Jon Stewart calls it right
Jon Stewart was not at all funny last night. He gave a five plus minute monologue that detailed the angst of many who are tired of reliving the massacres that continue to happen again and again. But there is one segment that encapsulated it all.
“I honestly have nothing,” Jon Stewart said. “Other than just sadness. Once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other in the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist.”
Jon Stewart then really got deep after saying he does not want to get into the political wrangling. “What blows my mind,” Stewart said. “Is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves.” He then spoke about the seemingly unlimited amount of our treasure spent to fight terrorism overseas. Yet there is a domestic terrorism problem in America that goes unacknowledged.
That was the subject of my radio show Politics Done Right yesterday. In the corresponding Blog of the Week for the show I wrote the following.
The media and our government may attempt to qualify this event as a lone act but it is far from it. The sum total of many ‘lone wolf’ acts of violence based on a particular ideology is equivalent to the terrorism we call out whenever we call Islamic militants terrorists. Many more Americans have died and will die at the hands of American terrorists more so than at the hand of any foreign terrorists. The problem is no one is really looking for these terrorists within. They have attempted to redefine terrorism to exclude them. They have simply chosen not to connect the dots because the resulting drawing does not make a pretty picture.
One hopes that sooner rather than later we will take heed of all the signs before it gets too late.
(h/t DailyShow)