Shielding the results of the carnage only allows the enablers to continue push their narrow view. To me I see a lot of anger and frustration going around. Millennials are experiencing a high suicide rate because many feel there is no life for them (and they are right). I totally believe many who commit suicide and are angry try to take others with them and we have ample evidence for this. People (mostly men) get a sense of being able to express their rage before ending it for themselves. The only reason politicians are on board support the carnage is that they receive money from the industries involved in manufacturing the weapons.

@JackPedigo The other side of that political 'coin' is the value of such events in gaining votes via pandering to those with a purely emotional, short-cut reaction of legislation while ignoring the causes.

Suicides are symptomatic of the same frustrations caused by being born with a set of instinctually programmed 'expectations', into a world that has erased and forbidden practically everything that nurtures those instincts. They are far too numerous to include in an informal opinion section. One recent example is, however, a shortage of baby formula.

Baby 'formula' has only been with our kind for about 160 years; readily, market available for about 100. We are mammals but appear to have even forgotten THAT, in this sick existence comprised of artifice everywhere one looks.

@Silver1wun So a part of the reply concerned a lack of a particular resource. It is a well known fact the when resources become hard to get people start to compete and place others in categories, deserving and not-deserving. Women, children and outsiders go to the bottom of the list. However there is another aspect which I posted a few days ago. It's about who is able to get into and thrive in politics.

”The late Professor Albert Bartlett, Professor of Physics at the University of Boulder, Colorado, wrote a book called The Essential Exponential for the Future of our Planet, with a chapter called “Democracy Cannot Survive Overpopulation.” When he moved to Boulder in 1950, the population was 20,000. There were 9 city councilors. By the time he was writing, Boulder’s population had grown to 100,000, and there were still 9 councilors. He wrote: “in effect today we have only 20% of the democracy we used to have in 1950,” because it is harder for the individual to get access to a representative. Professor Bartlett said the massive increase in electorate sizes for members of Congress made it impossible for them to personally represent their constituents. They ended up getting their campaign support, and ideas, from lobbyists and well-funded propagandists. “As a result,” he wrote, “we often get one dollar one vote versus what used to be one person one vote.” There is a crowding out effect, and people become alienated.”

@JackPedigo You cite valid, typical points on similarities between democracies and how they ultimately devolve back to the original forms of human gfovernment since the advent of male domination and conquest.

Democracy does not work and we've known that for millennia while still trying it over and over again. All forms of government, including self-government, ultimately decay into the strong man tyranny. This, because of something 'under the radar' that goes unconsidered.

If we want freedom and successful, egalitarian self-government, we must change the human character structure formed in the fascist family structure. It is the psychological 'safe-zone', born of the real or ideal father figure, provider and owner of all; the omnipotent overseer who passes judgment on and permission for everything that takes place. This is the human (unconscious) safe security zone. It is the father who loves us and will take care of us. Bill, George, Barack, Donald or Joe; it matters not. Each successive consolidation of power assures an ass to ultimately become our 'protector', our hero, our salvation.

@Silver1wun My uncle was German and grew up under the strict male dominant hierarchical system. I knew other Germans who were sent to prison camps and all said when they learned about the democratic system it was a revelation. There are different forms of government and in much of Europe the central government has more control over what is said, publicly and the power of business. That has helped maintain some semblance of a democratic system. Here, as I quoted, more and more it is being controlled by the business whose job it seem to be to deregulate the federal system.

@JackPedigo " She stated the problem exactly.

@JackPedigo

@JackPedigo My focus isn't on who specifically degrades self-government. It is on how it happens and has happened for over 6,000 years of male dominance, ownership and conquest.

Plato also stated correctly that a tyrant 'ALWAYS first appears as a protector'.

The promises of protection/salvation always appeal to the melancholic craving of the nascent 'safe-zone', motivated by promises of Paradise by any name. The price is always paid in abdication of our reasoning and loyalty in return for 'pie' that never comes.

One other favorite example is part of my profile. Alice (in Wonderland) inquires about why there isn't jam if its supposed to be 'jam every other day', to which the Queen replies that 'today is not another day'.

Theological and ideological rackets work that way. Sad news to face, but true, that until we return to our natures as Nature herself has given us instinctually we have no reason to expect anything other than newer forms of self-destruction destruction or inescapable tryanny.

Call them what you will; corporations, charismatic saviours equipped with this or that map to Utopia. The masses are afflicted, all of us by degrees, with the desire for 'somebody else to do it'.

@Silver1wun We all are responsible for degrading the self-governance movement. Once we start to produce more offspring than can be supported then nature takes over. The hunter-gatherer societies learned their lifestyle could support only so many of us and tried to limit their progeny to 2 or replacement level. The advent of agriculture sealed our fate.

I agree. We don't understand the mindset of people motivated by violence. They aren't repulsed by the same things that normal people find horrific. And seriously, this would be torture to bereaved families.

So who cares if the perpetrators get some sort of glee out of this. The idea is to motivate the overwhelming majority and to show them this could happen to their kids.

@JackPedigo My point was that the GOP has already show to not give a flying fuck about legislation to curb gun violence, so you advance this naive notion of showing the carnage in the hope of persuading those you know you won't persuade and end up harming those who have already been harmed. Sounds like a net loss to me.

@chalupacabre Again, the overwhelming majority want change. Showing carnage will motivate more to stop saying they care into action. There are members of the GOP who feel it is time to start restricting gun access.

@Garban

I'm honored.