The art of normalizing (and boycotting) violence

and other Happy New Year wishes

Why do they keep showing us egregious acts of violence on TV and on social media? Has this gotten significantly worse in recent years, or is it just me becoming more sensitive and (for some reason) less numb to these hideous clips? Why is it entirely acceptable for the media to traumatize its viewing audience with images and videos of cars plowing through crowds in terrorist attacks, as we’ve seen with the horrifying footage from New Orleans this week? And how quickly has this been normalized to such a degree that we fully expect it and, at some point, become at least somewhat numb to it?

This is the first Substack we’re publishing this year, and I would have preferred to write something hopeful, poignant, or (dare I say) motivating. And maybe that will still come. But the thing that’s ringing around in my head this morning is how truly gobsmacked I am — even after all these years of fighting against the normalization and radical acceptance of violence toward non-human and human animals — by how easy it is to sit down with our morning coffee and casually witness heinous images of lives being destroyed on the screens in front of us. We wince, maybe even flinch, and then we casually just move on … planning our grocery shopping for later.

But why do we effortlessly allow this into our lives and psyches? And, perhaps most alarmingly, why do we become complacent … even complicit?

Those of us who care about changing the world for animals often grapple with the question of when it’s appropriate to show people violent imagery. To show someone violence they don’t know about — violence they’re complicit in through their purchases — is seen as controversial, even offensive. But to show someone violence they already know has happened and that they can’t influence or change is framed as essential “news.” What can anyone learn from seeing that footage? That driving a truck into people is a bad thing?

I’ve realized that when I see those images, they make their way deep into my brain and become the stuff of my nightmares. Not just nightmares, but the OCD-related intrusive thoughts that become the stuff prescriptions are made for.

Call me a Highly-Sensitive Person, or just call me a … person, but it’s just too much. And I am saying this as someone who works in media, as a self-aware human who understands her boundaries and (usually) how to enforce them, and as an activist who is no stranger to the reality of society normalizing violence.

In this way, I’m so ordinary, and it deeply concerns me that even people who don’t write Substacks about their early-morning TV-watching experiences shielding their eyes from egregious images are also being traumatized every single day — without their consent.

But what troubles me most is how we seem to have drawn the line between the importance of not hiding the truth and the gratuitous showcasing of horrific violence in completely the wrong place. I’m not suggesting we ignore or hide the truth. On the contrary, we must not. But does the truth need to be presented in the form of relentless, gut-wrenching imagery that deadens rather than mobilizes us?

It’s the brand of trauma that hardens us. It’s the kind of trauma that deadens us. It’s the sort of trauma that invites us to participate in the very system that traumatized us in the first place. And it’s completely on-brand for Americans.

Listen, I’m not disregarding the literal thousands of people I’ve interviewed who give me oodles of hope, who fight against this violence in one way or another (or another or another … since there are endless ways of “raging against the dying of the light”), and who refuse to become complacent. Nor do I feel I’m somehow “better” or more special than anyone else; I don’t mean this rant to be self-righteous. I’m just being honest here.

Sometimes, it’s the horror show of mindless scrolling through Bluesky or whatever that stops me in my tracks, that gut-punches me, and that — on a particularly bad day — leaves me in an unrelenting spiral of existential angst. Why are we headed in this direction when we can do so much better?

And yes, there is a line to be drawn. A trigger warning wouldn’t fix it, though there’s something to be said about the ridiculous way they’re applied to some things while ignoring what needs them most. The bigger question is this: How do we ensure that telling the truth doesn’t mean perpetuating the violence?

What I’m suggesting is that we stop and really take inventory here. What’s on that grocery list we’re mindlessly jotting down while lives are being plowed down on the news before our very eyes? Is that list a reflection of our values, or is it a normalization of the violence that made us wince in the first place?

Thanks for letting me rant on this early January morning as I, along with most of you, grapple with the fear of the unknown and of what’s to come later this month. And the fear of collectively losing our morality entirely as we normalize the violence of breaking families apart simply because … we can.

To do something “simply because we can” is, I think, the root of most evil throughout history. It’s also the reason news channels show us footage of terrorists plowing down entire existences right before they cut to the segment about how to perfectly fry up some bacon.

If you want to resist the mayhem, consider a boycott of cruelty. Try Veganuary on for size.

xo,

Jasmin