NOW TOO MUCH FOR US? We say guns, they say mental illness!

FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2023

Justin Jones, bring us together! After Monday, it's been a very good week, mass shooting wise.

Admittedly, Monday was bad. 

On that occasion, a 25-year-old man walked into a bank in Louisville and fatally shot five people. One week earlier, a mass shooting inside a Nashville school had taken the lives of six people—three adults, three 9-year-old children.

Why do people conduct these mass shootings? According to CNN,  the Louisville shooter's family "plans to have his brain tested for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE." 

It would be interesting to see what some such procedure might show.

That said, this type of mass shooting incident has become a familiar part of the American scene. It has become a cultural norm, one of many destructive norms we the people don't seem to be able to find our way back out of.

With respect to the culture of mass shootings, a familiar pattern obtains. Our blue tribe prescribes a certain approach to this deeply destructive state of affairs—an approach which involves the regulation of guns.

Personally, we agree with such proposals. That said, office holders of the red tribe talk about the role that mental illness plays in these mass shooting events. 

Our tribe tends to dismiss such statements as acts of bad faith, as they often may be. That said, mental health issues are an obvious part of this syndrome too, but rarely the twain shall meet in our segregated tribal discussions.

It's easy for those of us who are blue to see the apparent bad faith of the red tribe's office holders. At the end of a very discouraging week, we're going to leave you with a few events which capture much of the way our own blue tribe tends to behave.

We'll start last night, as Al Franken spoke with Alex Wagner about the phenomenon which has often been called "the big sort." 

At one point, Wagner posed this question: "Does it feel to you like we are eventually sorting ourselves into deeper blue and deeper red states?"

It was a decent question. Increasingly, members of the red and blue tribes don't even live in the same localities, let alone hold the same views. Responding to Wagner, Franken said this:

"Yeah, we're doing nothing to bring people together, we're just always dividing people, and we are getting more separate, living more in our different areas that are red or bkue, and this has been happening for quite awhile, hasn't it?"

AS their discussion continued, the pair agreed that they weren't "trying to draw a false equivalence" between the behaviors of the red and blue worlds. That said, under a visual which said "Red States Gone Wild," here's how the segment ended:

FRANKEN (4/13/23): There's just an escalation in how far gone the Republican Party is. I mean, when they call January 6th a "legitimate political discourse," I mean—it's close to parody, but it's not, because it's not funny.

Speaking of behavior which comes close to parody, have "they" called January 6 a "legitimate political discourse?"

That's a referece to a single statement made by a single Republican official about a year ago. In our view, that was never an accurate account of what that one person had said—but so what?

Under current rules of the road, it became a standard jibe in our standard blue tribe jibe book. After seeming to lament the way we don't bring people together, Franken turned to that bit of script and said that "they" have said that.

Franken and Wagner agreed that current Republican policies and impulses are crazier than those of our own party. A person could quite sensibly advance that view.

That said, does it help when our tribunes insist on promoting the lazy tales which keep us blues feeling good? For another example from this week, consider what Lawrence said.

Lawrence O'Donnell contains multitudes. He's very experienced in several realms, and he knows a lot. We've often complimented him as one of the only mainstream journalists who was willing to speak with medical specialists, in a perfectly reasonable way, about the mental health, or lack of same, of one Donald J. Trump.

That said, Lawrence also has a history of failures of anger management which have created a string of entertaining though unhelpful episodes. He sometimes adopts his Dorchester accent during such episodes. 

Beyond that, he may still be subject to the unhelpful anger of We Northern Irish against the rebels Down South.

On Tuesday night, Lawrence played tape of a public statement by Rep. Justin Jones, who had just been reinstated to the Tennessee House.  For ourselves, we hope that Rep. Jones turns out to be a wise and effective political leader. 

In our view, Lawrence let his anger flash at that point. Different people will hold different views about the utility of a statement like this:

O'DONNELL (4/11/23): The white Republicans in power in the Tennessee state House, which was built by slaves, have shown how little has changed in that building in the 55 years since Avon Williams, Jr. became the first black person elected to the Tennessee Senate in the 20th century.

The white Republicans are holding power in a House which was built by slaves!

Each person can judge the utility and wisdom of such formulations, offered by people like Lawrence. We've seen a lot of such statements in the wake of recent Tennessee events.

For ourselves, this sort of thing has made us think back to a column by the very angry Jimmy Breslin in 1999—an angry column about what an obvious old school white Tennessee racist Candidate Gore so plainly was.

The anger of Us Northern Irish isn't always enormously smart. That said, We Northern Irish have been doing this since the time of Civil War. Each individual is allowed to decide if they think this is helpful or smart.

We'll leave you with two statements, the first by Brother Franken, who wrote some great jokes for Gore:

Yeah, we're doing nothing to bring people together, we're just always dividing people.

That's one statement, from last night, yanked out of a larger context. The second statement comes from Professor Cottom. 

In our view, she pretty much got it right:

I keep my eyes on the South for a lot of reasons. This is my home. It is the region of this nation’s original sin. Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here: not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.

We think Cottom got it right. We think Cottom knows what we need, though Lawrence and the rest of the cable news Rolling Stones may know what we want.

Has our nation achieved a state of affairs which is "now too much for us?" Can we possibly find a way "back out of all this?"

It may seem, at this point, that the party favored by our blue tribe can't possibly lose next year. The large majority of the public disagrees with the GOP with respect to abortion. A very large percentage of voters favor tougher laws with respect to access to guns.

It almost seems like there's no way our self-impressed tribe could possibly lose. To that, we'll only offer this:

Just sit back and watch us try!

For quite a few years, it has seemed to us that there's no easy or obvious way out of our devolving political mess. In our view, turning things over to Lawrence's anger may not be the way to proceed.

We say guns, they say mental illness. Justin Jones, develop your skills and bring us together! Bring us together, please!