It’s Going To Get Worse
I was living in San Diego when the attack at the McDonalds in San Ysidro occurred. There were 21 dead before the police got a clear shot and killed the shooter.
That was 1984 and the economy was in the tank. There were lay offs and out-sourcing was beginning in earnest. When the economy is bad there is always a sharp upturn in these mass killings. People believe that their worth as a person is dependent on their job. When people are out of work for an extended period they become depressed and some eventually snap.
These events are usually suicides, either by their own hand or by the police. They are often an attempt to establish the perpetrator as “somebody”, not just some faceless loser. Often the victims are chosen with revenge in the mind of the shooter, but the connection may only be obvious to the shooter, usually a white male, just like serial killers.
MSNBC has an AP article that features criminal profilers. They make the point that there isn’t a single cause that would make it possible to predict who will do this, and though the triggering event is usually unemployment, that is merely the last straw for the individual.
It would be nice if there were a decent safety net in this this country so that people didn’t get this desperate, but that would be “creeping socialism’ which wouldn’t help the moneyed elites so it isn’t going to happen.
My immediate concern are the people spreading propaganda and inciting those whose are vulnerable. Fallenmonk covers this in his post, Madness On the Right, as well as my general concern in the earlier post, Expect More Violence.
Laws are not going to solve this problem by prohibiting things. People need hope, and many don’t see any. People are getting angry, which is a lot better than feeling despair. For more than 7 years the Federal government preached fear. The new government had better start taking steps to counter that.
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…and in 1984, he probably supported Ronald Reagan for re-election because Walter Mondale was going to take his guns away.
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People probably haven’t noticed that all of the recent unemployment stats are referring back to 1982-83, the last time things were this bad on the employment front.
Oh, yes, Ronnie was going to fix everything, and you should ignore the horrible economy.
The funny thing about Americans is that when things get hard, they don’t blame the oligarchs who are sucking them dry. No, they blame the folks who are trying to help them by trying to level the playing field. Because, apparently, Americans think level playing fields are for losers, and it’s just morally and ethically right that the oligarchs are running downhill and flattening the average American over and over again due to that unfair advantage…
– Badtux the Puzzled Penguin
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It is very strange that most of the people who die in these attacks have absolutely nothing to do with the problems that caused the killers to snap. It is almost as weird as the people who oppose the estate tax, which has absolutely nothing to do with them.
You wonder where these people were when the last administration was eliminating civil rights wholesale, given that they are killing people based on rumors today.
We have a lot of crazy people in this country, and too many of them hold political office.
Yes. Like Michele Bachmann and Palin who are IMHO complete narcissists. They and others like them don’t give a damn about the damage they cause, so long as people are paying them attention.
I was totally amazed to see Glen Beck back pedal, and in fact debunk, his own rants a short time ago about the FEMA concentration camps conspiracy the rightwingnuts have been pushing for years. I have to wonder why he did that? He’s as insane as the rest of them. Maybe it was because he actually can’t stand Backmann trying to get off on his dime, as she followed right after him on the camps theme, thought she ratcheted it up a bit and called them “re-education camps for young people” . So, maybe he went and debunked his pet conspiracy to take the wind from her sails. It would be the kind of thing they all would do.
Glenn Beck’s thorough debunking of FEMA camps confirms C&L’s reportage
I guess Beck decided that there is just not enough credit for insane conspiracies to go around now that the numbers of the *not quite insane, just stupid* listening to him are shrinking.
Michelle Bachmann warns of politically correct re-education camps for young people
But, then we see Beck back to normal refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever like the good narcissist he is:
Glenn Beck blames CrooksandLiars and Kos for pointing out his role in the Pittsburgh shootings
Like I said years ago, they will eat their young. They will sure as hell eat each other! 😆 Good.
We are approaching law suit territory in some of these incidents, and even if the chances of winning aren’t great, getting sued by a police union and/or widows of police officers is not something a corporation will be happy about.
There are FEMA camps that the Hedgemony set up to house undocumented immigrants, and that is the basis for the camps story. After what we know the Hedgemony has done, I wouldn’t have put much beyond them. There were a lot of things that I assumed were conspiracy theories that turned out to be true under the Shrubbery.
The radio ranters are just like Operation Rescue and the other anti-abortion nuts – they whip people into a frenzy and then claim they had nothing to do with the murders and bombings that result.
The gun thing is really puzzling because the Supreme Court made its first official direct ruling on the Second Amendment, and confiscation isn’t an option without a Constitutional amendment.
These people live in their own world and don’t let reality intrude on them.