I was thinking about violence in media, how it has an effect of increasing rates of depression, and social alienation and cynicism, and lack of empathy. These are all negatives, which are not balanced by any positives.
If there were something in our food supply that was doing that–say, making people depressed–the Left woudl be all over it, especially if they could blame the “corporations”, say Monsanto.
Given, then, the research that is available, why are so few people, particularly on the Left, saying anything? The answer is that objecting to it would require moral judgement. It would require speaking in a cultural voice, which has at its root a vision for a shared cultural order, over and above the political order. For people for whom everything is political, this is impossible. If it is not demonizing Republicans and corporations, then it has no use.
But we live in cultural orders, not political orders. Culture gives us meaning. Police can only give us physical order.