I woke up this morning, flipped on MSNBC to see that the world was still there, and found that all other news had been preempted by the shooting massacre in Binghamton. Coming so hot on the heels of Wednesday’s post, it all gave me pause and the weirded feeling that maybe I shouldn’t be posting any TGIF fun and frolic before the bodies are cold. A strange Cartesian paraphrase slips into my mind. “We kill, therefore we are.” Or is it “we are, therefore we kill.?”
Read Going Postal - it explains a lot about this uniquely American phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteI dunno about that Going Postal guy. How come it is always men, and usually white men who do this shit? Couldn't put together a lynch mob and needed to assert themselves? Maybe we need to look into the evil at the center of whiteness? I don't mean people of European extraction, I mean white identity. White men seem to be the most dangerous group of people on earth. I'm just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteNo argument there!
ReplyDeleteI think you should give the book a chance. He makes it clear that it is white-man's culture, specifically the US post-colonial white man who grows up at the epicentre of the horror - the satanic mills of the last three or four decades, that creates these situations: for example, he goes into the jock/bully-ocracy of the US school system which extends to the working world afterwards (if you liked school, you'll love work!).
But he also contextualiases it in the post Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal work-place. These shooting didn't get started till the early 80s.
Ames' recent article about the Alabama murders rehearses all his arguments neatly - well worth a read.
WV: rednes
Thanks Chris. I'll give him another try. I realized, after I posted, that I was in too much of a hurry and probably should have kept quiet. Not that I am retracting anything I said, just regret the heat in which I said it.
ReplyDeleteAgree, the Alabama article is pretty good, at least as a starting point for a useful discussion.
ReplyDeleteI fear there's going to be a lot more of this kind of stuff in the news.People losing their jobs and income,etc. Other people bullying others while some unlucky types eat dirt. I noticed the local sports/hunter/fishing/camping big store with tons of white guys at the gun counter,that couldn't wait to purchase a gun. They stood in line. They were two deep,at the counter.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't help but put the two together,that America is arming itself,for fear,because when more poor folks lose their jobs,people might get more rat like.
This is some scary ass shit going on.