The "fiscal cliff" negotiations are starting to seem like a repeat of the debate over the debt ceiling this summer. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Does that sound like the current state of our politics or what?
Then there's the gun control debate. Pres. Obama proposed "meaningful action" to prevent gun violence without specifying what that meant, and the NRA responds by proposing armed guards at schools. Pres. Obama does intend to make gun control a "central issue" of his second term, according to this PBS News Hour headline, so the response from the NRA is to some degree understandable. But when the NRA starts blaming video games for being too violent, as well as the media for covering the story too much, and then says the answer is more guns, I start to wonder if there's any sanity left in our political discourse. Gun control may not be the answer to preventing gun violence. There's little evidence that the assault weapons ban of the 1990s had any effect on gun violence, according to one expert I heard on NPR. But proposing to expand the security state to every school in the country, beyond where we're already at, seems ludicrous to me. Making guns harder for convicted criminals and the mentally ill to purchase legally seems like a level-headed policy response in comparison. But our current political discourse will make the President seem like the extremist if things continue the way they are. Our current political discourse gives equal weight to both sides, even when one side is proposing incremental change, and the other is spouting extreme, rigid ideology that defends their conception of liberty while threatening everyone else's safety. The same arguments happen over and over again, and nothing ever changes for the better. The cliffs of insanity indeed.
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