Mass shooting at Oregon college: 15+ dead...

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Dox47
There was no failure in my logic, I'm just saying there are plenty of people that buy overpriced crap that they don't need. There is a reason why people jokingly refer to whole foods as "whole paychecks."

One question though Dox47 as I know none of us will ever change your mind on anything. What do you think can be done to reduce the number of mass shootings in this country?

This is the fault of modern society as a whole. When I was growing up in Upstate New York, people respected each other and each others' property. There was minimal law enforcement and minimal government interference in our lives because these weren't needed. Now we have all these 'me first' types who don't care about others and this attitude is pimped by the government, mass media, and the entertainment industry.
By expecting and wanting the government to enforce morality, you are opening the door to dictatorship. You may be O.K. with this, I am not.
I have lived in a community that was caring and respectful of others, and I know it can work. But first you need to make a difference, not expect someone else to do it for you.

A government that acts lawless and violent should expect lawless and violent citizens, it's pretty funny how we always blame movies or video games or whatever but never how our government conducts itself domestically and overseas. Most of my life has been war and ever growing police state, it was war even during the 'peace dividend' time I was born. The violence in our media is just a reflection of our poisoned wicked society governed by violence, it's an outlet not a cause.

Okay, so what are you doing about it. If you don't like what is going on, just talking about it is not going to cut it; you need to do things as simple as being considerate of other people or volunteering in your neighborhood. YOU need to make a difference.

I'm not sure what the point is trying to turn it back on me, it seems like a more nuance way of saying "if you don't like America, you can geeeettttt out!"

If I had the means to do something I probably would, I look at Donald Trump sort of enviously but also with frustration thinking if only I was put in that position. You don't even have to be a billionaire, I look at these Democratic nominees in the south that get nominated completely randomly and think the same thing, Alvin Greene or that truck driver now down in Mississippi nominated for governor. Imagine if somebody actually spoke truth to power in one of these positions.

Americans are largely powerless, there is an elite class that has ruled this country since before it was even a country, the longer this goes on the further Americans will go in looking for somebody that will bring real change. Real change means burning down the establishment, nobody ever offers real change.

I didn't mean you when I said 'you', I meant people in general. Sorry if I gave that impression.
What I meant was that you hear so much talk about this and that problem, but you never see anyone doing anything. This really tweaks my tail. If there is a problem, don't you correct it?

Actually there were many peaceful people who attempted real change in the '60s. The shrewd government was able to turn public opinion against us (called us dirty hippies, etc.) to deflect the public's attention, but we gave it a good try. I don't know if or when the people's chance will come again. Unless you're a billionaire don't expect politics to ever work in your favor.

Hey ZenDen, it's good to see an original hippie here. I've had the pleasure to know many growing up. It is one of the most peaceful and accepting groups I know.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that there are a lot of younger people that are carrying on with what your generation kick started. Peaceful protest and opposition to oligarchy are alive and well. Just look at the crowds Senator Sanders is drawing.

The media is still smearing us though, especially fox news. But hey what can you do?

Any organic people's movements get co-opted by the establishment almost the second the media starts paying attention to them now, they'll co-opt and muddy anything remotely threatening. If not ignored you will be derided as crazy and or stupid.

The charade is wearing thin, with the internet they cannot control the free access of information and with that they are losing control of the narrative. There is a HUGE disconnect between the American people and the politicians elected to represent them.

Sorry, man, there just isn't a way to BS away from this graph's badness.

It's a very simple graph that's the equivalent of standing on your head with night-vision goggles and announcing that the world is upside-down, monochrome, and glowy. Also, if you're going to wave BS in my face by making it giant, then yes, I will likely notice it preferentially.

It wants to talk about gun homicides while ignoring gun suicides, far and away the largest cause of gun death.

It wants to pretend that the rise in gun ownership is responsible for the drop in gun homicide since 1993, when in fact it's well-known that all crime has dropped precipitously since 1993, and that *nobody knows why*. Not because people are standing around shrugging, but because after a lot of study, the people who study these things are forced to admit that they really do not know why crime across the board is down. They have some guesses. Gun proliferation as a reason is on the map only for gun rights activists.

It wants to decontextualize America and help you forget that we have, next to the rest of the world, a positively obscene gun death rate, and that something is clearly wrong in what we're doing. Again, not an inactive subject of study.

I'm not looking at the graph right now, because this is the last post I'll make on the subject, but I would guess that the scale is also truncated mightily so that this homicide-rate drop looks precipitious when in fact it's not, and that it's way out of proportion to the opposing scale, the one in gun ownership. And that if you rectified that situation the picture would look very different.

So yeah, distortion and cherrypicking of facts by an interested party to promote a preferred view in a simplistic, highly memorable manner? That's pretty much the textbook definition of propaganda.

Okay, I have a life to go live. Enjoy turning yourself into a pretzel to defend something indefensible. I think the political reality is that your time's just up on this issue, anyhow.

I have also felt the benefit of living in a community of decent people in the past and aim to move back to one soon.

Unfortunately where I live currently I am very much an outsider. As a result of standing up for what is right I have been subjected to harassment, vandalism and criminal damage to our home and threats of violence. I am very well aware of the importance of making a stand and, if standing alone, what the results are likely to be too.

'Exceptional'? Apart from being exceptionally violent (not to mention deluded when it comes to gun control), you are not above the rest of us poor sods on planet Earth.

If I were a betting man I'd bet that the typical Australian knows a helluva lot more about the United States than the average American even cares to know about Australia. It's not that we're uninformed but that your country, by comparison, is just insigificant.

You forgot to put "knows" in quotation marks.

Most Americans freely admit to knowing little about the rest of the world, and for that they are derided as ignorant and insular. But between Hollywood shoot-em-ups and the international media, most of which is somewhere to the left of the Daily Worker, many foreigners have an image of life in the US which bears little resemblance to reality.

I meant more about the individual states and our national history. I bet the average Aussie could find several states on a map of the US and know who Thomas Jefferson and Booker T. Washington was. They know probably that Yosemite is in California, Mt. Rushmore is in S. Dakota, and that Monticello is in Virginia.

Could the average American find Queensland or Victoria on a map?
Would the average American know where Uluru is or even what it is?
Do they even know who the current PM is?
They probably did know at one time but there's just not enough significance there to keep them in mind for long.
That's what I'm talking about.

I'm afraid there are quite a few Americans who couldn't find Australia on a globe. Or demonstrate any of the knowledge of their own country in your first paragraph.

If only we had a government-run educational system … oh wait …