Anger
The Monday after the El Paso and Dayton shootings a man in Atlanta shot three people and then himself. It was just another shooting such as those we wake up to nearly every morning. I don’t recall this level of violence 20 or 30 years ago.
Road rage is a relatively new phenomenon which is growing more and more common as well. Angry drivers are drawing weapons on drivers they feel have wronged them more and more often. Or they pull out into traffic rather than waiting until it’s safe. This evening a guy walked into the shop where my husband works and said he came within inches of being shot in a road rage incident. The shooter was able to drive away.
People are behaving in an angry manner so often it surpasses my cynicism. Trump people hate immigrants. Democrats hate Trump people. Meanwhile Congress still only represents the 1%, while they endlessly debate issues that the 99% overwhelmingly support.
The oppressive heat this summer may contribute to the level of anger as climate change rears its ugly head. But we continue to do those things which guarantee more warming, because Congress doesn’t work for us.
We have the illusion of power with the cars we drive which favor horsepower over mileage. And we have our guns no matter how bad an idea that proves to be. And so we have shootings, mass and otherwise. And the anger grows.
Comments
Yes.
My paralegal thinks it is ok to take exception to her traffic problems by talking, making gestures, and I have told her over and over again, for those 30 miles down the roads in Texas, stay silent.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
My husband says, “Blow your horn!” I say, “No, they
may be armed.”
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Is it anger?
Or possibly the feeling of hopelessness.
No hope that anything will change.
No hope that those who represent us will.
I no longer feel anger at those individuals who care not but for themselves.
Survival is a base instinct and in the long run, none will survive.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
A guy in Las Vegas has been arrested
He wanted to bomb a LGBT.... community, but no reason has been given yet. In one of the open carry states a guy was arrested for going into a Walmart with an assault weapon and having body armor on. I think that should fit the definition of terrorism because he deliberately stoked fear in people. Why would anyone think that was a good idea?
I'm thinking that we are seeing an increase in violence for numerous reasons. Our government thinks it's okay to discriminately bomb people of color in any country it wants. It thinks nothing of overthrowing governments it doesn't like regardless of the consequences to people there and then people acts surprised and bent out of shape when they want to escape from the violence we installed and come here where they can be safe again.
The increasing wealth inequality, rising costs for just about everything with wages being insufficient to keep pace is causing lots of worries and frustration. Watching as our corrupt congress transfers our money to those that don't need it while gutting money for infrastructure, schools, etc and especially programs that help people is causing social and economic anxiety. Road rage is caused by poor road conditions and increasing traffic flows, bad days at work, sick kids and no health insurance...the list goes on and on doesn't it?
But countries that have quality health care, real time for vacations and sick leave and other things that make their lives better don't have anywhere near the violence that this country has. And for some reason I think we're being screwed so that we keep fighting each other instead of focusing our anger on our government. IMO of course..
Good thought provoking essay.
ETA
Las Vegas man arrested for plotting to bomb a synagogue and a LGBT.... center. Interesting article, but I'm wondering why so many people are just talking to cops without getting a lawyer? The El Paso shooter admitted that he targeted Mexicans. Seriously? Guy kills 22 , but doesn't have an attorney?
ETA details of the guy who went into Walmart dressed to kill.
He was arrested by an armed off-duty firefighter.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Still haven’t unravelled that *last* Las Vegas shooting in 2017
58 dead, 422 wounded — “lone gunman” huh?
Victims: fans of “Country & Western” music (= SWPL = “stuff white people like”) . . . ?
Motive? (Crickets.)
Reaction of political and economic elites? (Crickets.)
Yep. Another official story that doesn't pass the smell test.
But I can't ascribe a motive or identify any group that benefits from that situation. My best guess is that it was a false flag that was botched or aborted. Since it didn't run until it's completion the motive remains a mystery.
I was thinking about that too.
it seems like it just faded away despite it being a pretty out of the ordinary shooting. Was it because it falls outside the accepted norms? Given the scope, it seems there should be more attention but it faded away.
Also sad I can talk about mass shootings as having accepted norms, but that’s the country we live in.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
do you really think it's hard to kill/wound that many people
with automatic weapons fire into a thick crowd from height (almost every shot will hit someone), with restricted egress and unlimited ammo?
i'm surprised there weren't more dead.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yes^^^^Wealth inequality and insecurity = constant stress.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Our government bombs white people too. Lots of them.
Arabs are white. So are Iranians.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
"white" isn't a physical description.
it's an illusory cultural mark.
in early 20th century america, italians weren't considered white.
there's a WHOLE lotta people in this country who don't considered Iranians or Arabs or for that matter Spaniards to be "white".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
smart
Nobody said these effers were smart.
File under: "Stupid Criminals". CC: Tonya Harding.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Exactly.
No, you're exactly right. Why should they give a shit if we're too busy fighting and murdering each other to notice how we're being screwed? I brought this up on a FB thread recently about gun control, but it was largely ignored. Of course. This is why the gun control issue will never be solved.
This shit is bananas.
It isn't that they don't give a shit.
They work diligently to insure we fight with each other and never notice what they're doing to us. Let's you and him fight.
I think it's the despair over inequality, socio-economic and
of equal rights ones. Not the oppressive heat.
https://www.euronews.com/live
The increasing heat's not helping
You can look it up; there's been a lot of credible talk recently about global warming directly contributing to human violence.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I don't deny that it is not helping
just saying that I think it is not the main root cause. I guess to survive extreme weather periods, being the cold or the heat ones, makes people violent against each other in their efforts to survive.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Unless a strongly bonded community works together.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
probably your clan and if lucky your little village's folks
may be I just can't see it anymore so often in my neighborhoods.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Here's what I STILL don't get
Murder is still illegal, and reliably prosecuted (the Zimmerman/Martin case was unusual, hence the mass media coverage, and very contingent on the defense's ability to wriggle behind regional laws and culture); if you choose to go on a killing spree, you are throwing your life away, and the people who do this MUST be aware of that...
...so WHY do they waste their final shot on having a meaningful impact on the world (which is what this is about, at least for some of them) on suboptimal targets???
Nightclubs, churches, schools...they're not only choosing to go after innocent victims, but RANDOM, IRRELEVANT victims. You'd think they'd at least go after the specific individuals who'd crossed them in their own lives, right? Sure, obsessive racism explains Dylan Roof, but what about (for example) the Vegas shooter guy? And what about the Dallas sniper, who was at least savvy enough to realize that "all they care about is revenue and blood" - yet he chose to waste his life killing RANDOM cops?
If you're going to throw your life away, why not try to hunt down ANY of the few people who MATTER? Why do all the most hated people in the world, most of whom have all been quite well-documented, have some kind of bizarre force-field around them? They are all mortal men and women with names and addresses, most of them do not have eternal Secret Service posses surrounding them and continue to live mostly normal (and therefore vulnerable) lives, and frankly, one need not worry about metaphysical sticking points about whether they or anybody else "deserve" to die when the fact is that they have proved themselves intractable in their desire to take, despoil, ravage, ruin, and destroy, and sustained in their ability to do so. Why have NONE of them faced a serious attempt on their lives???
I think it may matter, too. I think all these innocent people who have been randomly mowed down are victims of DISPLACED hatred; we've gone over 30 years without any real accountability for the worst criminals in the world, and the cumulative "negative energy", if you will, is slaking its invincible thirst on scapegoats.
WE. NEED. NUREMBERG. 2. It's the ONLY REAL way to shut the book on all this.
Either mass-murder isn't okay...or it is.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
“Red Army Faction / Baader-Meinhof gang” killed important people
in Germany in the 1970s. The establishment, from Social Democrat chancellor Helmut Schmidt on down, responded by cracking down on the entire counterculture and alternative Left spectrum. We were all suspected of either being, or harboring, “terrorist sympathizers.”
Now the death toll from Islamic terrorism and other violent migrants is much higher, but the victims are ordinary people, random citizenry. This time the establishment’s reaction is the opposite. No crackdown, no sweeping investigations. Just NAXALT (“Not All X Are Like That“) exhortations to the public not to think worse of Islam and migration in general, but associate them with happy thoughts instead.
Hmmm.
true, they killed important people and
the buck stops were you murder people on the basis of ideological' convictions. Also I think the comparison imo is not quite appropirate, because RAF and Baader Meinhof were 'natural born white Germans' (huh, I hope you get what I mean without being upset, just don't know how to say what I want to say) and their targets were one of their own folks so to speak.
When I graduated from the University 1975 in Berlin and applied for my first professional job in my field as an employee in the public sector, I got a visit from the "German Verfassungsschutz", because I had signed a little pamphlet of a 'Kommilitone' (fellow student in the department at the University I graduated from), who was active in the SDS (Sozialischer Deutscher Studentenbund). At that time I was not aware of what I singed, I had just a pity with the my fellow student, who was so seriously trying to 'make the world a better place' so to speak.
I started out studying in 1968 and just a couple of months after Rudi Dutschke had survived an assassination attack. So, that lead over the years to become aware about the SDS without understanding how they were surveilled and how 'radicalized' they may have been.
In any case, they grilled me on my understanding and support of the German Verfassung (German Basic Law and Constitution) and understood me as being a natural supporter of the German Verfassung and not at all engaged in something that would qualify as being 'verfassungsfeindlich' (enemy of the constitution). So, I got released and got my first job in the public sector.
I would think today's violent crimes and killings by immigrants coming into Germany are not ideologically based. They seem to be more random violent acts out of frustration of their socio-economic misery, them blaming much of it to former colonialism (rightfully imho) and caused by their religious and racial fanatism (I had no clue about the latter of the two, but run into it here in Germany on the streets quite a bit). Their violent attacks could be interpreted as revenge attacks on those, they believe are their direct enemies for their miserable lives they had. Their own racism and extreme religious ideologies are as bad as some of our own (or what I seen in the US). It's a fubar mess.
Why do you try to compare the two groups of 'terrorists'. I think it's like comparing Apples to Oranges.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Because the comparison is helpful to see what is going on?
As Caitlin Johnstone says, whoever controls the narrative controls the world.
To raise questions and points that disrupt the establishment narrative is to do the work that needs to be done.
Conversely, to argue in a way that upholds the establishment narrative is to work for the oligarchs and against change.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/whoever-controls-the-narrative-contro...
That applies to Germany too. The Greens and alternative Left, who used to disrupt the establishment narrative in Germany, now support it; indeed they are it. Where, then, is the needed change to come from?
"NAXALT" - nice acronym
It's one of the many things that strikes me about the new "PC Inquisition" is the conspicuous and even aggressive omission of that - and the way some people have been reacting in the past few years to at-all-non-mainstream groups (4chan/8chan/etc, for example) who have been outed in the past few years for supposedly being the source of violence and hate that they never cared about until after they had their Terror-Goggles firmly grafted on reminds me PRECISELY of the way people reacted after 9/11 to "Islam". They're even using a lot of the same talking points they were using in the '000s ("Ignorant, dirty, hirsute misogynists with strange living conditions! PROTECT THE WIMMENFOLK LIKE GOODBIGSTRONGMEN!!!").
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Was Islam peripheral to 9-11?
Or was it at the heart? I can only take the terrorists word for why they did it. And they said they did it for Islam.
Just like the Christian terrorists assassinating abortion providers.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
It's interesting that . . .
those who are killing for Islam kill, by orders of magnitude, more followers of Islam than Christians or Jews. Makes it a little hard to take them at their word.
Just like murdering an ob-gyn. I wonder whether these people believe they're doing what Jesus would have done.
Saudis —> Salafism —> Sunni takfiri view: all Shia = unbelievers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takfiri
I think the Sunni takfiri are just concentrating on killing Shia Muslims first. Give ’em enough time, space, oil revenue, and Toyota trucks and don’t worry, they’ll eventually get around to killing members of the other Abrahamic religions too.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=christians+syria+islamic+state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_by_ISIL
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31648888
Americans still can't figure out
...the Shia genocide they are paying for. It's amazing.
No True Scotsman
And the use of the so-called "No True Scotsman fallacy" every time someone of integrity calls the "PC Inquisition" on their genuinely fallacious attempts at the guilt-by-association smear.
NAXALT, indeed!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I thought I'd noticed that
The whole thing is riddled with well-known fallacies - how the hell is it, in a time when anyone can look these fallacies up and love calling people out on them even if they don't comprehend what they're reading, that it even managed to survive getting out of the gate, let alone conquering everything???
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
those that matter
Because those who are intelligent enough to recognize these "people who matter" as the problem are also smart enough to recognize that violence to these will solve nothing. New bosses will appear where the old ones had been, ad nauseam per saecula saeculorum.
(per saecula saeculorum == forever and ever, literally "through the ages of ages")
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Exactly. You can’t cut the head off of greed. That’s why
I just can’t get excited about guillotines.
I am annoyed by people like Warren Buffet who acknowledge class war, but continue to wage it nevertheless. Apparently the invisible hand of the market regularly jumps up his ass and makes him do things like relocating a business headquarters out of the country to avoid taxes which might actually go to the common good. He just can’t help himself. Capitalism makes him do it.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Warren Buffet
And all that guillotining him would accomplish is to change the name of the one we're annoyed at. Nothing else.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I don't believe that for a second
I think that's nothing but an excuse.
Individuals matter - and therefore, regrettably, so do assassins. There are NOT an infinite number of Kochs and Waltons out there (to say nothing of the war criminal set, or even petty criminals and pimples on society's ass who luck into making a far bigger splash than they deserve to). The untimely demise of this Epstein fellow will, barring a miracle or brilliant intrigue on the part of the forces of Justice, prevent a radical change for the better. The world is made the way it is by PEOPLE - good people make a good world, and bad people make a bad world. If every billionaire were like Bill Gates, we wouldn't be in this nightmare.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
You identified what you "don't get"
It is called TERRORISM
Re-read your own essay. You provided the answer. Now you must absorb the reality--terror is intended to provoke fear precisely because of its randomness and otherwise lack of meaning.
Ah, well here's the problem with that...
...I've never been scared of randomness and lack of meaning.
Maybe that's why I didn't see that, because that defect was never a fundamental part of me; telling me I "must absorb the reality" feels too much to me like demanding I step into the Devolution Chamber-thing from the Super Mario Bros. movie or some other body-brain-horror metaphor. Other people should be learning from ME. I don't fear Chaos. I don't fear Cthulhu. I fear ordinary people. I fear Order - or rather, I fear the fear of Chaos, which is all that Order is. It is what drives the idiocy of everyone from DAESH to neocons the Klan to the PC Police. It's like an addictive drug, one that most people are pumped full of from birth to the point that they have no idea that it's possible to live - and to live FAR BETTER - without it.
My grand thesis ever since 4th grade has been that obsolete human instincts that once served to keep primitive humans alive are now killing them. This is the Anthropocene Era - like the cyanobacteria of the Archean Eon, Humanity has transformed the world it was born into; now, they must adapt to the world they have created, or both the world and the race are damned.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
My bet is on the planet outlasting two-legged apes
Very nice song a la Devo.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vREt7rwK12I]
One of the MSM's
talking points this past week was criticizing Bernie and Tulsi for seeming to be angry.
Do they think that's going to be a turn-off for the American voting public? What do the brilliant minds at the MSM think gave us Trump (and almost gave us Bernie, and may still do so), anyway? It certainly wasn't millions of happy, comfortable citizens who are content with their lives and the way things are being run.
With all the apparent divisions among the American people at present, there's one thing that unites us: anger. Extreme anger. And very often, if you get underneath anger, you find fear.
It is a world-class effort at gaslighting and shaming that the MSM is trying to perpetrate on us now.
They're trying to get us to deny our anger. They want us to believe that no one in America is angry, except for "unacceptable" people like Bernie and Tulsi and Trump supporters and the people who shoot up schools and events. They want us to believe that there is no reason for Bernie or any of us to be angry. They want us to believe that feeling and expressing anger is shameful, bad, and wrong. Don't we know that we need to be polite at all times?
Obviously, TPTB are worried about the growing discontent among the populace. They have to be sensing it. If they're at all intelligent, they know that an angry populace is dangerous. If enough people get angry enough, TPTB could lose control.
So TPTB is turning on the propaganda machine full blast, trying to keep control of the narrative. Trying to keep us focusing our rage and fear on each other instead of at them. Trying to get us to shut up and go back to sleep.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Oops. Too late. There he is, and we see him.
Edited to add: I also think TPTB and MSM are trying to use our anger and fear. They manufacture it, fan the flames, and try to manipulate our anger and fear to their benefit.
This is a very dangerous game they're playing. Dangerous to the US, to the world, and to TPTB themselves. I'm not sure they can handle it. The corporate oligarchy has devolved into addiction. They can't stop themselves. They are not in control of themselves, and they are playing with fire. I wonder if any of them realize it?
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Regarding road rage.
I think a lot of it is due to widespread road dickishness. I am all too often triggered to intense anger when driving, although if I haven't snapped by now, I doubt I ever will. But what I see constantly is infuriating; speeding, lane wandering, turns and lane changes without even looking, and worst of all, tailgating. I fantasize about having a cannon in my trunk, pointing to the rear.
Government is quite a fan of drones; why not camera drones in the skies with AI processing of the video to identify traffic offenses? This would also provide a record of the offense, and could be used to direct traffic officers to pull them over and ticket them (or arrest them, whichever is needed).
Speeding vs creeping
The speeders aren't what infuriates me, it's the old folks that go 20 mph below the speed limit on roads where it's impossible to pass them.
I avoid driving in the city or on the interstate as much as possible - too much traffic, too many people, too many possibilities.
ETA: Ah, yes, more tools for the pigs. That's just what we need. *eyeroll*
Hoe about 15mph in a 50 mph zone?
Got a ticket in Virginia once for passing in a no passing zone near Dulles for that. As the cop was writing it, Ma and Pa Kettle crept past at 15.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
WOW! I'm not alone!
Police traffic enforcement is nearly non-existent.
They are focusing on "important issues". Like whether to eat a Dunkin Donuts cruller with vanilla icing or chocolate.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
No to more Big Brother, Eye in the Sky
Though I used to wish there was a helicopter equipped with a big magnet that could swoop down and pluck the idiots off the road and plunk them down in the middle of a field they could only walk out of, more BB survailance is not ideal, imo.
I do wish we had to take a driving test every 5 yrs, though. I also wish we could have a device that disabled all but 911 functions on cell phones while a vehicle is in motion, but freedumb! (We used to find our ways without having a voice tell us where to turn, and we either talked to ourselves or our passengers while driving.) Put down the gd phone and drive!
Better drones than what I’ve experienced.
I was driving with 3 other people in the car, in the center lane of a 6-lane divided highway. A semi pulled up so close to to me that I expected to get crushed. I couldn’t safely change lanes, and speeding up would have made it even more dangerous (I was already going with the flow of traffic, and what if the tailgater sped up to match?). The truck driver stayed on my tail for at least 5 minutes. I would have killed the SOB if I could.
Someone tracking me from on high? Bring it on.
Road dickishness
Pffft, speeding is the least rage-inducing shit I see on the road. Let 'em go have fun with their speeding tickets if they get caught. (One time I was driving back to my college on a 65-mph highway, some dude in a pickup blows past me at least 80; a mile down the road I saw him pulled over. Another time I was driving to work on I-15 in Utah; I watched some asshole in a BMW cut off a cop, and immediately get pulled over by said cop. Sometimes instant karma happens!)
Now I work in a small town full of vacationers and old white people; nobody uses their turn signals, and nobody knows where tf they're going. I don't even like going back there after work because I don't want to deal with them. One of our delivery truck drivers even commented on it before; he said "So what age do people in this town stop using their turn signals?"
A few weeks ago I was waiting to turn left onto the 4-lane highway after work; I was waiting in the center divider-intersection thing. An older guy in a big pickup pulls up on my right, also signaling left, which I see people do around here often. He crept forward enough to block my view right, so I crept forward a bit more, then he crept forward more and pulled around turning left in front of me!
"OUT OF MY WAY PUNY WOMAN, I AM IMPORTANT" (--old dude in truck, probably)
Anyway, there are definitely certain types of vehicles that drive more aggressively than others. At least then I know who to avoid while driving.
This shit is bananas.