And Yet....

We may be at an inflection point for political violence in the U.S.https://t.co/sgLSjxqz8h

— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 24, 2021

Only 758 words (yes, I counted), and yet not one mention of  slavery; the violence committed simply to establish the "peculiar institution," not to mention the violence committed to defend and preserve it (foremost in my mind not being the Civil War, but the Texas War for Independence, fought solely to preserve slavery in the northern Mexican territory.)  The centuries long violence against the indigenous people of this continent, who we virtually wiped off the face of the earth.  The violence done to preserve Jim Crow and segregation and legalized discrimination long after the South "lost" the war (the electoral college is only one of the many remaining and functional vestiges of the peculiar institution, and frankly it is promoting violence today.  What was the joint session on Jan. 6, 2021 except the final act required by having an electoral college?).

Nothing about the violence done to people of color, in other words; or the violence of the '60's, of the Vietnam War and Kent State and Chicago '68.  Why were these not "inflection points"?  Because John Stoehr was not around then?  How about the political violence of the '70's?  Everybody knows the story of Patty Hearst.  Everybody has also forgotten how commonplace such violence was.   The ending of "Network" is about as removed from reality as Gen. Buck Turgidson was from Gen. Curtis LeMay (the former was a more sympathetic character, though).  Chayefsky made up his band of radicals who gun down Howard Beale on live TV for the ratings, but it worked because it was so close to the physical, political, and violent reality of the time.  A violence which, much like the violence of slavery, against the natives, against people of color or any minority we could label (watch "Gangs of New York" sometime and tell me it isn't more historically accurate than most people's views of American history) since this nation started (a few hundred years before that, actually), all of which we have flushed down the memory hole, the better to enjoy our TeeVees and our internet access.

Inflection point?  Now?  Why, because white people are killing white people, rather than just black people?  This is the flip side of the coin when white people freaked out because H. Rap Brown read the law in California and realized a black man was as free as a white man to carry a gun in public (no, the NRA didn't invent that in the last 10 years).  Open carry wasn't scary to white people until black people started doing it.  But Kyle Rittenhouse shot three white men, and says he supports Black Lives Matter.

Is he the inflection point, regardless?  Please.

Dylann Roof wasn't the inflection point, either.  Nor was Timothy McVeigh, much as he wanted to be.  Nor was Waco, though McVeigh thought it was.  Nor was Ruby Ridge.  Nor was the mass shooting in El Paso (Greg Abbott echoes the language of that shooter now, and puts shipping containers, about a football field's worth, on the border to "protect us".  Nobody flinches; or much cares.).  Nor was the massacre at Sandy Hook.  Or in the theater in Colorado; or in Columbine, also in Colorado.  Vietnam wasn't even an inflection point turning American's against pointless wars.  Within 15 years of the end of that war Bush invaded Iraq; then Shrub did it again, miring us in a war that lasted longer than Vietnam, and ended no better.  And the lesson from that war?  That we'd "unlearned" the "bad" lessons of Vietnam, and we should have stayed and "finished the job."

"Inflection points" are for conspiracy theory believers and children who know nothing about history or reality (two groups which often appear alike).  They are not a serious topic of discussion for adults.