March 31: Nashville and the spread of political violence

In which, America reels from another mass shooting that is tragically politicized.

It has been a week and I’m getting to this newsletter late. My apologies if this isn’t in your inbox in time for you to enjoy on your lunch break. Onwards!

Nashville and the spread of political violence

This week started with another senseless act of domestic terrorism in the form of a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, a transgendered man (woman who identifies as a man) appears to have thought long and hard about this crime, having drafted a manifesto, and selecting and surveilling multiple targets before settling on a school she had once attended.

The shooter killed six individuals, three school staff and three students, before police got to the shooter.

I cannot comprehend the level of despair an individual must be in to be able to so thoroughly dehumanize their fellow human beings to the point of being willing to kill innocent people, especially children. It’s more than a perverted sense of injustice, mental illness or anger (all of which seemed to be in play here for the shooter). There’s a rage in the soul that is terrifying.

A student asked me this week if I thought this scourge of mass shootings was more a culture issue or a policy issue. I’ve been pondering that and digging through the news stories and data on gun violence this week. I really think it’s a culture issue much more than a policy issue. It’s a culture issue that runs deep in our hearts in terms of how we view our neighbors, how we view and value those who are different from us, and how we conceive of our communal duty to serve and protect the innocent.

Here’s the catch to this one: I’ve been watching and mapping the popular debate on guns and gun policy closely, especially since the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018. Typically, the first 24 hours after an event like this is focused on the initial shock and trying to figure out the details of the event. Within 48 hours, though, public discourse abstracts the tragedy into preselected, ideologically defined talking points, and things go downhill from there.

That hasn’t happened this week. While President Biden repeated his call for “common sense” gun control, media coverage on the shooters background and possible motivations has all but ceased, there’s been next to no memorializing (outside the conservative press) of the victims, or praise of the officers who ended the rampage. 

Indeed, mainstream news outlets appear to have shifted into a kind of victim blaming with outlets like Axios publishing stories on how Christian groups are backing so-called anti-trans legislation. At the same time, transgendered activists attempting to occupy state houses in Kentucky and Tennessee during what activists call a “Week of Visibility” or “Day of Vengeance” have drawn little to no coverage. 

What am I suggesting here? I’m suggesting something I’ve talked about quite a bit in the last year in this newsletter: The culture war is getting increasingly dangerous, and while the Biden administration focuses on the danger of right wing domestic terrorism, it drags its feet on prosecuting left wing terrorism (if it prosecutes at all), the media largely downplays or explains away left wing terrorism, and public officials believe they can casually use violent rhetoric and harass independent journalists. 

Explaining away unlawful behavior, denying/justifying violence of your followers, using incendiary rhetoric and violent imagery… what does all this sound like? If your answer is “Donald Trump and the January 6 rioters,” you’d be correct. Speaking of Donald Trump…