Everyone's an Activist

While it may not be apparent, I do make a conscious effort to be sensative to international news and various political issues which effect both the US and the world at large. I do try. Now, will the BBC or CNN be calling me up as a news analyst any time soon? Not likely. Just the other day, in an attempt to check up on the global buzz, I picked up the latest copy of The Economist, a moderately priced, world-savey news source out of London. There, on the cover, appeared a red-white-blue print semi-automatic handgun. The headline above read "America's Tragedy." Gripping, eh? Nough' said. I had to get it. So, I flipped immediately to the cover story and read. The writer's comments were, to my surprise, more discriptive than evaluative. He was quite fair to the public struggle between basic freedoms and gun control in American politics (as well as that at the cloak-and-daggar level). The opening page was, of course, a retelling of the brutal murders at Virginia Polytechnical Institute. With this, he then raised some important questions in a segue to the facts on civilian murders with fire-arms in the last 30 years, etc. At the end of the article, he nudged readers to re-evaluate their view of both sides of the aisle on the issue: Democrats and their short-lived vendetta against guns and hyper-sensative NRA members who react as if they were being completely disarmed each time someone even mentions the word gun. He then went on to make a not so subtle mockery of the Democrat's more recent exaltation of pro-gun candidates. Hardly atypical of a European writer.

What struck me most, though, was the persuasive force of the article without making an extreme, self-aggrandizing claim about gun control. I must say. Using the events in Blacksburg, VA as a springboard into his article was a rather engaging move. The oldest trick in the book: emotive appeal to raise crucial questions. In this case, however, he did not over-state what took place, nor did he have to. All he had to do was describe. Good. I hope we need no convincing. We must re-think gun politics. Documentaries such as 'Bowling for Columbine' and the like have previously created waves of activism, but politics based upon sensation tend to foster polarization rather than dialogue and tend also not to stick. The line between hyper-activism and fanaticism is blurry. I mean, who doesn't have a friend that was once a walking Michael Moore transcript? Mr. Moore and I agree that it's great to see people passionate about issues that effect both the greater populus and the margianalized. I just hope that the sensible doesn't get drowned in the sensational.