Rage Against the American Dream
Last edited Wed Jul 25, 2012, 06:08 PM - Edit history (3)
After Jared Loughner opened fire on group of people in an Arizona grocery store early last year, apparently targeting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, I wrote a post called "The Lunatic is in my Head". It questioned the mainstream narrative that we were fed about Loughner being a paranoid schizophrenic who had simply gone untreated for too long, and suddenly snapped. Let me be clear - in my opinion, whether Loughner was a "lunatic" or not is irrelevant to whether he should be held accountable for his despicable actions. There is absolutely NO excuse for such actions, and people like him should (and will) be punished to account for justice.
Fast forward to July 20, 2012, and we find ourselves confronted with a very similar tragedy. Police have identified James Holmes, a 24 year old studying for a P.h.D. in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, as the gunman who killed 12 people and injured 40 others at a Dark Knight movie premier in Denver. Should we chalk this horrendous incident up to the homicidal delusions of an abnormal person in an otherwise "normal" society as well, and then forget about it next week? Is there any connection at all between the actions of Holmes and the societal institutions and ingrained culture that surrounds us?
Perhaps it is time we, as individuals living in such a society, really start to ask ourselves why these incidents are apparently becoming more common throughout the developed world, mainly in the West but also in the East. What's happening in our economies, our corporate sectors, our banking systems and our socipolitical environments is not independent of what's happening in our movie theatres and our schools and our workplaces. Something deeper is happening than just chemical imbalances and misfiring neurons here; something more sinister, and something more widespread. I dare say we owe it to the victims and their families to not only offer them our thoughts and prayers, but to offer them our deeply considered reflection on what just happened.
In that spirit, I would ask readers to consider the following summary and review of the book "Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion " by Mark Ames, written in 2007 by Ed Vulliamy for the Guardian. In the book, Ames compares modern shooting sprees to the murderous outbursts of slaves against those around them, including but not limited to their masters - acute episodes of backlash against a culture of severe oppression and alienation. In the review, however, Vulliamy takes it a step further to suggest that perhaps what we are experiencing through these acts IS our culture, and what it has been for many years now. People like Holmes are not victims, rebels or exceptions - they are the metastasized cells of a cancerous culture.
http://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/rage-against-the-american-dream.html
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MAP: 36 Mass Murders Across America in 30 Years
It's perhaps too easy to forget how many times this has happened. The horrific mass murder at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday is the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 36 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the United States. We have mapped them below, including details on the shooter's identity, the date of the event, and the number of victims injured and killed. We do not consider the map comprehensive (and there are countless incidents of deadly gun violence in America, of course). We used the following criteria to identify incidents of mass murder:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
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Moyers and Winship | The NRA Has America Living Under the Gun
You might think Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, “Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure.” Two days later, a young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, staff and teachers.
Just last week, LaPierre showed up at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and spoke out against what he called “anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens’ right to self-defense.” Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down at a showing of the new film, The Dark Knight Rises, a Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The ban ran out in 2004.
Obviously, LaPierre’s timing isn’t cosmic, just coincidental and unfortunate; as Shakespeare famously wrote, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. In other words, people — people with guns. There are some 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, over the last 30 years, “the number of states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38.”
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10457-the-nra-has-america-living-under-the-gun
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America's Perverse Titillation With Violence: Mass Shooting as a Form of Entertainment
I wrote last week about the Aurora, Colorado, shooting and America's responsibility for starting to look at our culture of violence - and our glorification of the gun and the "right" of people who feel victimized to use it to avenge themselves.
This is the subtext after all, as BuzzFlash at Truthout pointed out, of the "shoot to kill/stand your ground" law in Florida, which only requires that the shooter perceive a threat - however that might be defined by the shooter - to kill someone.
But there is another perversity at work in the United States when it comes to mass shootings: we wallow in them vicariously.
For the past few days, as BuzzFlash has predicted, we've seen the victims' families in their grief; articles speculating on the character, background and motivation of the shooter; and soon the first funerals.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13620
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Arizona Shootings, The Lunatic is in My Head
"The possibility of madness is therefore implicit in the very phenomenon of passion."
- Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilisation)
The mass shooting in Tuscon, Arizona was a sad and unpleasant event, but it was fully expected by those of us who stay informed. We couldn't predict exactly where such an event would occur, when it would occur or how it would occur, but we knew that it was only a matter of time before people began lashing out against "the system" in violent ways. In early 2010, a man lashed out by flying a plane into an IRS building in Texas, but this time the violence directly targeted a federal politician, who is currently hospitalized in critical condition.
The shooter was Jared Loughner, a 22-year old who was "studying" in an Arizona Community College. Since the event, many people have obviously started digging through every single detail of this man's history, from the "incoherent" and "inappropriate" things he said in class, to his "disturbing" postings on the Internet and his drug-related criminal record. There were all kinds of different "warning signs" available to foreshadow the shooting and potentially prevent it, if only those who had observed him had been more vigilant and took some action.
Perhaps it is true that Loughner's parents, friends or classmates could have deciphered his murderous plans and prevented the shooting. But does that mean this rampage was an isolated incident, specific to a hopelessly deranged individual who had inexplicably fallen from the good graces of "normal" society? Frankly, the whole post-event routine reminds me of CNBC pundits attempting to explain a large market sell-off by referencing a mish-mash of "unexpected" economic events and "temporarily" negative data.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25620.html
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Yes, Blame the NRA for the Movie Theater Shooting in Colorado
The Brady Campaign has a 62-page list of mass shootings in America since 2005. It is Wayne LaPierre's resume.
For 21 years, LaPierre has been the executive vice president - and chief political strategist - of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The blood of the victims of the Aurora, Colorado, shooting is on his hands.
Of course LaPierre didn't pull the trigger, but he's the NRA's hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of gun control, and he's the nation's most vocal advocate of gun owner rights.
The NRA not only lobbies on behalf of "stand your ground" laws, but also offers insurance to members to pay for the legal costs of shooting people in "self-defense." The NRA also defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons, including handguns.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10517-yes-blame-the-nra-for-the-movie-theater-shooting-in-colorado
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