Mass shootings are difficult to understand. Most of us resort to judgment and leave it there. But if you really want something to stop, you must seek to understand where it originated.
Mass shooting are difficult to understand because they are always done by people with significant mental health problems and/or terrorists pursuing a goal to cause fear and chaos in the general population. Nobody can understand the motives of the insane... even the insane.
The interest in gun ownership is not hard to understand given the God given right to protect self and family and the fact that criminals are abundant and Democrats have clearly demonstrated that they will condone both mob violence and increases in violent crime to serve their political interests.
I have had the displeasure of being at the scene of three multi-fatality automobile accidents. I have witnessed first hand what a moving automobile can do to the human body. However, I am not at all for banning automobiles.
Yep. Agreed. Banning weapons is never going to happen anyway. So its a silly discussion. If we don't take down the oligarchy, everything is moot anyway.
Did we watch the same video? I thought Mr Hedges presented a perfectly rational explanation of the causes of gun issues in the US and the multi - faceted reasons behind them. Actually brought to mind a famous(ish) quote from Scottish psychiatrist. R.D Laing: "Insanity is a rational response to an irrational world."
Oh yes. The reaction of a lefty that wants to read only news and comments that confirm what he is sure he knows. I point this out all the time... only lefties do that. I know of no right-leaning thinkers that ever suggest we cancel or mute our lefty friends. Why is that?
The need for a gun in a society, one in which I have lived for over 70 years without ever feeling threatened by any fellow citizen...experience that makes nonsense of the obsession with self-defense and the insistence that anyone should be able to go out in public with a deadly weapon designed to quickly and easily injure or kill a fellow citizen. And this not based on personal experience, but fantasies of threat made real only in the personal powerlessness that Chris so accurately describes.
No one says anything about the greatest danger of all to America from gun mania, the exploitation of fear of the other to sell weapons that at the same time kills trust in the minds of our children.
The gun advocates' solution voiced even in Congress is to fortify schools across the country with more guns, which would be a conclusive act in the death of trust, trust that comes naturally to children and must be actively destroyed by teaching fear of the other, the fellow citizen, the very persons that along with each of us form the basis of our democracy. And all we do is watch it happen. Guns are killing America in this way, the very antithesis of self-defense for our country and by far the greatest danger to national security, a death from within to be taught silently in every school without a shot being fired. And nobody in Congress has mentioned this.
Your isolated life experience does not at all represent that of other Americans. It is the height of arrogance and selfishness to assume everyone else is the same or should be the same.
Guns are not killing people as they don’t shoot themselves. We have a people behavior problem not a gun problem. Focus on the people problem as it is ubiquitous and if not guns they will just turn to other objects to cause malice.
Frank, you aren't addressing reality and you have nothing to say about my main point concerning the destruction of trust in children.
As for my experience, it's hardly isolated and is duplicated by almost everyone I know. We aren't living in the Old West. We have laws and courts where injury or death is not a punishment for all the things that citizen gun-carriers think well deserves being shot at. I carry a gun, you scare me for some reason, I shoot you because I think you are a threat. That's just fine? There is an obsession with dealing out punishment for criminals on the spot, all up to the armed citizen.
But what about real criminals that I have failed to encounter in my 71 years. They are all around so we should arm up? Tell me of your experience with your home being invaded, with you being threatened on the street in your neighborhood, with you being assaulted. Tell me of the number of times you have had to draw a gun to protect yourself in public or at home, not stories of how you thought something was amiss and the suspect fled with no testimony but yours, but of incidents backed by investigation where a real crime was proven to be underway.
I have spoken to gun advocates and have so far found 1) they cannot tell of any personal experiences that back up the kind fear that they feel requires a gun as proven by investigation and 2) they cannot identify any specific individuals that that they consider a threat. After all we do have police, but no, they can't identify anyone they know as a threat. Then all this arming up is for something unexpected by someone unknown - EXACTLY the kind of thing that can be misinterpreted, a perfect setting for a gun being improperly used, as we see police do regularly.
The fear of the gun advocates is of anonymous groups made up of individuals they do not know and have no contact with, though they refuse to talk of it as fear, so they speak of "being prepared". It's no mystery that white supremacists are gun advocates eager to display the hardware. The groups whose members are imagined as targets are not hard to identify. This is stuff going on in the head, Frank, not in reality. It's about being ready to fire a weapon that can be deadly to anyone on the basis of a fear driving imaginations.
In contrast to my experience, tell me the experiences of Wayne LaPierre and Charleton Heston regarding the above questions as they are (Heston now gone) nuts about guns, ranting about defense against the very government that protects the ownership of guns, the availability of guns, the production of guns, even the protection of gun manufacturers from law suits from victims of shootings. Some state governments have gone so crazy as to produce Stand Your Ground laws that invite armed citizens to shoot what they fear, period. No need to call the police, feel free to open fire when you thing you should and the law, what is supposed to protect the citizenry, will let you go! This is a license for the murder of people based SOLELY on the perception of a gun carrier who becomes afraid, with no protection for those who might inspire that fear regardless of the facts of the situation.
Lately it has become even worse with at least one state requiring prosecutors to first prove a gun incident was NOT self-defense. How is that possible when it is up to one person, the shooter, to define it as self-defense? This makes any armed citizen the potential judge and executioner of any other citizen if he is afraid. And the citizenry should welcome this as a safety measure? Every citizen should be his own policeman? That is c-r-a-z-y. And you tell me about the height of arrogance. Do you know any gun owners who are unsure of themselves with their weapon, who have doubts they would always make the right decision in any situation? Any who would admit misgivings about injuring/killing someone by mistaken fear, or do they set that aside as all but impossible?
The country is not beset by crime. The real problem is the low rate of solving crimes that do happen and that is not corrected by people carrying guns. We have a mass psychology problem of people who are obsessed with guns just as Chris describes and Representatives/Senators in Congress that protect that mass psychology. Note that Chris explains reasons for that mass psychology, he does not justify it.
Correct. In many places it is worse in terms of lawlessness. But you hang in your coastal liberal gated community and imagine that everyone else is just like you.
It is not lawlessness, but our rich society tolerating or looking the other way about poverty, misery and lack of any perspective, hopelessness to ever get out of the mess you were born into (there is not even education to teach females that it is a very bad choice to have a child when they are still a child themselves and living in dire conditions - my most appalling experience was working in a psychiatric hospital were they treated drug addicts and a young girl was gleaming with joy advertising she was pregnant - lunacy!!!!!)
Even if all the shootings would be done by people with mental health problems, which I doubt, I think there are a lot of very angry people out there that see no other way out (take some lives before they suicide or are 'suicided'). And those with real mental health problems: where is the money for treatment (and who let them all loose on the streets??? A lot of them are anyway 'put out of sight' in regular jails which is another huge problem, they just go in and out and nothing ever changes for them BUT THERE IS TOO LITTLE MONEY AVAILABLE, it has to be spent on the Pentagon budget ... this is our wonderful society ...
I have no problem moving away from automobiles, trucks and tractors running on organic fuel, but there are several issues that need to be addressed before we can do that.
Today the electrical grid would only support about 10% of the total cars being electric.
Generating electricity enough to charge all these vehicles will require a huge increase in productions from what we can with sustainable now. Nuclear will need to be part of that.
Trucks and tractors are not yet feasible for using electric. Hydrogen is probably the better choices, but we are not there yet in development.
Cars don't suck for the millions of people that need them for work and school.
The New Deal brought meaningful work to craftsmen, laborers and artists, something this country needed then and desperately needs right now. Reagan ushered in the era of "grab all the money you can". Now we are a country that makes money with money. Usurers and money changers. There is no more meaningful work. Even farming is mechanized and computerized. As a result we are no longer stewards of the land but consumers of petrochemicals, industrial grade poison. and machinery debt.
Guns seem to provide some kind of security blanket for the masses. A way to lash out at a society that has lost it's humanity. I don't have a problem with guns. They're a tool made to kill things, if that's what you need to do.
They are not good for growing things or conserving water. America will run out water before it runs out of ammunition. We need to start making the tools we need to rebuild this broken country. We already have enough guns. We need more books and teachers and workplaces.
Guns and gun crimes are a side effect. It’s the same answer for the solution for crime, poverty, and despair. If you invest in the communities people feel empowered and that they have a chance. The US invests in corporations and rich people. It doesn’t invest in education, revitalizing struggling cities and investing in infrastructure. If you give people a chance and actual tools like good schools, fair wages, and just a chance people will be less despondent. Politicians and corporations starved the working class for three decades and then are surprised people are pissed off and want to take it out on someone. We send tens of billions a month to Ukraine but won’t increase the Federal Education budget by $20 billion. Once Ukraine situation is over we will send Trillions of dollars to them to rebuild their country but we won’t rebuild decaying cities in the US and help low income people get out of their situation. That price tag is always too high. The Fed bought $9 trillion of US debt, we could have rebuilt inner city Baltimore 10x over with that money and had a greater long term effect on the economy. When people feel they have no choices and no way out they lash out. Sure feels like the system is rigged.
My feeling is that this is spot on ... I am a visitor to the US and my only use for guns is for protection in my home (otherwise guns belong to the police and military - I guess we need these, because our so called civilization has almost fallen apart, which means there are some very angry and desperate people around that want whatever you own and have worked for - whereas I have to see that I earned my things mainly by having better possibilities on the back of poor people that never had the same chances that I had!). It always goes back to our bottomless greed and my fear is that we are heading for total chaos ...
One further thought: I am very glad that guns where very difficult to get were I grew up, because having a short temper I could not be sure not to have used it in an argument (f.i. on the road ...), and for what, that I feel a bit better for a few seconds??
If you need protection in your home why wouldn't you need protection outside of it where you have a much higher chance of encountering criminals, dangerous wildlife, etc?
Home protection: use a gun for immediate answer to a threat - I do not want a police man living in my home (and could not afford it). Outside it is the matter of police and the justice system (and you can avoid dangerous areas ... I live in the US now for 12 years and was NEVER under any threat by anybody ...). And for wildlife: they are sometimes dangerous because we did not leave them much of their territory (humans have the same reaction BTW), I encountered bears, they never came towards me and we both went our own ways ... And even if you carry a gun and are trained, there is no guarantee that you will be the 'winner'.
Chris, I always admire your intellectual vibrancy, especially in it's potent veracity. God bless you my friend. The incomparably transformational book about " Policing " is just out; " Bullyycee " by Michael Claude Caesar Sampson. Global society needs the upgrade towards human salvation.
My God ... what a twisted, convoluted screed this is. I don’t even know where to begin. But suffice to say many ... no, most ... Americans disagree with you.
Man, people can't even tell that Chris Hedges is advocating for Americans. And I can understand why. Many people are rightly tuned into the BS liberal buzzwords. But they should actually stop and listen to this one through the context of what is actually being spoken. You'll realize you probably agree. Most people who disagree with what Chris is saying are probably projecting beliefs held by the bankrupt liberal class on to him. But that would be a mistake.
Stopped at about 1/2 way into the video. Hedges barfs out so many absurd, anti-"white", anti-male leftist narratives it is ridiculous, but not surprising.
Here is the reality of how such toxic, totalitarian leftist narratives actually play out:
Everytime we have a push for gun control, the gun shops increase their sales. Best to tone the anti gun rhetoric, take the guns from criminals and the mentally unstable, and serious background checks. Why in the world did the gun shop in Uvalde sell two automatic rifles and a pile of ammunition to an 18 year old other than profit. Lots of other things to think about and we should.
Just wanted to repost a comment from a take on Orwellian Newspeak:
Check out the industrial evil psychology of this new fangled, rushed-through "gun bill". All "our top DNC reps" keep saying "it's not perfect but it goes in the right direction"...right? well.....what kind of "right direction" is that? This new gun bill CODIFIES that the damn MSM will NEVER talk about "banning guns" ever again! It codifies "red flag" thought crime. Any time someone will go nuts and start shooting (you can be assured the bill won't do ONE thing to reduce shootings IMHO), the media will start going down the "thought crime" rabbit hole! "What was the shooters motivation?" "What did shooter say on forkbook?" "What did shooter google"? and the KICKER......"why was the shooter's gun NOT taken away earlier"..because NOW we have "red flag" laws in place!
SO we irrevocably morph from the concept of "taking guns away", to "why was the red flag not raised"...SEE?!!! A totally different talking point ! It's a completely different psychological mindset, as Orwell would love....the new Gun bill is so well crafted, they've been working it for years to juuuuuuust position it psychologically and cunningly into the new frame.
Recap: the venal upshot of the so called "gun bill"....NEVER will any news media talk about banning guns again.......it will permanently use the next shooter's news cycle to narrow focus on "why was a red flag not raised"
.....so thank the gun lobby for not only now killing innocents, but also for FURTHERING the panopticon dot com orwellian era. Murica!
Interesting how you show Elon Musk as your corporate oligarch. He has done great things for humanity; maybe next time, have your editor show Jamie Dimon or the Pfizer CEO. Elon Musk has propelled us into the future. The USA is still a strong country; the American people are resilient, and no one points out the good. Instead, it's all doom and gloom.
The USA is relatively new compared to other nations in the first world. We must catch up on infrastructure projects, education, and income inequality while fighting government corruption. Perhaps if we scaled back military spending, The United States could work on rebuilding the country. On that point, I agree with you.
All nations have a bloody, racist history of war and slavery. It is not just the USA. You have enjoyed the fruits of American universities and relative prosperity, yet you are painting the US as inherently evil. It is not that simple; things are not as bad as you make them.
We have some of the best individuals I have ever encountered in our nation's military. We are great because of these people's willingness to serve others regardless of political views. We are all Americans.
Mass shooting are difficult to understand because they are always done by people with significant mental health problems and/or terrorists pursuing a goal to cause fear and chaos in the general population. Nobody can understand the motives of the insane... even the insane.
The interest in gun ownership is not hard to understand given the God given right to protect self and family and the fact that criminals are abundant and Democrats have clearly demonstrated that they will condone both mob violence and increases in violent crime to serve their political interests.
I have had the displeasure of being at the scene of three multi-fatality automobile accidents. I have witnessed first hand what a moving automobile can do to the human body. However, I am not at all for banning automobiles.
Yep. Agreed. Banning weapons is never going to happen anyway. So its a silly discussion. If we don't take down the oligarchy, everything is moot anyway.
Did we watch the same video? I thought Mr Hedges presented a perfectly rational explanation of the causes of gun issues in the US and the multi - faceted reasons behind them. Actually brought to mind a famous(ish) quote from Scottish psychiatrist. R.D Laing: "Insanity is a rational response to an irrational world."
I wish I could mute you on this thing.
Oh yes. The reaction of a lefty that wants to read only news and comments that confirm what he is sure he knows. I point this out all the time... only lefties do that. I know of no right-leaning thinkers that ever suggest we cancel or mute our lefty friends. Why is that?
Are Hedges tired old tropes any different than Madcow's?
The need for a gun in a society, one in which I have lived for over 70 years without ever feeling threatened by any fellow citizen...experience that makes nonsense of the obsession with self-defense and the insistence that anyone should be able to go out in public with a deadly weapon designed to quickly and easily injure or kill a fellow citizen. And this not based on personal experience, but fantasies of threat made real only in the personal powerlessness that Chris so accurately describes.
No one says anything about the greatest danger of all to America from gun mania, the exploitation of fear of the other to sell weapons that at the same time kills trust in the minds of our children.
The gun advocates' solution voiced even in Congress is to fortify schools across the country with more guns, which would be a conclusive act in the death of trust, trust that comes naturally to children and must be actively destroyed by teaching fear of the other, the fellow citizen, the very persons that along with each of us form the basis of our democracy. And all we do is watch it happen. Guns are killing America in this way, the very antithesis of self-defense for our country and by far the greatest danger to national security, a death from within to be taught silently in every school without a shot being fired. And nobody in Congress has mentioned this.
Your isolated life experience does not at all represent that of other Americans. It is the height of arrogance and selfishness to assume everyone else is the same or should be the same.
Guns are not killing people as they don’t shoot themselves. We have a people behavior problem not a gun problem. Focus on the people problem as it is ubiquitous and if not guns they will just turn to other objects to cause malice.
Frank, you aren't addressing reality and you have nothing to say about my main point concerning the destruction of trust in children.
As for my experience, it's hardly isolated and is duplicated by almost everyone I know. We aren't living in the Old West. We have laws and courts where injury or death is not a punishment for all the things that citizen gun-carriers think well deserves being shot at. I carry a gun, you scare me for some reason, I shoot you because I think you are a threat. That's just fine? There is an obsession with dealing out punishment for criminals on the spot, all up to the armed citizen.
But what about real criminals that I have failed to encounter in my 71 years. They are all around so we should arm up? Tell me of your experience with your home being invaded, with you being threatened on the street in your neighborhood, with you being assaulted. Tell me of the number of times you have had to draw a gun to protect yourself in public or at home, not stories of how you thought something was amiss and the suspect fled with no testimony but yours, but of incidents backed by investigation where a real crime was proven to be underway.
I have spoken to gun advocates and have so far found 1) they cannot tell of any personal experiences that back up the kind fear that they feel requires a gun as proven by investigation and 2) they cannot identify any specific individuals that that they consider a threat. After all we do have police, but no, they can't identify anyone they know as a threat. Then all this arming up is for something unexpected by someone unknown - EXACTLY the kind of thing that can be misinterpreted, a perfect setting for a gun being improperly used, as we see police do regularly.
The fear of the gun advocates is of anonymous groups made up of individuals they do not know and have no contact with, though they refuse to talk of it as fear, so they speak of "being prepared". It's no mystery that white supremacists are gun advocates eager to display the hardware. The groups whose members are imagined as targets are not hard to identify. This is stuff going on in the head, Frank, not in reality. It's about being ready to fire a weapon that can be deadly to anyone on the basis of a fear driving imaginations.
In contrast to my experience, tell me the experiences of Wayne LaPierre and Charleton Heston regarding the above questions as they are (Heston now gone) nuts about guns, ranting about defense against the very government that protects the ownership of guns, the availability of guns, the production of guns, even the protection of gun manufacturers from law suits from victims of shootings. Some state governments have gone so crazy as to produce Stand Your Ground laws that invite armed citizens to shoot what they fear, period. No need to call the police, feel free to open fire when you thing you should and the law, what is supposed to protect the citizenry, will let you go! This is a license for the murder of people based SOLELY on the perception of a gun carrier who becomes afraid, with no protection for those who might inspire that fear regardless of the facts of the situation.
Lately it has become even worse with at least one state requiring prosecutors to first prove a gun incident was NOT self-defense. How is that possible when it is up to one person, the shooter, to define it as self-defense? This makes any armed citizen the potential judge and executioner of any other citizen if he is afraid. And the citizenry should welcome this as a safety measure? Every citizen should be his own policeman? That is c-r-a-z-y. And you tell me about the height of arrogance. Do you know any gun owners who are unsure of themselves with their weapon, who have doubts they would always make the right decision in any situation? Any who would admit misgivings about injuring/killing someone by mistaken fear, or do they set that aside as all but impossible?
The country is not beset by crime. The real problem is the low rate of solving crimes that do happen and that is not corrected by people carrying guns. We have a mass psychology problem of people who are obsessed with guns just as Chris describes and Representatives/Senators in Congress that protect that mass psychology. Note that Chris explains reasons for that mass psychology, he does not justify it.
"We aren't living in the Old West"
Correct. In many places it is worse in terms of lawlessness. But you hang in your coastal liberal gated community and imagine that everyone else is just like you.
It is not lawlessness, but our rich society tolerating or looking the other way about poverty, misery and lack of any perspective, hopelessness to ever get out of the mess you were born into (there is not even education to teach females that it is a very bad choice to have a child when they are still a child themselves and living in dire conditions - my most appalling experience was working in a psychiatric hospital were they treated drug addicts and a young girl was gleaming with joy advertising she was pregnant - lunacy!!!!!)
Even if all the shootings would be done by people with mental health problems, which I doubt, I think there are a lot of very angry people out there that see no other way out (take some lives before they suicide or are 'suicided'). And those with real mental health problems: where is the money for treatment (and who let them all loose on the streets??? A lot of them are anyway 'put out of sight' in regular jails which is another huge problem, they just go in and out and nothing ever changes for them BUT THERE IS TOO LITTLE MONEY AVAILABLE, it has to be spent on the Pentagon budget ... this is our wonderful society ...
I have no problem moving away from automobiles, trucks and tractors running on organic fuel, but there are several issues that need to be addressed before we can do that.
Today the electrical grid would only support about 10% of the total cars being electric.
Generating electricity enough to charge all these vehicles will require a huge increase in productions from what we can with sustainable now. Nuclear will need to be part of that.
Trucks and tractors are not yet feasible for using electric. Hydrogen is probably the better choices, but we are not there yet in development.
Cars don't suck for the millions of people that need them for work and school.
The New Deal brought meaningful work to craftsmen, laborers and artists, something this country needed then and desperately needs right now. Reagan ushered in the era of "grab all the money you can". Now we are a country that makes money with money. Usurers and money changers. There is no more meaningful work. Even farming is mechanized and computerized. As a result we are no longer stewards of the land but consumers of petrochemicals, industrial grade poison. and machinery debt.
Guns seem to provide some kind of security blanket for the masses. A way to lash out at a society that has lost it's humanity. I don't have a problem with guns. They're a tool made to kill things, if that's what you need to do.
They are not good for growing things or conserving water. America will run out water before it runs out of ammunition. We need to start making the tools we need to rebuild this broken country. We already have enough guns. We need more books and teachers and workplaces.
Guns and gun crimes are a side effect. It’s the same answer for the solution for crime, poverty, and despair. If you invest in the communities people feel empowered and that they have a chance. The US invests in corporations and rich people. It doesn’t invest in education, revitalizing struggling cities and investing in infrastructure. If you give people a chance and actual tools like good schools, fair wages, and just a chance people will be less despondent. Politicians and corporations starved the working class for three decades and then are surprised people are pissed off and want to take it out on someone. We send tens of billions a month to Ukraine but won’t increase the Federal Education budget by $20 billion. Once Ukraine situation is over we will send Trillions of dollars to them to rebuild their country but we won’t rebuild decaying cities in the US and help low income people get out of their situation. That price tag is always too high. The Fed bought $9 trillion of US debt, we could have rebuilt inner city Baltimore 10x over with that money and had a greater long term effect on the economy. When people feel they have no choices and no way out they lash out. Sure feels like the system is rigged.
So true!!!!
My feeling is that this is spot on ... I am a visitor to the US and my only use for guns is for protection in my home (otherwise guns belong to the police and military - I guess we need these, because our so called civilization has almost fallen apart, which means there are some very angry and desperate people around that want whatever you own and have worked for - whereas I have to see that I earned my things mainly by having better possibilities on the back of poor people that never had the same chances that I had!). It always goes back to our bottomless greed and my fear is that we are heading for total chaos ...
One further thought: I am very glad that guns where very difficult to get were I grew up, because having a short temper I could not be sure not to have used it in an argument (f.i. on the road ...), and for what, that I feel a bit better for a few seconds??
If you need protection in your home why wouldn't you need protection outside of it where you have a much higher chance of encountering criminals, dangerous wildlife, etc?
Home protection: use a gun for immediate answer to a threat - I do not want a police man living in my home (and could not afford it). Outside it is the matter of police and the justice system (and you can avoid dangerous areas ... I live in the US now for 12 years and was NEVER under any threat by anybody ...). And for wildlife: they are sometimes dangerous because we did not leave them much of their territory (humans have the same reaction BTW), I encountered bears, they never came towards me and we both went our own ways ... And even if you carry a gun and are trained, there is no guarantee that you will be the 'winner'.
You are seriously delusional, and lucky.
Chris, I always admire your intellectual vibrancy, especially in it's potent veracity. God bless you my friend. The incomparably transformational book about " Policing " is just out; " Bullyycee " by Michael Claude Caesar Sampson. Global society needs the upgrade towards human salvation.
My God ... what a twisted, convoluted screed this is. I don’t even know where to begin. But suffice to say many ... no, most ... Americans disagree with you.
Man, people can't even tell that Chris Hedges is advocating for Americans. And I can understand why. Many people are rightly tuned into the BS liberal buzzwords. But they should actually stop and listen to this one through the context of what is actually being spoken. You'll realize you probably agree. Most people who disagree with what Chris is saying are probably projecting beliefs held by the bankrupt liberal class on to him. But that would be a mistake.
incoherent. you make even less sense than Hedges. leftist.
Stopped at about 1/2 way into the video. Hedges barfs out so many absurd, anti-"white", anti-male leftist narratives it is ridiculous, but not surprising.
Here is the reality of how such toxic, totalitarian leftist narratives actually play out:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-criticized-blm-then-i-was-fired
A systematic, rational analysis of guns and the USA:
HWFO.substack.com
Everytime we have a push for gun control, the gun shops increase their sales. Best to tone the anti gun rhetoric, take the guns from criminals and the mentally unstable, and serious background checks. Why in the world did the gun shop in Uvalde sell two automatic rifles and a pile of ammunition to an 18 year old other than profit. Lots of other things to think about and we should.
Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys sang the Ballad of Charles Joseph Whitman in 1970.
"Who are we to say the boy's insane?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub9m4gszcR4
irrelevant, idiotic, psychotic, brain damaged blather, blubber and sputtering drivel and idiocy
chomsky bot at rubber ducky
Just wanted to repost a comment from a take on Orwellian Newspeak:
Check out the industrial evil psychology of this new fangled, rushed-through "gun bill". All "our top DNC reps" keep saying "it's not perfect but it goes in the right direction"...right? well.....what kind of "right direction" is that? This new gun bill CODIFIES that the damn MSM will NEVER talk about "banning guns" ever again! It codifies "red flag" thought crime. Any time someone will go nuts and start shooting (you can be assured the bill won't do ONE thing to reduce shootings IMHO), the media will start going down the "thought crime" rabbit hole! "What was the shooters motivation?" "What did shooter say on forkbook?" "What did shooter google"? and the KICKER......"why was the shooter's gun NOT taken away earlier"..because NOW we have "red flag" laws in place!
SO we irrevocably morph from the concept of "taking guns away", to "why was the red flag not raised"...SEE?!!! A totally different talking point ! It's a completely different psychological mindset, as Orwell would love....the new Gun bill is so well crafted, they've been working it for years to juuuuuuust position it psychologically and cunningly into the new frame.
Recap: the venal upshot of the so called "gun bill"....NEVER will any news media talk about banning guns again.......it will permanently use the next shooter's news cycle to narrow focus on "why was a red flag not raised"
.....so thank the gun lobby for not only now killing innocents, but also for FURTHERING the panopticon dot com orwellian era. Murica!
Interesting how you show Elon Musk as your corporate oligarch. He has done great things for humanity; maybe next time, have your editor show Jamie Dimon or the Pfizer CEO. Elon Musk has propelled us into the future. The USA is still a strong country; the American people are resilient, and no one points out the good. Instead, it's all doom and gloom.
The USA is relatively new compared to other nations in the first world. We must catch up on infrastructure projects, education, and income inequality while fighting government corruption. Perhaps if we scaled back military spending, The United States could work on rebuilding the country. On that point, I agree with you.
All nations have a bloody, racist history of war and slavery. It is not just the USA. You have enjoyed the fruits of American universities and relative prosperity, yet you are painting the US as inherently evil. It is not that simple; things are not as bad as you make them.
We have some of the best individuals I have ever encountered in our nation's military. We are great because of these people's willingness to serve others regardless of political views. We are all Americans.
That is simply wonderful, but I would be happy if your military stays in the US - your foreign policy is absolutely terrible!!!
Felling some white guilt Chris Hedges?