predictably vicious. Some can't get out of their own heads long enough to silence their political snarling. Others use their tributes to McCain to make nasty comparisons to the living. Still others start attacking the way some paid their respects. It's like watching people pull the man's body apart and beat each other over the head with his limbs.
Likewise with a shooting like the one in Jacksonville, Florida. We get a few minutes of thoughts and prayers (a completely appropriate response to a tragic situation over which you have no control and in which you had no involvement). Then the screaming starts over the Second Amendment. The nation's media can't even give the families of the dead one lousy day to grieve in peace before they are at each other's throats.
Then the screaming fades. The news and social media move on. Until the next time, when it all starts again.
We're in Hell.
Why? What have we done to find ourselves condemned to this endless cycle of useless rage, like the guy in Dante doomed to gnaw on another man's head forever? What is our sin?
The real issue is this: do we want to preserve American liberty and the constitutional machinery that maintains that liberty or not?
...We could easily confirm Supreme Court justices if we acknowledged that their role was not to make law but to ensure laws are in keeping with the Constitution. We could debate anything as long as we both agreed to our right to speak.
But the moment I know I am talking to a socialist who believes my work, my time, and thus my life belong to the state the moment I know I am talking to a leftist who will not concede my right to self-defense... ...the moment I know I am talking to a cheat willing to have our founding document rewritten from the bench the moment I know I'm with a censor who thinks it's fine to silence me whether on social media or in the news media or through the courts I will not give one bloody inch. Because, in that case, each concession becomes another step to the eradication of the one political asset I hold most dear: my freedom.
That is where we find ourselves. To my mind, our news media, our academies, the corporate culture of Silicon Valley, and the Democrat Party have all lost the plot of American liberty. They believe in socialism. They believe in a disarmed populace. They believe in ruling through the judiciary. And they believe in censorship of ideas they don't like.
I will not surrender to them even a little.
Until we can agree on the One Great Thing that Americans should be free we can't agree on anything. And we are doomed to repeat the same conversations again and again.
We are in Hell.
Why? What have we done to find ourselves condemned to this endless cycle of useless rage, like the guy in Dante doomed to gnaw on another man's head forever? What is our sin?
That is where we find ourselves. To my mind, our news media, our academies, the corporate culture of Silicon Valley, and the Democrat Party have all lost the plot of American liberty. They believe in socialism. They believe in a disarmed populace. They believe in ruling through the judiciary. And they believe in censorship of ideas they don't like.
Poster Comment:
Klavan's essay as well as these cartoons explains it all.