re: #9 Destro

I am using language that is designed to hit at the crux of the matter to whoever is passing by and feels like reading.

And I’m telling you that your language puts me off mightily, and I’ve seen it put off others, too. Do you give a shit?

I am not writting a scientific paper but having a discussion using language that can get to the heart of the matter with as few words as possible.

There is no way that you have to use pseudo-psychobabble of that level here. here. You can say that America has a love affair with violence, that America is comfortable with a level of violence that’s shocking, that American culture assumes that the one doing the beat-down is in the right, that someone who got smashed in the mouth deserved it, that the dead guy must have done something. You can say, if you want to verge towards the psychological, that Americans fetishize violence, that Americans have a fixed idea that might makes right and that the white-hatted hero can defeat the enemy with a single punch to the jaw. You can say that Americans fantasize that guns always hit their target and never blast passers-by. You can say that we prize anti-social traits, esteem bullies, and enjoy cruelty.

But for some reason, you’re dead set on using the stupid ‘homicidal mania’, which makes me laugh just as much as ‘reefer madness’ did. The problem is not homicidal mania. I wish the problem were homicidal mania. The problem is a comfortableness with violence, with homicide, that normalizes it, that makes it not the actions of a maniac, that makes it acceptable to express the desire to shoot someone.