Desensitized

When I first learned of the murder of Renee Good, my emotions were typical. Sadness, fear, and confusion. One emotion was not present– shock. The last time I remember being shocked by gun violence was the Las Vegas Massacre in 2017. Before that, I didn’t even know what a massacre was. We all remember doing active shooter drills in elementary school. We all remember how scary it was to think not only about how it could happen, but that it does. 

In middle school, my school received bomb threats and was almost the target of a shooting. Thankfully, the bomb threats were empty and the school shooting was stopped before it could happen.

 Last year, there was an announcement in Town Meeting about school shootings, the same year 75 school shootings happened in the US (CNN). 

This summer, my friend was at the NSDA nationals competition when the entire building evacuated because of a seemingly armed individual. The evacuation was the most dangerous part, with many slightly trampled and certainly uneased. Of course, shootings are not the only thing our generation is desensitized to. 

The far right movement has desensitized America slowly through their increasing radicalization, subtle culture shifts and unimaginable events that reset the bar. Nothing you do is shocking after an insurrection. Trump managed to drop one liners such as “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters” in his first term so that no one was surprised by anything he said after that. If you’ve ever watched the news—or more likely scrolled the news on social media—and wondered how we got here as a nation, this is how. The lack of surprise is why the administration is able to get away with constant illegal and immoral action. The banality of evil is cyclically insidious. We live in a day and age where the second we wake up to the minute we go to sleep we can watch war crimes and people being detained in cages on every sized screen imaginable. The issue is not that these issues are being seen. The issue is that this creates anxiety without providing a solution. You as a highschooler don’t need to have those solutions. After all, the rest of the world doesn’t seem to either. Still, you can take the first step.

Reader, allow yourself to be shocked. Allow yourself to say that this should not be normal. We don’t have to be frogs in boiling water. 

https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg 

https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2025/11/trump-the-media-and-our-desensitization-to-violence