IPS Blog

As a child I played war games (cowboys killing Indians). My friends and I routinely shot each other - with toy guns, of course. In my south Bronx neighborhood, older gang members had real guns and sometimes shot each other. Like in the movies! The cartoons I adored as a kid were loaded with violence as were the war movies Hollywood churned out to make propaganda for the actual war against Germany and Japan.

When James Holmes mowed down twelve people and wounded almost sixty at a movie theater in Colorado, I felt fresh violence enter my body as if a masseuse had greased me with liquid hostility before beginning the massage. Aggression penetrated my pores, inundated my brain and covered the cells of my heart. While the media reported the number of rounds fired, the kinds of weapons possessed by the assassin, and the anatomy of Holmes' booby-trapped apartment, President Obama and aspirant Romney uttered bland statements about the need for prayer, and consolation to the victims' families. Neither mentioned control of guns or the culture of violence that defines America. Freedom seems to equal gun possession for the National Rifle Association and many of its members.

Violence, more American than apple pie and baseball, has become a major social issue and a serious public health problem. Almost daily someone shoots another dead in countless metropolitan areas. Families suffer, cops say they are investigating and newspapers and TV stations get lead stories. I, like tens of millions, see the TV blood stories and easily fall into the fascination pit of the aftermaths and consequences of violence. But the media does not analyze or look for underlying themes in Aurora or similar horrifying acts. Instead, they use them to sell news shows, newspapers, and get advertisers.

Indeed, the media soak us with the culture of violence. In Hollywood and TV films, violent death has become the only formula for adequate retribution. Movie villains suffer hideous ends – movie justice. Violence as the cultural metaphor well suits a country that for decades has lived with perpetual war, backed by the owners of the war economy.

Continue reading Saul's colum at Progreso Weekly.

The night of Friday, July 20 was destined to make headlines — but never for this.

After three years of spiraling anticipation, the premier of The Dark Knight Rises was supposed to be the pinnacle of the American movie-going experience. But, in the aftermath of the midnight mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the nation wasn't enthralled by the big screen. Instead, we were collectively shell-shocked by this latest murderous rampage, which killed 12 dead and wounded 58 others.

As we mourn these senseless deaths, the media is sensationalizing the life and disappointments of James Holmes, the 24-year-old sole suspect behind the tragedy. Was he an obsessive fan with a blurred vision of reality? A lonely boy looking to be heard? Or an ambitious student weighed down by pressures to succeed? An entire narrative is spinning around him. It's a mythology that looks to craft as much fascination with the shooter as there was for the Batman movie itself.

But the particulars of Holmes' biography, riveting as they may be, should not become our take-away from what happened in Colorado. The heart of this story is not the state of James Holmes but the state of our country.

We've become a nation of jumbled values. While parents, politicians and everyone in between declare community safety a sacred right, movies glorify violence. And as we all mourn Colorado's needless deaths, gun-rights groups rail against the thought of stricter gun control.

But beneath the NRA's narrative of freedom and self-defense, "good, traditional American values," lies a simple truth: The gun industry is exactly that — an industry. And theirs is a profit motive so brutal that, according to one study, the gun industry is "working to recruit future customers among America's children…through advertising campaigns and even video games."

They're also working to keep guns ready at hand, pouring over $5,500,000 last year to lobby politicians.

How easy was it for Holmes to buy his weapons? Very. Colorado has some of the flimsiest gun laws in the United States: The assault rifle, shotgun, and handgun Holmes bought in the span of only a few months were all perfectly legal and raised zero flags. And where local distributors failed, there was always the unregulated online market, which outfitted Holmes with thousands of bullets and ballistic gear.

Each gun or bullet sold is profit in someone's eyes, so it's no wonder that every time we talk about gun control, a deafening uproar emerges. And there's little incentive for politicians to take a stand, either. Industry is industry, after all, and any production will raise GDP. Perversely, the more guns we churn out, the better off we call ourselves. Politicians get swelling statistics to market off to voters, the gun industry gets tenuous regulation, and we get ever more gun fatalities.

There's a defect in our priorities. We look at price tags and call it "value." But what of those dozens of victims in Colorado? Or the other estimated 100,000 people killed or injured by guns each year?

If we really must attach a dollar sign to understand, the University of Chicago Crime Lab pegs the annual cost of gun violence at $100 billion. But for all the media attention the Aurora shooting has gotten, most gun crimes flit silently under our radar — out of sight, out of mind. The societal damages they inflict are buried under headlines and forgotten.

For these unheard victims, it's time we get our values straight. We can't simply take gun sales at face-value. We must consider the staggering costs they carry along. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one possible step in that direction. The GPI, an alternate measurement to GDP, broadens our concept of wellbeing by integrating social, economic, and environmental indicators in its calculations of progress. One of these indicators, sure enough, is crime.

The Maryland GPI, for example, factors in not only direct out-of-pocket expenses, but also the more profound damages of crime, like trauma and fear, when determining its state-wide wellbeing. That way, when Maryland's legislators evaluate gun policy and regulation, they will realize the deeper, more substantial impacts that will work their way throughout the state.

The Colorado shootings have made one thing certain: We need to reorient our values. We need progress to be defined not by gun sales, but by the safety of our communities. And so we need a yardstick that will show both politicians and the public the true costs of our gun-wielding culture and the dangerous, short-sighted policies they have spawned. Only then will we have taken to heart the true message of Friday's tragedy. Only then will it not have been in vain.

Vicky Plestis is an intern at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she helps research alternative models of measuring economic progress. www.ips-dc.org

If ever an online video should go viral, it is Gasland director Josh Fox's vital new 18-minute gem, The Sky Is Pink.

It should become a widespread hit because:

1. It's brilliant.
2. It's funny.
3. It will scare the crap out of you and make you want to take action.

The film's title comes out of the mouth of a public official in Pittsburgh who, in Michael Moore comedic-style language, talks about how the media will report lies — "the sky is pink" — unless someone is out there to regularly rebut them. And if you say, "The sky is blue," the media will report this as a debate worthy of coverage.

What's brilliant about Fox's mini-documentary is that he both exposes the disinformation campaign being waged by the natural gas industry — and its allies in (very) high places — and reveals, in leaked documents and PowerPoint presentations, that the industry is fully aware that its fracking wells are contaminating water. Formally called hydraulic fracturing or shale-gas drilling — fracking requires large quantities of water and a cocktail of toxic chemicals. By poisoning drinking water and farmland, it endangers public health. 

The natural gas industry lies. Its executives know they lie. And we swallow their lies. Literally.

As someone who has wrestled with the climate crisis for over two decades, this mini-doc comes at a critical time. The crisis in journalism — with investigative journalism increasingly rare, and corporate control of the media at unprecedented heights — is one reason the Earth's climate is increasingly unstable. Tragically, we may already have reached critical tipping points, with dire consequences for everyone.

Watch this new film and weep for our water, our democracy, and our future.

Then spread the word and take action. Here are some great groups to support who are fighting fracking, working on media democracy issues, and trying to get the word out on the environmental crisis.

• Frackaction
• PRWatch
• Center for Investigative Reporting
• Shaleshock