In the mist of the recent shooting at the baseball field in Virginia that targeted Republican law makers, politicians and pundits have lamented about the coarsening of American politics over the years. It’s hard to keep up with what now happens to be the problem with our political dialogue. After the presidential election it was said our politics suffered from the bane of political correctness and the assault on our right to insult. Some believe this forced people to act out and vote for an ill-qualified candidate for president, and to elect to the House of Representatives a  candidate who violently attacked a reporter in the Montana special election. Today the commentary is our lack of decency and respect for each other and differing opinions that is doing us in. It’s beyond confusing.

My thinking is along the lines that America’s political discourse has always been mean spirited and violent. This write up in the New Republic supports my view. Historically no changes have occurred in our Nation without bloodshed. The media’s characterization of the shooting this past week in Virginia as isolated is par for the course. It demonstrates our lack of recognizing the many ways violence has shaped our Nation. The mischaracterization allows us to easily dismiss these events as rare, and therefore separate from everyday life. It makes us indifferent to the pain and lasting agony of the many victims of gun violence. More directly it supports the modern interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment, one that conflates the right of an individual associated with a militia to own a gun during times of war, with the right to own weapons of war as a hobby.

I believe no change will come about unless we own up to our political history, a history and a people so inured by violence, that the prevalence of shootings is either nonexistent or tantamount to our freedom. Americans like it mean.