California Freeway Shootings

I don't live in California, but has this sort of thing become so commonplace that it doesn't even make the news? I haven't seen a single thing about it anywhere, and I read a shitload of news every day.

The number of possible freeway shootings in the East Bay
jumped to seven and the California Highway Patrol said Saturday that
federal agents were helping the investigation. All seven incidents were
along a stretch of Interstate 580 between San Leandro and Dublin. Six
of the incidents, including three in which investigators later found
bullet fragments in the victims' cars, all occurred between 6 and 8
p.m. Monday. The most recent possible shooting to come to light
involves a motorist who called CHP officers about 12:30 a.m. Saturday
to report an incident at 7: 50 p.m. Monday. The driver was traveling
from southbound Highway 238 to eastbound I-580 when the vehicle's back
window suddenly shattered. The driver still doesn't know what caused
the window to shatter but initially assumed it was caused by a rock or
debris. The driver called investigators after seeing news reports of
the other shootings, CHP Officer Shawn Morris said.

Investigators are looking into seven incidents where vehicles were
possibly struck by gunfire last week near Interstate 580 between San
Leandro and Dublin.
What the hell is going on in this country? People are shooting random
cars on the highway and it's not even news? We've got hundreds of
thousands of American soldiers deployed across the globe and nobody's
even sure how many wars we're fighting (Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti (does
that count?), Terror (how about that?)), Our wild-eyed, increasingly
unpopular President wants to chuck a horrible, hateful Amendment into
the Constitution and people are actually thinking it might not be such
a bad idea?
How do we respond to all this rampant insanity? We watch American Idol
and talk about the latest Mel Gibson movie. Is it some kind of
self-preservation thing? Does society have a built in
"distract-me-from-reality-so-I-don't-lose-my-shit" mechanism? Maybe
what we're witnessing is a kind of distributed denial where an entire
nation has silently agreed to ignore reality in favor of reality TV.
Where we all play along and make believe tap water in expensive bottles
is somehow safer than tap water from the sink.
Or am I cutting people too much slack? Perhaps it's not some
deep-seated self-preservation subroutine. Maybe we're just so stupid
and lazy that we don't care about anything. I hate to think it, but
it's possible that we've grown so inured to the psychotic ultraviolence
and the constant barrage of bad news that it's all just another thing
we click past as we scan the channels for the second-to-last episode of
Friends.
I hope not. I'm going to bet that people come out in droves tomorrow to
vote in the Democratic Primary. Tonight I'll dream about a record
turnout that will show the entire world how fed up Americans are with
all this crazy stuff. I desperately want to believe that people are
starting to pay attention, and I'm praying that tomorrow will be the
first sign of an excited, energized populace.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 1, 2004 at 10:31 PM | Permalink