Knowledge is a Burden
I often wish I was as ignorant as many of the people I see, particularly on social media. You’d think I’d be used to it now, the frequently jaw-dropping stupidity of otherwise intelligent human beings, but it never fails to throw me for a loop when it gets thrown in my face.
As I write this, the town of Madison, WI is reeling from a school shooting. Three people died, including one teacher. Several wounded, a couple of them seriously. The shooter is among the dead; she took her own life.
Yeah. “Her.” The shooter was a 15-year-old girl. It’s extremely rare for a “mass shooter” to be female. That, along with the fact the shooting occurred at a private Christian school, raises all sorts of questions we don’t usually see raised at times like this.
Never mind that, though. Ignore the motive (which we don’t know yet), or any of the actual circumstances. No, because a firearm was involved, it’s automatically the fault of the NRA and the Republican Party; the blood on is on their hands, not the shooter’s. It can’t be the shooter’s fault – there was a gun!
It doesn’t matter what drove this girl to murder and suicide. Where the gun came from, how she got it: immaterial. That we’re not allowed to take even the most basic steps to protect our schools: not relevant. Gun = NRA/GOP culpability. It’s automatic. A given. As C follows B follows A. Not her fault, the gun made her do it.
Obviously, we should all turn in our guns and rely on the police to protect us. They can do it, they’re only minutes away at any given time, we just need to call them when we’re being robbed and our lives threatened. No problem, I’m sure the bad guy will let us call, and wait for the cops to show up before blowing our brains out.
And government single-payer health insurance will make all our healthcare problems go away, too, and everything will be bright and sunny, with rainbows and unicorns.
Life would be so much easier if I were capable of such Pollyanna thinking. But I can’t, I know too much.
Knowledge is a burden.
Critical thinking is a lost art.
That lobotomy is looking a lot more attractive, all the time…
- Uncle John
Uncle John is the black-sheep relative your family doesn't want to admit to. He's a writer, old fart, anti-extremist, dyed-in-the-wool cynic, sci-fi nerd, and practicing to be a curmudgeon. More vegan than carnivore, but very much a Constitutional "originalist"; a walking, talking contradiction in terms, and a straight, no-holds-barred talker, who will tell it like it is with no apologies. Pacific Northwest native, married for many, many years to a woman he doesn't deserve, with no kids that will acknowledge them - except for the cat, who is merely tolerant.
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- Healthcare and Insurance December 17, 2024
- Yes, Let's Celebrate Cold-Blooded Murder December 13, 2024
- The Election Postmortem You've All Been Waiting For December 7, 2024
- The Worst Candidate Won November 7, 2024
Largely agree. I’m sensing a little optimism in your post that *eventually* we, the people, will have the knowledge we need to assess what happened, how to avoid it and vote accordingly. I don’t share that optimism. I do, 100%, share the disgust at the politicization of tragedies that has become status quo.
Every time this happens, I have two immediate grievances:
1. Everyone, but everyone, has analyzed the situation and reached a conclusion about the causes (and non-causes) of the incident before the authorities have even spoken to the press, let alone learned anything.
2. Politicians, lobbyists and the media have been preparing their reaction for years and reinforce it in the way they report the story.
The truth is, if you’re not close to the criminal or judicial processing of the matter you’re not only un/minimally informed, but you will NEVER be as informed as the people who make the decisions. Even those people probably won’t make the right ones for the right reasons to my mind. And you are getting nothing but garbage by watching social OR mainstream media. The only thing you’ll learn are the bare facts about what happened: names, dates, etc. The “information age” is a joke.