We are all familiar with the expression “You are what you eat.”

We are learning today, with extreme pain, that you are also what you consume visually. That is, you are also what you watch, what you listen to, and what you see on television — what you eat visually.

Fifty years ago there was no serious violence depicted on television. Violence was not a source of entertainment. Today we are experiencing violence on a massive scale.

Also, there was the explosion of weaponry in every home. Now we are drowning in TV violence. Visual acts of extreme violence. We are now also experiencing real-live physical violence with daily mass shootings across the nation, from large commercial centers to tiny local schools to isolated random acts in every aspect of our communities.

We are, we have become, what we digest verbally and visually. At the peak of the pagan Roman Empire, physical violence was a genuine source of entertainment in huge amphitheaters with Christians being slaughtered before huge crowds of spectators. The empire would ultimately collapse after centuries of slaughter and torture.

We are a Christian nation. Shall we voluntarily surrender to become a second Roman Pagan Empire? No! 

We must stop the visual incendiary and physical violence, today.

Rustan Swenson

Middlebury