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Thursday, January 31, 2013
It's better in color
Or worse in some cases. We're all used to seeing pictures of Hitler and the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg in all their glorious black and white. But when you look at these color photos courtesy of LIFE magazine, you realize these really were people, just like we see on the widescreen today, whipped into a frenzy by a complete coming together of all the institutions of information that the country could muster. I've often said that nuclear weapons were not the most dangerous weapons of the last century. Nor were biological or chemical weapons the most dangerous. That designation goes, IMHO, to mass media. For in our age, in order to get common sense people ready to use some horrible weapon, or perpetrate some other terrifying deed, or promote an unthinkable evil (*cough* abortion), you need everything in an advanced society to come together to promote it, using all the information technology available.
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Wasn't it a journalist (or a saying of them) that said the most important weapon of today wasn't the gun, but the camera?
ReplyDeleteOf course, there was some other guy that long ago talked about the power of the tongue. Was probably in some dusty old book. ;-)
This was just...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/02/is-national-review-losing-its-senses.html
I followed the link and checked the full context.
The author was just saying the same thing you did in this post!
It's almost like Mark is coming unhinged and just looking for whatever target he can point at.
I'll admit, there's reason to believe the outrage was more that Obama said it than what he said. After all, it's not the first time the word 'senseless violence' has been applied to things like war or even the Holocaust. On the other hand, it's a valid point nonetheless, though perhaps she could have worded it a little differently (as if I'm some master wordsmith to say so). My guess is, those pouncing on her for this are probably doing so for similar reasons to her pouncing on Obama.
ReplyDeleteMostly agree with you obviously. The key (which everyone seems to be overlooking) is, I think, this sentence:
ReplyDeleteThe idea that all violence is “senseless” violence is one that has taken deep root on the left; it’s also, unfortunately, one that poses a major impediment to understanding the world.
Which she repeated in her followup:
The hysterical reaction elicited by my post underscores precisely the point I intended to make — that the notion, now deeply ingrained on the left, that violence is by definition senseless — random, incomprehensible, unpreventable — poses an enormous impediment to understanding the world and the forces at work in it.
So to me, it looks like... well what I do often. Something happens. It gets me thinking and reminding me about a thought I had in the past and/or been noodling around in my head.
Yeah some of it obviously had to do with Obama, but it looks most like the post was "Obama reminded me of something the left does all the time which annoys me..." etc.
And really, if one removes that "h" word that seems to have the magical ability to shut down all thought and look at her post the way I suggested, is she wrong?