No sooner had the bullets stopped flying in Las Vegas than certain politicians and media outlets (whom I will not dignify) started firing up the political machine. It mostly came in the form of tweets, calls for the political opposition to drop their deep-held beliefs and side with them as the only reasonable course of action. Of course, the demonization of the NRA began almost immediately as well, and while I'm not a member of the NRA, nor do I agree with some of their resistance to certain issues, I do not think they are the PR arm of a gun-toting political movement hell-bent on allowing people to shoot one another.
They are a political group, similar in nature to the Sierra Club, or any of the single-issue political groups on the right or left, but they are demonized because they a) mostly donate to Republicans and b) have been very successful in their efforts to promote legislation.
One area in the on-going game of political PR where the Democrats have most certainly won is in casting the opponents funding groups as somehow evil or a malignant force for society. Oil Companies? Polluting the world, the NRA? Actively trying to kill you. Drug companies? Trying to make big bucks on the backs of the dying. It's not an accident, it's a political plan by the left that they are winning in the same way they have won the culture wars. In short: The GOP has not become the hot-mess that they are wholly because they have bad ideas, in large part they struggle because their leadership is shite and their messaging is even worse.
It has now gotten so bad that even expressing sorrow and wishing good thoughts to victims of tragedy is seen as a negative event by the left's useful idiots. While the right makes up fake-news about Islamist terrorists where none exist, or continually tries to find a boogeyman for their adherents to latch on to.
What dies in all of this is reason, and reasonable arguments. For all of the bemoaning of the depths to which our politics has fallen both sides firmly believe that the root-cause of this is the actions of the other 'side' exclusively. This is because we've elected a group of carnival barkers to rule us, with no thought given to their intelligence or ability to actually govern. I've said this many times before and I'll say it again.
The problems in America are not caused by Trump, or by Obama or by the media, or anyone other than US. We have allowed things to devolve this far because WE abdicated our position of power in the Republic and handed it over lock, stock and barrel to a group of low-functioning idiots with a penchant for strongman style histrionics and rhetorical flair.
In a sane world, reasonable people could disagree on the merits or extent that gun control is needed. However, no reasonable person should disagree that every legal option should be investigated when it comes to preventing mass shootings.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not healthcare is a "right" or a "privilege" but should be able to agree that what we currently have is irreparably broken and the entire system needs an overhaul. Reasonable people can also disagree on what exactly the overhaul should be.
Reasonable people can disagree on taxation and government revenue, on where the money is going, but should be able to agree that the current tax code is a partisan, rent-seeking mess filled with too many rules and give-aways to political patrons.
But, and this is a big, big but, we no longer operate as reasonable people in our politics, either in the murky, stupid world of social media or in the increasingly page-click driven world of actual media.
I have made no secret of my disliking of the Republican party. The GOP is a dysfunctional, anti-intellectual mess right now. And while I dabbled with independence before I believe this time it will stick because where before I still found GOP politicians with ideas, I currently find many of the ideas from both parties to be lacking in both reason and logic. I can never be a Democrat because of their authoritarianism and, frankly, pretty scary ideas about how the country should be ran, but I can never be a Republican either because of the same.
It is possible, albeit unlikely, that the current Supreme Court case on gerrymandering could help alleviate some of this by removing the incumbent protection system but I doubt it. I doubt it because we've now all firmly entrenched ourselves within our tribes and our only goal is to "sick-burn" the other tribe. We don't want to govern, we have a NEED to win. And not just that, to humiliate the other side in large part to feel like we're something, instead of just floating along in life, accomplishing nothing and generally being......a loser.
To be honest, I'm not sure of the fix, if any exists.
And that might be the most depressing bit of all. That this cannot be fixed because most Americans, despite protestations to the contrary, don't WANT it to be. We NEED to hate the other side because it makes us feel superior, we need to gloat, to assure ourselves through smugness that we are, in fact, the superior people. We NEED to laugh at the stupidity of our political opposites because it helps us cover up our own.
You can't fix stupid, increasingly, it seems that we don't want to.
