I’ll Tell You Why

Why?

Obviously, high-powered weaponry has a lot to do with it. Still, look at China: just yesterday, the guy stabbed 22 schoolkids. So even if there were no guns, these things would still happen, albeit with lower death counts. That would be something.

The mental health system – or lack there of, for most people – is a contributing factor. Obviously, anyone who needs medical or mental health treatment should be able to get it for free. Goes without saying.

I’d like to focus on the culture of violence thing a little more, though. I don’t just mean the westerns and the cowboy go it alone mentality, although that is part of it. I mean the idea that we have in the United States that violence doesn’t just solve problems, but should be our first response to them. Look at 9/11. After the attacks, everyone will immediately wondered: which country should we invade or bomb?

No one in the media, and not many ordinary citizens, suggested that perhaps we just needed to find out who did this stuff, and ask the countries where they lived to have their police arrested them and charge them with crimes. No one asked that we take a few months in order to investigate the root causes of anti-Americanism around the world, particularly in Muslim countries.

Aggression, militarism, and deploying violence cavalierly is something that sends a signal from our top political and cultural leadership all the way down to everyone else in American society. Every time the president sends a drone to kill people without legal or moral justification, every time we go to war for economic reasons, every time we sell weapons to dictatorships, we are setting the stage, in part, for the next massacre.

It isn’t any one thing. But this is part of it.

7 Comments.

  • Violence is just part of human nature. We may feel safe at most times, but we are always vulnerable. There has never been a time when men have not killed men.

    This is not to justify violence. On the contrary, we can make violence seem less heroic but it will still erupt because it is part of our nature. Even little old ladies like to watch murder mysteries.

    Zebras cannot be taught to pull a plow and cats cannot be taught to herd sheep because its just not in them. Humans however can be taught to kill. More than 15% of soldiers could not be expected to shoot at the enemy until they were conditioned, then rates went over 90%. See Dave Grossman’s book “On Killing.”

  • I keep hearing folks ask why a young man will commit such an atrocity. I’m a Vietnam Vet (US56826953– in case someone accuses me of being a stolen valor wannabe) who knows that young men who have been trained by the military as killers can and did commit atrocities in that war, deliberately wasting civilians: men, women and children. One doesn’t have to be a psychopath to do it. Insurgency wars are an atrocity-producing environment.

  • “Anyone who needs medical or mental health treatment should be able to get it for free. Goes without saying.”

    Right, let’s just give away the excessive medical care we already can’t afford in this country. Who exactly is going to pay for all that free medical care? Your taxes? Oh, no. Ted’s for no taxes on anyone making a middle class salary or lower. Apparently those of us who are doing ok will foot the bill for everyone else, while they make cartoons or whatever.

    You know, I’m sick of this shit. There used to be a meaningful outlook here. Now it’s just tax the rich, everyone else gets a free fucking ride so they can do whatever job they want. Occupy this, fuck that. Blah, blah, blah …

    Sick of this shit. Done.

  • @ex

    I’ve come to the conclusion that you are a right-winger disguising himself as a “disaffected leftist”. Why? Because no true leftist would object to mental health being free, or paid for with tax dollars.

    Only Wingers bitch about paying taxes in general, and you just made the mistake of doing that in your comment. My advice: present yourself as openly on the Right, or don’t come here at all. Your “cynical” act is getting old and tiresome.

  • “Sick of this shit. Done.”

    Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, Ex.

  • alex_the_tired
    December 21, 2012 9:11 AM

    ex,

    You have to start going more than just one-move deep here. Example:

    “Right, let’s just give away the excessive medical care we already can’t afford in this country. Who exactly is going to pay for all that free medical care?”

    Okay. Here’s what you got wrong or missed entirely:

    Medical care isn’t excessive. That’s called begging the question. Medical care is necessary. And, if you think about it in more depth than just one move, you would see that far from being a “drain,” medical care enriches the society and the tax base because healthier workers — just like all other cattle — are more productive and more able to support themselves. The same thing applies to unemployment benefits and Free Breakfast/Lunch in schools: the unemployed spend pretty much all of their meager checks on things to support themselves, thus keeping other people employed and improving the economy. Ask any teacher if feeding hungry students improves their concentration.

    Yes, all of this goes against the Protestant Saved/Damned Work Ethic, but you know what, I have a lot of trouble accepting as right the philosophical mindset that says children should go hungry or someone who has been working his whole life should be left to starve on a street because his company wanted to make more profit by eliminating his job.

    Many things are wrong with our society. The schools are underfunded. As a result, we now have a class of persons (called adults) who can’t do long division, can’t pay attention for more than eight seconds, can’t compose an argue that holds up, and so forth. And all I hear is bitching about how asking the rich to pay more is somehow the most evil thought ever conceived.

    Fine. I’ve got a simple method that will give the rich (and everyone else) lower tax rates. Shut down the military. All I ever hear is people screaming themselves hoarse over the “greed” of those who want health care. How about we simply not buy a few battleships? Oh, no. We can’t do that. Macedonia might invade. We need a military stronger than the next 17 nations’ militaries combined.

    One-move-deep bullshit through and through.

  • You are right on, Ted – We need to yank the money out of the military and their cavalier actions because we need to stop the easy availability of it for the military actions, and to take care of our own people first. The USA ranks about 37th in the world for healthcare, but you won’t be able to find any people except a small tiny percentage that realize this fact. The USA also has the highest percent of its own people incarcerated in jails and prisons. In some ways, I hope we go over the “fiscal cliff” – that will do more than the President can accomplish himself – with immediate elimination of the tax cuts, a cut in the military budget, and maybe it will spotlight the fact that we are governed by a bunch of self-seeking aXXholes.

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