There was another school shooting today, this one in Washington State. From the sounds of it, there are some gravely injured people undergoing very serious surgery and the fatality list may, unfortunately, go up from where it is now.
We seem incapable of doing anything about this problem, and I attribute the failure mainly to there being way too many mean-spirited or paranoid people in this country. Tell me why we’re this way? Why are we so scared and angry when compared to other offshoots of the British Empire?
As best I can piece the story together, it is because Americans still indulge in racial slurs in a political environment that allows almost anyone to have a weapon almost anywhere. Match meet fuel.
Guilt.
Racial guilt out front. The U.S. genocided the original inhabitants of this continent and then raided West Africa for slave workers, thus crippling that part of Africa for generations. When slavery became…unfashionable if not unsustainable…the U.S. then substituted a racially-based economic system that kept a minimum wage population in position to be used based on skin color.
Twenty+ generations later? Even the assholes feel the guilt. Drives ’em crazy.
So it goes.
Get used to it.
Until we change the entire system, it is just going to keep going down.
Get used to it.
Or…fucking get used to it.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Disagree, about the “guilt”.
The NeoConfederates show zero hints of guilt. Zero.
Fear of retribution, more like.
Just go back in history, and the reaction to Haiti’s independence.
I seem to remember that this original post was asking “Why are we like that?” about the number of mean-spirited and paranoid people in this country and about the latest school shooting.
And you answer by saying that “NeoConfederates” are the problem!!!???
I sometimes wonder why the so-called left seems to always shoot itself in the foot. You and ol’ Deathtongue here are at least a part of the answer to that question. Besides your idiotic webnames…by themselves enough to discourage any right-thinking person from ever taking either of you seriously…you say it’s the NeoConfederates who are to blame and he says it’s the rural people, all religious and such.
Nice.
How many “NeoConfederates”…a term usually used without any attempt at a real definition, by the way…have been involved in the mass of school and public shootings that have been occurring here over the past several years? None as far as I know, unless by “NeoConfederate” you mean people who have been driven batshit crazy by a culture that quite demonstrably worships violence in its entire media culture while simultaneously preaching against it. How many real “NeoConfederates” as defined by Wikipedia…”various groups and individuals who view the Southern secession, the Confederate States of America, and the Southern United States in a heroic light”…do you believe there are in this country, and how powerful do you think they are? “NeoCorporatists” are the ones who are running this sick show, and when you get right down to it their forebears were the ones that ran the show when the Confederates got their asses handed to them in the Civil War. Your average local “NeoConfederate” is just another white loser looking to use race as an excuse for his own lack of abilities, and people like that don’t do much except strut around looking mean, drink themselves into a daily stupor and pick fights that they know they can win.
Get real.
Go look in the mirror.
NeoLiberal heal thyself.
AG
I assume because, amongst all other nations founded on slavery and genocide, we proved uniquely capable of sustaining the karmaic/genetic Fear Of The Other across generations, in the way that thieves always fear losing the things they’ve stolen.
Sometimes I feel like our whole right-to-violently-protect-our-property pathology is rooted in some psychic overcompensation for our forebears’ violent sins. I mean, if I weren’t such a blasé atheist I’d guess that heaven is punishing us for being so uniquely awful at the outset of things, and continuing to pretend that we weren’t (and not learning much from any of that).
And people say there’s no such thing as American exceptionalism. Ho ho.
I await the list of nations which weren’t founded on slavery and genocide…
Get comfy, dude!
People expect too much from politics — too much, that is, so long as it’s people doing the politicking.
The fundamental depravity of mankind pretty much guarantees that acting in the aggregate, we’re going to break crockery, just as we do one by one.
Economies of scale take care of the rest.
Culture and rigid economic stratification with low rate of advancement up the economic ladder (oddly while material possessions/consumption have increased significantly over the past sixty years). US foreign policy handles conflicts with violence. Low tolerance for “sucking it up” without striking back. Movies, etc. glorify violence and misogyny (and consumption of porn has exploded with the internet). Immediate gratification expectation (and consumption of seemingly endless amounts of toys and crap) and low bars for taking it by whatever means possible (am thinking of what appears to be an explosion of rape in the military and on college campuses). And guns, guns, guns.
We’re not a psychologically healthy nation of peoples.
I don’t care much for this explanation because it seems too short-term focused. You can draw a pretty straight line of (conservative) America’s thirst for preening, violent hierarchical domination at least back to the Know Nothings and certainly from the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan.
I mean, really, are our problems really any different than went we went on a genocidal rampage in the Philippines? What about us enshrining Jim Crow through the Civil Rights Cases? Or us ignoring widespread ecological damage during the Dust Bowl? Or our country’s fascination with social darwinism and eugenics which (I say not) coincidentally came concurrent with the rise of religious fundamentalism as an organized force?
How did you ever construe the two primary drivers of culture and economic stratification as “short term” factors? Culture is passed down from generation to generation and changes very slowly. In spite of the superficial changes that technology dumps into the mix.
Euro Americans have lived with African Americans who have done better than “sucking it up”. They modeled a strong tradition of non-violent objection from the first days in this enemy land. Imagine where our culture would be now if America had been just and democratic for these 238 years, I know it would not be in the place we are now.
We seem incapable of doing anything about this problem, and I attribute the failure mainly to there being way too many mean-spirited or paranoid people in this country. Tell me why we’re this way? Why are we so scared and angry when compared to other offshoots of the British Empire?
Because the United States simultaneously A.) has a large number of people in rural areas B.) gives them too much representation and C.) has its rural people considerably more religiously and politically conservative than the rest of the nation.
More generically, if you want to know why the United States or any nation is politically dysfunctional then you must first figure out where conservatism is strong, why it is strong, and most importantly how it is strong. Once you do that, you’ll know why the people in a or any nation seem to be unusually scared or angry or violent or stupid or sick or afflicted by any intellectual and emotional pathology compared to their neighbors and historical ancestors/descendants.
Historically, “rural people” in the US weren’t conservative. Wyoming was the first US territory to grant women in the vote in 1869. They were more open to new “christian” religious sects than those living on the eastern seaboard. And populism sprouted and grew on the prairie and not so much in the New England factories. The rural slave and plantation cultures spread out like a virus after the abolition of it’s formal brutality and theft of the lifeblood of people was ended. Facilitated in part by fundamentalist religiosity that was sold to the poor, both black and white, to keep everyone in a place similar to where they’d been before the civil war.
Oh, definitely, but the ideological switchover was more-or-less complete nationwide by the 2nd incarnation of the KKK. A phenomenon which has lasted for about a century and is buttressed by several structural factors (outside money, religiosity, low demographic turnover) to ensure that it’s not going to change anytime soon under its own power.
Your answer to the reason for our fear-fueled violence is “Because the United States simultaneously A.) has a large number of people in rural areas B.) gives them too much representation and C.) has its rural people considerably more religiously and politically conservative than the rest of the nation.”
Really???
C’mon.
I am often in rural areas of this country, mostly in rural NY state and Pennsylvania but also in New England, the midwest and the south. I live in the Bronx and have spent a great deal of time on the streets of all of the boroughs and all of the neighborhoods of NYC. I am also often in cities along the Boston/NYC/Washington DC megalopolis and have spent a great deal of time in big midwestern cities and Atlanta. The problem here is not “rural.” The schools that are being shot up are almost all suburban and the streets that are being shot up are pretty exclusively urban. I have fairly good street sense…40+ years of successfully surviving in rough neighborhoods of NYC will attest to that…and I have never, ever felt seriously threatened in any rural areas of America including those populated mostly by minorities. But a bunch of suburban boys of any race walking down the street? I watch them well. Same in the cities, of course, only it’s easier to tell the potential violence level in the cities because people advertise their alliances…and their intentions, of you know how to read them…by the way they dress and walk. Protective coloration, dontcha know. Potential uburban violence is harder to place. These kids that are shooting up their schools?
Riiiight…
My point exactly.
It is guilt that fuels this ongoing problem. Guilt and a rotted-out culture. Not “over-represnted” rural people who may be a little more religious than the other segments of the society. As far as their being more conservative? Politically? Yes, that is true. But I walk among well-armed rural people with considerablly less fear than I do among equally well-armed suburban and urban people. I mean…really, Deathtongue. Of all of the senseless shootings over the past several years…including those perpetrated by the most well-armed segment of this society, police and military people…exactly how many occurred in “rural” settings?
Please.
WTFU.
Country people are the least of our problems.
Later…
AG
If you’re looking at longer-term reasons for why it is intractable, the takeover of the National Rifle Association in the late 1970s by absolutist right-winger who allied with the Republican Party in the 1980 election is a good benchmark. It became a rural issue because the rise of right-wing talk shows rode the talk show phenomenon on rural stations because a talker was cheap content. Then beginning in the 1980s, ClearChannel bought up masses of rural radio stations because they were inexpensive to assemble into a new network after the deregulation reforms, especially the Reagan reforms, allowed assembly of larger and larger media companies. The ownership of ClearChannel were right-winger and their views biased the number of conservative vs. progressive talkers on their stations.
Conservative talkers developed in the 1980s and 1990s a “red meat” style or riling up audiences to attract them, and riling them up over gun rights was a good cheap trick. Enter Wayne LaPierre as a interviewee on national TV (even PBS) as the suit-and-tie low-key salesman for NRA absolutism that provided cover for Republican politicians.
The NRA and conservative talkers created the “sagebrush rebellion” types of populism against environmentalism that went hand-in-glove with the gun nuttery.
As bought-out politicians passed ever craziers gun legislation, they needed even more crazy gun legislation to turn out the gun nuts on election day.
And when a black President wants to take the crazies out of own guns, that threatens the gun nuts. When he wants to shut down illegal trades at gun shows, that threatens the gun show owners, an economic refugre in the current permanent recession in both rural and suburban communities.
By the 1930s to 1960s, US culture had domesticated firearms rules. Westerns on TV operated with a “don’t take your gun to town” plot. Efforts to shut down gun violence were proceeding and even got accelerated when Ronald Reagan as governor passed a tough gun law aimed at the Black Panther Party. There was even a brief public consensus to stop “Saturday Night Special” sales (especially in urban neighborhoods). Then it politically unraveled.
In the traditional culture, English were violent brawling people who had eye-gouging contests for sport. Irish, Scotch-Irish, and Scots were also violent, brawling people. Germans too. And Italians, And on and on down the line of immigrants. But most could not afford the expense of more than a hunting rifle. Mass manufacture brought the cost of guns down. Military service meant that a large number of people had government-issued guns as a result of their service. But most did then and do now have the good sense to understand the dangers and the safety issues involved in guns. Some of the open carry people these days seem utterly clueless to safety issues.
And then high school tensions and hazing in many high schools have become lethal. Bullying, stress breakdowns, and other eruptive behavior has become high stakes with the availability of guns and the legitimization of gun use in American culture.
Example: There is a Facebook picture going around that asks “Would you shoot your best friend for $10,000,000?” It is popular among high school males. Too many, either in jest or seriously, answer “You betcha. I’d take the money.” That is the culture that this prolonged absence of opportunity has created.
I was going to write comment starting with the 1970s takeover of the NRA by extremists, but then I find TarheelDem beat me to it. This hits all the points – the right wing media consolidation, the fact that the NRA used to support sensible gun control (actually more stringent than anything we have today), the revival of violence in American culture.
I would just add, to tie it all together, that all these changes didn’t happen in a vacuum. This is just one of the consequences of the new Conservative movement that started with the founding of Heritage in 1975 – a movement that was and is heavily funded by right wing robber barons. The NRA takeover was just one of many efforts to convert non-partisan institutions to full Conservatism – this included the funding of the big box church movement, the funding of the fundamentalist Xtian movement (that, among other things, rewrote fundamentalist/evangelical doctrine from being okay with abortion to treating abortion as the worst crime ever), and the taking over of various non-profits (such as Nature Conservancy) to promote right wing causes. The takeover of rural radio and conversion to 100% wingnut-all-the-time talk radio was part of a general movement to own the media, starting with the 1986 changes in telecom law including the end of the Fairness Doctrine PLUS the dedicated effort to buy up all news media companies and restaff them.
And the evolution to a violent culture didn’t happen by accident either. After World War 1 military colleges studied the war and found that over 90% of soldiers who died on the field had never fired a gun. That is, by nature most men were willing to die for their country but not to kill for it. Military training was revised heavily to change the psychology of recruits and by Vietnam the numbers had reversed – 90% willingly killed. But post-Vietnam military colleges focused on the public’s lack o support for the war, and in conjunction with the military-industrial complex, began to “manage” the public perception of the military and war. If you could take a few random Americans from 1990 and transport them to 2014 I wager that one of the biggest surprises for them – after they get over the whole smart phone thing – would be how militaristic this country has become top-to-bottom. Consider sports advertising – after beer ads the most common ads are for extremely violent video games (where YOU are the person who kills tens of thousands of people in a single session), violent TV shows, and violent movies. Even the car ads are full of violence just to compete. We’ve just accepted that this the normal state of being – spending half our non-social security/medicare taxes on the military, worshiping our military in public as often as we pray in public, and invoking military solutions to every international situation as if they were the only options.
We didn’t get here by accident – and we won’t get out of this situation as long as the root causes remain.
Minor correction, the NRA was a Republican political force earlier than the late 1970s. (Could have made the difference in the 1968 Presidential election.) A careful analysis might reveal that it has long been to the right edge of the GOP. The historical funding streams for the would also be revealing. When it was primarily funded by members that supported responsible gun ownership and use, was it less politicized? Less Republican? I don’t know, but when the major funding shifted from members to weapons manufacturers, it did and likely progressively at the membership share of the funding declined.
I remember them opposing the ban on mail order guns in the wake of the JFK assassination. My barbershop only had three magazines, American Riflemen, Playboy and Monsieur. I went with my father so I read the Rifleman, although I did find interesting articles on politics in Playboy on the days I went alone.
4.A. Fear and
4.B. Sadism, leading to
4.B.i. Violence and
4.B.ii. Dishonesty
Some very long explanations on here. I will make mine short and simple. You have one side that is trying to stick to using the Law to make changes. Remember the country is one based upon Laws from conception. This side can continue this course of action and end up like the Jews in Europe during WW2.
Then we have another side that has planted numerous political radicalized judicial appointees that ignore the law. This side is using a scorched earth tactic. If they do not take full control and get their way they will destroy all they can for no one can have it.
So one side is fighting an all out WAR and the other side is in denial of that fact. Until they wake up and react. This will continue, or they allow total subjugation by the other side.
“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”
MLK Letter from a Birminham Jail, April 16, 1963
I recollect the fascists in WWII using “scorched earth” policy lost, same for the US in Vietnam/Iraq. Same applies for the ME.
German police in 2011 fired 85 bullets: 49 were warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed.
US police often use the equivalent of 90 shots to apprehend a suspect or kill a mentally ill person. How many events in one year? A culture where a gun is used to settle an argument or take revenge.
And remember the Prussians have a militaristic culture throughout history.
PS Notice those parts of the Prussian Kingdom/Empire, now called Poland and Baltic states with parts of West Ukraine, where present day unrest originates.
See also the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Partition.
American Exceptionalism.
Not only does it mean Americans being above the law, but it is an euphemism for Empire.
Citizens of Empires who are constantly told that their government is above the law feel that they are above the law.