The news-cycle today is dominated, once again, by an eruption of evil. This time the limb of Satan was one Salvador Ramos, who, being pursued for shooting his own grandmother, entered an elementary school and massacred everyone he could until he was shot dead himself. (Nobody, as far as I can tell, has commented yet on the cruel irony of this young man’s Christian name.)
The problem, we hear, is guns. It’s funny how agency flits back and forth between the gun and the shooter, depending on the murderer’s race — but of course, correctly understood, it’s all perfectly consistent: the aim at every opportunity (and in war, every event must first and foremost be analyzed in terms of the opportunity it presents for action) is to advance, and to seize territory, whether by demonizing Whiteness or disarming the Resistance. And so that’s what’s happening, as always. (It’s odd that, when I was a boy growing up in rural New Jersey back in the ’60s and early ’70s, guns were everywhere, and scarcely regulated at all, but this sort of thing never happened.)
Perhaps, however, the problem is something else. I’m just spitballing here, but maybe a little structured order and deeply rooted meaning in young people’s lives might help: something to live for, and to look up to, so that they don’t have to make up every aspect of their being all alone, completely from scratch. Perhaps if they felt that they were a vitally important link in a great chain of civilized society, the heirs of a venerable past and stewards of their children’s futures, rather than formless atoms dropped into a stormy sea — perhaps, if young people didn’t look for meaning and guidance in the modern world and find only a deranged, screeching chaos — our prospects might improve a little.
20 Comments
For so many, social media has become their real world.
The kid has a speech defect, and he was heavily bullied at school. He comes from a broken home, and likely was abused. He is profoundly mentally ill, and other students and likely some teachers knew it. He once came to school with his face all cut up. He did it to himself. He made public threats to attack an elementary school.
He is absolutely the well-established psychological type that does school shootings. The pattern is classic.
There should have been an intervention long ago. That there wasn’t shows how degraded and debased our culture is.
https://areaocho.com/my-thoughts-on-uvalde/
https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-44a7cfb990feaa6ffe482483df6e4683
His father and mother are absolute zeroes. The grandfather wasn’t much better from an interview I saw. No statements of course from the critically injured grandmother. These dysfunctional families are all over the country, and any of them can get armed to the teeth.
https://areaocho.com/there-is-a-lesson-here/
AG,
What needs thinking about is that we’ve always had dysfunctional families, and easy access to guns — but we didn’t have this.
https://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-freaks-war-on-children.html#comment-form
Our schools and media tell boys they are toxic, they can also be girls if they want, they are not normal as they are.
https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states
Arguably, there’s a notable 1990s era one missing from the list – bunch of homeschooled children in the environs of Waco Texas. If that one is included I’d guess it to be the deadliest on record.
Just now re-reading Malcolm’s post, “the eruption of evil…the limb of Satan”. That is precisely the realm this has to be approached from. The Moral Transcendent was banished years ago and He has been replaced. Politicians are just flatulating as they are won’t to do every time. They aren’t even in the arena.
While there are unlikely panaceas to prevent massacres like this – and sadly subsequent repeats in the days ahead – it does suggest the necessity to not merely reform but revamp much of this nation’s public education, especially at the middle school level. If memory serves from what others have said about the psychologist’s scholarship, according to Judith “Nature Assumption” Harris something like 40 percent of the development of young people is influenced by their peers (the other 50 percent is genes; actual parental environment only accounts for a paltry 10 percent). The location then in which one receives education as an adolescent is quite vital, since it will tend to be the main source of socialization.
Apparently, this young Latino-American was mercilessly bullied because of his lisp or stutter. While readily admitting to speculation, I can’t help wondering if this tragedy could have been averted if this disturbed teenager had simply been in a different atmosphere than that of the all-to-often poisonous institution we call the American high school. (Don’t forget how recent this phenomenon of universal secondary learning has been in the grand scheme of history, its duration only approximately a century.) We spend copious amounts on education; while to a large degree powerless over providing effective fathers or mothers (in this case the former was lacking while the latter was a druggie), we could realistically develop better learning alternatives in which the troubled might thrive, or at least muddle along. Considering that Salvador was unlikely academically, or indeed intellectually precocious, wouldn’t he have been better off doing some constructive labor like construction or learning a trade, which might have incubated that “structured order” Malcolm mentions?
Run this up to oh, the 37 minute timestamp and proceed from there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MDrVhy0gow
Bearing in mind Robert Barnes is an “officer of the Court” in so very many jurisdictions – comprehending fully what an ‘officer of the Court’ entails
Barnes represented the Covington Kids for instance: burned the hell out of a bunch of “big media” companies – CNN, WaPo, and et ceteras
Here’s something you don’t see everyday!
Self-professed Liberals arguing in favor of the Second Amendment:
(For the foundational stuff it perhaps would be best to begin at the 52 minute mark but I suppose the 54 minute mark would be adequate. Proceeding to, at least, the 1:13 minute mark:
https://odysee.com/@BretWeinstein:f/EvoLens128:9
I recommend headphones.
Malcolm – yes. I can’t disagree.
I think Sailer’s no-heaven-or-hell thesis is probably the best one. Lack of religious belief fuels the social atomization and susbtance abuse.
I had hoped this might be on to something, but a whiff of ‘strawman’ over powered the writer.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/flawed-religion-not-god-is-the-problem/ar-AAY2T95?li=BBnb7Kz
Yeah yeah yeah I know, off-topic but what the hell …
Look Malcolm we all know you been busy but still ‘n all, can’t you at least share with us “something” about what we know you been doing?
“Eh?” I hear you ask, “How you JK, know what I been doing?”
Hints around the interwebz Malcolm, hints around the interwebz …
https://www.diogenesmiddlefinger.com/2022/06/mfst-sunday-matinee.html
Know whut I mean ol’ buddy?
JK,
Hi – sorry not to have been more active here.
I’m not sure what that Santana video has to do with me (other than seeing Tal Wilkenfeld playing bass; I recorded her first album).
I’ve just been busy mixing a record (a new album by sax player Randal Clark, whose debut album I mixed last year). I’ve also had some houseguests, and have been reading a lot (just finishing up James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution, which I’d never got to before). But I haven’t been doing any writing, mostly because I’ve had little time, and nothing much to say.
So: what are these “hints”?
Well, what kinda hints you reckon Malcolm a feller might can expect to, in reality, get in deepest darkest Arkansaw off the interwebz really?
Come on man!
(Then again, thinking “houseguests” … … I suppose we may as well cut you the benefit of some slack.)
Doing any fishing with the Grandchilds?
Hey Speedbump! It is Uvalde. It is pronounced you-val-day.
Are you so full of yourself that you don’t care about the name of the town?
george,
Right you are, and I thank you for pointing out that embarrassing error. (I have fixed it.)
At 66, I seem to be making many more of those lately, and I hope it isn’t the beginning of something worse.