The Romans loved violence, and as the United States is modelled on the Roman Empire, so too does it love its violence.
“You can show someone’s head getting blown off in a film, but ladies nipples are out. Sex and love are obscene to Americans in mainstream media, but the cold hearted murder of thousands in some Hollywood shooting festival are perfectly acceptable to Americans. This is why American society is sick, not only because of the film media which is geared towards extreme violence, but the constant wars, the constant open tap of hatred spewed from networks like Fox news and people like Rush Limbaugh. There is a never ending torrent of seething hatred that America as a nation spews out to the world,” professor of psychology at Cambridge University, told the BBC.
Americans are desensitized by extreme violence and hatred because they see so much of it, everywhere they go the screens tell them how to feel, what to think and how to act. Couple the extreme violence with Ritalined children and drugged up adults and you get a very dangerous cocktail; skewed logic, a deadly uncontrollable force waiting to explode in civil war.
The Batman shooter was merely acting out his isolated American Dream, it was a gun festival, it was a celebration of the American gun. His isolation is in fact very similar to the same isolation felt by Paul Schrader’s Travis Bickle character, in the film Taxi Driver.
“We built our nation with the gun. Our history is steeped in blood and guns, gunshot wounds, bullets and Remington six shooters. We built the Wild West with the gun, we shot those Indians till only a few were left with our guns, plus we robbed those stage coaches and trains with guns, without the gun we would not be American. So, you try and take away my gun, and you will see what happens,” Sam Willis, a pro gun lobby activist told the Washington Times on Sunday.
Americans also live in constant fear, where are you going to go when every place has the possibility of a crazed brainwashed gunman turning up and blowing your eight-year-old daughter away?
“It’s like Russian Roulette. You go to a mall to pick up some shoes, a gunman appears out of nowhere and blows away ten people. You go to the local burger joint, someone takes out an assault rifle because they didn’t get the right order, twelve people die. You go to your home, armed men have broken in and are demanding you hand over your ATM card and code or they shoot your family. This is the reality of living in America where there is a seething hatred for everything and where everything has to be given to you instantly, including fame and riches. Americans feel by shooting. This is what James Holmes was doing, he could not feel anymore, so he reached out with bullets. American society alienates those who do not play the game, who are not jocks, who are not cheerleaders. If you are none of those things, you are out, you are dead, goodbye you do not exist. How about after 911? If you did not wave an American flag, you were deemed a terrorist. If you did not call for the slaughter of Muslims around the world you were pretty much a pariah Muslim. This is the polarised society that is America, where there is no grey — only black and white,” an anonymous man who called up a late night talk show in Texas, said on Monday.