I would mark the Watergate Hearings as the last great performance of Congress and the two parties. The hearings were a distinguished investigation into the efforts of a president to subvert the constitution by engaging in "high crimes and misdemeanors". It was, because of its personalities, dignity, and seriousness, a just plain great all round political theatrical.

The last time the two-party system "worked" (but not the only time) was in the late 1950s, 1960s, and into the early 1970s. Both parties had some serious liabilities: the Democrats had the southern Dixiecrats who were dead-set against civil rights progress, and the Republicans had a fairly far out right wing which included their 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. The Republicans also had a liberal wing (the Rockefeller Republican wing) which was not quite as liberal as the Humphrey Democrats.

But all that was back then. The last 40 years have not seen a display of great bi-partisanship.

Politics and sausage should not be made in public, the saying goes. There is something to that. In the "Good Old Days" a lot of business was conducted in smoke-filled rooms where the leadership of the party got together and decided what was what. Issues could be debated more openly, frankly, bluntly, because it was a private meeting. Some of that stuff just shouldn't be hashed out in the open.

In any case, both parties are entirely devoted to the capitalist system, and to the republic for which it stands, and there will be no salvation coming from either the Republicans or Democrats.

Nicely done exercise.

I grew up in a small (white) rural county; my family was poor, but not desperately. Seven children. Three of the seven who went to college did so on scholarships (this was in the 1950s, 60s) or worked and studied at the same time. These were educational boom times. There was more money available for college student aid back then, and tuition was low.

Even though I attended a run-of-the-mill state college, the degree (and the experience of college) granted enduring advantages. There were enough blacks in Minnesota in the '50s and '60s to produce a fair representation in MN college enrollment, had it been possible for more blacks to find a way to attend. (About 15% of white men attended / completed college in the 1960s; black men attended and completed college at around 7% (these are national figures). There weren't many (less than 7%) blacks -- or any minorities -- at the state college. This situation has changed since the 1960s. More minority students of all backgrounds are attending colleges now, but probably still at a lower rate than whites.

The opportunity to obtain the advantages of completing college degrees links back at least to one generation, maybe back to two or three. My parents admired and respected learning, even though they had not attended college.

Opportunity compounds, and because of the degree, I was able to obtain professional employment. Being professionally employed (good experiences, interesting work, references, etc.) lays the groundwork for the next professional job, or graduate school. And graduate school opens up more opportunities.

"White Privilege" is a recently coined and is an empty concept if applied to ordinary -- most -- white people. Wealth Privilege strikes me as much more convincing. Money talks. "White trash" are trash because they are poor, and have been poor for a few generations, and have had as few opportunities as poor blacks. Whiteness doesn't help them at all.

Just read about actress Rosanna Arquette stating that she was "sorry and ashamed of being white and privileged" — Teller

If Rosanna Arquette were really worried about being privileged, she would liquidate her assets and send a large check to the NAACP. Just guessing, but I bet she doesn't do that.

People generally gain privilege by material means. They accumulate wealth, property, land, etc. and in possessing these assets can exercise power over others. The people who founded this country were privileged people, like privileged people everywhere, because they possessed substantial -- material -- wealth.

Wealth is inheritable, and through provident planning the CLASS of privileged people maintain the concentration of wealth among their small portion of the population. (Like, children of rich people are married to the children of other rich people.)

Race has certainly been a factor in the opportunity to accumulate wealth, property, land, and so on. The "white middle class" was selectively favored in the post-WWiI boom by having rich governmentally sponsored benefits designated for them, pretty much exclusively. Those benefits were the GI Education Bill, Veterans Housing Administration, and the much larger Federal Housing Administration programs which paid for education and subsidized the costs of building or acquiring homes. These benefits were generally denied to other other racial groups.

So, 2 or 3 generations later, there is a substantial portion of the population (maybe 20%) who are substantially better off today because of these programs. Many working class whites received NO benefit from these programs because they lived outside of metropolitan areas, did not have incomes high enough to qualify, did not enroll in college, or lived/worked on farms.

So, SOME whites are privileged because of their race, but most whites do not posses enough assets of the kind required to exercise any sort of privilege.

Only if we get down to the details of household goods, cars, clothes, and the like can we make a scale of "poor white privilege". For the most part, poor whites and poor blacks share a lack of privilege.

Upper or Middle Class Whites and Upper or Middle class people of other races have solid privilege based on wealth. Working class whites and people of other races share the same lack of privileged perqs. Yes, there definitely are many more people with out privilege, white or black, than there are people with privilege.

START TALKING ABOUT CLASS AND STOP TALKING ABOUT RACE. CLASS IS WHERE THE MONEY IS.

That is to enhance mental functioning through various means — Wallows

It doesn't seem to be happening, as far as I can tell.

Merciful god, fads die. The fads that don't die become the culture. That's why a lot of fads should have been nipped in the bud. Too bad rap music wasn't still born. Ditto for several religions.

I've heard of cryonics, yes. People can buy whatever insurance policies they like and have themselves frozen. In stock market lingo, freezing yourself to be awakened someday in a better world is not a "SELL", "HOLD", or "BUY". It's a "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT". It's just more proof of what H. L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating people's intelligence."

I just have come to accept life with all its up's and down's as inherently rewarding. — Wallows

As well you should. Life IS inherently rewarding.

There are things I would like to see down the pike, too. I'll probably be dead before most of them happen -- just because I've been around here too long for some things to happen whilst I'm watching. That's OK. Sic transit gloria mundi, etc.

Good point. Where does the conscious mind enter into this process? I think I read your post, to which I think I am responding. That didn't happen in the part of the brain I can't observe, I'm thinking. I think I decided to write this response, and I think I rejected the first offerings that came out. As a consequence I had to think a bit (consciously) about what I wanted to say here.

My conscious mind definitely does not like the idea that it is just a figurehead of the "real" brain, mind, that operates out of sight of the public, and the conscious facility. But it is possible, that what I identify as the "conscious me" isn't much more than a shadow puppet manipulated by the "real me".

The "real me", out of sight, busy doing god knows what behind the screen, experiences what it gets from the sensory data feeds, what it imagines, what it wishes for, what it fears, etc. The "invisible real me" projects the shadow puppet because it is just very useful to have a business rep out front which can deal with other business reps, which are also 'out front'.

This probably doesn't help much.

EDIT: I used to be a huge Kurtzweil fan, but think some of his projections are a little on the optimistic side... — Wallows

Haw! There's a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

I have heard of NO developments anywhere that would lead me to think that I, or anyone else, could live far beyond the normal lifespan. Lengthen the average life a few years? Improve the QOL in the last few years? Cure a handful of diseases? Improve physical and mental functioning in younger people?

These sorts of incremental improvements may happen, IF the effects of global warming--food and water shortages, new diseases, intense environmental challenges, large die-offs from epidemic disease, etc--don't swamp our ability to support luxury-oriented bio-medical research. Luxury would be finding a really effective new antibiotic, not helping people live 200 years.

Plants and animals DIE because they can't perpetually maintain all of the systems required for a healthy life, or life at all. Some trees may live 2500 years, but by that time they are just barely hanging on, with only the smallest piece of their former glory still qualifying as "alive".

Humans are just one more animal species, and we'll keep on dying. In the whole world, there are only about 316,600 centenarians--out of 7.4 billion. A few centenarians are alive, intellectually and emotionally intact, physically healthy (for a centenarian), and able to live independently. The rest are not in such great shape. any given centenarians can be expected to die very soon.

Whatever you are going to accomplish, you will most likely accomplish it before you are 80. Probably before you are 60. So, you had best get busy and do what ever it is that you are going to do (because it is what it is).

True, but one bird of influence in the hand is worth two birds of causation in the bush.

It is actually difficult to exactly pinpoint the driving force behind Hitler's rise but speaking on broad terms, it is likely the aftermath of WW1 and the treaty of Versailles if were honest. Hate speech always needs a context and an environment. — Wittgenstein

This is true; zeitgeists are notoriously difficult to nail down, but none the less they are a real factor. Hitler wasn't just "whistling Dixie". A lot of his speech was directed toward solving German problems in a not altogether novel way.

Germany did have a problem feeding itself. It imported a lot of feed and fodder, as well as meat and fruits and vegetables. Contrary to the upper-midwestern reputation of German-American farmers, the methods of farming in the old country wasn't all that efficient. Parts of Germany (under the control of the Junkers) did much better. The population had grown quite a bit, and heavy wet soils just aren't that good.

Other European countries had similar problems. Denmark's large pork and dairy production depended on imported feed and folder. The UK wasn't self-sufficient in food. Ditto for the Scandinavians. France had a much better farming-food-population situation. The USSR had large, fertile wheat growing areas. Eastern Europe also was self-sufficient in food (my guess).

Then too Germany didn't have that magic black stuff, petroleum, to which a lot of modern industrial activity had shifted. They had coal, of course, with which their chemists worked wonders, and some iron ore. Besides all that, they imported as much high quality metallurgical ores as they could financially manage, up until the late 1930s.

If one loathed Jews, then Germany and Europe had a "Jewish problem".

A student of history would note that United States, among others, improved our economic prospects with a "take it easy, but take it" approach. The sniveling 13 states that began our country's existence had big plans well beyond the eastern seaboard. True, we bought the Louisiana territory, but the rest -- a lot -- we just snatched from Mexico. Same approach with Florida, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, etc. We exterminated most of the Indians, at times one by one, at other times en masse. And, famously, we built a lot of our wealth on slave labor. Hitler was quite familiar with our methods.

So Hitler's speeches were preparatory to war as a tool of economic salvation. He may not have said so at the beginning -- that would have been highly impolitic -- but he and the Nazis worked patiently at revving up the war economy, getting people to focus on Jews as THE designated problem (if they didn't already think so), and so on. Various institutions like the Gestapo made sure that the German people fell into line, and stayed in line.

So, the point to all this is, Hitler wasn't just about hate. Hate was a tool. His grand design was intended to solve the German natural resource problem--Lebensraum, and more. Great Britain solved their resource problem with empire; the Americans did the same thing on the North American land mass. France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Italy, the Turks, the Austrian-Hungarians, Japan, Russia -- all had accumulated colonies or used territorial expansion, much to their economic advantage. Hitler intended to unify Europe, whether Europe wanted to be unified or not, and whether the Europeans wanted the Germans to be in charge of the unification or not.

So, here we are now. Europe is unified (sort of) and the Germans are the keystone in the structure.

In my view, yes. I'm a free speech absolutist.

II don't agree that speech can actually cause violence. People deciding to be violent causes violence. — Terrapin Station

I don't object to your free-speech absolutism, but at the same time I don't agree with your rejection of the the idea that speech can cause behavior (violent or beneficent). If speech had no effect on behavior then we really would be wasting our breath.

Speech can influence behavior. Speech (texts) can cause intellectual and emotional reactions. Speech can influence, direct, shape, alter, and cause behavior under certain circumstances. If we grant consent to the speaker to direct our behavior, then it will influence our behavior. Who does such a thing? All of us, at one time and many more.

WHY we grant consent to speakers to affect our behavior is another complicated question, but we do. IF we decide to go to a rally for Bernie Sanders, his speech will probably "cause" us to feel enthusiastic and excited; it might well result in us writing a check, and so on. The same people listening to a speech by Trump are likely to feel all sorts of unpleasant emotions. Why? Speech works (up to a point).

I felt really uncomfortable when I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Did McCarthy's words "make me feel" uncomfortable? Or feel a sense of relief at the end of the novel? In as much as I granted consent (suspension of disbelief), yes it did.

I have nothing but contempt for the limitations on free speech at universities spawned by students who demand safe zones, trigger warnings, protections from ideas they don't like, and so forth. The students who want these limitations don't seem to have any control over what they grant consent to.

Controlling one's reaction to what other people say is a necessary corollary of free speech. The students at some universities apparently are unable to control their reactions. Students aren't alone in this, of course. People choose to attend Trump rallies and consent to be influenced by his speech. At a different place and time on the political spectrum, many people chose to listen to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats on the radio and were reassured and comforted. Some people chose to listen to Roosevelt and were enraged -- also by consent.

Some people are walking around with "open-ended consent to be influenced by speech". They are primed and ready to react to whatever they hear. It's dangerous for and to an individual to grant such opened-ended consent, because other people will say upsetting words, and these words will result in their flipping out.

@Wittgenstein

It would radically change the world because all it takes is a good orator appealing to a disfranchised people to get to power and commit atrocities.Take Hitler for example. — Wittgenstein

It takes more than oratory, not to discount the effectiveness of well written speech. In Hitler's case (and numerous others) more was required.

Hitler was backed up by the Sturmabteilung, literally Storm Detachment, which was the Nazi Party's original paramilitary. The Storm Troupers and the Freikorps left over from WWI backed up Hitler's speeches with liberal doses of blunt violence.

The Germans were not disenfranchised. True, the were defeated in WWI, but they weren't occupied. True, the Treaty of Versailles was intended to cripple their future military intentions, but the allies were busy with their own problems and the Germans were initially discrete.

Hitler built upon and enflamed the already well-established German (and European) anti-semitism.

The Nazi military program was effective in bringing Germans relief from high-unemployment (owing to the world-wide depression).

The Nazi Party did not gain power by winning overwhelming majorities in the popular vote.

We have this feature we call consciousness. I guess that it is an emergent feature of the way the brain works. Most of the brain is outside of the conscious facility. It isn't "unconscious" it just doesn't "report everything" to the conscious facility -- which is a good thing. Were the whole brain conscious, it would be like riot in a stadium--impossible to think.

So, the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility is where most of our thinking is done. It's altogether ours, we do it, but we can't observe it. The activities of the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility pass things along to the conscious facility. So, if I ask you, "What is Mary's telephone number", the answer appears and you tell me what it is. HOW the brain found the number, and WHERE exactly it was stored, and by WHAT MEANS it delivered it to your tongue to speak, isn't open to the conscious facility's observation. fMRI machines can capture some of the processing that delivers up Mary's number.

Your conscious mind did not do much of the work composing your OP, just as my conscious mind is mostly an observer watching the words come off my fingertips. I have no idea how the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility assembles ideas, sentences, paragraphs, etc. and sends them off to the fingers or tongue for transmission.

Speaking of fMRIs, the dogs below are displaying a lot of attention. They are subjects in a canine cognition research program, and just right now a human is explaining what they will all be doing in the next phase--while holding up a tennis ball. Once trained to put up with the MRI, they hop right up and are given various stimuli--sounds, odors, pictures, words, etc. to see what happens in their heads. Brains all work pretty much alike, so it s quite relevant to our brains.





I suspect the "you can't even step into the same river once" quip was somebody's attempt to top Heraclitus.

The British are the Vikings, and we still describe people who go energetically and violently insane as 'berserk'. All you whiteys are European, and your horrible culture is all based on Europe's; the vikings are an influence beyond question. — unenlightened

The British are in part the Vikings, the Danes, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Normans (Vikings again, but Gaels too), and more, and all those came from the east, once upon a time--interbred with the Neanderthals every now and then--the Brits are a mix. And besides, the Vikings are now the bland Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.

We -you- humans have horrible habits and our various cultures round the globe all show the consequences of us bright and frustrated primates trying to square our pre-frontal cortexes with our highly reactive limbic systems. We all range from sublime to unrefined.

The thing about the rate of violence in the US is that it isn't a new thing, and it isn't unique to the US. The world, generally, has a steadily violent history. We humans obtain frequent episodes of peaceful co-existence with our neighbors, interrupted by the occasional episode of fratricidal rage.

Given the free-enterprise capitalism under which our economy is managed, which includes gun manufacturers making and selling as many guns as possible to maintain profits for their stockholders, it would be odd if 200 million guns scattered among 300 million people didn't lead to quite a bit of violence--that is what guns do, after all.

Gang bangers and drug dealers employing guns to settle scores we can understand. The fools wear their honor on their exteriors where it can be bruised ever so easily, and as often as not, their dubious personal honor is about all they've got. Then there are the drug debts that didn't get paid, and since they can't take it to small-claims court, what's a diligent drug dealer to do?

I don't know what, exactly, sends a few young men over the edge so that they decide to kill by the random batch. Peevishness over immigration stats don't quite account for it. I suppose it is dark fantasies unchecked against reality. Dark fantasies coupled with the medium of the rapid fire method leads to bad results.

But @T Clark is right in objecting to the disproportionate response of the media, et al. Ten people being executed by one killer seems worse than ten people being executed by ten killers, but the one-on-one death rate by individual armed killers is immensely worse, and the consoler-in-chief does not offer the country's "thoughts and prayers" on behalf of the several shot and killed every day--nor to many more who are "only injured".

Maybe it worked the first few times, but "our thoughts and prayers" has become about the lamest thing to say to the bereaved.

In some European countries, so I have heard, there are "dubbing stars" -- people whose dubbing performances have a following.

I like to see foreign films; subtitles are part of the experience. However, there are methods of superimposing subtitles on a film that work better than others. White subtitles against a light background, especially a visually active light background, might as well not be there.

It is true that one misses part of the actual film in the effort to quickly grasp the meaning of the film. However, it depends on how fast the dialog is, and how much dialog there one must catch

The best way to see film is in a real theater with an audience which is paying attention. That's true for foreign films, too. Fortunately, one can rent films and watch them on a small screen, and then one can stop the film, or back up if one needs to re-read the subtitle. This is best done by yourself. Other people will begin attacking you for interrupting the film when they didn't feel a need to reread anything.

Perhaps more film directors should do what Woody Allen did irreverently in What's Up Tiger Lily?

I think all the outrage put into trying could better be spent elsewhere. — T Clark

We modern Americans have become rather fussy about these little clusters of deaths brought about by armed individuals. Suppose the media stopped being the media and stopped reporting each one with loving care. Do you think the incidence of mass shootings would go up or down?

It does reveal a shocking lack of perspective. 6 people were killed in a head on collision near my home town. 1/2 of the 6 were decidedly in the wrong (they were on the wrong side of the freeway). Where was the outrage?

"Excess deaths" (those caused by something less predictable than natural causes like disease, old age, etc.) are common. Auto/motorcycle accidents, fires, industrial accidents, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, drownings, suicides, falls in the home (those stairs are out to get you -- so is the bathroom), and so on. Think of the carnage of the westward expansion which the English started back in 1620: Millions killed, quite deliberately--with guns!

17,000 deaths a year are the result of 1-by-1, or 2-by-1 armed assailants, quite often the victim having no connection to the killer because the man with the gun was firing wildly... Where are "thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families"? (When it comes to mass shootings and much else, nothing fails like thoughts and prayers!)

They are primarily a 1980s band. — T Clark

That explains it. I was busy in the 1980s studying classics, advancing the sexual revolution, going crazy, working...

Boomtown Rats — T Clark

Never heard of them. I suppose I should get out more. (But I did bother to listen to the song on YouTube, so now I know.)

"The Modern American social order and religion are able to accommodate this type of behaviour... " — unenlightened

99.9999% of Americans accommodate, tolerate, put up with, etc. this sort of violent behavior because there is nothing they can individually do about it. We could, should, must do something about it collectively, but collective action among 300,000,000 diverse people isn't exactly a simple thing.

But apart from being the cradle of democracy, having a penchant for bloody invasions of other countries, being despised and feared around the world, and having plenty of berserkers, how is the US like a Viking nation? — unenlightened

We're more like the British, I would think. The British Empire was not a tea party. Neither were the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, German, or Russian empires. Ye Brits turned out less savage (at home, anyway) thanks to long established class system which kept the lumpen proles under pretty tight control.

Why are the British people accommodating the (quite possibly) insane exit from the EU? Well, various people have argued vociferously and voted against doing it, but it's not very easy for you all to come to a consensus that doing so could be a really, really big mistake. And there are a batch of you who are determined to leave, come Hell or High Water.

But you know this.

"Forgive my impassioned OP, but I have very strong views on government. — Noah Te Stroete

Yeah... well, don't we all.

State governments are redundant and only serve to further divide the nation.

I don't understand your animus toward the states. Most countries subdivide themselves into provinces, states, counties, or some such. There are benefits: One big one is that states and federal government have separate, delegated and reserved, powers.

In a varied population, states can carry out collective government closer to the wishes of a smaller number of people than can occur on the national level. 5 million Wisconsinites vs. 300 million Americans. A number of states, across the northern part, are populated by people who ore or less LIKE the state, and invest the state as a vehicle of the collective will. The state is the means by which they achieve better education, health, and general well-being than other states do.

The states across the south have disliked the state from the get-go. They didn't like other states, and they didn't trust their own state. Breaking things down further, they didn't trust their county governments or city governments either. They saw the state as interference in their private prerogatives to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. As a consequence of this attitude, their stats on health, education, and generally well-being suck.

The states are free to experiment. Nebraska has a single legislative house (unicameral). Some state constitutions are better guarantees of individual liberties than the national constitution. States can legislate as they see fit on matters where they have precedence over the federal government. Voting laws vary. Minneapolis recently began ranked voting (first choice, second choice...)

NO system of government is perfect. Ours is improvable, but it isn't a total disaster, either. — Noah Te Stroete

Go Reds, smash state. Crush the Corporations.

@Tim Wood just said what I was going to say. Another thing that constitutional critics forget is that when the constitution was written, the USA was pretty small. there were only 13 states on the eastern seaboard, New Hampshire through Georgia. Vermont, Maine, and Florida were not among the first 13.

People who criticize the government (our government, your government...) forget what the purpose of government is, per Karl Marx. The government is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie (rich people, businesses, land owners, etc.). It is not there to guarantee YOU or ME happiness. If you are well fed and content with your life, then thank your lucky stars.

First, welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

I am 17 years old — NickP

I feel overwhelmed — NickP

Being 17 probably has something to do with your feeling overwhelmed. That's not a put down, by the way. I was 17 and overwhelmed a long time ago. Now I'm 73 and still overwhelmed.

"Existentialism, nihilism, absurdism" is as good an entry point as any.

The best advice I can offer is to avoid a direct attack on the mountain of books that make up the field.

Surveys like these and introductory materials are akin to owner's manuals, or mechanic's shop manuals, for a car. They are the place to start. And take it easy. This race really does go to the slow and steady. And you'll go the faster the more solid your basics. — tim wood

Good advice. Start with books about philosophy, a philosopher or a school of thought (like nihilism). There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting an overview of the whole field (500 BC to 2019) from the "history of philosophy made easy" kind of book or program.

In its beginning, philosophy was the most organized attempt to think carefully about the world. Of course, philosophers as such were never the only people thinking about how the world worked. In time, philosophy spawned science, and science with technology changed the world, and changed the field of philosophy.

I could blather on, but let me stop with this: you don't have to read it all, you don't have to believe it all. You will find what works for you.

Were we to figuratively burn the constitution, we would be obligated to call a constitutional convention to draft another one. Most sensible people are nauseated at the thought of what we would get what with all the lunatics on the far right running around.

By the way, the Second Amendment became important only quite recently relative to the founding fathers' ideas. One of the Supremes described the claim that Amendment II means everyone has a right to own a gun as "Stupidity".

The Afghanistan fighters are practicing "asymmetric" warfare techniques, aren't they? (Whatever it is called -- guerrilla fighting vs. typical military.). It works, obviously. Worked for the Viet Cong and others. [The auto-speller hadn't heard of the Viet Cong -- apparently.]

The American rebels will be able to use asymmetric, guerrilla methods too, but they will have to learn and build up expertise. That's somewhat hard to do around here since the police, highway departments, the government, and the public-at-large take a dim view of blowing up our nice highways, what with citizens getting blown up on their way to work, etc. Same for blowing up big buildings, leveling blocks of the city, etc. They just don't like it one bit.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, so I am told by some old students that were around then, a certain kind of chemistry majors would concoct explosives and see how well they worked--out in the country. That's harder to do these days. Maybe the labs at the universities are watched a bit more closely.

How about building surface to surface or surface to air missiles? It used to be OK to experiment with rockets, back in the Sputnik days. Homeland Security would track you down, now. Drones, of course... one should stock up before they are clamped down on.

This is all purely theoretical, of course. As a long-standing pacifist I don't have any experience blowing things and people up, but (like many pacifists) the idea certainly crosses my mind every now and then, and I wonder... Just how could that be done???

Were you in the armed services, regarding your reference to Afghanistan?

Gee, thank you!

You are quite right that the armed forces might not obey orders to suppress mass civilian uprising. It's just that even if some of them did obey, given their overwhelming superiority in arms on the land, air, and sea civilians resistance would be crushed.

In the case of mass civilian uprising, there probably would be civil war--some civilians opposed to other civilians, and some units of the armed services siding with one group or another.

Subversives have plans to infiltrate the armed services, and propagandists plan on targeting the military with messages urging them to join the revolution.

But rest assured, you and your inexperienced buddies who have no training on how to fight a civil war are not going to just grab your hunting rifles (or assault weapons you bought) and march down the freeway and capture many objectives. One tank could eliminate the lot of you. A few strafing runs by the airfare would cut your "troop strength" in short order.

Depending on which side you are on, I might throw Molotov cocktails at you.

Mass murders are generally not carried out by people wielding shotguns that can fire 1 or two shots before reloading. Successful killers generally use guns (pistols on up) that one can fire off many bullets without reloading, and use magazines of bullets when they run out of firepower.



Charles Whitman kicked off the contemporary period of mass shootings in 1966. From the top of the University of Texas Main observation deck (200+ feet above ground), he fired at individuals for 96 minutes, killing 14 and injuring 31 more, plus his parents who he had murdered earlier in the day. Probably unlike most mass murderers -- but I don't know for sure -- Whitman had a brain tumor in the amygdala which may have been causing the increasingly intense violent urges he had been experiencing.

A lot of "casual" murders seem to occur because people have been prepared mentally to be ready to kill. This happens in gangs, certainly, but not just in gangs. Events happen which trigger the urge (or the social requirement) to kill; a gun is at hand, the offending victim is close by, and the killer has no "Superego" brake on their behavior.

Most people, gun owners or not, are not heading toward murder, they are not close to murdering anyone, and they won't murder anyone. But a few (numbered in the scores of thousands) ARE heading towards attempting murder. A few, I don't know how few--probably a few hundred--are mentally preparing themselves to kill a batch of people who fit sort of imagined category of enemy. Easy access to guns is what is absurdly dangerous for this two groups. They may be few, but if the doors to the gun mart are wide open, they will walk in and arm themselves.

We didn't impose controls on the casual purchase of jet fuel and fertilizer to prevent thousands of people from stuffing vans full of the stuff and blowing up Oklahoma court houses. We imposed controls to prevent a handful of lunatics, terrorists, and the like from getting their hands on powerful bomb making material and blowing up god knows what next.

Similarly, we need tight controls on guns (damn the NRA to the hottest pits of hell) to keep them out of the hands of a small number of people, where it is a matter of life and death.

Let me close by citing the case of a school board member who blew up a school (children inside) because he was irked off about property taxes.



On May 18 1927 "A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the Bath, Michigan school building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children."

Crazy.

The obvious idea, eliminate the 200,000,000+ guns owned by 100,000,000+ Americans isn't going to happen, so forget about that idea. In fact, the number of guns (200 million) in the hands of Americans is a sort of argument that "guns as objects" are not the problem. The number of homicides in the country, somewhere around 40,000 a year, includes a large share of those which are suicides.

Why do so many people kill themselves with guns?

A) it is a proven method and
B) it is a fast method, therefore:
C It is generally not revokable (like, say, poison or gassing which requires more preparation and gives one more time to abort)

The general pattern is that more people are killed in places where there are more guns. One has more guns "floating around" in socially unstable situations where gun controls are lax.

Most guns in the possession of Americans are not "floating around". They are in houses and that is generally where they stay. If the mere presence of guns in a county led to high rates of death, then the annual death total of homicides would be in the several hundreds of thousands. It isn't because most people are not homicidal. (Most people are not homicidal most of the time. The problem is that when someone gets in a homicidal mood, the time delay between feeling like killing somebody and having the means to do so is very, very short.

I am no friend of the NRA (God damn the NRA to hell), and I am not pro gun. I am anti-gun, really -- especially pistols.

More, next post

the point is that the citizens should be able to fight the military if the need occur, — Obscuration

Thinking you will fight the military is what on the old left was called "infantile adventurism". No. IF we devolve to civil war between the army, navy, marines, and air force on the one hand, and citizens armed with whatever guns they can get their hands on (including assault rifles, the war will be nasty, brutish, and short--with the citizens getting the nasty, brutish, and short end of the stick.

True enough. Suicide is rarely a strictly private event.

Maybe it could decrease unecessary tragic suicides of older people? — Baskol1

Why is a suicide by older people "tragic" and helping somebody (eg., older person) to die NOT a tragedy?

There are not a lot of statistics on the matter, but apparently people who have the option of commencing a painless death (say, someone with terminal cancer) -- not just the theoretical option, but the actual barbiturates -- they usually don't use them.

I think that what people fear in dying from terminal illness is the run-away chaos of disease: severe pain, loss of bodily control (incontinence, etc.) nausea, paralysis... lots of very unpleasant stuff.

Hospice can greatly reduce the chaos and discomfort of dying.

Maybe. Allow me to wade into deeper water that is even farther over my head.

Whether a discrete event is determinative or irrelevant would depend on whether the event closed down species' ability to reproduce. My guess is that the resident plant life in some places has been changed by dramatic geological events (like volcanos). If species were unique to the vicinity of the volcanic blast or meteorite strike, they might become instantly extinct. On the other hand, conifers, for instance, wouldn't have become extinct because of Mt. St. HelensNM because there are millions of acres of conifers nearby to re-seed the altered slopes of the volcano, and any wrecked territory. Some plants have very limited ranges and volcanism could wipe them out.

Suppose one of the global extinction events had happened 130 million years ago, just as flowering plants were appearing. They might not have spread and diversified enough early in their history to survive a catastrophic environmental change. Other plants, we know, did survive, because have thrived on both sides of the catastrophic divide.

Horsetail plants (Equisetum) are around 300 million years old -- they are a "fossil species" but they aren't particularly rare. They are sometimes called "pot scrubbers" because they have a very high level of silica in their stems (they don't have what we would call leaves). There is enough silica in the plants to dull combine blades when the horsetail is in harvested fields. It's hard to eradicate. They are a dark green with segmented hollow stems. They reproduce by spores, and were once one of the dominant plants on earth.

Most plants from 300 million years ago are extinct -- they were unable to survive the several big environmental changes that occurred. Conifers (gymnosperms) are another plant that survived from the period of horsetails.

Oh, dear. I though it was a Greek custard wrapped up in philo dough, baked, and served with strong coffee. No wonder so much of this site doesn't make sense. BTW, the raining on people's parade was self criticism.

I don't know what @FDrake is up to here. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas with water, getting the horses all wet...

So, some volcanoes produce lots of airborne particles (which settles on the land, sometimes a long ways from the volcanic event, if it is powerful enough. Other volcanoes ooze magma which hardens and may take a long time to turn into soil. Dust good; magma, not so fast.

Central North America was given feet of volcanic dust whenever the Yellowstone supervolcano blew up. It's about due to blow up again. With any luck, it will blow up before November, 2020 while Donald Trump is visiting there to announce big cuts to the Department of the Interior. Maybe the Republican National Convention could be going on there when it blows. Get rid of the whole damned party.

Plant growth requires the formation of soil. — fdrake

Or, more to the point, plants make/produce/form soil. It isn't a fast process. In mountainous areas, it may take a century for the plants to produce an inch of soil. It's faster on well watered, temperate plains. Tropical jungles produce soil, but the high volume of rain and drainage wash most of the decayed plant matter out. Regular falls of volcanic dust would definitely help.

My apologies. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas with water, getting the horses all wet...

I think we all know, Mr. Wallows, WHICH animal you will be reincarnated as.

So, why stop with Buddhism? Why not try a whole smorgasbord of ancient and oriental religions?

I see no problem with people investigating, trying-on-for-size, sampling, playing with, becoming novices in, and dithering over other religions suitably distant from the wicked western wasteland of materialism, consumerism, industry, etc. Go for it, but you still have to work out your personal salvation (whatever that may be) where you are, in the cultural milieu in which you exist, using the too familiar materials at hand. Just like every Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Moslem, Jain, Zoroastrian, Shinto, atheist, etc. has to do.

Your best bet will, in the long run, will be to "grow where you are planted". For you, Western heritage, no less / no more than the Eastern, is a mixed bag and has depths that are difficult to fully plumb. You have a long head start in the Western traditions. "Your people" are westerners. You are a westerner. You may think that westerners are uniquely monstrous colonial, imperialist, materialistic, polluting... blah, blah, blah but we are not. There is no escape, this side of the grave, from human folly. We are all (7 billion+ of us) bozos on the bus, messing things up as we go along.

Finding your personal salvation (whatever that is) will be no easier here, there, or anywhere else.

@FDrake & @BrianW seem to have been affected by the same energy spike bouncing around the solar system. Hopefully they will recover soon.

I don't like the way this article was constructed.

I don't own a gun but I don't object to other people owning guns, but if 1/3 of the population owns guns, then that has to be accepted (like it or not) as a mainstream, normal, practice.

The amount of gun violence resulting in death and injury is a public health issue of enormous importance. But let's be clear about this: All but a small fraction of gun deaths and injuries are caused by civilians, and in any community--black, white, or hispanic, the gun deaths will be caused by black on black, white on white, or hispanic on hispanic killers. Some deaths are caused by interracial killers, but most are intrararacial. White and black cops alike are involved in shooting a greater number of whites, but a smaller percent of the white population.

Black on black violence is concentrated in black neighborhoods, and generally the victims and perpetrators know each other.

Did not mean offence. I too know educated rural people, including one heading to law school with me But there are statistics showing that anti-gun people are more likely to hold at least a bachelors degree, and that the less education someone has the more likely they are to have pro-gun views and die a violent death. — Grre

Oh, I wasn't offended. And. I agree that more education tends to equal less likelihood of pro-gun right views. I think that one of the background processes affecting this is that older, white people in general tend to be more conservative. Older people in general tend to be more conservative in various ways, but because older white people also tend to be voters, they are targeted by conservative interests.

Another background process is that opportunities for educated people tend to be fewer and farther between in rural areas, so people with educated skills tend to move to urban centers. This leaves a less educated population in rural areas. The opportunities for advancement aren't great for them, either, but may be better than in urban areas.

Older white folks also tend to stay in rural areas. So, one has less educated, older people, people with fewer opportunities forming the bulk of the population. This fits the hilly agricultural county I grew up in, and 55 years later, it is still like that. It's something like 92% white. There are only very small towns (less than 2500, with maybe one exception of 3000 people. It's average income is not impoverished, but it is poorer than the average Minnesota county, quite a bit poorer than metropolitan MN counties.

Agriculture is always a dicey proposition, and that is true now. The difference is that the small dairy farm with some cash crops on the side, and a small herd of pigs and a flock of chickens or geese is totally obsolete. Milk, corn, beans, hay, poultry, and hogs just aren't produced that way any more (unfortunately). It's been obsolete for a good 40 years.

So, if this county is at all representative, I think a lot of people there feel trapped by economic forces they can do nothing about. (Of course, the rest of us are also trapped by economic forces beyond our control, but we haven't been totally shafted yet.)

Well, I don't think you have to worry about gun confiscation or a massive gun buy-back. Too expensive, too much effort, takes too long, etc. You know, some problems are just insoluble. The number of guns in the possession of American citizens is one of those insolubles. More than 99% of those guns are never going to be used improperly, but .0005% of 100,000,000 guns is still 50,000 possible fatalities.

The lunatic fringe is everywhere. The difference between New York City and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin is that New York can absorb and dilute far more lunatics than a small Wisconsin town. That's why I moved to Minneapolis -- it's a safer place to be a rural lunatic than rural Podunk. In a small town, a few lunatics are very noticeable. It's easy for the whole cloth community (to which the fringe is attached) to make life difficult for the small group of deluded, mistaken, misinformed, deviantly opinionated, bigoted, faggoted, torqued out, commie, rebel yelling people. Or at least make them uncomfortable.

ignorant, hot-headed people in my community who wave confederate flags — Noah Te Stroete

Ah, like one of my in-laws...

What people lunatic fringe about changes over time. When I was a kid, the lunatic fringers were worried about communists. Later they were worried about women libbers, hippies, and fags. Then drugs and motorcycle gangs, or welfare queens. Or Islamic Terrorists, or immigrants, or martians.

Hold, on there. I grew up in a rural community (and got the hell out asap) and am related to a number of people who also grew up in that sort of place, and might be, as you say, "ignorant, rural, poor white who were exploited and manipulated into believing all this propaganda by the elite rich".

That's what's called a "glittering generalization". Sounds good; probably not all that true. Rural, poor whites may be more ignorant than they need to be, but a lot of rural whites are not poor (not rich, either), and not ignorant. Some of them are reasonably well educated.

I do agree that millions of Americans have been manipulated into believing all sorts of propaganda, just as most people everywhere have, excepting Canadians, whose minds are 100% free of any propaganda, whatsoever. I mean, they see propaganda on the CBC and it just doesn't make sense to them. It's like the announcer was suddenly speaking Swahili or something. They, of course, never watch American TV or film, listen to American Radio, or read American publications, so they stay pure and uncontaminated.

NRA gun owners and non-NRA gun owners are somewhat different.

Here are a couple of graphs from PEW RESEARCH which clarifies some of the differences between NRA gun owners and non-NRA gun owners.