The impulse, or the urge, or the need, or the idea to shoot up a school or a parade or a supermarket doesn’t come from nowhere. As we learn more about Robert E.
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone — to Lucian certainly — including the FBI, that these white killers are being groomed by white supremacists or other malevolent groups to upset society, to create more fear and disorder, to sow chaos, leading to the authoritarian regime that Trump and other GOP ilk long for?
I don't know, that seems to be an attempt to extract some motive behind this which simply doesn't exist --- the nihilistic act of random murder is the motive, the goal, the point. There's no occult eschatology. The journalistic trope, "We are not sure of the motive yet" is bizarre when applied to these cases. *****
"Authorities have yet to paint a clear picture of any motive behind the deadly shooting. But they said Crimo spent weeks planning the horrific attack launched from a rooftop, where he opened fire at random parade attendees awaiting floats and marching bands below."
Is the sequence in those sentences jarring? "Please, be so good as to explain your most clear and distinct motive for spending weeks planning to kill random members of your community while they attended a holiday parade. Now, I admit we have zero evidence indicating you are a reflective individual, prone to parsing out each nuance, and possible background of each component, within the magnificent intellectual edifice that is your weltanschauung, Mr. Crimo. But do your best, we are attentive, we are eager to have our doubts quelled as to whether this makes any sense in any way, and will settle for almost anything at this point."
Now in this hypothetical, Crimo could plunge right in explaining why he bought the military-style weapons, and headed for a high vantage point overlooking the scene, and dressed in a disguise, "women's clothes," which the Guardian put in quotation marks evidently to suggest we no longer exactly have a definitive set of clothing articles that fit that category excepting evening gowns and what, lingerie? In any event: he came prepared to wreak mass death and destruction, that was his motive, I submit, so really we can just move to the deeper question, why was he motivated to have this motive in the first place? That seems to be what the journalists and others are groping for.
One of the most illuminating passages in the Hitchcock classic Psycho is the extensive explanation from the psychatrist, or psychologist, Milton Arbogast, played by Martin Balsam, as to why Norman Bates kept his mother's corpse around, was obsessed and tormented by his existence, and so on. We are not going to get that here, real life is different from great movies, and this most recent mass killer has been scattering clues and waving red flags and might as well have been singing the Talking Heads song Psycho Killer to his peers and teachers, it was that blatant he was a possible violent criminal disaster waiting to happen.
I personally also am alerted when anyone starts seriously claiming "there is no free will," that's due to my training in philosophy, I suppose, and reading Dostoevsky and the existentialists (and pre-existentialists, universal artists like Shakespeare).
Beware anyone, or any set of doctrines, that openly seeks to completely remove individual human responsibility tout court! The next move in that Faustian chess game is to claim you, or someone else, or society at large, had to "sell your soul to the Devil," there was no way out, your will was overwhelmed by an irresistible impulse, in fact, it amounts to the setup for an insanity defense --- every law student encounters that material in their criminal law course.
So we need to take people seriously when they announce there is no free will, that they have no choice but to do x, y, or z, when those variables may encompass mass murder of their community. But even without Crimo's online declarations about that perennial debate, it looks like some people looking at his posts must have been confronted with a veritable sea of red flags, foreshadowing the bloody streets in Highland Park, and were simply perplexed, mildly alarmed, but went on with their day.
So there's another set of questions for intrepid investigative journalists: "How do you look at this material he was posting, and do nothing?"
As of Friday, July 8, we have learned his father wants to make a distinction between simply signing off on allowing a process to begin which could lead to his obviously unstable son to acquire firearms, from a process in which he, the father, acquires the weapons and gives them to his son. This looks like a distinction without a meaningful difference, though, precisely because of the "unstable" nature of the younger Crimo, doen't it? The father needed to exert his paternal control here. Not leave it open that the eventual mass murderer could acquire the firearms, not given the other facts being established. Not given his own direct observations --- he also said his son's comment to the effect he would "kill the whole family" is "being taken out of context, wow. Talk about post hoc rationalizations for really bad judgment on his part!
That “conversation” that “we need to have” has been shut down by 6 unelected individuals in black robes. I am so angry, and I don’t know how to process that right now
We started needing to have that conversation long before 5 of those 6 unelected individuals were appointed to the Court. Sorry, we can't pin this on them.
Things are going to get even worse now that law enforcement agencies must issue a weapon permit if the applicant has satisfied some minimal requirements. Expect more mass shootings.
Again my brother in arms you tell the truth. So sad, I have met the enemy and he is among us, he did not breach our perimeter, he walks among us, shouts brazen lies and gibberish and we do nothing to deter him or her. I find myself thinking how the world would be better, without their presence. Should I render justice? Then I Pull back and realize that would make me one like them. I pray for this nation to stop the power of money above the people, democracy depends on the vote of the people. Vote not for a party or money but to help your neighbor and those facing hardship, discrimination, and persecution. Major Dennis Palmer, U.S.Army, Retired
Not this time. What's with the collective guilt? No, "we" did not create these monsters. We've fought like hell against monstrosity, thwarted by a system skewed to elevate the minority that produces monsters.
They will be psychically shielded from ever experiencing the requisite metanoia, and yet that might be the single healthiest experience they could hope for!
Lucian: George Carlin does a good bit on how America produces these flawed individuals, but he uses politics as his example. It doesn't matter who it is, however. I have posted and often said that "Is it possible that video games---ultra violent and graphic videos games---play a roll in all this?" Needless to say the laughter directed at me for saying something so obviously absurd was loud and condescending. I think that when realistic blood, gore and violence reach a point where one becomes numb to it all, then the step from fantasy to real life doesn't seem so far fetched. Consider this: 10 years on video games starting at age 12, combined with 'killing' a few hundred thousand 'animated' villains, monsters, and 'bad guys?' Out of 334,000,000 people in this country you're going to produce some interesting characters where the lines of reality and fantasy are blurred. We can thank our lucky stars a video game nut or TV addict has never reached the White House and the RED button... uh... wait-a-minute... "That's not a real football, sir. I know it's shiny! No! No don't press it..." EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I have often thought that violent video games are at the root of all this current carnage. But then “experts” keep insisting there is no firm connection between violent games and actual, real-world violence.
Violent video games probably don’t affect mentally stable people to act out violently, but they could push the already unstable ones over the edge to go to a rooftop during a July 4th parade and start shooting.
I don't know what to say anymore. I yell at the TV. I scream, in disbelief, at the people that are supposed to represent me, to protect me. The people we hope will do the right thing. When these people go home at night, what do they tell their family?
The report from the Texas Tribune included this comment: “. . . his kind of angry misogyny was just ‘how online is.’” I submit that "angry misogyny" is common offline as well. So is angry racism. (Often the two are linked.) I submit that they're so common that in many circles they pass for, if not quite normal, then nothing significant enough to report to any authority, -- and the authorities would probably ignore any such report because, well, if they followed up on all of them they'd have no time for anything else. It's not peculiar to the right wing either. During the 2016 campaign quite a few of us female types encountered good ol' "angry misogyny" among male devotees of Bernie Sanders, and it wasn't just online either. The culture provides good cover for angry misogynists and angry racists, and as long as it continues to do so, it's going to be bloody hard to identify potential killers and take their threats seriously.
Yeah I agreed up until the bit about Bernie's "devotees," I sent his campaign monthly donations and encountered some online Hillary Clinton supporters as evil and malevolent and "entitled" as anything I ever met up with in decades of political involvement, who posted under their own names no less! I think the theory was that "there's a special place in hell for people who wouldn't support Clinton," paraphrasing the notorious comment from Madelyn Albright, or that you simply must be against women in some way or other if you supported Sanders, the democratic socialist progressive, over Clinton, the classic center-right Wall Street Democrat.
I won't be associated with the woman-hating bilge some of those alleged "Bernie supporters" posted, either, because you have no way of knowing if they really ever supported Sanders, not online!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is my choice for the Democratic nomination in 2024, I would work for her campaign, donate, you name it. Nominate a centrist female Democrat and prepare to lose. It's your choice.
I would love to be able to agree with you about a progressive being able to win in 2024, but I just don't know. I assumed that old-fashioned "don't vote for the commie" red-baiting had gone the way of pocket change and subway tokens, but apparently it's had a rebirth and, from what I can gather, calling someone a "communist" works just as well as it ever did.
Red-baiting has worked pretty damn well for almost two centuries. Add to that the uproar over "CRT" (i.e., acknowledging that racism is a factor in U.S. history) and "the LGBTQs are grooming your kids" (never mind there's no such thing as an "LGBTQ") and the well-funded right has plenty of smear to aim at anyone who sounds too progressive. It probably won't work everywhere, but it most of the country, yeah, it will. Scared people are easily manipulated.
^^^^^ This, focusing mainly on the 2016 campaign against Trump, is still well worth reading.
At some point all of these issues will have to be confronted, or preposterous mountebanks like Trump will continue to exploit targets of opportunity, game the system, and watch as hapless, well-meaning, well-intentioned Democrats lose to them.
Yes, exactly. I have never seen any remorse or learning from the Hillary Clinton campaign, either. I eman, that's what you're talking about, right? Comprehension of how Trump won and Clinton lost?
If you search for "Democratic Autopsy," you will find an extended, fact-based examination of how on earth Clinton managed to lose to a blustering, bigoted, bullying, bizarre sociopath like Trump, but the Clinton campaign people have never taken any responsibility for it. So here we are: they are still prone to deflect and deny, to this day, seeming to have learned nothing, whether implying it was Russian meddling that forced Clinton to avoid campaigning in key swing states down the stretch, where Trump only edged her out by some 80,000 votes total spread among three states, or blaming Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her and campaigned for her! C'est incroyable!
What should the Clinton people have learned? This is not a snarky or a rhetorical question. I genuinely do not know the answer and would be interested in your thoughts, as I’m sure others would be as well.
Is it correct that Crimo purchased his weapons and ammo legally, with no onerous background checks, possibly with no background checks at all beyond showing a very basic i.d. card?
That's pure insanity right there, you don't need to go further to open up a discussion of how bogus our "gun laws" are!
Went to an annual 4th of July cookout yesterday at the home of a relative who lives in Glencoe – a suburb just south of Highland Park. When we got there, one of the hostesses (who is the Director of Education at North Shore Congregation Israel) was busy texting her teachers that one of their number was among the dead.
Weird, and as close to something like this I ever hope to be.
What can anyone say? We have reached such a place of overt insanity. We watch and make a point not to feel anything because this will happen again. Today, Tuesday 5 July 2022 a man is plotting his moment on the stage of madness. The United State has become a theatre of the absurd.
"At some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns."
You'll have to excuse me from your "we." I'd no sooner engage in a conversation that lumps all white men into some problem group than i would in one that lumps all black women into such a group. I found out what that feels like when Charles Blow insisted in print that white women without exception are Karens. He's entitled to his prejudice and I'm free never to read another word he writes—not a terribly healthy situation, but there you are. That's where a statement like his, and yours, leads.
You’re reacting not thinking. Consider infant mortality rates among different races. We do, as medical investigators, explore why the rates are different for Caucasian women than they are for Hispanic and African American women. We’re not “lumping” all black women together, nor are we disparaging them. We’re noting that there are important data that need to be understood and identified to remedy these higher rates among Hispanic and African American women. It’s called the scientific method.
About CERTAIN white men. Please don’t lump all men with incels and other violent psychopaths. Isn’t generalizing like that a bit like saying we should “talk about black people” because some are violent criminals?
I used to agree with you. Now, not so much. These mass shootings are almost always white men. I’m not arguing all white men should be criminally responsible for mass shootings. But there is something in their American social conditioning that contributes to that being the case. We need to discuss and explore that in America, instead of falling back on the fallacy that your line of thinking tends to represent.
Sorry, but I don’t see any fallacy. Exploring why some white men are violent and why many white men hold misogynistic attitudes seems worth doing. I imagine that you wouldn’t like a man lumping the entire female sex together in some negative way-/ “We have to talk about you women….”
The weapons used are expensive, there's your answer. I don't think its takes Marx and Engels, or any of Heilbroner's `Worldly Philosophers,' to figure this out, does it? More access to money equals more access to consumer goods, including, unfortunately, tragically, absurdly, inanely, military-style firearms built for battlefields.
Now it seems that Robert Crimo III had his knives taken away in 2019 after he (allegedly, but this is the reporting I saw before returning to Season 8 of the Complete Seinfeld episode "The Summer of George") "threatened to kill everyone."
Where in the name of Diana of Ephesus are the "red flag laws" at work when we need them, with serious consequences? We learn that his father ran for mayor, his grandfather was a pillar of the community on scenic Lake Michigan, more access to wealth, mind you.
But to return with injecting sociologically-defined "races" into this, even if it turns out every single guy shooting and shot on Boom Island and near Gold Medal Park in Minnneapolis yesterday was of this or that racial or ethnic grouping, it would still require far more detailed facts vis-a-vis their background than just skin color; the USA in 2022 is far too complicated to leave out many other variables in the criminological equation.
Cf. "I think we should just get rid of all the blacks," allegedly tweeted by accused mass murderer Robert Crimo III, who apparently even put out a rap song a few years ago that was played a million times or something on Spotify. This guy's past is getting more filled with clues and warning signs, as it seems his rap lyrics tended towards the ultra-violent end of the lyrical spectrum.
He said we should “get rid of all the blacks,” and then he shoots a bunch of white people. Go figure. Probably afraid to show his pallid mug in any black neighborhood.
Not sure if Crimo's intrapsychic ideation was exactly lucid, Judith! Even arguing from plausible premises to a valid conclusion could be something he found tremendously taxing. But what really surprises me, a bit, is all these reported "warning signs" piling up in his past from the past few years, knives seized by the authorities, all the violent bilge he posted online, etc. Where was the intervention to see if there was any possibility some meds might help?
I would have thought he had established enough grounds for a civil commitment hearing, in fact. But no one mustered up the focus and energy to act, and he went off like a loose cannon. How many more times do we have people shielding close relatives and effectively allowing mass carnage to ensue? One of the more stunning aspects of the Dec. 2016 Sandy Hook shooting was that the perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, clearly very disturbed, was the recipient of dangerous firearms and trips to the shooting range from, of all people, his own mother. That fact still astounds me.
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone — to Lucian certainly — including the FBI, that these white killers are being groomed by white supremacists or other malevolent groups to upset society, to create more fear and disorder, to sow chaos, leading to the authoritarian regime that Trump and other GOP ilk long for?
I don't know, that seems to be an attempt to extract some motive behind this which simply doesn't exist --- the nihilistic act of random murder is the motive, the goal, the point. There's no occult eschatology. The journalistic trope, "We are not sure of the motive yet" is bizarre when applied to these cases. *****
"Authorities have yet to paint a clear picture of any motive behind the deadly shooting. But they said Crimo spent weeks planning the horrific attack launched from a rooftop, where he opened fire at random parade attendees awaiting floats and marching bands below."
Is the sequence in those sentences jarring? "Please, be so good as to explain your most clear and distinct motive for spending weeks planning to kill random members of your community while they attended a holiday parade. Now, I admit we have zero evidence indicating you are a reflective individual, prone to parsing out each nuance, and possible background of each component, within the magnificent intellectual edifice that is your weltanschauung, Mr. Crimo. But do your best, we are attentive, we are eager to have our doubts quelled as to whether this makes any sense in any way, and will settle for almost anything at this point."
Now in this hypothetical, Crimo could plunge right in explaining why he bought the military-style weapons, and headed for a high vantage point overlooking the scene, and dressed in a disguise, "women's clothes," which the Guardian put in quotation marks evidently to suggest we no longer exactly have a definitive set of clothing articles that fit that category excepting evening gowns and what, lingerie? In any event: he came prepared to wreak mass death and destruction, that was his motive, I submit, so really we can just move to the deeper question, why was he motivated to have this motive in the first place? That seems to be what the journalists and others are groping for.
One of the most illuminating passages in the Hitchcock classic Psycho is the extensive explanation from the psychatrist, or psychologist, Milton Arbogast, played by Martin Balsam, as to why Norman Bates kept his mother's corpse around, was obsessed and tormented by his existence, and so on. We are not going to get that here, real life is different from great movies, and this most recent mass killer has been scattering clues and waving red flags and might as well have been singing the Talking Heads song Psycho Killer to his peers and teachers, it was that blatant he was a possible violent criminal disaster waiting to happen.
I personally also am alerted when anyone starts seriously claiming "there is no free will," that's due to my training in philosophy, I suppose, and reading Dostoevsky and the existentialists (and pre-existentialists, universal artists like Shakespeare).
Beware anyone, or any set of doctrines, that openly seeks to completely remove individual human responsibility tout court! The next move in that Faustian chess game is to claim you, or someone else, or society at large, had to "sell your soul to the Devil," there was no way out, your will was overwhelmed by an irresistible impulse, in fact, it amounts to the setup for an insanity defense --- every law student encounters that material in their criminal law course.
So we need to take people seriously when they announce there is no free will, that they have no choice but to do x, y, or z, when those variables may encompass mass murder of their community. But even without Crimo's online declarations about that perennial debate, it looks like some people looking at his posts must have been confronted with a veritable sea of red flags, foreshadowing the bloody streets in Highland Park, and were simply perplexed, mildly alarmed, but went on with their day.
So there's another set of questions for intrepid investigative journalists: "How do you look at this material he was posting, and do nothing?"
Kid buys a weapon designed to maim and/or kill humans.
Anyone concerned?
As of Friday, July 8, we have learned his father wants to make a distinction between simply signing off on allowing a process to begin which could lead to his obviously unstable son to acquire firearms, from a process in which he, the father, acquires the weapons and gives them to his son. This looks like a distinction without a meaningful difference, though, precisely because of the "unstable" nature of the younger Crimo, doen't it? The father needed to exert his paternal control here. Not leave it open that the eventual mass murderer could acquire the firearms, not given the other facts being established. Not given his own direct observations --- he also said his son's comment to the effect he would "kill the whole family" is "being taken out of context, wow. Talk about post hoc rationalizations for really bad judgment on his part!
I'm a brat and vet like Lucian.
Any military grade, hunting humans, weapon should be registered and kept at a range. Go there to get rocks off!!!
Everyone knows, the sacred 2d Amendment blah blah blah...
We used to have a Supreme Court that might have addressed this issue at some point.
That “conversation” that “we need to have” has been shut down by 6 unelected individuals in black robes. I am so angry, and I don’t know how to process that right now
We started needing to have that conversation long before 5 of those 6 unelected individuals were appointed to the Court. Sorry, we can't pin this on them.
Things are going to get even worse now that law enforcement agencies must issue a weapon permit if the applicant has satisfied some minimal requirements. Expect more mass shootings.
Again my brother in arms you tell the truth. So sad, I have met the enemy and he is among us, he did not breach our perimeter, he walks among us, shouts brazen lies and gibberish and we do nothing to deter him or her. I find myself thinking how the world would be better, without their presence. Should I render justice? Then I Pull back and realize that would make me one like them. I pray for this nation to stop the power of money above the people, democracy depends on the vote of the people. Vote not for a party or money but to help your neighbor and those facing hardship, discrimination, and persecution. Major Dennis Palmer, U.S.Army, Retired
We have met the enemy and he is us.
-Pogo
Not this time. What's with the collective guilt? No, "we" did not create these monsters. We've fought like hell against monstrosity, thwarted by a system skewed to elevate the minority that produces monsters.
Walt Kelly foresaw this, he knew.
The least the Supreme Court Justices is to attend some of the funerals. This blood is on their hands, too.
They will be psychically shielded from ever experiencing the requisite metanoia, and yet that might be the single healthiest experience they could hope for!
Lucian: George Carlin does a good bit on how America produces these flawed individuals, but he uses politics as his example. It doesn't matter who it is, however. I have posted and often said that "Is it possible that video games---ultra violent and graphic videos games---play a roll in all this?" Needless to say the laughter directed at me for saying something so obviously absurd was loud and condescending. I think that when realistic blood, gore and violence reach a point where one becomes numb to it all, then the step from fantasy to real life doesn't seem so far fetched. Consider this: 10 years on video games starting at age 12, combined with 'killing' a few hundred thousand 'animated' villains, monsters, and 'bad guys?' Out of 334,000,000 people in this country you're going to produce some interesting characters where the lines of reality and fantasy are blurred. We can thank our lucky stars a video game nut or TV addict has never reached the White House and the RED button... uh... wait-a-minute... "That's not a real football, sir. I know it's shiny! No! No don't press it..." EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Just imagine if the dangerous ones could be identified when filling out the DEA form and then denied purchase.
Naw, dead kids the price of liberty...
A Dead Zone prediction headed our way.
Greg Stillson. That, I fear, is who is coming next.
I have often thought that violent video games are at the root of all this current carnage. But then “experts” keep insisting there is no firm connection between violent games and actual, real-world violence.
Violent video games probably don’t affect mentally stable people to act out violently, but they could push the already unstable ones over the edge to go to a rooftop during a July 4th parade and start shooting.
I don't know what to say anymore. I yell at the TV. I scream, in disbelief, at the people that are supposed to represent me, to protect me. The people we hope will do the right thing. When these people go home at night, what do they tell their family?
How, how can we take anymore of this?
The report from the Texas Tribune included this comment: “. . . his kind of angry misogyny was just ‘how online is.’” I submit that "angry misogyny" is common offline as well. So is angry racism. (Often the two are linked.) I submit that they're so common that in many circles they pass for, if not quite normal, then nothing significant enough to report to any authority, -- and the authorities would probably ignore any such report because, well, if they followed up on all of them they'd have no time for anything else. It's not peculiar to the right wing either. During the 2016 campaign quite a few of us female types encountered good ol' "angry misogyny" among male devotees of Bernie Sanders, and it wasn't just online either. The culture provides good cover for angry misogynists and angry racists, and as long as it continues to do so, it's going to be bloody hard to identify potential killers and take their threats seriously.
Yeah I agreed up until the bit about Bernie's "devotees," I sent his campaign monthly donations and encountered some online Hillary Clinton supporters as evil and malevolent and "entitled" as anything I ever met up with in decades of political involvement, who posted under their own names no less! I think the theory was that "there's a special place in hell for people who wouldn't support Clinton," paraphrasing the notorious comment from Madelyn Albright, or that you simply must be against women in some way or other if you supported Sanders, the democratic socialist progressive, over Clinton, the classic center-right Wall Street Democrat.
I won't be associated with the woman-hating bilge some of those alleged "Bernie supporters" posted, either, because you have no way of knowing if they really ever supported Sanders, not online!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is my choice for the Democratic nomination in 2024, I would work for her campaign, donate, you name it. Nominate a centrist female Democrat and prepare to lose. It's your choice.
I would love to be able to agree with you about a progressive being able to win in 2024, but I just don't know. I assumed that old-fashioned "don't vote for the commie" red-baiting had gone the way of pocket change and subway tokens, but apparently it's had a rebirth and, from what I can gather, calling someone a "communist" works just as well as it ever did.
Red-baiting has worked pretty damn well for almost two centuries. Add to that the uproar over "CRT" (i.e., acknowledging that racism is a factor in U.S. history) and "the LGBTQs are grooming your kids" (never mind there's no such thing as an "LGBTQ") and the well-funded right has plenty of smear to aim at anyone who sounds too progressive. It probably won't work everywhere, but it most of the country, yeah, it will. Scared people are easily manipulated.
I've run into a lot of this deflection and denial in the last six years. It's part of what I'm talking about.
democraticautopsy.org/democratic-party-in-crisis/
^^^^^ This, focusing mainly on the 2016 campaign against Trump, is still well worth reading.
At some point all of these issues will have to be confronted, or preposterous mountebanks like Trump will continue to exploit targets of opportunity, game the system, and watch as hapless, well-meaning, well-intentioned Democrats lose to them.
Amazing, you can know nothing about the Constatution or the Bible and win.
Just be a racist birther moron...easy peasy!
Yes, exactly. I have never seen any remorse or learning from the Hillary Clinton campaign, either. I eman, that's what you're talking about, right? Comprehension of how Trump won and Clinton lost?
If you search for "Democratic Autopsy," you will find an extended, fact-based examination of how on earth Clinton managed to lose to a blustering, bigoted, bullying, bizarre sociopath like Trump, but the Clinton campaign people have never taken any responsibility for it. So here we are: they are still prone to deflect and deny, to this day, seeming to have learned nothing, whether implying it was Russian meddling that forced Clinton to avoid campaigning in key swing states down the stretch, where Trump only edged her out by some 80,000 votes total spread among three states, or blaming Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her and campaigned for her! C'est incroyable!
What should the Clinton people have learned? This is not a snarky or a rhetorical question. I genuinely do not know the answer and would be interested in your thoughts, as I’m sure others would be as well.
My mantra for years having watched successful women leading countries and corporations:
Put Mom in charge, EVERYWHERE!!!
Is it correct that Crimo purchased his weapons and ammo legally, with no onerous background checks, possibly with no background checks at all beyond showing a very basic i.d. card?
That's pure insanity right there, you don't need to go further to open up a discussion of how bogus our "gun laws" are!
Went to an annual 4th of July cookout yesterday at the home of a relative who lives in Glencoe – a suburb just south of Highland Park. When we got there, one of the hostesses (who is the Director of Education at North Shore Congregation Israel) was busy texting her teachers that one of their number was among the dead.
Weird, and as close to something like this I ever hope to be.
Every day I remember the trial I when I was a jury member who saw a single individual buy 10 so called assault rifles legally in the state of Florida.
Yes. If you saw my last column, "we have dark hearts. We; should acknowledge that fact."
On a happy note, Georgia going after the Big Lie Bozos!
Maybe they’ll be more aggressive than the DOJ.
What can anyone say? We have reached such a place of overt insanity. We watch and make a point not to feel anything because this will happen again. Today, Tuesday 5 July 2022 a man is plotting his moment on the stage of madness. The United State has become a theatre of the absurd.
"At some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns."
At some point???
How about NOW
At some point, we need to talk about white men.
You'll have to excuse me from your "we." I'd no sooner engage in a conversation that lumps all white men into some problem group than i would in one that lumps all black women into such a group. I found out what that feels like when Charles Blow insisted in print that white women without exception are Karens. He's entitled to his prejudice and I'm free never to read another word he writes—not a terribly healthy situation, but there you are. That's where a statement like his, and yours, leads.
You’re reacting not thinking. Consider infant mortality rates among different races. We do, as medical investigators, explore why the rates are different for Caucasian women than they are for Hispanic and African American women. We’re not “lumping” all black women together, nor are we disparaging them. We’re noting that there are important data that need to be understood and identified to remedy these higher rates among Hispanic and African American women. It’s called the scientific method.
I understand why you would want to change the subject.
About CERTAIN white men. Please don’t lump all men with incels and other violent psychopaths. Isn’t generalizing like that a bit like saying we should “talk about black people” because some are violent criminals?
I used to agree with you. Now, not so much. These mass shootings are almost always white men. I’m not arguing all white men should be criminally responsible for mass shootings. But there is something in their American social conditioning that contributes to that being the case. We need to discuss and explore that in America, instead of falling back on the fallacy that your line of thinking tends to represent.
Sorry, but I don’t see any fallacy. Exploring why some white men are violent and why many white men hold misogynistic attitudes seems worth doing. I imagine that you wouldn’t like a man lumping the entire female sex together in some negative way-/ “We have to talk about you women….”
The weapons used are expensive, there's your answer. I don't think its takes Marx and Engels, or any of Heilbroner's `Worldly Philosophers,' to figure this out, does it? More access to money equals more access to consumer goods, including, unfortunately, tragically, absurdly, inanely, military-style firearms built for battlefields.
Now it seems that Robert Crimo III had his knives taken away in 2019 after he (allegedly, but this is the reporting I saw before returning to Season 8 of the Complete Seinfeld episode "The Summer of George") "threatened to kill everyone."
Where in the name of Diana of Ephesus are the "red flag laws" at work when we need them, with serious consequences? We learn that his father ran for mayor, his grandfather was a pillar of the community on scenic Lake Michigan, more access to wealth, mind you.
But to return with injecting sociologically-defined "races" into this, even if it turns out every single guy shooting and shot on Boom Island and near Gold Medal Park in Minnneapolis yesterday was of this or that racial or ethnic grouping, it would still require far more detailed facts vis-a-vis their background than just skin color; the USA in 2022 is far too complicated to leave out many other variables in the criminological equation.
Who did Trump enroll with his Obama birth certificate nonsense around 11 years ago?
Shooting 60 to 80 rounds into a black man is our solution...
Cf. "I think we should just get rid of all the blacks," allegedly tweeted by accused mass murderer Robert Crimo III, who apparently even put out a rap song a few years ago that was played a million times or something on Spotify. This guy's past is getting more filled with clues and warning signs, as it seems his rap lyrics tended towards the ultra-violent end of the lyrical spectrum.
He said we should “get rid of all the blacks,” and then he shoots a bunch of white people. Go figure. Probably afraid to show his pallid mug in any black neighborhood.
Not sure if Crimo's intrapsychic ideation was exactly lucid, Judith! Even arguing from plausible premises to a valid conclusion could be something he found tremendously taxing. But what really surprises me, a bit, is all these reported "warning signs" piling up in his past from the past few years, knives seized by the authorities, all the violent bilge he posted online, etc. Where was the intervention to see if there was any possibility some meds might help?
I would have thought he had established enough grounds for a civil commitment hearing, in fact. But no one mustered up the focus and energy to act, and he went off like a loose cannon. How many more times do we have people shielding close relatives and effectively allowing mass carnage to ensue? One of the more stunning aspects of the Dec. 2016 Sandy Hook shooting was that the perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, clearly very disturbed, was the recipient of dangerous firearms and trips to the shooting range from, of all people, his own mother. That fact still astounds me.
Plot spoiler!!!
"Chickens come home to roost," as Malcolm said after our most famous shooting.