Beautiful, blue eyed blond hair five yr old killed senselessly...

"Absolutely, Piers; its the guns. That's what has changed since the 50's."

Fred:

I was a single-digit kid in the '50s, living in a small, quiet village about 20 miles east of Albany, NY. Next to baseball, my favorite outdoor activity was playing Cowboys & Indians & War with my pals. We fought these violent campaigns with our biggest & baddest weapons.

And every year in late December our armories were replenished by our favorite weapons dealer … Santa Claus.

But Santa was a reluctant merchant of death. Don’t blame him for turning me and my buddies into the Rambos & Tarantinos of our little hamlet. Unfortunately, Santa didn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of our favorite indoor diversion: hours & hours of black & white shoot-em-up TV westerns & violent Saturday morning cartoons. Nor could he defeat the incessant pleading that erupted moments after the arrival of our favorite weapons catalog, carefully disguised as the Sears-Roebuck Toy Catalog.

I should mention that during this time of my life, there was a REAL GUN -- a cold, gray double-barreled shotgun -- leaning against the wall in the back of my parents' bedroom closet. I always knew it was there. Once in a while I would sneak a peak at it when my parents weren’t around. But I never touched it. Too SCARY! Scared me almost as much as thunder & lightning. Somehow I knew it was different than the pistols & rifles & machine guns I used to shoot Apaches & Nazis & Japs in the woods behind our house. Most of the time I just tried not to think about it ... especially when the Toy Catalog came in the mail and I started making my wish-list for next year's arsenal.

Speaking of Sears-Roebuck, a few years later my father moved us to the Big City. Actually, it was a small city of 20,000, but it seemed pretty big to me at the time. One of the downtown stores actually had an escalator!

Soon after summer ended in ‘62 I became a teenager. It was my last summer of Little League baseball. I didn’t play Cowboys & Indians anymore. And I was much too old & mature to get excited about the Toy Catalog. However, in our new city I could walk to the Sears-Roebuck store on Main Street. And it just so happened that one of my Little League coaches worked in the sporting goods department, where I would stop once in a while to gaze at the baseball gear.

One day I was admiring a particular Louisville slugger when my coach spoke to me from across the room. He used my name, and I recognized his voice. When I turned around I saw him standing behind the counter. It’s the first time I knew he worked there. I walked over and we talked about the team … the season … the All-Star schedule … my erratic curve ball ... the bat I was looking at. Baseball stuff.

All the time we were talking, he had a gun in his hands … a REAL hand-gun of some kind … and he was rubbing it all over with a dirty cloth. That’s the first time I ever noticed there were REAL guns for sale in the Sears-Roebuck sporting goods department. There was a bunch of them under the glass-topped counter.

I asked him what kind of gun he was holding. He told me (don’t remember), and I said something like, “I didn’t know you could buy REAL guns in a regular store like Sears-Roebuck.” He said, “Sure.” He told me even I could buy one if I had enough money. Then he showed me a piece of paper and said all I would have to do is get my dad to fill out this form, sign it, and then have him come back with me to the store to buy a gun.

I knew the coach pretty well, and I was used to him teasing me and my teammates. This didn’t sound like teasing. Thing is, I wasn’t really surprised. It didn’t seem all that weird to me. My reaction was more like: Huh … learn something new everyday. He asked me if I wanted to hold the gun he was cleaning. I told him, “No, thanks.” I was still pretty scared of real guns.

Anyway, I started thinking about all this a few days after the horrific events in Connecticut.

In the early 60’s, like most teenagers back then, I didn’t pay much attention to The News. No computers. No cable TV or internet. I didn’t carry around a 24/7 breaking news ‘device’ in the palm of my hand like I do today. So I probably missed an awful lot of the bad stuff that happened in the world. If there were annual or semi-annual mass shootings of little kids in schools back then like there are today, I don’t remember hearing about them. The only news event involving a real, live shooting that I can remember from that time in my life is the assassination of President Kennedy.

Now I’m 63. Over the past 40 years, I’ve paid a lot more attention to what goes on in the world than I did as a teenager. And here’s something I know: Hundreds, maybe thousands of laws governing the buying, selling, ownership, transport, and discharge of firearms have been put in place by the national government, state governments, and local municipalities over the past 50 years. It is vastly more difficult today for the average citizen to LEGALLY acquire, own, carry, and discharge a firearm than it was 50 years ago.

So … in light of the terrible events in CT and similar tragedies dating back to Columbine and even before that ... I have a question.

It’s a question I haven’t heard being addressed by the howling heads on TV News. It's a fairly basic two-parter ...

Part 1: What was the actual purpose of all those so-called “gun-control" laws implemented over the past 50 years; i.e., which of the civil society's problems were they intended to solve or ameliorate?

Part 2: What evidence do we have that any significant progress has been made toward achieving that purpose?

Seems to me we ought to have a pretty firm grasp on the answers to these questions before we proceed with a further unfettering of the state.

Post 21

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 9:23am

Deanna:

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Fred, but I think you have too narrow of a definition of "family." I love your passion, but I'm getting the impression that you think anything other than a traditional nuclear family with a mother, father, kid(s) of those same parents all living under the same roof, is a recipe for destruction."

No, not for destruction; I'd call it a recipe to generate an uptick in distress at the fringes.

I agree that most/many weather not having both parents just fine. It is entirely possible for single parents to raise healthy children and have healthy families, and as always, that is up to the individuals involved.

I just don't believe, for an instant, that there is a majority or even 'many' of such children of divorce who, given the hypothetical choice between seeing their parents happy and together or living apart from one of them and subject to the venomous discord that often accompanies willful breakups would gladly -choose- the latter. An actual choice may not be 'happy and together' -- for lots of reasons. Not my point; my point is, as a child's -rational- preference, if they could have their wishes granted. Not all react like Adam. Some take it out on themselves. Self cutting, addictions, blaming themselves for Dad's Holy need to sniff after the strange...sorry, 'find himself.'

For sake of argument, assume that 99.9% of such circumstances are perfectly healthy. (I've yet to see even one, but that is just personal and anecdotal). If it is only 0.1% that adds to the disturbed population on the edge, and if the total supply is growing, then 0.1% time that total supply is growing and is -a- factor in what has changed over the last 50 yrs.

It depends on the circumstances. Take a look at the circumstances behind a Piers Morgan leaving three bleeding on the battlefield of the marriage he failed. He ran around with another married journalist(now long gone.) That was the special circumstance worthy of destroying his three kids family. I want to hear a serious argument that his three boys, ages 8-15 at the time of that breakup, are all happy about the six weeks of hot sex with some other damaged human now long gone gained by their father's little foray into the strange. Hey, Dad had an itch and it had to be scratched, so its all good; we get to see him a weekend every month now, he buys us shiny guilt shit, and for the rest of the month, we get to listen to mom badmouth the scheming lizard who spawned us. No, for sure, that's not a recipe to build slightly more Adams in the world, that's how we build healthy, well adjusted adults, ready to consume the latest sermon from Shonda Rhimes about how hip it is to use kids like fashion accessories for our lives.

But that's so unfair, because after all, someone was unhappy with their marriage; the one that they willfully brought kids into before the great realization that they were terminally unhappy...

College? Check.
Fraternity? Check
Job? Check.
Better Job? Check.
Apartment? Check.
Better Apartment? Check.
Girlfriend? Check.
Better girlfriend? Check.
Career? Check.
Wife? Check.
Boat? Check.
Vacation home? Check.
Kids? Check.
2nd Vacation home? Check.
Mistress? Check.
Divorce? Check.
Better wife? Check.
Better kids? Check.
IPad? Check.

Check please.

regards,
Fred

Post 22

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 10:19am

Ken:

Remember mail order firearms, back of many magazines?

It wasn't a spate of school shootings that eliminated mail order firearms; it was the lone act of Lee Harvey Oswald.

I just picked up a copy of RAMPAGE: The Social Roots of School Shootings by Katherine S. Newman. I'd heard her briefly on CNN recently, and she had some very unusual insights. It is a very worthwhile and balanced piece of reporting of the many cultural factors impacting this phenomena. She concludes something reasonable-- something that reasonable people already suspect; that these fringe events are the result of a confluence of some subset of a constellation of influences, no one of which by itself is predictive by itself. There is no single answer or cause. And of course, one element is access to firearms, but it is not isolated nor sufficient, nor drastically changed in America; she points out several times that even though the total number of firearms has grown in America, the % of gun ownership has remained fairly constant(same % of Americans own more guns per capita than 50 yrs ago.) An increase in the total number of guns in America, by itself, does not bear much scrutiny as a root cause, especially in light of ever more gun control. Our culture has changed.

Just one example, the one that originally caught my attention, was her reporting of the subtle nature of media/game violence; her observation is that it isn't so much that such violence is a brainwashing exhortation to go out and commit violence as it is an iconic symbol of what a path to a kind of tribal admiration looks like. Here is something that, when committed, results in the focused attention of the tribe. A kind of tribal admiration. A kind of notoriety. A kind of respect, even if it is warped respect.

Clearly, our world devotes millions and millions of dollars of adoration to glorifying violence. This is not new, however, it has always been the case; it is a fact not only of violence, but of the tribe's relationship to violence. So when a piece is missing somewhere at the fringes, this is highly advertised as one means of filling in that missing piece. Perhaps the effectiveness of the glorification has changed, but not the glorification itself.

The work is filled with un-nerving insights, an analysis of a number of such school shootings, and in some cases, the manifestos left by the shooters, as deliberate evidence of the 'why' behind the mayhem. It is far too easy to dismiss these fringe miscreants as simply unexamined loons; some of what they write in the aftermath is chilling, and gives pause. A solution can't be "just ignore their scribblings after the fact, that just encourages more scribblings..." That is wishful thinking, as in, keep doing what we are doing culturally, ignore them, and they will go away.

The work in total is the ultimate indictment of the tribe itself, and of course the tribe reacts by defending its right to be the tribe. They must be nuts. It must be the guns. It can't be the 'normals' in the tribe itself causing any of this fringe mayhem in any way shape or form.

It just can' t be. Personal responsibility, after all.

Individuals must be willing and able to take whatever abuses the tribe delivers, without waxing violent as if tied to a stake in the public square. It is the tribe's right to be the tribe, uber alles, and there is no such thing as collective responsibility...so when individuals behave poorly as members of the collective tribe, they are not behaving poorly as individuals, and so, carte blanch and anything goes.

Including, driving the fringe insane at the fringe, and then ... wondering why they act insane.

It's what 'we' do.

regards,
Fred

Post 23

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 11:09am

Ken:

In thinking of your question, the response -- ever more gun control -- has been an attempt to cling to our revolutionary changes in culture, to absolve revolutionary changes of blame for rising, fringe mayhem. The nation is coming apart at the fringes, the result of a revolutionary culture war.

But that response -- constructivist gun control laws -- is precisely consistent with the revolution. A religious belief in forced association/constructivist solutions. Mankind as maleable tinker toys, waiting for the right constructivist string pullers to pull strings. And when strings prove insufficient, ropes. And when ropes, chains.

Some cling to their revolutionary agendas, even as they accuse others of clinging to their guns and bibles.

A whole lot of clinging going around.

The unfettered state: blaming the freedom of others in the tribes latest steel cage death match struggle for forced association uber alles.

Someone will win that steel cage death match struggle, and then watch the forced association fun begin.

Again.

regards,
Fred

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 12/29, 11:12am)

Post 24

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 11:16am

Clearly, our world devotes millions and millions of dollars of adoration to glorifying violence. This is not new, however, it has always been the case; it is a fact not only of violence, but of the tribe's relationship to violence. So when a piece is missing somewhere at the fringes, this is highly advertised as one means of filling in that missing piece. Perhaps the effectiveness of the glorification has changed, but not the glorification itself.

Fred:

Thanks for the book tip. I'll check it out.

A few days after CT, I heard a talking head speculate about what young people take away from today's depiction of violence in games/TV/movies as compared to, say, 40 or 50 years ago. He suggested that enduring lessons of Good vs Evil ... White Hats vs Black Hats ... Good Violence vs Bad Violence ... have been largely supplanted or overshadowed by critiques of the 'coolness' of the violence, regardless of the purposes it may serve in any given context.

And, furthermore, this is a logical outgrowth of the culture's movement toward a more generalized posture of non-judgmentalism and moral relativism.

OTOH, here's a post-CT instance where this posture is suspended, presumably in the interest of the ... uhh .. common good.

I call it the Moral Preening of Hollywood Hypocrites ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pItiypwjHx4

(Edited by Ken Bashford on 12/29, 11:38am)

Post 25

Saturday, December 29, 2012 - 11:43am

Fred,

That sounds like an interesting book. I made a couple of notes as I read your post.
-----

Desire for admiration taken to an extreme as a motivation is the pathological sense of self that is dependent upon the respect of others. "I am what others think of me. If they don't think of me, it is like I don't exist at all." It is about an individual that is filled with shame over their sense of who they are, while at the same time thinking that it is the respect of others that would heal their shame. (And from there, it isn't much of a stretch to see them killing those who withhold the respect and thereby leave them drowning in shame. Although it would most likely have a detached, cold feeling because of the massive amount of repression that would be the norm by that point.)
------

Violence is a kind of efficacy. It is what is left to those whose deepest fear is that they are not suited to survival in this world - if survival means being productive in a world of voluntary associations. They escape that primal fear by imagining the use of violence. The lower the self-esteem, all else remaining equal, the greater the appeal of violence. But there is a point where all rationality disappears under pure rage - that is where violence isn't to gain something, but just to destroy for the sake of destroying.
------

Each psychotic gets to where they are either by organic disorder, or by a long, long series of bad choices in how they use their consciousness. Those choices are strongly influenced by their surroundings - their parents, their school, the culture, the tribe. But, in the end, each choice is just that - a choice, and like Fred said, "Individuals must be willing and able to take whatever abuses the tribe delivers, without waxing violent as if tied to a stake in the public square. ... there is no such thing as collective responsibility."

Post 26

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 3:24am

21.2 million children of single parent households did not commit heinous crimes. Individualism is an axiomatic truth about individuals.

THE ROLE OF TELEVISION NEWS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE AS A "MORAL PANIC" by Donna Killingbeck, Eastern Michigan University
Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(3) (2001) 186-202
This work examines the representation of school shootings in the television news media and how these representations have contributed to the construction of school violence as a "moral panic." A review of the literature as it pertains to the media and the social construction of moral panics is provided as well as an overview of the news making process. The discussion is situated within Stanley Cohen’s stages of a "moral panic." The article concludes that the presentation of specific events (i.e., school shootings) and elements of popular culture have contributed to increasing levels of fear, misguided political policy, and the development of an industry focused on school violence. In addition, an integrative, broader definition of school violence is suggested.

In the academic school year 1997-1998, there were 44,351 public and private secondary schools and 91,661 public and private elementary schools for a total of 136,012 schools (Moody 1998). There are on average 180 days of school per year when schools are in session for a total of 24.5 million school sessions. The nine school shootings in this year represent .00003 percent of the approximately 24.5 million times school was in session for the day somewhere in America. As horrific and tragic as each of these events was, given the number of days individual schools in America are in session, on most days and in most places it is safe for a child to go to school.
Despite the small numbers and percentages of school shootings, stories of youth violence are used by the news media to present a distorted image of the true state of affairs in our schools. ... According to Ray Surette (1992:88): "the media emphasis on crime has frequently been credited with raising the public’s fear of being victimized to disproportionate levels, hence giving crime an inappropriately high ranking on the public agenda." Surette (1992) concludes that the importance of the relationship between mass media news and the criminal justice system may be greater today than ever before.
http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol8is3/killingbeck.html

In the USA the percentage of marriages ending in divorce varies from around 30% of all U.S. marriages to 50% of first marriages and 60% of second marriages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce
(Apparently, the very stable third marriages are regressing the others to the mean.)

What do we know about single parents? Due to an increase in the numbers of children
born outside of marriage and the rise in divorce rates, there has been a “three-fold increase in the
proportion of children growing up in single-parent families since 1960.”3 According to 2005
statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau in August 2007, “there are approximately 13.6
million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising
21.2 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today).”4 Another
way to look at it is that as of the year 2000, about one third of the births in the U.S. were to
unmarried mothers, which is one of the most “profound changes in American society.”5
The “average” single parent is a mother (84% of custodial parents are mothers); she is
divorced or separated (44% of them) and so is the father (57% are divorced or separated); both
she and he are employed (79% of custodial single mothers and 92% of custodial single fathers
are gainfully employed); most single parents and their children do not live in poverty (only 31%
of custodial single mothers and 11.1% of custodial single fathers do); she and he do not receive
public assistance (31% of all single parents receive public assistance); she is 40 years or older
(37.7% of custodial mothers are 40 years old or older); she is raising one child (56% of custodial
mothers are raising one child ).6 As you will note, below, these statistics vary somewhat
depending upon the source.
http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/parent-ed/pdf/ArticleSingleParents.pdf

Post 27

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 10:09am

Michael:

Exactly; the overwhelming majority of every classification imaginable does not commit rare, fringe murder, by definition.

Ditto young white males with guns in the basement.

Ditto those with Aspbergers.

Ditto those with mental illness.

Ditto those who seeth with self-imagined slight because they aren't a jock, preppy, high achiever, or cheerleader in the local jr high/high school adolescent torture chamber.

The subject is, what has changed in this nation over the last 50 yrs to explain the uptick in rare, fringe mayhem such as these school shootings?

One thing which struck me from the information presented in "RAMPAGE" Teachers after the fact saying things like "I could have given you a list of two hundred children who I would have thought capable of this mayhem before I ever got to his name; it was a total shock."

Yes, Mam. No, Mam. Can I help you with that, Mam? Participated in class, did his homework, ...

I believe them; it didn't come across as self-serving or apologetic at all.

I went to a large HS, between 3 and 4 thousand students. I played sports, chased cheerleaders, and should have been one of those mythical jocks who slammed others heads into lockers all day long. Yet, I never saw an incident of a jock hurling some smaller child at a locker, the favorite of popular culture HS abuse porn. The jocks would throw -each other- at lockers and worse all the time, but it would have seemed unsightly to direct that fraternal aggression at anyone except your closest friends. So was the actual abuse -not- hurling the other kids at lockers-- a form of exclusion? I never thought about it; nobody ever got cut from the football team or track team for that matter, the scrawniest kid in the school was always free to show up and put up with the practices, and many did. The games and meets were a tiny fraction of the entire experience, by far, most of the 'being a jock' experience transpires at practice and even, off season. Being a 'jock' was not a question of exclusion, it was largely a question of choice. (Not so much for my youngest son.)

My oldest son also went to a large HS, also played sports. I asked him if he'd ever seen anything like someone getting hurled into a locker by a jock and he said "No, that is just ridiculous." And he told me the same thing "We did much worse to each other, for fun."

I understand why that environment is not everyone's choice, but the movies have popularized a vision of stupid jocks running through the halls throwing victims up against lockers as if it was commonplace or widely accepted, even by jocks. I can't imagine any self-respecting jocks tolerating other jocks pounding on kids in the halls, though I am certain we can drag up anecdotes. I just don't buy that anything like this is widespread except in the movies.

And so, to my hypothesis; the victimhood of aggressive exclusion is largely self-imagined by the victims, resenting their own unwillingness to subject themselves to the demands of that culture. And so, they blame that subculture of free association for 'excluding' them -- for not arranging that local subculture to suit their wishes, and yet, are unsatisfied with the free association choices they are willing to make.

And so, they grow up to make HS abuse movie porn, to get their revenge for imagined slights.

The jocks are perfectly happy with their free association choices; why can't we all be?

We'd play games on Friday nights. On Saturday mornings, there was a class of six of us nerds who signed up for an extra class in chemical instrumentation. We'd examine the theory of operation of various pieces of lab equipment, like a gas chromatograph, and if the school didn't have an example, the teacher would sometimes arrange field trips to a local working lab or business that had the equipment. I'd be black and blue and beat up, but I'd show up 8:00am on Sat morning with my nerd friends.

There wasn't much crossover between those two groups, but so what? Because it was clearly possible, without issue. Those free associations in HS are clearly a question of choice, so why is it so hard for some to live with their choices?

There was a girl in HS I didn't know at all. Spring of Sr yr, someone told me she hated my guts. I had committed the sin of playing football and getting into Princeton, no doubt taking her spot undeservedly as a dumb jock. Well, maybe so. It's true, I did not remember her in those locker rooms on a Friday night, but neither did I remember her among the six lonely kids taking an extra class on those Saturday mornings, nor in the summer before when I sent myself to summer school to take a course in trig, because otherwise I couldn't fit it into the extra math I was taking as a Sr. I also don't remember her from that long weekend camping on the local mountain, when our AP Biology teacher took us all on an extended field trip. She never asked me about my SATs. But she knew I played football, and that was enough to explain why she didn't get the fat envelope she was looking for.

I'm guessing, she went on to write movies.

A much more common form of aggressive exclusion, I suspect, is the kind of catty social pecking order nonsense that transpires at cafeteria tables every day, where kids rip apart others for sport. Wrong clothes. Wrong fashion. Wrong car. No car. Too fat. Too thin. Too pale. Too tan. Too smart. Not smart enough. Either having or not having braces at the right time in their life take your pick. Extraordinarily not exceptionally average.

You know, the Jr. High that never ends even with young adults these days.

We don't fix that until it is no longer cool to be cool, whatever that means. Rhymes with cruel...

regards,
Fred

Post 28

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 10:23am

Ken:

Re; Coolness of the violence

That is part (a part -- she sells clearly the idea that there is no single answer--) of Newman's story in RAMPAGE.

It is a piece of the puzzle when the missing piece is some defect in how we perceive ourselves through others eyes. Not just self-image, but others-image-of-our-self.

One skin, one driver-- we don't need endless validation for the parking of our one and only skins. We need enough to be polite. To be sure we aren't stepping on our neighbors toes. "Excuse me. Pardon me. Please. Thank you."

By the time we get to "Do these jeans make my ass look fat?" we're screwed, because let me tell you, we're not all in those jeans together, and that is true for much of life.

regards,
Fred

Post 29

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 11:37am

Fred,

...the victimhood of aggressive exclusion is largely self-imagined by the victims, resenting their own unwillingness to subject themselves to the demands of that culture.

So true. I would add that most believe they have been excluded because it suits a sense of themselves as somehow deficient and/or somewhat unlovable. Remember what Groucho Marx said, "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member"?

There is no pain of social rejection that could be as intense as the one imagined by a person of low self-esteem. To project onto the group any number of trite evils would be the next step - simple sour grapes. And increasingly their view will be that life itself is lacking. The feelings, translated into words would be something like, "They would never accept someone like me, but, screw them, who would want to be with those losers. Life sucks."

I've been thinking about why the violent fringe increases or decreases as a percentage of the population as the decades pass. And one factor that came to mind was the culture's attitude towards heroes, towards virtue, and the efficacy an individual has to make a good life.

When we are young, we are far more oriented towards being open to the expectations of others (parents, teachers, peers) because that is at least partially a prerequisite for learning. I remember a culture with books and movies for the young that portrayed heroes and that cast different virtues as desirable. These messages often were of the form that not only were such virtues desirable, but that they could be embodied by those that tried, and that doing so would help one have a good life.

Today's culture is about anti-heroes, dark endings, villains with good traits, good guys that filled with bad traits, and twisted unrealities as their universe. Today's fictional characters are more likely to be cartoons (and THAT is certainly a message in itself) and are not so much heroes because of their intentions and actions, but because of a magical superpower and that too has its message ("Do you have a super power?" "No, then you're not a hero.")

The positive messages we received decades ago were a form of emotional fuel as well as being suggestions for a general direction to take. And they came to us at that point where we were most open to suggestion. And, back then, we were more aware that we were on the way to becoming an adult - a person like someone our parent's age. Today, that expectation is more in the background because a broader generational gap exists and in its place is a more intense focus on peers - as if becoming an adult was not a goal, intended or otherwise. Today's actors and idols aren't as old... have you noticed that?

Expectations that are positive, suggested goals that are realistic, directions that can and should be taken, and the emotional fuel of experiencing our heroic goals succeeding were powerful forces that have waned in recent generations.

Post 30

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 2:17pm

Steve:

When I observe that there is no such thing as collective responsibility, what I meant to highlight was the fact that when we, individually, reinforce the local tribe's standard of what is cool and what is not, we are always acting as individuals, with individual responsibility for our actions -- even as those actions are the actions of a mob of us.

During the LA Riots, when the mobs rioted, that mob was made up of individuals making choices; the individual members of mobs have responsibility for unfettering the local state-- no matter what scale that is permitted to happen.

It might be easier, individually, to act as the local mob, but that does not(IMO)release individual culpability.

That -ease- is the answer to the recently often asked question, "Of what use are high capacity magazines and assault rifles?"

What has already happened cannot be said to be impossible to happen in this America or anywhere else.

regards,
Fred

Post 31

Sunday, December 30, 2012 - 2:28pm

Fred,

...we are always acting as individuals, with individual responsibility for our actions -- even as those actions are the actions of a mob of us.

Yes, I've always started from that premise. That's in our nature. It couldn't be otherwise. When I try to understand the factors that influence someone, it isn't meant to imply that they have any less responsibility - their relationship to their actions is metaphysical - no one else can, as you might say, get inside their skin and drive for them.

Post 32

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 7:30am

Teresa,
First, whatever awful experience you've had with a family court that has led to your vitriol must have really sucked, and I'm sorry that happened to you.

Second, please explain specifically what case I have made for you? Because I don't see anywhere that you have enumerated what you are actually talking about. What I get from your posts is that you hate family court for some vague and general reasons. What exactly do you find so wrong? And how do you propose to fix it?

My experience with family court is in Louisiana and Tennessee, but I have done some research into the laws in other southeastern states. Mississippi diverges most, but overall there are some relatively standard practices. Also, I'm speaking specifically of custody/visitation and support. In every instance, education and mediation are always the first stops. Mediation does require that all parties be rational individuals who have their child's best interest as a priority.

Post 33

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 7:34am

my point is, as a child's -rational- preference, if they could have their wishes granted.

Fred,

Point (finally) taken. :-)

Deanna

Post 34

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:18am

Your question, Deanna, sounds exactly like the kind asked by Christians: "What awful thing happened that made you stop believing in God??"

I don't need to be a victim to recognise that others are being victimized, do I? Do I need to be a slave to see how awful government sanctioned slavery is?

All I need, really, is a pocket full of rational principles to measure the morality of anything (including legalized slavery) or anyone (including apologists for legalized slavery.)

Clearly you're a believer in the legalized slavery of non-custodial parents. Why do you believe in that popular religion? That's all it is to me; a set of beliefs, traditions, rituals, and practices used in the hopes of reducing the burden of life on Earth, but at its core, as with all religions, is a reverence for sacrifice, suffering, and death.

How does that improve a culture or a child's view of him/herself?

Mississippi diverges most, but overall there are some relatively standard practices.

Slavery is a relatively standard practice? Yes! Yes it is! Evading the identification and definition of a concept doesn't change it. This is Objectivism (Epistemology) 102. Post modernism is fond of redefining concepts, but Objectivism is antithetical to that dishonest ideological practice.

Also, I'm speaking specifically of custody/visitation and support.

Do the practitioners of legalized slavery deal with anything else? Sometimes they do. Some states are trying to be more fair by allowing duel custody of children without the slavery and "bad guyism" of support, but that's rare. The norm for the practitioners and enforcers of slavery in Georgia allows for the enslavement of people while giving them no benefit of visitation or parenting time. Its called "verification." If a custodial parent refuses to "verify" a biological link between a child and parent, that particular slave master is free to collect support from, while also denying a child time with an "unverified" parent. The science of DNA is just not good enough for the enforcers of slavery in Georgia. A mother's verbal "verification" is also required. Really quite standard in that state. It happened to an old friend of mine, Reginald Finley. A wonderful, loving, hard working, smart, caring, and completely enslaved American, and he isn't the only one.

How much research did you say you conducted, again?

When slavery is legalized and actually enforced by law, masters seem to come out of the wood work.

Why shouldn't a judge make demands, like "don't have no more kids!" from a man who's already considered a slave by the state's "standards?" The message that mothers are "victims of their kids," and therefore within their right to demand retribution for the "crime" couldn't be any clearer in my view. Never are they considered culpable in cases like this, because they're the "victims." Can't you see a slippery slope forming, here? Its plain as day to me.

And here, what about this case? Is the state actually concerned about "the children," or just about enforcing their stupid, blind, anti-life standards? I think the later, because the former is delusional by any reality respecting standard. As long as the victims get their 2.00 a month, the standard is satisfied, but are the needs of the "victims?"

Is "but what about the children??" really the issue with these mechanisms? Do they really, honestly care? Billions of tax dollars go into supporting these mechanisms in the hope they'll reduce the burden of life on Earth, but do they? Or do they only increase the burden of life for all innocent parties, including the kids?

I'm trying to think of anything that actually improves when the government meddles in it. I'm trying to think of the last time the rights of a non-custodial parent were actually enforced, other than redefined to meet the standards of the state's religion of victim worship.

Children are never served by laws that criminalize half of their identity.

Post 35

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:44am

Ken:

That hypocrite video is just ... chilling.

They might as well just put out a PSA that says, "Hey, all you fugly people out there, turn in your guns so we beautiful people can continue to make our living glorifying their abuse with a clean conscience."

But they care so deeply, and know exactly which side to face the camera with when caring.

regards,
Fred

Post 36

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 10:58am

I can't imagine what it is like to deal with those courts under those circumstances.

My experience with divorce was childless, and as painless and as 'nofault' as it was, for that period in your life when you are going through a divorce, the guide rails get real close together. You are, for some period of time, a de facto criminal, undeserving of even simple credit, because your status is up in the air until the divorce is finalized. But then, with childless divorce in the rear view mirror, the guide rails move apart once more, and it is possible to speed freely through life. With children...that divorce never ends, does it?

And, how do we print that warning on a box of condoms? It is crucial-- not just for children, but for parents -- to be absolutely sure they are bringing children into a stable marriage. But, there is no magic pill for that, either.

Divorce+children... I can't even imagine what the system is like. I watched my much older sister, the since alcoholic, deal with it...poorly. Four 'kids,' now in their 30s and 40s, none of whom who will have anything to do with her.

Two older sisters and myself. From same family. Two divorces, one with kids. We for sure didn't blow the marriage curve.

regards,
Fred

Post 37

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 11:44am

I am a believer in personal responsibility. I am a believer in every person's right to decide whether or not to become a parent, but once one has made that choice, I believe in expecting that person to suck it up and honor that responsbility. (Currently, men are sorely disadvantaged in that respect as they are forced to make that choice at the time of ejaculation while women have many more options. When I become Queen Miss Bitch of the Universe that will change. Until then.....)

There are many parents, both custodial and non-custodial, who have been screwed by the system, I get that. But in how many of those cases was there true rational cooperation going on among ALL the grown-ups in the situation? That is my point. If two parents are being truly rational and objective and working towards the betterment of the members of the family (albeit broken), the system will never screw them. They can only screw themselves. The sucky part is that it only takes one person in the equation to muck it up. Then what do you do? In the absence of a third party (the family court), to mediate and rule and enforce how does one arrive at some kind of resolution?

Post 38

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 12:15pm

Deanna:

And how common is it that there isn't already one person who has seriously mucked it up?

I think folks do take things like marriage and children seriously, and because of that, I think it is rare that -both- parents, simultaneously, breakup a marriage with kids.

I don't have any data on that, and I'm not even sure it is possible to truly have data on that; I'm limited to anecdotal, personal experience. It always seems to be the actions of one parent who wanders off and breaks a marriage.

They might wander off with a whole armslength of rationalizations, but it seems like one parent always initializes the breakup.

Irreconcilable differences? I was unhappy? Infidelity? Got bored? Wanted to try something else? Snoring was unbearable? Wanted a shinier house? My mistress was better in bed? More vacations?

Where is the subset of reasons for breaking a marriage apart with children that doesn't just sound ... ridiculous?

I can't prove it, but I don't think there are many instances of both parents getting ridiculous at exactly the same time. I just don't think that .. likely. I think it is usually one or the other first, and so, there is usually someone already well out on the 'mucked it up' limb in those proceedings.

I have no idea, however, how courts react to those circumstances; do they accurately address that, are they encumbered by judges personal bias in the proceedings? Do they just coldly process the ...mess... as best they can?

We would like to think that it was possible to 'compartmentalize' a broken marriage from a broken family for children. Folks do their best to still provide a family for children whose family was at least partially broken by a broken marriage.

We'd like to think that -both- parents in those circumstances to that, and provide some kind of removed experience family relationship as a bridge for as long as it takes.

And then, there is my niece, who was adopted as an infant, deserted by her father when, at the end of his baseball career, he went sniffing after a waitress at spring training, now long gone, rubbed it in his wife's face, broke up his adopted daughter's family when she was 4, same year that her beloved grandfather dies, and at the age of 32 she still isn't right. 'Troubled' teen, complete with self cutting, suicide attempts. Her mother blew through her 'college fund' when her daughter was 14-16, because she was sent off to a tough-love outdoors borderline abuse school in Oregon at 50,000/yr to try and straighten her out.

Dad was a total asshole. Couldn't handle the end of his career, and just punted on the family he had started.

There is only one societal crime these days that has been effectively eliminated, and that is the crime of judgementalism; assholes like him get a complete bye, and folks like my niece and sister-in-law pay the tab, for life.

regards,
Fred

Post 39

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 12:33pm