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19 comments

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1 FemNaziBitch  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 10:15:41am

UNFUCKINGBELIVABLE.

I’m going to wretch

2 Mostly sane, most of the time.  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 10:18:49am

Unacceptable. I hope he gets the maximum penalty.

3 Decatur Deb  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 10:27:52am

Feared for his life—stood his ground.

4 majii  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 10:54:52am

It’s sad to say it, but there are many Americans that feel the same way that Butler does. They’ll say they’re Christians on the one hand, and on the other they’ll say all kinds of ugly things about Black, LGBTQ, Hispanic, Muslim Americans, and others. We saw this when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin in February of this year. He felt fully justified taking the kid’s life and his recent interview with Hannity showed it. Zimmerman said it was God’s will that he kill Trayvon Martin, and that he regrets nothing. The thing Zimmerman didn’t think about was that Trayvon had parents who cared and were determined to get justice for their son.

5 Destro  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 11:34:52am

I said it before I will say it again - I know nerves were raw after that Aurora mass shooting when I said this and I understand why I got backlash - but here goes - America has a homicidal mania problem.

We are an advanced industrial first world country and our homicide rate is just a little better (.8%) than Iraq’s and Iraq is an anarchic, sectarian war zone! We have a sick culture. I am not even blaming guns. Canada has the same if not more firearm ownership than the USA and they have a very low homicide rate.

There is something really wrong in America and has been for a long time. People, live overseas in similar socio-economic countries (Western Europe, Japan, etc) and you will see America’s condition is not normal. It’s abnormal. It’s f’cked up.

6 Shiplord Kirel  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 12:35:05pm

re: #5 Destro

I said it before I will say it again - I know nerves were raw after that Aurora mass shooting when I said this and I understand why I got backlash - but here goes - America has a homicidal mania problem.

We are an advanced industrial first world country and our homicide rate is just a little better (.8%) than Iraq’s and Iraq is an anarchic, sectarian war zone! We have a sick culture. I am not even blaming guns. Canada has the same if not more firearm ownership than the USA and they have a very low homicide rate.

There is something really wrong in America and has been for a long time. People, live overseas in similar socio-economic countries (Western Europe, Japan, etc) and you will see America’s condition is not normal. It’s abnormal. It’s f’cked up.

See The Pursuit of Loneliness by Philip Slater, first published in 1970. This connects a variety of American ills, including violence, to sexual repression resulting from conservative religious influence. This begins with the Puritans and runs through present-day fundamentalists. Slater may be overstating the case on sex, partly for reader appeal. I think he is on target otherwise though, since sexual repression is only one aspect of the negative influence of certain long-running religious strains. Today, a comparison with religiously oppressive societies in the Muslim world would be inevitable and obvious.

I don’t want to join a certain tribe of 60s intellectuals and blame the long extinct Puritans for everything that is wrong here, but there is a very real correlation between conservative religion and a variety of deeply ingrained social problems. Puritans never settled in Canada and fundamentalists are a little thin on the ground there. Great Britain expelled the Puritans, or subsumed them into other denominations, and fundamentalists have never gained much of a foothold there. In this country, fundamentalism is intimately connected with the gun culture. This is in sharp contrast to the UK and Canada, where gun ownership is strongly connected with military tradition and the rural lifestyle.

7 Shiplord Kirel  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 12:44:17pm
According to a charging affidavit obtained by The Star, Butler had referred to Pamela Rogers’ child and other children at his apartment complex with racial slurs.
Gant was shot between the eyes when he went to Butler’s apartment to confront him over the remarks, the documents said.

No doubt the crazed racist will claim he was in fear of his life when Gant arrived at his door. You know what? Someone who uses slurs about children should reasonably expect to be put in fear of his life.

8 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 1:04:42pm

re: #5 Destro

I said it before I will say it again - I know nerves were raw after that Aurora mass shooting when I said this and I understand why I got backlash - but here goes - America has a homicidal mania problem.

You’re just getting backlash because you’re using completely stupid and inappropriate pseudo-psychological language to talk about this shit. It’s not because people don’t think America has a problem with violence— we really obviously do.

I’d say our high incidence of wife and child beating shows an even more ingrained problem.

9 Destro  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 3:33:13pm

re: #8 Obdicut

You’re just getting backlash because you’re using completely stupid and inappropriate pseudo-psychological language to talk about this shit. It’s not because people don’t think America has a problem with violence— we really obviously do.

I’d say our high incidence of wife and child beating shows an even more ingrained problem.

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

What would you suggest I use instead of homidical mania? Sociopathic culture?

10 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 4:36:43pm

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.

11 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 4:37:31pm

re: #9 Destro

Sociopathic culture?

That would literally be an oxymoron, by the way.

You could say, if you want, that we value anti-social traits, like selfishness and lying, as a survey of CEOs will prove.

12 Destro  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 4:47:03pm

re: #10 Obdicut

can say that America has a love affair with violence

You saying America has a love affair with violence is synonomous with me accusing America of having a homicidal mania…..

homicidal = having a tendency to commit murder. Check.

mania= An excessively intense enthusiasm, interest, or desire; a craze. Check.

13 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 4:49:22pm

re: #12 Destro

You saying America has a love affair with violence is synonomous with me saying Americ of having a homicidal mania!

No, it’s not. Mania actually means something. Violence is not homicide. Language is not something you can just fuck any way you want.

Listen, if you just want to go on flailing, feel free, but what the fuck is the problem in listening to criticism of style? You’ll get more people actually paying attention to you if you frame the issues in a straightforward way that doesn’t allow easy dismissal because you’re riding the hyperbole highway.

14 Destro  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 4:51:00pm

re: #13 Obdicut

No, it’s not. Mania actually means something. Violence is not homicide. Language is not something you can just fuck any way you want.

Listen, if you just want to go on flailing, feel free, but what the fuck is the problem in listening to criticism of style? You’ll get more people actually paying attention to you if you frame the issues in a straightforward way that doesn’t allow easy dismissal because you’re riding the hyperbole highway.

homicidal = having a tendency to commit murder. Check.

mania= An excessively intense enthusiasm, interest, or desire; a craze. Check.

15 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 5:03:26pm

re: #14 Destro

homicidal = having a tendency to commit murder. Check.

homicidal and violent are not synonyms. No check.

Mania and love affair are not synonyms. No check.

Check out this site. It might help you. Though I really need to bear down and get some writing done for it.

[Link: www.winningwordsproject.com…]

16 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 5:08:54pm

re: #14 Destro

To put it another way:

What you’re saying is Americans have a tendency to go crazy and kill people.

What I’m saying is that it’s different— and arguably worse— than that. Americans have a tendency to remain perfectly sane and still kill people.

17 Destro  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 7:18:04pm

re: #15 Obdicut

homicidal and violent are not synonyms. No check.

Mania and love affair are not synonyms. No check.

Check out this site. It might help you. Though I really need to bear down and get some writing done for it.

[Link: www.winningwordsproject.com…]

I did not say America had a violence problem I said America had a murder problem. I compared MURDER rates not violent crime rates. I wrote America’s MURDER rate was on par with Iraq’s MURDER rate.

18 Obdicut  Tue, Jul 31, 2012 7:49:44pm

re: #17 Destro

I did not say America had a violence problem I said America had a murder problem. I compared MURDER rates not violent crime rates. I wrote America’s MURDER rate was on par with Iraq’s MURDER rate.

Yeah, I know you did. I’m not sure why you feel this is so important to caps-lock reiterate.

I was criticizing your focus on murder, and your psychobabble language. Two separate criticisms.

Though, here’s another one: The main reasons for the high murder rate is a very hard-fought drug war and systemic poverty in a lot of places in the US. There are other countries that have loads of guns and lower murder rates, because they have better attitudes towards drugs than we do and fewer problems with massive wealth inequity. A large number of those murders are black-on-black murders related to gangs, often kids who have had no real life choices, who nearly inevitably wound up in gang culture. It’s irking when you talk about homicidal mania in the US because it reminds me quite a lot of dog whistles about black violence.

I know that’s not at all, in any way, how you meant it, but a lot of the language you’re using is the same that people on the right use to scaremonger.

Alternately, it can just be seen as a condemnation of all murders as driven wild by this culture, rather than influenced by their actual life circumstances. Many murders are murders of desperation, and while they’re not in any way excusable they may be quite understandable.

In cultural problems, we have a great toleration for violence, especially any violence we can see as vigilante. But the amount of murders we have I think is much more influenced by the specific socio-economic conditions we have due to the drug war and systemic poverty in inner cities, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, etc.

19 Destro  Wed, Aug 1, 2012 7:44:57am

re: #18 Obdicut

Yeah, I know you did. I’m not sure why you feel this is so important to caps-lock reiterate.

I was criticizing your focus on murder, and your psychobabble language. Two separate criticisms.

Though, here’s another one: The main reasons for the high murder rate is a very hard-fought drug war and systemic poverty in a lot of places in the US. There are other countries that have loads of guns and lower murder rates, because they have better attitudes towards drugs than we do and fewer problems with massive wealth inequity. A large number of those murders are black-on-black murders related to gangs, often kids who have had no real life choices, who nearly inevitably wound up in gang culture. It’s irking when you talk about homicidal mania in the US because it reminds me quite a lot of dog whistles about black violence.

I know that’s not at all, in any way, how you meant it, but a lot of the language you’re using is the same that people on the right use to scaremonger.

Alternately, it can just be seen as a condemnation of all murders as driven wild by this culture, rather than influenced by their actual life circumstances. Many murders are murders of desperation, and while they’re not in any way excusable they may be quite understandable.

In cultural problems, we have a great toleration for violence, especially any violence we can see as vigilante. But the amount of murders we have I think is much more influenced by the specific socio-economic conditions we have due to the drug war and systemic poverty in inner cities, Appalachia, the Rust Belt, etc.

Michael Moore made a few documentary movies about what is wrong with America that can cause this from economics to cultural reasons. When you have a society built around the social-darwinian model where losers are ground down and discarded then even racism makes sense because you don’t wan’t your kind losing to those others. It is an all-vs-all world that creates this mindset. It’s the mindset of the prison exercise yard as the model for American society.


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