no. 487

"A good friend posted this to his site today. naylandblake.net
This has to be the one of the most reasoned explanations I've read on this massacre.

What to say after Pulse

June 14, 2016
This is what I have to say post the Pulse massacre.

The problem is not that this man was a demon, an outsider, some sort of outlier on the continuum of human American experience. This man was a citizen of this country. He was what is held up as the norm: young, religious, husband, father.

The problems are the systems that surrounded this man, that taught him that the normal reaction to seeing people different from himself was disgust.
The systems that taught him that his disgust was normal.
The systems that taught him to rationalize his disgust as an expression of faith. The systems that cloaked that rationalization in a rhetoric of nobility.
The economic systems that allowed him to weaponize that disgust, to turn that disgust into bullets and mutilation. At every step he made decisions that he is responsible for, but at every step those decisions were made easier by hundreds of other people whose words and actions told him : Yes, you are right to be disgusted, and the righteous way to deal with your disgust is to deal death to people you don’t know and to crow about it. Here is a gun that lets you do that, here is a system that will laud you for doing that.

When politicians pray after these things, pray after killing bill after bill that would break these systems, pray after taking money from people whose incomes come from making it easy for these men to spray death, I can only think that they are praying that people don’t connect the dots, that people don’t try to say to them, you continue to teach people that their disgust is normal, that their violence is normal and right and good, that their deadly actions are normal.
They are praying that people don’t wake up to the fact that you have said to all of those families and lovers of the people who died at Pulse that you would rather have your gun today than to have any of those victims still alive.

The killer was merely the agent of your contempt. When you put your righteousness above those lives, when you put your gun above those lives, you make a sham of the Constitution and the country and the god you claim to serve and revere.

The problem is not that the killer is beyond the pale: The problem is that the killer was an apt pupil for all the teaching that you left for him and which you are still maintaining today." 




Bric 1101 commenting at The Rant

no. 462

"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."

Dan Hodges @DPJHodges

no. 444

"We’ve separated religion and politics, and this was a great innovation. But so deeply embedded in our consciousness is the desire to give our lives some meaning and significance that no sooner did we do this than we infused the new nation-state with a sort of quasi-religious fervor. If you regard the sacred as something for which we are willing to give our lives, in some senses the nation has replaced God, because it’s now not acceptable to die for religion, but it is admirable to die for your country."

Karen Armstrong

no. 321

"Seven blunders of the world lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character. commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle."

Mahatma Gandhi

no. 309

no. 258

via

no. 177

"Some people abuse and misuse the social safety net, so conservatives think we should get rid of it.

If we could only get them to apply that logic to guns."

Gin And Tacos on Facbook

no. 140

"Do you think that your 16 year old daughter hasn’t masturbated already? Like, do you really think there’s anything in that scene that this chick hasn’t already tried when the lights go out at night, or in the bathroom, or in the tub, or with the shower head or something like that? I’m telling you, man, I’m not teaching this broad anything new. If I were to create a rating system, I wouldn’t even put murder right at the top of the chief offenses. I would put rape right at the top, and assault against women. Because it’s so insanely overused and insulting how much it’s overused in movies as a plot device, a woman in peril. That, to me, is offensive, yet that shit skates."

Kevin Smith (director) on the ridiculousness of movies about sex receiving NC-17 ratings while extremely violent movies get by with R ratings.