Connecticut school shooting

[W*GS]

WTF is wrong with people?

Why? Why so many little kids?

How ****ed up does one person have to be to do something so horrible and evil?

[Rohirrim]

Crazy apes.






With guns.

[sinuous sausage]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Crazy apes.






With guns.

I'd address the bolded part first. Until then, I'm much more comfortable being a non-crazy ape with a gun.

[Requiem]

Ape shall not kill ape.

[Rohirrim]

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...ef=mostpopular

Life is simple for the simple-minded.

[Fedaykin]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said on Fox News. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...ef=mostpopular

Life is simple for the simple-minded.

Gotta love how eager the Christian Right is to exploit dead children to further their goals.

Very Christ like.

[cutthemdown]

Originally Posted by W*GS

WTF is wrong with people?

Why? Why so many little kids?

How ****ed up does one person have to be to do something so horrible and evil?

I'd say you have to be as ****ed up as is possible for a human to be.

[Pony Boy]

Originally Posted by Fedaykin

Gotta love how eager the Christian Right is to exploit dead children to further their goals.

Very Christ like.

Gotta love how eager the Loony left is to exploit dead children to further their agenda on gun control.

Very Liberal like.

[cutthemdown]

Yep those religious people with there praying, candlelight vigils and church services trying to help one another cope are really ****ing this tragedy up for the liberals who just want to blame the govt for not protecting them with gun control.

Whatever can we do to reign in these crazy Christians and stop all the explotation.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

Yep those religious people with there praying, candlelight vigils and church services trying to help one another cope are really ****ing this tragedy up for the liberals who just want to blame the govt for not protecting them with gun control.

Whatever can we do to reign in these crazy Christians and stop all the explotation.

What a truly stupid thing to post.

[W*GS]

The obvious solution by the RKBA purists. All of us walk around like this all the time...

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

What a truly stupid thing to post.

We can always count on cut for a massive dose of stupid.

[Fedaykin]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

Yep those religious people with there praying, candlelight vigils and church services trying to help one another cope are really ****ing this tragedy up for the liberals who just want to blame the govt for not protecting them with gun control.

Whatever can we do to reign in these crazy Christians and stop all the explotation.

I have no problem with the role of religion you describe above, but of course that's not the actions and speech being called out here (you knew that, but you're too dishonest to acknowledge it and instead pull the above inanity).

What this SOB Huckabee (and others like you) is saying, in effect, is that people who are not religious are responsible for the deaths of these children.

It's blaming an entire class of people for the ills of society with absolutely no factual ground to stand on. Not all that different from 1930's Germany.

Contrast this to the gun control angle, which is not blaming a class of people for mass murders, but rather blaming the availability of a particular tool. We could go the rounds on the validity of that opinion, but it is not the same vileness that is coming from you and Huckabee.

[orinjkrush]

mental illness. its everywhere. and in everyone.

tough "nut" to crack.

[W*GS]

The Freedom of an Armed Society

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by W*GS

The Freedom of an Armed Society

Powerful hypothesis:

As Michel Foucault pointed out in his detailed study of the mechanisms of power, nothing suits power so well as extreme individualism. In fact, he explains, political and corporate interests aim at nothing less than “individualization,” since it is far easier to manipulate a collection of discrete and increasingly independent individuals than a community. Guns undermine just that — community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government.

Our gun culture promotes a fatal slide into extreme individualism. It fosters a society of atomistic individuals, isolated before power — and one another — and in the aftermath of shootings such as at Newtown, paralyzed with fear. That is not freedom, but quite its opposite. And as the Occupy movement makes clear, also the demonstrators that precipitated regime change in Egypt and Myanmar last year, assembled masses don’t require guns to exercise and secure their freedom, and wield world-changing political force. Arendt and Foucault reveal that power does not lie in armed individuals, but in assembly — and everything conducive to that.

Thanks for that.

[Rohirrim]

I especially like the point in the essay above regarding the delusional idea that groups like the NRA, and the myriad of militarist, survivalist groups try to forward regarding protecting themselves from the government. I don't care how many guns, of what caliber, and how much ammo you buy, if the force of the U.S. government really came down on you, you would be as a flea to an elephant. They wouldn't even notice swatting you away. I spent three years in the Army Infantry. Trust me. You wouldn't last ten minutes.

This writer is correct: It's the power of community that holds government in check.

[Rohirrim]

IMHO, 9/11 was a turning point. Since then, our society has become more and more fractured, combative and paranoid. It reminds me of the Yeats poem, The Second Coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

Basically, Bin Ladin won. America is filled with terror.

[razorwire77]

I'm an educator (high school students) and I've been reflecting on this tragedy for the past couple of days, as I'm sure many of us have been. There are so many issues and sub issues regarding the health (mental and physical) of our society. I honestly do not believe that students are any more violent or prone to violence or apathetic than they were 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Statistically, student don't learn at a lesser rate today than they did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. It's actually more if you factor in what students are capable of doing with computers. I teach students that are kicked out of the worst schools in Albuquerque and yes, a few of them are sociopaths or deviants, but most of them are simply kids who through circumstance (lack of family structure, a few poor decisions have fallen through the cracks. They have a moral code, they are often empathetic and capable of generosity. In other words, they aren't a "lost generation."

Without getting into a gun control argument or a political argument, I feel that there are a few basic contributing factors to the violence we are seeing. Just a couple of random thoughts and observations.

1.) We have advanced technologically beyond where we are cognitively able to handle it. Our memory, judgment, and reasoning is bombarded by being plugged into media, video games, music, message boards and we aren't wired so to speak to live our lives like this. It impacts everything from family and dating relationships to how we interact with people on a daily basis in the workplace. People have lost connection with nature and connection with real, in person tangible relationships.

2.) Over the past several generations, we have seen the decay of the family relationship. In some cases, people are working too hard and too many hours to create meaningful relationships with their children. These are the parents that think "everything is great, Billy is on the wrestling team" when the reality is they are too busy working or self-absorbed with their own world to realize that Billy quit the team his freshman year, is hooked on prescription meds and hasn't been to school in 30 days (not hyperbole, a real example.)

The other extreme are the parents (men in particular) that somehow think it's expected or the norm to bring children into this world and not support them emotionally or financially.

3.) The parameters for how we measure success and our perceptions for what will make us happy are way off. Without getting into the specifics, several quality studies have shown that about 40 percent of our satisfaction levels are genetic (really not much we can change), about 10 percent of satisfaction/happiness is acquisition based on for the lack better words getting stuff, and the remaining 50 percent of happiness is impacted by establishing strong community membership and a life filled full of intrinsic motivation (doing stuff for the love of it) rather than extrinsic.

So basically intrinsic motivation and meaningful belonging to a group make up 50 percent of what makes the average person balanced and happy, but the majority of us spend most of our lives chasing the 10 percent. As a result, we fill the gaps in a multitude of unhealthy ways.

[cutthemdown]

So now according to Fed religion not all that different from nazis in 1930 germany. Umm yeah you are right you are super reasonable.

[cutthemdown]

Originally Posted by razorwire77

I'm an educator (high school students) and I've been reflecting on this tragedy for the past couple of days, as I'm sure many of us have been. There are so many issues and sub issues regarding the health (mental and physical) of our society. I honestly do not believe that students are any more violent or prone to violence or apathetic than they were 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Statistically, student don't learn at a lesser rate today than they did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. It's actually more if you factor in what students are capable of doing with computers. I teach students that are kicked out of the worst schools in Albuquerque and yes, a few of them are sociopaths or deviants, but most of them are simply kids who through circumstance (lack of family structure, a few poor decisions have fallen through the cracks. They have a moral code, they are often empathetic and capable of generosity. In other words, they aren't a "lost generation."

Without getting into a gun control argument or a political argument, I feel that there are a few basic contributing factors to the violence we are seeing. Just a couple of random thoughts and observations.

1.) We have advanced technologically beyond where we are cognitively able to handle it. Our memory, judgment, and reasoning is bombarded by being plugged into media, video games, music, message boards and we aren't wired so to speak to live our lives like this. It impacts everything from family and dating relationships to how we interact with people on a daily basis in the workplace. People have lost connection with nature and connection with real, in person tangible relationships.

2.) Over the past several generations, we have seen the decay of the family relationship. In some cases, people are working too hard and too many hours to create meaningful relationships with their children. These are the parents that think "everything is great, Billy is on the wrestling team" when the reality is they are too busy working or self-absorbed with their own world to realize that Billy quit the team his freshman year, is hooked on prescription meds and hasn't been to school in 30 days (not hyperbole, a real example.)

The other extreme are the parents (men in particular) that somehow think it's expected or the norm to bring children into this world and not support them emotionally or financially.

3.) The parameters for how we measure success and our perceptions for what will make us happy are way off. Without getting into the specifics, several quality studies have shown that about 40 percent of our satisfaction levels are genetic (really not much we can change), about 10 percent of satisfaction/happiness is acquisition based on for the lack better words getting stuff, and the remaining 50 percent of happiness is impacted by establishing strong community membership and a life filled full of intrinsic motivation (doing stuff for the love of it) rather than extrinsic.

So basically intrinsic motivation and meaningful belonging to a group make up 50 percent of what makes the average person balanced and happy, but the majority of us spend most of our lives chasing the 10 percent. As a result, we fill the gaps in a multitude of unhealthy ways.

One thing i noticed was the blaming men for having babies they don't take care of. Could it also be that women didn't spread their legs as easily in the past? Maybe it is both of those things. Another issue that religion addresses much more then the secular crowd does.

religion= wait until marraige to have sex
secular= go get a rubber and have some fun

Then you talk about family and the race for money and objects. These issues are also talked about at a very young age in the church. Maybe god isn't real but what is real is the fact churches help people form communities. They help people have a place they feel they belong regardless of money or power.

[W*GS]

Some common sense...

[cutthemdown]

It's stupid wiggs because we have lots of laws about where and when you can have a gun. The failure is in school security.

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by cutthemdown

It's stupid wiggs because we have lots of laws about where and when you can have a gun. The failure is in school security.

Schools ought to be armed and locked-down camps, then.

WTF is wrong with that picture?

How 'bout we fix what's wrong with the rest of society so our schools don't need to resemble prisons.

PS - What do you think a 6-year-old looks like after being shot 11 times?

[Arkie]

sucks to be a rapist