Dark Night
--Sleepwalking in America
The first and principal benefit
caused by the arid and dark night of contemplation:
the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery
--Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross
--Have you met the devil?
I want to meet him too.
--Why do you want to do that?
--I want to ask him about God.
He must know. He, if anyone
--Seventh Seal (1957)
_________________
caused by the arid and dark night of contemplation:
the knowledge of oneself and of one’s misery
--Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross
--Have you met the devil?
I want to meet him too.
--Why do you want to do that?
--I want to ask him about God.
He must know. He, if anyone
--Seventh Seal (1957)
_________________
Sunday Homily: Propriety
It may seem an odd topic for RangerAgainstWar, but we, your humble writers, are often in the process of asking ourselves how to get it right, this appropriate living - behavior thing. Beyond identifying some of the problems, we are not sure.
The recent Aurora, Colorado shootings at the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" brought propriety back as a topic. Needless to say, another senseless, meaningless performance from a disenfranchised, perhaps deranged individual, and impropriety is not the word for such an unspeakable action. There is not much to say beyond another soon to be delivered dissection of another 15-second-murderous-famer by an obsequious press in collusion with a nation which does not really want to know why these senseless acts are now occurring with predictable regularity.
The thing that is improprietous is President Obama's visit to the Aurora Hospital which currently houses ten of the survivors. Colorado Governor John Hickenloope and Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan should be on-site. But for Obama, who interrupted his campaigning in Florida, this smacks of campaign flourish. The President should not glorify every failure via his presence, lending a gravitas which should be saved for events of national import. This is just another shooting event du jour.
We do not mean to be priggish, but a message sent from the White House would have sent the correct tone. Does our President intend to run hither and thither to address every heinous act? Obama is neither a goodwill ambassador nor a triage nurse.
What advice from the Gospels do we have on how to treat our fellows? The Golden Rule, the 10 Commandments and the Good Samaritan are a start, but these offer advice to the individual navigating his world, and do not need the reinforcement of a secular president. If they don't work prima facia, then perhaps they don't work.
The Aurora shooting occurred at the midnight premiere of the third installment in the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight. The series has been hailed as a masterful depiction of the comic book characters, but it is far from light entertainment; the films raise sadism and violence to an art form, or so the aficionados say. One of the dead is a six-year old girl, her mother still in intensive care.
Who would take a young child to the midnight showing of such a gore fest? That is a story of societal malfunction in itself. The UK Telegraph ran a piece in '08 addressing the issue (Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows).
We feel Mr. Obama has made several missteps in his capacity as Chief Executive of the United States. Several involve giving lie to the fact that we are a post-racial nation, as the pundits so glowingly declaimed after his election.
[1] Obama inappropriately stepped into the Cambridge, Massachusetts arrest of black scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by saying the police department "acted stupidly", and later holding a "beer summit" at the White House between the arresting officer and Gates.
[2] Next, in the Sanford, Florida incident of a Stand Your Ground killing of a 17-year-old black male by a 28-year-old Latino male, Obama chose to say of victim "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon", hopelessly biasing the adjudication of the case.
[3] Now, Obama is visiting Aurora following another mindless mass shooting. It is surely simply a photo-op in a contentious campaign.
We have some serious issues as a nation, but these lie underneath the matters of State and are not things our President should be addressing, nor is he able to address them.
As one of our readers recently commented, if we need to talk about race, let's talk about race; if guns, then let's talk about guns.
Why must we behave disingenuously, taking the long way about the barn, and never solving anything anyway? Americans may be loud and brash, but the bravado is shrill as it lacks self-awareness.
Labels: geroge zimmerman, not post racial, obama acts inappropriately, trayvon martin
posted by Lisa at 10:23 PM
29 Comments:
Sadly, the "need" for politicians to open their everlasting gobstoppers every time some lunatic goes all postal has become obligatory. The President has become the national mourner-in-chief, and had Obama NOT taken time out to visit these people you can bet that the right-wing press would have crucified him for it.
A friend of mine posted something about this shooting on her blog - she lives in Colorado - and was (in my opinion) appropriately grieved and horrified. But being the contrary bastard I am I had to leave a comment about how what this does as much as anything is show what a peaceful society we live in!
No entire villages dying of the Black Death...no Hunnic or Mongol hordes passing through for a bit of casual massacre, wholesale rape, and burning. No pogroms, no extermination camps...
But we've become - again, in my opinion - so sensitive to these random whack shootings that we insist that our national figurehead has to bend a knee in public...
(Mind you - if this happens in some unpaved part of the world where U.S. troops are farkling about then, whatever...)
And since I know this will become a massive "gun control" topic...
I honestly have no idea what we can do about these sorts of things.
IMO there are WAY too many people in this country who can get their hands on a firearm.
But I don't see any way of preventing that without keeping those firearms OUT of the hands of people who will never use them any way but sensibly and moderately.
So while I don't see this as an example of "OMFG this country is SO DANGEROUS!" I'd also like to find a way to prevent gomers like this guy from having the ability to mad-minute their surroundings. Just don't see how it can be done...
Chief,
Yes, what to do?
Acting shocked and wallowing in a group grief-fest is no longer an option. Banning guns at this point is neither feasible nor constitutional.
So who's raising (or not) these freaks who think shooting people is fun? Looking at mass shootings, the gunman are either young misfits anticipating their moment of FB infamy, or older, desperate people who feel this will be their final scream of frustration.
The NRA's correct: People kill people. So why are they doing it? Because they can?
I fear the neo-narcissism and egotism of today's youth bodes poorly for the incidence of future such events.
Lisa: I guess that the human record is such that I am pretty skeptical that these people are a product of lax modern parenting. I'm willing to bet that we've had these nutters around since the caves.
But it's a hell of a lot easier to whack a dozen people with a 30 round magazine and semiauto than with a meat cleaver.
IMO we have two options;
1. Do everything we can to get everything more versatile than a flintlock pistol out of the hands of Joe and Molly, or
2. Accept that we're willing to enjoy these occasional random nut-shootings as part of our national love-affair with private modern weaponry.
It's either one or the other, when you think about it coldly. We do this all the time (as my blog post today talks about) with stuff like automobiles. We just seem to have a hard time accepting that we've made the same choice with firearms.
Chief, It's going to be option #2.
Yeah, to some extent guns are a fetish, but they are a distictly American fetish. As such they are not going to go away without a radical change in our national mythos. And I don't see that happening. Ironic that some people considering a shoot 'em up violent film to be high entertainment, end up getting actually shot and only then complain about guns.
To the extent that guns are more than fetish, they serve a real purpose related to American ideals and I think that purpose goes unstated in the mainstream because it's too terrible to be politically viable even for the NRA - though I do believe there is an unspoken understanding. This is the idea that when the people are disarmed, the government can complete it realization of tyranny. Guns are the people's way of ensuring they can fight back against a government that is no longer Constitutional.
Can't happen you say? I disagree. So we have these so superior Europeans and there strict gun control. First off, Europeans have a long history of allowing themselves to be subjugated by kings, emperors, dictators and the like. It's in their blood to be subjugated. Then, for all of their haute civility, they occasionally go on bloody rampages chopping off their dear leaders' heads, exciling them, etc and then they go all incediary and trash the continent and kill off entire generations of their young. Of course they call upon the barbarians from across the Atlantic to save themselves from themselves.
I digress, but it felt good to get that off my chest.
Any how, revolutions do happen; even our effete gun controlled European friends manage to succesfully pull these off every few decades. So, yes, it could happen here if the government stepped too far.
In fact, I think it will happen here sooner or later.
So we live with the random senseless acts of homocidal insanity because we value our ability to take back our freedom. That's America. Once we give that up we are something else. Again, given the behavior of Europeans I'm not convinced that the something else is an improvement.
avedis
"We have a moral obligation to look into the collective unconscious because one of its crossover effects is called "history." And as Stephen Dedalus, the James Joyce character, so memorably put it, "History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." History is a crossover effect of the collective unconscious. War, every aspect of the economy, violence, mass shootings, environmental pollution -- these are all psychological products. All these things originated from psyche, so any discussion of those things that doesn't probe into psyche is superficial, and misses the prime mover of all human phenomena."
The Batman Shootings and Crossover Effects
Yes to Chief/avedis and PoLT,
All correct. We revise our Constitution or no.
A well-armed citizenry has one purpose: to protect it against the extremities of a rogue government. As RAW has explored in the past, the weaponry of the government logarithmically outstrips that of the citizenry, but the pioneer ideal remains.
Beyond that, the violence is reflective of a citizenry immersed in bloodshed and told it is a good, a freedom and a right. As one who has always hewed to absolute freedom of expression, I am now facing the corrupting influences of profit-making industries upon the collective psyche (thank you, GWB.)
avedis,
Per your "chopping off their dear leaders' heads, exciling them, etc." --
the order of events you pose is compelling; I must confess, I first read it as "exciting them", causing me to imagine a more perverse scenario than you actually present ;)
OTOH, the little band of gun-nuts down at the Portway Tavern is going to last about ten minutes against my infantry squad and our Brad.
IMO the whole idea that we're going to take to the hills with our hoglegs WOLVERINES!-style to resist subjugation by kings, emperors, dictators, etc is a pretty bad fantasy. The average American hasn't the willingness to die uselessly that it takes to become a good mujehedin. I honestly doubt whether the liberals will fight to the death, and the regressives will welcome our next dictator with a wild feu de joie so long as he comes wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
This is even more deliciously ironic since most of us have been already been fully subjugated by our financial Masters and Commanders. At this point we really are about 94% an open oligarchy.
Hmm. Tell me...how well have all those liberty-givin' guns helped with that? So far I haven't seen anyone willing to take their converted full-auto AR-15 to the boardroom of Goldman Sachs.
Ah, well...
At least we can pop the guy who flips us off in traffic on our way to the unemployment office, the oppressive fucker!
Chief, your brad and infy squad have not done diddly to a bunch of goat herders in the Hindu Kush. In fact they've been giving your brad the finger for 11 years. They gave the Russian equivalent the same.
What if the crew at the pub used to an infy squad?
What set off the the '67/'68 riots? Who knows what little spark lit the fires that burned cities.
Mobs and revolutions are strange beasts.
avedis
Chief says,
I am pretty skeptical that these people are a product of lax modern parenting. I'm willing to bet that we've had these nutters around since the caves.
No doubt we've had nutters since the inception. It's not parenting alone that's the problem. It is a gestalt:
Media/entertainment hews to the sensational and violent; liberal values by necessity say anything goes; values clarification is removed from the schools as are morally instructive primers, and so it goes.
Why we pay for garbage and sit mouths agape viewing things that warp our minds is beyond me, but the people get what they want and deserve. That is democracy, and who is the Solomon to determine what is beyond the pale?
The liberals would go crazy at the suggestion, and the conservatives wouldn't understand a truly kind and compassionate line. And no one's asking me ;)
Chief says,
At least we can pop the guy who flips us off in traffic on our way to the unemployment office, the oppressive fucker! --
And that is it, isn't it? Most people fight those in the same boat, because they are cheek by jowl and can feel the jostling, but they never move up to the people really squeezing them, if indeed that is the source of our murderous impulses.
This is to presume that people see a fault and wish to set it aright. I think mostly people are, at their worst, like a writhing bunch of maggots and just wish to shoot off some angsty energy. Our own human sunspot analog.
I'm not sure if it makes them feel better to make others feel worse, but it would be just so typical of the puny impulse to step on others to rise up oneself.
What we're addressing in this incident is mindless violence perpetrated in a random way. This does not seem to bother the perpetrators, and the populace seems content to dismiss away the behavior as the aberrant action of misfits. When does it happen enough times that we say, WE are the misfits?
Lisa,
Jeez, now that I read what I wrote, I guess I was going a little James Joyce or a little Freud, I'll let you decide.
Is it possible that blogger dissembles the spelling in comments? Maybe punctuation as well? Anyone else notice that?
Excite them and then chop off their heads....or vice versa........either way.........thanks for noticing that.........I think.....
avedis
avedis,
You may always wax Joycian or Freudian @ RAW :) Focused absurdity is welcome.
avedis: Those infantrymen, their Brads, tacair, and artillery have killed muj by the busload.
When you look at the sort of people who make good "mobs" and guerrillas you don't see too many nice, comfortable types, the sort of people we don't much produce here in the U.S. outside of the deep poverty ghettos of the inner cities and the backass mountains. People whose "good life" is grinding poverty and hopelessness, not TV and McDonalds.
Plus, the reality is that any military force capable of overcoming the USN and the organized military forces of the U.S. will certainly be capable of oppressing this country with efficient brutality. Historically guerrilla forces/rebellions only succeeded when a) they were supported by conventional military forces, or b) their regime/opponents were at the extreme far end of military and political incompetence.
Nope. The bottom line is that these firearms are our toys, our security blankets, and our hobbies.
We just don't have the balls to tell our fellow Americans that they're going to have to suck it up and get killed every so often to support our hobbies.
Chief, You could be right about all of that. OTOH, why are there still muj that still come out and fight us? Why are they not all crushed out physically and morale-wise by our massive kill ratio?
Also, I would note that others have mistakenly assumed that Americans are weak and too over indulged to wage war effectively. Hirohito's and Hitler's staff advized them that soft Americans could never be a serious threat and they'd be easily defeated on the battlefield. They were wrong. I guess I could go on to quote Patton or USMC indoctrination at this point concerning the inner warrior/killer that naturally dwells within every American, but I bet you already knew that's where I was going. Any how, I believe it to be true.
Going back to what I said earlier, if the French burg. can pull of these things, then certainly our better armed burg could do it too. Things just have to get bad enough to motivate them.
avedis
Chief,as far as fatal hobies go, how many people die in car accidents where mass transit is a better option (an option with environmental and economic fringe benefits as well). A subset would be elderly drivers. The car as the quinestential American fetish.
Snow mobiling, an obnoxious, IMO, passtime, resulting in numerous deaths and maimings each year.
Sky diving, who, outside of the military, really needs to engage in this dangerous behavior?
Then there is smoking, totally legal, albeit increasingly expensive and its cousin, drinking alcohol. Who really needs to indulge in either.
Fast food and other unhealthy dietary habits. Probably the biggest killers of Americans by a wide margin. Eating as a hobby = obesity = death.
Personally, I'm avoiding all of these things. I think I'm then guaranteed to live to be at least a 1,000 years old. Maybe I'll become immortal because within my expected 1,000 year lifetime they'll find a cure for everything.
But I'm so worried that some madman with a gun is going to ruin my master plan by shooting me.
That's the one form of death I can't accept.
avedis
My point being that guns are not just a potentially lethal hobby.
We have a lot of lethal hobbies and we know the risks and we live with them and talk about them.
Guns, It's deeper than that.
It goes to the question of who has the coersive power of life and death, the state or the people.
Gun control advocates are happy to surrender that power to the state (and to outlaws who evade state restrictions and apphrension). After all, isn't that govt is? the ability to enforce some social order on pain of death.
Gun rights advocates want to keep some of that power with the people.
That is the bottom line on this issue from where I'm sitting.
avedis
This is even more deliciously ironic since most of us have been already been fully subjugated by our financial Masters and Commanders.
So at this MB I frequent, there's a thread dedicated to the recent shooting in Colo. The usual comments are there, gun laws and the enforcement of them, 2nd Amend., and types and kinds of weaponry and what they can do.
So I did some research wrt the NRA and the weapons industry.
Hand in hand, fist in glove, it's all about money and profits.
LaPierre rants and raves about the gov't and presidents taking away weapons, and the gun manufacturers make huge sales and profits.
Like any other corporate entities, they know who their friends are and they reward them very well.
It's not really about rights, just follow the money. LaPierre does his booga booga boogey woogey, kaching, and everyone is happy.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/bloodmoney.pdf
http://billmoyers.com/2012/07/21/the-nra-has-america-living-under-the-gun/
bb
As far as tyrannical gov'ts and all, there is the very militaristic activity by city police against the various occupy protests. Oakland in particular.
Could happen. But I think that there would have to be a very enormous event to start up what essentially would be civil war.
Who could shoot up, napalm familiar places or people known on the say so of some dude in the White House you didn't vote for anyway?
bb
To all,
Why do we get all weak kneed when we have massacres by gun in America?
Look at what we've done to Iraq.
Look at the killings there in the last 2 weeks-our policy gave them this gift.
Look at the killings in Puerto Rico that are drug related.
Look at our killings done by predator/hellfire. Why is that less lamentable than blasting someone to shit in Yemen , or any other shit hole??
Why is meaningless death only worthy of comment here in the Homeland?
As Avedis points out we have Act Of Valor fantasies, and most of our entertainment is gun centric, so why cry when u get killed while trying to watch a violent depiction of fantasy killing?
Guns are not the problem, and if they are let's tell that to the Swiss.
Look at TV, it's all about violence OR about goof balls and stupid reality shows.
If we are a christian nation then i reckon we reap what we sow.
In closing- how many people are killed by law enforcement every year here in the US??
jim
Because we COULD cut the number of these random whacko killings way back, jim, but we choose not to.
We could do the same thing about our expeditionary wars, too, but we'd rather not.
In both cases we know perfectly well what we COULD do, or SHOULD do, but doing it would cause us significant irritation or pain, so we prefer to let the bodies fall.
I'm not sure if it's a sign of our moral unease or just guilt that we then indulge in all this breast-beating about not do that.
Avedis: There will always be those willing to fight and die, regardless of the odds. Especially in "warrior" cultures like SW Asia. Doesn't mean they make better guerrillas, just that there will be more of them.
And those lethal amusements are primarily just that - amusements. Their primary purpose is to entertain, divert, or exercise us. Firearms are fundamentally about shooting something. If it's living, it's about damaging it, wounding or killing it. Just because we use them to shoot targets for fun doesn't change the fundamental nature of the fun. That's a LOT harder to sell to Joe and Molly, which is why I'm saying that being honest about firearms is less likely to win acceptance for them than being honest about skydiving and snowmobiling...
And...
Fundamentally "civilization" is ALL about giving the state the power to bind, injure, and kill.
By accepting the rule of law we are all tacitly accepting that our law-making and law-enforcing bodies - our governments - have the right to use violent force on us if we fail to obey, and to punish or kill us if we attempt to use that force on the officers of that government. It's not "gun control advocates" who are saying this. It's the fundamental difference between living in an "ordered society" and living in a Hobbesean war of all against all.
Here in the U.S. we have chosen to give ourselves the "right" to carry private weaponry. Frankly, we know, or should know, that doing that WILL - not might, but WILL - result in an increase in private murder, accidental deaths, lunatic rampages, and poor sight picture acquisition. I've pointed out why these private firearms are more likely to be used against individual liberties or insurrection than for them. The real argument for "keeping and bearing arms" is that we LIKE to.
And y'know what? I'm OK with that.
But I'm also willing to admit that it's a selfish prick-y sort of argument, and that if a majority of my fellow citizens disagrees with it I would be neither surprised nor particularly resistant.
Chief, Firearms are, as you say, fundamentally about shooting something, unless they are in the movies or video games, in which case they cross over into your definition of amusement.
I'm going to echo one of RAW's original statements. When we have a culture that takes its children out at midnight to watch gratuitously violent "amusement" we have a problem more fundemental than guns or whackos with guns.
The shooter, IMO, is not the only one who has an impaired ability to grasp reality - he just took the whole thing to the next level. And I'm not sure that that step is really so very illogical.
The one aspect of private gun ownership that you have side stepped is the right to self defense, which even the Supreme Court has stated is primary.
As long as we live in a violent culture, I want the ability to defend myself and loved ones against any whacko that comes my way meaning me or them harm.
Even if you were to take away all of the guns that problem would still exist. I used to be fairly decent with hand to hand combat. Even then i would not relish the idea of facing a murderous maniac with a knife. Now I am getting old and can easily imagine losing, bare handed, to a man with a knife or club, etc. I very much prefer the option of shooting such a person.
How often would that scenario play out in our society without guns?
avedis
Jim,Why is meaningless death only worthy of comment here in the Homeland?
Because of that schizophrenic inability to grasp reality.
Seriously, I think that there is a swath of the demographic that lives in a distorted fantasy. They don't even know where there food comes from beyond McDonalds or whatever grocery store they shop in. There are American males between the age of 10 and 50 that probably break a sweat only once every couple years.
They don't even know where these places are on the map (where drones strike) ans they have only the vaguest notion of what people there are like - the drone victims are the same guys hollywood heros shoot up in the movies, right?
avedis
avedis: You can't "defend yourself" with a single-shot derringer as well as a Glock w/ a 33 round hi-cap magazine?
Well, damn.
Again...where am I saying that we shouldn't be free to let our semiauto freak flag fly?
I'm just saying it has a cost, a cost in innocent lives. And if we really want to "defend ourselves" (or enjoy our toys) we need to accept that in so doing we are condemning others to die.
If we are willing to be honest and accept that, then, fine. We may be callous pricks (I know I am!) but we're HONEST callous pricks.
The thing that irritates me about this whole business is not the callousness or the prickery but the dishonesty. IMO if the "public debate" is characterized by arguments in favor of private gun ownership that don't start with the open acceptance that we're advocating something that will help kill innocent people (along with defending some others, and entertaining many more) than we're already down 0-and-2 before we begin.
Let's be honest, first. THEN if we can still win the argument, good. But let's not act like Republicans and prefer to win by evasion rather than lose honestly.
But better to win honestly, no?
Alright, Chief, I read you loud and clear now. Previous transmisions were garbled, probably strictly on my end.
I agree 100%.
I'd be happy with a six shot revolver.
avedis
Chief,
You are correct -- I've always advocated for honesty (not always an easy thing around RAW, this hotbed of creative, um, reasoning.)
If we will wake up and speak the truth, then life gets much easier. Not everything is win-win, but the trade-offs become clear.
Why hide behind contorted justifications? Just say what's what. So simple, really.
Anyone heard of the Port Arthur incident? Port Arthur is a historic former prison settlement on the island of Tasmania, Australia. Shortly after the shootings in 1996 where apx 35 people were shot dead (most by head shots) in a crowded cafe - all reportedly carried out by a lone gunman, the feds acted with astonishing speed by enacting laws that forcibly removing all semi auto/pump action firearms from registered & licensed holders throughout the entire country.
Along with the new laws, firearm licensing and purchasing is strictly controlled and has basically removed the rights of citizens to legally own a firearm.
Re "lone gunman": How a very low IQ male who never had any formal weapons training or experience, ever managed to commit this type of incident, is hard to fathom.
Here is one recent link on the matter, followed by an analysis of the Port Arthur shootings.
http://planet.infowars.com/politics/batman-gun-grab-the-port-arthur-massacre-parallels
http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/port_arthur.htm
Carl
We’re faced with two problems – SUVs and guns. When SUVs first came out, early adapters were kings of the road, able to crush the opposition like flies. Mass is class. But wouldn’t you know? – soon everybody who was anybody was driving a SUV. A head-on collision between two 6000-lb urban assault vehicles is automotive equivalent of the Hadron Collider.
The same goes for guns. Back in the days when men settled their differences with fists, a pistol conferred a real advantage. But now, with some 80,000,000 guns in circulation, almost every American of the fighting sort packs heat. Where you once got a bloody nose, now you stand a good chance of getting perforated.
The solution? Upsize! We need to restore our comparative advantage with larger, locomotive-scale SUVs and heavier personal defense weapons, such as the Lahti 20-mm anti-tank rifle.
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