The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Orion's picture

    Remember Our Hearts

    By Orion on Thu, 05/26/2022 - 11:35pm |

    I'm just .... going to start with this: 

    Uvalde student laid on top of dying classmate to avoid being shot by gunman, video shows cops preventing parents from entering school during shooting.

    It is okay to cry:

    Horrifying details have emerged regarding the moments inside a Robb Elementary classroom on Tuesday when it was targeted by suspected mass shooter Salvador Ramos, an 18-year-old gunman who was killed after allegedly going on a shooting spree that took the lives of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

    I started crying when I read this. The NRA exists because its tentacles are in a lot of avenues - more than likely, the police who responded to the incident had NRA gear themselves. More:

    Joe Garcia, husband of fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia, one of two teachers killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting Tuesday, died Thursday morning of a heart attack caused by grief, according to family members. 

    "EXTREMELY heartbreaking and come with deep sorrow to say that my Tia Irma’s husband Joe Garcia has passed away due to grief," Garcia's 21-year-old nephew John Martinez wrote in a post on Thursday. "I truly am at a loss for words for how we are all feeling, PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR FAMILY, God have mercy on us, this isn’t easy."

    Was the shooter on antidepressants? It's a possibility, but we should also think of this as what it may really be: an American holocaust. 

    I had a roommate in Portland who, after the shooting at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, sat me down and asked me if he thought we were "in some kind of a social war."

    I get the feeling that this is true. I don't feel peace any where. We have not really had peace in this country for some time, since at least 9/11, and the horror of terrorism eventually just found its way home to us.

    After the Nazi holocaust, Europe enjoyed a lasting moment of real peace. Only true hell was able to get people to that moment. That moment has only broken recently with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    This is the moment that we need to look at one another, embrace one another and to know peace. Peace is only possible through us.

    It's important to always remember our hearts, because it helps us be nice.

    Comments

    Re: After the Nazi holocaust, Europe enjoyed a lasting moment of real peace

    not mentally, that's for sure, on that front I vehemently disagree! in Europe, it was the heyday of existentialism (and mental depression to go with it) when people questioned whether life had any meaning or value at all, everything seemed absurd, no peace of mind, none at all, zero

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#After_the_Second_World_War

    in the UK rationing and austerity was so severe that they treasured any care packages from the U.S.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Post-Second_World_War_1945%E2%80%931954

    in the U.S., nobody had anywhere to live, there was a severe shortage! when my father returned from the draft he and his widowed mother lived in a Quonset hut.

    there were refugees everywhere and they were very poor and the official term "D.P." for "Displaced Person" became a popular derogative, as in "you look awful, just like a D.P."

    etc.

    I don't think there's any time since when the western world was as depressed about human potential. They had just seen humans use an atom bomb on other humans and the full horrors of the Nazis were finally becoming known. What horrors were next? Victory my ass, 50 million dead, many beautiful cities bombed and burned to the ground, for what, what have we got now?

    The existentialists main guru said

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 05/27/2022 - 7:38pm

    The Orlando Pulse shooter didn't even realize he was in a gay club.
    He was just looking for someplace open with lots of people.
    A factoid that was downplayed to push the LGBT victimhood in general.
    Does that fit your theory still?
    I would say more than a "social war" 9/11 put us on emergency footing,
    so we had to sacrifice basic freedoms for the enemy without & within.
    Back to WWII "loose lips sink ships" (and buildings) - parrot the team mottos,
    tough on security, blah blah blah.
    One of the huge ironies of the Durham-Sussmann trial is what a shit job
    the FBI did with real hacking/cyberwar possibilities with a Russian bank
    and one of the 2 parties' presidential campaigns - *AFTER* the other campaign
    was publicly and demonstrably hacked. Instead they dropped the investigation
    to "nothing to see there" within hours, while giving a heads up to the bank
    and the campaign so anything suspicious could be wiped anyway.
    But get a bunch of kids with confused thoughts on politics, & the FBI
    can spend months leading them towards an impractical but prosecutable
    "terrorist attack".
    So we're into rampant symbolism, the marketing push on the home front,
    rather than actually fighting that terrorist/cyberwar. Sending surplus Iraq gear
    to police departments everywhere was not just a boon for defense companies -
    it made sure to militarize the message on the homefront. Up to that time
    we didn't have a lot of worries about these military loons at home except
    for a few out in the Rockies (Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico...).
    All the issues solidify into a kind of home patriotism litmus test.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/28/2022 - 1:40am

    great thought-provoking casual twitter convo along the lines of cultural trends in crime and popular attention to theme; (and yeah, they're making presumptions and that works best like here when people who know the eras of which they speak well and not just stereotypes)

    In a society of spectacle, culture exists as memetic loops that propagate and eventually exhaust themselves, even crime.

    We used to have serial killers, and by the 00s they mostly disappeared.

    Before the 90s, school shootings were practically non-existent, now they’re routine.

    — Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) (@antoniogm) May 27, 2022

    Girard had an entire theory of society around the mimesis of status competition, and how it eventually resolved itself via violence by the group on the individual. Christianity was meant to dissolve that drive for violence by elevating the victim to divinity in the Christ figure.

    — Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) (@antoniogm) May 27, 2022


    On why serial killers seemed to just disappear one day:https://t.co/xX4zF2YAcz

    — Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) (@antoniogm) May 27, 2022

    The overall rate of school shootings was higher in early 90s than now

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) May 27, 2022

    That's the starting point.

    — Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) (@antoniogm) May 27, 2022

    But it actually started to go down in late 90s and early 00s. Went up a bit more recently.

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) May 27, 2022


    One aspect no one is talking about: media coverage that shows the shooter’s face inspires more shootings.

    Yes gun laws, yes mental health. But ABC, CNN, FOX are all stoking the flameshttps://t.co/2Fyrs9WVTu

    — Matt (@mattsmethods) May 27, 2022

    A handful of radical groups did like 2,500 bombings in the span of two years in the early 70s.

    — spooner (@spooner4321) May 27, 2022

    Active shooter drills propagate and reinforce the memetic loop of school shootings.

    To use your example, imagine if multiple times a year we had schoolchildren reenact and prepare for political assassinations.

    — Josh Ryan (@joshryan212) May 27, 2022

    And I remember in the '80s the terror of the day was workplace mass shootings. So much so that the term "going postal" entered the vernacular.

    — NeoConTrarian (@NeoConTrarian) May 27, 2022

    Would-be serial killers get caught way sooner nowadays.

    — Samir Soriano (@samirsoriano) May 27, 2022


    Yeah. With zero research other than a Netflix special or two, it seems like they disappeared with the advent of tech and connected systems.

    — Paul Nichols (@naulpichols) May 27, 2022

    Yep.
    DNA has linked a lot of things.

    — Casey (@miteycasey) May 27, 2022

    Has anyone dug into why serial killers are no longer “a thing?”

    — caroline mccarthy (@caro) May 27, 2022

    I was wondering that not long ago and found this piece that has some experts weighing in. https://t.co/hpKrftHCyM

    — Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) May 27, 2022

    But isn't most of this about technology? It's a lot harder to assassinate someone today or be a serial killer without being caught due to all the surveillance tech. School shooters don't have that issue since most of them want to die too...

    — ElMioL (@ElMioL1) May 27, 2022

    Uh, polonium tea? Kasshoghi? Assange (almost)? The Russian opposition leader?

    Now it's not even about getting caught or not.

    It's about having the geopolitical balls to have literal first world governments with standing militaries be afraid to do anything about it.

    — Nathan K. (@USBCGuy) May 28, 2022


    The reduction in serial killers has nothing to do with "memetic loops", but improvements in forensic science. Killers are caught after a killing or two, rather than after dozens.

    Mass shootings are in large part the fault of you, the audience.https://t.co/Fnpt2WVDIn

    — George Hackenschmidt (@GeorgeHackensc2) May 28, 2022

    I think your analysis is the he most pertinent from an American https://t.co/ERIMUzKwQV try to explain and understand the roots of this: our sense of reality and capacity of empathy are melting in continuity spectacle of everything: cry over a kitten or kids caught in a war 1/

    — ghislaine maro (@sarasunwoman) May 27, 2022

    I think a big part of the lessening of serial killing isnt the lack of attention, but the technology, cameras DNA and phones. Also kids aren't allowed anywhere by themselves.

    — Keith Kopinski (@KeithKopinski) May 27, 2022

    I always wonder if they're still out there but not getting as much attention because they kill one by one and not en masse?

    — potato doritos (@postposting1) May 27, 2022

    the serial killer who gets really into his own press is gone

    — potato doritos (@postposting1) May 27, 2022

    It's noteworthy how the rise of school shootings seems to have coincided with the proliferation of easy-to-buy assault weapons. Would seem that mimetic loops can be coaxed along by external forces, and don't just arise out of thin air.

    — DeepSee-er (@ErDeepsee) May 27, 2022

    Just how we went from long tv shows to short tiktoks, the spam of attention is shorter so the action of the psychopath has to shorten too. Definitely seems media related.

    — Pablo Eder (@pablothee) May 27, 2022

    it goes on, there's a lot more!


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/28/2022 - 12:37pm

    ^  was thinking Dan Abrams could definitely give valuable input here, if was honest about it...He began his professional career in 1994 as a reporter for Court TV, covering, among others, the O. J. Simpson murder trial....

    knows what "human interest" crime stories have ab"sold" big with the public at any one time, and where crime and media intersect and interact, just from doing it so long


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/28/2022 - 12:49pm

    From the New Yorker:

    But the data are less salient than another element of the month’s tragedies: the images posted of the children who died, many of them smiling, blithely unaware of the flawed world they were born into. The knowledge that they are no longer alive—that any future iterations of those smiles have been permanently forestalled—is an indictment that we all have to live with.

    There is an image of Ted Cruz that is jarred in memory. It is the same expression that Zelensky showed after seeing Russian atrocities. He simply doesn't believe it any more.

    One thing I would suggest to Democrats is to build some sort of alternative. If you are a hunter or working in any sort of law enforcement, you end up going through gun channels to get stuff. Come up with an alternative vision and alternative organizations for this.

    An alternative vision should focus squarely on protecting and nurturing children. When children are hurt on any level, we see red or we see black. There are vigilantes who attack sex offenders because they think the system does not give them what they really deserve. There is very little protection for children in this society - it's not a good place to be one. This makes it clear and the inherent weakness in the conservative defense of this issue is that they are avoiding that massive elephant in the room.

    Quite literally everything we're discussing here - the medications, the guns, the hormone blockers - all have to do with a lack of respect for children and childhood by American society. There are no "family values" going on here. The society simply sees children as experimental subjects and flaws that need to be corrected.

    This would also be a massive Achille's heel in the abortion debate - as how can you be pro-life when, given a few years, the baby could just get wiped out by a madman?


    by Orion on Mon, 05/30/2022 - 11:43am


    by Orion on Mon, 05/30/2022 - 12:01pm

    Apparently in Illinois, lawmakers do put a high value on school children's lives, at least while they are attending school

    Today's law lesson from felony bond court —

    Judge Marubio notes that, because a student allegedly tried to bring a gun into his high school, the law requires him to undergo a mental health evaluation as a condition of bail.

    Until then, $250,000 bail as a precaution.

    — CWBChicago (@CWBChicago) June 10, 2022

    not so much otherwise, though.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 06/12/2022 - 5:33am

    A high school freshman was arrested and charged for bringing a loaded ghost gun to his Hyattsville, Maryland, school on Thursday, the last day of classes before summer break. https://t.co/S4vME2IGtc

    — WTOP (@WTOP) June 24, 2022

    The new law won't have a lot of effect on school shootings. The kids will just switch to ghost guns and black market now. Also, they can still use their parents' guns, as they usually have.

    Sure it will prevent a few mentally ill and angry nuts about this or that from getting guns, and that's a good thing, like in Buffalo.

    But it won't stop most shootings by teenagers and kids in school. They're trying to prove they're big shot alpha males (or in some instances, get back at bullies, real or imagined.)

    I think what will have an effect: trying them as adults, as here! Making it known, it's uncool, nobody will like it, you'll get locked up like an adult. Perhaps also making their parents liable. Rap music would help a lot if it made guns uncool as well. Used to be something that rural yahoos who need viagara to get it up, as Obama famously said "they like their guns and bibles" (Obama had a huge effect on Black kids in NYC - I noticed how many of them in Harlem were dressing and acting preppie. Now gone with the wind, a mass shooting in Harlem the other night, back to gangsta culcha.)


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/25/2022 - 3:29am

    this begs the question that maybe drills gives some kids the idea that bringing that gun from their home to school will get them some attention and respect as alphas? instead of victims of bullies?


    by artappraiser on Mon, 06/27/2022 - 7:47pm


    by artappraiser on Wed, 07/20/2022 - 2:23am


    by artappraiser on Fri, 07/22/2022 - 7:34am

    so this could be the plan to protect the schoolkids where everyone could be carrying?


    by artappraiser on Tue, 08/16/2022 - 8:54pm