Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

There's no need: that is what I thought would happen, and it did.

People scream at the most visible issue, but they miss the root cause. And spectacularly so.

Think about it: this guy planned it through during weeks. Guns made it easier, but with that kind of commitment and a bit of ingenuity, he could have come up with a knife, some kind of tool, a homemade bomb.
Always comes back to the guns, Gov Abbot making guns more readily available and lack of strong gun safety laws.

Where are all the mass stabbing and bombing schools?

Making military weapons readily available is nuts. The amazing thing is there are so few mass shooting considering the firepower available.

About a week ago I was looking up the Milkor MGL, a 40mm six-shot grenade launcher, that is now in use UA, but that too is for sale in the US!
 
I haven't seen anything else that quite nailed my initial reaction to the Uvalde shooting quite as well as this: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-leaders-children-uvalde-shooting/

It's numbness. Like the author says, "The revulsion dulls, the novelty fades, and it becomes normal."

I haven't felt much until more and more came out about the piss-poor response of the cops, and now I'm beyond livid at the whole thing, as I probably was deep-down all along, but it took a while to get there. My initial response was, sadly, again? I was surprised when people at work who lived across the country were profoundly affected by it because to me, it felt like a Tuesday. Just any Tuesday. Another garbage Tuesday in this dystopian place where The Onion runs its "No Way to Prevent This" article on mass shootings enough to fill its entire homepage with "No Way to Prevent This" articles from its back catalog.

Perhaps it's that distance that allows other folks to realize off the bat that holy crap, this was horrific, but it took me a while. I, like my fellow Texan writing in Texas Monthly, just feel numb.

There's a profound callousness to death and suffering from our state leadership in recent years. Texans freezing to death, dying in mass shootings, dying because we're unable to access appropriate healthcare—it's all met with indifference from the state leadership. In the case of healthcare, the state has been actively making things more dangerous for women, trans people and low-income folks, not to mention the horrifying negligence in our state's foster care system that TM brings up. The same frauds who are quick to throw out mental health to distract from any kind of firearms regulation after a mass shooting are the same ones who cut programs related to mental health. They couldn't give even a fraction of a rat's ass if we die a death of despair, or suffer at the hands of someone else who should have had better access to mental help. They don't care if we die of other causes, either—our own lieutenant governor said we should be happy to die for the economy right after the start of the global pandemic, after all. We're still not out of that, either.

In that environment, where losing friends and family to things we know how to prevent, mitigate, or at least for goodness' sake make less frequent becomes normalized, numbness is a coping strategy. Is it a healthy one? Hell no. In a sane world, none of this is acceptable.
 
Always comes back to the guns, Gov Abbot making guns more readily available and lack of strong gun safety laws.

Where are all the mass stabbing and bombing schools?

Making military weapons readily available is nuts. The amazing thing is there are so few mass shooting considering the firepower available.

About a week ago I was looking up the Milkor MGL, a 40mm six-shot grenade launcher, that is now in use UA, but that too is for sale in the US!
As I said right from the start, I agree with more gun controls in the US; the situation now is just ridiculous.

Yet if you think that gun control alone will solve the problem, then read ninjacoco's post about how people think, feel, act. Guns are a perfect method, but if they weren't around, you'd really hear of stabbing, IED, or cars plowing through the crowd (in fact, in some case you already have).

The Uvalde shooter was a lonely, problematic, young man who has been - raised - to have these problems, without - anyone - intervening beforehand or even trying to help him.

Even without guns, he would have been all those things, and he would have planned a way to burn out by taking as many purple as he could.

In order for the mass killings to stop, - that - must change most of all. Gun limitation can be a very good idea, but it won't change the root cause, which is that there are too many young people (mostly men) so lost that they are willing to do that.

After all, think about it: suicide bombings are typical in places like Afghanistan, but not elsewhere, schoolgirls abduction is a nigerian thing, Japan is well known for suicides, Brazil for favelas, Mexico for homicides, India for religious turmoils, South Africa for racial issues, the nordic for alcohol abuse, Italy for mafia. These things won't change just by making some things illegal; in fact, mostly the governments tried it, but the problem is still there.

So it is for the US and mass killings: btw, go on and take away the guns, but the problem is way deeper than that. It's deep in how Americans live their lives, think, and in what they believe. Its cultural.
 
We need both. Make it a lot harder to maim and kill with some common-sense restrictions on the weapons that make it the easiest to inflict the most damage, AND invest in social services meant to keep folks out of the kind of despair or mental state that leads to this. That's not just mental healthcare, IMHO—actually giving poor folks a fighting chance to get back on their feet could go a long way, too. Not plunging your family into the poorhouse if a member has a health issue would be massive. Doing something more than just finger-pointing about the student debt and wider affordability crises could go a long way. People grasp for answers when things feel hopeless, and it's too easy to fall into scapegoats that don't make sense (other races as in Buffalo and El Paso, women as in UCSB, etc., etc.) when life feels like it's just a string of pointless suffering. And my gosh, in the internet age, we have so much trash out there peddled by dishonest pricks online that we've gotta start considering all the factors that lead to someone to that point where these kinds of thoughts become okay.

That could start with better mental healthcare—and by forcing everyone calling this a mental health epidemic to put their money where their mouth is. This isn't an either/or situation—again, it'll take a lot to get us up to par with real first-world countries that worry less about their kids dying at school—but that's the solution that gets at least vocal support across both parties. Start with the lowest-effort stuff and work towards broader change when we can get it. Some of that isn't unfathomable, either—even republicans in Texas voiced support for things like red flag laws that would take firearms away from domestic abusers. And my gosh, I hope we can vote every disingenuous prick who is calling this a mental health issue but cuts services to mental health out of office. (I don't have much hope here in TX, but for the love of all things holy, DO prove me wrong.)

tl;dr—This country's "fend for yourself, we don't give a shit" approach does not work.
 
You dirty, rotten communist!

Actually, what you’re describing is exactly what I think about Australia. Quite similar to the US in several important aspects, but populated by people who give a damn.
...c-ccccan I have a Trabant? I've wanted one for years!!!
 
Gun violence in America is so bad that Canada is taking action.

You read that correctly.


 
So, Croatia is on track to join the € zone next year:


I'm kind of sad to see the old Kuna banknotes go. They invoke a very German nostalgia in me, as they design is, let's say heavily influenced by the last set of pre-€ Deutsche Mark notes. :D
 

Seven years later, still no trial for Texas AG Ken Paxton​

 
Navarro whined about the FBI, then he wonders why the arrested him on an airplane and hauled him before a judge. Live thread is crazy:

Peter Navarro Thinks He’s Better than the 800 Other January 6 Defendants


An hour ago, Peter Navarro had his first appearance before a very patient Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, represented for the hearing by Public Defender Ubong Akpan.
Here’s of my live thread the hilarity that occurred.

Outside courthouse:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmM55huNpAc
 
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