By W.B. Dunne
The News Pauper grieves to be reminded, along with everyone else, that despicable acts of violence have no boundaries. First, we all should acknowledge and absorb what it must feel like today on that base. As large as it is, anyone who has stayed on a military base for any length of time can tell you that it has a tendency to be as insular a community as has ever been fashioned for human beings to live in. The individual is charged with a single mission, to support the others, as in no other community, and that extends to the families of the soldier. The entire group is feeling very traumatizedmore so than at any time these eight long years. This latest event, and its scale, and its location, shows us an opportunity to point out the path weve been on and who took us down that path, but even more importantly, do we not sympathize with the loss the families of those at Ft. Hood are experiencing?
There is no surprise when our news-holes sink their teeth into a story like this and start to make the attempt to fit it into their script. If it bleeds it leads. Personally, I am happy to hear that the shooter has survived. I predict we will hear a tale of a mental breakdown, of the inability to take a step back and say, “I shouldnt shoot these people.” It might give some insight into what is wrong with the way we deal with every event like this to hear the story of why from the shooters own mouth. No way will there ever be an opportunity given to anyone to stray from the script thoughif an event cant be made into a TV show, it never happened.
There will be the typical exploitation of the facts of this case on the typical standardized model. We all know it is coming. The decades of desensitizing have turned the world into a wasteland. Eventually we all became zombies for a daily dose of somebody elses trauma. Do the architects of this evil feel any remorse for the harm they have done to a group that once carried the moniker, HUMANITY? Do the ones that profit from the chaos ever feel any regret? The News Pauper is not an overtly religious man; he wishes that there were a god, or any number of gods, that could be petitioned to redress this one prevailing issue. However, empiricism dictates that only through the flesh can any god act in our cause, which is gods way of saying ‘do it yourself.’
If there is anything I can do to help do gods work, it would be to sound the clarion call for the dismantling of the macabre edifice that is our media. To see something that has the capacity to teach and engage and entertain be prostituted for the benefit of those that degrade us and keep us at odds with each other is demoralizing to say the least. I can have little effect on such a leviathan, but, if I can sway one mind to my view that the law should try to protect our dignity at least as hard as it tries to protect propertywell, you see. One or two minds will never win.
Can anyone relate to the desolation, BEFORE the next shooter acts out his futility and impotence in the next burst of rage? Is there anyone out there that can acknowledge that it is the way we are speaking to each other about the big questions in our lives that is causing these people to go insane? The tone of the public discourse — that is where the cancer lies. It convinces the confused that there are no solutions but to lash out. Its a deadly form of pollution that makes elements on the margins attack the healthy middle. It seems as clear as day to the compulsive-obsessive sap who will tomorrow become a hated assassin.
We all need to relate to the losses at Ft. Hood. We are all the traumatized community that seems to be intent on consuming itself in spite of its horror at what it has become. Are we so trapped by a set of corporate sociopaths that we cannot act in our own interest and the larger interests of the world?
The News Pauper salutes you if you spend even a second thinking about this.
Contact the author at WBDunne@ltsaloon.org
2009 W.B. Dunne. All Rights Reserved.
It’s true our national media no longer has a brain or a heart — it’s seems they are a creature equipped with popping eyeballs for scandal and Viagra-reinforced gonads for sexual escapades and little else. And, yes, they have also all become Jerry Bruckheimer scriptwriters, always looking for that treacly melodramatic or USA kicks-ass storyline to tie the ‘news’ up into a neat little emotional bundle for the blank, staring spectators desperately gripping their remotes and itching to change the channel. The only thing that will cure this is loss of ratings, and I think that’s in progress.
Of course, no tragedy is too horrific for the right-wing buzz bombs to avoid using to slap Obama — some of the wingnuts are now claiming a ‘connection’ between the shooter, Maj. Hasan, and our president because Hasan was one of hundreds of names on a list that was sent to the White House. Kerry Swift Boat liar Jerome Corsi is apparently even saying Hasan was an ‘advisor’ to Obama although, typical for Insane Birther Corsi, not a shred of evidence exists to back up this fantasy. Oh, and since Hasan is a Muslim, he must also be a jihadist tied to Al-Qaeda, or so the noise machine imagines. There is no septic tank they won’t wallow in if they think they can score a point against Obama.
An excellent article WB. Not having a TV I was unaware of this tragedy until I went to work and saw the NY Times. I do not regret missing the endless blathering of TV nitwits. The media’s job is to keep us inflamed if they can’t keep us comatose. It’s time we changed that job description.
Simply the Clinton years redux, only now they have more control over, and own more of, the media. I remember when it was claimed that the media would never give Hillary a rest if she won: they would say and do anything to get her just like they did Bill. Thank God we avoided that.
I hope people realize that no matter how much they despise the Clintons, or how bad they think it might have been, it’s not really a Clinton problem we’ve been having.
They have no shame. They will use anything, encourage hatred of any religion, and race, any ethnicity. They will tell any lie over and over and never apologize for doing so… just move on to the next one. They are the perfect companion for the Right Wing Neo Nuts. That’s no accident either.
I suspect, when it comes to Muslims, they and the media are encouraging and would love to have another Crusades.
I called Richard Bey who was sub-ing for the screech lady on Sirius Left this week. I pointed out that if 9/11 had been a bigger conspiracy and some Christians had been forced to help in the attack, they might “snap” too. This is what made a certain plane crash in Pennsylvania, sad to say but fortunate for us. Most people seem to be mentally unable to flip the situation around like that. It’s just easier to blame the Christians, the Muslims, the Atheists, the Liberals, the homeless, Welfare Mamas…
It’s always interesting to notice the goofy mental preoccupations of some of our fellow citizens. An aging yuppie obsessed with homeless people ‘stealing his garbage’ (seriously) tends to blame every local arson or robbery on the homeless; an Anglo restaurant owner who was once stuck up by an Hispanic man automatically attributes every unsolved crime to Mexicans; a white liquor store clerk thinks all black men are born thieves because a few shoplifted from his store in a black neighborhood (as if whites never shoplift), so every reported mugging or petty theft is obviously the work of a black man. Even if the homeless, or Mexicans or blacks are subsequently found not to have committed whatever crime was under discussion, these people still cling tenaciously to their prejudices which, like most bigotry, is completely irrational and therefore beyond the bounds of reason and fact. And here we have in a — ahem — ‘nutshell’ the frightened Palin Teabaggers and throwback Christopublicans, rural rubes scared to death of change and anything outside of their very limited experience.
Perhaps the yuppie could learn a lesson by being homeless; perhaps the restaurant owner could get a new perspective by opening his next business in Mexico City; perhaps the liquor store clerk could open his mind by making some new friends with a darker skin color than his own, but the T-C’s seem incapable of ever learning from past experience and failure — it’s one of the persistent hallmarks of their ignorance.
dunne has his thinking cap on hear. we can prevent ths sensseless murder if we prepare for it. i hope the rite people are reading dunne.