American the Violent

We may not like to admit it, but America has always been a violent country. I spend my days writing about the violent actions of people in the Old West. Brutal men and women like Juan Soto, Tom Bell, Kate Bender and Belle Starr. The frontier was definitely a violent place – but nowadays we’ve gone off the Richter scale. I’m referring of course to the shooting that took place this weekend in Tucson, Arizona. It seems that violence has turned the American dream into an Imax version of The Sopranos. Look out over the landscape and what do you see? You see a demented Toontown, filled with carloads of gun-wielding maniacs exploding innocent bystanders like cantaloupes at a backwoods turkey shoot. You see a twisted bizarro-land gone crazy on a lethal cocktail made with equal parts of instant gratification, self-righteous anger, and notions of entitlement. But as I mentioned, America has always been subject to violence from such individuals. The difference now is the bad guys are no longer riding into town on their horses and shooting at the law, they arrive via Taxi with semi-automatic weapons and gun down innocent children. It was tragic behavior then and it’s tragic behavior now.