How to Stop the Government from Electrocuting our Children
A guide to prevent the government from viewing a disaster as a political advantage
Columbine, Jonesboro, Springfield, Paducah, Umbqua, Colorado, Virginia Tech, Santa Barbara, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, and by the time you read this there will probably be one more school to add to the list of school shootings I made from just the top of my head. The epidemic of school shootings has quickly become rampant in our nation with a body count growing as fast as the shootings. This disaster has been rampaging the USA since at least 1999 and due to the government’s lack of response to the crisis it has only gotten worse. The lack of government response is also due to the organization known as the NRA. The NRA (National Rifle Association) is an organization that prevents our government from passing common sense laws that prevent any restriction on guns even if they are directly designed to prevent the loss of life through gun violence that could have easily been prevented if these laws had been in place. However the government has taken to the opportunity to use Parkland as the Disaster to apply shock therapy.
In Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” she talks about the use of Shock Therapy, a political move coined by Professor Friedman from the University of Chicago. Shock Therapy is political tactic that can be used to pass laws the nation is against without them even realizing. With Shock Therapy the government keeps a disliked idea on the table until a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina happens. Then with the nation in shock of the event that just occurred the government can pass any bill they want because the nation is too distracted with disaster relief and aid to realize what the government is doing instead of helping. For example when Hurricane Katrina happened the government destroyed Louisiana’s public education system and replaced it with a private charter system.
I believe the government attempted to use Shock therapy after the Parkland High School shooting but failed to do so from my own analysis of a report I read from the National Public Radio. I believe following Parkland, Trump attempted to use Shock Therapy to create a school system where teachers would be armed and he also tried to use shock Therapy to de-villainize the NRA and make them seem like the good guys. However this was met with great protest and resentment by March For Our Lives, a group created by the students of Parkland to create change to end gun violence in America. In this event we see the shock treatment fail due to the governments underestimation of the shock the public would go through. While normally any other disaster would have worked however since this is a continuous event that keeps happening the actual shock it leaves behind has completely disappeared and public now wants the government to actually do something effective instead of an idea that’s been rejected by the public so many times such as arming teachers.
This is one of the rare occasions where the despicable shock Therapy tactic has been rejected and dismantled by the public it was suppose to go unnoticed by. This provides a template for how to fight against this tactic that has been used to exploit the public on multiple occasions. Instead of asking how could this have happened we need to be asking what could have been done to prevent this and what could our government have done to prevent this. There will be disasters where this will be difficult to not be stuck in a state of helpless shock, such as KKK riots, economic collapse, and increased By doing this we turn the shock meant to distract us into a force that drives us to demand better from our government to protect us from these disasters instead of using them as political tools.