In the Aftermath of ...

I think our nation is sinking lower in the muck and mire, afraid to really look at where the problems lies. With each day that passes we become a more violence accepting society. Oh, we will rise up and scream about the horrors, like the recent Colorado killings but just as quickly we simmer down and go back to our every days lives, demanding no change, continuing to defend an individual rights but stopping just short of defending their right to kill.

I read an article today by D. L. Hughley in HuffPost:  It's Mourning in America where he brings up the fact we are a violence obsessed society,  and I will throw in my two cents worth - a society that cares little about correcting the situation. We have allowed almost every facet of our lives to be at the whim of politics, from healthcare to violence and back again.

He brings up an incident that occurred the '80's that I had almost forgotten about and then went on to mention the campaign and work against drunk driving.

"Some of us are old enough to remember when a madman poisoned packages of Tylenol in 1982. Seven people died, and the reaction was immediate: the entire run of the product was recalled. Packaging was changed so that the buyer would know it's safe and wasn't tampered with. Liberal or conservative had nothing to do with it. It was not treated as a political issue. No one claimed that making it marginally harder to get at those headache pills was the first step toward dictatorship. 

 Drunk driving was a similar scenario. No one argued whether it was the alcohol that was the problem, or the car. No one advocated for prohibition or for some sort of nationwide bus system in lieu of the automobile. We did not hear that drunk driving is a right enshrined in the Constitution by our founding fathers. People just got sick of losing their friends and family members due to tragic circumstances that were entirely avoidable. Ad campaigns were launched, the police cracked down, and a nationwide stigma developed."

Why is it that we continue to tolerate violence and killing in our society and are happy to let it be a political football that is passed back and forth between political parties almost at whim?

I think that is a fair question to ask. Read D. L. Hughley's article, he makes some good points.