The Dangers of Expedient, Self-serving Conflation

This past weekend's shooting tragedy in Tucson, Arizona has kicked The Conflation Machinery into high gear. No surprise there. But it's still sad, because it's actually being fueled by one of the elements being conflated.

Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at an outdoor 'town hall' meeting in a Safeway parking lot. Nineteen people were shot, six were killed. Representative Gabreille Giffords, critically wounded by a bullet to the head, seems to have been the primary target, so the term 'attempted assassination' has been used in news reports and editorials.

The conflation started when the question 'Why?' began being asked.

As of the time of this post's writing, Loughner is, at the very least, 'mentally disturbed'. After a proper psychiatric evaluation, it may well be that he suffers from a variety of substantial ailments.

Given this, does it make any sense to lay so much blame for this event on the behaviour of the Sarah Palins, the Sharon Angles, the Michele Bachmanns, the Glenn Becks, etc?

Make no mistake about it: there is a culture of vilification, of intolerance present in the US (not just in the political arena, but in everyday life) that is troubling. So troubling that the sheriff of Tucson had some very pointed things to say about it at the initial press conference. And it would be ill-advised to deny that Mr. Loughner would not have been, at the very least, affected by this pervasive poison.

But as much as I agree that this is in fact the state of affairs that's been created in our modern society...nothing more than a manifestation of the 'Us vs Them' mindset I see all the time, everywhere, even within our PanAm Games stadium site selection process...it worries me that conflation will prevent not only the question 'Why?' from being properly answered, but will prevent others from even being asked. It worries me that in the rush to get more participants onto the playing field (battlefield?) between 'right' and 'left', a desire for genuine understanding will be muzzled.

Jared Lee Loughner is a troubled young man.

Today's politics and media foment notions of combative rhetoric, of extreme actions.

People today seem more driven to vent and to judge and to damn than they are to seek out comprehension, to construct informed, qualified opinions in order to generate sincere consensus.

All of these suggestions are valid and deserving of our energies to remedy.

As a society, we need to have a better understanding of mental illness, remove the stigmas, have better mechanisms in place to deal with those who require attention.

As a society, we need to have a better understanding of the political process, of the framework within which we live, so that disinformation and fomenting are simply not effective.

As a society, we need to have a better understanding of how we can better deal with the anger, the fear, the frustrations with which modern life is so rife, so that we're better equipped to engage, to converse, to generate sincere consensus.

But when The Conflation Machinery is revving as high as it currently is, I mostly worry that too, too much will be sacrificed, and that in the end, the situation will have been made worse.

Leading to me wonder 'If we don't deal with these issues on their own, acknowledge the importance of addressing them independently while conceding their interconnectivity, if we allow The Conflation Machinery to hold sway, just how bad is this all going to get?'

More on this to follow.