'A resurgent conservatism took hold of the reins of power and replaced the liberal social project of the prior five decades with a neoliberal ideology that saw government action on behalf of ordinary people as a blunder.'
are killed with guns. Our gun homicide rate is eighteen times the rate of other developed countries. No other economically advanced country has such carnage.
Beginning in the 1980s, however, the bonds of a shared aspiration began to unravel; the social compact began to split. A resurgent conservatism took hold of the reins of power and replaced the liberal social project of the prior five decades with a neoliberal ideology that saw government action on behalf of ordinary people as a blunder.
The original aspiration of the nation to advance"liberty and justice for all" gave way to a credo of"each against all," a struggle where private ambition trumps all other values. A symbiotic relationship emerged between the oligarchs and the political class, politicians relying on Super PACs for lavish contributions to finance their campaigns and reciprocating by serving the interests of the rich.
When the hatred infects an unstable mind, it might explode in racial violence or even a mass shooting: a paroxysm of destruction rooted in the fear that one's group status is in peril. The victims are mere innocent bystanders whose only offense is that they happen to represent a group seen as a threat to one's identity. Witness the Mother Emanuel AME church shooting in South Carolina; the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburg; and the Tops Market shooting in Buffalo.
But these measures, as critical as they are, treat the symptoms of gun violence, not the root causes. They don't address the factors that incline people to commit random acts of murder, whether individual homicide or mass shootings. Tackling the problem at a more fundamental level calls for a radical transformation of our social ethos: from one built on competitive individualism to one that promotes a shared dedication to the common good.
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