Where do I start with this drivel?
RICKAMAVEN wrote:Mass killings became a new phenomenon in the 1980s when Reagan's platform of disempowerment of white, male workers, began. Asian men had at that point also been largely included in the hegemonic gender.
It was the US Post Office workers who put mass killing on the American map. In 1986 the phrase, "going postal" was born when a postal worker named Patrick Sherrill fired 50 shots on his job site. He murdered 15 postal workers and wounded more. The first man Sherrill shot to death was his supervisor. Sherrill's second murder victim was the grandson of Reagan's hero, the football star Knute Rockne, who was the topic of Reagan's most famous movie Knute Rockne, All American. This was described brilliantly by Mark Ames, in Going Postal, a powerful and neglected book.
Reagan's "reforms" included changing the time-honored practice of promoting experienced postal workers to supervisory positions from within the ranks of the postal workers union. Instead, supervisors without experience in the postal system were recruited. They were characterized by harassment to produce greater productivity and a generally adversarial relationship to workers. Under Reagan, the postal system was changed from a social service into a supposedly self-sufficient or profitable business.
Reagan began the process of destroying the safe secure jobs that created middle-class families. He began a trend that has continued since, a trend of lowering real white male wages. Male wages have remained flat since the 1970s. White male mass killings have grown exponentially. Flat real wages wiped out the chance that a man's family wage could support his family. Millions of women were pushed out of the home and into the labor force. Women benefitted with independence, but also suffered with divorce and poverty. White and Asian men have lost their dominant position at work and at home. The rage of American white men may well have something to do with their humiliation and loss of dominance.
I had a friend whose sister-in-law was in one of those mass-shootings, and was one of the victims. She was shot through the liver, and managed to survive.
The "Reagan reforms" were put in place because - as it was told to me - the common practice of moving "experienced" postal workers to supervisory positions was often a precusor to canning them for poor performance.
But hey, I guess Truthout and Rick here think it is perfectly justifiable to go around killing people because you're mad. It's all Reagans fault.
RICKAMAVEN wrote:
Adam Lanza of Newtown had his own story. He was identified as a child, and then an adolescent, who had serious mental problems. He was also diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Asperger Syndrome alone would not be a massive problem. Since dependent children have so much in common with chattel, Lanza's mother could legally withdraw him from school, provide no help or treatment and isolate him at home where all day he played violent video shooting games in a windowless basement with no other contact but his mother. His only outings were to a shooting range with his mother. No one was allowed into the home. Adam's basement location was home to his survivalist mother's gun collection which included the assault weapon and pistol he used to shoot her in the face and kill 26 others. He was abandoned to his family as children are.
If there was anything to Adam Lanza's "illness," it had more to do with poor parenting than mental illness.
My son has Aspergers. By extension, I have it too. Kids who have Aspergers live in a world of their own, and if raised poorly, will revert into this fantasy world. These kids need a strong religious upbringing, a life where the ambiguities of "normal" people are removed, and require a stable family. The family was neither stable, and I wholeheartedly doubt given that Adam's mother and father were divorced, that they had any sort of strong religious influence on the kid. Moreover, with a mother who was constantly "throwing up her hands" in frustration with the kid, and allowing him to play uber-violent video games, she allowed her son to withdraw into his self-made world where the hurts and wounds inflicted upon him by "normal" people were allowed to fester. Without a strong moral compass to fall back upon, feeling isolated and alone the kid re-arranged his reality, and the end result is pretty well known.
Aspergers kids sometimes dwell excessively on negativity, and never forget hurts of the past.
Adam Lanza wasn't mentally ill. Adam Lanza is what happens to those types of kids when mommy and daddy act like to bunch of crotch-centered juviniles, and ignore their kids.
He wasn't "abandoned" to his family, he was abandoned BY his family. It's why he shot his mother first. His father and his brother should feel were lucky they weren't around when the kid snapped because they'r probably be dead too.
So spare me the second-rate psychobabble, Rick.
RICKAMAVEN wrote:
I believe that Lanza murdered little children because he was murdering the child in himself. When children are cruelly treated, they do not necessarily hate their parents. Instead they hate their childhood needs that keep them dependent on the savage adults that surround them. Lanza hated his mother - but also his childlike dependence on her absolute power over him.
And this is utterly moronic.
There was an event in Lanza's life that marred him, and it most likely happend in Kindergarten. But we'll never know now...
RICKAMAVEN wrote:
It is time to respond to our initial question: Where does the murderous rage come from? Why does the US lead the world in mass killings? Some have blamed popular violent video games of the type Adam Lanza watched almost continuously. However, Japan, to name just one major industrialized society, allows books, films and video games whose violence is at least on a par with what is seen in the US. Yet only in America do we see so many mass shootings.
Where does this murderous rage come from? is this a joke?
Take away a strict moral foundation, and insert moral relevency. Remove the sanctity of human life, and replace it with abortion on demand, and assisted suicide. Cheapen life, and the rule of law. That's where it comes from.
The end result is people killing people more and more, with no thought of consequences down the line...because the consequences don't mean squat.
Plus, last time I looked, Egypt, Libya, and Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq were doing a whole lotta mass killing. We don't even rate on that kind of scale.
