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[EnigmaticHat]

Re: what individuals can do.  There's a lot we can do to help this country's culture and politics, but the first step is abandoning the idea of fixing the big level stuff as an individual.  Express support for LGBT people in your life, have an honest discourse with young people and latinos to move them over to your view (since they're going to hold the future of our politics in their hands the same way that disgruntled retirees hold the present of our politics in their hands).  Spread correct information about how voting, interacting with cops, and getting access to welfare/veterans benefits work.  The trick to achieving political impact as someone who isn't an activist, politician or cheater* isn't to get millions of people to vote your way, its to get dozens of people to vote your way.  Although in the US even that's reduced to a long term impact unless you're part of the 5% or whatever of the population that lives in a contested district or swing state.  But hey, if your politics can make a difference in even a couple people's lives, that's real.

I don't think there's productive conversation to be had on 2nd amendment issues.  At this time its a dead end, plain and simple.  Sometimes in a democracy you lose.  The left should still get its perspective out there (if for no other reason than to have the NRA publicly hang itself in front of the X% of the country that understands guns /= action figures), but nothing is going to change in the medium term.  To me the related issue that we do have a chance of unraveling is the counterproductive pressures that law enforcement is under.  We've talked about before how monitoring of white/right-wing extremism has been suppressed in the US among the FBI.  And how people lock hands to support law enforcement at inappropriate time.  That's a younger conversation that isn't over yet.  We've already seen very limited gains in terms of local police departments trying to engage in PR (tweeting images of cops hanging out with teenage PoC, making a point of not breaking out the rubber bullets for BLM).  That's not the main factor leading to mass shootings but presumably with better law enforcement priorities we might at least catch a few more beforehand than we currently do.  So basically what I'm say is, if you want to have a political impact as an individual go join BLM or the anti-fascist counter protestors.  Although I wouldn't advocate joining antifa just because anarchists aren't the future of the left IMO, but if you find yourself holding a sign next to them more power to you.

*strictly speaking if you want to achieve political impact from the outside, the best way to do it is to distribute misinformation to the other side about how to vote, but like... is that really how you want to spend your life?

[Antioch]

Why do we have so many mass shootings outside of terrorism these days, anyway? Definitely a problem of today.

Well, one way to think about it is that generations of "TV culture" have replaced community, while extended family is less of a thing as well. Another important fact is that people talk much less to friends of any type, than they did 50 years ago, and it's not just the internet that did that, it started declining in the early TV era. All types of community connections between individuals are much weaker than ever, and it's been replaced by the mass-media TV "glue" to hold everyone together instead. The internet isn't a panacea for that problem, either.
 
You are dissociated, disillusioned and nobody hears you in such a culture? You have to do something fucked up enough that the media is going to sit up and listen. You're not nobody now, you're somebody, even if that somebody is hated. You're talked about.

Also of note is whether there were random mass-shootings before you'd be immortalized on TV for doing so. While there an army veteran who did a mass shooting in 1949, they really didn't start happening among young people until ~1966, which is well into the TV mass-media era.

Lets not forget that semi automatic rifles and pistols became more and more prolific in that period.

[Dunamisdeos]

Why do we have so many mass shootings outside of terrorism these days, anyway? Definitely a problem of today.

Well, one way to think about it is that generations of "TV culture" have replaced community, while extended family is less of a thing as well. Another important fact is that people talk much less to friends of any type, than they did 50 years ago, and it's not just the internet that did that, it started declining in the early TV era. All types of community connections between individuals are much weaker than ever, and it's been replaced by the mass-media TV "glue" to hold everyone together instead. The internet isn't a panacea for that problem, either.
 
You are dissociated, disillusioned and nobody hears you in such a culture? You have to do something fucked up enough that the media is going to sit up and listen. You're not nobody now, you're somebody, even if that somebody is hated. You're talked about.

Also of note is whether there were random mass-shootings before you'd be immortalized on TV for doing so. While there an army veteran who did a mass shooting in 1949, they really didn't start happening among young people until ~1966, which is well into the TV mass-media era.

Lets not forget that semi automatic rifles and pistols became more and more prolific in that period.

Following this logic, social media prospered in the last 10-15 years (aka an even more ubiquitous form of mass media) and mass shootings have risen alongside.

I don't have actual data points mind you, but it follows the pattern you propose. A good follow-up question might be "how did people act out these feelings before mass media"?

[EnigmaticHat]

Correlation doesn't imply causation.  With the proliferation of smartphones even people from "third world" nations are plugged into social media.  If it was responsible for mass shootings we should expect to see the increase in the US mirrored across the world.  That's not what we're seeing.

Edit: Its also worth pointing out that the US has a LOT of famous massacres and serial killers that were talked about across the nation, from pretty much day one.  We just don't talk about anything before 9/11 any more.  Remember, the deadliest school massacre in US history is from 1927.

[Lord Shonus]

Why do we have so many mass shootings outside of terrorism these days, anyway? Definitely a problem of today.

Well, one way to think about it is that generations of "TV culture" have replaced community, while extended family is less of a thing as well. Another important fact is that people talk much less to friends of any type, than they did 50 years ago, and it's not just the internet that did that, it started declining in the early TV era. All types of community connections between individuals are much weaker than ever, and it's been replaced by the mass-media TV "glue" to hold everyone together instead. The internet isn't a panacea for that problem, either.
 
You are dissociated, disillusioned and nobody hears you in such a culture? You have to do something fucked up enough that the media is going to sit up and listen. You're not nobody now, you're somebody, even if that somebody is hated. You're talked about.

Also of note is whether there were random mass-shootings before you'd be immortalized on TV for doing so. While there an army veteran who did a mass shooting in 1949, they really didn't start happening among young people until ~1966, which is well into the TV mass-media era.

Lets not forget that semi automatic rifles and pistols became more and more prolific in that period.

Semi-automatic weapons - both rifles and pistols - were widespread on the civilian market before World War 1. By 1920 you could go into any hardware store and walk out the door with a fully-automatic submachine gun, assuming you were willing to pay the fairly high price for one. Forget SMGs, civilians were perfectly capable of buying the 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle if they so chose (nobody did, because it was far too expensive). Yet mass shootings were fairly rare events, and random mass killings even rarer.

[redwallzyl]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/03/555016024/every-yahoo-account-that-existed-in-mid-2013-was-likely-hacked

self explanatory.

[RedKing]

Why do we have so many mass shootings outside of terrorism these days, anyway? Definitely a problem of today.

Well, one way to think about it is that generations of "TV culture" have replaced community, while extended family is less of a thing as well. Another important fact is that people talk much less to friends of any type, than they did 50 years ago, and it's not just the internet that did that, it started declining in the early TV era. All types of community connections between individuals are much weaker than ever, and it's been replaced by the mass-media TV "glue" to hold everyone together instead. The internet isn't a panacea for that problem, either.
 
You are dissociated, disillusioned and nobody hears you in such a culture? You have to do something fucked up enough that the media is going to sit up and listen. You're not nobody now, you're somebody, even if that somebody is hated. You're talked about.

Also of note is whether there were random mass-shootings before you'd be immortalized on TV for doing so. While there an army veteran who did a mass shooting in 1949, they really didn't start happening among young people until ~1966, which is well into the TV mass-media era.

Lets not forget that semi automatic rifles and pistols became more and more prolific in that period.

Semi-automatic weapons - both rifles and pistols - were widespread on the civilian market before World War 1. By 1920 you could go into any hardware store and walk out the door with a fully-automatic submachine gun, assuming you were willing to pay the fairly high price for one. Forget SMGs, civilians were perfectly capable of buying the 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle if they so chose (nobody did, because it was far too expensive). Yet mass shootings were fairly rare events, and random mass killings even rarer.

As you point out, most people couldn't afford one. At best, they could afford a shotgun, a bolt-action rifle, or a pistol. I'd also scoff at the "any hardware store" bit. They weren't nearly that common. Even most of the BARs and tommy guns used by the mob were stolen from armories or obtained on the black market for exorbitant amounts of money.

Bottom line is, guns are far more common and cheaper than at any time in American history. And they just keep getting more common and cheaper.

Example: Colt released the Colt Monitor (a commercial version of the M1918 BAR) for civilian purchase in 1931 at $300.
Adjusted for inflation, that's $4,845.77 in today's dollars. I can buy at least 4 AR-15s for that price today.

Interestingly, handguns seem to buck this trend.
A Colt 1911 pistol cost $36.75 in 1932. Adjusted for inflation, that's $658.60 in 2017 dollars.
Looking at Colt's catalog for 2017, their pistols run $500-1700, with the median price being around $900-1000. You can literally buy an assault rifle for roughly the same cost as a semiautomatic pistol. Which is all kinds of fucked-up in my book.

[Starver]

Take the 50mph metric you cited.  That number was reached in the 1950s, based on road handling tests with vintage vehicles of that era that lacked antilock breaks, lacked better engines and tire manuracture, and was based on traffic flow patterns endemic to that time period.

Fastforward to today, where these conditions are noplace even close to accurate of the modern reality, and the obviousness of revisiting these speed limits becomes apparent to the critical mind.

However, bureaucratic processes dont respond well to critical thinking, and expect blind obedience, even when it can be clearly demonstrated that these rules are actually deleterious in the modern setting.

Not that this is US Politics, now, but the argument for relaxing limits assumes that the older limits were exactly arbitrarily right for that age, thus higher limits should be similarly as arbitrarily right given the modern situation. Instead, perhaps we understand the true issue better these days, and really the old limits were reckless, whilst now technology may just about allow the old limits to be the current limit but only with the better handling involved.

Indeed (edit: in the UK, I'm talking about now), the profusion of 20mph restrictions in many urban residential areas, over and above under and below the standard and default built-up-area limit of 30mph indicates that opinions as to "what is safe" have become more tightening down of a driver's rights to take advantage of their more sophisticated person-movers.

But that's not exactly the main subject of conversation at the moment, so...

[Descan]

.....Descan, I feel like you clicked them and read the first sentence, because 3 of them specifically mention behavior abnormalities as an indicator.

wot

[Max™]

You know, I wonder how many people have committed suicide with a firearm since the Vegas shooting... I know the majority of firearm deaths in many states are suicide rather than homicide or accident, but not sure how long it takes for 60 ticks on the counter.

everyone likes to think they have the moral high ground, they don't.

Except when nazis are involved, at which point you can rest assured that while some people might think it is cool to eradicate other races, and some of them even go so far as to state this openly in public, you're not, see?

The bit described above about how people will often engage in a process of redefining and recasting things in order to make them seem more reasonable to others? The whole process of "well, actually [BLANK] wasn't a case of [AWFULNESS] because [SOMETHING WITH ILLUSIONARY DEPTH] meant [KNOWN SHITHEADS] were really [MISREPRESENTATION OF EVENTS TO OVERLAP WITH FAVORABLE BEHAVIOR] so really [TARGETED GROUP OR VICTIMS] are responsible and [HITLER WASN'T SUCH A BAD GUY OR OTHER SUCH BULLSHIT]" that goes on is literally used by actual fucking nazis to introduce their fuckbaggery to new people in a way that lets them:

a. play the victim card when silenced for being nazi shitwads

or

b. gradually walk the public definition of acceptable discourse over until it overlaps with ACTUAL FUCKING NAZI BULLSHIT

...fuck.

[Reelya]

Huh, it turns out I was wrong. Apparently the US, at least on a state level, does enact new gun legislation in the event of a mass shooting. Quite a lot, in fact. See?

So there you go. We might very well see some change after this shooting after all.

It would be in the NRA's interest to downplay that, actually. If people are convinced they can't make a difference then they won't campaign to make a difference, and that makes the NRA people's job much easier.

@Max, I think you're getting carried away with the Nazi thing there. What redwallzyl was saying had absolutely no connection to that, and they way you clipped their statement out of context makes it sound like you're accusing redwallzyl of being a Nazi apologist. Please don't get this to the point where you're steamrolling entirely unrelated points with "Yeah, but Naaaaaaaaaazis!". It's a pure Godwin, because rather than establishing a dialogue or trying to understand what redwallzyl was talking about, you've derailed it into Hitler-land. Please watch it, because with your current zeal I can only see you heading into a situation where you get hit with a banhammer at some point. Don't do "Neonivek".

~~~

What redwallzyl was saying was in direct response to exactly one thing, which was someone who directly lambasted other cultures for "child marriages" and said "our culture is superior. We wouldn't do that" when in fact, child marriages are legal in the USA, with one state even legally allowing 13 year old girls to marry, and numerous other states allowing 15 year old girls to marry. redwallzyl was criticizing the action of the lambasting of other cultures when being entirely ignorant of the identical flaws in one's own culture. redwallzyl was calling out people who have a smug false sense of cultural superiority over other races. Now, exactly how is this at all equivalent to redwallzyl being a "Nazi apologist"? how? And if you're not intending to single out redwallzyl, why clip a statement out of context like that? It's insulting to whom you're communicating to act like that.

Remember, redwallzyl isn't any sort of Alt-Right apologist, I'm pretty sure redwallzyl is in fact all the way on the left as I am as well.

~~~

This post, Max, is in fact something that proves the point that anyone who remotely appears not to be on your team is then automatically associated with the Alt-Right, and then you basically define the Alt-Right as Nazi apologists. So ... you didn't understand someone else's point so you immediately jump to "you're only two degrees of separation from an actual Nazi!!". Can you seriously not understand how this is not a constructive dialogue?

It's an example of the very behavior a number of people have called out. That anyone who doesn't read from "the radical left dogma playbook" on Every. Fucking. Single. Point. is tarred with the Alt-Right label, and that "Alt-Right" is then directly associated with Nazi apologism. So the insinuation is that for not following Received Dogma like a fucking good little cultist, you must be literally two steps removed from flag-bearing Nazis. This isn't about challeging Nazis, it's about shutting down policy dissent within the Liberal Left. Let's get with reality here. "yeah but Nazis" in response to any remotely challenging statement is in fact a flimsy excuse from having to define a response.

This is the meta-dialogue as I see it:

Person 1: "can we stop labeling everyone as Nazis"
Person 2: "we're not doing that. Nazis are Nazis. Just don't be a Nazi."
Person 1: "but I have examples ..."
Person 2: "heh good 'example', it's the proof I was looking for that you are a secret Nazi sympathizer. Otherwise why would you be so keen to say not to label people as nazis? Huh?"
Person 3: "I don't think that argument is sound, actually"
Person 2: "... Where are all these Nazis coming from?"
Person 4: "Hey did you know <entirely tangential point>"
Person 2: "... you're not agreeing with me, therefore you must be against me. OMG you must be a Nazi sympathizer too! <proceed to ranting about everyone being a Nazi>".

This is humorous but also fairly justified since some random comment that was merely construed (wrongly) as being "on the other side of the debate" (with the sides of the debate largely existing within Max's head) was instantly and unqequivocally associated with hardline nazi apologism.

[wierd]

My 2 cents on this exchange.

1) It is NEVER ok to "Silence" anyone, no matter how completely and thoroughly one dissects and disproves what they have to say. The proper thing is to dissect and disprove what they have to say, then allow them another chance to speak. (Failure to do so results in dogmatism, despotic censorship, and worse.)

2) The issue with people using weasel-worded rhetoric to attempt to redefine things in nonsensical ways, is best countered with healthy critical thinking. Not with dogmatic censorship. I get that training people how to think is much harder than training them WHAT to think, but when people do not know HOW to think, they become easy victims for very bad people, and very bad things eventually happen.  Coming from the historic Left, the very people that championed the very notion that people needed to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT (in defiance of then prevailing religious dogmatism) in the Enlightenment movement that brought Europe out of the dark ages, the idea that the human race should return to dogmatism sits very poorly in my craw.

3) It is wrong to lambaste people who still hold true to actual liberalism and enlightenment based thinking as being some kind of enabler for "Really bad people", just because they are willing and able to listen to, digest, process, and then either appropriate or eschew arguments from the groups you consider to be "bad evil people."


Basically-- Knee-jerking is not intellectualism.  Failure to conduct one's self in an intellectual manner is a sign that one is not actually a member of the historic Left. Condemning people who fail to knee-jerk is not intellectualism, as it is itself, a form of knee-jerking.

The Nazi platform is riddled with falsehoods, half-truths, and dubious axiomatic precepts.  You do not have to resort to dogmatism to combat it rationally. It is insulting to human kind, and intellectually disingenuous to assert that other people need predigested soundbytes, instead of being trained HOW to think, lest they come to "wrong conclusions."

Having said these things, I think we should move on.

[martinuzz]

I fear your president is having a psychotic breakdown.

I mean.. Throwing paper towels at hurricane victims? Really?
He needs to be put in a locked psych ward.

[EnigmaticHat]

My 2 cents on this exchange.

1) It is NEVER ok to "Silence" anyone, no matter how completely and thoroughly one dissects and disproves what they have to say. The proper thing is to dissect and disprove what they have to say, then allow them another chance to speak. (Failure to do so results in dogmatism, despotic censorship, and worse.)

2) The issue with people using weasel-worded rhetoric to attempt to redefine things in nonsensical ways, is best countered with healthy critical thinking. Not with dogmatic censorship. I get that training people how to think is much harder than training them WHAT to think, but when people do not know HOW to think, they become easy victims for very bad people, and very bad things eventually happen.  Coming from the historic Left, the very people that championed the very notion that people needed to learn HOW to think instead of WHAT (in defiance of then prevailing religious dogmatism) in the Enlightenment movement that brought Europe out of the dark ages, the idea that the human race should return to dogmatism sits very poorly in my craw.

3) It is wrong to lambaste people who still hold true to actual liberalism and enlightenment based thinking as being some kind of enabler for "Really bad people", just because they are willing and able to listen to, digest, process, and then either appropriate or eschew arguments from the groups you consider to be "bad evil people."


Basically-- Knee-jerking is not intellectualism.  Failure to conduct one's self in an intellectual manner is a sign that one is not actually a member of the historic Left. Condemning people who fail to knee-jerk is not intellectualism, as it is itself, a form of knee-jerking.

The Nazi platform is riddled with falsehoods, half-truths, and dubious axiomatic precepts.  You do not have to resort to dogmatism to combat it rationally. It is insulting to human kind, and intellectually disingenuous to assert that other people need predigested soundbytes, instead of being trained HOW to think, lest they come to "wrong conclusions."

Having said these things, I think we should move on.

I don't value being part of the "historic left."  Might as well say Republicans aren't part of the "historic right" because they're not monarchists.

Behind every argument is assumptions and observations.  If you start with the core value that human existence is a competition that the most worthy race will win, and hold as observably true the conspiracy theories that Hitler believed in, the Nazi platform is consistent.

If two people enter a dialogue with different enough core assumptions, no amount of discussion will reconcile their views.

[Lucus Casius]

Not that I consider Max's statements particularly useful in this context, but I can't say I consider platitudes regarding an idealized and largely false vision of the 'historic left' any more valuable.  The historic left killed people who disagreed with them, or were insufficiently in agreement with them, and did indeed encourage dogmatism in several contexts.  Nor do I think just saying you need to teach people "How to think" is any more useful, given the vagueness in the 'how' and the excessive optimism in assuming that they'll end up reasoning their way into agreement with you when the opposite is just as possible.  Intellectuals exist on all sides of the spectrum, and there have been plenty of perfectly intelligent people with perfectly good reasoning abilities who have supported some extremely horrible things.

Teaching people "what" to think IS just as important as "how," at least so far as these issues are concerned.  And you shouldn't shy away from the tools available to do so out of some misguided attempt at making yourself seem morally superior.  Though if you really, truly believe that your way is the most effective way to support your political philosophy, then go right ahead and continue.  Nothing wrong with that.  I don't personally think it'll work the way you think it will, but hell, we all know punching nazis is going to backfire horribly without really accomplishing much. 

Only point I really agree on is that the nazi argument probably needs to stop.  How long has this been going on?  It's been a while.