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The El Paso shooter was a right wing nut job who supported Trump. The Dayton shooter was a left wing nut job who supported Bernie & Warren. While both sides are blaming each other, can’t reasonable people realize social media extremism is breaking many people in this country?
Mass shootings have skyrocketed in the country as social media has grown in popularity. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s because social media rewards extremism & convinces people that whatever opinion they have is 100% correct and the other side is 100% wrong.
Social media dehumanizes those you disagree with and allows good and evil tropes to triumph. Add in easy access to firearms and whatever side of the political aisle you’re on there’s plenty of fuel to start a fire.
Social media is, essentially, a blame factory. Something happens and everyone rushes to assign blame. Generally the person to be blamed is outside your tribe. (A different race, gender, political party, sex, etc). But wild idea: what if all of us are to blame when things go bad?
If you eliminate blame as the precondition for most debate & discussion, couldn’t you then focus on eminently reasonable solutions? Seems like a great starting point. Because most of the time it doesn’t seem like we ever move beyond blame. (End rant).
