After a white conservative had been shot, many of the prominent white people in politics and the media hurried to blame themselves for a variety of apologies when they found that the shooter was a white young man from a Republican family.
Republican Government Spencer Cox from Utah, where Kirk was killed, thinks the problem is social media.
Cox has become a media -by criticizing the platform that made traditional media more irrelevant.
Gov. Cox said Sunday:
I believe that social media have played a direct role in every murder and murder attack that we have seen over the past five or six years. There is no doubt in my mind – ‘cancer’ is probably not a strong word. What we have done, especially for our children, it took us decades to realize how bad these algorithms are.
Cox is not completely wrong. Studies have shown that social media are bad for mental health and that the mental health of individuals improves when they stop consuming social media.
The problem with the theory of Cox is that social media existed for a long time before the current climate of political violence. Cox quotes the last five or six years of attacks, but social media are more than 20 years old, so being unable to be social media in itself.
Pete Buttigieg thinks the problem is lonely white men:
I think a broader social disease that I honestly think could see and feel how many people in America, normal people, not dangerous people, were at a time when we all had to pray for the victim and his family, was online for a bit of proof that the shooter would turn out to be from the other political team.
That is not healthy and that is not a way forward. But that is exactly what the algorithm encourages us to encourage us. And this seems to be especially acute for young men. Young men, at the moment, statistically, are the group that most likely spends most of their time alone. That is a recipe for a deeper social level of pain and unraveling that we have to turn around. We can’t continue like that. And I think it is especially important to remember that some of the same people who are online in these conversations will be completely normal offline. That is why we just have to put the phone down, put the computer down, go out and talk to each other in environments where our humanity comes through.
BUTTIJGIEG is talking about how loneliness and online spend too much time online can lead to the dehumanian of other people, and how people are brave and say things online that they would never say to someone’s face, but loneliness is a condition that is as old as humanity itself, and keyboard fighters have existed since the Dialup Internet.
None of them really gives a satisfactory explanation.
A CNN -Analysis Found threats against chosen officials in 2023 of 500 federally continued threats:
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At least 41% of all cases in the entire decade were politically motivated.
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Almost 95% of people who are being prosecuted for making threats for civil servants are male; The median age is 37.
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Politically motivated threats for civil servants rose 178% during Trump’s presidency.
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Threats with regard to hot political topics such as abortion or police -Bridity also shot up in the Trump years, with more than 300% of Obama’s second term.
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As the party in power, 16 Democrats were given threats during Obama’s second term. This rose by 169% with 43 GOP laws threatened under Trump.
None of this means that Donald Trump causes political violence.
It is impossible to ignore that Trump has embraced violent political rhetoric and his observed enemies, both republican and democratically, has attacked in such a threatening way that he created a cultural political language that lends himself to people who are not agree with you, and labeling opponents.
The rise of Trump on Twitter, where he has issued many of his threats, and the problematic nature of social media goes hand in hand.
America often takes on the personality of his presidents. A president influences the culture of the country.
All the talk about lonely white men and algorithms seems to be avoided.
Until America demands better from the person in the White House, the broken partisan political culture will remain pumped into our collective atmosphere such as pollution by a chimney.
As long as we continue to ignore the real problem, it should not surprise us if the problem continues or gets worse.
What do you think is the cause of the current environment of political violence? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
