Squander Not This Opportunity

A plea for rationality

Ripped from a video posted by Collin Rugg on X

Former President Trump turned his head slightly to the right and a bullet hit his ear instead of penetrating his skull. Timing is everything.

BUTLER, PA., July 16, 2024 (GLOB) — Timing. I read one pundit that I can’t find now that said this may have saved Biden’s nomination but cemented his loss in November. I have also read that Trump had his speech re-written for the RNC. Did this near-death experience affect his choice of running mate? What else has been impacted by this event?

Biden gave a very well written and at times very well delivered speech calling for lowering the temperature, reducing the hostility, reminding people that disagreement is not just unavoidable but necessary for a functioning democracy, but that invective and hostility are not productive and are in fact harmful.

Or at least, that is what I chose to hear.

And I think it is important what we choose to hear. I don’t mean interpreting things they way we want. I mean choosing what we hear, preferring reason and rationality over hyperbole and frenzy.

Hamish McKenzie noted in this post:

Fight!

That:

The incentives of this system may not be the cause of our social division, but they certainly don’t help. It’s a system that gets stronger with polarization, feeding on conflict and histrionics. We’ve never had more power to communicate with each other, but it seems increasingly difficult to see each other’s humanity. (Emphasis mine)

He is right.

But, these algorithms are actually controlled by us, not vice versa. We decide what we look at, and the algorithm complies with more of the same.

Imagine what could happen if you read information dense articles that rationally discussed the issues of the day, focusing on verified information and facts and expecting you to form your own opinion instead of telling you what to think.

Boring? Yeah, probably.

But, the desire to be entertained rather than informed is how we have arrived at this point in time and history.

I will share one example of a timely hot-topic - Gun Control.

When I was a lad in California I recall with dismay the Watts Riots. Why was I dismayed? The Watts riots happened in August of 1965. I was 9 years and 9 months old. There were no cartoons on TV. All I could see on our 16 inch black and white Zenith were pictures of night time fires and I had no idea what was going on.

Please note, the above picture is dramatically clearer on whatever screen you are viewing it on vs what it looked like on that Zenith television.

My dad, years later, told me a story. We lived in a neighborhood in Upland, California populated by many WWII and Korean War veterans. During that August, my dad had no less than three people knock on his door and ask if he needed a gun. We were 70 miles away from this riot, but people were scared. My dad said no, he had one. He had a little 22 pistol. I never knew this.

He went walking the neighborhood just to scope out the situation. One of our neighbors was in his garage wiping the cosmoline off of a .50 caliber machine gun. Imagine seeing this in your neighbor’s garage:

Korean war era M2 Browning

He said there were guns “everywhere.”

When the riots ended, the guns all vanished.

My point? There were no accidental shootings in my neighborhood, no intentional shootings, no guns brought to school. I remember a conversation I had with a friend here in Texas. He said his dad had many guns, handguns, hunting rifles, etc. But he never took a gun to school because, “I knew my dad would beat my ass.”

Guns were readily available, but people were not conducting mass shootings.

Why?

Have we as a nation spent any time trying to figure out what changed societally? Because it simply is not the availability of guns. Otherwise, school shootings should have been commonplace in 1965.

We’ve never had more power to communicate with each other, but it seems increasingly difficult to see each other’s humanity.

Now, will this comment elicit rational debate and a real search for answers to the problem of anti-social behavior? Or will I be labeled a gun nut?

The responsible media outlets are calling for cooling of the rhetoric and a return to civil debate. Whether or not that happens is up to us. Not the media. Us. We choose our news. They will pander to whatever we consume. Will we consume wisely?

We should. We will eventually wish we had. The time to effect change is now.

Squander not this opportunity.