Uvalde incompetence

[btq96r]

Sobering view of the expectations that were not met.  Worth reading the thread, even if the sources used aren't your usual ones.

 

[m16ty]

Society has collapsed as a whole. We've had devices readily available to create mass casualty events for well over 100 years, but  indiscriminate mass casualty events on innocent people and children is something that really just started in the last 30 years. I mean, even in the wild west where everybody carried a gun and a short temper would never think of just going in and shooting up a school or church. David is 100% spot on, we have schools that are not much more that indoctrination camps to make good little liberals, kids with just one parent or no parents, and all other matter of debauchery that has now become commonplace. You have the government, the Sate run media, and social media all pushing this agenda, and willing to destroy anybody that speaks against them, and don't even realize that they are the ones causing this problem. This isn't something that came about in the last few years, I will submit it really started gathering steam in the '60s with all the peace, love, and "free" thinking. It has really went into overdrive within the last 10 years or so. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't see us doing anything but getting worse and worse, people as a whole have just become to depraved and self centered to even consider a different point of view. We have to try though, and try hard any way we can. To fix the problem will take years, because it took us many years to get to this point.

I don't think God is punishing us for our bad behavior, but he is willing to watch us reap the rewards of our foolish actions.

[Links2k]

Just now, m16ty said:

 

I don't think God is punishing us for our bad behavior, but he is willing to watch us reap the rewards of our foolish actions.

I agree with this statement, but this punishment is not new.
 

Until people acknowledge the sins behind the founding of this country, the punishment is likely to continue. I have no problem with that. When a country thinks it’s a good idea to hide its history from students, it deserves to be punished. When the original inhabitants of this land are mostly living in third world poverty on reservations, this country needs to be punished. When the majority in this country professes to be Christian, but doesn’t live up to the basic tenet of loving your neighbor like you love yourself, this country deserves to be punished. 
 

It’s a cop out to lay the blame for societal failures and people distancing themselves from God on bad parenting. I subscribe to the notion that you can be the best parent in the world, and one of your kids can still be rotten to the core. I would place the blame on people moving away from religion more on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist scandal. 
 

https://sbcec.s3.amazonaws.com/FINAL+-+List+of+Alleged+Abusers+-+SBC+REDACTED.pdf

Much like our host, I don’t care who likes it or not. 

[Daniel]

36 minutes ago, m16ty said:

I mean, even in the wild west where everybody carried a gun and a short temper would never think of just going in and shooting up a school or church.

Yeah we stuck to indian villages full of women, children and old people!

[m16ty]

23 minutes ago, Daniel said:

Yeah we stuck to indian villages full of women, children and old people!

That was the government that did that, not lone gunmen just going in and shooting up a indian camp.

Edited May 28, 2022 by m16ty

[btq96r]

Plenty of kids are struggling with mental issues, get bullied, feel ostracized, and would at first glance be considered discontents.  I certainly went through all that as kid throughout a lot of my time in school. I acted out a lot, got into plenty of fights (which wasn't a red flag event back then as long as it wasn't done with a weapon), and had a disregard for authority at times.  I like to think I turned out okay in spite of, and in some small ways, through it.

One individual, out of the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) in a similar situation acted out with tragic and horrific results this week.  The singular event is almost too much to deep think into the results on, but it's also not enough of an occurrence to think we need some kind of mass religious doctrine put back into society for behavior control.  That's not too far different from wanting to ban a certain type of guns every time someone uses them for evil or criminal purposes.

I'm honestly more likely to say access to firearms was the biggest enabling cause of this event, not a lack of religious backed morality.  If all this person had was a blade, or baseball bat...I doubt he has the determination or ability to kill like he did.  But I'll not for a moment think that taking away my right to own an *assault rifle* is the appropriate response for the morally reprehensible actions of another.  Just as I would hope the lack of moral center in that individual wouldn't inspire a religious imprint that society feels necessary to impose.

Some folks are going to take this as a religion bashing post...it's not.  It's an expression that I see forcing religion through society as incongruent with personal liberty.  I may be agnostic, but I respect the individual right of religious liberty to an enormous degree.  I just don't want a majority's religious choices seeping into my right to embrace agnosticism and be left out of it.

[m16ty]

6 minutes ago, btq96r said:

Plenty of kids are struggling with mental issues, get bullied, feel ostracized, and would at first glance be considered discontents.  I certainly went through all that as kid throughout a lot of my time in school. I acted out a lot, got into plenty of fights (which wasn't a red flag event back then as long as it wasn't done with a weapon), and had a disregard for authority at times.  I like to think I turned out okay in spite of, and in some small ways, through it.

One individual, out of the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) in a similar situation acted out with tragic and horrific results this week.  The singular event is almost too much to deep think into the results on, but it's also not enough of an occurrence to think we need some kind of mass religious doctrine put back into society for behavior control.  That's not too far different from wanting to ban a certain type of guns every time someone uses them for evil or criminal purposes.

I'm honestly more likely to say access to firearms was the biggest enabling cause of this event, not a lack of religious backed morality.  If all this person had was a blade, or baseball bat...I doubt he has the determination or ability to kill like he did.  But I'll not for a moment think that taking away my right to own an *assault rifle* is the appropriate response for the morally reprehensible actions of another.  Just as I would hope the lack of moral center in that individual wouldn't inspire a religious imprint that society feels necessary to impose.

Some folks are going to take this as a religion bashing post...it's not.  It's an expression that I see forcing religion through society as incongruent with personal liberty.  I may be agnostic, but I respect the individual right of religious liberty to an enormous degree.  I just don't want a majority's religious choices seeping into my right to embrace agnosticism and be left out of it.

When I went to High School there were more pickups with rifles in the rack than there were that weren't, not once did anybody go to their vehicle, grab the rifle off the rack, and shoot up the school. There were also zero SROs, and every door was unlocked and people just came and went as they pleased. Access to firearms were as easy as a walk to the parking lot, and zero security measures in place as a deterrent, yet nobody even thought of shooting up the school. I suspect most other rural schools were much the same. There is no more access to guns now than there were in the past, yet school shootings are a fairly recent event. Something else has changed. 

I'm not forcing religion on anybody, but I will express my beliefs. The destruction of the nuclear family is a big one, which is a religious concept. Almost all of these school shooters have lots of things in common, one main one is a lack of a father in the child's life, and it sounds like this one didn't even have a mother that wanted anything to do with him. Now that doesn't mean that I want some sort of law to keep families together, but that doesn't mean that I should not try to make sure kids have a father and mother in their home if I can.    

[m16ty]

1 hour ago, Links2k said:

I agree with this statement, but this punishment is not new.
 

Until people acknowledge the sins behind the founding of this country, the punishment is likely to continue. I have no problem with that. When a country thinks it’s a good idea to hide its history from students, it deserves to be punished. When the original inhabitants of this land are mostly living in third world poverty on reservations, this country needs to be punished. When the majority in this country professes to be Christian, but doesn’t live up to the basic tenet of loving your neighbor like you love yourself, this country deserves to be punished. 
 

It’s a cop out to lay the blame for societal failures and people distancing themselves from God on bad parenting. I subscribe to the notion that you can be the best parent in the world, and one of your kids can still be rotten to the core. I would place the blame on people moving away from religion more on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist scandal. 
 

https://sbcec.s3.amazonaws.com/FINAL+-+List+of+Alleged+Abusers+-+SBC+REDACTED.pdf

Much like our host, I don’t care who likes it or not. 

What would you suggest we do about the indians living in poverty? I agree they got a raw deal, but I or anybody else alive today didn't have anything to do with it, why am I guilty of the sins of my forefathers? I'm guilty just because I'm white and happened to be born in the US, neither of which I had any control over. I 100% agree that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, but I think we all fall short of that from time to time. I do agree that we should quit trying to edit history to suit our needs.

I also agree that you can be the best parents in the world and have a rotten child, I've seen it happen. It is also true that you could have the most rotten childhood anybody could imagine and still turn out alright. Both of those scenarios are out of the norm though. I can't lay my finger on a single thing that causes somebody to want to go into a school and shoot it up, I think it is an accumulation of a bunch of things to create these monsters, but I do think a collapse of the traditional family has a lot to do with it. The problem with that is, nobody wants to hear that you should put more thought into who you marry and have kids with, and you need to try harder to stay married and take care of your kids, and you shouldn't have kids outside of marriage.

[Wingshooter]

16 hours ago, TGO David said:

A lot of folks aren't going to like this post and I think I am honestly past the point of caring.  Why?  Because the people who won't like it don't have any solutions either and their feelings on what I am about to say is why we are where we're at in the first place.

This country has forfeited its moral compass.  We have a sin problem that has been intentionally hidden behind the symptomatic mental health problem, which itself is one that not many want to talk about.  We have allowed leftists to take God out of our society.  People, young and old alike, have practically been forbidden to talk in publicly funded places about the God who heals hearts and minds, who tells us what is right and wrong, and with whom heavy human burdens can be traded for peace that transcends worldly hurts.

Kids brains are now saturated from Pre-Kindergarten, forward, with all manner of unnatural doctrines which warp their minds and injure their souls.  They are told that boys with XY chromosomes and penises can call themselves girls, and that girls with XX chromosomes and vaginas can call themselves boys, and that anyone who dares conflict those misconceptions is guilty of assaulting their self-identities.  Men are Women, Adults are Kids, Kids are Sexual Beings, Left is Right, Right is Left, Wrong is Right, Right is Wrong and God is a Myth.

 

These days, a messed-up kid with a list of grievances in his heart often doesn't have a father AND mother at home to confide in, because we've allowed leftist ideals to destroy the nuclear family.  And if the kid does have one or both at home, there is a chance that one or both are terrible human beings, themselves, and maybe the cause of some of the kid's pain.  Or, at best, apathetic to it because they are just adult-sized children too, living selfish self-centered, hedonistic lives and lacking any natural compassion for their child.

That kid typically hasn't been brought up to understand that there is a real and loving God who cares for him and to whom all of his hurts and pains and anger can be brought to have them sorted out and healed.

So that kid just festers with confusion, anger and rage, like an infection below the skin, just waiting to burst and release all of what has been trapped inside of him.  And then he makes the news, with a weapon of any sort, and a victim or list of victims upon whom he released his wrath.

 

We are reaping what our society has sown over the past five or more decades.   We asked for this.  And if we want to change it, we've got to get involved.  We have to save our kids by investing in our kids.  Not just our biological children, but our society's children.  There are a lot of kids out there who don't have mom or dad, or for whom mom and dad are a part of the problem.

This isn't a situation where we can write checks and make donations and other people do the work.  If you're reading this and you care about where our society is headed, you can personally get involved and you NEED to.  Kids from Pre-K up to early adulthood need your mentorship, your guidance and your heart.

 

Like I said, a lot of people won't like this post.  So be it.

 

Best post of the internet. Hit the nail on the head  

[Links2k]

25 minutes ago, m16ty said:

What would you suggest we do about the indians living in poverty? I agree they got a raw deal, but I or anybody else alive today didn't have anything to do with it, why am I guilty of the sins of my forefathers? I'm guilty just because I'm white and happened to be born in the US, neither of which I had any control over. I 100% agree that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, but I think we all fall short of that from time to time. I do agree that we should quit trying to edit history to suit our needs.

Indigenous peoples should be allowed to live anywhere in this country tax free as long as they can afford it.  They should be given reparations, not reservations!  
 

I was waiting on the “I wasn’t alive” response. The natives suffer the same negative residual effects as the descendants of slaves. It’s not anyone alive today fault. It is what it is. The thing that’s damning to white, conservative Christians is no one can hear your voices until you feel something personally threatens you. It seems that guns are more important than people to some of you. Look at the b.s. that’s being called CRT. Only a nation embarrassed by its past would limit the availability of its entire history. For example, The 1619 project should be available in all schools. It should make people uncomfortable so it will never be repeated. 
 

This country will spend trillions on defense and arming so-called allies, but can’t ensure that veterans, the mentally ill and children are properly housed, fed, are safe in school and have health care. 
 

The decline of this country is because it’s people and it’s leaders are hypocrites. Sadly, pride will never allow for Christ like change. 
 

America will go down in history on the same level as the Roman Empire if the people don’t change. It wouldn’t be the first time that God has allowed a people he loved to be punished. 

[Daniel]

2 hours ago, m16ty said:

That was the government that did that, not lone gunmen just going in and shooting up a indian camp.

Which is even worse.

[Daniel]

 

Quote

 

On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist and anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America. It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of the power of private business and a step towards socialism. [...]

The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It inspired wealthy heirs of earlier American industrialists [...] to use their private charitable foundations, [...] to fund Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimally government-regulated America based on what he thought America had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Powell Memorandum thus became the blueprint for the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as well as inspiring the US Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active. CUNY professor David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.#Powell_Memorandum

(And institutions like ALEC and The Heritage Foundation are the institutional core of political conservatism.)

The Reactionary Mind makes many of the same suggestions. American conservatives essentially succeeded the Jacobites as the part of human society that will find any way to argue that God decides who is in charge and God says it should be them. It isn't much different from how the Roman Empire collapsed into the Christendom for a thousand years to begin with.

If you read Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, that's basically what he wants. Conservatism has always been about hierarchy and who they feel is deserving of being at the top of it."

 

 

[A.J. Holst]

8 hours ago, btq96r said:

Some folks are going to take this as a religion bashing post...it's not.  It's an expression that I see forcing religion through society as incongruent with personal liberty.  I may be agnostic, but I respect the individual right of religious liberty to an enormous degree.  I just don't want a majority's religious choices seeping into my right to embrace agnosticism and be left out of it.

Well said.

Last time I checked, a personal, individual choice needs to be made to be a follower of Christ.

It's the moral compass I choose to follow.

Some may call it free will.

Our societal woes also are be driven by subjective morality, "I'm a pretty good dude and anything bad I do isn't illegal (or not that illegal) and not as bad as people I know or read about in the news."

At time of the event, as Tom Givens says, "it's doesn't make a effing bit of difference why he is doing it."

From reports, LE response was not "industry standard" and the fact he barricaded may infer murder and surrender.

I don't have the source, be seem to recall an n emerging trend in these active murderer events is escape/surrender vs. martyrdom.

[Darrell]

3 minutes ago, A.J. Holst said:

"I'm a pretty good dude and anything bad I do isn't illegal (or not that illegal) and not as bad as people I know or read about in the news."

That's a pretty good point, and it becomes amplified when the government CHOOSES to ignore it's own laws. People aren't prosecuted for shoplifting, the borders aren't protected, etc. Some parents choose to defend their children when the children do wrong. There are communities in which 80% of children are born to single mothers.  Moral decline, indeed.

[m16ty]

6 hours ago, Daniel said:

Which is even worse.

I didn’t say it was better or worse, but if you can’t understand the different mindset of a lone gunman shooting up a school and a government policy to eradicate a people from their land, I can’t help you. 
Last time I checked the discussion was trying to figure out why kids are shooting up schools, you and others seem to think it has something to do with how the government treated the Indians over 100 years ago, which is insane to me.

[TGO David]

28 minutes ago, m16ty said:

Last time I checked the discussion was trying to figure out why kids are shooting up schools, you and others seem to think it has something to do with how the government treated the Indians over 100 years ago, which is insane to me.

It's the Distraction Fallacy at work.

[gregintenn]

8 hours ago, Daniel said:

Which is even worse.

Yet you advocate for more government. I don’t get it.

Edited May 28, 2022 by gregintenn

[Erik88]

1 hour ago, m16ty said:

Last time I checked the discussion was trying to figure out why kids are shooting up schools, you and others seem to think it has something to do with how the government treated the Indians over 100 years ago, which is insane to me.

And we went off the rails when people used this thread as their own personal pulpit. Both groups have made valid points. The Indian issue is just as valid as bringing up the transgender topic. This is an extremely complicated issue that we're all trying to make sense of. 

I'm not convinced more Christianity is somehow going to stop this issue. Back when more people when to church we had a whole host of other issues. My Baptist friends still think that being gay is a "lifestyle" and will lead to eternal damnation. I'm sure many here do as well. 

Anyways, I saw this comment on Reddit 4 years ago and it always stuck with me. I may have shared it before but it's worth sharing again. 

Edited May 28, 2022 by Erik88

[deerslayer]

11 hours ago, Links2k said:

I agree with this statement, but this punishment is not new.
 

Until people acknowledge the sins behind the founding of this country, the punishment is likely to continue. I have no problem with that. When a country thinks it’s a good idea to hide its history from students, it deserves to be punished. When the original inhabitants of this land are mostly living in third world poverty on reservations, this country needs to be punished. When the majority in this country professes to be Christian, but doesn’t live up to the basic tenet of loving your neighbor like you love yourself, this country deserves to be punished. 

So America deserves mass shootings of children?

[leroy]

I've looked thru this thread and I'm sad... Very sad on lotsa levels... The truth is that everybody is examining the facets of the problem, not the problem itself. 

I encourage you to zoom out a bit. 

When I zoom out, I see the " Roman Empire 2.0 "... Our society has devolved and tribalized to the point where ya can do anything you decide to do; and you can make it happen if ya are big enough to do it... No matter how good or bad... Everything is permissable, because everyone, no matter how sane or insane, has a voice, the capability to act, and a cheerleading section. 

We have no single shared set of guiding principles.  There are no taboos... " If God be dead, all things are permissable "... Friedreich Neitzche said... He was sadly prophetic... We, for the most part, have cast aside all restraint and societal norms.   Take a look around.  You live in a fallen world.

I have little doubt that these shootings could be just as well be politically motivated to cause turmoil at just the right time; and, in fact, be triggered by individuals unknown ALA " The Manchurian Candidate " style; as they are the acts of a deranged mad man.   Nothing would surprise me... They seem to come up at very interesting times... 

We are, indeed, living in dark and troublesome times. The insane you will always have with you, the evil you will always have with you, the opportunistic and unprincipled you will always have with you.  No amount of planning and jawboning this issue will fix it.   Hearts have to be changed; not more laws enacted nor plans made...

leroy...

[Grunt67]

2 hours ago, Erik88 said:

And we went off the rails when people used this thread as their own personal pulpit. Both groups have made valid points. The Indian issue is just as valid as bringing up the transgender topic. This is an extremely complicated issue that we're all trying to make sense of. 

I'm not convinced more Christianity is somehow going to stop this issue. Back when more people when to church we had a whole host of other issues. My Baptist friends still think that being gay is a "lifestyle" and will lead to eternal damnation. I'm sure many here do as well. 

Anyways, I saw this comment on Reddit 4 years ago and it always stuck with me. I may have shared it before but it's worth sharing again. 

It appears the topic has left the building.

[m16ty]

4 hours ago, Erik88 said:

And we went off the rails when people used this thread as their own personal pulpit. Both groups have made valid points. The Indian issue is just as valid as bringing up the transgender topic. This is an extremely complicated issue that we're all trying to make sense of. 

I'm not convinced more Christianity is somehow going to stop this issue. Back when more people when to church we had a whole host of other issues. My Baptist friends still think that being gay is a "lifestyle" and will lead to eternal damnation. I'm sure many here do as well. 

Anyways, I saw this comment on Reddit 4 years ago and it always stuck with me. I may have shared it before but it's worth sharing again. 

I’m not saying everybody has to be in church Sunday (although it wouldn’t be a bad idea), but the things talked about in that Reddit post are Christian principles.

[Daniel]

5 hours ago, TGO David said:

It's the Distraction Fallacy at work.

lol I didnt bring it up I was responding to his comment.

[Daniel]

10 hours ago, leroy said:

I have little doubt that these shootings could be just as well be politically motivated to cause turmoil at just the right time; and, in fact, be triggered by individuals unknown ALA " The Manchurian Candidate " style; as they are the acts of a deranged mad man.   Nothing would surprise me... They seem to come up at very interesting times... 

 We have a mix of "deranged man" such as last Tuesday and political attacks, such as the attack on the congressional softball game, to racial animus such as the shooting a couple weeks ago in NY, to hatred of a sexual orientation as in the pulse nightclub, or hatred of Jewish people such as in Pittsburgh, or hatred of nationalities such as in CA a couple weeks ago when a naturalized Chinese man attacked a Taiwanese church. I am sure I am missing some motivation and obviously MANY instances.  Which should give you pause.

Edited May 29, 2022 by Daniel

[Daniel]

6 hours ago, gregintenn said:

Yet you advocate for more government. I don’t get it.

The government of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries are not the government of today.