As an outsider looking in, the mass killings that have just taken place at a college in Virginia, USA, are just stunning, unbelievable. That this could happen again is just incomprehensible to me.
Why can this happen?
Certainly, the gun control laws in America need to be reformed in some way. It just should not be possible for a known 'disturbed' person to purchase a weapon and ammunition in twenty minutes flat. End of.
But there is more. As Michael Moore's documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' shows, there is the same availability of guns in Canada as in the US, but vastly different gun crime statistics. Canadians, apparently, can get hold of a gun just as easily as Americans, yet they don't seem to have the habit of blasting holes in one another as their neighbours do. Why is this so?
There could be several reasons.
As Michael Moore, amongst others has suggested, it could have something to do with the American national posture as defined by it's last several governments. Since the second world war, America has bestrode the globe like a bully, using it's overwhelming firepower in a long sequence of military actions against weaker and smaller states. The American people have been on the recieving end of a barrage of propoganda by governments and the military/industrial complex, for decades, justifying this overwhelming use of force abroad.
Is it totally surprising that an over-assertive and violent state breeds the odd over-assertive and violent individual?
In a great many Hollywood movies, the violent and aggressive male is often the central character - knee deep in blood, saving the day with his heart of gold....
Non-violence, compassion, understanding, accomodation, these are the ways of the effiminate, or the cissy to our errant cousins. Complex disagreements are reduced, to simple 'good vs evil' nonsense, or shouted down altogether.
The national character is of win-at-all-costs, for to lose is to fail. And failure sucks, because that means poverty.
And to be poor in America is to be desperate indeed. Despite it being the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it has frightful levels of poverty. At least 36 million people live in poverty in America, according to this - http://www.peacetakescourage.com/American_Poverty.html
But what I really wanted to talk about was drugs.
According to http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5686225 , the lad who killed 32 people in Virginia this week was on anti-depressents. Many American children, and increasingly UK and European children, are on prescribed medication for one reason or another. I recall reading of one such drug, for attention disorders, which gave a kid a "laser-like" attention in class!
Michael Moore was interviewed recently and has said that prescription medication is one area he did not explore in Bowling for Columbine. http://www.drugawareness.org/home.html Apparently, both the Columbine killers were on a drug called LUVOX....
A further sad aspect to this, is that no-one seems that surprised by it. Is the American model now seen as so debauched and far gone, that these sort of things are almost inevitable?
Instead of medicating their citizens, the American establishment should think about the reasons why people are in need of medication in the first place!
Why can this happen?
Certainly, the gun control laws in America need to be reformed in some way. It just should not be possible for a known 'disturbed' person to purchase a weapon and ammunition in twenty minutes flat. End of.
But there is more. As Michael Moore's documentary 'Bowling for Columbine' shows, there is the same availability of guns in Canada as in the US, but vastly different gun crime statistics. Canadians, apparently, can get hold of a gun just as easily as Americans, yet they don't seem to have the habit of blasting holes in one another as their neighbours do. Why is this so?
There could be several reasons.
As Michael Moore, amongst others has suggested, it could have something to do with the American national posture as defined by it's last several governments. Since the second world war, America has bestrode the globe like a bully, using it's overwhelming firepower in a long sequence of military actions against weaker and smaller states. The American people have been on the recieving end of a barrage of propoganda by governments and the military/industrial complex, for decades, justifying this overwhelming use of force abroad.
Is it totally surprising that an over-assertive and violent state breeds the odd over-assertive and violent individual?
In a great many Hollywood movies, the violent and aggressive male is often the central character - knee deep in blood, saving the day with his heart of gold....
Non-violence, compassion, understanding, accomodation, these are the ways of the effiminate, or the cissy to our errant cousins. Complex disagreements are reduced, to simple 'good vs evil' nonsense, or shouted down altogether.
The national character is of win-at-all-costs, for to lose is to fail. And failure sucks, because that means poverty.
And to be poor in America is to be desperate indeed. Despite it being the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it has frightful levels of poverty. At least 36 million people live in poverty in America, according to this - http://www.peacetakescourage.com/American_Poverty.html
But what I really wanted to talk about was drugs.
According to http://www.sltrib.com/ci_5686225 , the lad who killed 32 people in Virginia this week was on anti-depressents. Many American children, and increasingly UK and European children, are on prescribed medication for one reason or another. I recall reading of one such drug, for attention disorders, which gave a kid a "laser-like" attention in class!
Michael Moore was interviewed recently and has said that prescription medication is one area he did not explore in Bowling for Columbine. http://www.drugawareness.org/home.html Apparently, both the Columbine killers were on a drug called LUVOX....
A further sad aspect to this, is that no-one seems that surprised by it. Is the American model now seen as so debauched and far gone, that these sort of things are almost inevitable?
Instead of medicating their citizens, the American establishment should think about the reasons why people are in need of medication in the first place!
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