Scarcely a day after the San Bernardino massacre, many questions remain unanswered. Thus far, among the 14 dead and 21 injured were clients with developmental disabilities -- helplessly handicapped -- and their caregivers. What else do we know?
According to reports, there was a heated exchange at the social services center. A man stormed angrily from a meeting room. He returned later with an accomplice. Together, they aimed for maximum body count in the shortest possible time.
The shooters were a man and wife armed with assault rifles, handguns, tactical gear, and high capacity ammunition magazines. Hardly a spontaneous act, these superficial details suggest advance planning and preparation.
Was the massacre a work-related revenge killing, an act of terrorism, or a hybrid of motives and methods as yet unknown?
Yesterday, our news media reported unsubstantiated rumors with headlined hearsay and mindless blather. Tomorrow, no doubt, reactionary voices will jump to conclusions with reflexive blame, opportunistic pandering, and ritual scapegoating.
No doubt, the NRA will place “good guys with a gun” on a pedestal alongside Buffalo Bill’s Defunct -- American idols of anachronism, snake oil, and sleaze. Once again, the NRA will blame victims for failing to defend themselves. Rehearsed rhetoric from recycled scripts will condemn victims to silence -- shades of Aurora, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Roseburg, Tucson, and Virginia Tech.
All of which makes me madder than hell. No longer will I accept carnage as currency in exchange for unfettered gun rights. No longer should we tolerate errors of mystification that lead to an overwhelming conclusion: Nothing can be done.
Those who perpetuate the madness -- the NRA, the gun lobby, 'open carry' extremists, and politicians of every stripe on the NRA payroll -- have blood on their hands. From this day forward, let us treat them as enablers, collaborators, and co-conspirators. Never again should we accept partisan deadlock and Congressional gridlock as an excuse for protecting this American death cult.
Those who perpetuate the madness -- the NRA, the gun lobby, 'open carry' extremists, and politicians of every stripe on the NRA payroll -- have blood on their hands. From this day forward, let us treat them as enablers, collaborators, and co-conspirators. Never again should we accept partisan deadlock and Congressional gridlock as an excuse for protecting this American death cult.
I'm going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and suggest that this couple were well along in the process of Islamic radicalization and have been in contact with radical elements for a while. You're right, it's not a spontaneous act. Until shown to be otherwise I have to list this on the same page as the Paris attacks and others around the world. Perhaps it was launched prematurely, but the bombs were built, the weapons purchased, the kevlar jackets and ninja suits bought in preparation for an attack.. They had more equipment in reserve for a second act it seems.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned yesterday, I had occasion to read the NRA magazine and even at this late date it was able to shock me with the venom and rage and twisted arguments, easily the equal of anything out of Josef Goebbels' desk drawer. I'll never forget how Mr. LaPierre justified the bombing of the Murrah Building and all the children killed. What can we call it but a terrorist group now that Wayne is the President.
Now that we have to admit (I think) we're engaged in a war we have to consider that anyone encouraging and aiding, even with words, an enemy is a traitor as well as a terrorist. The incitement to violence wrapped around nostalgic prose about classic shotguns is plainly visible, at least to me. As much so as it is in the Anti-Abortion, Anti-Gay rhetoric. Discrediting all those people is a worth goal.
Where I disagree however is in permitting myself to entrapped by rage. Seeing through rage is seeing through a glass darkly, at least it is for me. We have a long battle ahead. In a sense it's an eternal battle as much as Bel and the Dragon -- the force of goodness against the dragon of chaos. It's the basis for much of the Bible.
As the President said,there will always be such acts but we can make it more difficult. If we can justify a no-fly list, we can justify a no-gun list. One small step as Mr. Armstrong said, but when we're differentiating this from the disturbed youth, disgruntled employee or dysfunctional family sort of spree we have to note that it's going to take a different strategy and embark on a long road. Gun control isn't nearly enough.
Gun control works against individual crazies to an extent, but not very well against international Jihad. Ask the French and all the countries who witness such things all the time. What I admire about them however is that they aren't collapsing into a terrified state. I think it's time for defiance instead of self-immolating rage.
Another thing we have to face squarely is that every such incident creates a line outside the gun shop door. Smith and Wesson and Sturm - Ruger stock got a big boost today in an otherwise down market. People are afraid of terrorists and equally as afraid of losing their guns. Any year with a "Democrat in the White House is a good year for the gun industry. shooting sprees are a windfall. It's about fear and knowing how to dispel it.
ReplyDeleteThere are those who are phobic about keeping their guns and those who are phobic about anyone having them. I devoutly wish that any discussions exclude such people as being counterproductive - that we can all refrain from wild hyperbole and exaggerated and inaccurate descriptions of people and things and risks because I want to make progress more than I want to let my enemies know how angry and therefore weak I am.
I devoutly wish we could not keep insisting on a magic bullet or messianic solution with the stroke of a legislative pen but calmly take steps that eventually will add up. There are indeed 300 million guns in the US. Nothing mysterious about recognizing that, or how easy they are to hide.
OK, lets talk about magic bullets and messianic solutions. Here's one: Senate republicans just blocked a gun control measure that would have prevented suspected terrorists from buying weapons. Is this the kind of hyperbole you were talking about?
ReplyDeleteJust another example of the republicans caring more about company profits than American lives.
DeleteNo, in fact that's one of the steps we can take. It's one of the things Obama mentioned as one of the small steps we can take and I mentioned that quite plainly. The hyperbole I'm talking about is the practice of the media and others of making everything as scary, as evil sounding and dangerous as possible - and even more so without regard to the facts. It certainly reduces the possibility of convincing the opposition which is small enough as it is. It distracts from the fact that we need to do something about guns because a hundred voices are pushing a hundred different versions of the problem.
DeleteThe problem in this case is international terrorism yet we have a dense cloud of verbiage about irrelevant things. One size fits all usually means nothing gets fit at all.
It's a big and old problem and won't ever go away completely. I'm arguing against unrestrained emotionalism, not against action.
Jerry:
DeleteProfits and votes, both of which add up to power.
“I'm arguing against unrestrained emotionalism, not against action.”
DeleteI’m arguing in favor of emotion for these reasons: The GOP feeds off FERVOR and PASSION; whereas thoughtful and more dispassionate liberals and independents tend to stay away from midterm elections and thereby concede defeat to Republicans. Emotion stirs people and brings out the vote. Reason rarely wins arguments; but emotion sends more powerful signals to the dumb fucks who ignore them.
The current crop of GOP candidates such as Donald Dump appeal to the lowest emotions of all: Fear and bigotry. The way I see it, we are facing a stark choice: Sit back and be reasonable, or let the proto-fascists take over. I say, push back and get in their faces!
Typo. What I meant: "Sit back and be reasonable (and let the proto-fascists take over), or push back and get in their faces!"
DeleteI'm not convinced that arguing to the fringe from the fringe does anything but make things worse. Ted Nugent who wants to "cleanse America of Liberals" isn't affecting anyone but the loonies of the loony right. I want to know what we can do to get to the middle and the moderate conservatives. Cant we argue passionately and accurately? I don't think we get anywhere ignoring the middle. I know the DNC has already seriously alienated my with hysterical e-mails like todays shouting that Obamacare is already dead unless I send money in the next 30 seconds. Every day is a calamity unless I send money. Preaching to the choir converts no one and I'm positive we get nowhere without converting the "guns Ueber alles" crowd.
DeleteI know my weakness is believing in reason, but there I am, Ich kann nicht anders.
There is no “moderate” or “middle” anymore. The “my-way-or-the-highway” people are hell bent on total domination, and there is no way I can live in any country under proto-fascism. Bill Moyers and Michael Winship summarize the situation as follows:
Delete“For reasons hard to fathom, the Republicans seem to have made up their minds: they will divide, degrade and secede from the Union.
They will do so with bullying, lies and manipulation, a willingness to say anything, no matter how daft or wrong. They will do so by spending unheard of sums to buy elections with the happy assistance of big business and wealthy patrons for whom the joys of gross income inequality are a comfortable fact of life. By gerrymandering and denying the vote to as many of the poor, the elderly, struggling low-paid workers, and people of color as they can. And by appealing to the basest impulses of human nature: anger, fear and bigotry.”
You can read the rest of this commentary here.
There is no reasonable way to have a reasonable discussion with unreasonable people. The worst is yet to come: I will not give up without a fight, and FIGHT is what intend to do! And scare the shit out of them if that is what it takes.
Ich kann nicht anders!
There's reason for hope. I see Trump signs going up all over town and I think as long as he keeps it up the GOP is in trouble. Give it a year and if I'm wrong, If the Trump / Nugent ticket wins, it's still fairly warm in Paris
Deletea nice Clicquot,
A cafe I know
Les Deux Magots. .
a deux cheveax
Parked outside. .
I still have a beret somewhere.
Battle lines have been drawn. Opposing rhetorical armies and activists are active. They lob verbal grenades and rapid fire mortar rounds at each other. Special interest groups, we all know who they are, pour fuel on the raging fire. Nothing happens, more round.
DeleteInnocent lives continue to be lost.
Who's accountable? Where to begin? THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE PERHAPS...?.
Of course you are right, RN. Don't like our politicians? The blame lies with the people who elect them. They only have the power because we give it to them.
DeleteAnd with the people who don't vote, unfortunately. That Republicans are the minority party seems odd when you look at how easily they get elected. I don't think we can blame this on voter suppression. I think we can blame it on apathy. We have adults who have never voted in their lives.
DeleteMaybe if we made election day a holiday, or on a weekend?
That concept Captain is one that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Make our right and obligation to vote a national holiday. Now that would TRULY back a PATRIOTIC act.
DeleteOne republicans would strongly resist no doubt.
"One republicans would strongly resist no doubt."
DeleteNo doubt, because winning at all cost (regardless of principle) means limiting the vote to include only 'the base' while disenfranchising the opposition through the use of voter suppression, gerrymandering, caging, and other crooked tactics. The GOP is now a proto-fascist party -- no longer a partner in democracy.
The republicans have a winning strategy.
DeleteJerry,
DeleteThank you for the link. Those GOP fundraising slides are so CYNICAL, they cross all thresholds of UNETHICAL behavior. The link certainly confirms my suspicions. My only question is this: Why hasn’t the media covered this story? Either the MSM has been MIA or complicit in crime.
And why haven't the Democrats been talking about them also?
DeleteDamned good question. We've sure been obsessively howling about a dozen other things which may be important, but i think too much of the impotent rage and the scripted protest simply distracts from the fact that the media and the GOP are being led into some giant Roach Motel from which they can't and won't check out. So many of our complaints are so narrow and hermetic we wind up arguing with ourselves even when we agree.
DeleteI've been saying the same thing over and over: Facts don't matter in our political world. They won't believe them any more than we will question our own carefully arranged versions of facts. AND OF COURSE THE MEDIA ARE SO FAIR AND BALANCED THEY GIVE LIES EQUAL STATUS.
Here are the names of America's mass murderers going back to 1984:
ReplyDeleteSyed Rizwan Farook, Tashfeen Malik Richard Lewis Dear, Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, Dylann Storm Roof, Elliot Rodger, Ivan Lopez Aaron Alexis, John Zawahri, Adam Lanza, Radcliffe Haughton, Andrew Engeldinger, Wade Michael Page, James Holmes, One L. Goh, Scott Dekraai, Jared Lee Loughner, Omar S. Thornton, Amy Bishop, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Jiverly Voong, Steven Kazmierczak, Robert Hawkins, Seung-hui Cho, Sulejman Talovic, Charles Carl Roberts IV, Jennifer San Marco, Jeffrey Weise, Doug Williams, Charles Andrew Williams, Michael McDermott, Byran Uyesugi, Larry Gene Ashbrook, Mark Orrin Barton, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, Colin Ferguson, Gian Luigi Ferri, Eric Houston, Gang Lu, George Jo Hennard, James E. Pough, Patrick Edward Purdy, Patrick H. Sherrill, James Oliver Huberty.
The mass murderers who were Muslims are in bold.
SOURCE
Six out of the 48 mass shooters were Muslims. Whether we'll see more Muslim as mass shooters in the following weeks is an unknown. But just from studying this list, I don't see that Muslims are more murderous than the American males in the list, even taking into account that Muslims are a minority in our population (about 7% of our population--2010 census).
Well, here's our evidence! We need to do something about young males. I'm only half joking here, they perpetrate most violent crimes. I wonder just how Trump is going to register all of them, but that would be easier than registering all the guns. There are about two for every dude in the US.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, the search for bogeymen is part of the problem and they're not the only ones doing it. Is the problem just NRA propaganda or is it that confused people believe that propaganda? Are we educating or are looking just like the bogeyman the NRA is making out of us? Salesmen sell things. Loonies with signs do not. The NRA is all about sales. We're not being convincing and we can't blame it all on them.
We're not going to convince people who want guns to register them by calling them evil, demented and murderous and of course only a tiny percentage of them ever commit any crimes. They suppress the gathering of statistics, we suppress safety education. The angrier we appear, the more we babble about "military style" the less trustworthy.we look.
Do we overcome people's fears and delusions, do we sell them on specific, non threatening courses of action by calling them names or demonizing those they see as lobbyists in their interest? or are we just like the damned Republicans just energizing our base? I side with the President here -- step by step.
I agree. Calm, measured, reasonable, and rational. The President has it right.
DeleteCable news, rightwing pundits, and rightwing blogs are intent on fueling the fear and Islamophobia.
As firearms fly off the shelves.
And, Trump's poll numbers soar to 36% among republicans.
The home of the brave is becoming the land of the fearful.
And nothing sells AKs and Glocks like fear. Sales are up about 30%. People are filling closets with 40 round, 90 round magazines and burying guns in the back yard. If manufacture and import stopped today, how many centuries worth would there be?
DeleteFear is how monsters wind up in power. Roosevelt was right in that fear is what we have to be afraid of.
"Is the problem just NRA propaganda or is it that confused people believe that propaganda?"
ReplyDeleteBoth. Please recall the "Cincinatti Revolution" when the current Executive Committee took over the NRA ... literally tantamount to a Coup d' Etats. The insurgents rewrote the bylaws such that rank and file NRA members could no longer vote them out. IOW, a photo-fascist takeover of sorts.
Low information voters are always confused by propaganda and always easily swayed. No mystery there!. If photo-fascists know anything, they can always smell an opportunity to exploit.
Typo noticed again! A "photo finish" for the "protos." This is what happens when iPhone does the spell checking and automatically corrects your copy. Speaking of "protos" ... damn iPhone! People no longer make eye contact or share a meal together without smart phones in their faces.
Delete