Posted on 05/22/2018 3:43:28 PM PDT by Kaslin
One telling detail keeps escaping the men and women of words who would end school shootings by one expedient or another: gun control, better security, the arming of teachers, more careful vetting of potential gunmen and so forth.
The detail of which I speak: We didn't use to endure this horror. It didn't happen.
The urgent question that flows from this detail: Why not?
Well, to start with, because things were different, prior to the shooting fests, which break so many hearts and generate so much despair.
Right, yes -- but different in what way?
I will take a crack at this: Our culture (as we have come to call the circumstances of daily life) was cooler, calmer, less emotional, more orderly than it has become since then -- which is not the same as saying pre-massacre culture (what a term) was cool, calm and unemotional. It was not. Those personally familiar with that culture know better, I hope, than to indulge in nose-honkings over the joys of the past.
Still, massacres, explosions of personal rage, were rare and generally connected with mental disorder, such as the case of Howard Unruh, the World War II vet who went wild in New Jersey in 1949, gunning down people on and off the street, including a barber and his 6-year-old customer. There were guns enough out there, no doubt; nevertheless, few thought of using them in today's ghastly, almost customary, way.
We didn't use to endure this horror. It didn't happen (or, save for Howard Unruh, hardly ever).
One telling detail keeps escaping the men and women of words who would end school shootings by one expedient or another: gun control, better security, the arming of teachers, more careful vetting of potential gunmen and so forth.
The detail of which I speak: We didn't use to endure this horror. It didn't happen.
The urgent question that flows from this detail: Why not?
Well, to start with, because things were different, prior to the shooting fests, which break so many hearts and generate so much despair.
Right, yes -- but different in what way?
I will take a crack at this: Our culture (as we have come to call the circumstances of daily life) was cooler, calmer, less emotional, more orderly than it has become since then -- which is not the same as saying pre-massacre culture (what a term) was cool, calm and unemotional. It was not. Those personally familiar with that culture know better, I hope, than to indulge in nose-honkings over the joys of the past.
Still, massacres, explosions of personal rage, were rare and generally connected with mental disorder, such as the case of Howard Unruh, the World War II vet who went wild in New Jersey in 1949, gunning down people on and off the street, including a barber and his 6-year-old customer. There were guns enough out there, no doubt; nevertheless, few thought of using them in today's ghastly, almost customary, way.
We didn't use to endure this horror. It didn't happen (or, save for Howard Unruh, hardly ever).
No. It didn’t used to be this way...
Back around the turn of the 19th century, it was axe murders, here, there and everywhere
Oh yeah...they had guns back then too.
The problem seems to be with the negative ‘didn’t’.
The issue doesn’t seem to be ‘cut-and-dried’...
In the old days the imbecile Factory didn’t dope up a third of the kids on Ritalin and SSRI, they didn’t tear down every American morality story such as George Washington and the cherry tree, the first Thanksgiving, Abraham Lincoln in the $0.09 Etc. They didn’t push militant Atheism and every sort of perversion known to man including some that would shock the Romans, like cutting their penises off. School shootings cannot be fixed by a gun law because they are a symptom of a very sick Society.
This was a child of a Greek immigrant shooting a child from Pakistan. That was the Genesis of this one
But some people say that while "I use to" is definitely wrong, the negative "I didn't use to" is acceptable. And it looks like some people didn't understand the question.
I guess Murchison has a valid point. People in the past were too busy just trying to get by. They accepted the conditions of life and had more of a sense of limits. Less ego. Less emotionalizing.
Also, America is in its 17th year of War. That’s never good for society and for the people who grow up in it
I think you are correct on the grammar.
And I think that people have forsaken religion, but have failed to replace it with an equally powerful and inspiring philosophy. People are just as busy today, in different ways; but many no longer have ingrained standards of behavior to guide them.
Oh they replaced it with an inspiring and Powerful philosophy all right. The problem is it’s the same philosophy that brought down the Roman Empire and killed a hundred million people in the last century
Society was over 90% white and people feared God and had more self-control.
Joe Biden as Senator passed the school gun free zone bill. Thete after school shootings started
Things have changed so much since many of us were in high school. Lack of respect for so many simple things has disappeared. Killing in classrooms even looks and sounds like what kids do in video games.
The USA schools need God’s intercession.
No, they didn’t replace it with anything solid, but with the vague, undisciplined and narcissistic notion of ‘if it feels good - or consolidates your self-esteem - DO it’.
That’s not a powerful and inspiring philosophy. It’s nothing.
(Murchison could have written this a lot better. It seems ‘rambling’, and more concerned with how he says things than with what he says. I don’t know anything about him, but I didn’t get a solid ‘takeaway’ from it.)
Things have changed so much since many of us were in high school. Lack of respect for so many simple things has disappeared. Killing in classrooms even looks and sounds like what kids do in video games.
You could get any drug but heroin in the E building hall. Adults molesting students got away with it 100% of the time. Ambulance blaring to pick up someone who ODed at school almost commonplace (the ODs were never fatal). Life was fairly wild and scary even without school shootings or video games (outside an arcade).
Remember when people used to have actual fistfights? One on one. Not til the death or anything, just til you won or the other person gave up.
I remember when there used to be fights. Not guns. Just a good old fashioned azz kicking fight.
I was talking about the influence the 3rd worlders have on our youth without the balance of God.
“Just a good old fashioned azz kicking fight.”
—
That’s how it was when I was raising kids-—I remember they were really antsy during April vacation-—I used to call it “Fight Week”.
No one was ever hurt badly——and they all grew up and moved on.
.
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Socialism Is a virulent mental disease.
You are younger than many of us, Yaelle.
I graduated high school in 1971. By then, there were some kids smoking weed, dropping acid - but most didn’t want to fool with that, and it would be ten years or more before drugs were really mainstream and we heard of high-school kids OD-ing or dying.
There were male teachers who were rumored to have an eye for the young girls, but never any hint of actual sexual stuff going on. (Except for one female teacher, who apparently fell in love with a student, and married him after the young man had graduated.)
I remember a couple of girls getting pregnant, and disappearing; and one young girl who became pregnant by her boyfriend - who married her, then went to Viet Nam, and came home. That Italian-American, very Catholic couple went on to have several children, and became upstanding and very involved citizens of the community.
My High School generation were on the cusp of all the bad stuff; we saw it all happen, but we remember a better, still salvageable America.
24 hour news cycle, the rise of social media and smart phones, and internet porn. It all has an alienating effect I think, especially for young people who have never known anything else. Most kids that age are looking at screens more than the faces of their friends and family. TV and home computers were bad enough, and now we take our dumb screens everywhere.
Freegards
There were shooting ranges at high schools.
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