America's Culture of Cruelty

I found this article

I disagree it with as soon as I see the title but maybe this might start an interesting discussion.

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

Oh dear, my brain was trying to escape from my head reading that.

I caught the Dilbert reference. That was about my reaction to it but I've learned that the things I've disagreed with, even if they were completely insane, at least made for interesting discussion.

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

This article has some elements of truth, but it's ludicrously overstated.

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I saw a troper link from there and the comments were in agreement, so I'm not sure if the views expressed here were part of a larger movement I wasn't aware of or something.

But I think that its a bit too soon to really judge what motivated the shooter, by all accounts he was crazy for a long time.

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

From the link: "There is a deeper order of politics behind this murderous act, one that the American public is inclined to ignore. More specifically, the general responses to this violent act are symptomatic of a society that separates private injuries from public considerations, refusing to connect individual acts to broader social considerations."

There are good reasons to separate private acts from public considerations. The actions of single individuals (whatever their state of mind) may not be representative of the population as a whole. Now if you can identify a pattern of actions over time, and correlate that to some component of American public culture, you might have an argument.

"The culture of cruelty is important for thinking through how entertainment and politics now converge in ways that fundamentally transform how we understand and imagine politics in the current historical moment - a moment when the central issue of getting by is no longer about working to get ahead but struggling simply to survive."

No logical connection to shooting people that I can see.

"How else to explain the zealousness in which social safety nets have been dismantled, the transition from welfare to workfare (offering little job training programs and no child care) and recent acrimony over health care reform's public option?"

Now that's just too silly to even comment on.

I'm baffled by the suggestion that suspension from school is inherently cruel.

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I'm more bothered by the implication that the juvnile justice system is cruel to its inmates. Have you seen what we have to do when dealing with a juvenile? We practically can't touch them without a court order (Shit writing this I know what that could also mean, NO IT DOESNT and shut up).

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

There is probably a certain amount of cruelty in the juvenile justice system. The idea that public schools are systematically racist was much sillier.

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Trust me, there might be among the juveniles but certainly not as a matter of policy. You would be surprised at how much we basically babysit them. Well at least in California. Maybe they still beat them in Texas or someplace. :V

edited 24th Jan '11 8:38:41 PM by saladofstones

Well he's talking about WWII when the Chinese bomb pearl harbor and they commuted suicide by running their planes into the ship.

This seems pretty typical (and actually more logical than most) of the anti - right statements that came out following the Giffords incident.

What I find sad is the fact that politics has trumped serious police work in the media. While Laughner held some right - wing beliefs (he thought US currency should return to the gold standard for one), he did not appear to be connected to any political group, and one expert said the language he used in his You Tube videos is a classic symptom of Schizophrenia.

I do find some of the rhetoric today distasteful.

• I used to listen to Keith Oberman. He accused George W Bush of ordering a hit on him with no evidence. I stopped listening.
• I started to listen to Glenn Beck, but he accused George Soros of being the near - literal antichrist of the financial world.

But it's interesting how the bloggers never criticize those they agree with, they only blame the other side.

Food stamps? What about farm subsidies?

I tend to agree with most of this part of the arguement. I don't have a problem with Grand Theft Auto, but the prople who make "let's beat up somebody and post it for lols" videos absolutely disgust me.

edited 24th Jan '11 8:44:17 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

What I don't get is how (some) liberals (of which I'm one, I suppose) wish to decrease censorship, and then turn around and blame media violence for all of society's ills. The millenia without television or video games would lead one to believe that looking for and solving the deeper reasons behind our tendencies to violence and ism would be better than merely attacking the symptoms.

edited 24th Jan '11 8:46:17 PM by DarkDecapodian

Aww, did I hurt your widdle fee-fees?

Did Olberman really say that?

Edit: His article on The Other Wiki doesn't mention it.

edited 24th Jan '11 8:53:23 PM by silver2195

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Oh wow, that article was ridiculous. I'm really liberal on most issues–I do think that there's a culture of violence that provides context for tragedies like Tucson, and I do think that Republican economic policy is designed to transfer wealth from the middle and lower classes to the wealthy, and even I felt that article fell into Don't Shoot the Message.

edited 24th Jan '11 9:08:30 PM by Linhasxoc

This guy has some, er, interesting books.

Amazon summary of The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

"His newest book details the sweeping post-9/11 assault being waged on the academy by militarization, corporatization, and right-wing fundamentalists who increasingly view critical thought itself as a threat to the dominant political order. Giroux argues that the university has become a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning and has compromised its role as a democratic public sphere. And yet, in spite of its present embattled status and the inroads made by corporate power, the defense industries, and the right wing extremists, Giroux defends the university as one of the few public spaces left capable of raising important questions and educating students to be critical and engaged agents and concluded by making a strong case for reclaiming it as a democratic public sphere."

Honestly this is a sort of pain that exists in my countries, and can't be solely to blame for people going over the edge. But admittedly, the economics of a country contributes to crime and violence.

Stress in general helps people to snap. And it doesn't help. Who knows what all motivated Loughner, but he was, it would seem, a warped angry and paranoid person, in more ways than necessarily can be attributed to Rightist politics and a culture that is indeed a bit insensitive to the poor. I don't know, I can understand some of the connection, but it was too greatly made. There's a limit to assertiveness, you know?

I agree upon all of the message, except that with Jared Lee Loughner, it isn't quite the place for it. It would be better to say something more general along the lines of "Given the political climate and despair of the country, maybe it's not so shocking that we've driven some people to insanity?". That sounds like a better statement, in my humble opinion.

Then again, given one if his messages says something about being saddened by unemployment, maybe the message isn't that far off? I just don't know, didn't seem quite worded right.

As much as it's politically incorrect, I definitely don't agree with this. I'm honestly tired of people decrying "the system is racist, the system is racist!".

edited 24th Jan '11 10:08:07 PM by Ukonkivi

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He has some points however.

America is getting more and more okay with violence, even fictional violence.

Let me put it this way. On cable TV, you can see Uma Thurman kill 88 people without any cuts or censorship.

But the moment she says the word Shit or Fuck, people would flip out, and force that to be censored.

It makes no sense.

Not to mention: Titties.

Serious business, those titties.

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I agree. We've gotten into this nasty habit of calling every inconvenience "racist", and the only thing it's doing is diluting the meaning of racism. Yes, racism still exists, and yes it's still terrible, but when there are a hundred people crying "racism" at the drop of a hat, it's hard to tell when five people are actually being hurt by bigotry.

I think it's terrible that racism still exists, but I think it's even worse that "you don't like me because I'm black" is considered a joke.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

It's possible I misunderstood.

I agree wholeheartedly... by using offensive language so casually, we make strong words meaningless. But...

As a right - libertarian (which apparently I am) a world where people call each other racists, hatemongers, and violent is preferable to a world where the media is censored for every questionable call.

"And if you disagree with me you're a homophobic backlashing racist." - Greg Gutfeld

I'm a Left Libertarian, and I believe in the right to hate speech.

Doesn't mean I can't complain about how annoying it is that places such as Youtube are littered with stuff that makes me sick to my stomach. And that I don't don't have any right to be disgusted by it.

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Well, I agree that American culture tends to overemphasize the causal role of the individual. And I agree that there's an over-reliance on punitive measures and callous market forces. But like all short essays critiquing some cultural trend, it's essentially just a soundbite.

In all the sound and thunder, the right and the left are trying to score points on each other. There is no room left anywhere for sober reflection, just talking heads yelling past each other. You have to choose a side, and if you refuse to choose a side, a side will be chosen for you; words will be put in your mouth; assumptions will be made about you, your beliefs, and your personal habits; you will be pigeonholed; and you will never have an opportunity to set the record straight. That's a sort of cruelty, isn't it? Not to compare it with, say, capital punishment.

Nothing in society will change because of the Giffords massacre. The "debate" doesn't change, it only gets louder and uglier.

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If its their right to express their hateful feelings to the emotionally and psychologically wounded people, then its my right to express my feelings by throwing piss filled water balloons at them.

From the article: "young people and adults alike are seduced"

So it seems that the problem here is... the seduction of the innocent? *Ba-dum-tish*

Seriously, though, I wish American society was actually like that. Dystopias are so much more interesting than real life. That's probably why fanatics like to see them in the world around us.

Speaking of which, is it just my imagination, or is there a trend among this type of political extremist to lay the problems of America/the world at the feet of some sort of antagonist? Like right-wing nutballs blaming everything on some vast progressivist conspiracy, while left-wing nutballs blame everything on corporations and the military?