Perhaps you have heard about this Facebook post by Kelly Guthrie Raley, a Teacher of the Year at a Florida middle school. For those of you who do not have access to Facebook, below is the entire rant, dated 8:25 A.M., February 15, 2018, the day after the Parkland massacre (emphases mine):Okay, I’ll be the bad guy and say what no one else is brave enough to say, but wants to say. I’ll take all the criticism and attacks from everyone because you know what? I’m a TEACHER. I live this life daily. And I wouldn’t do anything else! But I also know daily I could end up in an active shooter situation.Related reading: Is It Really Possible for Parents to Be Friends With Their Kids? (dated June 22, 2016). Excerpt (emphases mine):
Until we, as a country, are willing to get serious and talk about mental health issues, lack of available care for the mental health issues, lack of discipline in the home, horrendous lack of parental support when the schools are trying to control horrible behavior at school (oh no! Not MY KID. What did YOU do to cause my kid to react that way?), lack of moral values, and yes, I’ll say it-violent video games that take away all sensitivity to ANY compassion for others’ lives, as well as reality TV that makes it commonplace for people to constantly scream up in each others’ faces and not value any other person but themselves, we will have a gun problem in school. Our kids don’t understand the permanency of death anymore!!!
I grew up with guns. Everyone knows that. But you know what? My parents NEVER supported any bad behavior from me. I was terrified of doing something bad at school, as I would have not had a life until I corrected the problem and straightened my ass out. My parents invaded my life. They knew where I was ALL the time. They made me have a curfew. They made me wake them up when I got home. They made me respect their rules. They had full control of their house, and at any time could and would go through every inch of my bedroom, backpack, pockets, anything! Parents: it’s time to STEP UP! Be the parent that actually gives a crap! Be the annoying mom that pries and knows what your kid is doing. STOP being their friend. They have enough “friends” at school. Be their parent. Being the “cool mom” means not a damn thing when either your kid is dead or your kid kills other people because they were allowed to have their space and privacy in YOUR HOME. I’ll say it again. My home was filled with guns growing up. For God’s sake, my daddy was an 82nd Airborne Ranger who lost half his face serving our country. But you know what? I never dreamed of shooting anyone with his guns. I never dreamed of taking one! I was taught respect for human life, compassion, rules, common decency, and most of all, I was taught that until I moved out, my life and bedroom wasn’t mine...it was theirs. And they were going to know what was happening because they loved me and wanted the best for me.
There. Say that I’m a horrible person. I didn’t bring up gun control, and I will refuse to debate it with anyone. This post wasn’t about gun control. This was me, loving the crap out of people and wanting the best for them. This was about my school babies and knowing that God created each one for greatness, and just wanting them to reach their futures. It’s about 20 years ago this year I started my teaching career. Violence was not this bad 20 years ago. Lack of compassion wasn’t this bad 20 years ago. And God knows 20 years ago that I wasn’t afraid daily to call a parent because I KNEW that 9 out of 10 would cuss me out, tell me to go to Hell, call the news on me, call the school board on me, or post all over FaceBook about me because I called to let them know what their child chose to do at school...because they are a NORMAL kid!!!!!
Those 17 lives mattered. When are we going to take our own responsibility seriously?
...According to family historian Stephanie Coontz, the idea that parents and kids would even want to be friends is a relatively new idea, one that emerged along with “more democratic child-rearing practices” in the mid-20th century.Read the rest HERE.
“Parents today really want their kids to be individuals — they try and shape their values and decision-making skills, but they back off from the idea that they know better what these kids should be, should do, should think,” says Coontz, the director of research and education for the Council on Contemporary Families. “And that’s a tremendous change from most of history, when parents really did think … their kids would be safest if they obeyed them or followed in their footsteps, or at least followed their instructions for how to do better.”
[...]
...[S]ocial support, possibly the central component of a healthy friendship, is just one part of the job for parents, who also have to devote their energy to shaping a human into a functional adult — meaning that affection and intimacy are often bound up in other things, like rules and boundaries.
“I think there are elements of friendship. Parent-child relationships can be warm, accepting, responsive, trusting,” agrees Judith Smetana, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester who studies child development. “But at some point, the buck stops with the parents,” she says. “Making sure your child stays safe and out of trouble — sometimes that means pulling rank, saying something’s not acceptable, in a way a friend probably wouldn’t or couldn’t do.”...
Addendum (with thanks to Ed for alerting me to this video):
More information at CCHR International.
Of note: many schools push parents to get their children medicated earlier and earlier, even as early as First Grade.
from the Jowett summary of Plato's "Republic" Tyranny springs from democracy much as democracy springs from oligarchy. Both arise from excess; the one from excess of wealth, the other from excess of freedom. 'The great natural good of life,' says the democrat, 'is freedom.' And this exclusive love of freedom and regardlessness of everything else, is the cause of the change from democracy to tyranny. The State demands the strong wine of freedom, and unless her rulers give her a plentiful draught, punishes and insults them; equality and fraternity of governors and governed is the approved principle. Anarchy is the law, not of the State only, but of private houses, and extends even to the animals. Father and son, citizen and foreigner, teacher and pupil, old and young, are all on a level; fathers and teachers fear their sons and pupils, and the wisdom of the young man is a match for the elder, and the old imitate the jaunty manners of the young because they are afraid of being thought morose.
ReplyDeleteJoe,
DeleteCenturies ago!
Millenial's ago>? ;)
DeleteGoing to have to move in pretty mysterious ways to show a case where effective democracy sprang from oligarchy.
DeleteDemocracy's on the downhill slope from oligarchy. Oligarchy's an "improvement". But then again, Ixion's wheel doesn't spin that way. :)
DeleteModerns have re-defined "timocracy". In the day of Archilochus, it was based upon "honour". Moderns now claim that it was based upon "wealth". But Plato's pretty clear. THAT, McDuck, is what the democracy that Oligarchy decayed from. Honour, of the type beloved by Aeschylus (see his epitaph). Of the type beloved by both Washington and Cincinnatus.
DeleteThe timocracy of the hoi agathoi becomes the oligarchy of the hoi polloi/oligoi becomes the democracy of the hoi kakoi
DeleteParents back off from "influencing" their kids, then give them to the school system.
ReplyDeleteEd,
DeleteAlso, many schools push parents into medicating their children -- even as early as 1st Grade. In fact, teachers very nearly threaten parents with putting their children into Special Ed unless the children are medicated. I've seen such cases -- personally. And, honestly, these children with whom I've had contacted have been undisciplined in the home.
A vicious circle!
If anything, this event has shown us how far our society has fallen. With rare exception [such as the JROTC cadet and the Kevlar blankets], Parkland students stood by the carnage as spectators with their cell phones. They weren't trying to barricade doors, look for egress routes.....or trying to subdue the gunman. They were increasing their social media profile. And the self righteous, smug Statists in the media and political sphere actually applaud the for that.
ReplyDeleteWe don't teach our younger generation how to improvise, adapt and overcome...to survive; we teach them to virtue signal and favor ruling by emotion over fact.
Now some politician wannabe senior in that class is organizing rallies for gun control.
DeleteAgain, dancing in the pool of blood…..
And hardly anyone appearing in the media [including Republicans] is pushing back against the litany of lies and misinformation being used as sloganeering by these student "activists".
DeleteI have sympathy for these students, but expending such energy on a topic they know nothing about, erodes that.
I thought Emma Gonzalez was a pretty effective speaker.
DeleteIf these students can focus on a narrower question such as why the guns everywhere crowd has made it possible for a kid with so many red lights flashing to by a semi-auto almost as easily as a can of soda.
Again - 'No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
There is no "guns everywhere crowd". It's a figment of your imagination. Think I'm wrong? Try me.
DeleteThe shooter being able to purchase a firearm, despite the warnings....isn't the fault of the gun rights camp. It's safe to say that the School District Administration in which the Parkland school resides....isn't exactly populated with gun owners.
CI,
DeleteWith rare exception [such as the JROTC cadet and the Kevlar blankets], Parkland students stood by the carnage as spectators with their cell phones.
I'm glad that you mentioned that. Pathetic passivity.
Unless I am mistaken, there really was nothing for the school to report to the police -- except for a hunch.
DeleteBesides, I'd like to know if the school system has regulations limiting the administration's calling the police.
Ducky,
DeleteYour rebroadcasting the stale "Only Nation..." cries out for a response.
Our shamefully high global ranking for gun violence tracks with our other shameful global rankings like # of abortions, # of violent assaults, and # of rapes.
We're also in the top 20% for suicides.
We also rank way up there in tobacco usages, pot smokers and abusers of other drugs, including opioids and prescription meds.
We rank highest in % of population that is bipolar, ADHD and consumption of ADHD meds, as well as other meds for anxiety and other psychological ailments.
Our global ranking in math is below the OECD average, and reading and science are just above it.
Have you ever considered perhaps we are merely a nation weighed down by a larger than normal population of stupid, violent people?
Stop it. Stop the yammering. Just stop it.
I think the US is pretty good on tobacco use. Hard to compare illicit drug use because data gathering varies so much between countries, but prescription drugs are a big problem, which pharmaceutical companies are probably exacerbating through advertising and lobbying.
Delete"a larger than normal population of stupid, violent people"
is a decent hypothesis, but I tend to look towards the culture. The Asian countries which fill the top places in the education rankings do so because of the priority they give to education.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete"And God knows 20 years ago that I wasn’t afraid daily to call a parent because I KNEW that 9 out of 10 would cuss me out, tell me to go to Hell, call the news on me, call the school board on me, or post all over FaceBook about me..."
ReplyDeleteWith her there. Twenty years ago social media was a niche interest, and journalism was funded better so they didn't have to fill space with these types or irresponsible one-sided non-stories.
"Violence was not this bad 20 years ago. Lack of compassion wasn’t this bad 20 years ago."
I know she's extrapolating from her personal impressions, but I wonder if she is correct. I think violent crime, for example, was higher twenty years ago.
She extrapolates elsewhere, from her personal experience of having no impulse to shoot her peers. Well of course, but neither do the vast majority of students now. Observations about the psychologically normal are not that helpful to reduce mass shootings, which are only ever carried out by the troubled. From my layman's perspective, it seems that an excessively rigid strict parent is as conducive to psychopathy as neglect, not that she's recommending the former but I imagine those types of parents use similar logic to her's to justify their excessive overbearance.
Jez,
DeleteThank you for your thoughtful comment.
There was certainly violence in the public schools when I worked there (1973-1977), but violent crime was limited to certain schools. Now, however, there is violence at the best schools -- and that was rarely the case decades ago.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSave yo breff, hunnychile. Dere ain't nobody lissenin' to a woid you say. Day all thinks your nutz. Dat only shows how smart day ain't.
DeleteA society that cannot police itself invites the state to police it.
ReplyDeleteI still remember the words of my basic training drill sergeant: "Locks are for honest people."
A society that grants Ultimate Freedom to everyone to snub societal norms = Anarchy
A society that grants Ultimate Freedom to everyone to snub societal norms = Anarchy
DeleteThere's truth to this, but all too often, we seem to sacrifice liberty for a false sense of security.....as we see happening again today.
All so called freedom is a conflict of interests.
DeleteCI: Every healthy system consists of counterbalancing forces. The founders set it up a system where countervailing forces like personal liberty are in constant tension with good of society.
DeleteI know you understand this, just illuminating my comment a little better.
What do you think of temporary custody/examination/questioning of someone who has issued credible threats? Taking away their gun temporarily?
All underpinned by a rebuttable presumption of danger to others based upon legal criteria, hearing by a judge, with the person in question afforded full legal rights and legal representation?
Also, if detained/weapons impounded, an automatic 30-day (or 45-day, whatever) clock that expires everything if not positively reset by government going back to the judge to justify such action.
Also, I think positions such as school principle should be able to identify to police dangerous students without fear of being sued.
What say you? We have to come up with some way to stop dangerous mentally ill people from accessing weapons. In too many of these cases, all the signs were there. Obviously, anybody can go around a ban on firearm purchase, but in those obvious cases, some intervention as I've outlined above could have saved lives.
Taking away their gun temporarily?
DeleteSure, provided that the process follows what you went on to write. As I understand it, that is not what occurs presently. Much like the no-fly list.
But that is a specific and reasonable offering towards a solution. Some agreement could be obtained, were the gun control cabal only to discard the lies and misinformation, and act like adults.
One of the slogans always bandied about, is "universal background checks". Seems pretty cut and dry, until you ask anyone from the gun control crowd - who is the enforcement mechanism for this proposed law.
I do not favor legislation based on appeal to emotion [from any camp], that is unenforceable or irrational.
Good. Wanted to check my nebulous ideas against another libertarian.
DeleteSF - your offerings are light years more cogent than anything the “we’ve got to do something!!!!!” crowd has.
DeleteThank you. Screaming loonies on all sides fail to realize this is a balancing act, and the fulcrum is a government with near-zero credibility.
DeleteLet me just suggest one doesn't need to be "another libertarian" to think much of what SF suggested is worth consideration.
DeleteI'm getting a tad 'over' the media frequently saying lately how all people should want to protect our children...as if "all people" doesn't include the party they hate. Again, sacrificing reason on the altar of preference. Their clear preference is to believe anyone right of center is a knuckle dragging gun owner who wants everyone on the planet armed.
Nostradumbass said:
Delete"All so called freedom is a conflict of interests."
As is every argument, political, religious, or private. Every crime, misdemeanor or felony and civil suit and every regulation that has the force of law, every political party and faction faction. So what is your point?
It may sound profound to you but the concept is so nebulous as to have no meaning it's just a synonym for a conflicting viewpoint or in your case, anyone that disagrees with you.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteBen Franklin's Famous 'Liberty, Safety' Quote Lost Its Context In 21st Century
DeleteSame thing, from the right:
https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/
The very foundation of the Founders' experiment is the trading of the the minimal amount of liberties necessary to purchase securty from a government tasked with defending our rights.
Anything else is an all-against-all anarchy.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethe guy in the video
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Democrats use the blood of children to make a political point about gun control knowing full well it won't stop the next shooter. Worse still, like immigration law, when Obama was in power he undermined law enforcement and actually reduced prosecutions.
ReplyDeleteObama talked tough about gun control, but prosecutions plummet on his watch . Gun Control Policies shifted and declined In cases since the Newtown tragedy.
Now, we have an FBI that has become corrupted by the influence of Obama's political cronies. Cronies that Obama put into office.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFT,
ReplyDeletestart LOCKING up the LOONIES again
But who decides that who is loony?
The DSM keeps changing.
SF,
ReplyDeleteI think positions such as school principle should be able to identify to police dangerous students without fear of being sued.
Do you happen to know if the school system has regulations limiting or even forbidding the administration from contacting the police about a troubled student? I'm willing to bet that such regulations exist.
I know that there are regulations as to what can be conveyed from one school to another when a student is expelled; typically the expulsion is in a closed file listing offenses and other data.
My only evidence in anecdotal: Principles saying they cannot single out students for fear of federal intervention (remember Holder scolding schools because they were punishing too many black males and not enough white female Asians?), lawsuits, or simply mobs of bullhorn-wielding community agitators.
DeleteNow there's a friend of Cruz saying she'd alerted the school 17 times....boy
DeleteZ,
Delete17 times? Sheesh.
”The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical College. “The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness.” When we have 'experts' like this, we're in trouble. I'm trying to picture someone who kills innocent people en masse and isn't mentally ill....impossible but I believe this well illustrates a great line I heard last night "sacrificing reason on the altar of preferences"....the Doc (and he's not alone) wants it to BE GUNS, it's only THE GUNS. gad
ReplyDeleteZ,
DeleteWouldn't actual evil without mental illness be a factor?
”The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus...
My father used to say, "A lot of crazy people never hurt anyone." And that is a true statement, IMO.
You could extrapolate it that way....but I don't think actual evil isn't an illness...To plot, to plan, to see people smiling, have lunch with them, sit in class with them, then decide to murder them in cold blood seems like mental illness to me, but maybe you and Doc Kraus are right and I'm wrong... I do believe a lot of crazy people never hurt anyone; don't think I implied all would. But SOME do...do perfectly sane people plan to murder ...premeditated murder? not sure....taking a life is pretty 'out there,' in my opinion. Thoughts?
DeleteZ,
DeleteIt's complicated!
Remember Ted Bundy? Crazy (psychotic and with a high IQ) or evil? I say the latter in his case.
Z,
Deletetaking a life is pretty 'out there,' in my opinion.
Sure, murder is "out there."
Could "out there" mean no faith training?
I must say, however, that the two diagnosed sociopaths I personally know had a Christian upbringing.
Then, again, those two I mentioned never committed mass murder. I do suspect that each did commit one murder and was never convicted (protected by their families). I can't get into more on this in a public forum.
DeleteWell, we all know the many stories about CHRISTIAN murderers...I remember reading one article where some old man had killed a neighbor or something and the media said "Ex Sunday School Teacher Murders.." and he hadn't been to church in 25 years let alone taught Sunday School in those years! AOW...I stand by the idea that there are mentally ill folks who'd NEVER EVER kill....I hope I didn't infer differently...and I still feel premeditated murder involving shootings, hatchets, etc., are by the ILL...Christian upbringing or not.
DeleteOK...I'm done, too :-)
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI, too, don't believe insanity should exculpate anybody....agreed, FT. No more 'abuse excuse'
DeleteFrom my good friend Mustang's post today:
ReplyDelete...Let’s do some math. Presently, there are 20 million high-school aged children. Of these, between 6.9 and 7.2% suffer mental health issues, which include developmental delay, emotional disturbance, intellectual and mental health debilities. The scope of behavioral abnormality is quite wide, ranging from youngsters with histories of trying to harm themselves, to harming their peers … and some of these behaviors are quite disturbing.
We don’t know who these people are, nor even the extent of their psychosis because the law protects their identities —even when the public has an interest in knowing who they are and the dangers they impose. Yet, psychotic students are mainstreamed in public school classrooms, subjecting normal students to great risk without the knowledge of tax-paying parents. When incidents do occur in schools, education officials cover them up or address them in such a way that no one knows who was involved or how school officials addressed the matter.
We are informed of the existence of dangerously psychotic individuals after incidents such as Sandy Hook or the Douglas High School shooting —but only after the fact, when the damage has already been done, and only then in the context of the instrument used, not the cause of the violence. If we apply the lowest percentage of mentally impaired students in the United States today, we are faced with the potential for 1.4 million similar acts of violence....
Read the entire blog post HERE. Worth your timd!
"We are informed of the existence of dangerously psychotic individuals..."
DeleteThis video of Mustang's is going around...saw it on FB and got it emailed to me. I HOPE the government takes heed....
Let's face it, it's people like Dr Kraus in my comment above who benefit financially from NOT saying/admitting drugs given to kids when they're young to calm them, etc., cause illness.
(forgot to add I'd say "dangerously psychotic individuals" are mentally ill")
DeleteUm, time.
DeleteINTERESTING!
ReplyDeleteCheck out this comment, which has embedded links:
IWB: Nikolas Cruz told family he was living with that he was going to inherit $800,000 when he turned 22
Cruz told them he stood to inherit at least $800,000 from his deceased parents. Most of the money would come when he turned 22, he said. The Sneads have since seen paperwork they think supports the claim he was going to be very financially comfortable.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-school-shooting-family-helped-nikolas-cruz-20180217-story.html
via: YouTube: The major business is the huge commercial printing company called Robert Mark Enterprises (a son of his partner,Roger Cruz, is named Robert while one of Mr. Weiner's four sons is Mark). Mr. Weiner's daughter, Ellen, is his secretary and another son, Jeffrey is in the business. The firm is in the Westchester Tower, where i(t) has a complete floor.
Does this explain the source of the funds to buy all those guns?
DeleteEd,
DeleteVery possibly!
I would love to see a good statistical breakdown of murderers/psychological meds
ReplyDeleteSF,
DeleteSo would I!
Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteCNN’s Symone Sanders on Fla. Students: ‘These Are the Radical Revolutionaries We Need’
The ugly truth (a comment I found on blog rounds this morning):
ReplyDeleteTreating CRIMES as school discipline issues is guaranteed to result in more and more violent crimes because it enables thugs to victimize innocents.
Crimes are committed on school grounds, yet those crimes are swept under the rug (expulsion) so that it's hard to find a paper trail. This may not have been the case with Nikolas Cruz, however. But this is often the case.
Expulsions aren't documented?
DeleteJez,
DeleteOften, no.
We ran into this problem when I was teaching at a private school. We were uninformed about violence on a public school campus. We found out to our chagrin when a 2nd grader stabbed another 2nd grader in the next with a sharpened pencil. We found out again to our chagrin when a drug deal was intercepted on campus (powder cocaine, at the high school level); he had been expelled from a public school for the same reason.
Interesting statistics:
ReplyDeleteIn frequency of mass public schootings, the U.S. falls between France and Canada.
Another interesting statistic.
DeleteOn average between 2005 and 2010, every 1 in 16 kids between the age of 12 and 19 was on psychotropic medications. That's a drugged kid in every classroom in America.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps our school shooting "epidemic" is simply another symptom of Big Pharma's unfettered power, much like the opioid epidemic.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAnd real estate taxes more and more force women -- mothers -- into the work force.
DeleteThe only thing I'd add is "Mom and Dad spend 90% of their time at home texting friends and otherwise doing internet stuff." Also, I've seen so many little kids at restaurants with adults and the kid's sitting there with headphones on playing video games all through dinner...horrible. FT...you nailed a lot of it...and yes, our kids are suffering for the lie of LIB.
DeleteZ,
DeleteYou have prompted me to type in this comment....
Today my History through Film students were watching How Green Is My Valley during class time. I wonder if they saw what I saw: a very different world wherein the family around the table is central to life, a centrality that offers great joy. It struck me in class today that life with all this wonderful technology (iPhones, computers, iPads, etc.) is lonely and impersonally joyless.
From my experience, a more realistic scenario:
Delete1. Mum goes to work.
2. Baby spends the day with a child-minder who is attentive and stimulating. Ideally she has a baby of a similar age whom she cares for at the same time.
3. Mum takes the baby home.
4. Dad comes home from his office. He's tired but not physically exhausted, so he makes dinner
5. Baby hears mum and dad chat about their day. Sometimes accompanied by laughter and the clink of wine glasses. Also, sometimes mum's day has been more interesting than dad's.
6. After eating together, dad does the washing up while listening to a fascinating podcast or radio documentary while mum puts away some laundry.
7. Baby would have eaten long before now, of course. Depending on her age she gets milk or some of what mum and dad are having, mashed.
8. Mum and dad take turns rocking the baby to sleep, which takes at least 1.5 hours of incessant, highly specific motion from which zero deviation is tolerated. I defy anyone who isn't deaf to "ignore" a screaming baby for more than fifteen seconds.
9. Mum and dad get about 30 minutes alone together before zonking out themselves.
I adopted a bit of a snarky tone for some of these points, but it's actually a wonderful time. A parent's experience depends greatly on how sleep-deprived they are -- some parents have it a LOT worse than I did.
The point about women getting to work is that men have to pick up some slack around the house. I can understand that men in physically demanding jobs need to invest time in recovery, but most there's no reason why office-workers shouldn't be able to do some chores; employers should expect new dads not to work crazy long hours.
In my opinion, the biggest fib is this idea that women didn't used to have to work -- for most classes, this might have approached being true for a period of about 20 minutes during the 20th century. Working-class (ie most) women worked throughout eg. the Victorian era.
Jez,
DeleteThe kind of daycare you mention is much different from the daycare in which most working American women use since about 1970.
Working-class (ie most) women worked throughout eg. the Victorian era.
Particularly widows and "old maids."
Swifton Dedleigh said
DeleteAha! the psychologically gelded male –– the feminist's dream come true. He goes to work, then he makes the dinner, and does the dishes. Probably buys the groceries and does the wash too, and stillclips the hedges, pulls the weeds, and mows the grass.
This charming post-modern couple probably produce babies by artificial insemination to avoid the abject horror of the woman's having to endure the repulsive affront to her dignty of actual coitus.
Effeminized males are relegated to masturbating to onscreen porn.
The psychologically castrated post-modern male is too afraid of being hauled into court to be charged with "marital rape" to dare attempt actual interourse anymore. After all, you never know when the b-tch. may turn on you.
I leave it as a creative exercise to the original poster to recast his 8 scenes with a depressed stay-at-home mother who is isolated and unstimulated and a work-obsessed husband who is even more absent emotionally than he is physically. He sleeps with ear-plugs, so she's up most of the night with the baby. Although they haven't kissed for months, he always insists on penetration.
DeleteHow precarious your identity as a male must be if it cannot withstand the act of cooking up a bit of dinner. This must be what is meant by the phrase "toxic masculinity."
FT,
ReplyDeleteDSM = Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Excerpt:
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and offers a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. It is used, or relied upon, by clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the legal system, and policy makers together with alternatives such as the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, produced by the WHO.
Note the portion about health insurance! If a mental illness is not allowed for by the DSM, health insurance won't cover exams, hospitalizations, medications,etc.
There is also this (at the above link):
Many mental health professionals use the manual to determine and help communicate a patient's diagnosis after an evaluation; hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies in the US also generally require a DSM diagnosis for all patients treated.
It's pretty looney to call the cops on someone 39 tines for making death threats. After 2 or 3 times you know the cops aren't going to show uo when you disappear the MFer.
ReplyDeleteNever involve government in Do It Yourself projects.
TC,
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I'm surprised that the police came more than two or three times.
As someone from across the Pond, I find that Americans have a strange way of viewing these shootings, these massacres, these killings of their children. They seem to look for all the possible causes of such barbaric behaviour everywhere but the obvious place: the guns. The problem is caused not by mental illness, not by opioids, not by a lack of Christianity, but by lack of gun control. All Western counties suffer to a greater or lesser extent from young people on drugs, from young people lacking faith, from young people with mental illness. But only in America are there mass shootings like this; and only in America is there a lack of gun control. Ask yourselves one simple question: Do you love your guns more than you love your kids? If the answer is yes, then continue down the road you are on. If, however, the answer is no, then perhaps it is high time that the gun laws be changed.
ReplyDeleteAll the emotion and boilerplate aside; you clearly don't understand America or Americans.
DeleteDo you also believe that we should also give up our personal sovereignty and demand that our Government treat us as ignorant and stupid peasants? Should we relegate our fierce independence to the ash bin of history and ensue our freedoms and liberty in favor of the prodigal sons portion of pottage.
The right to keep and bear arms is enshrined as a personal right given to us by natures God and, even if they are removed from us under the pretense of law, the right cannot be taken away. An American government so foolish to attempt that undertaking risks armed insurrection and a possible civil war. We are not subjects to be ordered about we are citizens and sovereign in our person. There are 300 million Americans and over 300 million guns.
What I see is a failure of Progressive social engineering in our government and especially in our schools. Law enforcement and bureaucratic bollocks also had its bloody hand in the mess. They, with countless warnings, decided to ignore it.
[If] "The problem is caused not by mental illness, not by opioids, not by a lack of Christianity", then who pulled the trigger. He wasn't a child, he is a 19 year old. Old enough to pick up a gun and go to war but evidently not old enough to restrain himself and not murder 17 others.
Do I love my guns more than my kid; hardly. My son is 40 years old now, when he was 7 he was beaten up by a neighborhood bully and I taught him how to defend himself (did it very handily too). When he was 13 I I taught him about firearms and how to use them. When he was 15, he was attacked by a gang member in school. The gang member was 19 and was expelled (for his final time) but my son beat the crap out of him, broke his jaw and sent him to the hospital. My son was suspended for 3 days and threatened with expulsion if he was in anymore fights (i.e. he would have to redo the year even though my son was only defending himself). There's more to the story but I won't bore you.
Funny thing, even though my son had access to guns he never even thought about taking one and killing anybody.
Only in America? I think not!
LINK HERE!
Always, my comment doesn't appear to have been put up. How so?
ReplyDeleteMark,
DeleteI don't see any comment of yours in the spam folder.
Perhaps Blogger burped?
@ AOW, he was speaking of his first comment above, it had posted before I could check on it. I think blogger did "burp" because I made a short comment that seems to have evaporated into the Internet ether.
DeleteI understand America and Americans far better than you might imagine. I also know you that Americans think of themselves as special, different from citizens of other lesser countries.
ReplyDelete“There are 300 million Americans and over 300 million guns.”
That’s nothing to be proud of!
For your information, I wasn’t suggesting that your precious guns be taken away from you; rather, I was suggesting that they be controlled.
You talk about your right to bear arms being enshrined in the constitution, in the form of the Second Amendment. I know and understand that. But does that right extend to military-grade arms too? To automatic weapons more suited to the battlefield than to main street?
The constraints you put forward mean that mass shootings and massacres will continue in America; and for one simple reason: there is nothing acceptable to you that can be done about it. It is not acceptable to you to control guns in any way; so the shootings will go on. That’s the sad reality.
You stated that I don’t understand America, Americans. I would say the following: There is not one America, but many. Not all Americans want to carry guns, not all Americans keep guns at home. My guess would be that attitudes to gun control would vary from state to state, from east coast to west coast, from north to south. My understanding of America tells me that attitudes to guns and gun control are as varied and nuanced as Americans themselves.
Naturally, I come to this problem from a different perspective than you do; and that is to be expected, since I come from a vastly different culture. Europe is very different from America. A European doesn’t generally consider it his right to bear arms. If he owns a gun, it is strictly controlled; and it is allowed him for reasons of sport or hunting. In any case, the police come and check up on the owner and the gun, in order to ensure that the gun is kept in a safe place, and to check up on the owner’s attitudes and reasons for wanting it. In order to own a gun, you have to have a reference from an upstanding person in society. That person has to vouch for you, vouch for your suitability to bear arms, vouch for your mental health. Owning a gun is not an automatic right.
I know that for freedom-loving Americans, this would be an intrusion and unacceptable, But these regulations do ensure that those who bear arms are generally unlikely to go to a school and massacre children.
If my memory serves me well, in my lifetime, we have only ever had one school massacre. That was in Dunblane, Scotland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
It didn’t take the authorities long to introduce tighter controls on guns after that.
Delete“There are 300 million Americans and over 300 million guns.”
"That’s nothing to be proud of!"
It's not a matter of pride, it's a fact. The shear numbers involved make it an impossibility to remove those weapons if they are not willfully surrendered. They will not be.
" For your information, I wasn’t suggesting that your precious guns be taken away from you; rather, I was suggesting that they be controlled.
Confiscation always follows 'control'. Just as it did in your country. You might argue that people still own guns in your country but you don't really own anything that you cannot put your hands on without the Governments permission and whim. It's just a convenient illusion.
"But does that right extend to military-grade arms too?"
Actually, given an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, it does. That's why pro-ban forces aren't eager to have the matter settled in our Supreme Court unless they have a firm "Progressive" majority. The first battle of our founding revolution occurred when British forces attempted to confiscate colonist firearms.
"Not all Americans want to carry guns, not all Americans keep guns at home.
And no one forces them too.
More later, I must get ready to leave for work now.
Mark,
DeleteThank you for commenting.
But does that right extend to military-grade arms too?
I'm no expert on guns, but I'm not sure that the rifle used in Parkland (and elsewhere) was military grade. See Weapons of war, they say, should be banned.
A weapon of war wasn't used. Would not have stopped Parkland.
Also, I'm not sure that the now-much-reviled bump stock makes a rifle military grade -- although certainly a bump stock makes firing the weapon more rapid than one trigger pull equals one round fired.
IMO, our "gun problem" is caused by numerous interacting factors: a lack of moral/faith upbringing, school problems, psychotropic medications, both parents in the work force, failure on the part of law enforcement (just to name four factors, that last one a huge factor at Parkland).
"Military grade/style" is an emotionally descriptive term. It literally has no meaning outside of gun control circles. The closest one could get to an accurate term, would be MIL-STD, which refers to the technical, durability and performance standards required of military equipment.
DeleteAbove, Warren is correct. As SCOTUS ruled in United States v. Miller [1939], arms suitable for military service are indeed protected by the 2nd Amendment.
Further, there is no such animal as an "offensive" or "defensive" firearm; and every class of firearms ever devised, was done so initially to be used in a military capacity.
This is all standard gun control narrative, that due to a fundamental lack of education in our schools and media....doesn't get the correction it should.
- CI
Thank you, CI.
DeleteI have grown weary to the bone with the gun control narrative and the fundamental lack of education in our schools and media.
When I grew up, every household whom I personally knew was armed to the teeth. Not a single suicide by gun nor a murder committed by gun. On the other hand, we regularly used firearms to "take care of" rabid animals (rabies epidemic in the 1960s) and the occasionally deter/detain an escapee from the prison at Lorton.
Even now, it takes the police at least 15 minutes to get where I live today if I phone the police and see, "There is a man with a gun in my back yard."
Swifton Dedleigh said
Delete"Mark" is clearly just another leftist troll spouting standard leftist boilerplate. Belongs in a category with Ducky, This One, Rational Nation, Dervish Sanders, OCTOPUS, Jerry Critter, and others of that type.
I wouldn't give "Mark" the time of day, because his hostility born of stupidity is so nakedly apparent. He doesn't want to reason with anybody, he just wants to spurt venom.
F-him!
Life is too short and too precious to waste wrangling with brainwashed zombie ideologues.
When you gaze into a mirror, do you see your own reflection?
DeleteSwifton,
DeleteMark Alexander is not a troll. In fact, I invited him to look at this thread. Make of that fact what you will.
And he certainly doesn't spurt venom, nor is he stupid.
You might learn something if you bothered to read Mark's essays, which are linked on his sidebar.
Can it Swifton! Right now you're the one coming off as the troll.
DeleteHe's a Brit and has a different perspective than most Americans. That doesn't make him a Leftist hack.
Police get paid even when they don't do their job. Greatest scam ever concieved.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I watched the White House conversation about school shootings. One idea posited was to train teachers to recognize problems with students such that those students might be a danger to the school.
ReplyDeleteReally?
Even mental health and law enforcement professionals have difficulty in doing so:
The two boys [the Columbine shooters] got into trouble with the law for breaking into a locked van and stealing computers. In January 1998, they were charged with mischief, breaking and entering, trespassing, and theft. They both left good impressions on the juvenile officers, who offered to expunge their criminal records if they agreed to attend a diversionary program to include community service, received psychiatric treatment, and obeyed the law. Harris was required to attend anger management classes where, again, he made a favorable impression. They were so well-behaved that their probation officer discharged them from the program a few months earlier than the due date. Of Harris, it was remarked that he was "a very bright individual who is likely to succeed in life", while Klebold was said to be intelligent, but "needs to understand that hard work is part of fulfilling a dream."
For Warren: You'll be surprised to learn that I have a gun at home! So I am quite familiar with the procedure of gaining permission to hold one. And no, I don't need permission from the government to put my hands on it. It is actually not mine, though it is now in my name; so I suppose technically it is mine. I would never buy a gun, though. It is in my home, because I hold it for safe-keeping for my brother who lives abroad, in Australia.
ReplyDeleteHe owned the gun for purposes of hunting. He cannot take it in to Australia, and is too sentimental about it to get rid of it. So I am stuck with it. As far as I am concerned, it's a damn nuisance. About once every five years, a police officer pays me a visit to make sure it is locked up and kept safely. Between visits, I never touch it. Shooting is not my thing. But technically, were I to want to, I could use it for pheasant shooting, or such sporting activities.
As for teachers being armed in the classroom, that's about the dumbest idea I have ever heard of. I am a qualified teacher. And I have mixed with and known many, many teachers throughout my life. I can't think of one that I have known who has ever shown any interest in shooting, still less shown any aptitude for it.
I know more than a few retired military folks who are now teachers, and they've spent their lives around guns. What would be your opposition to them being able to be armed?
Delete- CI
It is wrong for children to be educated in such an environment. It would not be correct or easy to properly educate children in such an environment. Children need to be allowed a period of innocence. Guns in the classroom would totally destroy that innocence. It is so wrong that I don't know where to begin to answer your question, to be honest.
DeleteThere is something very, very sick about a society even contemplating arming its teachers. To have to think about such a move shows that something has gone dreadfully wrong in society.
I wonder....Should we turn our schools into fortresses?
DeleteYes, Mark, something has gone dreadfully wrong , but that something isn't the guns.
In most of these school shootings -- and other mass shootings which are not jihad -- we're looking at time bombs which were bound to explode. Call it mental illness, call it evil, call it whatever we like.
Maybe we should ask this question of ourselves, then answer it for ourselves: Why don't I go out there and shoot up the place [whatever the place is which has touched off our anger]? Why don't we go out there and shoot up the place?
I know my own answers. So why is it that the mass shooters don't have the same answer that I do?
Mark,
DeleteI have mixed with and known many, many teachers throughout my life. I can't think of one that I have known who has ever shown any interest in shooting, still less shown any aptitude for it.
My experience is a bit different. Several of my fellow teachers have been retired military or retired law enforcement, and they would have no problem with carrying on school grounds -- except for the concern that a student would get the weapon.
For self-defense, a weapon needs to be available -- not locked in a gun safe in the teachers' lounge.
Guns in the classroom would totally destroy that innocence.
DeleteNo proposal I've yet seen indicates that a teacher would be carrying openly, in fact...students wouldn't know that a teacher or administrator was armed...unless there was an armed threat.
If we can employ arms to protect our politicians....we can damn sure use them to protect our children.
- CI
Mark, No I'm not surprised you have one. I'm somewhat familiar with UK arms licensing requirements and I am surprised that they let you keep it under the "good reason" clause of UK law. I assume it's a shotgun or your brother wouldn't be hunting pheasant with it. I also know that, under UK law, that a firearm is never legal to use in self defense. That's not the case here.
DeleteBoth CI and I are military veterans. CI is still involved in security work, at home and abroad, and I hold a lifetime concealed carry license. Weapons were/are the tools of our trade and we are quite knowledgeable about them and what they can and cannot do. I own several firearms most of them are old but functional bolt action rifles. I also own several handguns and a couple of AR platform rifles in different calibers. None of them are licensed or registered but all are legal under State law.
A firearm is a tool, nothing more or less. Being a tool it can only be put to use, for good or bad, as it's master wills. You may remove a tool from it's master for misuse but you do a great disservice to everyone else that uses the tool if you infringe their right to use it or ban it altogether. Our second amendment says "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". If the gun banners wish to change the second amendment, there is a process for doing so. Let them try! But they'd rather keep waving the bloody shirt in the name of politics and ideology.
Maybe we care more about our children than you do. After-all, we're prepared to guard their lives with deadly force.
No one is saying that teachers have to be armed unless they want to be. If we have armed guards at sporting events surely we can have them in schools. It works for the Israelis.
BTW, those old bolt action rifles are military rifles, more accurate and powerful out to longer ranges that the AR platform rifles.
DeleteHold.
ReplyDeleteThe.
Phone.
Mainstreaming Nikolas Cruz was a fatal mistake. See School board knew of Parkland shooter's obsession with guns and violence, documents show: Warning signs present in Cruz's education plan prior to Douglas enrollment.
The first few paragraphs of the above article:
PARKLAND, Fla. - Exclusive documents obtained by Local 10 News show the education plan for school shooter Nikolas Cruz; a plan that left clear signals that should have alerted officials of the danger he posed to the community, according to a former Broward County ESE specialist who reviewed the information at the station's request.
"What you're discussing from the plan seems to be the profile of a mass killer," said Dottie Provenzano, who retired from Broward County Public Schools in 2017.
The education plan shows that, even as Cruz was making progress at the Cross Creek School for emotionally and behaviorally disabled students in late 2015, but that he was known by administrators to have an obsession with guns and violence. Here are some passages from the plan...
[...]
The documents also show Cruz was dependent on psychiatric medication and continued to struggle greatly in social situations. Despite those issues, he was still enrolled at Douglas in January 2016 when his behavior rapidly deteriorated....
Read the rest at the above link.
This figures: Women’s March leader works behind scenes on ‘student-led’ Parkland gun-control protest.
ReplyDeleteo/t - The Steele dossier was a "trojan horse". It was a laundering mechanism for intelligence products generated through US government databases for spying on Trump.
ReplyDeleteEvidence of this laundry process is found in a significant “search query” result that was actually a mistake. The faulty intelligence mistake was the travel history of Michael Cohen, a long-time Trump lawyer. The FISA search turned up a Michael Cohen traveling to Prague. It was the wrong Michael Cohen. However, that mistaken result was passed on to Chris Steele and it made its way into the dossier. Absent of a FISA search, there’s no other way Christopher Steele could identify a random “Michael Cohen” traveling to Prague.
The Cohen mistake created a trail from Chris Steele to the FISA database. {Go Deep}
All of the unauthorized FISA-702 search queries, “To From”(16) and/or “About”(17), of the NSA/FBI database were returning results. Those results were “raw intelligence”.
That raw intelligence needed “unmasking”, that’s where the Department of State (DoS) comes in. The U.N. Ambassador is part of the DoS. Samantha Power stated she wasn’t doing the daily “unmasking” identified by the House Intelligence Committee investigation {Go Deep}. Someone, or a group of people, within the State Department, were doing unmasking requests – presumably using Ms. Power’s authority.