The Right Wing's Cultural Civil War Is a Drag

A little over a week ago, seven people were killed during a shooting spree in Midland-Odessa, Texas. It was August's third high-profile mass shooting—following attacks that killed 31 in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas earlier in the month—and the fifth shooting this year to have killed at least a half dozen people. At an Odessa press conference last Sunday, it was noted by an FBI agent that there is an active shooting episode every two weeks in America, one of the striking statistics that have convinced many on the left that these increasingly common events—beyond reflecting the failures of our policymakers and political system to address gun violence with meaningful legislation—are evidence of a national psyche gone horribly wrong. It is a sick country that prizes its gun culture over public order, the freedom of a minority of Americans over the safety of all.