Violence in America: Treating the problem, not the symptoms. Pt. 3: Education, parenting, and American values.

(Yes, this is long, as many of my commentaries are. Deal with it.)

My last update was about how proper security could have prevented things like Sandy Hook, My sister has brought up a good point that I will elaborate on. I believe one of my other updates addressed the issue, but maybe just indirectly. What american children lack far more than security in school is proper education. If schools were properly funded, children educated and had the values of life and the ideals that this nation once held high, and claims to still hold dear, instilled in them, values such as honesty, integrity, loyalty, honor, respect, service, tolerance, equality and many others, then maybe elevated levels of security and weapon bans will be irrelevant once again. 

The sad truth is that people would rather satiate their cognitive dissonance and stay in their comfort zones instead of addressing the real issues of society. The problem isn't godlessness, it's ignorance and it's laziness. Parents have stopped being parents. (Although not all. I'm glad to know that my nephew values life and knows the difference between reality and video games.) It's sad when people want to ban video games because their too lazy to be parents. Sure we can blame it on the schools for not teaching things like fine arts, but that's ultimately on us also because we don't want to pay for it. Certain people would cut funding for PBS. When I was a child, we frequently watched things from PBS as lessons. One of the best lessons I've seen, though I already knew it, was from PBS in a COLLEGE Psych class. Not elementary, not jr. high or high school, but college. (I will include a link to it at the end, I suggest everyone watch it.) If PBS' material is good enough for college, it's good enough for kids, but no, we must cut that while we spend 3/4 of a TRILLION dollars on defense spending. 
We live in a day and age when popular music is about sex, drugs and violence or is so devoid of artistic content, it's a wonder how it passes for music. Before we had artists like Simon and Garfunkle who had songs like "The Boxer", John Lennon with "Imagine", yet today we have an androgynous singer who's popularity is based on songs like "Baby" which is of absolutely no lyrical value. People wonder where our morals, ethics and ideals go...they left with our Music and artists. Fascists didn't ban creative artistic expression for the fun of it. A society's soul lies within it's artists.

When did we stop teaching our children to value life. Not just life as in human/animal life, But to value living — You know, the aspects of life that make us smile. To value the warmth of the sun, the singing of the birds, the smell of a fresh rainfall, the crispness of a cold winter morning or even the sparkle in a strangers eye as they walk past? Never have I know anyone who values both life and living to ever needlessly take the life of another living creature; human or not. 

The link I mentioned previously. Watch it, if you aren't cold hearted and racist it will move you; if you are, I hope it changes you. (granted if you fall into the latter group, we aren't friends on here and you won't see it. Eh well)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

Violence in America: Treating the problem, not the symptoms. Pt. 2: Security

You know what would have prevented Sandy Hook from ever occurring? Security. And I don't mean armed guards, although those are located at courthouses and government buildings, but not school. Not sure why that is. But had they designed the school with security in mind, there would have been only one way to enter the building. Controlled ingress, screening for weapons to actively exclude them from the building. Restrict entrance to the building until potential entrants are deemed not a threat instead of granting entrance until a threat is presented. Strangely we value our court houses and banks more than our children and then when shit hits the fan as it did at this school we seek to ban guns when this could have easily been prevented without the issue of gun control ever being addressed. But no one wants to talk about the other problems we have because attacking guns and the right to bear arms is the easy thing to do. We can point at guns and say, there...that's the demon we must exorcise when in reality guns are nothing but a tool and gun violence is nothing but a symptom. If you break a bone, do you just take some pain killers and say fuck it, this will work? Absolutely not. You go to a doctor to have them fix the problem. Yes, there will be pain in the process, but once you face reality and treat the real problem, the pain will go away on its own, organically. However, if you just take pain killers and ignore the problem, A. the problem is still there. B. The pain killers over time cause their own set of problems that are just as bad, if not worse, than the original problem. There is a reason why science and medicine work on the premise of treat the cause, not the symptoms.

Violence in America: Treating the problem, not the symptoms. Pt. 1: A Look at gun bans and other American problems.

Anti-Gun people is your issue guns, or is it violence? Well let me ask, if you have gun violence and remove the guns, what are you left with? Now if you have gun violence and you remove the violence, what are you left with? I happen to know how to mix Ammonium Nitrate and fuel oil to create a really nasty explosive. It's one of the side effects of taking a variety of chemistry classes. I choose not to for a variety of reasons. Notice the lack of desire is the overriding factor. But clearly you wish to disregard logic and stick to your ineffective talking points. The same points that were used by....you guessed it...Conservatives to ban drugs and alcohol. Ignore history to appease your cognitive dissonance all you wish, the fact of the matter is simple; YOU CANNOT STOP ACTION BY BANNING OBJECTS, IT SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK. Why do you think Supply side economics doesn't work (while not banning something, attempting to control the supply has little effect on the outcome when compared to demand.), why banning drugs didn't work, why banning homosexuality doesn't work, why banning alcohol didn't work, why banning abortions does not work, why banning pornography does not work and why banning guns has not and will not work. 

I'm not saying we don't have a problem, I'm simply saying that restrictions of firearms access does not and will not work. Hell, I don't even think Arming teachers is the best idea (although I don't think preventing properly trained and vetted personnel from owning and possessing them on schools is the best idea either). Honestly, I think if you want to protect schools, increase security. restrict the means of ingress to one location, screen people for weapons and laminate the windows so as to prevent breaching. Restrict access until it is shown that the entering person is safe instead of granting access until they are proven a threat. This is done, for the most part, in courts and airports.

If you want to limit the violence, address the violence. I can own 1,000 firearms and if I don't have the desire to use them on innocent people, it will never happens. Now if I had 0 firearms and I was intent on causing massive loss of life, I could do so with less trouble than it would for me to get a firearm. The argument for banning firearms is born out of a severe lack of familiarity and fear over firearms as well as laziness. People don't want to talk about the poverty, urban blight, decline in morality and ethics (I'm not talking about God or religion), obsessive media coverage, poor parenting, and other such issues because they are abstract and they require us to look at ourselves and find fault with ourselves as a nation and as individuals. Guns are easy to target because they are tangible. You can post up pictures and say, this is the enemy. These are the things responsible for our problems. It is easy to blame objects that can't speak for themselves or blame others for our problems. But unless we take responsibility for our actions things will only get worse. It is not the drug but the addiction that plagues the drug addict, remove the drugs and the problems they have are still there and will display themselves in other, often more violent, ways. Bottom line, if I shoot you, I am responsible, not the fire arm. Not the type of firearm. If I beat you with a club, It is me who is as fault. You want to tell us to focus on guns, well sorry, I prefer to focus on the problem, not the symptom. If you have bad breath, do you take a breath mint or do you treat the underlying infection resulting in the problem? I sure hope not.

Lastly, reduce the need for violence and you won't have to worry about guns. Sure you will have domestic violence issues, but those will happen regardless of tools available. Portugal for example decriminalized all drugs, replaced prison with treatment and their drug rates went down 50% and HIV rates went down. To take a reference out of economics, If you reduce the demand, the supply becomes irrelevant. Limit people's desire to kill people and it won't matter how many guns there are. Conversely, limit the supply of firearms and leave the demand there, guess what will happen...human ingenuity will prevail. When people want to do something bad enough, they will find a way. Which, incidentally is why the worse mass murder at a school was done by explosives, not firearms. (funny side note, the rate and magnitude of school shooting increased after the gun free school zone acts and with the increased level of media coverage of events. But hey, let's ban guns instead of addressing the real issues. Seems like a legit idea)

A work in progress

A majority of people who use government benefits do not use them in perpetuity if they have a choice.

Unemployment Insurance is actually a vital tool implemented by the government and funded by employers to reduce the incentive to lay people off and to keep the economy going/from falling apart completely due to stagnation/stagflation arising from massive freezing of the flow of money. After all, if the consumers stop buying the businesses stop selling. Big business won't be so important if they fold due to not making a profit. Also, what do you propose the government do when people can't find jobs when the job market needs don't meet the demand of the job seekers? Tell them screw you because you don't have a job? Wait, that's what business wanted to do when they started refusing to hire people who didn't currently have jobs. 

The concept of people collecting welfare checks in perpetuity is a throwback to pre-1996 welfare programs. The current welfare program is designed around enabling people to support themselves w/o welfare and providing them assistance while they get physically, medically, or vocationally rehabilitated. 

People always complain about people collecting food stamps thinking that they are a mooch on the economy and the tax base when the reason food stamps exist in the first place has absolutely nothing to do with helping poor people get food, that's simply a side benefit of the program. It was created, and still exists, to ensure that the american agriculture base has a demand to meet their supply so the agricultural infrastructure doesn't collapse like it did during the great depression. So yeah, recipients of these benefits will likely vote democrat, likely reason...they realize that democrats will extend their collective hands and help people get back on their feet and self-sufficient. After all, isn't that what this country was founded on? 

Helping each other through the hard times without expecting anything in return but knowing that should we ever need it, the same help we gave to others will be there for us. It's sad that so many people only care about about their own short term interests and care nothing about the welfare of each other and the interests of the nation as a whole. You don't win Football games by the lineman avoiding blocks because they don't want to get hurt and leaving the QB to fend for himself. Hell, you can't win a wrestling dual by training all you need so you can win and then leaving your teammates to train on their own because you're tired and and want to go home; you make the sacrifices you need to for the betterment of the team and because the team succeeds your succeed. 

There is a reason why the WWII generation is referred to as The Greatest Generation, everyone made sacrifices and contributed what they could to the effort because it simply was what needed to be done. The only difference between now and then is that instead of the threat being in uniform and carrying the flag of a foreign country, the threat is ourselves. As Lincoln stated, "A house divided against itself cannot stand". 9/11 should have had the same unifying effect that Pearl Harbor did, but it hasn't, it's absolutely pathetic that partisan politics took that thought and tore it to shreds. It seems that people care more about their party than their country. So much so that their cognitive dissonance allows people to ignore facts in favor maintaining political allegiances. 

How many times did we hear people complain that Bush and his right wing Republican policies were to blame for high and rising gas prices? How many times have we heard that Obama and his leftist policies were to blame for the high and rising gas prices? 

How many times have we heard that Bush was responsible for the continuing and rising unemployment? How many times have we heard the same said for Obama? 

How many days can we turn on the cable news channels to see MSNBC ridiculing some republican official for doing something and then come back a few days later defending a democrat for doing the same exact thing? Fox News is no different in that regard either. 

Case in point, Fox News and the GOP are ridiculing Obama for invoking Executive Privilege while MSNBC and the Dems are rationalizing Obamas action and saying that it's ok because it's only his 1st invocation of Exec. Privilege and he went longer than any Pres. in the past 30 years without using it and has used Exec. Privilege less than those presidents. Go back to the Bush Presidency and you had MSNBC and the Dems ridiculing Bush for invoking executive privilege while FOX News and the GOP the Presidential stock quotes for the legal justification for invoking Privilege while citing how bush has used Privilege less than preceding presidents. It's as if the political mantra going from the political elites all the way down to the voters is simply, "I'm right, so if you do something then you're wrong, but if I do the same thing then it's ok because I'm right." 

To quote one of my favorite passages from the New Testament (Yeah you heard me right, a Jew who has go to passages from the New Testament, get over it!), 1 Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." Isn't it about damn time that we, as a nation and as individuals, put these childish ways behind us? And make no mistake, this shit is fucking childish; our words… childish, our thoughts… childish, Our reasoning… childish. In fact it's worse than childish because a child is ignorant ans they know not what they say. 

In kindergarden our kids are taught to be kind to each other and treat each other as equals; meanwhile our politicians stonewall each other and disrespect each other. Not too long ago the Michigan state legislature censured and silenced a female representative for using the word vagina in a debate on abortion. Not too long before that the US congress convened a panel, also on the subject of abortion, comprising of nothing but men and the panel only allowed male "experts" to testify on the issue. Even our judicial system allows the endangered party to defend themselves and speak on their own behalf yet it appears you get no such luxury in legislature. Even a child could tell you that these actions are wrong. I've yet to figure out why we are even wasting time on this issue — There are FAR more important things to worry about.

It doesn't stop with abortion or Republican stupidity, the other day I saw a news article about Representatives of the LGBT community who were invited to the White House for a Pride event held by The President of the United Fucking States, the first even of it's kind in American history and they were posing in front of a portait of Reagan with their middle fingers extended facing the painting. I have no idea if the pictures are real or not, but regardless it's pathetic: Option A: The pictures are real and these representatives are embarrassing themselves and disgracing the community which they were charged to represent. Option B. Some bigot took the time to doctor pictures in order to defame a group of people who are simply trying to get the same rights that the bigot enjoys. As I said, it's pathetic either way. Again childish

Ohio Republicans redistricted the electoral precincts to make it effectively impossible for the democrats to win a majority in the state legislature for at least 10 years until the next census. Can anyone justify stacking the deck to ensure that you win and have the perpetual advantage? If so, can you do it while Congress wastes absurd amounts of time and the courts press charges against Athletes for using steroids in privately owned athletic leagues and potentially lying about it while being targets of a which hunt, respectively. 

And one more shining example of Americas political maturity. I'm sure we can all remember the debacle that was the Wisconsin crusade on public workers and the subsequent recalls and the Democratic senator walkout? The entire establishment, both Republicans and Democratic were acting like children who couldn't get what they want so the GOP said, "We don't give a damn what you want, we're going to do what we want, when we want, and we don't care what you have to say about it." and the Dems just said, "Oh yeah? well too bad, you can't do it with out us there." and I can't help but picturing the Dems sitting on the state border sticking out their tongues with their collective thumbs to their noses with fingers extended and wiggling back and forth. This debacle isn't much different than the stalemate in US congress because no one wants to sacrifice or compromise. 

Here's an Idea...let's grow the hell up and start acting like adults. Lets learn from the best aspects of generations past. Generations such as The Greatest Generation who stood together as one nation indivisible and said with one voice, "WE ARE DIVERSE AND THROUGH THIS DIVERSITY WE ARE STRONG! WE ARE ACCEPTING AND THROUGH THIS ACCEPTANCE WE ARE MANY! WE ARE THE TIRED, THE POOR, THE HUDDLED MASSES AND WE ARE RESILIENT AND IT IS BECAUSE OF THIS RESILIENCE THAT WE WILL PERSIST!" Like they did in the past, let us all stand together and say, in one unified voice, that, "We will not fail; we will not falter; we will not go quietly into the night for we Americans!"