January 1, 2023: 7 people dead and 25 injured in seven mass shootings, in Mifflin Township, Ohio; Oklahoma City; Ocala, Florida; Clinton, Maryland; Durham, North Carolina; Chicago; and Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was an ominously bloody beginning to what has been a bloody year so far. Though there is no universally-accepted definition for a mass shooting, by one count there had been 223 this year as of last Sunday, including eight in Philadelphia, six in Chicago, six in New Orleans, and (oddly enough) five in Shreveport. Perhaps the worst day so far this year was April 15, which saw four shootings and fifty casualties, including four killed and 32 injured at a 16th-birthday party in Dadeville, Alabama. And the response of our body politic? Cue up the fiddle tunes while Rome is burning down around our ears. Everyone agrees these are bad things, but other than that, the only thing on which everyone is agreed is on approaching them primarily as opportunities for partisan attacks and political advantage. Brothers and sisters, this is our nation; we are in trouble.
I don’t just say that because of mass shootings, either. Thing is, of the various trends in our culture which disturb me deeply, that might be the only one where calling it bad is uncontroversial—and that points to the biggest problem of all. Those of y’all who’ve been around here long enough may remember I taught a few sessions in the Opening on family-systems theory, drawing primarily on the work of Rabbi Dr. Edwin Friedman. In his last book, published posthumously in 1996, Dr. Friedman judged the US to be in a state of emotional regression, rising anxiety in the culture producing hyperseriousness and driving the herding instinct. That process has only accelerated, tribalizing our politics to the point that even when everyone agrees something is bad, that just means the tribal warfare shifts to fighting over what to do about it.