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DeadlyMuffin posted:If the root cause of mass shootings is capitalism, why does the US have so many more shootings than other capitalist countries? Because we have a major political party devoted to tearing down the administrative state. Services such as education and healthcare are being purposely destroyed in bad faith with the goal being to destroy public trust in institutions and community. Mass shootings are a side effect of this push. Edit: I don't believe that gun control would change anything, and like the focus on abortion rights, it's a smokescreen for deeper issues.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:23
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DeadlyMuffin posted:If the root cause of mass shootings is capitalism, why does the US have so many more shootings than other capitalist countries? Because how the working classes are managed is crucial to capitalism. If you don’t have adequate medical care free to all, you have to deal with the psychiatric crises that come from capitalist atomization without the ability for the state to intervene until it’s too late. Another angle is desperation: being two paychecks away from homelessness for your entire adult life is psychological torture we perpetrate at scale. Because we also make sure that it’s an absolute horror show of monstrous proportions to be homeless here. Look at worldwide stats for desperation drugs like meth and heroin for another great angle on how this works. We are an extremely medicated society, legally and illegally, in ways other supposedly first world nations are not. Is that because of guns? No, it’s capitalism. Same goes with suicide attempts. You can measure desperation a lot of ways, and from a lot of angles, and the US is a struggling, desperate nation right now. Guns are an unfortunate feature but ultimately it’s the broken promise of American society that underpins desperate, nihilistic violence regardless of the way it’s carried out. It infects even ostensibly non-capitalist institutions, the idea that no human deserves any compassion or help, and thus we have children defending themselves in immigration court. It’s the reason cops have QI; they are going to be asked to do more and greater brutalization to defend capital, and must be kept from fearing consequences for it. Hell even racism as we practice it in America grew from capitalist needs, read your Nell Painter for more. We have mass shootings here because this is the place where Capital succeeded to a degree beyond any oligarch’s wildest dream, because we created a place where the only thing that matters is money and if you get in the way of it, your community, your household, and your entire life can be destroyed by an algorithm that decided your town is no longer profitable.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:27
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DeadlyMuffin posted:If the root cause of mass shootings is capitalism, why does the US have so many more shootings than other capitalist countries? There’s a category error in the question above, where “capitalist country” is meant to have some stable definition. The post you’re replying to is explaining how the operation of capitalism can create a shithole country like the United States, not making a general claim that any capitalist country necessarily must be the same exact kind of shithole. That capitalism should operate differently in a country structured like the US, structured sociologically and formally through institutions and laws, than in a country structured differently doesn’t mean that the explanation can’t be the operation of capitalism. The second amendment doesn’t inevitably create a situation like ours: it was a 40-year campaign by millionaires and gun companies targeted at interpreting the second amendment as the supreme court has chosen to interpret it.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:28
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I think Selac is right though I think a more simple explanation is that it would kill the American private gun industry. No one wants to be a job killer. The industry has successfully lobbied against legislation for years. I think other capitalist countries have the alienation Selac is talking about but they lack the guns. The US gets incels shooting up malls, Nordic countries got black metal. Therefore the reason why the US is unique is because we grew a rich gun industry compared to other countries so that gun industry is able to resist abolishment. It is also all very similar to why we don't have a state sponsored healthcare system when most capitalist countries do.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:30
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I AM GRANDO posted:There’s a category error in the question above, where “capitalist country” is meant to have some stable definition. The post you’re replying to is explaining how the operation of capitalism can create a shithole country like the United States, not making a general claim that any capitalist country necessarily must be the same exact kind of shithole. That's not at all what the post I replied to said. It said this: selec posted:People have just accepted that mass shootings happen, because the actual explanations for why people are so constantly unhappy and freaked out is bad for the money. It’s capitalism, and you can’t change it, because there’s more money in letting these things happen than there is in nationalized health care and communities which know and care about each other, rather than absorbing messages about how you shouldn’t trust your neighbors. You're making an American exceptionalism argument. If so, what makes us exceptional? It certainly isn't capitalism. It seems like people are twisting themselves in knots to find something to blame other than the huge number of guns in the US, and the low barriers to obtaining them. Gumball Gumption posted:I think Selac is right though I think a more simple explanation is that it would kill the American private gun industry. No one wants to be a job killer. The industry has successfully lobbied against legislation for years. I think other capitalist countries have the alienation Selac is talking about but they lack the guns. The US gets incels shooting up malls, Nordic countries got black metal. Therefore the reason why the US is unique is because we grew a rich gun industry compared to other countries so that gun industry is able to resist abolishment. Thanks. This is an actual answer! I agree, the private gun industry is a huge problem.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:37
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selec posted:All of that is due to capitalism, I don’t know what you think capitalism is if you can’t see “wealthy country provides no safety net worth a drat” as a feature of American capitalism. The root cause of basically everything bad is capitalism. That's both trivially true and not useful here because: a) A lack of poeple vocally supporting capitalism in this discussion b) It's so vague and general that it doesn't really pariticipate in the conversation meaningfully. Like you could say "it's capitalism" for why police are often domestic abusers. That would be true too, Basically you could say "it's capitalism" for everything we talk about here in this thread. Cool. It is. What conversation comes from that?
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Nov 23, 2022 22:39
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DeadlyMuffin posted:That's not at all what the post I replied to said. It said this: I’d say the voracious, take-no-prisoners form of capitalist exploitation we insist on domestically and abroad is if not uniquely American, has reached its apotheosis here. Would you be satisfied with a country that had no guns in civilian hands but still had all the markers of desperation and decline that we do? Do you think getting rid of guns would make those conditions change?
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Nov 23, 2022 22:40
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DeadlyMuffin posted:It seems like people are twisting themselves in knots to find something to blame other than the huge number of guns in the US, and the low barriers to obtaining them. I think I see where your mistake starts. Where do the guns come from?
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Nov 23, 2022 22:43
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selec posted:I’d say the voracious, take-no-prisoners form of capitalist exploitation we insist on domestically and abroad is if not uniquely American, has reached its apotheosis here. I think that incremental improvements are better than no improvements. Would I be satisfied with a country that had no guns in civilian hands but still had all the markers of desperation and decline that we do? Of course not. Do you think a country where everything is the same except guns aren't widely available would be an improvement over the situation now? I think so, because there would be fewer LGBT clubs, schools and churches getting shot up, and that's a good thing. The options are not "do nothing" or "magic bullet that solves everything" with nothing in between. You're presenting a false dichotomy.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:48
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I think that incremental improvements are better than no improvements. I think that if we took all the guns away, that would just make the inevitable violence that the crises brewing now will, not might, but will bring to us in the coming times even worse. Because the state is going to have to try to tamp down what’s to come, no matter who is in the streets, and it’s inevitable that we will see greater and more explosive civic discord to come. A lot of it will be justified as Americans become more desperate. America is bad now, but it’s going to be so much worse in the coming decades, and if you thought cops were bad now, they will only get worse, and community self-protection will become more and more of a reality. We already have antifa lining up open carry defenders in front of drag shows, because the cops don’t do their job. Is it wrong for them to work to prevent mass shootings when the cops have visibly failed to do so right in front of all of us? The cops will never take right wingers guns, so I guess I was silly to present a possible future where guns don’t exist in civilian hands, and I regret trying to go that route than just speaking on it from a reasonable understanding of the present, which is that the armed forces of law and order are not here to protect minority groups despite any mission statement from their leadership to the contrary. I don’t think we can bridge the differences of opinion on what kind of country we live in, but thanks for talking. Gotta shower up and go have dinner with the in-laws.
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Nov 23, 2022 22:58
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selec posted:Because how the working classes are managed is crucial to capitalism. If you don’t have adequate medical care free to all, you have to deal with the psychiatric crises that come from capitalist atomization without the ability for the state to intervene until it’s too late. These comparisons only work when your sample is the absolute wealthiest, most developed nations in the world. There are far more capitalist countries with far worse material conditions than the US without the associated shooting epidemic, countries with far worse labor conditions, countries with far more oligarchic power structures, and countries with far less restraint on capitalism. Everything you've presented as evidence as to "capitalism" being the cause of the US shooting epidemic proves exactly the opposite as the one thing you've shown to be constant without respect to the number of shootings is capitalism. "But American capitalism is different" doesn't make all this evidence against your thesis suddenly become evidence for it. Even if we except for a moment that American capitalism in 2022 is somehow unique in being the absolute worst and most exploitative capitalist hellscape that's ever existed in the post-firearm history of man the data your presenting (I'm taking at face value because you didn't cite any of it) is evidence that the problem is with the American form of capitalism and explicitly evidence that capitalism as a general system isn't the cause. Jarmak fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 23:00
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selec posted:I’d say it’s significant but predictable that right wing influencers have made the turn to cheering these on. A liberal state has no meaningful way to challenge free speech, with enough money for lawyers to advise, that constantly incites violence but in a non-actionable way. It has to feel very exciting to be a Tim Pool or Matt Walsh fan right now, knowing how neutered anyone who would try to stop you is, and the deep, abiding approval for this tendency within American law enforcement and governmental structures. It's a signifier that they don't see themselves as being on the defensive anymore, that they're now ready to actively roll back trans rights rather than just preventing them from advancing. It's not even just about violence specifically: it's about arguing that they're protecting morality and that their agenda should be enforced by any means possible, whether by law or by violence. It reminds me of the civil rights fights of the 50s and 60s. It was a continuum of oppression: there was official discrimination by law, and then there was unofficial discrimination by state entities following unwritten rules, and then there was private discrimination of all sorts by all sorts of people, and then there was straight-up violence where people would just get beaten and murdered. Gun control is important for a lot of reasons, but we also can't ignore that America's social and political zeitgeist have ended up at a point where people are apparently just that much more willing to kill.
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Nov 23, 2022 23:09
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Yes, just framing it as a gun problem and “capitalism” problem is dismissing the bigotry. He was making bombs too. If he didn’t have a gun, he would’ve blown them up. It’s a nazi problem.
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Nov 23, 2022 23:58
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I mean, bombs are generally fairly hard to make and get right and cause the devastation a single gun can create. There is a Nazi problem, but the problem is Nazis getting access to guns.
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Nov 23, 2022 23:59
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Yeah, I’d call it an improvement if nazis had to rely 100% on making bombs. Columbine was a failed bombing. Imagine if it had ended there. Everything vis a vis mass killing in the US would be different because the foundational narrative would have been nazi scum fail because they’re loser idiots.
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Nov 24, 2022 00:23
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Reducing any complex problem to the most immutable (or unfalsifiable) element of its causality just interferes with understanding it.
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Nov 24, 2022 00:25
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Yes, just framing it as a gun problem and “capitalism” problem is dismissing the bigotry. If we're discussing what makes America unique then it's not a Nazi problem, lots of countries have Nazis. Very few of them give their Nazis access to guns like we do. You're not wrong but that's what kicked off the discussion, what's unique to the US compared to other capitalist countries (whatever that means) and having fascists is very common between them.
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Nov 24, 2022 00:27
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Automata 10 Pack posted:It’s a nazi problem. It's a gun prolbem, a capitalism problem, and a nazi problem. It's also a men problem. We should address all 4 of those.
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Nov 24, 2022 00:39
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Yes, just framing it as a gun problem and “capitalism” problem is dismissing the bigotry. They have Nazis and their equivalent in other places. Some of them do mass shooting like we see in America (Finland, Norway), some do not. I don’t think it’s only Nazis nor only the mere presence of capitalism. One of the few things I’ve read on this subject is Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide by Franco “Bifo” Berardi, from 2015. It’s rather meandering so it’s hard to summarize. Generally it proposes that extremes of alienation caused by living in contemporary capitalist society are at the heart of the issue of mass murder committed by individuals and an explosion in suicides, and that the effect of virtualizing technologies has been to pus this alienation to new heights that produce very warped views of the world. I don’t always understand what he’s getting at but I think he brings up different ways to consider this. quote:“I do not think that extended exposure of the brain to simulated stimulation like the video games automatically induces a mutation of mental activity. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to imagine that if the conscious experience of a person is primarily developed in the virtual world, then something significant will also happen in this person’s psychological and cognitive sphere. In this case, it is worth reiterating that Breivik was diagnosed with a form of alexithymia since he was very young. Alexithymia is an inability to recognize one’s own feelings and emotions, a sort of un-empathy which involves not only the emotional perception of others but also emotional self-perception. The virtualization of lived experience can have a similar effect: firstly, to assuage the pain resulting from rejection, isolation and mockery; and secondly, to exaggerate the inability to relate to others, and to distinguish between fantasy and reality in the social sphere. He says the mass shooters tend to be inspired by Nazis aesthetically but places the actual ideology within neoliberalism: quote:Natural Selector's Manifesto Later on I think this captures his belief on how the current tendencies in capitalism contribute to these problems: quote:Financial capitalism is based on a process of unrelenting deterritorialization, and this is causing fear to spread among those who are unable to deal with the precariousness of daily He also differentiates between different types of mass murderers: quote:The previous accounts of mass murderers in this book have primarily described people who suffer: Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were essentially suffering people who performed mass murder with the intention of being killed in order to be released from the intolerable burden of their life. Since this was written, in 2015, I think there have been more Breivik-style shooters in recent years, but some have embodied aspects of both types described here. I wonder what the author would have to add. Anyway, while the cases above are non-US shooters, I think some types of alienation are heightened in America more than elsewhere in the world, (which explains why it’s not the only place the place too). The United States is widely seen as one of the most individualistic countries in the world and is ranked #1 on many of the faulty metrics that try to measure this. The US is the source of so many of the demeaning management practices that are later taught in business schools around the world. The shambolic US healthcare system that produces so many broken people is now being applied as a model of profit extraction in other parts of the world (often with US aid). There are so many ways the US is exceptional in ways that enhance this. Defense spending, for example. The disparity in education dollars and outcomes. Hours of television watched. Being the economic and cultural hegemon and everything that goes with it. America is exceptional right now in a lot of ways that have a material basis, but it’s not essentially exceptional. Discendo Vox posted:Reducing any complex problem to the most immutable (or unfalsifiable) element of its causality just interferes with understanding it.  it’s overdetermined
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Nov 24, 2022 00:58
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Are those other Nazis being empowered by a fictional narrative dictated by an oil trillionare?
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Nov 24, 2022 01:02
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selec posted:The state isn’t equipped to deal with this issue because ultimately the cops agree and slow-walk efforts to protect minority groups. Abolish the police. Hey, so please don't add your own commentary on what the article actually says, which is "the police were given a tip by a watchdog organization and then acted on it." NYTimes posted:Initially, the tweets indicated that perhaps the threat might occur on Long Island, so the consultants immediately alerted law enforcement authorities there. By early afternoon, the security team found additional online profiles seemingly linked to Mr. Brown that mentioned other threats, Mr. Silber said.
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Nov 24, 2022 01:58
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I AM GRANDO posted:Yeah, I’d call it an improvement if nazis had to rely 100% on making bombs. Columbine was a failed bombing. Imagine if it had ended there. Everything vis a vis mass killing in the US would be different because the foundational narrative would have been nazi scum fail because they’re loser idiots. True, but that's only really the case for "lone wolf" type stuff. The KKK was pretty drat effective at blowing poo poo up back in the 60s when they were bombing civil rights groups. With organized militia groups on the upswing, they shouldn't have too much trouble getting their hands on some explosives or someone who can make explosives (especially given how connected they are). IMO, as a general rule of thumb, reducing the number of guns out there is good. But when it comes to mass killings specifically, there's lots of ways to kill multiple people in a crowd. Certainly, guns are particularly effective at racking up the numbers. But gun control wouldn't have stopped the Charlottesville car attack, for instance. There were no firearms at all there - just a neo-Nazi who hated the peaceful protesters in front of him enough that he was willing to give up the rest of his life in order to kill them.
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Nov 24, 2022 02:58
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Main Paineframe posted:True, but that's only really the case for "lone wolf" type stuff. The KKK was pretty drat effective at blowing poo poo up back in the 60s when they were bombing civil rights groups. With organized militia groups on the upswing, they shouldn't have too much trouble getting their hands on some explosives or someone who can make explosives (especially given how connected they are). The Charlottesville car attack killed one person. Firearms are much better at this, it's what they're made for.
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Nov 24, 2022 02:59
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Main Paineframe posted:True, but that's only really the case for "lone wolf" type stuff. The KKK was pretty drat effective at blowing poo poo up back in the 60s when they were bombing civil rights groups. With organized militia groups on the upswing, they shouldn't have too much trouble getting their hands on some explosives or someone who can make explosives (especially given how connected they are). Melting down most of the guns in this county would be very very very difficult, but preventing people from making bombs is effectively impossible.
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Nov 24, 2022 03:03
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 https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1595519454900805649?s=20&t=lJR_m1Bi_1lnA1d0NQN3Jg
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Nov 24, 2022 03:19
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skylined! posted:
As horrifying as that thought process is, I'm very unsurprised of it after I heard he's Mormon. Having grown up Mormon, I feel like this would be a common thought process among them. And I looked up a little more from that interview and saw quote:Until six months ago, Aaron Brink thought his son died by suicide. Wow. I feel annoyed at the news channels trying to dig up as much as they can regarding situations like these, but unfortunately they got me to read about it 
Kalit fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Nov 24, 2022 |
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Nov 24, 2022 03:32
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Australia and New Zealand had a mass shooting each, after which they effectively banned guns and removed them from circulation, no more mass shootings. It really is that simple.
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Nov 24, 2022 04:19
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Matt Gaetz says he has 5 firm votes against McCarthy who would all reject his bid on the house floor. If thats true, McCarthy can't become speaker without help from the Dems. (lol, bullshit) Apparently they are beginning to try to convince moderate Dems to switch parties, but haven't gotten any takers. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/14/house-gop-leadership-elections-2022-elections-00066664 edit: There are also rumors that if the speaker vote repeatedly fails in several ballots and it becomes clear that the GOP can't elect anyone, then the Dems may vote for Liz Cheney. (You don't have to be a member of congress to be speaker) Rigel fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Nov 24, 2022 |
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Nov 24, 2022 04:19
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There’s nothing moderate about the Republican Party. I wonder what they’re offering those representatives to try getting them to change parties.
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Nov 24, 2022 04:28
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Rigel posted:Matt Gaetz says he has 5 firm votes against McCarthy who would all reject his bid on the house floor. If thats true, McCarthy can't become speaker without help from the Dems. (lol, bullshit) McCarthy was always going to have problems actually getting all the votes. The money ghouls think he's drunk too much of the kool-aide, while the brain worm ghouls are convinced he's only pretending to sip it. Voting in Liz Cheney as the Speaker is perhaps the most Resistance Democrat move possible though.
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Nov 24, 2022 05:17
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There's no chance that House Dem leadership is going to let their caucus members cut deals with the GOP for a Speaker vote.
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Nov 24, 2022 05:17
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FlamingLiberal posted:There's no chance that House Dem leadership is going to let their caucus members cut deals with the GOP for a Speaker vote. Yeah, especially with new people in the top spots. I doubt they'd do it even if they weren't trying to prove themselves to all the Dem factions.
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Nov 24, 2022 05:22
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It's the best situation for Dems outside of having the majority, where you can probably peel away some of those newly elected NY Republicans who are going to have a hard time holding their seats in 2 years.
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Nov 24, 2022 05:42
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FlamingLiberal posted:There's no chance that House Dem leadership is going to let their caucus members cut deals with the GOP for a Speaker vote. This is presuming a scenario where the GOP thoroughly and exhaustively prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that no one in their caucus can get 218 votes solely from the GOP, and that the Dems also can't peel off 5 votes for someone in their caucus.
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Nov 24, 2022 05:43
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Assuming the GOP are unable to elect anyone on their own, there's definitely a possibility that the Dems support a "moderate" Republican for Speaker. It's going to be after they fail to get enough Republicans to support any Democrat, and it will be a current member of the House. It definitely won't be Liz Cheney, even if they have to pull someone from outside the House.
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Nov 24, 2022 06:53
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Gyges posted:Assuming the GOP are unable to elect anyone on their own, there's definitely a possibility that the Dems support a "moderate" Republican for Speaker. It's going to be after they fail to get enough Republicans to support any Democrat, and it will be a current member of the House. It definitely won't be Liz Cheney, even if they have to pull someone from outside the House. At best you're going to end up with someone the Republicans instantly excommunicate, at worst they're going to pull up the football and openly go 'lol those idiot commiecrats fell for it'
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Nov 24, 2022 07:11
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Ghost Leviathan posted:At best you're going to end up with someone the Republicans instantly excommunicate, at worst they're going to pull up the football and openly go 'lol those idiot commiecrats fell for it' Yeah, I don't trust the Dems not to get bamboozled in the event of any messy Speaker vote and/or negotiation, but the prospect for absolute bonkers chaos gives me life right now. My baseline hope is that Kevin McCarthy walks away never having become Speaker because it's exactly the humiliating fate he deserves.
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Nov 24, 2022 10:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Australia and New Zealand had a mass shooting each, after which they effectively banned guns and removed them from circulation, no more mass shootings. It's not really that simple, because the Christchurch shooting happened in 2019 with 51 dead Muslims. Your point is accurate, but we shouldn't pretend that any gun laws will result in "no more mass shootings". Not because it's a semantic point, but because we should feel each tragedy, and we don't want to allow chuds to point to isolated tragedies and say "see, these laws do nothing"
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Nov 24, 2022 10:36
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https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2022/11/22/proud-boys-announce-plans-to-disrupt-drag-story-event-in-columbus/ It seems that the typical disavow, deflect, distort response to the latest lone wolf attacks has basically collapsed. I don't think openly planning domestic terror will go well for them. That said they did enough to get any leftist group broken up years ago and it's disgusting they get a right wing free pass to exist as an organization.
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Nov 24, 2022 12:10
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It might be hitting an inflection point. Right wing terrorism is escalating very, very quickly. They have literally already targeted elected Democrats, and I see no reason to believe they won't continue to do so.
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Nov 24, 2022 12:14
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