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If we lived in your capitalist utopia, Steve Jobs would've been shut down by the typewriter companies from the get-go. The fact that you equate unrestricted capitalism with any sort of freedom of thought or movement or market is just advertising that you don't know anything about capitalism, society or economics. You look at a system where the wealthy suck the life out of the poor, and then you blame the poor for their terrible decision to not being rich. You expound a system where there must, by definition, be losers, then you blame the losers for being losers.
If you must maintain that level of cognitive dissonance, the CD rules of explanation are not the reason you don't understand what people have to say about the ills of society.
I mentioned no capitalist utopia.
I did not mention Steve Jobs.
I did not equate unrestricted capitalism...
etc.etc.
All of these are you inplants. Then you come out and say I know nothing when I have not written these things.
I think you need to look at yourself.
I place those on ignore who use false premises in their constructs which are so beyond our normal experience that they are laboring under a delusion.
Here is another thing. How does one measure parenting skills? Parenting is like teaching, to a certain degree. If you measure the teachers ability by the performance of the students, its not fair because certain environments and conditions make it harder for kids to learn. A teacher can use the same books, the same lectures, the same level of caring in two different environments and get drastically different results based upon the environment. Parenting is the same way.
There are white kids in divorced families whose kids hardly see their dad.....yet....do not engage in violence. This is true for the majority of black single parent homes as well. Thus, bad parenting is not synonymous with single parent household.
It does appear to be as simple as that. If Brown hadn't robbed the store. If he hadn't attacked the cop.....
I think there is more to it. There seems to be a simmering hatred for authority in this country which starts at the top. More and more of our lives are being restricted and directed by our government and I think people are upset about it.
Authority starts at home with good parenting but too many kids are so spoiled today that they don't know how to react when they venture out into the real and dangerous world.
Oppositional Defiance Disorder ( ODD) is alive and well. Most kids outgrow this state. Some do not. Dysfunctional family life, family history of mental illness and/or substance abuse and inconsistent discipline are thought to be likely contributing factors.
I don't know if it is more prevalent or if 24/7 media and the internet, especially social media, has made us more aware of it.
As I sit here, I cannot think of how government restricts or directs my life in a negative way. Yeah, it's a royal pain in the butt to go through the TSA drill at an airport. Then again, when I see the mountains of stuff confiscated from passengers prior to boarding, I don't mind the drill knowing the guy next to me is less likely to have a machete in his carry on.
My life is not going to change because of who sits the oval or holds the majority at the federal or state level.
The only thing any of us really control in life is our own reaction.
I strongly believe it is parenting (and single-parent households). Growing up in a house with one parent statistically puts you at a big disadvantage. I think most people agree on that. The other issue is aggression in the home.
I listen to a show where they talk about this on a regular basis. They've talked about various studies and data that all point to aggressive parenting having negative effects on children. In general, it teaches that violence solves problems, which it doesn't. Significantly higher rates of criminal activity, violence, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, etc. are correlated with aggression in the home when they were growing up. Not all people who are spanked, hit, screamed at, etc. will have these characteristics of course, but the percentage of dysfunctional people (those in prison or with significant issues) who happened to have an abusive childhood is EXTREMELY high. There's also data that shows a small drop in IQ when regularly hit by parents.
In short, it does some long-term damage that's hard to reverse. The better option is teaching your kids, preparing them BEFOREHAND so you don't need to resort to violence, and give them incentives (example: instead of going to the store, your kid starts acting up, and you smack them and yell at them to stop...explain to them what behavior you expect and WHY before you leave, maybe have them agree to act politely and if they don't you won't take them to a friends house next time they ask...it can be whatever agreement you want, or maybe just "bribe" them in rare cases by offering them something for good behavior. Peaceful parenting...it can literally change the world.
As I sit here, I cannot think of how government restricts or directs my life in a negative way. Yeah, it's a royal pain in the butt to go through the TSA drill at an airport. Then again, when I see the mountains of stuff confiscated from passengers prior to boarding, I don't mind the drill knowing the guy next to me is less likely to have a machete in his carry on.
Of course, we all take our shoes off every time we get on a plane because one guy stuffed a bomb into his and killed nobody. Somebody walked into an elementary school with a gun and shot a bunch of toddlers, and gun control laws have gotten looser. I think it's fair to say that our governing priorities are a bit out of whack.
The common denominator is violence. Cars kill more people than guns. Ted Kennedy has killed more people with his car than over a hundred of my acquaintances have in my lifetime (63 years).
Guns are a tool, an end to a means, they just make it easier some of the time.
Grandparents and Female parents have a real difficulty disciplining male children. Boys need discipline to become good men. Lack of enough fathers is the main cause. Boys are going to find someone to follow, if all there is are gang-bangers , that's what he will follow. As a long time youth coach, I can say that boys without fathers involved in their lives have less discipline and are much harder to coach.
This thread didn't ask about violence in general, it asked specifically about gun violence, compartmentalizing it from violence that takes shape in other forms.
I mean, what exactly else ties together say, the Zodiac Killer, a guy who finds his wife with another man and shoots the other man; a gang member trying to shoot a member of a different gang and hitting an innocent bystander; a mobster killing a rival mobster with a shot to the back of the head; a guy robbing a bank who gets nervous and shoots; and a complete nut who goes to a public place and just randomly starts to kill whoever happens to be there? They're all different and the cause of their violence comes from an entirely different place than the others.
Money is the root of all evil, and capitalists are the root of all money. Eat the rich.
It starts when their parents are old enough to look for jobs. Society forces them to grow up in poor, hopeless, violent ghettos before they're old enough to think for themselves, and molds them into criminals. Society bears the weight of responsibility.
If you were sentenced to twenty years of psychopath camp, where you were trained extensively upon pain of violence to be a psychopath, and you came out of it a psychopath, do you suppose that you bear full responsibility for being a psychopath? Or do you suppose the people who sent you there might deserve some blame?
The people in charge are the ones screwing everything up. That's not exactly a difficult idea. Just think about it for awhile.
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