Psychiatrist and Washington Post commentator Charles Krauthammer suggests that the solution to mass shootings must include but also transcend gun control. Violent movies and games have to be considered as well:
“We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”
So why are politicians (including President Obama himself) so silent about video violence? Is it possible they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them?
“Since 1998, America’s five largest film studios contributed $41 million dollars to political candidates, compared with $16 million from the NRA, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.” So reports William La Jeunesse, who adds:
“The Entertainment Software Association, representing the video game industry, spent $4.4 million last year alone. That money has largely kept Congress off their backs, despite pressure from parental groups to fight the increasing violence their children are exposed to.”
One politician with the integrity to say something about media violence is Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia: “There’s a fear of confronting, taking on a controversial subject which is so profoundly important to get done and get done right. It baffles me.”
God is not deceived nor mocked by the wickedness of this age or the hypocrisy of so-called leaders who defend it—whether by active advocacy or by the silence of cowardly passivity.
