Even if you only stay plugged in for a few minutes on a continuous news channel, you can’t escape this question: why are young people so violent? Who is responsible for it? Everyone goes through it: parents, school, police, city politics, consumer society, video games, social networks, etc. Curiously, two “bodies” are spared from criticism.
The Pinder Circus
Under the 14th legislature (2012-2017), without going so far as to say that all the debates were good behavior, the deputies behaved more or less correctly. Obviously, no one has forgotten marriage for all or the security texts. The sessions were long, copious, sometimes indigestible. If certain bird names could fly, we did not come out of them with the impression of having cuckoo clocks in our heads.
Since 2017 (15th and 16th legislatures), almost all public sessions have turned into boxing matches. Little by little, we get used to it: we lower the volume of the television, we keep our hands busy during the countless reminders of the rules. In other words, by dint of being exposed, you end up being desensitized to it all. We forget one detail: MPs love to stage themselves on social networks and what better way to click than to clash?
We relay insults, rants, in short, everything that causes MPs to be confused with Wish influencers. To believe that Marlène Schiappa has made school. Of course, the most “serious” cases are widely reported by the press. This form of verbal abuse is not lost on people outside Parliament. They see it, they perceive it and we have normalized it. It’s hard to lecture a kid on being polite when a Keeper of the Seals can give a finger of honor in the hemicycle.
In a sense, being aggressive, violent and vulgar has been shown to be a norm in politics. This is not even confined or circumscribed to the National Assembly – the Senate is much more civilized. It overflows outside.
Prime Time Trash
When you’re a junkie on the news, you necessarily watch the news channels continuously. In the popular imagination, the politician and the journalist are intellectually superior professions, just like the doctor, the lawyer, etc. They are notables. However, to see most of the debate sets, one wonders. We cut each other off, we insult each other, we invective each other, etc. The elementary rules of life in society are not applied. We could say that this has no hold on children or adolescents. Nevertheless, it contributes to it, if only with regard to the audiences. Obviously, we can also look at the case of TPMP, which conveys all that is most unhealthy in society.
But, even outside the debates, there is a trend that seems to be taking hold: the “trassification of news items”. We are no longer content to relay a news item, we script it, we make special editions, we give the most sordid details continuously. Some media coverage has absolutely nothing to envy to Rob Zombie’s films, which are not the least gory of their kind. Except that there are warnings about Rob Zombie films and you have to want to see them. You will never fall by chance, by turning on your television on a TNT channel, on a film by Rob Zombie. Even his version of the Halloween franchise, which is nice compared to his other productions, has never been broadcast on TNT, as far as we know. When you turn on your television, to get information, you are confronted in the foreground with this violence, which is in no way scripted. The balance between information and filth is no longer made.
These two elements alone are not enough to explain and rationalize the events and that would make them too easy and comfortable scapegoats. But, even if everyone makes their own criticism, we cannot ignore them. We accuse video games of all the evils, saying that they distill a dehumanization among young people. But, why video games and not the rest?
Perhaps this self-criticism will take longer to come, because it supposes that the two professions mentioned here get rid of a certain feeling of impunity, even that they accept that their ego prevails over the rest. It is up to adults to set an example and to pacify society and not always the same.