The Blind Shooting The Blind.
- vfelice4
- Sep 15
- 11 min read
Vincent Bertolini-Felice / 9.15.25 / "Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
-Neil Postman
A man died last week. Three months ago, a woman and her husband died. Both, victims of political violence. Families have been left behind, decades of individual political commitment have ceased.
Such violent deaths truly highlight the worst aspects of the human condition. An atavistic ability triggered by a variety of factors; the factors that motivate a person to kill are tremendously difficult to understand at a personal and psychological level.
One fact that is difficult to deny is that humans are not psychologically programmed to kill in almost any capacity. In a study done by Pascal Molenberghs, PhD, at Melbourne University, 48 subjects viewed rendered video clips from a first person perspective in which they either “shot” (they simply viewed a brief clip) a civilian, or they shot a soldier.
In the situations in which a civilian was killed, participants reported more guilt, as the killing is seemingly unjustifiable when compared with an enemy soldier. Molenberghs and his team noticed that more activity was noticed in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex when subjects were presented with killing the civilian, and the more guilt processed, the greater the action in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC.
Further analysis revealed a tie between the guilt noticed in the OFC and a response from the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The TPJ has several functions, which Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts, Jon Kabat-Zinn notes as, “such cognition (via the TPJ) lets humans self-evaluate behavior, make predictions and moral judgments, monitor their own mental states, and engage in other forms of perspective-taking”.
The repetitive loop of examining the killing essentially means the TPJ is constantly reinforcing the feelings of guilt presented by the OFC and causing short- and long-term guilt and grief.
While there exists other Psychological and Philosophical reasons that make killing a difficult idea to grapple with, the most interesting part of Molenberghs study was left to the conclusion. When analyzing the response individuals held when responding to the killing of the enemy soldier, an action seen as “more justifiable”, Molenberghs determines that, “The results show that the neural mechanisms typically implicated with harming others, such as the OFC, become less active when the violence against a particular group is seen as justified. This study therefore provides unique insight into how normal individuals can become aggressors in specific situations.”
The purpose of this essay is not to determine what makes a killing justified. In the span of three months, two high profile political assassinations have rocked a delicate America into agony, apathy, and dread. It is my belief that the two killers of both Charlie Kirk, and of Melissa and Mark Hortman, were dangerously misled and committed two atrocities.
However, in a landscape paved with rampant scapegoating, flawed ideas of why two people could be so cruel, and abhorrent bifurcation, it is my belief that there is a single problem at fault for creating a platform to propel these individuals to murder. Two people fell victim to a psychological attack that has existed for decades, with the goal of diminishing the OFC and TPJ and creating a basis for the justification of murder.
It feels cliché to resort to the Twitter Marxist trope of blaming Capitalism. However, it is certain that Capitalism is the driving factor behind a change in news and the dissemination of information. During the latter half of the twentieth century and well into the Age of Information, capital interest dictated a new direction for news that has become the standard. As a result of this standard, not only has the ability to think with nuance been diminished, that ability (or lack thereof) has been weaponized.
In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, former NYU Professor of Media Ecology, Neil Postman, writes on a variety of topics revolving around the evolution of entertainment in the United States. One aspect he dedicated extensive time to analyzing was the change in news reporting in a new age centered around television.
Postman starts with the presupposition that the common cultural dialogue, the most popular sources of conversation, are largely defined by the most technologically advanced medium of entertainment available. In an age in which everything was printed, the public dialogue was centered around the printed word: recent affairs in printed newspapers, books written by literary giants, etc.
However, Postman notes a significant change around the 1960 Presidential debate. It was the first televised debate in United States history and carried significant ramifications on the 1960 election. Republican candidate Richard Nixon had been dealing with an extended sickness, and appeared as such on the debate, with most viewers noting Nixon’s profuse sweating and pale visage more than anything he spoke of.
When news outlets reported on who had “won” the debate, those who had watched the debate believed Democrat John F. Kennedy had won by a decisive margin, while, importantly, radio listeners opined that Nixon had won the debate by a fine margin. Nixon would go on to lose the election, claiming he had lost the election due to the malintent of several “makeup men”.
As television became the most advanced and easily accessible form of entertainment available, the medium of television also became the primary source of spreading information to the masses. Rather than there existing a defined separation between the information-centric form of television and the entertainment-focused side of television, the two began to merge. Informing became the focus of entertainment, and more consequentially, entertainment became the focus of informing.
Hence the fixation of the modern news cycle on the reduction of nuanced topics into easily understandable tidbits. In Postman’s perspective, this led to a public that was subservient to infotainment, people that did not grapple with complex topics that would inform others of their misguided perspectives.
In the conclusion to Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman summarizes the state of both public discourse and mainstream news, opining,
But what is happening in America is not the design of an articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless, for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas, about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is
ideology.
The last portion about how public consciousness has lost a homogeneity that existed under a time in which the printed word dominated seems especially apt. Ideology is technology, and whoever can co-opt the medium (technology and news spaces) is the arbiter of ideology.
Where do we go from here? What is the value in Postman’s perspective? Postman died in 2003, long before the modern conception of news and modern forms of technology. And what relevance does this serve to the assassination of a politician and a political figurehead. This requires greater extrapolation.
As previously outlined, killing and other atrocities can be more willingly viewed as “justifiable” when the OFC (the part of the brain that processes guilt) is not triggered. What if, then, there was a reason behind why two people could commit these acts and view them as justified on a psychological level.
It is possible that this can happen without an external catalyst. Some people do carry mental illness or traits of sociopathy that allow them to internally justify these acts without the need for external validation. However, I would argue that the same traits that have influenced the recent political assassinations exist and are dormant in many American citizens.
It is my belief that the willing subservience to the modern conception of news and the degradation of public discourse has contributed to political extremism, ignorance, and isolation.
Veering away for a second, many in the mainstream and alternative news space have painted an idea of Charlie Kirk as a champion of public discourse. This is a notion I fundamentally reject. The way in which Charlie approached public discourse, most notably, his “Prove Me Wrong” series, hosted at universities was a bastion of the flawed public discourse.
Postman detailed the modern conception of debate (most notably at the Presidential level) shifted from extended periods of outlining belief, policy, and the implications of both belief and philosophy to emotive rambling.
Each candidate was given five minutes to address such questions as, What is (or would be) your policy in Central America? His opposite number was then given one minute for a rebuttal. In such circumstances, complexity, documentation and logic can play no role, and, indeed, on several occasions syntax itself was abandoned entirely
Those guiding thought, politicians, talking heads, “public intellectuals” moved away from logical conversation to bite-size arguments in which appeals to emotion, frequent interruptions, and irrelevant statistics were commonplace. Kirk is not the only one who did this, as this is the status quo for most mainstream news networks and alternative speakers who exist in independent spaces.
Charlie Kirk is a byproduct of entertainment news and furthered a system that so frequently lacks nuance, complexity, and a common language of discourse.
So frequently, the politicians, talking heads, and “public intellectuals” outlined above will commonly speak of the fear of a dying America. One in which the culture of the past is being replaced. The causes presented for this are multiple, ranging from ethnic minorities, a loss of common religion to the declining of democracy, and Donald Trump.
It is my belief that America is dying but not due to any of the reasons outlined above, rather due to the disintegration of public discourse and willful submission to ignorance.
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.
Returning now to the reasoning, what caused this situation? What created broad division, no care for nuance, and the willingness to die for causes people seldom understand? There is no easy answer but one factor broadly exacerbating this is Postman’s conception of the modern news media.
In a study done for RAND Corporation, Political Scientist Jennifer Kavanaugh outlines how over the past thirty years, there has been a notable shift away from traditional forms of media, both printed and early television reports (Local news, national news coverage through NBC, ABC, and CBS), and towards cable news.
There were three large takeaways in analyzing this study,
Print journalism and reporting on broadcast television have been mostly consistent in tone and style over the last 30 years. But since 2000, there's been a gradual shift toward more-subjective reporting.
When comparing prime-time cable programming with broadcast television, there were significant differences in how the news was presented.
"Old media" is more grounded in traditional reporting. "New media" tends to lean more subjective.
(PsychologyToday.com/RAND Corp.)
The shift towards subjectivity in reporting is a direct response to the search for entertainment in news. Because the public want for grounded discourse has vanished, modern news focuses on subjectivity and appealing to the emotions of their viewers.
Whether a viewer believes it to or not, consistent viewership of cable news has been noted to increase biases. In a 2017 study done by Gregory J. Martin and Ari Yurkoglu, two professors at Stanford University, the impact of these biases was noticed. The two concluded that,
Furthermore, we estimate that cable news can increase polarization and explain about two-thirds of the increase among the public in the United States, and that this increase depends on both a persuasive effect of cable news and the existence of tastes for like-minded news. Finally, we find that an influence-maximizing owner of the cable news channels could have large effects on vote shares, but would have to sacrifice some levels of viewership to maximize influence.
So now we have established the pieces. Cable news (catch all term for the phenomenon of modern news that Postman noted in this context) creates an ill-informed public, an ill-informed public kills public discourse, the death of public discourse creates division, division creates hostility. What is the conclusion of this? The conclusion is that hostility creates murderers and kills politicians.
This is not a lengthy jump to make. When asked why he murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman, Vance Boelter cited his political and religious affiliations, noting he had recently been laid off and that he had, in recent years, increasingly become a viewer of Fox News and alternative, right-leaning sources.
While there simply has not been enough information released on Tyler Robinson (Charlie Kirk’s killer) to group him with Boelter in radicalization through the intaking of information, he did openly express anti-fascist ideals that liberal news sources often used to criticize Kirk.
Is it negligence? Is the news just doing what sells and is that just happening to radicalize and influence people into committing atrocities? Well, no, yes, and no. The news is doing what sells the best and pumps viewership and stock prices; however, it is not chance that it is radicalizing people.
With any corporation, the fundamental goal is to drive profit for their shareholders, and in turn, those who have the highest stake in the company. When you prioritize a quintessential philosophy that guides corporations, the profit motive, it is impossible to remain objective on matters. At a philosophical level, corporations are driven to analyze their consumers and cater their product towards their consumers to keep them engaged and ensure their continual return to a product.
This is the goal of cable news. Identify its target audience, and attempt to appease them so that they can have their biases affirmed. A space for logical discourse grounded in proper syntax and an appreciation for nuance is increasingly rare, and non-existent amongst corporate media.
Over the past half-century, political analysists have discovered that the idea of a “rational voter”, a person who carefully considers the pros and cons of each candidate and wishes to hear complex policy that directly influences their platform simply does not exist (or is a tremendously small minority). Rather, the focus became emotional appeal; finding a way to convince the voter they understand them and that the source of their problems is in the opposition.
The prevalence of rebuttals in debates and sharp increase in negative advertisement has communicated to the masses that “we MIGHT have the answer, but our opponent assuredly does not”.
Isolating the opponent has become the status quo not only for political parties but also for the way in which news is reported. Many consumers of corporate media are ill-informed, failing to understand the nuance of complex topics, so willing to scapegoat, and most dangerously, odious of their “opposition”.
To conclude, the ease of entertainment leaking into news, something that started with the birth of television has never been more prevalent than now. Corporate interest in the reporting of news has ensured that what is profitable will remain the standard for news reporting. What is profitable is promoting biases and retaining viewers, hence the want to please the viewers.
This is often done by reducing hard-to-understanding topics into clips that leave the viewer believing they fully understand the intricacies of this. Rather than admitting the limited perspective they are intaking, many are led to believe they are correct and their “opposition” is objectively wrong. A tendency which is reinforced by corporate news.
Corporate news serves to justify the biases of its viewers. It convinces a viewer that they need not even consider another perspective because the viewer is right, is morally justified. So, when we ask, how could someone come to do such things, commit such heinous acts, it is important to understand everyone is under attack.
Corporate news has waged a psychological war on public discourse and on objectivity, and we are all losers. Violence will continue to occur so long as corporate interest guides corporate news into vilifying others. When news bypasses the OFC, the ability to self-evaluate, think critically, is gone.
With no guilt, with no understanding, with no compassion, we are breeding sociopathy in and amongst ourselves. And so long as corporate news in not held accountable, this war will not stop, blood will continue to flow.
It is negligent to whitewash the legacy of the dead. Despite that, everyone ought to recognize the profound sadness of the recent situations. Take a moment and pray for the families of the deceased, and in solitude, take a moment and reflect on the fact that these are children of God. Pray, also, for compassion, and understanding, that apathy and division may diminish.
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