Society's Relationship with Violence

I’m over this whole love/hate relationship that America has with violence.

How they keep going back and forth with loving each other, with violence pulling the rope

 Towards its side, and always winning in this unending game of tug-of-war.

With violence being in movies, video games, and TV shows,

And just about anything else.

Everyone is always aware of it, but in a blissful way where we say how bad violence is, yet still

 Go back to it at the end of the day, because they just seem to enjoy it so much, like a drug that

they can’t get enough of.

And when they’ve had their fix, they soon become numb to it,

And it just becomes commonplace.

Sex doesn’t even get looked at ever. It is always stared at for a while,

Until someone takes up an issue with it.

And the whole worrying about the effect of children, sexual acts of sorts on TV are to blame,

Yet violence runs rampant all over the networks.

Then when something bad happens, like a shooting at a school, violence is blamed.

Then people go off about how it is so bad,

And with how game and movie violence should be regulated more.

Of course, once this blows over, like a friend dealing with a smoker who says they’re going to quit soon, it just resumes.

The hate that America has for violence disappears,

And it shows up again in our media and entertainment.

How we as a nation are able to just go back to violence, and let it tell us once again,

How “everything is going to be okay”

And we believe it, even though we know deep down that

Nothing is going to change, and that violence is only here to take our money.

Even knowing a lot about media violence, knowing what it does,

We still turn a blind eye to it, like we are just a person affected by the bystander effect,

And see a problem, yet do nothing to stop it and solve the problem.

How odd it is that many years ago,

That our form of entertainment was watching someone fall,

Through a little trapdoor on the floor,

And hang by a noose, choking to death.

We think that because the hero in games or movies

Is justified to use violence to beat the bad guys,

And we root for those heroes when the bad guys die.

No matter how violent it may be, they are still the hero,

 And they are the person we are supposed to be rooting for,

 Rooting for them to win the fight and defeat the evil villain.

Maybe nothing has changed since our days of going to the gallows for entertainment,

 Except the form that we receive our entertainment in,

 And maybe things will just remain the same in this unending relationship

 Between our lovely Lady America and violence.