So long as we are a media-saturated culture, it’s not likely things are going to get better. Media by its very nature works in the realm of the phantasmic, manipulating archetypes and narratives. Every story has to have a hero and a villain, and in the gnostic psycho-drama, representatives of traditions and long-standing systems or institutions—like capitalism, republicanism, federalism, the rule of law, individualism, marriage, family, and faith—are the villains keeping the hero from his journey of authentic self-realization.

Exhibit A: just about every movie ever made. Exhibit B: the mainstream media’s framing of news and events. It’s the gnostic psycho-drama that haunts the American soul, a truly American religion.

Until we pass through this gnostic moment, and begin seeing each other as our flesh and blood neighbors with names and not through the phantasmic and archetypical lenses of Facebook, the mainstream media, pop music, and any number of other media, the violence will only heighten. This is true on the Left as well as on the Right. The Left should know that they’re no longer dealing with right-wing, passive Christians, but with a new, irreligious rightist element that will fight back. Have fun with that.