[Newfie]

It's also a good example of how we let the media grab our attention and lead us around by the nose.

Oh, and you don't think that people pattern themselves after each other?

Evil,

If you were to slow down a bit and read more closely you would see we are talking about the same thing.

The patterns we are most often exposed to are the ones we see in media. Copy cat killers being but one example. Propoganda that hypes the worst of society. Our media is constantly in a state of tension, finding and eliminating the bad guy. The few times I turn on a TV set in a motel room I get these sick CSI types of shoes where they are discecting people. Then perpetrators are some kind of dementated monster. The solution is to pump them full of lead.

Dr. Phil, political talk shows, Howard Stern, shooter video games. It's all sick.

Yes, these are the things we all too frequently pattern after. It's a mirical we are not worse.

Then again, I was reading some Indian news last night and was reminded of an indicent where one group of 2,000+ stopped and attacked a passenger train, locked the doors and poured on some gas immolating some 600 inside. Ensuing riots killed thousands. Recently there have been dairy farmer killings, for molesting the sacred cows. Not to mention torching off wives with insufficient rosette, or pitching widows on the pyre with their deceased beloved.

What drives that society? AFAIK their media is pretty censored. They don't have the gun ownership we do.

Maybe it's just that, at our core, humans (too many anyway) are pretty fecked up animals, it always tightly bound and apt to do anything. Maybe the answer is that we are imperfect critters capable of a very wide range reactions.

There are not always nice clean logical answers.

[Ibon]

It's also a good example of how we let the media grab our attention and lead us around by the nose.

Oh, and you don't think that people pattern themselves after each other?

Evil,

If you were to slow down a bit and read more closely you would see we are talking about the same thing.

Yes, actually this tendency to align with the group consensus can be harnessed for cohesion and harmony or toward divisiveness and religious or ethnic or racial hatred.

The ecologist in me understands the baboon hard wiring of humans as in the video link I posted. The humanist in me understands that reconfiguring this hard wiring can result in the baboon troop becoming more integrated and socialized toward harmony and tolerance like when all the aggressive alpha males died of tuberculosis.

The ecologist in me also understands that somehow all this divisiveness is consistent with the stresses of human overshoot. The humanist in me understands that there can be alternatives.

The reason Trump got elected was all these stressed out white male americans where made to feel guilty about losing rank to females and minorities. Trump made it all right to be bastards again. We have this back lash of baboon behavior validating the worst and lowest forms of behavior

It's like Trump is telling all these dysenfranchised Americans that it is OK to be an asshole.

What do most americans do when they wake up in the morning. Turn on their TV's or digital devices. What group consensus does this reinforce?

[vtsnowedin]

The reason Trump got elected was all these stressed out white male americans where made to feel guilty about losing rank to females and minorities. Trump made it all right to be bastards again. We have this back lash of baboon behavior validating the worst and lowest forms of behavior

It's like Trump is telling all these dysenfranchised Americans that it is OK to be an asshole.

I must totally disagree with this premise. I did not vote for Trump because I think he is unqualified, but you could not have paid me to vote for Hillary, (I wrote in Bernie in Vermont where it did not matter how a Republican voted) I did not vote against Hillary because I can't stand the thought of a woman being president but because I can't stand the thought of THAT woman being president. I also don't mind having a female boss as long as she is not the boss just because she is female.
I think very few Trump voters look to him as a role model on sex or race relations and most wish he would shape up on those and other fronts.
Of course there a few A** holes out there that use him as an excuse but they were A**holes long before Trump got into the race.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

The priblem with the Trump discussion is it narrows the view, too close to ground level.

We need to elevate the conversation recognizing Trump/Hillary as symptoms of a sick society. Why is the society sick? Can it heal? If so how? If not what is the prognosis? How can I personally inoculate myself from the sickness? Can I inoculate my loved ones?

[Ibon]

Ibon,

The priblem with the Trump discussion is it narrows the view, too close to ground level.

We need to elevate the conversation recognizing Trump/Hillary as symptoms of a sick society. Why is the society sick? Can it heal? If so how? If not what is the prognosis? How can I personally inoculate myself from the sickness? Can I inoculate my loved ones?

I thought I was taking a broader view from my perspective and then using Trump as an example to illustrate this. But anyway, you inoculate your loved ones by doing what many very intelligent people have done both on the political right and political left. You disengage from continuing to ride on a sick horse which is our political system and increasing the society which is aligning itself more and more with Trump's strategy of inflaming our worst and lowest instincts.

The reason Trump got elected was all these stressed out white male americans where made to feel guilty about losing rank to females and minorities. Trump made it all right to be bastards again. We have this back lash of baboon behavior validating the worst and lowest forms of behavior

It's like Trump is telling all these dysenfranchised Americans that it is OK to be an asshole.

I must totally disagree with this premise.

When the masses start to reject the divisiveness of Trump then this will be true. Otherwise you being the exception does not dispute this.

Back to Newfie's question of how to inoculate yourself, well you choose either to align yourself with a tribe of friends and family that share your values or you join the masses who have been duped.

Think about how many super smart and dedicated individuals are out there whose civil integrity is of the highest ranks who would not touch politics with a ten foot pole. You see, there is that phenomenon of brain drain from poor to rich countries, the phenomenon of brain drain from rural to urban areas. Well, there is another brain drain we haven't discussed much, that which is from those who participate and believe in the political institutions and those that have decided to withdraw and close in around a smaller tight nit group of kin and friends.

Why do I sometimes claim that this site for example begins to more and more resemble Facebook in the quality of discourse. Because we are infected by the diseased and dysfunctional political discourse being spewed by our politicians and media who do not represent the best of who we are.

More and more I am withdrawing myself really focusing on the smaller community of organic friends and family with whom I can have an impact. This digital venue is corrupted and sick.

which really goes back to Evilgeniuse's comment about how we pattern ourselves around each other. Since we see a brain drain away from politics and media we are not hearing those valuable insights in our national discourse of those that can raise us to a higher level. So what you left to pattern yourself off of are the dregs, the garbage. Your typical politician.

This is not elitist to withdraw, it is a question of starting to build up that alternative that happens when the system breaks down and gets splintered. You abandon the whole and when it starts to fragment you re align yourself.

America is falling fast into a cultural abyss. Trump is not the origin of this, his demagoguery did not rise in a vacuum, it rose because our society was ripe and ready and full of anger and rage to align themselves with this.

I will be proven otherwise when the momentum flows against this primitive divisiveness. It ain't anywhere near happening yet. In fact we can see on this site several posters who feed on and enjoy this divisiveness. The one I have not put on ignore is a great example.

[Tanada]

The reason Trump got elected was all these stressed out white male americans where made to feel guilty about losing rank to females and minorities. Trump made it all right to be bastards again. We have this back lash of baboon behavior validating the worst and lowest forms of behavior

It's like Trump is telling all these dysenfranchised Americans that it is OK to be an asshole.

You really need to get past this Democrat talking point. the numbers just simply do not add up the way you are saying they do.

https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/u ... oted-2016/

Trump got 53% of men, Hillary got 54% of women. Hillary got 88% of all African American votes and 65% of all Hispanic American votes while Trump got 8% and 29% respectively. On the other racial coin Hillary only received 37% of the European American vote. Trump received just 58% of the European American vote, a smaller ethnic percentage that Hillary received for either Hispanic Americans or African Americans.

So turn your meme around and ask, What did Hillary do to drive a wedge between the three minorities she won, Women, African Americans and Hispanic Americans, and the European American voters she needed to get a majority in the democratic republican system where she ran for President? IOW stop blaming the VOTERS and look at what turned them away from the CANDIDATE.

[onlooker]

If you wish to dissect exactly what got Trump elected primarily, it is quite clear that he got the electroral victories he needed in the rust belt. Those States that often vote Democrat, voted for Trump. Those same states which have been particlarly hit by Economic malaise.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/secret ... 2017-09-21

[Ibon]

So turn your meme around and ask, What did Hillary do to drive a wedge between the three minorities she won, Women, African Americans and Hispanic Americans, and the European American voters she needed to get a majority in the democratic republican system where she ran for President? IOW stop blaming the VOTERS and look at what turned them away from the CANDIDATE.

Neither the voters or the candidate exist in a vacuum, there is always synergy. A dance they do together. This is why demagogues do not rise in a vacuum, whether they be a Hugo Chavez or a Pinochet or Trump.

The question of why Clinton lost and Trump won cannot be reduced to a singular reason. We had two presidential cycles with Obama that left a lot of working class Americans feeling un represented. Clinton did nothing to address this. Calling Trump supporters a basket of deplorables probably made even more swing Trump's way. Trump did address working class American's feeling of being unrepresented. He did this though by divisiveness which has only accelerated after he was elected. Besides starting every day dissing someone what has he really done?

Trump is a role model of divisiveness. And there are copy cats, little mini Trumps on this site and all throughout social media. Are you suggesting that this is a democratic talking point? I see it as a daily reality. It doesn't matter which side you are on. There is a spin off when you play this divisiveness card, all the normal friction points in a society get heated up; racism, immigration, party division, etc. etc. Folks become unglued, rage and immature ego pettiness becomes normal. Trump is our leader after all. You think his "style" is not rubbing off on the collective at large? Is this a democratic talking point? I don't think so. I think it is real. It is reducing the cultural dialogue down to a very low and primitive level and validating exclusiveness over inclusiveness.

Even discussing this makes me feel cheap. I really can't stand it anymore. I am about through here.

Not just with this site but with this whole orientation of engaging in these topics. It makes me feel dirty.

Exiting the public discourse. How many have already done this. How many really switched on intelligent folks have pulled the plug on civic discourse and have withdrawn?

Dumb yourselves down. That is all we are all doing here discussing this.

I feel increasingly polluted and nauseous.

Time to move on.

[evilgenius]

That alienation and subsequent turning away is, in part, what I was thinking about when I suggested a registry for all grey area and offensive weapons and weapon accessories. I don't think they need to be illegal as much as people need to know who owns them. Then let people and businesses make their own decisions. What the people do when they are truly free has great value in determining the structure of a just society. The resultant backlash from people's reactions to the knowledge (for the fearful have rights too, and the power to make certain that they are observed) would open up the legal structure for many who have long sought some kind of relief. Black people, for instance, have been struggling for a long time to get what the gun lobby could have in a mere few years, should they perceive themselves as disenfranchised as black people have been for, oh, so long. And with that gun lobby change there would come a precedent that black people could use in the legal structure. Talk abut a two edged sword.

I appreciated that baboon video. It points out something I've been working into my thinking for some years now, extrovert patterning. There are two types of people, introverts and extroverts. Introverts get their energy from within and extroverts get it from without. Most people are extroverts. In the process of getting their energy from others they pattern themselves after those others. They gather from others in various ways. They might observe the structures that exist. They might observe people's end games. Maybe money is the most important thing to them. It's just like high school, where there isn't always very much recognition of how horrible it can be to suffer from too many illogical examples bending people to become one thing or another. At least in high school you eventually graduate.

I think it's really interesting that the alpha male dominance was what distorted the baboon troop. It's kind of similar to what modern Western Societies face, when arguments for certain things like guns are based upon a fear set that has its origins in primordial history. Most of the reasons for those fears are not relevant to their lives, but they can go on as if they are. As a society we magnify those fears. We don't just do it in our political discourse, but in our popular art as well. Yes, you can't watch many movies or TV shows without someone resorting to the instillation of fear as a means to grip you. It isn't that there aren't really things to be afraid of, but TV shows about all of the scammers trying to get you into debt wouldn't really be all that popular. For some reason they don't appeal to the patterning, unless you find yourself trapped there. I guess a lot of the stuff that is truly scary about modern life doesn't appear that way until we experience it first hand. Even then, in things such as drug addiction and disability graft, there can be so many more people pouring into a thing than are trying to get out of it that it can appear sexy, making it harder to escape from them.

[evilgenius]

Dropping out is no answer, by the way. When you do that you expose yourself to the political decisions of those whom you seek to avoid. You could very well wind up in a situation akin to the people of Ferguson, Missouri. The black community there essentially dropped out. Now, they have to put up with a minority rule that does things like impose heavy fines upon members of the community who do things, or make mistakes, that you can expect everyone to make over the course of time. Then, those people don't want to go to court because they know they can't pay those fines. Pretty soon there are failure to appear warrants out for a significant percentage of the population, and the very thought of taking the situation back seems out of reach. Many of those people, often the most affected by the situation, get stripped of voting rights. People can't find work. People do whatever they need to in order to both comply and survive. The assessment of those who brought the situation to bear upon the community in the first place seems correct, by default. Often, the default attitude brings tighter rules and more opportunity to fall afoul. It's all very legal. It has the appearance of being right.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

Somehow we are talking past one another. I don't know how to fix it.

I would suggest we just drop the whole Clinton/Trump thing completly. It's too loaded and inflammatory.

There are tons of other examples we can use.

[vtsnowedin]

So turn your meme around and ask, What did Hillary do to drive a wedge between the three minorities she won, Women, African Americans and Hispanic Americans, and the European American voters she needed to get a majority in the democratic republican system where she ran for President? IOW stop blaming the VOTERS and look at what turned them away from the CANDIDATE.

While she still won the two minorities Blacks and Hispanics and the Majority women's vote she won them by much smaller margins then Obama did. Most probably because along with the White European descendants they had grown tired of the Clinton brand and increasingly obvious corruption. From speaking fees to Whitewater and cattle futures and the Russian reset button there was much to be tired of and few if any real accomplishments to balance out the many failures. What voting block including the ones that did vote for her over Trump could point to something she had actually delivered to them in exchange for the millions she had gained from the system.

[Newfie]

What about India? Why is there culture such a mess? Cant blame that on Trump/Hillary or TV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... s_in_India

Or dowery death

Dowry deaths are found in Australia, [1] India,[2] Pakistan,[3] Bangladesh,[4] and Iran.[5][6] India reports the highest total number of dowry deaths with 8,391 such deaths reported in 2010, 1.4 deaths per 100,000 women. Adjusted for population, Pakistan, with 2,000 reported such deaths per year, has the highest rate of dowry death at 2.45 per 100,000 women.[7][8]

Or look up SATI for some fun reading.

I tell you, people are not a real nice species.

[Subjectivist]

What about India? Why is there culture such a mess? Cant blame that on Trump/Hillary or TV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... s_in_India

Or dowery death

Dowry deaths are found in Australia, [1] India,[2] Pakistan,[3] Bangladesh,[4] and Iran.[5][6] India reports the highest total number of dowry deaths with 8,391 such deaths reported in 2010, 1.4 deaths per 100,000 women. Adjusted for population, Pakistan, with 2,000 reported such deaths per year, has the highest rate of dowry death at 2.45 per 100,000 women.[7][8]

Or look up SATI for some fun reading.

I tell you, people are not a real nice species.

I had an Anthropology class on the topic one time, about dowry deaths and “grieving” widows being forcibly thrown onto the husbands funeral pyre if she survived him. Pure greed, if they both die the dowry stays in the husbands family, but if she stays a widow the dowry returns to her and her family to provide support.

The lesson I took from it is greed is nothing new, and never gentle with its victims.

[Newfie]

Nice analysis. Transfer of wealth also had a lot to do with the RC ban on priestly marriage, and the formal institution of marriage itself. Stalins porgams of the middle class are another example. The local operatives found a lot of the monied folks to be capitalist, who the executed or shipped off. And confiscated the goods for themselves. Until some bigger fish did the same to them.

Greed is a common human element. It has not disappeared in our times. One of the nastier bits of what it means to be human.

I doubt the LV shooters motive was greed. But I DO think greed is behind a lot of our social ills.

[Cog]

The whole time line on the security guard Jesus Campos has changed. Instead of the initial story of Campos interrupting the shooter while he was blasting away at the crowd below, Campos gets shot 6 minutes before the shooter starts shooting at the crowd. Hard to understand how the cops got that so wrong and didn't correct it until more than a week later. This whole investigation really smells bad to me and I'm not given to conspiracy theories.

[vtsnowedin]

The whole time line on the security guard Jesus Campos has changed. Instead of the initial story of Campos interrupting the shooter while he was blasting away at the crowd below, Campos gets shot 6 minutes before the shooter starts shooting at the crowd. Hard to understand how the cops got that so wrong and didn't correct it until more than a week later. This whole investigation really smells bad to me and I'm not given to conspiracy theories.

Might be harmless. The authorities often hide a few key facts from the public to sort out tipsters that don't really have any real information beyond what they have gathered from the media.

[Newfie]

It does make you wonder why he didn't call for help. Anyone ever see a hotel security guard without a radio or cell phone? I also read he was shot in the leg. Also read the shooter was shooting at airport fuel tanks.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lasve ... CE2GM?il=0

[evilgenius]

A reaction that isn't dropping out, changing your buying habits to make them coincide with your beliefs, has been mentioned by someone in the media. I see this woman, Jemele Hill from ESPN, recommended a boycott of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' advertisers. Her suggestion was politically motivated. It was due to the NFL kneeling controversy that we have been talking about on a different thread. Jerry Jones came out with a policy that was interpreted as supporting what Donald Trump said about sh*t canning players who don't stand for the anthem. Jemele apparently tweeted that people could boycott his advertisers if they disagreed. She said something disapproving of Trump before. For this second comment, she was suspended.

There is real danger in going against the tide. When there is a very large chunk of people who mostly all react the same way, or can quickly be gotten to react in the same way, people who are seen as different can become targets. The weaker you look, the more likely you are to get picked on. Being strong, however, is no guarantee of protection. When people come in numbers they have not only strength, but confidence enough to allow themselves to perish, sometimes, for what they don't even understand they are doing. Those at the forefront of an argument will act according to their beliefs as part of the group and there is very little a person opposed to them can do to stop them. You need help. Too bad that, in this world, that help may come in the form of a court decision that gives joint custody to the rapist of a 12 year old girl almost 10 years later, when the girl has grown up and in her very early 20's and is seeking sole custody of the child that came from the rape. I'm not kidding, this actually was in the news a few days ago. It's testosterone run amok. Want to make a bet (rhetorical device for you people who don't understand what that is) that the judge is also pro-life? Want to make a bet that the judge, while being pro-life, is also pro-gun? I don't know, but I think you are looking at another example of something going on at the forefront. Being at the forefront can mean being stuck.

This begs the question, what can you do then, if you want to stay safe? I think you can align your buying habits with your beliefs, as long as you don't make any of those controversial or salient purchases. Boycotts are not the same as choosing from a list of things you agree with. While the testosterone crowd will have their list of icons, like the F-150 which they will buy no matter what it looks like, but especially if it looks good with a set of truck nuts, those who oppose them often only have reason to guide them. Reason is a good guide, and may eventually put you in good company. If you feel comfortable with your choices for your own reasons, maybe you can find other people who think like you? You have to hope that the other side doesn't latch onto something you've already bought, that makes you stand out. If the divide gets worse that means that people who want to buy solar, or some other 'girly' alternative to the consumptive status quo, will think twice about it. Hopefully, the marketing for those things will come with enough emphasis upon smartness and savings that people won't have to worry that much. The angry orcs love flashy tech. Solar is one of those things, like electric cars will be soon, that can be positioned as flashy tech. Testosterone loves to play the hero and will want to prove itself by mastery over what goes wrong with flashy tech. The collapse into this polarized, infantilism could, flashy tech aside, become dangerously regressive. It looks like we may be heading there.

[KaiserJeep]

Speculation about the shooter and his deeds serves no purpose. The dearth of information means either that the investigation is fruitless or that there are arrests imminent and they do not want to spook their targets.

I do not doubt that the shooter was mentally ill. He was also fixated on small arms which believe it or not, full auto fire or not, kept the casualties to a minimum.

Now I am going to demonstrate just how foolish the shooter and all of you are. If I were wanting to kill and maim hundreds at that same concert, I would not have selected any firearm as my weapon. I would have plowed through the crowd control barrier in one of these, and killed hundreds, not dozens, driving through the crowd:

(EG, this truck started life as an F-250 or F-350, it would appear.)
If I thought there would be police present, versus the unarmed security at this particular concert, then I would have specificly selected this particular model, complete with run-flat tire disks and the optional small arms armor which is proof against .50-caliber machine gun rounds, meaning that nothing the local SWAT team was equipped with could stop me from killing.

Either of these trucks is a much deadlier weapon than any small arm, and you can buy them freely, and all you need is money - no background checks for mental disease or criminal offenses. Once upon a time, I was more hesitant about discussing such topics, but the terrorists have now used vehicles as weapons of mass murder on several occasions, no longer anything to keep secret.

If I wanted to kill mass numbers of civilians, then I would arrange a huge fuel/air explosion in one of several US ports, using a hijacked LNG tanker:

...this takes a working knowledge of explosives, and a degree in Physics, Mathematics, or Engineering. Then you need access to the Civil Engineering texts on explosives - which I perused at the Engineering Library at my Alma Mater one day as an undergraduate. The equations for fuel/air explosions are relatively complex, but with a PC-based math program, easily mastered. Nothing terrorists could not acquire if they wanted to. Enough said about that, as this has not been done - yet. But I would note that Turkey just banned the transit of such tankers in river ports - for good and sufficient reasons.

The point would be that gun control is foolish, it only works for law-abiding citizens, who then become unarmed victims. It does nothing whatsoever to discourage or diminish mass murders. Indeed - the presence of enforced gun controls would cause those who want to commit acts of terror to become clever and to strike unsuspected targets using improvised weaponry, and ultimately to kill more people.

So I say let the crazies have their guns. When some fool takes an AK and sprays full auto fire into a crown, screaming "Allahu Akbar!", the SWAT team - or a crowd member with a concealed carry handgun - can put a bullet in his skull.