The Commentariat -- June 13, 2016
Afternoon Update:
David Graham in The Atlantic: Obama Involved in Orlando Nightclub Shooting. "In an almost entirely unprecedented moment, Donald Trump ... suggested in interviews Monday morning that President Obama may have somehow been involved in Sunday's massacre in Orlando. Trump's suggestion came by implication, but the message is unmistakable: The president may have somehow known about or been involved in the shooting." ...
... : Off the rails, into the woods, and over a cliff. You might as well vote for the guy on the subway who talks to himself.
Steve Benen of MSNBC demonstrates how Republicans are making hay while the blood's still wet: "GOP officials, including staunch opponents of gay rights, were eager to condemn the mass shooting, but most were silent on the fact that the gunman targeted not just Americans in general, but LGBT Americans specifically.... Republicans in general were loath to mention the role of anti-LGBT attitudes in the Orlando attack, but [Ted] Cruz saw an opportunity -- not because of his sympathies, but because the slayings might be a wedge issue." ...
... : Any chance to turn bloodshed to his advantage, Lyin' Ted will hop to it. Despicable is too nice a word.
Dan Mangan of CNBC: "If the next president and Congress repeals Obamacare -- as many Republican elected officials want to do -- there could end up being more people without health insurance than before the law went into effect, a new study says. A total of 24 million more people would lose health coverage by 2021 if the Affordable Care Act was repealed, according to the study issued Monday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute. As a result, the uninsured rate would nearly double, to 19.4 percent of the U.S. population by 2021, according to the study." ...
... : What a victory that would be for Republicans. I'm sure they'd all be so proud. Those nasty moochers would be back waiting to gasp their last breath on an emergency room gurney. The Republican Way.
*****
Christal Hayes, et al., of the Orlando Sentinel: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation three times interviewed Omar Mateen for having alleged terrorist ties before he killed 50 people and injured 53 others at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. The names of several people he killed have been released. ...
... The Sentinel is liveblogging developments here. ...
... The New York Times story, by Lizette Alvarez & Richard Perez-Pena, is here. ...
... Max Bearak of the Washington Post: "The father of Omar Mateen, identified by police as the man behind the carnage at an Orlando nightclub early Sunday morning, is an Afghan man who holds strong political views, including support for the Afghan Taliban. In a video he posted on Saturday, he appears to be portraying himself as the president of Afghanistan. Seddique Mateen ... hosted the 'Durand Jirga Show' on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. He doesn't always make much sense.... On Sunday morning, Mateen told NBC News that his son's rampage 'has nothing to do with religion.' Instead, he offered another possible motive. He said his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a few months ago." -- CW ...
... Anthony Westbury, et al., of Florida Today: "A former Fort Pierce police officer who once worked with 29-year-old Omar Mateen ... said he was 'unhinged and unstable.' Daniel Gilroy said ... Mateen frequently made homophobic and racial comments. Gilroy said he complained to his employer several times but it did nothing because he was Muslim. Gilroy quit after he said Mateen began stalking him via multiple text messages -- 20 or 30 a day. He also sent Gilroy 13 to 15 phone messages a day, he said.... 'He talked of killing people.' Gilroy said this shooting didn't come as a surprise to him." -- CW ...
...Katie Zavadski of The Daily Beast: "Years before he shot up an Orlando gay club in what became the largest mass shooting in American history, Omar Mateen regularly picked up lunch from a drag queen at Ruby Tuesday. He may have even gone to see a drag show or two, a former high school classmate told The Daily Beast.... Mateen was a few years out of playing football in high school while King [the former classmate], who is openly gay, had long, flowing extensions, and prettier hair than most of his female co-workers.... King saw none of that homophobia. Quite the opposite: He said Mateen knew that he and many of his co-workers at Ruby Tuesday were gay, and didn't seem to have a problem with it." --safari...
... Adam Goldman, et al., of the Washington Post: "The ex-wife of the 29-year-old man who is believed to have killed 50 people in an Orlando nightclub early Sunday said that he was violent and mentally unstable and beat her repeatedly while they were married." -- CW ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama expressed the anguish of a nation on Sunday as he condemned the worst mass shooting in United States history and vowed to respond forcefully to the devastating 'act of terror' at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla":
... Mike Weisser of the Huffington Post in a New York Times op-ed: "When 50 people were shot and killed last night at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the toll from gun murders this year rose to somewhere around 6,000 deaths, which means if the trend continues, this year may end up with the highest gun homicide count since Barack Obama took office in 2009. Add to the homicide number the 550 or so victims of police shootings, roughly the same number of accidental gun deaths and the 21,000+ Americans who use a gun to end their own lives, and the total gun mortality number this year may go above 35,000.... By my calculations, we currently suffer more gun deaths than occurred during the bloodiest war in our entire history, and it has been going on for far longer than the fifty months of the Civil War." -- CW ...
... Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "One common denominator behind ... high-casualty mass shootings in recent years is the use of assault style rifles, capable of firing many rounds of ammunition in a relatively short period of time, with high accuracy. And their use in these types of shooting is becoming more common: There have been eight high-profile public mass shootings since July of last year, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine. Assault-style rifles were used in seven of those.... Gun rights proponents point out that rifles, of any type, are rarely used to kill people in the U.S.... Terrorist groups have taken note of the widespread availability of assault rifles and other guns in the U.S. In 2011, al-Qaeda encouraged its followers to take advantage of lax guns laws, purchase assault-style weapons and use them to shoot people.... Indeed, federal law allows people on terror watch lists to purchase guns, and thousands of them have done so." -- CW ...
... Larry Buchanan, et al., of the New York Times: "The vast majority of guns used in 16 recent mass shootings, including two guns believed to be used in the Orlando attack, were bought legally and with a federal background check. At least eight gunmen had criminal histories or documented mental health problems that did not prevent them from obtaining their weapons." The reporters catalog the sources of guns used in these calamities. -- CW ...
...Jane C. Timm of NBC News: "Former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the war in Afghanistan, endorsed strong gun control laws Tuesday on Morning Joe...'We've got to take a serious look -- I understand everyone's desire to have whatever they want -- but we;ve got to protect our children, we've got to protect our police, we’ve got to protect our population,' McChrystal said. 'Serious action is necessary. Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges and I just don't think that;s enough." --safari
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump on Sunday pounced on the news of the massacre at an Orlando gay nightclub to underscore his presidential campaign's central message -- that the United States needs to be tougher to combat Islamist terrorism. 'When will this stop?' Mr. Trump ...wrote in a Twitter post shortly before noon. 'When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?' About an hour later, he amplified that point, writing: 'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!'... A tragedy in the middle of a presidential race would typically force restraint on candidates.... Hillary Clinton initially responded with caution Sunday morning, offering on Twitter her thoughts to those affected 'as we wait for more information.' But after Mr. Obama spoke, she issued a longer statement echoing the president: 'This was an act of terror.'... Friday, Mr. Trump used an address to a Christian conservative group to criticize Mrs. Clinton for refusing 'to even say the words radical Islam.' 'This alone makes her unfit to be president,' he said." -- CW ...
... Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "In the first hours since the mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, Democratic politicians have been far more likely than Republicans to note that the target seemed to be the LGBT community. While suspect Omar Mateen's father suggested that anti-gay animus may have motivated him, only a handful of Republicans mentioned that aspect of the shooting; nearly every Democrat did." CW: And of course the MoC who made the biggest ass of himself was Ted Cruz. ...
... There's Something About Texans. Jessica Hamilton of the Houston Chronicle: "A 'reap what you sow' tweet from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick that went out hours after approximately 50 people were killed at a Florida LGBT nightclub has been deleted amid backlash.... Patrick's adviser Allen Blakemore issued a statement explaining that the tweet was an unfortunate coincidence." CW: Uh-huh. ...
Steve M. sez: "Follow Igor Volsky of Center for American Progress on Twitter for constant updates on all the US congresspersons and senators who have taken campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association and voted against every kind of gun control legislation" but are offering "thoughts and prayers." -- CW
... safari: after all the reports and warnings about the rise of right wing extremists, the GOP continues to play with fire, threatening the very lives of Americans they claim to cherish so. It's repulsive and sadistic. ...
... Gary Younge of the Guardian: "Those who hoped a tragedy of this nature might be extracted from partisan politics will be sorely disappointed...The array of initial reactions illustrates just how confused the political response might become...Just 48 hours after America laid its most famous Muslim, Muhammad Ali, to rest in a spirit of celebration and pride, the entire Muslim community faced finding itself under collective suspicion, not only of terrorism but of homophobia." --safari...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "In the hours after midnight Sunday in an Orlando nightclub, three of the most contentious questions in American culture and politics -- gay rights, gun control and terrorism -- collided in a horrific way.... Since [9/11], calamity seems only to drive the left and the right further apart, while faith in the nation's institutions deteriorates further." -- CW ...
... ** Juan Cole: "The great thing about this definition [of 'terrorism'] is that it focuses on the motive behind the act. And it specifies that the motive has to be to coerce people or influence or affect government policy...We know the FBI investigated him twice and found no reason to pursue the inquiry or to keep him on a terrorist watch list. So this person looks as though he was unbalanced and extremely prejudiced individual who bought two semi-automatic weapons only last week and then committed a mass shooting against a group against which he was bigoted. He may have invoked Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) as he began his mayhem, but there is no reason at the moment to think that he was involved with them in any practical way. He was about to commit a mass murder that he must have known would likely end in his own death as well." --safari
...Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "A Florida Imam who went on CNN Sunday morning to express condolences to the victims and families of the horrific shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando is now on the receiving end of threats and attacks on social media...At a press conference, Muhammad Musri, the President of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, disavowed contact with 29-year-old Omar Mateen and praised emergency workers.... Respondents on Twitter did not share the sentiment, with one commenter telling him, 'Leave the USA.'" --safari
Bureaucracy Hell, brought to by Washington. Laura Kwerel of The Atlantic: "Massive budget cuts and hiring freezes in the last few years have turned the Social Security Administration into one of the most understaffed and overburdened agencies in the federal government. As of June, it had a backlog of more than 1 million unresolved disability claims, the highest in the agency’s history. The average wait time to get one of these claims adjudicated is more than a year...Unfortunately, when it comes to customer service, many government agencies that serve the poor are being asked to do more with less, and the SSA has faced particularly hard times." --safari
Screwing the Poor, Vol. XXVII. Eric Markowitz of NewsWeek: "In America, jail and prison payphones are an important source of funding for local jurisdictions. For years, cash-strapped sheriffs and law enforcement officials across the country have signed contracts with third-party vendors -- phone companies, commissaries, even medical providers to take a cut of the proceeds paid by inmates and their families...Part of the reason the calls are so expensive is that a private company, Securus Technologies, has an exclusive contract to operate the jail's phone and video system. But the major reason for the high cost of the calls is that the local sheriff's office takes a cut.... But over time, critics say, the ways in which prisons and jail officials spend this money has expanded beyond recognition." Read on. --safari
Presidential Race
** He Took the Money & Ran, Ctd. Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "It was promoted as the chance of a lifetime: Mom-and-pop investors could buy shares in celebrity businessman Donald Trump's first public company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. Their investments were quickly depleted. The company known by Trump&'s initials, DJT, crumbled into a penny stock and filed for bankruptcy after less than a decade, costing shareholders millions of dollars, even as other casino companies soared.... Despite losing money every year under Trump's leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in the year the company's stock plummeted 70 percent.... Interviews with former shareholders and analysts as well as years of financial filings reveal a striking characteristic of his business record: Even when his endeavors failed and other people lost money, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee found a way to make money for himself...." (Emphasis added.) CW: Read on. What a horrible human being. ...
... ** GOP = Grifters on Parade. Paul Krugman: "... my question, as Democrats gleefully tear into the Trump business record, is why rival Republicans never did the same. How did someone who looks so much like a cheap con man bulldoze right through the G.O.P. nomination process?... Were they just incompetent, or is there something structural about the modern Republican Party that makes it unable to confront grifters?... There has always been a close association between the [conservative] movement and the operations of snake-oil salesmen.... The con job that lies at the heart of so much Republican politics makes it hard to go after other, more commercial cons." -- CW
The Anniversary of Drumpf. Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast: "According to those who know him, [Trump] wanted to run just to prove he could; he wanted to poll respectably, be taken seriously. Then, he wanted to go back to NBC's The Apprentice, the popular program he'd hosted for twelve years. It didn't work out that way, of course.... A lot can happen in a year. Life can end, or begin; love can be lost, or found; the democratic process as we know it can be fundamentally changed; the Republican Party damaged beyond all recognition...Perhaps it's because in a single year, Trump created a lifetime's worth of news." --safari
Fearmongerer in Chief. Jonathan Chait of New York: "[O]n the subject of Islamic terrorism, Trump has not hijacked orthodox conservatism. He has intensified it, given it a more explicit policy objective, and brought its ideas closer to their logical conclusion. Sunday's mass murder in Orlando, and the political response that has ensued, reveal Trump as a true conservative thought leader, and further reveal the ugliness of those thoughts." --safari...
...Eric Levitz of New York: "One day after calling for Obama to resign in recompense for his failure to say the words "radical Islamic terror,"Trump suggested there could be an unspeakable motive behind that failure. 'He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other,' Trump said of Obama on Fox & Friends Monday morning. 'We're led by a man who is a very -- look, we're led by a man that either is, is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can't believe it...By saying Obama may have "something else in mind" with regard to Orlando, something "inconceivable," Trump is winking at the darkest corner of the far-right fever swamp...To appreciate how profoundly irresponsible it is for the Republican nominee to make such insinuations, please review [Trump's] butler's various fantasies about hanging the first black president on the White House lawn." --safari...
...safari: Let's take a moment to contemplate the stark reality that Donald Trump is supposedly running a Presidential campaign as the leader of the GOP, and this latest episode of absolute absurdity will hardly cause a wave in the cesspool of DC politics.
Beyond the Beltway
Joel Rubin, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "Authorities on Sunday were trying to determine the intentions of an Indiana man with a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood. Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks said on Twitter that the 20-year-old man told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted 'to harm Gay Pride event.' But she did not provide any details, and officials said they are still trying to sort out his motives." -- CW...
... Sarah Burris of RawStory : "The man arrested en route to the Los Angeles LGBT Pride festival with weapons, James Wesley Howell, of Indiana, has a criminal past involving guns..., Unlike the Orlando, Florida shooter, Howell is a young, white, midwestern man with a history of right-wing ideology, if his social media is any indication. He posted both anti-Hillary Clinton and anti-Barack Obama things on his social media as well as support for marjuana legalization. His last post on Facebook shows a meme comparing the Democratic presidential candidate to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler." --safari
Rong-Gong Lin of the Los Angeles Times: "A handful of graduating Stanford seniors waved signs at Sunday's commencement ceremony showing support for victims of sexual assault and urging the university to do more to protect potential victims. -- CW
News Lede
AP: "A Dutch woman held in Qatar for nearly three months after telling police she had been raped there was released on Monday after receiving a one-year suspended prison sentence, a Dutch diplomat said." -- CW
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Reader Comments (23)
Hillary Rodham delivered the first ever student speech at Wellesley commencement in 1969: " and she was impressive " It's a short black & white video (with still shots), but worth a listen. A very likeable Hillary!
Then there's the thoroughly unlikeable Trump highlighted in Dean Harwell's WaPo article on his self-serving wheeling and dealings...that makes CW's call out of him as "a horrible human being" seem charitable!
@KateM: Your analysis of Omar Mateen observed from his "selfie" images, which appear to reveal a narcissistic side and have such a coy, flirtatious aspect to them—makes me think you're definitely onto something about his possible hidden proclivities! (...just some armchair psychoanalysis!)
While reading the article posted about the mass murderer's affinities to lunch at Ruby Tuesday's with his homosexual friends (linked above), my red light was going off re: Kate Madison's comments yesterday, saying "Calling Dr. Madison, calling Dr. Madison..."
Last night I was struck by the juxtaposition of the gala event of the Tonys with all those beautiful, talented people, acting, singing, accepting awards for work well done while on the other side of the country there was carnage and the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. But these Tony people are always connected to life in all its guises and Lin Manuel Miranda accepted his award by giving a sonnet tribute to Orlando; Frank Langella, instead of thanking the many people for their contributions, said this:
"When something bad happens, we have three choices: We can let it define us, we can let it destroy us or we can let it strengthen us. Today in Orlando we had a dose of this reality..."
And again we go back to guns. My fury and frustration regarding this issue is in full flower. I don't care what this demented individual's motive was for this mass killing, the fact that he was able to procure these guns while having been on the FBI list is just infuriating. Here's a statistic that should be plastered all over in gigantic letters:
"By my calculations,[Mike Weisser} we currently suffer more gun deaths than occurred during the bloodiest war in our entire history, and it has been going on for far longer than the fifty months of the Civil War." -
Maybe someone can make a musical out of that little item.
Here we go again with a total lack of logic and reason. 50 dead from a Muslim and we will never mention the 11,000 dead from mostly Christians every year. So it's wrong for Muslims to kill but Christians have the constitutional right to murder.
I hesitated before I clicked on an on-line petition this AM, asking for my support for a ban on military assault rifles. I tried to think of even one way the possession of such weapons by the people I knew and the millions I do not would make me feel more free or secure.
I couldn't think of one, so I clicked...
British journalist walks off T.v, show when he thinks that the others won't address what he says is the real cause of the Orlando shooting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/owen-jones-homophobia-orlando-shooting_us_575ead01e4b0ced23ca885c7
Good for Owen Jones!
PD wrote "Maybe someone can make a musical out of that little item"
Just turn on Fox any time, day or night, you're sure to see some of the little gun knobbers doing the Second Amendment Strut. It's one of the longest running musicals in history, a kind of Confederate Chorus Line.
Question. Ozytrumpias, along with most of the usual suspects, has been wasting enormous amounts of oxygen screaming that the president should resign because he won't say "Radical Islamists! Aiiiiieeeee!" as they all do.
Okay, fine.
So, say he does. What then? What happens next? Do any of you have a plan here or is this just more name calling? We all know who and what ISIS is. Do you have a plan other than "bombing the shit out of them" or denying all Muslims entry into the US or "Radical Islamists! Aiiiieeeee"?
No? Then shut the fuck up until you do. Because name calling is not the solution, even though you all think it is. I realize that's pretty much as far as your little brains can go in times of crisis, and most of the rest of the time as well. So, if there's a plan here, something I'm missing, something close to reality, with a pragmatic basis and a rational line of attack, I'm all ears.
Oh, wait. How 'bout this for a plan? how about we make sure "Radical Islamists! Aiiieeeee!" don't get their hands on assault weapons. Wow, that would be a great start. And not hard to do. Wouldn't cost a cent. What? Excuse me? Say that again. The NRA WANTS them to have assault weapons and high capacity clips? And you guys all voted for that? Seriously? That's fucked up. So, you have no plans, no serious ones anyway, but a plan that would do a lot of immediate good, you're against.
But you all want the president to resign and for us to put all of you in charge.
Gotcha.
Most humble apologies, brothers and sisters.
I was just ripping Confederates for having no ideas, but I forgot about Drumpf! He has more ideas than a man on a beer and bean diet has farts. And most of them are just as fragrant.
So, the other day, Ozytrumpias was caterwauling about the president declining to say, along with him, "Radical Islamists! Aiiieeee!", a sin for which Ozy suggests auto-defenestration. "I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack." Oooooh. So manly, isn't he? But how exactly will he save lives? Mother Jones reminds us of an amazing, great, bestest, most fabulousest idea that Ozy floated a while back for funding national security.
The Donald J. Trump Lottery!
"I bet if I started a national-defense lottery, with money earmarked for preventing terrorism against U.S. cities, we would take in enough money to hire and train every spy on earth and still have money to spare..."
Yeah! A lottery. But wait, how much would that make for us?
Mother Jones looks at the take from the Powerball lottery as a way of more accurately assessing how much funding could be realized from Ozy's idea:
"...the proceeds from every Powerball ticket ever sold in its 24-year history would, in total, net about $16 billion for new spies—which is what the government already spent on counterterrorism in 2013 alone."
And that's before Trump's cut, which would leave....let's see, apply the Drumpf co-efficient, divide by 1,290, carry the three....about a buck eighty-five.
Sorry Ozy, another fail. But come back tomorrow and play again.
(Wait, "...every spy on earth"? Wouldn't that mean you might be supporting some who would use all that money and training against the US? Well, never mind. It sounded good. Details are for losers anyway...)
1. Why the #@()#)($#@()*& are the media and POTUS et al. calling the act of a hateful loony terrorism? Fuel on the fire.
@Ak re. born mean or not? A creative colleague from Budapest, who grew up under the Soviet occupation and repression, proposed that 1/5 of humankind is born empathetic, and nothing in their upbringing can corrupt them. Another 1/5 is born sociopathic, and the only thing we can do is contain them. The remainder 3/5 are plastic. The older I get, now substantial, the more I come to think he may be correct, pending refinement of the fractions.
Do we need a repeat of 1 March 1954 to jolt congress into reality on gun control? True, this was in a more innocent age without metal detectors at every entry point but a repeat might just nudge these "representatives of the people" towards reality. Maybe, just maybe, a taste of being under fire might bring a little common sense to the fore.
Have been reading "The Moral Arc" by "Skeptic" founder and editor Michael Shermer, preparing a talk for a group that invited me to speak to them, likely having no idea what they were asking for.
Shermer's argument seems very apropos today. I'll summarize it, keeping in mind I haven't yet finished the book, and add a few thoughts of my own.
Despite the headlines that assault us, the human race has made significant moral (behavioral, call it what you will) progress since the Enlightenment and the ascent of rational, empirical, scientific thinking in the eighteenth centuy.
Unlike religion, codified superstition, science is reality based and works only if we look at the facts and are willing to change the meaning we attach to them if a further look at the facts calls for it.
Though it is often obscured by the headlines, over the last three centuries that progress is very real and widespread, even it is not universal and entirely consistent. We have seen the end of slavery, the sanctification of individual human rights, the extension of those rights to millions (people of color, women and here in the U.S. the gay community.) We have also created social democracies that provide a safety net to millions who would otherwise be trodden into the earth by the conscienceless mechanism of economic systems that do such a poor job of resource distribution.
History tells us, of course, that progress has not been linear. It has been halting and will continue to be so, but moral arc's essence is that over time it does bend toward justice, and the facts would seem to support that conclusion.
Don't know about Whyte's general proposition (nature or nurture?) but would suggest that a feeling of of relatedness, of kinship, if not of direct consanguinity, then of a common humanity, always precedes empathy. We can feel for and with those we know. Those we do not are easy to think of as "the other," sometimes merely unworthy of our attention, too often simply "the enemy." And today we have a lot of enemies.
Why?
Our fast-paced, global, increasingly inter-connected world, where millions of people and dozens of cultures are suddenly forced together is fundamentally destabilizing. Accommodation and assimilation takes people years, even multiple generations. That's fact (like the too ready availability of assault weapons), and that's the primary reality we do not consider when we talk about the causes of the violence that wracks our world. Cultures have an embedded inertia; they don't change quickly or easily, even when logic would tell us they must.
But the upside of the human ferment we're experiencing is, whether we like it or not, the walls are coming down. Between peoples, between religions, between men and women and in some cases, even between genders. In the mixmaster of the globalization that has shoved us together, there are every day fewer strangers. Those strangers from over there somewhere across the ocean or border now live next door. The human family to which we belong is growing by the day.
Many don't like it because, like most change, it makes them uncomfortable and they want it to stop. I feel some of that discomfort myself. But it won't stop. What we're experiencing, planet-wide, is and will be messy, often tragic.
I remember a phrase from the sixties to the effect that reality is overrated, but to borrow another term from the sixties, we can either get on the reality bus or we'll be ground under its wheels. I can't help but believe the human race will not choose suicide.
We'll see how the moral arc MLKing has such faith in continues to bend.
Whyte,
I certainly hope your friend's assumptions are off. If not, we're talking about 20% of all the people in the world--over 1.4 billion--are sociopaths. In the US, that would mean 62 million sociopaths. Man, that's an army of assholes, but it would explain the excessive number of jerks you run into on line at grocery stores or who cut you off in traffic. It might also explain how Ozytrumpias has galumphed his way to a single step from the seat of power.
@ Akhilleus: From the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "South Pacific", in support of how one has to be taught to hate:
"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!"
On another subject, does St. J's mean anything to you? I'm thinking about the set of your mind.
Jackalizer
NATP
And not only is it Not a Trump Post, it's actually good news.
As we contemplate the hatred abroad in the world and its baleful effects in our country, one small, intrepid band of committed people are working on our behalf to rescue and maintain the intellectual heritage of a past age.
"In 2012, jihadists—armed to the teeth with weapons seized in Libya after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi—overran northern Mali and established a brutal, sharia regime in Timbuktu. Once a center of learning and culture, the city housed a priceless collection of manuscripts: volumes of poetry, encyclopedias, and even sexual manuals that invoked the name of Allah. Threatened with destruction, the manuscripts were spirited out of the city to safety in a thrilling, cloak-and-dagger operation."
Who are these cloak-and-dagger heroes? Why, they are the Badass Librarians of Timbuktu, that's who!
A title that will make me smile every time I visit any library from here on out. She may look like a mild mannered bookworm who can still recite the Dewey Decimal system from General Works (000) to History and Geography (900), but watch out, kids! That lady there is a Badass Librarian!
(Oh, and leave us not forget that jihadists are not the only religiously influenced group of anti-intellectuals.)
Jackalizer,
Great pick! A perfect reminder of how hate eats its way into the soul. And Republicans and Fox and right-wing radio certainly teach hatred, day and night. They're like the Typhoid Mary of hatred.
As for the set of my mind, I can't place the reference to St. J's, but I'm curious as to what it might mean.
Ken & Ak, My colleague's fractions may be off, but I think his categories make some sense. Fractions of course matter: Paul Ehrlich's prediction that the population bomb will do us in is credible, and in my view accounts for much or most of the trouble around the Globe, even here, but he made a trivial error in the exponent which, for exponential growth can create a large error in extrapolation. Unfortunately, like the noise in the upward growth of global temperature, meaningless minor deviations get amplified by the media, which are driven so often by the "gotcha" mentality. Or Barbie — Math class is hard.
Jackalizer,
Does St. J's possibly refer to "St James Infirmary Blues?" I will never forget the mournful lyrics and trumpet of Louis Armstrong. Fits the national mood right now.
https://youtu.be/oXMx8OW32Bs
Whyte,
Exponent errors aside, population growth over the last fifty years is one of the major elements in the multi-variable feedback loop that has spurred change far faster than cultures can adapt. I mentioned globalization, the economic face of that headlong change, but left out population growth, which itself has multiple causes and effects, and the rapid pace of technological change, with its own cause and effect links to burgeoning population, world migration patterns and globalization, all of which have proved to be immensely disruptive.
For all these reasons and more, things are very much astir.
But I still don't know if, in most instances of violence, we're talking nature or nurture. Likely some combination, but tho' maybe naive of me, for now I'm going with G & S.
His hypothesis was nature for a few, nurture for the majority. There remains the phenomenon of the sociopath who as a preschooler took pleasure in torturing animals. Can't feature that's not nature. On the other hand are the prison programs that have inmates care for dogs or horses, with documented results..
Yo, Ak wrote, "And right-wing propganda's most effective tool is hatred." Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead said this, "http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-weir-homophobes-isis-supporters-share-same-hatred-20160613".
I will say it slowly, they share the same hatred. Imagine living life into your seventies, sixties, fifties, forties, whatever and being full of hate, not humor, not love, not spinning as a whirling dervish to the music. Bob likely has learned the lessons of life; Cruz, Dfumpf and the pretty face-bots on teevee want to impose their lessons onto us. Why do we want to take their impositions anyhow? Oh! Yes! They are self-described leaders. They are who Groucho Marx referred to when he said he didn't want to belong to any club that would take him for a member.