Friday, February 16, 2018

School Shootings as Metaphor and Synecdoche


School shootings are too awful to think about carefully.

I try and avoid thinking of this rupture in the fiber of our being.

But school shootings are a metaphor for the place that we find ourselves and we therefore should examine their logics most carefully.

They are a rupture of rage and resentment by the marginalized and/or dispossessed.

They are rarely born, but rather are made by the adverse circumstances of their upbringing.

They are a metaphor for a time in which more and more people are enraged and are willing to take drastic action to express that rage, whether it be through violent homicide or whether it occur more indirectly through support of fascistic leaders/or and policies. 

They are a synecdoche, a linguistic device wherein a part represents the whole.

They express the more general tendency for humanity to react with psychotic anger in response to repressed anger and anxiety.

This is not a new phenomenon. However, in the past, mass homicide was more difficult to achieve.  Today, mass homicide is easily accomplished through technologies that allow single individuals to kill entire populations.

AKs and ARs are just the tip of the iceberg.

And perhaps even more importantly, today the synecodoche of the individual mass shooter elides the homicidal tendencies of institutional actors, and these collective actors need not be dispossessed to be driven by latent homicidal rage.

The process whereby powerful institutions become psychopathic in their operations, calculating in their externalizations and their crimes, has been explored extensively in academic and journalistic literatures.

Unlike abused and marginalized individuals, the psychopathic institution bears no psychological trauma explicable in terms of abuse and marginalization.

This is why the school shooter is incomplete in its representation of today's homicidal psychoses.






 



28 comments:

  1. The fabric of society is unravelling rapidly. No leadership

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  2. https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/16/are-modern-cities-sustainable/

    ReplyDelete
  3. https://www.texasobserver.org/big-trouble-little-cambodia/

    When cambodians. And vietnamese first came to america after vietnam, many were heavily harassed by kkk and rightwing hate groups.

    As if those cambodian peoples lives were not bad enough, after nixon carpet bombed them and, turned loose the killing fields of the pol pot fanatics onto millions of Cambodians. The pol pot killing fields fanatics are not unlike this rightwing fanatics that invaded them in the us after hurricane harvey, last summer. Fuckers with guns and cammo descended on these already traumatized people in this post apocolyptic harvey town and tried to block them from getting help.
     A coalition of far-right groups, including theAmerican Freedom Keepers, the Confederate Riders of America and the New York Light Foot Militia descended on this little cambodian communitu.

    These jackasses scared and intimidated, poor cambodian farmers, whose homes and farms were destroyed by 4 feet of water, after Harvey. The cambodian people were used to pol-pot types but they do not want the bastards back.

    Libertarianism is bullshit. I belonged to it  In libertarian towns nobody pays their water bills, the sewer system goes to shit, in some areas no septic. Yards filled with raw sewer. Cops BECOME corrupt and, turn into major bullies. Just like the thrid world libertarian countries like mexico, honduras, guatemala.

    As said before, Libertarianism is bullshit. I once belonged to them. In latin american countries, that truly follow the libertarian model quite closely, schools are crappy. Truly, no viable public schools or education for many. Few commons. Few public libraries.  Totally corrupt cops. Drug war lords and thugs run the country. The elite dont give a shit. That is where america is headed. Socalled elite libertarian think tanks , like the Cato institutes aholes, are pronuclear mostly. They are koch brother controlled.

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  4. In mexico, carlos slim the oligarch,controls the phones. WORSE CELL PHONE AND TELEPHONE SERVICES IN THE WORLD, BY FAR. Not unlike the way the.media is here owned by a few and is, so full of bullshit propaganda it stinks to high heavan. . Overpriced toll roads in many parts of mexico, most people cannot afford to use. This is what trump wants to do here. Ulitimate, libertarian, neoliberal privateization. Invite the 911 perpetrator Saudi ARABIANS OVER to build toll booths everywhere in the usa and, privatize our hiway, bridge and transportation systems. MAGA!

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    1. But Mexico has almost total gun control. True it is now the top murder rate nation--but you can not expect to have everything.

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    2. Mexico is run by the oligarchy, and drug lords. They have plenty of guns. Makes for the perfect top-down libertarian paradise. Will happen in murica soon. MAGA

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  5. Japan will collapse soon. Everyone i know, from fukushima to yokohama,says so. so Sad. I have many friends there.

    Same will happen here, after a reactor meltsdown, and fuel pool catches fire. It will probably happen this year.

    Moscow is inundated with radiation, as i write, from an accident there. Who could be so stupid?

    The daiini reactors caught fire in japan, recently. Fukushima is just,continuosly blasting, shit into the ocean and japan. Probably all 8 reactors in fukui will blow soon.
    Trumputen wants to ope a hundred new reactors in the usa, and not close any of the sixty,50 yo rattle traps. 200 million americans drink dangerously radioactive water from 75 years of nuclear waste, bomb explosions, uranium mining, bomb productions, coveredup meldtowns, shitty reactors pouring tritium into our water supply.,

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  6. Im no fan of any oligarch. Not soros not sheldon adelson. Not the mercers. Soros wants facebook to stop subsidizing the free advertising of the trump fascists on google and facebook. They are not poplulists. They wallow in piles of dark money from breibart, mercers, kochs, zionist oligarchs, mic, rightwing kill hate groups. They are not populist they are fascist. Trumputin is the most fascist, militarist, nuclear bomp threatening and making ass in history. They have reopened uranium mines in the west for more added ,massive radioactive contamination there and elsewhere.
    It's Time to Deal With Trumputin's Second Amendment Idiocy from opednews
    By Harvey Wasserman 
    (Page 1 of 
    My beloved childhood friend, someone I've known since before elementary school, has lost his grandson in the latest Florida shooting.

    He was a freshman in high school, a beautiful innocent, full of joy and promise. My sister cannot stop crying. Writing this article is the only way I can deal with it. I cannot yet bring myself to call.

    Make no mistake about this: Sooner or later, these mass murders will strike you personally in your home and in your heart and in your soul.

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    1. I'm so sorry for your loss. My heart goes out to you. Yes, everyone is going to feel the madness that has been unleashed...
      Majia

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  7. Amazing how the hitler hags, who claim to be antinuclear, and support beitbart altright sites like zerohedge, and hard core racist sites, are. They threaten avademics and peacelovers. They support blatant antidemocracy operations like this , funded by the republican national committee. Operations to make public protest a felony unless it is violent , pronazi hate. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5873e26fe4b043ad97e516f7s.




    There are paid wolves-in-sheeps clothing all over the internet, and twitter. Doublethink bombs to fuck with your brain. Screw google. And facebook anyway. Breakem up, curse to sciety and democracy.

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  8. "UPenn Law Professor Told to Take ‘Leave of Absence’ for Politically Incorrect Views"

    --"Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime." --

    Perhaps universities are a real factor in the events we dislike in this society. When I was growing up there were no school shootings that made national news; and there were revolvers then that could easily have killed numerous students. It is not technology but the social chaos AND the psychiatric medications that no main stream media dares mention! AND universities were definitely zones of free speech. Today's universities are a sham in my opinion.


    While celebrities and politicians have their security guards with their guns, schools advertise as gun free zones thereby telling the shooter to express his drug fueled rage in their domain where he will meet no resistance. Then the cry for more laws--well, how about a law prohibiting people from shooting celebrities and politicians and preventing them from having armed guards? Wouldn't that be best. Of course the kind of gun laws the left wants would simply create a massive black market for guns! And worse probably.

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  9. I am surprised, actually very surprised, that Jordan Peterson's name has not appeared here. It seems to me that he has zeroed in on all the contemporary problems including the nuclear one.

    Additionally it seems to me that the relationship between men and women basically sets the tune or vibration for a society. Given how chaotic it is now no wonder that the society we live in is crumbling in every area. Again this particular idea seems largely hidden. I mean no one but Peterson has zoomed in on it in a way which is intelligible. Neither men nor women seem more content or happier for all the innovations in the relationship area--and I can easily go back over seventy years now with readily accessible memories. Women do not seem as content as they did once; nor men either. All this change for nothing apparently.







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  10. When the government started clamping down on al capone type, gangsters and ther thompson machine gun, masacre shit stopped. There was a significant drop in mass murders like this, before the 2008 ban on worthless weapons of mass killings, and hi round clips, machine gun converting devices
    Was repealed.
    Psychopathic politicians, political chat-bots like william, and neonazis could give a shit less about reason or rationality. The politicians got their blood money and are not about to give back. Only time they blow a different tune is when their kids or grandkids are massacered. Same deal with nukes. What a bunch of cold blooded psychotic-monsters. I like this article, about how ifblack folks got all armed crazy, gun control would be supportted en masse. So ironically true.

    https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/want-see-gun-control-enacted-support-movement-arm-black-folks-en-masse


    Cruz, the shooter in florida, was not on drugs. He is a disposeessed soul, who was very pissed off, living in a basement on a dead-end minimum wage job. Bare had money to survive like a lot of working poor now. Did have enough to buy an ar15, fast clips, and a bunch of ammo. He trained to shoot through the NRA. Was associated with a right-wing group. The trump trolls, fascist and elitist do not give a damned about, kids or human life. Fuck all you bastards. May you all rot in hell.

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    Replies
    1. Did you drop out of high school?

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    2. For an unemotional, programmed, political chatbot, that is programmed to disrespect, univerity students, that is a par question. Most people can barely contain themselves, over this bloodshed. The elites that program william, are happy about the amount of death, and the brutality of the bloodshed. Innocent children murdered, so senselessly. Psychopathic politicians, take the money from the gun and arms lobbys, so they can line their pockets.

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    3. So you are a university student. You don't write very well. And you substitute insults for arguments. You probably haven't read much in the way of the classics. You would benefit from watching some of Jordan Peterson's videos. And his book 12 Rules For Life was written for young people like yourself who lack a good philosophy of life and have fallen into the political maelstrom created by the Democrats and liberals. All the disturbed emotion you express needs some intelligent control.
      Good luck.

      Delete
  11. The Florida gunman’s private chats just surfaced, and they’re straight out of Trump’s alt-right

     Admin1  February 17, 2018  News


    More than two days have passed since the heinous shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and the inevitable but ultimately empty outpouring of “thoughts and prayers” has turned into expressions of outrage over how this could have happened – and who, or what, is to blame.

    While NRA funded Republicans predictably spend most of their energy shouting-down any suggestion that the easy access to high powered fire arms had anything to do with this (the shooter, Niklaus Cruz, used a legally purchased AR-15 assault rifle), they may have a much larger PR problem on their hands.

    Soon after the shooting, reports linked Cruz to a the Republic of Florida Militia, a White Supremacist group similar to those that President Trump has refused to condemn in the past.  But his association at first appeared to be tangential at best, despite the group confirming that he was a member.

    New reports, however, paint a much more disturbing picture of Cruz as a fully radicalized White Supremacist determined to kill Blacks, Jews and Mexicans.

    CNN gained access to a private Instagram group chat of which Cruz was a member, and what they found was shocking.



    The group was called ‘Murica Great, and featured an American flag and eagle emojis in the name.  “Racism was a constant theme in the chat group,” CNN’s Paul P. Murphy writes, adding that cruz came up with the name, and over time members posted  “hundreds of racist messages, racist memes and racist Instagram videos” to the private group.

    More from CNN:

    The hatred he and others in the group espoused met little resistance from its active members. In one part of the group chat, Cruz wrote that he hated, “jews, ni**ers, immigrants. He talked about killing Mexicans, keeping black people in chains and cutting their necks. The statements were not made in jest.

    Cruz said he hated black people simply because they were black; Cruz hated Jews because he believed they wanted to destroy the world. After one member expressed hatred for gay people, Cruz agreed, saying, “Shoot them in the back of head.”

    It wasn’t just minorities he had a problem with.  Cruz also had deplorable opinions about White women, especially those in interracial relationships.

    Republicans and others on the right will continue to try in vain to keep the conversation on “mental illness” or the breakdown of the family or some other NRA approved issue.  The real culprits, however – a deadly cocktail of White Supremacy inspired hate and easy access to high powered firearms – is now almost impossible to deny

    http://thingsdaily.net/the-florida-gunmans-private-chats-just-surfaced-and-theyre-straight-out-of-trumps-alt-right/

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    1. He was adopted. Not sure at what age. One look at his face is enough to reveal that he is not normal which the students who knew him confirm. He was at times involved with some kind of mental health resource and probably has taken psychiatric drugs which can result in temporary drug induced insanity. I doubt he knew the difference between right and wrong. His mother had recently died. He is an easy person to hate now . . .not an attractive victim though what else can he be but the consequence of bad environments. He has a "brother" in a mental hospital. Who was there in his life to point out important things and show him how to live a decent life? And then we have the FBI and their lapses of judgment. Plus a plethora of false news and misleading commentary from CNN. Personally I would be ashamed to quote them on any event. Well, not everyone coming from a good family becomes an admirable person, but it is undeniably a great help. Or are we now into denying that family matters? Perhaps. Majia would know.

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    2. Welcome to the oligocracy.

      https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/thom-hartmann-corruption-new-normal-american-politics

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    3. Do you mean oligarchy? Have never come across an oligocracy.

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    4. You are right, brutal kleptocracy, is more appropriate.

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    5. Moving steadfastly, to a totalitarian oligarchy, under trump. Effectively, there.

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  12. First it was blacks. Then it was mexicans. Now it is women. That is the bannon and the oligarch conrolled, altright new-old meme. Women are the devils.
    Woman are still treated as chattel and, as inferior. Like using people, that are not of the dominant ethnicity, they mobilize their "soldiers," through hate and bigotry. Always hammering more scapegoats for their criminal behavior.

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    1. Next it will be folks like you though I am not sure what category you fit into.

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  13. Trump trolls going after women now. Probably because they are not as big of blood thirsty killers as many men. So goes the new, improved-fascism

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    Replies
    1. Should the USA emulate Sweden and the treatment of women there?

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  14. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-gun-control-parkland-shooting-20180220-story.html

    We banned machine guns in the 1930s. Why can't we ban or restrict, machine gun-like assault rifles now? It is because our politicians are greedy mavhiavelian, traitors to our children. They are also psychopathic

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  15. As the author says, the remedial action should begin from home. The chief reason behind youngsters becoming violent killers is the faults in upbringing. The policies of the federal government always comes second.
    Custom Essay Writing Service

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