Yeah but also the idea of being the most important person in the school when everybody else is hiding. They will cower from me. That sort of thing.
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Addressing inequality is always a good idea, but In the specific case of mass-shootings, I don’t think there’s much, if any evidence that they are driven by inequality. Look at the worst of them. The Vegas shooter was independently wealthy and had unknown motives. The Sandy Hook shooter came from a wealthy family that had good access to resources to treat his mental disabilities (which may or may not have even been related to his motives) which did not help. Background checks would not have helped because these men were not criminals until they started shooing dozens of people. What exactly are you proposing that would have made a difference in these cases? Because preventing their easy access to efficient mass killing machines sure seems like a good start.
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Incidentally, it really looks to me (as an outside observer) that increasingly the American right is abandoning the whole concept of the future.
On one hand, it’s the elites focusing more and more on the short-term profit at the cost of long-term viability, both for the corporations and for the country as a whole, as they loot and pillage the economy and ignore things like the mounting infrastructure problems, soaring costs of education, climate change with its myriad effects, and so on.
On the other hand, it’s the right-wing voters, the “masses”, turning increasingly bitter and hostile towards the younger generation, lashing out spitefully at everyone and everything in reach because they don’t like the direction things are going. Including attacking their own children first not fitting into their understanding of the American dream, then for daring to want to change things for the better.
I repeat: it’s like a huge chunk of the American right has given up on the future, and now just wants to loot everything, set the country into flames, and die laughing about how they’ve ruined it for the uppity young people.
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As my wife has always said - “you can fuck with me as much as you want, but don’t fuck with my kids” She becomes a hellcat when she feels someone has wronged our kids. This is what’s got to happen to get meaningful change, suburban moms everywhere have to demand change.
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Thanks. Made the change. Any thoughts on the substance, which hasn’t changed?
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I think you mean “liberals.” “Neoliberal” is an economic term that refers to those who favour unregulated, laissez-faire capitalist markets.
Unless you want to portray yourself as a firearms fetishist, you’re more accurately described as anti-gun-control (at least when it comes to the objects themselves).
For the moment. Those were far from unanimous decisions, with strong and compelling dissents. While I doubt that private ownership will be banned in the near future, there will be future cases about how and under what circumstances and in what quantities certain types of firearms may be owned. Some of those cases will no doubt begin with someone who’s been bereaved by yet another massacre like the one in FL.
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The British right, too. One of the best descriptions I’ve heard of Brexit is the nation’s old selling out the future prospects of the nation’s young. This war on young people is not incidental to any of this, either
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And that person was immediately fired, as he was obviously an idiot.
If you think that guy’s an outlier, you’re not paying attention. The propaganda machine is kicking into high gear.
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So much burning stupid. Sure, right…a dude who’s not even close to being the richest guy in the world funds absolutely every last friggin’ thing that the US far-right doesn’t like. [insert “oh, OK” Jennifer Lawrence gif here]
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Nope, just have middle schoolers myself, a lot of them are learning
about Sandy Hook now in the wake of Parkland.
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While we adults are thinking about “empowering them” they are empowering themselves. Today, they are walking out in Florida. Soon, the whole country. Valentine’s day was a week ago. They have effectively organized mass protest in the space of a week, with however they do it on social media.
Are the adults paying attention yet?
Watch and learn how it’s done.
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March 24th, I believe?
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they trigger all the time. that’s the problem.
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March 14 is the walkout, March 24 is the march, then there is another walkout scheduled for April 20. I feel like April 20 is too long to wait to let the kids express what they’re feeling, but I’m supporting all three events.
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Thanks for clarifying. There is a walkout today in Florida, happening now. I bet there will be more, locally organized, sooner than March 14th.
I hate to say it, but it looks that way from the inside too.
So long and so fervently has a certain subset of our society believed in the fallacy of ‘American Exceptionalism’ and ‘manifest destiny’ that now that the facade is crumbling they can’t deal with the reality that’s always been beneath it… and they’d just rather tear it all down than give an inch.
Such people are like freakin’ Petyr Baelish, squared in their detrimental sociopathy:
Dave Clarke needs to shut the hell up, already.
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Look at the average age of UK or US legislators compared to NZ or Scandinavia.
The old empires have become gerontocracies.
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