Anger and Violence in America

As readers of this blog know, I usually keep things pretty light and humorous and leave the heavy stuff to others. But today, after the horrible shooting incident in Tucson over the weekend, I don’t feel very much like smiling or, in my case, purring.

By this time, I’m sure everyone knows the details of the story… six people dead including a nine-year-old girl, several people wounded, and a U.S. Congressperson in critical condition with a head injury. But what makes me saddest of all is the undercurrent of anger, violence and general mean-spiritedness that seems to have permeated our culture in the USA, and is, in my opinion, a major reason for tragedies like this one. And it’s not just the usual suspects of talk radio and TV “news”…you’ll find loads of unbridled anger and nastiness in our music, our reality TV shows, our computer games, and all over the Internet. And when you combine this roiling undercurrent with a populace that’s armed to the teeth… well, it makes you wish humans would be more like cats. Sure we kitties disagree and fight from time to time, but we always manage to settle our differences with our own claws and teeth instead of weaponry. And most of the time, we manage to be pretty sweet.

So how about it humans? If we cats can rein in our anger and keep our tempers in check most of the time, certainly you can too. Hey, I like mayhem in movies and screeching “real” housewives on TV as much as the next fellow, but perhaps we should take a step back and think about what all this is doing to us as a society. Surely we can do much, much better. Meanwhile, our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of the shooting incident in Tucson, and to their families and friends.