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u.s. politics: sundowning on the american empire


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33 minutes ago, karaddin said:

@Bonnot OG I'm willing to trust Emily G when she's putting forth what she's managed to find so far on the shooter:

ETA: Id seen that post from a classmate of his earlier, whatever his political beliefs he sounds pretty clearly a misogynist and a scary one

Oh I trust her too. I saw her post earlier about it where his former classmate outed him as a violent asshole back then. Seems like another incel.

If you live in the PNW, California, or Arizona is recommend reading this tweet and it’s thread below.

 

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I knew you'd posted her before, that thread was just more recent than your last post so thought I'd bring it to your attention. Incel is definitely my gut assumption once you get that info but he seems like he was getting drawn into that at a young age even for them.

Ugh at the hate camp at Spokane, the nazis have set up across the Idaho border in the past but even the very Red towns weren't putting up with that shit 10 years ago and they got driven out by everyone refusing to serve them (if I'm remembering it right)

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4 hours ago, Fez said:

One big thing that pokes a hole in the games-cause-problems is Japan. In Japan, gaming culture is just as large, perhaps even larger, among a huge swath of young men and others. And yet Japan doesn't have anywhere near the level of mass shootings we do, or mass knife attacks because guns are so rare. 

And in fact, I think pretty much any single variable you pick out for the US, you can find just as present, or even moreso, in other countries, and none have the same level of mass violence that we do. It's something about how they all combine together here that makes such a toxic soup. Real, serious gun control would help, but we'll never get rid of all the guns, and there's always knifes. Or becoming a bomber. I think we have to figure out what the real root causes are and address them, or at least be able to identify them.

BUT, let's be fair, there is a well documented current of sexism and misogyny that runs through some parts of Japanese culture too. The difference is the violent actors, and I agree, this is a huge difference. But the hateful cultures still exist in both places, and I do not think Japan's online gaming culture is any less toxic in that regard. 

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24 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

BUT, let's be fair, there is a well documented current of sexism and misogyny that runs through some parts of Japanese culture too. The difference is the violent actors, and I agree, this is a huge difference. But the hateful cultures still exist in both places, and I do not think Japan's online gaming culture is any less toxic in that regard. 

Online gaming in general is full of racists, sexists, homophopes and transphobes. 

Source: I have played online games which lacked the option to disable chat and I tend to play on EU based servers in such games. 

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1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

BUT, let's be fair, there is a well documented current of sexism and misogyny that runs through some parts of Japanese culture too. The difference is the violent actors, and I agree, this is a huge difference. But the hateful cultures still exist in both places, and I do not think Japan's online gaming culture is any less toxic in that regard. 

I've been trying to avoid weighing in because I'm *supposed* to be writing my thesis but funnily enough (or not at all funny) Japan is the only place I happen to know of outside the US where brutal school-related murders are (or were) considered to be an actual social problem. 

I don't think games are the problem and I have no idea what the problem is (other than complex and probably not just one thing) 

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11 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

also saw an earlier interview with Mulvaney denying that Trump was a white supremacist and saying the cause of the shootings was mental illness, that you’d have to be crazy to be a white supremacist

I get he was indirectly pushing this message of “Well you then you can’t really hate them now can you? If they’re suffering a mental illness then you’re a dick for condemning them over it.”

Don’t treat people who want to kill and/or subjugate others for their race poorly. It’s not their fault.

Honestly, this is worse than the “they’re just expressing an opinion and you shouldn’t stigmatize someone for their beliefs” nonsense that’s often trotted out in defense white-supremacists who’re of the of the opinion that it’s ok to kill/subjugate others based on them being non-white. 

 

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6 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

theres also an issue of red brownism / Duginism, where leftists are a bit too friendly / cross over with fascists. Nazbols etc.

 

These types of left-wingers are good reminder old school bigotry could permeate anywhere. A person could be a racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic bigot, and still hate capitalism-especially if they see that as a system that truly helps groups that they don’t like. For example many would see it as bad when “respecting” the free-market bars government not to clamp down on media that depicts gay people...as people. What about their cultural values that says its ok to ridicule, beat, imprison and even kill gay people? How are most people supposed to know, it’s ok to treat gays poorly for being gay, if films, and tv shows are allowed to present them as not to be the caricature bigots have made gays out to be? 

 Bernie’s and quite frankly many of his supporters insistence on making economic concerns the driving force behind the  racism/xenophobia that infects this country is  dangerous because it allows these types of bigots a mask to hide their prejudices behind.

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6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

You might as well say watching TV or movies or listening to music or even reading (as entertainment) is stupid and unhealthy too. They are all passive consumption of entertainment. Video games are interactive, but still consumptive rather than productive. I suspect a lot of people who single out video games for derision also don't recognize video games as an art form similar to film / TV / music. There is excellent art being produced in video games as well as a plethora of shite, that's no different to all of the other mass entertainment media. People should have a healthy relationship with any form of entertainment media they choose to consume and try to avoid obsession and addiction. Video games are no better or worse in that regard.

Some people might say a whole online community dedicated to examining and arguing about the intricacies of one work of fantasy fiction is stupid and unhealthy. Consider the number of words and hours spent arguing about the parentage of a fictional bastard. Looked at from a certain perspective that is an unequivocal waste of time of everyone who has ever been involved in such a debate.

Personally I think the only way for toxic masculinity to be eliminated from video games is greater involvement of women both in the industry and as gamers. Though I don't envy what these pioneering women go through at this point in time. They are like modern day suffragettes, subject to the same sort of hatred, vitriol and threats to their person. Rather sad that such a parallel can be drawn 100 years after most democracies deigned to allow women to vote. 

Most of us don't spend every waking minute in front of a computer, TV or gaming console. I don't know anyone who does that. We have adult responsibilities and there's no time for that. Maybe it's an age gap. We liked video games, but the world wasn't connected. Player 2 had to be physically present and put the quarter in the slot or ready with the joystick or controller. There was still physical and real social interaction with other human beings.

My kids were older when online gaming became a thing. Maybe that's a factor, too. My daughter was 17 or 18 when a boyfriend introduced her to it. We had a PC that was in the dining room and everyone could see what you were doing. They did not get their own laptops till they went to college. Of course we had gaming systems like Sega (which was the height of technology!) then Game Cube, Wii,  X Box and Nintendo DS.

What you're essentially saying is that it's okay for boys and young men to torture and abuse women in gaming culture and they should just toughen up, and that abuse should be expected because hey, they're women. So you're just justifying the budding psychopaths' unrealistic views of women. As fragile as their egos are, they take silence as encouragement. 

Toxic masculinity will never be eliminated until other men call them on it. Have you ever done that? 

Ask yourself why more young girls and women don't game. Part of it is the inherent and rampant misogyny, but another part of it is that most of us don't get off on guns and killing things, even in a non-real environment. As we get older, other things become more important, like raising children. It's kind of hard to play when you barely have time for a shower.

I once dated a guy whose 24 year old son lived at home. He was so introverted it was a little scary. He went to work every day, but the minute he got home he went straight to his room and started playing. He would go to virtual parties instead of socializing in real life. No girlfriend--he didn't have the first clue how to go about talking to a woman. I remember thinking that he was a potential mass shooter. 

Edit: I don't think gaming is the problem any more than D&D or playing Ozzy Osbourne backwards was. But certain personalities gravitate to that world, and I'd be willing to bet that gaming allows them to express violent tendencies and attitudes they already had.

 

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The US has 4.4% of the world’s population and 42% of the world’s guns. The reason you have so many mass shootings and gun deaths is because you have so many guns. All kinds of studies and analysis have shown over and over and over again that there is a direct correlation between the two. It’s been mapped on graphs - there’s a mass of dots in the lower left corner representing all the countries in the world and the US dot is way out there in the upper right hand corner.

It’s not a mental health issue, the US spends the same amount of money on mental health that other developed nations do. In fact, studies have shown nations with higher mental health issues have higher suicide rates, because, you know, mentally ill people kill themselves at higher rates. They don’t plan mass killings, buy body armour, write manifestos, drive for 9 hours and walk into shopping malls and gun down people. All the while playing video games.

 

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23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The US has 4.4% of the world’s population and 42% of the world’s guns. The reason you have so many mass shootings and gun deaths is because you have so many guns. All kinds of studies and analysis have shown over and over and over again that there is a direct correlation between the two. It’s been mapped on graphs - there’s a mass of dots in the lower left corner representing all the countries in the world and the US dot is way out there in the upper right hand corner.

It’s not a mental health issue, the US spends the same amount of money on mental health that other developed nations do. In fact, studies have shown nations with higher mental health issues have higher suicide rates, because, you know, mentally ill people kill themselves at higher rates. They don’t plan mass killings, buy body armour, write manifestos, drive for 9 hours and walk into shopping malls and gun down people. All the while playing video games.

 

Guns are a huge part of it, but it's not just guns. The US has always had tons of guns, but it's only in recent decades that mass shootings have become so prevalent. And the countries with civilian gun rates the closest to ours (not that they are that close) don't have anywhere near the relatively same rates of mass shootings. There's plenty of countries that have about 1/4 the per capita gun rate that the US does, they don't have 1/4 the mass shooting rate.

There's also the question of why is the overall gun violence rate down so much in the US? Mass shootings have gotten more and more common, but one person shooting one other person has gotten much rarer. 

We need better gun control. But we also need to address whatever else is going on.

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26 minutes ago, Fez said:

Guns are a huge part of it, but it's not just guns. The US has always had tons of guns, but it's only in recent decades that mass shootings have become so prevalent. And the countries with civilian gun rates the closest to ours (not that they are that close) don't have anywhere near the relatively same rates of mass shootings. There's plenty of countries that have about 1/4 the per capita gun rate that the US does, they don't have 1/4 the mass shooting rate.

It's gun culture.

You have lots of guns in Switzerland but no gun culture. You have always had lotsa guns in the US but gun culture, i.e. the adoration of guns, is a relatively new development.

Think of it as a kind of death cult and it should start making sense. You can draw links with the importance of the military as well.

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3 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's gun culture.

You have lots of guns in Switzerland but no gun culture. You have always had lotsa guns in the US but gun culture, i.e. the adoration of guns, is a relatively new development.

Think of it as a kind of death cult and it should start making sense. You can draw links with the importance of the military as well.

No its not. The mass shooters typically aren't the guys participating in sports shooting, or religiously attending gun shows or generally prominent members of the gun owning community. Instead, they are generally outcast loners, hanging around in their mom's basement, sharing their poisonous thoughts over the internet.

Yes America has always had lots of guns, and has always had a "gun culture". But now that ready availability of guns has intersected with the age of social media, inattentive parenting, the breakdown of the family structure, and a host of modern social ills that awkward misfits are unable to deal with psychologically.

Mix that with access to guns and you get the phenomenon of mass shootings.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

No its not. The mass shooters typically aren't the guys participating in sports shooting, or religiously attending gun shows or generally prominent members of the gun owning community. Instead, they are generally outcast loners, hanging around in their mom's basement, sharing their poisonous thoughts over the internet.

Yes America has always had lots of guns, and has always had a "gun culture". But now that ready availability of guns has intersected with the age of social media, inattentive parenting, the breakdown of the family structure, and a host of modern social ills that awkward misfits are unable to deal with psychologically.

Mix that with access to guns and you get the phenomenon of mass shootings.

 

 

Deflect, deflect, deflect, that’s all you ever do on this subject. Just accept that you’ve been defending an ignorant position and evolve.

How are those marauding hordes of barbarians coming to attack your family, btw?

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2 hours ago, Fez said:

Guns are a huge part of it, but it's not just guns. The US has always had tons of guns, but it's only in recent decades that mass shootings have become so prevalent. And the countries with civilian gun rates the closest to ours (not that they are that close) don't have anywhere near the relatively same rates of mass shootings. There's plenty of countries that have about 1/4 the per capita gun rate that the US does, they don't have 1/4 the mass shooting rate.

There's also the question of why is the overall gun violence rate down so much in the US? Mass shootings have gotten more and more common, but one person shooting one other person has gotten much rarer. 

We need better gun control. But we also need to address whatever else is going on.

Where in heaven’s name did you see the gun violence rate in the US is down? I went looking and my search found article after article about the steadily increasing rates of gun violence in the US. Just a year or two ago you had a record high number of deaths by guns.

The reason you have so many mass shootings is because you have such easy access to guns, period. Other countries don’t have mass shootings because people don’t have easy access to guns. The UK has a lot of knife attacks, and the pro-gun crowd wags a finger and says see, take away the guns and the knives come out. People have access to knives, they use them.

If my neighbor gets into a fight with the loud and obnoxious family across the street, he doesn’t have a gun that he can pick up to use against 6 people in that house. If his teenage kid is a moody, depressed bastard who hates his school teacher and his fellow students, it’s extremely unlikely he can grab his dad’s gun and shoot up the school because his dad doesn’t own a gun.

 

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It’s nice to see the president tying gun control with immigration. What better way to reward the shooter for what he did.

Also, video games are bad, apparently. I killed a lot of people in RDR2 this weekend. I guess that makes me a potential murderer now……

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16 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Where in heaven’s name did you see the gun violence rate in the US is down? I went looking and my search found article after article about the steadily increasing rates of gun violence in the US. Just a year or two ago you had a record high number of deaths by guns.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/

Few years old, but in 1993 the gun violence rate was 15.2 per 100,000 people (7.0 were homicides), by 2014 that declined to 10.5 per 100,000 people (3.4 were homicides). Non-fatal violent firearm convictions (since its hard to get data on total incidents) declined from 725.3 per 100,000 in 1993 to 174.8 in 2014.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666209430/deaths-from-gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world

More recent data shows that has been a slight uptick since then, and that the firearm homicide rate in 2017 was 4.43 per 100,000. However, while that uptick is concerning and needs to be addressed, it is far below where things were. Furthermore, even if 2014 was the low point, we were already seeing a large increase in mass shootings by then.

ETA: The reason you see articles about gun deaths increasing is because suicide deaths are included in that count unless homicide is specified. The rate of suicide deaths by gun has been remained steady, and since the population has been rising, that means the number of suicide gun deaths has increased.

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