violence

Its been a loooong long time since I have written here. I don't think many people read it, because I don't let many people know about it. I am still a bit ambivalent about being a blogger. But there are some things on my mind and I can't find people talking about them, so I'll start.

Something is up, don't you think? Violence is every present and certainly focused on in the media, so I'm not saying that the recent string of family murders, child murders, and domestic violence cases are new. But combined with what seems to me to be an unusually large number--in an unusually short amount of time--of mass murders--rampage style random or not so random killings--this does seem unusual. Columbine shocked us, and then there were more Columbines, and that shocked us. But in something like three weeks we had the Alabama shooting spree, the shooting rampage at the nursing home, the shooting rampage at the immigrant center, and at least one other that my sickened mind is blocking out. Before these rampages there seemed to be a large number of parents killing their children them themselves out of desperation of some sort. Can these things really be disconnected?

Are things accelerating? Do we always think that? Is the problem only about firearms? Obviously this is a problem, but is something else going on too?

I don't have any theories. But I'm disturbed and concerned. And I have a sense its an expression of things much more ordinary and commonplace, and our sensationalizing of it all doesn't help us get to the bottom of it.