Unintended Consequences

The recent rash of mass shootings has left the nation stunned but, sadly, not speechless. The usual media and political suspects are saying the usual things, using the bodies of the innocent as a sickening ideological soapbox.

We're not going to do that here. These gruesome murders are not about, nor caused by, politics. Rather, they are the unavoidable and perhaps unstoppable product of a deeply diseased culture. A culture which has become the perfect growth medium for psychopathy.

"Loners" are no longer alone when in their online worlds. They can communicate without actual human contact. They can find reinforcement for their darkest and most twisted thoughts and fantasies. They can give the worst demons of their psyches an artificial, external life in cyberspace - free to express hatred and anger anonymously and without consequence. And on the Internet, madness can hide in plain sight.

After all, who's going to notice or care about garden variety insanity in a world which routinely describes everyone as murderous: baby killers on one side, Earth-destroying Nazis on the other. The stakes are absolute, the "other" is the enemy, and words are just words...until they become actions.

The social mechanisms which formerly prevented these massacres have crumbled. The bonds of family, friendship, and faith. A shared sense of community. Optimism about the future. Moral certainty and personal responsibility.

Instead, we now live in a crowded world of communal loners, all staring at their phones instead of the world and people around them. Politicians and media figures preach an unsubtle and dangerously divisive message of absolutes: you are either on this side or that, either all good or all evil. There is no middle ground - only calls for action. Calls that the wrong people are hearing.

We live in a culture in which too many feel they have no meaning or importance, but believe that one spectacular act of madness can give them the instant celebrity which defines success in a sick society. And so they kill to feel alive. To experience an illusion of power at the expense of the powerless. And even knowing the likelihood that they will be killed during their heinous act, they believe they will live eternally in the electronic ether, washed in the blood of the sacrificed.

Gun control can not and will not change any of this. The phenomena of mass shootings is, in fact, unstoppable absent a wholesale change in our culture, our way of life, and our society's unhealthy obsession with an inhuman and inhumane electronic world.

The good news is that the vast majority of people still retain values strong enough to keep them morally centered in our crumbling culture. The bad news is that unless those values can regain cultural dominance, and unless we can replace combativeness and angry confrontation with honest conversation, mass murder will continue to be our inescapable new normal.

Bitter Lemon

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As there's no Pulitzer Prize offered for "Subtlety in Editorial Cartooning," we see no particular downside to taking a direct approach in our criticism of CNN's Don Lemon and his wildly biased questions while moderating the most recent Democrat debate.

Lemon's declaration of Trump's bigotry as a "fact" is the sort of drip-drip-drip Chinese water torture of constant misinformation that has convinced half the country that Trump and his supporters (even his reluctant supporters) are racist bastards who always keep a noose in the glove compartment "just in case."

As journalistic standards don't really mean anything anymore, there's no point in our suggesting that Lemon and his ilk "live up" to rules which no longer apply. But entirely apart from that, there should be repercussions for those in public positions who deliberately use untruthful hate speech to divide and incite the American public.

And when we say "repercussions," we're not talking about the restriction of free speech. We're talking repercussions in the sense of marketplace pressures, or even condemnation of this kind of nonsense from any remaining journalists who aren't complete whores.

And it's a pity that Lemon's sleazy lack of professionalism is a distraction from the many interesting, accurate, and logical statements made by the Democrat candidates on Wednesday night. Oh, not regarding policies - but rather in their attacks on each other. Blood was drawn, and we enjoyed every drop of it!

Happily, we'll be spared any new debates for at least a few weeks. Perhaps during that time, Don Lemon can learn to prioritize journalistic integrity over his hate-filled ignorance.

BONUS: WEIGHTY DECISION

Michael "Wearing a Black Hole Would Make Me Look Slimmer" Moore is trying to promote the idea of Michelle Obama running for President, saying that while there are a number of Democrats who could beat Trump, only Michelle could crush him.

As genuinely nightmarish as the idea is, Moore might not be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a completely unqualified, politically radical, self-invented facade of a person named "Obama" was put in the Oval Office.

Not So Silent But Deadly

To be completely honest, we're writing this before Tuesday night's Democrat debate (the first of a two night series) so we have no way of knowing the specifics of what the candidates will say. But we still feel fairly safe in our assumption that the cartoon above has captured the essence of the event.

Still, even from our viewpoint here in the past, we think there are a number of things we can predict about Tuesday's debate. Let's see how many of these we get right...

• Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, finally on the same stage, will shout themselves hoarse while trying to offer more free stuff than the other candidate is offering. Their combined offerings will total more money than there's ever been, or will ever be, but both will claim that the cash will magically materialize if a massive tax is levied on the evil rich.

• Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg will each try to eliminate the other, so as to be the surviving "young, alternative" candidate. O'Rourke hopes to accomplish this by inviting as guests several black high school football players who kneel during the playing of the national anthem. In this way, O'Rourke can make the important political point that it isn't only women soccer players who are assholes. Buttigieg, on the other hand, may respond that he is far, far more experienced in matters related to kneeling.

And our predictions for tonight's debate...

• Joe Biden, after promising to be "not so nice" to his political attackers, will challenge Kamala "Biden and his Klan buddies threw garbage while Norman Rockwell painted me walking into elementary school" Harris to meet him behind the gym to duke it out.

• Cory Booker, after gaining no ground by claiming that his testosterone levels make him want to punch Trump in the face, will walk back his statement by claiming that he actually has so much estrogen that he only threatened to attack the President because he was feeling cranky during his period.

The big topics of both nights will be racism and healthcare, followed closely by student debt forgiveness and the absolutely critical need to impeach Donald Trump for being Donald Trump. Little will be said about Russia or Mueller, (except, perhaps, in the context of discussing long term healthcare for the senile) and even less will be mentioned about the way Democrats routinely turn cities into soul-destroying slums.

There is, however, one bright spot in all of this. Which is that, after being on meds for diverticulitis for a month, we have now been cleared to start drinking liquor again. Whew - that was a close one!