East High School shooting - March 22, 2023 This past weekend I was talking to my oldest friend (since before we were old enough to know what friends are), who still lives in Colorado, and she brought up the recent school shooting at East High School in Denver, reminding me of the many times both of us had been there “back in the day.”
Anger used to fuel art, music, writing, and activism, acts that required civilized conduct. We learned to sublimate because at that time the civilized world would not accept what is happening now that half the country seems to accept it. Nothing will change until bullets whiz by the heads of all of the US lawmakers currently whoring for the NRA.
By the way, I hope Mexico wins its lawsuit against US gun manufacturers for arming the cartels and making parts of their country hellholes from which decent people must flee in order to survive.
This is another excellent reason to bring all the high-capacity semi-auto rifles and pistols under the National Firearms Act.....NFA weapons are much more strictly controlled; you don't just waltz into a gun store and buy several ARs the way you can in some gun stores today in some places. The vast majority of illegal guns in Mexico come from straw buyers in the US - people who buy thew guns for others, not themselves. There are no straw buyers for NFA weapons, and if you did manage to do it, there would be a federal prison term waiting for you when you got found out.
For people with an imagination, compassion, and a conscience, the simulations in the WaPo article are plenty graphic. But not for Republican Congresspersons and state legislators. They need an extended dose of much stronger medicine. I want to see them all confined to a locked room for a 2-hour documentary, strapped into chairs facing a huge screen, heads in a locked, cushioned frame facing screenward, so they cannot turn away. I want the documentary to be a compilation of crime scene photos of each person found dead at the scene of a mass shooting, starting with Sandy Hook, interspersed with any available footage of loved ones waiting in agony for news and then reacting to the terrible truth, and footage of first responders breaking down. Every legislator with a rating over 50% from the NRA must watch, no exceptions, no getting out early. If they are all sobbing and vomiting by the end, and have PTSD that requires extensive therapy afterward, that's fine.
I think they need to have the insensitivity emotionally shocked out of them. That's the point. They need to be rendered incapable of thinking about gun violence in the abstract, bloodless terms that have so far caused them to vote for more and more and more guns and unregulated access to guns by unregulated groups of people. The irony is that there would be an outcry about subjecting these poor legislators to this emotionally devastating, physically nauseating, permanent nightmare-causing content, as if _they_ were the important victims, poor things.
This, just this! We sanitize violence in this country. We refuse to deal with the reality of these shootings. You want gun control? Then demand that the papers and TV stations show EVERYTHING - the blood, the small bodies shot to pieces, the brains leaking onto the floor. That's what you have to do to start the process of voting out of office every single enabler of the NRA and the gun industry and its marketers. When 19 kids and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas, the TV stations showed how the cops waited outside in the hall while the killer did his work. They edited out the sound because it had the screams of the kids as they were shot and lay dying. That is poor reporting - I no longer care how many people are "upset" or "disturbed" by real violence. You want this to stop - we must vote every gun-enabling politician out of office, EVERY ELECTION, until they are gone or realize the NRA will not save them, and change sides. And the only way I know to do that is to bring home to every voter what really happens in a mass shooting - in every shooting. Unfortunately, even the WaPo recreation of the bullet wounds, well done for computer art, was still an abstract representation - no blood, no guts. You have to hit the public with the truth. It is said that if you know the truth, the truth will make you free. Let's do this.
Oh my god. A child holding that sign! What a powerful and heartbreaking thing. I was in second grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. For about two weeks I was terrified every second that we were going to be annihilated in a nuclear attack. Two weeks. These days, American children are afraid that on any random day, they could be the next obliterated victims of the next school shooting. And the callous assholes like Rep. Burchett of Tennessee say things like “We’re not going to fix it … blather blather shameful excuses like you can’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and we have to change Americans’ *hearts*”. And then they protect their own children by homeschooling them, an option affordable for only the economically secure and privileged. I cannot tamp down the loathing I feel for the legislators who vote for guns.
To our foreign enemies, our gun fetish is seen as destabilizing, so they keep up the pressure and propaganda, which elects true believing ideologues..
To the Domestic Libertarians, guns are not just a right, but a way to destabilize and then privatize the Department of Education. Libertarian’s want a federal government that only provides for national defense. Everything else is up to the states.
Thank you so much for that - shes such a strong voice right now. AND I LOVE chickens! Used to have a flock of bantys - they were wonderful - I'd love to have more again.
Wow. Thank you for the link to Joyce Vance’s post. Obviously she’s no relation to J.D. The photo of the young with the sign. Wow. Burned into my heart now, too. Thank you.
Boggles the mind, doesnt it? There arent more people with mental illness now - but sure seems like there are more who no longer get any care. Think about the number of mental hospitals that were shut down years ago - and how many of the people who no longer had the help now are living among our homeless. Funny - well, odd, I guess - this issue doesnt seem to come from the homeless community - but then - I would guess - no money to buy a gun?
I think the whole "attitude" towards guns has morphed into something else. When I was a kid (long long long ago) many of the boys (never girls) in school would take off the first day of hunting season - with very few repercussions. I remember pictures of my husband at 6 ! with his first gun - a 22. But I also remember his stories of his dad not just stressing, but very vigilant, regarding safety! And I have to admit - my husband was just as much. My son loved being in the woods with his dad - didnt get to spend that much time with him otherwise - but killing animals just didnt appeal to him.
Sorry - rambled off on another track! Sign of old age.
I agree, TC - it could well have happened way back when - but it DIDNT!
I knew disturbed kids in high school, way back there. I knew them when I worked at high school in the 90’s. Society has given permission in a perverted way. Grievance = societal punishment, the worse the better. One of Malcolm Gladwell’s books spoke to why such cycles start and stop in a society. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find it. But republicans and their grievance crap have changed life for us all, in my humble opinion…
There also seems to have been a resurgence of an "honor" culture, in which any perceived slight or insult has to be avenged, usually with violence - to "teach the other person a lesson"..... This certainly reflects some of the increase in social violence. Fighting the honor culture will have to be an important part of dealing with our violent society.
My brother and I shot 22s at MIT Day Camp when I was 7 and he was going on 10--the summer that JFK was nominated for pres. That was the only time in our lives either of us shot guns (except for a b b gun that my brother had later, a device that hardly counts as a gun IMO. I mean, a direct hit by a b b gun on a dung beetle probably wouldn't even harm it!
My mother was East High class of '41. Her sister, my aunt, was probably class of '40. My understanding is that when they were there, it was still the Jewish school. Other relatives undoubtedly went there. That's the first connection I'm aware of with any shootings. Definitely weird. My mother and my aunt, and my great Uncle Phillip Hornbein, who ran the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the last century, would be appalled about this shooting, but more so that our country JUST CAN'T SEEM TO PASS LEGISLATION TO KEEP GUNS out of the hands of nutcases, and other dangerous hands, even after gun deaths have surpassed car-related deaths. Truly this is truly crazy stuff.
EDIT: and here I am forgetting that my maternal grandmother, Mildred Hornbein, probably the first female Coloradan to get a PhD, was likely also a graduate of East High.
Yeah, it was still "the Jewish school" when I was there. "Mommie dearest" was terrified that Pat (my East High girlriend) was "one of them" when I first started dating her.
in my Total Bizarro World neighborhood, EVERY school was "The Jewish School." my next door neighbor had a Sicilian mother (and grandmother, who never mastered more than three consecutive English words in her late '80s AND an alcoholic Yiddish-speaking grandpa, both of whom lived in this little row house, along with Jeff and his two sisters and parents), and if anyone mentioned this fact, they'd get laid to filth for the sheer rudeness involved in reminding Jeff that he wasn't QUITE "one of us."
I ended up falling madly in love with one of the fifty or so African-Americans in my graduating class of over 1200. neurodiversity? contrariness? I always chalked it up to good taste. plus, to most of us, Jewish girls seemed sort of boring back then...there were just SO MANY of them.
on the other hand, my mother grew up in Monroe, LA, in which there were about fifty Jewish families in the whole burg, so my mom ALWAYS went out with gentile boys, all of whom thought she--with all the other Jews in town--was exotic and profoundly sexy. which only goes to show that the groups with the smallest populations in any given area tend to be considered really, really INTERESTING just for drawing breath. I will say that one advantage to being Jewish in Loosiana back then was that among the resident Jews, that status was much more important than any other class or financial divisions.
I went out with a girl in HS and college (still a friend) whose father taught Navigation in Monroe during the war. I thought this was an interesting coincidence, but it gets better. he noticed the same thing about how being Jewish was more important than salary, education, etc. (how was that for avoiding the use of "t****ed?) and said it was REALLY confirmed for him when he attended a big, expensive party thrown by the owner of the largest department store in town so that local Jewish girls could hook up with Jewish GIs. my response was "fuck. my parents MET at that party." which was true.
so was Pat actually an MOT, or was that just your mom's paranoia? what was supposed to happen to you if she was?
my mom told me once that a date asked if he could see her horns. she treated the request with good humor, but there was obviously no second date. and at that point (after the aforementioned party) she was just biding her time waiting to see if my dad was gonna make it through VE Day, which he did or this would be some kind of Twilight Zone episode.
I have to say that, in the 60s, certain Jewish girls from NYC were the furthest thing from "boring" this midwestern Goy ever met. They were highly educational.
Pat was thoroughly Congregational, which was the religion Mommie Dearest was also involved with at the time (her careening trip through various varieties of protestant Christianity is a story all its own) so her mind was set at ease. Of course, when the next one was *Catholic* there was a real brouhaha.
There was a permanent Brouhaha with Mommie Dearest, it just changed topics as it went along. There's a reason why the day she died, after I put down the phone from the notification, that I danced around the room and sang "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead." The problem is that she may now be gone 30 years, but the shit she generated still pops up in me whenever I am not vigilant.
Sure is telling about your "childhood". There was much alcoholism in my family but I knew I was loved. You've come a long way, TC (old saying, but true)
The reason didn’t necessarily start out that way. It was just a political calculation that was deliberate for the purpose of making enemies of democrats (who were trying to take your guns). And they lied about the constitution to do it. That it was a plan run amok just made it more attractive. Greedy bastards signed on and the bodies of mangled children is the cost.
I would like to live in a world where not one more republican would ever be allowed in the halls of our government. Just think of the world our children could inherit…
I wondered how long it would take for the "Christian" denomination of the school before it became a "thing". Seems little old Josh Hawley wants to make this a hate crime.
Dont get me wrong - hate sure does come into it - one way or another. Anyone who could do this to little nine year old kids and adults, people who work & care for those kids, sure does have a lot of hate. But - its not the school, Christian or otherwise, that makes it a hate crime. Its the act itself - every one of these acts has been a crime of hate - whether it meets the criteria for it or not.
It has been reported that the school was chosen because as a private school it did not have a Nashville PD resource officer on campus. The shooter chose it because the security at other schools was too tight. Of course, years ago, we didn't have to worry that the security at our kids' schools was tight enough.....
Considering the results of other schools that DID have a resource officer - sounds like this school was NOT a good choice because of the police response. The police deserve a lot of credit for the way they reacted.
And yeah - security never seemed to be a concern years ago.
Ideation is a word that has been trending lately about suicide. But what if we applied it more broadly? Where do these ideas of violence come from? If you have been stumped for more than five seconds, then you haven't turned on a TV or any modern device connected to the internet.
Anyone else feel as if the people driving now act like they are in a video game?
TC, back in the day - the times you describe, what were we watching? What games were popular?
Here's my hypothesis. Popular culture has become so monstrously horrific, so brutal, so murderous, so vicious, so blood thirsty, so vile, so evil, so over the top of normalcy...that it is bleeding into real life.
I never thought this way in the past. But now I am convinced. Every element of our entertainment culture constantly tries to exceed the outrage factor - to gain more eyeballs and ad revenue.
Yes, I know that studies have indicated that normal kids can play even violent "first person shooter" video games and not become violent. But that presupposes "normal" kids. I love the old Warner Bros. cartoons - Roadrunner and Coyote, Bugs and Elmer Fudd, etc. - they were finny and often violent, but it was cartoon violence that none of us ever thought was real. But we didn't live in that world all the time, because there were other things to do. We played cowboys and Indians and war games, shooting games that everyone did back then, but we didn't have the carnage we have now. I suspect that a steady diet of violent games or violent entertainment can gradually inure a person to the bad effects of violence and make it easier to engage in violence in their lives. At any rate, we know that all the resistance to reasonable gun control (hell, ANY gun control) is coming from the Republican Party. That is the problem we face now - NO gun control measures will come out of the Congress as long as the Republicans hold the House and the filibuster holds the Senate.....
I read my comment again this morning and guess what came to mind? "Yellowjackets". A series about teenage cannibals. A headline from Entertainment Mag: "Yellowjackets boss says cannibalism is 'just the tip of the iceberg' "
Then there are all the "apocalyptic" movies, tv shows, books on & on. Yes there is that danger but marketing of that danger has increased way beyond. More nightmare. Saw the ads for Yellowjacket but didnt delve into it enough to know what its about. Now that I do, not interested.
Not a school shooting but one of my step-grandsons was among 3 more 18 year old males who were doing some kind of smokable drugs, sitting around a table with a handgun playing Russian roulette. My grandson got the bullet in his forehead. Another kind of tragedy, youth, testosterone, drugs and a gun with one bullet in it, lethal combination.
That's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that. I had a brother with a drug problem and a suicidal ideation. I went over to his house one night and found him playing Russian roulette. Fortunately he was so drunk and stoned, I was able to distract him and unloaded the pistol - the one bullet would have been next if he'd pulled the trigger. He finally managed to achieve his goal a year later, driving onto an off-ramp meeting an 18 wheeler at a combined speed of around 90mph; the only thing good was it was instantaneous.
Kristof nailed it - the problem and the solution. This is one of the overall best articles on the gun problem and possible solutions. He makes excellent points, such as the private ownership of machine guns with no crimes committed with them, that should give us hope that we can (and must) deal with this situation. The far-right will object to ANY attempts at regulation, but they are a vocal but small part of the shooting community. Work with the more responsible sportsmen/women (yes, they shoot too) and we can bring this under control. It will be expensive to correct what we have allowed for too long, but kids unborn will thank us for it.....
No doubt about the effort and expense required, some of it will have to go toward making sure that the two Senators from MO are replaced when they come up for re-election.
Thank you, TC, for making those articles available--although you are likely preaching to the choir, here. I had already done some research on the affects of the high muzzle velocity and the damage from the massive energy blast and the cavitation of the bullet but the appropriately horrifying effects were really brought home with the three-D graphics and the effects on actual victims.
I wish I could say that having that article widely read would change hearts and minds, but I fear that until such a horrific massacre happens "close to home", none of those Congressional NRA lobby money recipients will ever have an epiphany...and honestly, I would never ever want or wish for such a thing to happen to otherwise innocent people.
You raise an observation that hasn’t been discussed much. Why now? Statistically when did mass shootings start as a regular occurrence? There was the Texas Tower and about two decades later the McDonalds shooting. But sometime around...2000? It just started to seem so frequent. Mr. Alstrom has an appealing theory. And certainly the ease of acquiring horridly lethal weapons is part of it post 2004. Has to be some published work on that question somewhere.
And that graphic WaPo article. Stomach churning. And that one kid shot so many times. I haven’t the imagination for it. Shudders.
Maybe we need to start seeing the bodies. It won’t change the mind of a spineless congressman, but it may change the mind of his constituents. People will object but screw ‘em. We, the people, collectively, are allowing this mayhem. We all need to share the consequence.
Just finished The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple about the Biden WH. Very informative & much that I either didnt see in the news or as I said on LFAA comment - buried under drama & clicks!
The problem is todays young men and men are buying a black rifle to prove their manhood. They live on their cell phones and video games, watch porn and become angry and frustrated. They see the black rifle as macho. But they are sick wimps.
One of those posts I actually don't "like" because that's a damn sad story, but it needs an up vote because we need to remind ourselves that story exists.
It gets better/worse. The oldest, at 24 (at the time of this incident), had some of his buds over and of course were cracking a few brews and pulling out their guns. What do you know!
In all the fooling around, one of the 9 millimeters
went off and my grandson got hit in the upper front shoulder. They told the ER doc a gun got dropped on floor.
He didn't buy it and had to report it to local law.
Anger + gun = shooting.
Anger used to fuel art, music, writing, and activism, acts that required civilized conduct. We learned to sublimate because at that time the civilized world would not accept what is happening now that half the country seems to accept it. Nothing will change until bullets whiz by the heads of all of the US lawmakers currently whoring for the NRA.
By the way, I hope Mexico wins its lawsuit against US gun manufacturers for arming the cartels and making parts of their country hellholes from which decent people must flee in order to survive.
This is another excellent reason to bring all the high-capacity semi-auto rifles and pistols under the National Firearms Act.....NFA weapons are much more strictly controlled; you don't just waltz into a gun store and buy several ARs the way you can in some gun stores today in some places. The vast majority of illegal guns in Mexico come from straw buyers in the US - people who buy thew guns for others, not themselves. There are no straw buyers for NFA weapons, and if you did manage to do it, there would be a federal prison term waiting for you when you got found out.
For people with an imagination, compassion, and a conscience, the simulations in the WaPo article are plenty graphic. But not for Republican Congresspersons and state legislators. They need an extended dose of much stronger medicine. I want to see them all confined to a locked room for a 2-hour documentary, strapped into chairs facing a huge screen, heads in a locked, cushioned frame facing screenward, so they cannot turn away. I want the documentary to be a compilation of crime scene photos of each person found dead at the scene of a mass shooting, starting with Sandy Hook, interspersed with any available footage of loved ones waiting in agony for news and then reacting to the terrible truth, and footage of first responders breaking down. Every legislator with a rating over 50% from the NRA must watch, no exceptions, no getting out early. If they are all sobbing and vomiting by the end, and have PTSD that requires extensive therapy afterward, that's fine.
They don’t care. Isn’t that more clear than any other issue on the topic
I think they need to have the insensitivity emotionally shocked out of them. That's the point. They need to be rendered incapable of thinking about gun violence in the abstract, bloodless terms that have so far caused them to vote for more and more and more guns and unregulated access to guns by unregulated groups of people. The irony is that there would be an outcry about subjecting these poor legislators to this emotionally devastating, physically nauseating, permanent nightmare-causing content, as if _they_ were the important victims, poor things.
😥😭
A Clockwork Orange on them.
This, just this! We sanitize violence in this country. We refuse to deal with the reality of these shootings. You want gun control? Then demand that the papers and TV stations show EVERYTHING - the blood, the small bodies shot to pieces, the brains leaking onto the floor. That's what you have to do to start the process of voting out of office every single enabler of the NRA and the gun industry and its marketers. When 19 kids and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas, the TV stations showed how the cops waited outside in the hall while the killer did his work. They edited out the sound because it had the screams of the kids as they were shot and lay dying. That is poor reporting - I no longer care how many people are "upset" or "disturbed" by real violence. You want this to stop - we must vote every gun-enabling politician out of office, EVERY ELECTION, until they are gone or realize the NRA will not save them, and change sides. And the only way I know to do that is to bring home to every voter what really happens in a mass shooting - in every shooting. Unfortunately, even the WaPo recreation of the bullet wounds, well done for computer art, was still an abstract representation - no blood, no guts. You have to hit the public with the truth. It is said that if you know the truth, the truth will make you free. Let's do this.
“If I die in a school shooting, leave my body on the steps of Congress.” -American child’s poster at a vigil for Nashville tragedy.
Oh my god. A child holding that sign! What a powerful and heartbreaking thing. I was in second grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. For about two weeks I was terrified every second that we were going to be annihilated in a nuclear attack. Two weeks. These days, American children are afraid that on any random day, they could be the next obliterated victims of the next school shooting. And the callous assholes like Rep. Burchett of Tennessee say things like “We’re not going to fix it … blather blather shameful excuses like you can’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and we have to change Americans’ *hearts*”. And then they protect their own children by homeschooling them, an option affordable for only the economically secure and privileged. I cannot tamp down the loathing I feel for the legislators who vote for guns.
Recognize the pattern of aligned interests.
To our foreign enemies, our gun fetish is seen as destabilizing, so they keep up the pressure and propaganda, which elects true believing ideologues..
To the Domestic Libertarians, guns are not just a right, but a way to destabilize and then privatize the Department of Education. Libertarian’s want a federal government that only provides for national defense. Everything else is up to the states.
Oh, I like your "dosage prescription". Not sure if it would work, but I'd purely love to see it tried!
I betcha it'd work on some of them.
some here, some there...pretty soon you might be talking about real numbers.
Elizabeth, u might like what Joyce Vance just wrote, and stronger is the last image, it’s now burned into my heart.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joycevance/p/we-all-need-a-break?r=44kjm&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thank you so much for that - shes such a strong voice right now. AND I LOVE chickens! Used to have a flock of bantys - they were wonderful - I'd love to have more again.
Wow. Thank you for the link to Joyce Vance’s post. Obviously she’s no relation to J.D. The photo of the young with the sign. Wow. Burned into my heart now, too. Thank you.
Boggles the mind, doesnt it? There arent more people with mental illness now - but sure seems like there are more who no longer get any care. Think about the number of mental hospitals that were shut down years ago - and how many of the people who no longer had the help now are living among our homeless. Funny - well, odd, I guess - this issue doesnt seem to come from the homeless community - but then - I would guess - no money to buy a gun?
I think the whole "attitude" towards guns has morphed into something else. When I was a kid (long long long ago) many of the boys (never girls) in school would take off the first day of hunting season - with very few repercussions. I remember pictures of my husband at 6 ! with his first gun - a 22. But I also remember his stories of his dad not just stressing, but very vigilant, regarding safety! And I have to admit - my husband was just as much. My son loved being in the woods with his dad - didnt get to spend that much time with him otherwise - but killing animals just didnt appeal to him.
Sorry - rambled off on another track! Sign of old age.
I agree, TC - it could well have happened way back when - but it DIDNT!
I knew disturbed kids in high school, way back there. I knew them when I worked at high school in the 90’s. Society has given permission in a perverted way. Grievance = societal punishment, the worse the better. One of Malcolm Gladwell’s books spoke to why such cycles start and stop in a society. I’ll have to dig around and see if I can find it. But republicans and their grievance crap have changed life for us all, in my humble opinion…
There also seems to have been a resurgence of an "honor" culture, in which any perceived slight or insult has to be avenged, usually with violence - to "teach the other person a lesson"..... This certainly reflects some of the increase in social violence. Fighting the honor culture will have to be an important part of dealing with our violent society.
My brother and I shot 22s at MIT Day Camp when I was 7 and he was going on 10--the summer that JFK was nominated for pres. That was the only time in our lives either of us shot guns (except for a b b gun that my brother had later, a device that hardly counts as a gun IMO. I mean, a direct hit by a b b gun on a dung beetle probably wouldn't even harm it!
Thank you. This article is a real service; people need this history and perspective. Much appreciated.
My mother was East High class of '41. Her sister, my aunt, was probably class of '40. My understanding is that when they were there, it was still the Jewish school. Other relatives undoubtedly went there. That's the first connection I'm aware of with any shootings. Definitely weird. My mother and my aunt, and my great Uncle Phillip Hornbein, who ran the Colorado Democratic Party for most of the first half of the last century, would be appalled about this shooting, but more so that our country JUST CAN'T SEEM TO PASS LEGISLATION TO KEEP GUNS out of the hands of nutcases, and other dangerous hands, even after gun deaths have surpassed car-related deaths. Truly this is truly crazy stuff.
EDIT: and here I am forgetting that my maternal grandmother, Mildred Hornbein, probably the first female Coloradan to get a PhD, was likely also a graduate of East High.
Yeah, it was still "the Jewish school" when I was there. "Mommie dearest" was terrified that Pat (my East High girlriend) was "one of them" when I first started dating her.
in my Total Bizarro World neighborhood, EVERY school was "The Jewish School." my next door neighbor had a Sicilian mother (and grandmother, who never mastered more than three consecutive English words in her late '80s AND an alcoholic Yiddish-speaking grandpa, both of whom lived in this little row house, along with Jeff and his two sisters and parents), and if anyone mentioned this fact, they'd get laid to filth for the sheer rudeness involved in reminding Jeff that he wasn't QUITE "one of us."
I ended up falling madly in love with one of the fifty or so African-Americans in my graduating class of over 1200. neurodiversity? contrariness? I always chalked it up to good taste. plus, to most of us, Jewish girls seemed sort of boring back then...there were just SO MANY of them.
on the other hand, my mother grew up in Monroe, LA, in which there were about fifty Jewish families in the whole burg, so my mom ALWAYS went out with gentile boys, all of whom thought she--with all the other Jews in town--was exotic and profoundly sexy. which only goes to show that the groups with the smallest populations in any given area tend to be considered really, really INTERESTING just for drawing breath. I will say that one advantage to being Jewish in Loosiana back then was that among the resident Jews, that status was much more important than any other class or financial divisions.
I went out with a girl in HS and college (still a friend) whose father taught Navigation in Monroe during the war. I thought this was an interesting coincidence, but it gets better. he noticed the same thing about how being Jewish was more important than salary, education, etc. (how was that for avoiding the use of "t****ed?) and said it was REALLY confirmed for him when he attended a big, expensive party thrown by the owner of the largest department store in town so that local Jewish girls could hook up with Jewish GIs. my response was "fuck. my parents MET at that party." which was true.
so was Pat actually an MOT, or was that just your mom's paranoia? what was supposed to happen to you if she was?
my mom told me once that a date asked if he could see her horns. she treated the request with good humor, but there was obviously no second date. and at that point (after the aforementioned party) she was just biding her time waiting to see if my dad was gonna make it through VE Day, which he did or this would be some kind of Twilight Zone episode.
I have to say that, in the 60s, certain Jewish girls from NYC were the furthest thing from "boring" this midwestern Goy ever met. They were highly educational.
Pat was thoroughly Congregational, which was the religion Mommie Dearest was also involved with at the time (her careening trip through various varieties of protestant Christianity is a story all its own) so her mind was set at ease. Of course, when the next one was *Catholic* there was a real brouhaha.
it sounds like there was always going to be a brouhaha about SOMETHING, right?
There was a permanent Brouhaha with Mommie Dearest, it just changed topics as it went along. There's a reason why the day she died, after I put down the phone from the notification, that I danced around the room and sang "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead." The problem is that she may now be gone 30 years, but the shit she generated still pops up in me whenever I am not vigilant.
Sure is telling about your "childhood". There was much alcoholism in my family but I knew I was loved. You've come a long way, TC (old saying, but true)
I knew things like that happened, but I didn't experience it--probably a combination of being born later, and the places we lived.
The reason didn’t necessarily start out that way. It was just a political calculation that was deliberate for the purpose of making enemies of democrats (who were trying to take your guns). And they lied about the constitution to do it. That it was a plan run amok just made it more attractive. Greedy bastards signed on and the bodies of mangled children is the cost.
I would like to live in a world where not one more republican would ever be allowed in the halls of our government. Just think of the world our children could inherit…
I like your solution better, Jeri.
I wondered how long it would take for the "Christian" denomination of the school before it became a "thing". Seems little old Josh Hawley wants to make this a hate crime.
Dont get me wrong - hate sure does come into it - one way or another. Anyone who could do this to little nine year old kids and adults, people who work & care for those kids, sure does have a lot of hate. But - its not the school, Christian or otherwise, that makes it a hate crime. Its the act itself - every one of these acts has been a crime of hate - whether it meets the criteria for it or not.
It has been reported that the school was chosen because as a private school it did not have a Nashville PD resource officer on campus. The shooter chose it because the security at other schools was too tight. Of course, years ago, we didn't have to worry that the security at our kids' schools was tight enough.....
Considering the results of other schools that DID have a resource officer - sounds like this school was NOT a good choice because of the police response. The police deserve a lot of credit for the way they reacted.
And yeah - security never seemed to be a concern years ago.
Ideation is a word that has been trending lately about suicide. But what if we applied it more broadly? Where do these ideas of violence come from? If you have been stumped for more than five seconds, then you haven't turned on a TV or any modern device connected to the internet.
Anyone else feel as if the people driving now act like they are in a video game?
TC, back in the day - the times you describe, what were we watching? What games were popular?
Here's my hypothesis. Popular culture has become so monstrously horrific, so brutal, so murderous, so vicious, so blood thirsty, so vile, so evil, so over the top of normalcy...that it is bleeding into real life.
I never thought this way in the past. But now I am convinced. Every element of our entertainment culture constantly tries to exceed the outrage factor - to gain more eyeballs and ad revenue.
We have created our own nightmare.
A very interesting and solid hypothesis. Makes a lot of sense. You might have the answer I said I couldn't find.
Yes, I know that studies have indicated that normal kids can play even violent "first person shooter" video games and not become violent. But that presupposes "normal" kids. I love the old Warner Bros. cartoons - Roadrunner and Coyote, Bugs and Elmer Fudd, etc. - they were finny and often violent, but it was cartoon violence that none of us ever thought was real. But we didn't live in that world all the time, because there were other things to do. We played cowboys and Indians and war games, shooting games that everyone did back then, but we didn't have the carnage we have now. I suspect that a steady diet of violent games or violent entertainment can gradually inure a person to the bad effects of violence and make it easier to engage in violence in their lives. At any rate, we know that all the resistance to reasonable gun control (hell, ANY gun control) is coming from the Republican Party. That is the problem we face now - NO gun control measures will come out of the Congress as long as the Republicans hold the House and the filibuster holds the Senate.....
I read my comment again this morning and guess what came to mind? "Yellowjackets". A series about teenage cannibals. A headline from Entertainment Mag: "Yellowjackets boss says cannibalism is 'just the tip of the iceberg' "
Then there are all the "apocalyptic" movies, tv shows, books on & on. Yes there is that danger but marketing of that danger has increased way beyond. More nightmare. Saw the ads for Yellowjacket but didnt delve into it enough to know what its about. Now that I do, not interested.
When we were kids the population of the United States and the world was less than half of what it is now. (We’re geezers, TC).
Yeah, there's that. California was a lot better when I first arrived and the total state population was less than the current population of LA county.
Not a school shooting but one of my step-grandsons was among 3 more 18 year old males who were doing some kind of smokable drugs, sitting around a table with a handgun playing Russian roulette. My grandson got the bullet in his forehead. Another kind of tragedy, youth, testosterone, drugs and a gun with one bullet in it, lethal combination.
That's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that. I had a brother with a drug problem and a suicidal ideation. I went over to his house one night and found him playing Russian roulette. Fortunately he was so drunk and stoned, I was able to distract him and unloaded the pistol - the one bullet would have been next if he'd pulled the trigger. He finally managed to achieve his goal a year later, driving onto an off-ramp meeting an 18 wheeler at a combined speed of around 90mph; the only thing good was it was instantaneous.
Yes, the instantaneous death is probably the only redeeming part they didn’t suffer. Still extremely hard for those left behind.
Indeed. It will be 24 years this October and I still think of it.
No words…except I’m sorry…for all.
Nicholas Kristoff wrote an excellent piece a while back and updated it after Nashville.
Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths https://nyti.ms/400zQQN
Kristof nailed it - the problem and the solution. This is one of the overall best articles on the gun problem and possible solutions. He makes excellent points, such as the private ownership of machine guns with no crimes committed with them, that should give us hope that we can (and must) deal with this situation. The far-right will object to ANY attempts at regulation, but they are a vocal but small part of the shooting community. Work with the more responsible sportsmen/women (yes, they shoot too) and we can bring this under control. It will be expensive to correct what we have allowed for too long, but kids unborn will thank us for it.....
No doubt about the effort and expense required, some of it will have to go toward making sure that the two Senators from MO are replaced when they come up for re-election.
Thank you, TC, for making those articles available--although you are likely preaching to the choir, here. I had already done some research on the affects of the high muzzle velocity and the damage from the massive energy blast and the cavitation of the bullet but the appropriately horrifying effects were really brought home with the three-D graphics and the effects on actual victims.
I wish I could say that having that article widely read would change hearts and minds, but I fear that until such a horrific massacre happens "close to home", none of those Congressional NRA lobby money recipients will ever have an epiphany...and honestly, I would never ever want or wish for such a thing to happen to otherwise innocent people.
You raise an observation that hasn’t been discussed much. Why now? Statistically when did mass shootings start as a regular occurrence? There was the Texas Tower and about two decades later the McDonalds shooting. But sometime around...2000? It just started to seem so frequent. Mr. Alstrom has an appealing theory. And certainly the ease of acquiring horridly lethal weapons is part of it post 2004. Has to be some published work on that question somewhere.
And that graphic WaPo article. Stomach churning. And that one kid shot so many times. I haven’t the imagination for it. Shudders.
Maybe we need to start seeing the bodies. It won’t change the mind of a spineless congressman, but it may change the mind of his constituents. People will object but screw ‘em. We, the people, collectively, are allowing this mayhem. We all need to share the consequence.
Just finished The Fight of His Life by Chris Whipple about the Biden WH. Very informative & much that I either didnt see in the news or as I said on LFAA comment - buried under drama & clicks!
Its a really worthwhile read.
Gun owner. Have never felt the need to display. It must be so sad to live in that world.
Yes - the "need to display" covers a lot of area. Sad for sure. For everyone!
The problem is todays young men and men are buying a black rifle to prove their manhood. They live on their cell phones and video games, watch porn and become angry and frustrated. They see the black rifle as macho. But they are sick wimps.
My 2 grandsons. Status symbols. AR15s. I asked them why. Just to
shoot stuff up. What a terrible
mindset. This is Arkansas.
One of those posts I actually don't "like" because that's a damn sad story, but it needs an up vote because we need to remind ourselves that story exists.
It gets better/worse. The oldest, at 24 (at the time of this incident), had some of his buds over and of course were cracking a few brews and pulling out their guns. What do you know!
In all the fooling around, one of the 9 millimeters
went off and my grandson got hit in the upper front shoulder. They told the ER doc a gun got dropped on floor.
He didn't buy it and had to report it to local law.
LOL Sheriff was daddy's
best friend. Welcome to
Arkansas.😪
This is why I live on top of a reclusive mountain and am pretty happy 😊