Watch now (125 mins) | Mass murder is one thing, but misgendering is apparently the real crime. Plus, wrapping up "That Hideous Strength" by C.S. Lewis
The MSM has become irrelevant and even dangerous in matters of this sort. Instead we should be concerned with the actual causes of this terrible madness aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers. Several have referred to the use of drugs and THIS requires more serious investigation. About 20 or more years ago psychiatry gave up on listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils. Instead they turned to the use of SSRI drugs which were easier and faster. If they had done due diligence, they might have discovered that in many cases the mental illness was aggravated. Shame on the medical profession!
Nope. My dad worked in a VA mental hospital (Dentist) when they closed the PA state system after ditching laws which allowed (basically) incarceration for mental illness — It was a political theory that all people should be able to choose to leave those facilities on their own signature. He said, then, that they’d end up homeless, drug/alcohol addicted, dead or violent criminals.
He was right.
Liberals did this to the entire country. On purpose. See a pattern there?
Even then the cocktail parties you and I will never attend produced harm.
So it truly is the “liberal elite” that needs to be blamed, and if possible removed from power.
Since no amount of evidence has changed anything best guess my grandchildren live in states which never did fall to leftists.
And if they don't end up homeless, they end up strapping down their mom or sister from doing anything productive except watching over/wrangling with them ... until they are worn out, poverty stricken, and on public assistance themselves.
What ever Reagan did or did not do, the man has been out of office for nearly 40 years and dead for 20.
Americans have had plenty of time to correct any mistakes Ronnie made, yet the Left is still consumed with blaming him. Better we actually solve the problem.
That was only one state, more than 50 years ago. This problem is the result of weenies on both sides of the political aisle.
I have also seen Reagan blamed for emptying asylums nationwide, but that wasn't the result of an executive order; it was legislation passed by Congress, which somehow always escapes any blame.
The acceleration of the closing of the national network of mental hospitals/institutions is arguably one of the worst policy decisions of the Reagan administration.
At the time, I was pretty liberal and voted consistently Democrat but I've come to appreciate much of what Reagan tried to accomplish.
The "homlessness crisis" also putatively began around this time. Put people incapable of taking care of themselves out on the street and what do you get? The "seed population" for homelessness.
Human nature is such that if we get used to the existence of something, we tend not to be as sensitive to changes in scale.
As noted, I think the mentally ill provided the "seed population" which then grew during the years of the "crack" mania. Again, if people are accustomed to the existence of homelessness, they probably won't notice how it grows.
In the late 1980's I was involved in a photo-survey of the homeless shelters for Hennepin County (which includes Minneapolis).
At the time, my sense was that the people at the shelters roughly broke down into three groups:
1.) People who were down on their luck but were trying to get ahead. Namely, this is the group that such shelters are designed to help. People not wanting hand-outs but just needing assistance.
2.) People who had drug and/or alcohol issues.
3.) The mentally ill.
And it seemed as though it was roughly 33% in each group.
. . . and a whole lot of Congress Critters on both sides of the aisle.
I don't understand why, in the intervening decades, no politician has had the testicular fortitude to tackle this problem. I guess the biggest issue is that it will have to involve holding people against their will, and, in many cases, medicating them against their will. It's still odd that society at large seems to be content with simply ignoring the very real pain it's causing. We'll walk around the crazy lady shrieking at the sky, or turn away in horror at the crazy/drug addled person who sets fire to a fellow passenger on the subway, but never really ask the tough questions.
My late husband was a cop, and he told me how sad it was, being called to the home of an elderly man, whose schizophrenic son had been having troubles. The son had initially agreed to consent to a 3 Day Hold, as I recall, but changed his mind when police and mental health people arrived. The old man was in tears, worried about his son, worried about what he might do, and how he might wind up. I had never considered this situation until then. Since then, I had a friend whose son was schizophrenic, and she had had to steel herself to not worry about him. He was very intelligent, and able to work at a tech job, at times. Other times, he would drift onto the streets, self-medicating with illicit substances, and winding up in jails or hospitals. Mental illness takes a toll on families, not just individuals.
I think the criminally (violent) insane become wards of the state. As such, they can be held and medicated as thought necessary. They are dangerous to themselves as well as to their attendants, visitors, and other patients. The reality of their lives is an awful thing for “normal” people to consider. I’d say the same for what used to be called the profoundly retarded tho the details are different.
«I don't understand why, in the intervening decades, no politician has had the testicular fortitude to tackle this problem. I guess the biggest issue is that it will have to involve holding people against their will, and, in many cases, medicating them against their will.»
That is a very amusingly naive view as I think the biggest issue is who is going to pay for treatment. The same legislators who have criminalized ever greater categories of "bad" behavior seem to have little reluctance about “holding people against their will”.
The politicians especially in the USA do not have the testicular fortitude to increase taxes in general, never mind to increase taxes on the middle class to pay for person-to-person mental health treatment for the lower classes.
Back in the early '90s, I was a special ed teacher. One of my former hard-of-hearing students was quite violent. I got through the year with him (barely) but didn't teach him the following year, as I switched schools. I heard he was institutionalized. That was a tough case, but I support humanely institutionalizing violent mentally ill people.
There will probably be efforts to medicate the individuals, who sometimes don't like the effects of the meds, and may lash out. Then we get into the question of whether we have the right to involuntarily medicate someone. . .
I’m sure he has food and water and is allowed visits from family when conditions are safe enough to permit them. The violent insane can be terrifyingly dangerous. It speaks well of you as his teacher that you still worry about his welfare.
I worked in downtown Flint in the late 70s, and this was in full bloom already, where downtown was flooded with de-institutionalized mentally ill people who were put in halfway houses, but walked around downtown all day. It helped the mall in the suburbs tremendously.
It seems the case in most of our urban spaces. The population of my small town hovers at slightly under 30000 and we have the same problem. I'm tempted to wonder at times if generous services provide a stronger incentive to addiction and homelessness, at least among the men.
Bringing back mental hospitals could be a danger to our democracy. Imagine how many politicians really should be institutionalized for their own good and those around them?
Mental hospital exists. The issue of compelled treatment, AOT (assisted outpatient therapy), is central to closing gaps following de-institutionalization.
Whose taxes are going to pay for those hospitals for those who cannot afford them? Because for those who can afford to pay for them there are plenty of luxurious metal hospitals (with delicately euphemistic names).
Look into the Order of 9 Angles aka O9A, look into their iconography, then look at the shit this shooter had on their weapons and the fact that they wrote the odd Cyrillic letters to form English words. To use a Walterism - In other words, there is strong circumstantial evidence that this person was groomed by a group of sadistic esoteric loner psychopaths into doing this, either directly or by simply encouraging the concept, and potentially that our government is aware of and monitoring this activity but is unable or unwilling to stop it before it turns from sick chatter on a Discord server into an actual attack in real life.
Andrew, this thread you've pulled actually fits in perfectly with the book they are reading, "That Hideous Strength." In my opinion the Order you speak of has the same goals as The N.I.C.E. in the book.
I just caught a few minutes on that on Infowars this afternoon.
Very sick stuff.
You'd think, with all the mass surveillance going on, that our government might actually make itself useful and track some of these weirdos, instead of focusing on Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and parents who rant at school board members.
The Order of 9 angles is a global death cult. William Ramsey has done quite a bit research on this, and other occult/esoteric groups and their origins.
There is no question, guns definitely kill humans but it does not depend on the gun, the gun laws or the number of guns per capita. IT DEPENDS ON THE PERSON USING THE GUN!!!!!!! Now control that.
Amen. Gun control laws are the height of illogically proposed "solutions". It is like outlawing vehicles because bad drivers kill humans or outlawing bodies of water because people drown or my favorite pulling, all of the sheep's teeth because they witnessed a wolf's teeth tear one of them apart and determined teeth are dangerous.
Unfortunately, talk therapy is more art, intuition, patience than science. Drugs promised an easier, quicker, more reliable scientific "cure.". The reality is that drugs also have proven to be as much art, intuition, and patience as science.
I didn,t, and wouldn't ever,, claim that therapy can,t be effective. I would be willing to claim that success will almost always involve some combination of art, intuition, science (experience), and patience. I'd also be willing to claim that there are too many practitioners out there who have no idea what they are doing.
Amen to that, Ann. You do need both but more care and follow through with meds. All patients do not respond the same way. In a few or more cases there may be adverse reactions. Much can be said about practitioners especially when they are taken in by the patient and tell the patient what they want to hear. Patients can be manipulative.
Addressing mental illness is crucial and although it is popular to say guns don’t kill, they do in the wrong hands. Let’s have more clear thinking rathe r than making point for one side or the other.
"there are too many practitioners out there who have no idea what they are doing"
Agreed. Which circles back to just what kind of education, training, and certification is occurring, for treatment that is supposed to be medical, and consequently covered by insurance as leading to terminating/sustaining desirable outcome. It always floored me that in "talk therapy", "if you don't like one therapist, just find another you like!"
Is there no theory considered "truth", at least clear consensus among professionals? is there any way for medical professionals to triage a sufferer toward that truth, without the (ignorant patient/"client") winging it? It's looking increasingly to me, the older I get, like a massive con job -- just like most other industries today, where "one makes one's own reality", and foundational truth is optional.
That’s why I say that effective therapy is as much art as science. Experience and sharp intuition are not learned in school. There are techniques, certainly, such as behavior modification therapy, which can be taught but successful application takes time, imagination, intuition, self-discipline, and talent. A therapist who knows how to listen will know how to adjust.
To put it differently (from my previous comment below), for the client who specifically *asks* for it, the therapist (and group members in a therapy group) needs to stop worrying about stirring up the client's feelings, and start worrying primarily about telling the client the truth as they see it, arguing it out as necessary, no matter what the consequences to the therapy relationship.
These therapists have no idea just how destructive their eternal poker games can be, at least for a number of their patients like me. In my case, it took many years of *my own* contemplation outside therapy to crystalize what was going on in the therapy system to be articulate about it here. I had to figure out *why* I was not the only one at fault, and that, no, my thoughts and feelings about therapists are not always proxies for childhood experiences. Therapist behavior can easily constitute their *own* independent evils.
Ironically, here we are in 2025, in a political world that is self-destructing for, IMO, *exactly* the same reason -- pretenses to perfect knowledge, the out-of-control lying that results as well as the compartmentalized shunning, cutting off democratic communication. (See for example the Bill Moyers interview of Elizabeth Warren's encounter with Larry Summers on the way the world really works - https://billmoyers.com/2014/09/05/i-had-been-warned/) The lying sickness has now been thoroughly normalized in the West, so its monsters (Summers et al), who used to hide in the shadows, now openly rule the world, and don't care who knows why.
Thank you for the helpful clarification. I think I understand what you are saying and agree for the most part.
I am not at all a fan of Therapy Poker. It can do a great deal of harm, tho diff patients respond differently to therapists and therapies. Your point is well taken that when it is in play, the therapist had better be a lot quicker than the patient. It's a game hard to play in good faith and so offers little in a clinical setting.
As for truth in therapeutic theory, assumptions must hold and they rarely if ever do. Imo theories are a lot more useful in training than in practice.
Elizabeth Warren (aka Pocahontas) tells the truth perhaps in the context of the left but I personally wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her. Larry Summers got into a lot of trouble when he told the truth - he knows better now.
Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful replies.
Theory is clearly also incomplete, full of errors, and moreover full of differing *schools of thought* which argue with each other. To understate it, this is not a good look. This is rarely if ever revealed to a patient, which is my primary gripe about it.
In a clinical setting, but if and only when requested, a therapist should be able to explain to the patient theory as it applies to the patient EXACTLY as they would to a peer, taking all time necessary time to get through background and jargon, of course, at the patient's expense. You know, actually treat their patient *as* a client, as many of them ironically like to tout. No matter *what* they think is wrong with the client.
Instead, what we have is a thoroughly non-equal relationship, where the therapist views the patient as a specimen in a Petri dish to manipulate, or an encounter with a wild animal they must outsmart, by any mind-trickery possible. The patient is always performing some kind of role-playing, as if they must, and for some reason can only, understand what is wrong with them by acting out some damned stage play, after which the client "graduates" and the therapist finally explains what happened, reveals the super-secret point of it all which *had* to be kept hidden. Therapy is *chock full* of activities like this which "pull one over" on a patient. It appears to be a fundamental assumption in fact. Often I wish I had the time and discipline to suss this out and comment on it publicly with discipline worthy of attention.
For a client with trust issues, and especially by a therapist who isn't a good deal smarter (and I don't mean simply 'experienced') than the client, this is absolute poison. *This* is the thing that has driven me mad over the years, far angrier and messed up than I ever was growing up.
Not all therapy is merely Art or intuition. First, the person with a serious mental malady (I say serious because we all seem to have some mental malady today) very often is unwilling to except the illness and searches for the nut that caused the condition leaving them vulnerable to quacks. Perhaps it would be easier for them if society didn’t label them and they were considered as human beings with a disease like any other disease. That’s a start.
Many of these patients have difficulty with obsessive thinking or crooked thinking. It is possible to help them cope with these problems which medicines alone will not cure
Maybe some people need the hard knocks of life. Life is so easy now that an obvious sociopath who clearly couldnt have held down a job somehow was living, eating and buying guns. How, who would have hired this person. I bet he was supportes by his parents or us the tax payer
In this case, Westman was living in a rental with "a friend," and had been working at a marijuana dispensary.
According to the Minnesota Star Tribune: *Westman left his job at a marijuana dispensary called RISE only 11 days before the shooting. An unnamed coworker told the paper that he worked as a "personal care specialist" and worked with patients who were part of a state medical marijuana program. That coworker cryptically said "recent events have been the catalyst for this thing he has been planning for a long time."*
The rise of polypharmacy and Big Pharma coincided with the Rockafella approach to medicine: "Got a problem? Here's a pill. Next!"
Johnny's depressed and the kids at school are picking on him. No psychiatric workup, no blood work, nothing. You and Johnny leave with enough Prozac to paralyze a horse. That should fix things.
There are literally dozens of cases indicating an adverse reaction within 24 hours of the first dose, or 24 hours after you discontinue use. No followup and no warning about what could happen if you went cold turkey after 6 months.
I had a folder of newspaper articles, and it's all anecdotal evidence, because no one's ever going to tell you what the shooter was taking (I mean, take a look at Adam Lanza's eyes, big as pie plates). One stuck out in particular: a couple was going through a messy divorce, which was doing a number on their 12 year old son. It was decided he would go to stay with his grandparents. He had followed his grandfather so closely as a child they called him grandpa's shadow.
He was prescribed "something for depression" right before he left home. Within the first week, he'd shot both of his grandparents dead with a shotgun, set their house on fire, and was later found driving their car. Twelve.
I've got more, but like I said, all anecdotal. Maybe there's nothing to it?
I like the way the mayor notices at the last minute he hasn't even mentioned Catholics - and oh yeah, EVEN Catholics.
One meek thing which needs to be remembered in the phenomenon of public revulsion against the pharmaceutical companies is that their rise to massive power and wealth in the 1950s and 1960s happened as part of the high tide of modernism.
Better Living Through Chemistry.
It sounds like the perfect example of modernistic bilge. In fact, if you do research by going over some copies of general interest magazines from circa 1960, you'll find that the American people in 1960 presumed that the next one hundred years would be better and better and better, and that an indefinite large amount of this would come through scientific and medical research.
I agree. Over the last 125 years, from 1900 to 2025, male life expectancy has increased by approximately 29.5 years (from 46.3 to 75.8), primarily due to vaccines, antibiotics, improved nutrition, sanitation, reduced child mortality, and advances in chronic disease management.
My grandmother lost 5 of her 7 brothers to the Spanish Flu in the early '20s. Her mother was a visiting nurse and the thought is she probably brought it home with her. My grandmother survived because she was doing all the dishes and laundry at the time (with her hands constantly in lye soap). We didn't know squat about infectious diseases back then, and we lost a huge number of kids before age 5 due to our ignorance. Today our numbers are limited by fentanyl overdoes, a huge, murderous drug underworld, and adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine (Died Suddenly).
The biggest problem we have, in my opinion, is that millions have lost faith in science and medicine. Not because we're idiots and don't understand science (as the Left surmises), but because in the last 5 years we've been lied to every time we turned around. Trust the science, they told us. If you get the vaccine, you won't get the virus, you won't be able to spread it. We got 2 years in the basement while Gavin Newsom got the French Laundry and Fauci went to baseball games. They arrested a guy sailboarding offshore in California, for God's sake. I got yelled at twice for going the "wrong way" down an aisle in the grocery (because the virus only goes one way down an aisle?). Unfortunately, we need some sort of authority before the next thing hits, but everyone saw what happened and assumes scientists and doctors are full of shit. I didn't do that, science and medicine did that. I mean, isn't Florida supposed to be underwater by now?
Everything else was basically a rounding error compared to improved sanitation and food supply. How very odd that the modern elite are now heavily in favor of public defecation and chemically manufactured food-like substances.
This "shooting" is a tragic example of what happens when poseur ideologues (lesbian feminist Marxism now the DEI)--avaricious finance (surveillance capitalism)--and a corrupt bureaucratic political system join hands to loot a national economy and are allowed to seize--distort--and reduce-- a Republic's national conversation to a psyop. All three feed on the lives--labor and productivity of We the People. The six decade war on the American psyche is now visible in the American landscape. A political leaders fear and inability to speak openly about a tragedy of this magnitude is the result of the ideological/bureaucratic/surveillance poisoning of public discourse to cover the theft and looting of American treasure. Likewise--the assault on free speech and thought--culture-- and civilization in general. One can say anything but the truth. The seizure and exploitation of important social/political/financial issues for profit by poseur politicians--financiers and grifters pretending moral concern? Consider Soros--the various Clinton charities--Billy Gates or the Mayorkas NGO hustle that painted itself in high moral color and lost 350 thousand children without trace or concern. The USAID reveal should--but hasn't--sobered We the People. The bottom is--as planned--falling out. The "five eyes" are morally blind as the proverbial bat. They'll gladly incarcerate or euthanize a citizen at the drop of a hat. Know your enemy!!
There is the Republic--the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is just passing through. Depart the psyop and live.
All true. Catch Megyn Kelly’s podcast this past week. A way to think about it is a dereliction of care of patients with real mental problems. Instead of treating them, helping them, they affirm the bizarre lifestyle and mental state calling it trans and trans rights etc. And even after that bankrupt logic leads to innocent children being killed, our so called mainstream media and left political leaders cover it up and double down on trans agenda. Take the word trans out for a moment, their slogan is “crazy rights”. They apparently will continue to champion that along w open borders, lionizing illegal immigrants who are violent criminals, and so on. This is why there is a second Trump presidency. Thank goodness millions of Americans see this for what it is and new media does a great job exposing the madness. As a lifelong conservative I welcome the Democrats doubling and tripling down.
«About 20 or more years ago psychiatry gave up on listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils. Instead they turned to the use of SSRI drugs which were easier and faster. If they had done due diligence, they might have discovered that in many cases the mental illness was aggravated. Shame on the medical profession!»
In medicine like in everything else there are "gold", "silver", "bronze" and "stone" plans and people on "gold" and "silver" plans get the “listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils” help which is simply too expensive for the "bronze" and "stone" plans, which are basically about handing out pills as substitute for expensive in-person time.
The USA is pay-to-play so everything, from schooling to medicine, depends on the type of plan you are on. Why should middle and upper class people who pay for their own "gold" and "silver" plans hand-out even a cent of their property and stocks profits for which they wait every day so hard to help upgrade the plans of working class and under class people who can only afford "bronze" and "stone" plans?
In Reagan and Clinton's America winners (the upper and middle classes) must win and suckers (the working class) and losers (the under class) must lose.
"Instead we should be concerned with the actual causes of this terrible madness aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers."
Obviously mental health is an important issue, but "...aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers" is one hell of a line to drop.
We don't have enough money, resources or inherent mental health to fight off a constant drumbeat agitating violence at very specific people promoted by both political parties, major media, domestic and international institutions, social media, [and the list keeps going].
Trump and Musk's names were not accidental.
And a conspiracy to promote and agitate violence by the RussiaGate alumni aimed at the crazy and sane alike is a much more interesting story than drugs or trans people.
I am not ignoring the horrific damage the violent behavior and dishonesty of politicians , MSM, social media and don’t forget Hollywood. Those belong in a different category of crazies. The shooters severely mentally disturbed due to chemical imbalance or genetic mishaps. They are probably living in a hellish nightmare and the forces you mention are egging them on. As far as the shootings, I believe they do fall into the mental heath category. The other problems are another kettle of fish that is also boiling over.
That's a very good reply. And we really do need people thinking about this issue from an individual perspective. And my conspiracy talk, right or wrong, doesn't help with that aspect.
Considering the endless drumbeat of straight up calls for violence and assassination just on Reddit and Bluesky alone and the implicit blank check society wise, it's actually impressive as hell how few people, crazy and sane alike, are taking the bait.
I think we are passing this test really well considering our population size.
But we could do a lot better with more help for people and less agitation. And the more help for people the less the agitation works.
Wow, that’s so specious it leaves me nearly speechless. The fact that the states with the highest gun ownership per capita also have the highest homicide rates per capita is precisely my argument. See if you can follow this: Mississippi’s gun death rate is six times higher per capita than New York’s — even though Mississippi’s population is six times smaller. That isn’t coincidence, it’s causation. The pattern is unmistakable: more guns in circulation translates into more people killed with guns.
Saying the forbidden: the number of gunshot deaths correlates in an extremely revealing manner with the number of blacks in the area being surveyed. The South is loaded with guns. The upper Midwest, the near Northwest, and the Pacific Northwest are loaded with guns. The latter three areas have nothing like the gunshot murder rate we have in the South, and in cities with large numbers of blacks.
Wiki: "The per-capita offending rate (homicide)for African-Americans was roughly eight times higher than that of whites, and their victim rate was similar. About half of homicides are known to be single-offender/single-victim, and most of those were intraracial; in those where the perpetrator's and victim's races were known, 81% of white victims were killed by whites and 91% of black or African-American victims were killed by blacks or African-Americans."
I'm still haunted by something which happened when I was twenty - three. One Saturday evening, I became aware from the flashing lights that cop activity was going on nearby. I was still living at home, and my father came in at just about the moment I realized that the police were nearby. He told me and my mother what had happened.
A guy just a year older than I was then, who was an engineer, had realized that oh sh*t, he'd forgotten to buy food for his cat. After dark he walked to the neighborhood, family owned grocery store to buy a few cans. On his way back, just a block from his apartment, a driver had pulled up to the curb, gotten out and robbed him. The bastard could have left it at that. Instead, he blew the kid's brains out.
I've always had an unshakeable sense that I knew who committed the crime, a guy named Johnny DeMouchette, whose reputation was such that all the Texas police departments, and the Texas Rangers, regarded him as "the meanest man in Texas." A few years later, one of his murders caught up with him, and he was executed.
The heartlessness of the murder of the young engineer, whose name was Stephen Duss, has stayed with me all these decades.
I hope Walter and Matt will read this and moderate their thoughts on surveillance with some common sense. This guy should have been locked up at birth.
It is also true that we can collect data til the cows come home, but if no responsive action is taken, what's the point?
I’m not going to waste time on you; I just want others to see my response. They can decide who actually understands logic and statistics for themselves. ✌️
Shame on the NRA. All ya need to know about US off-the-charts homicide rates (which Matt is apparently oblivious to because he’s busy stoking culture wars):
Mississippi. Very permissive gun laws (no permit required to carry). Homicide rate: ~20–23 per 100,000 (highest in the U.S.).
Firstly, you completely ignore that the states with the most guns per capita will have higher gun fatalities per capita. Guess what? People who have a pool in their backyard have higher rates of drowning than those who don’t.
Secondly, Mississippi is arguably the poorest state in the nation. Kindly let me know when you perform a multi-variate analysis that controls for the other indicators present in Mississippi and similar states that beget crime.
Thirdly, cherry picking data without this work is not only pointless, it’s easy to refute with random examples. What’s the murder rate in Chicago compared to the balance of Illinois? What’s the murder rate in NYC compared to the balance of NY State?
Once again, we see that figures don't lie but liars do figure. You select five states and those are your proof. What about Utah? Lax gun laws but according to CDC figures, the third lowest homicide rate in the US (2.2/100K), considerably lower than Hawaii (2.9) or New York (3.9). Missouri (10.4), Maryland (10.1), Georgia (9.9) and Illinois (9.8) are all clustered together, even though Missouri and Georgia have lax laws while Maryland and Illinois have among the strictest in the nation. Vermont used to have very lax gun laws and a low crime rate, but in 2018, the laws were tightened up with absolutely no effect on crime. But it made people feel good and that's all that matters. And by they way, Mississippi is the state with the highest murder rate in the US but the Washington, DC murder rate is roughly twice that of Mississippi.
These are complex issues. Arguments based on factoids are not persuasive. Poverty is at least as highly correlated with crime as gun laws.
You can’t escape facts — outliers do not erase a statistical correlation. U.S states with more permissive gun laws and higher gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings. Specifically, it has been shown a 10% increase in gun ownership is linked to a 35.1% higher rate of mass shootings.
Watching these people come out IMMEDIATELY with the same talking point shitting on people praying for the victims and their families was sickening to me.
I'm agnostic, maybe even atheistic at times.
Even I know that people pray to ease pain in times of tragedy and cannot fucking believe that THIS is the point the want to hammer on.
Like, WTactualF?
MN is a portal to hell and has gone from a wholesome heartland state full of proud industrious immigrants to a third world shithole in 30 years.
I don't even hate religion but I know that religious people get a LOT out of prayer and it harms NO one when people pray.
The fact that it was a knee-jerk reaction to this is telling and really shines a light on the suspicious lack of empathy coming from those who'd claim to be "progressive" and "inclusive".
If it were a synagogue or Muslim school what would the coverage be like?
Why THE FUCK ARE WE EVEN HAVING TO TALK ABOUT THIS?
That was the response on Israel and Gaza immediately after October 7th. “Genocide” by Israel was proclaimed as the pre-crime at hand. The attacks on women’s rights, the demonization of Israel and rising antisemitism, the extolling of political violence by characters like Luigi and others as acceptable and “justified”, are all related aspects of a general campaign (it’s too consistent and omnipresent not to be) and atmosphere of hysteria fostered for hard division of working people.
While I agree that the elites are pushing us to fight each other instead of them, I disagree with your Palestine points: the genocide has been on-going for decades, and hating the actions of a state are nothing like hating its population (although some people will go overboard, of course).
Schiff, I appreciate the civility, but it’s a strange “genocide” when the population of Gaza has increased every decade in the past 70 years. It’s also clearly incorrect that the intent to commit a genocide comes from the Israeli government, despite the fact that members of the War Cabinet have made statements that lend themselves to that claim. The Israeli government and military warn civilians of impending military action sometimes days ahead, drop leaflets, make thousands of individual cell phones calls and texts to warn civilians of imminent attacks on Hamas troops, they drop door-knock rounds on roofs, and various other measures to limit civilian casualties. Hamas, PIJ, and PFLP and DFLP do the opposite, placing weaponry, HQs, and forces in or near hospitals, schools, UNRWA buildings, and private residences, while also allowing NO CIVILIAN ACCESS to the vast tunnel system built for the various Gaza military forces. “Genocide” is what Hamas wants, and at various times members of their leadership have stated that openly. It serves the propaganda purposes of Hamas, the PIJ, DFLP and PFLP to have a higher civilian death toll in order to run what is a gigantic propaganda operation that is willingly received by a vast complement of NGOs, News organizations, Youtube “influencers” both left and right, and UN bureaucrats. The only genocide in Gaza is a “genocide”.
Thousands of texts wouldn't mean much, because there are 2M people in the occupied territories - but perhaps you mean 'millions'. And I would not be surprised if the violent on both sides have made illegal actions and genocidal statements.
But I don't see how a portrayal of isnotreal as an honorable belligerent can be correct. Going off statements from the UN and other relevant bodies, isnotreal has bombed Palestinians AT the places they were told to flee to, the vehicles of clearly marked aid vehicles, and journalists. Palestine is blockaded, and people are killed at some of the distribution sites of what supplies are allowed in. And perhaps Palestine does have military outposts at hospitals, which would be illegal; but bombing them would still be illegal! WikiLeaks just released footage of people attempting rescue at a hospital after an airstrike being bombed themselves!
The groups that supposedly stand for the world's conscience could be wrong about this event, but isnotreal could just allow in observers to verify that; there would be plenty of time for slaughter after. And I do mean slaughter: the death-toll ratio is wildly one-sided. This doesn't seem like a war to me.
Walter is right, we are being manipulated, by the murderers and by the media, politicians, and activists. The latter group gives these people free publicity as if they were celebrities on the same level as Pat Mahomes, and almost literally maintains a scoreboard for them. I suspect that at least some of the psychos have realized that using an AR or other scary looking weapon gives them more attention because of the political implications. Ironically it's the people who claim to be the only ones who truly care about these incidents, anti-gun politicians and activists, who do the most to give the killers exactly what they want.
Had to stop watching the video to comment. Walter, that sticker with the rifle on the progress pride flag is a thing. Trans pride stickers are often emblazoned with violent imagery intended to express their hatred of 'terfs' and anyone else who is based in reality. Pink and blue baseball bats wrapped with barbed wire, double bladed axes, and sledge hammers are brandished in pride parades particularly by a group of young men who call themselves the Degenderettes. These violent men insist they are women. There was a gallery installation of their equipment and wearable 'art' ('Kill a Terf' tee shirts) at the San Diego Public Library in 2018. https://www.ebar.com/story/38760
Women with children and grandchildren have been navigating this shite in schools, doctors' offices, libraries, and even churches for more than a decade. It is no small thing that many democrats like myself have left the party because the trans agenda specifically was such a huge part of the platform and a complete turn off. When NPR began banging on about 'trans kids' and the AP's Style Diversity Recommendations resulted in every reported crime being reported as a person's gender identity rather than the perp's sex, (resulting in headlines describing arrests of women for thousands of images of child sexual abuse, woman arrested for knifing postal worker in Harlem, sixty year old Brooklyn woman killed and dismembered her neighbor, woman sexually assaulted 13 year old girl in changing stall} how could we trust anything in the media? Early on I realized that NYT, the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Colbert, John Stewart, etc. were ideologically captured. Which is when I began to realize that Trump's policies were not to be dismissed out of hand simply because we hated the messenger. The 'trans rights issue' in particular didn't seem like a 'grass roots' civil rights movement but rather a highly funded, internationally coordinated psy-op.
Also guys...it doesn't matter how much effort these men put into being 'authentically' trans. You seem to think that if a man takes wrong sex hormones, he's more authentically trans than a man who puts on a wig, makeup, and dress, and less authentic than a man who has a vaginoplasty and FFS. The entire argument of TRAs is that one's 'gender' is whatever they 'feel' it to be and once you declare it then, voila, you are not only trans, you are the opposite sex (or non-binary) and can have your name and sex marker changed on your license, passport, and in some states, on your birth certificate. TWAW (trans women ARE women) and NO DEBATE.
Please, please stop perpetuating the notion that people based in reality are on the right. This is a big deal and not the annoying little diversion you think.
“A smart book about the politics of gender and the perils of transphobia, Manhunt could easily have turned didactic — but Felker-Martin, a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, delights in the genre’s free-flowing carnage, and that glee is tons of fun.”
—The New York Times
"A filthy, furious delight; within its tense, gruesome premise live roundly human characters, with big, unwieldy emotions. It’s a shockingly tender exploration of genders and bodies, of violence as a part of nature, of the way love is a tool of survival."
Saw this on X. Clearly trans id as woman out and proud but suddenly main stream media describes this as a killing by a male using correct sex pronouns. 'Nothing to see here, folks. Just another normal murder of a father walking with his 6yr old son by perpetrated by some random dude.
Driving around Seattle doing my city bus routes and I can feel the tension. Something is boiling right underneath and it smells like a septic tank. Even here I'm seeing anti-trans graffiti. Media makes it worse everytime by not acknowledging the reality of the shooter's identity when it doesn't fit the narrative.
Sorry, everyone, but when you rub your opinions up in everybody's face, expect backlash. Be trans. I don't care. Marry whom you like. Worship as you please. But don't expect me to listen to you whine about it all day, or insist you are commanded by God to proselytize in public, nor tell me what I have to like, whom to associate with, or what to believe. Christians are as bad about this as BLM, Muslims, transgender, or any other radical position. It's always their way or the highway, and all else be damned. No, the only road to peace is respect for other people's choices, and don't make others pay for your way. A secular political structure is the only way to achieve peace on Earth.
There is a considerable school of thought among historians of the time and place that Europe in 1914 was primed for cataclysmic war because of the secularization of the European mind in the nineteenth century.
Gay marriage succeeded largely because it was live and let live. The trans ideology is encountering resistance because it demands your participation and affirmation.
the knee jerk reaction of pivoting from the massacre of some children in a church to criticism of people who oppose the trans movement is reflective of a much larger Spiritual problem.
Person A: "I'm a little concerned about person Z. He is acting erratically, abusing drugs and proclaiming that he wants to kill others then himself, plus he has guns all over the place."
You both brought up the weird feelings engendered by looking at the graffiti and comments made by the murderer on the bullets.......if I recall correctly that you felt that seemed new.
Really?
When I was a much younger man, and our soldiers were spray painting "ROCK THE CASBAH" on ammunition headed for Iraq, I thought to myself how immoral that was - knowing those were going to be used on innocent civilians.
But nothing could have prepared me for last year when Zelensky came to Pennsylvania for some kind of Kamala Harris campaign event accompanied by the governor of the state of PA - Josh Shapiro. They had a big party in a munitions factory. And both literally autographed munitions that were going to be sent to Ukraine to bomb even more civilians.
I would say we have a fine tradition in the USA of signing bombs and bullets and other ammo. The problem is for those who do it - it leaves a very sick feeling in those of us who are not really into killing innocents. Accordingly, I, a Dem, will never even consider voting for Shapiro after that stunt - and the entire event greatly decreased my chance of voting for any Democrat in their current form.
Ha ha yeah, I remember that. It was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's "hometown." They were smiling and holding missiles the way politicians in Philadelphia hold up cheesesteaks. It was unbelievable. That missile factory is the only business left in Scranton. All the jobs in that town were shipped to third world countries. Chris Hedges even dedicated the entire first chapter of one of his books to how much Scranton sucks.
Good discussion during a more somber episode. I especially liked what Walt said about America becoming a "traumaocracy." It has felt this way ever since 9-11.
Thousands and thousands of little babies with their arms and legs melted off don't phase us, in fact we support it, even Matt Taibbi has nothing to say about it, but that's not a factor in our violent culture, nothing to say about that, no it's the video games and reddit. Every other country has video games and reddit but not so much the mass murder and maiming of babies that we have. But nah that's not it, let's listen to Walter stammer and stutter through ignorant fox news grandpa garbage for 45 minutes instead.
This shooting seems as suspect as the Luigi one. This time, our monster writes in perfect Cyrillic? He's pro-Palestinian? He's trans? He's anti-Trump? He shoots praying children? His manifesto is out lickety-split? Remember. We have entered an information age. Every age has its own weapons of war. This feels like warfare.
Look into the Order of 9 Angles aka O9A, look into their iconography, then look at the shit this shooter had on their weapons and the fact that they wrote the odd Cyrillic letters to form English words. To use a Walterism - In other words, there is strong circumstantial evidence that this person was groomed by a group of sadistic esoteric loner psychopaths into doing this, either directly or by simply encouraging the concept, and potentially that our government is aware of and monitoring this activity but is unable or unwilling to stop it before it turns from sick chatter on a Discord server into an actual attack in real life.
Andrew Dolgin - What gives with the pronouns? At times you refer to this individual shooter as "this shooter" or "this person." At other times you refer to this individual shooter using the grammatically incorrect but politically correct pronouns "their" or "they" as in "their iconography," "their weapons," and "they wrote."
Andrew Dolgin - I think you and I are in agreement about the shooter's motivation. What is puzzling to me is instead of using "his" or "he" in referring to the shooter, you would use "their," a sure sign of what you correctly call the "culture war slop brained."
I used neutral pronouns to avoid the exact culture war slop you're dragging in now. Man, woman, some other made up identity, it doesn't matter to me because it is a distraction. If this person was actually fueled by trans ideology of some sort and there was evidence of that I would not use neutral language, but since the issue of them being trans is now being politicized I avoided it completely so people could focus on my actual message.
The silhouette image in that psycho's notebook is an AK-47 (the "commie gun"), not an AR-pattern rifle. I told myself to shut up about it, but Walter misidentified it two or three times. As iconography it's associated with the revolutionary left-wing.
Thank you. When I first listened to the (otherwise very good) segment, I too repeatedly told myself I was going to resist and not correct Walter on this matter.
And here I am. Yes, with all due respect to WK, his repeated invocation of that particular model combined with his reminisces about growing up around guns and his consequent familiarity did drive me here.
While the AR-15 includes an optional handle that also functions as a site (but can be replaced by a conventional scope), the key characteristics that make these weapons so identifiable are:
1.) A pistol grip: conventional "hunting" rifles do not incorporate this
Additionally, the manufacturer allows you to select from a variety of weapon and flag styles.
So this was not a creation of the Westman monster. Still seems...kinda weird and provocative though. Thematic?
For the record, I shot a rifle once, when I was around 12 or so. Do not nor ever have owned any guns. I do support the rights identified in the Second Amendment as the first thing tyrants (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) do is disarm their population.
Please don't overlook the influence of shadowy trans cults that groom these children. They know it takes years to grow a psychopath and they know that news cycles only focus on today's news and gloss right over the entire path taken to get to the event.
I’ve seen so many posts of detransitioners who got pounced on in these chat rooms and convinced that their malaise is the result of them being trans. It’s evil- and even more evil is the medical community embracing whole heartedly. This individual clearly had issues prior to transitioning but was likely told this was the answer to his problems.
True, but they convinced him of a new delusion (with the promise that this was the answer) instead of diagnosing and treating him for the pre-existing ones. It’s an abomination. I’m looking forward to the 1-800-LAWYERS commercials. “If you or a loved one had your (fill in blank) cut off…” it’s just a matter of time.
I am heartened that RFK Jr is calling for research into the dangerous ocer prescribed SSRI drugs and of course the dramatic increase in dangerous hormone “ treatments” for people wanting to change their gender
The one thing I get from this stuff is that our choice to homeschool our kids is the only way that guarantees they will be safe. I don’t wish it were this way but this along with how crap the education system is, you don’t really have any other choice.
The MSM has become irrelevant and even dangerous in matters of this sort. Instead we should be concerned with the actual causes of this terrible madness aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers. Several have referred to the use of drugs and THIS requires more serious investigation. About 20 or more years ago psychiatry gave up on listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils. Instead they turned to the use of SSRI drugs which were easier and faster. If they had done due diligence, they might have discovered that in many cases the mental illness was aggravated. Shame on the medical profession!
Mental hospitals should be brought back.
It was probably the big pharma lobby that did away with them.
Nope. My dad worked in a VA mental hospital (Dentist) when they closed the PA state system after ditching laws which allowed (basically) incarceration for mental illness — It was a political theory that all people should be able to choose to leave those facilities on their own signature. He said, then, that they’d end up homeless, drug/alcohol addicted, dead or violent criminals.
He was right.
Liberals did this to the entire country. On purpose. See a pattern there?
Even then the cocktail parties you and I will never attend produced harm.
So it truly is the “liberal elite” that needs to be blamed, and if possible removed from power.
Since no amount of evidence has changed anything best guess my grandchildren live in states which never did fall to leftists.
One of Trump's Executive Orders deals with working to restore involuntary civil commitment for people who need it.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/
And if they don't end up homeless, they end up strapping down their mom or sister from doing anything productive except watching over/wrangling with them ... until they are worn out, poverty stricken, and on public assistance themselves.
The pattern I see is a mentally unbalanced obsession with "liberals, the liberal elite," and "leftists" who must be "removed from power."
It's well known that Reagan signed the bills emptying the mental hospitals in California. https://capitolweekly.net/the-republican-who-emptied-the-asylums/
What ever Reagan did or did not do, the man has been out of office for nearly 40 years and dead for 20.
Americans have had plenty of time to correct any mistakes Ronnie made, yet the Left is still consumed with blaming him. Better we actually solve the problem.
"Deinstitutionalization" as national policy began in 1963 in the JFK administration.
That's true.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.2021.160404
And who voted in favor of those bills?
That was only one state, more than 50 years ago. This problem is the result of weenies on both sides of the political aisle.
I have also seen Reagan blamed for emptying asylums nationwide, but that wasn't the result of an executive order; it was legislation passed by Congress, which somehow always escapes any blame.
Gaslight alert!
Reagan was always looking to shrink govt and spending so he reacted to the left pushing to close mental hospitals by giving it to them.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the propaganda no different than An Inconvenient Truth was for the nonexistent climate emergency
The acceleration of the closing of the national network of mental hospitals/institutions is arguably one of the worst policy decisions of the Reagan administration.
At the time, I was pretty liberal and voted consistently Democrat but I've come to appreciate much of what Reagan tried to accomplish.
The "homlessness crisis" also putatively began around this time. Put people incapable of taking care of themselves out on the street and what do you get? The "seed population" for homelessness.
Human nature is such that if we get used to the existence of something, we tend not to be as sensitive to changes in scale.
As noted, I think the mentally ill provided the "seed population" which then grew during the years of the "crack" mania. Again, if people are accustomed to the existence of homelessness, they probably won't notice how it grows.
In the late 1980's I was involved in a photo-survey of the homeless shelters for Hennepin County (which includes Minneapolis).
At the time, my sense was that the people at the shelters roughly broke down into three groups:
1.) People who were down on their luck but were trying to get ahead. Namely, this is the group that such shelters are designed to help. People not wanting hand-outs but just needing assistance.
2.) People who had drug and/or alcohol issues.
3.) The mentally ill.
And it seemed as though it was roughly 33% in each group.
All true I am sure. And our innocent children pay the price.
Sam, you and Scott are half-right. IMHO, Ann, below, has the correct and full analysis.
No. The effort was bipartisan, supported by both Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Each side had different motives.
https://psychiatry.uchicago.edu/news/mike-pence-said-liberals-emptied-mental-health-hospitals-1960s-they-didnt-act-alone
. . . and a whole lot of Congress Critters on both sides of the aisle.
I don't understand why, in the intervening decades, no politician has had the testicular fortitude to tackle this problem. I guess the biggest issue is that it will have to involve holding people against their will, and, in many cases, medicating them against their will. It's still odd that society at large seems to be content with simply ignoring the very real pain it's causing. We'll walk around the crazy lady shrieking at the sky, or turn away in horror at the crazy/drug addled person who sets fire to a fellow passenger on the subway, but never really ask the tough questions.
My late husband was a cop, and he told me how sad it was, being called to the home of an elderly man, whose schizophrenic son had been having troubles. The son had initially agreed to consent to a 3 Day Hold, as I recall, but changed his mind when police and mental health people arrived. The old man was in tears, worried about his son, worried about what he might do, and how he might wind up. I had never considered this situation until then. Since then, I had a friend whose son was schizophrenic, and she had had to steel herself to not worry about him. He was very intelligent, and able to work at a tech job, at times. Other times, he would drift onto the streets, self-medicating with illicit substances, and winding up in jails or hospitals. Mental illness takes a toll on families, not just individuals.
I think the criminally (violent) insane become wards of the state. As such, they can be held and medicated as thought necessary. They are dangerous to themselves as well as to their attendants, visitors, and other patients. The reality of their lives is an awful thing for “normal” people to consider. I’d say the same for what used to be called the profoundly retarded tho the details are different.
«I don't understand why, in the intervening decades, no politician has had the testicular fortitude to tackle this problem. I guess the biggest issue is that it will have to involve holding people against their will, and, in many cases, medicating them against their will.»
That is a very amusingly naive view as I think the biggest issue is who is going to pay for treatment. The same legislators who have criminalized ever greater categories of "bad" behavior seem to have little reluctance about “holding people against their will”.
The politicians especially in the USA do not have the testicular fortitude to increase taxes in general, never mind to increase taxes on the middle class to pay for person-to-person mental health treatment for the lower classes.
Back in the early '90s, I was a special ed teacher. One of my former hard-of-hearing students was quite violent. I got through the year with him (barely) but didn't teach him the following year, as I switched schools. I heard he was institutionalized. That was a tough case, but I support humanely institutionalizing violent mentally ill people.
I think we all support that but I question if what normal people consider humane treatment of the violent insane is even possible.
Maybe decent conditions, food, water, visits from family (if possible)- that sort of thing? But I guess it all depends on the individual.
There will probably be efforts to medicate the individuals, who sometimes don't like the effects of the meds, and may lash out. Then we get into the question of whether we have the right to involuntarily medicate someone. . .
I’m sure he has food and water and is allowed visits from family when conditions are safe enough to permit them. The violent insane can be terrifyingly dangerous. It speaks well of you as his teacher that you still worry about his welfare.
🛎️🔨
I worked in downtown Flint in the late 70s, and this was in full bloom already, where downtown was flooded with de-institutionalized mentally ill people who were put in halfway houses, but walked around downtown all day. It helped the mall in the suburbs tremendously.
It seems the case in most of our urban spaces. The population of my small town hovers at slightly under 30000 and we have the same problem. I'm tempted to wonder at times if generous services provide a stronger incentive to addiction and homelessness, at least among the men.
Bringing back mental hospitals could be a danger to our democracy. Imagine how many politicians really should be institutionalized for their own good and those around them?
Nice!
🤭
Mental hospital exists. The issue of compelled treatment, AOT (assisted outpatient therapy), is central to closing gaps following de-institutionalization.
«Mental hospitals should be brought back.»
Whose taxes are going to pay for those hospitals for those who cannot afford them? Because for those who can afford to pay for them there are plenty of luxurious metal hospitals (with delicately euphemistic names).
Look into the Order of 9 Angles aka O9A, look into their iconography, then look at the shit this shooter had on their weapons and the fact that they wrote the odd Cyrillic letters to form English words. To use a Walterism - In other words, there is strong circumstantial evidence that this person was groomed by a group of sadistic esoteric loner psychopaths into doing this, either directly or by simply encouraging the concept, and potentially that our government is aware of and monitoring this activity but is unable or unwilling to stop it before it turns from sick chatter on a Discord server into an actual attack in real life.
Andrew, this thread you've pulled actually fits in perfectly with the book they are reading, "That Hideous Strength." In my opinion the Order you speak of has the same goals as The N.I.C.E. in the book.
Look into "Cult 764".
More of this bulshit
I just caught a few minutes on that on Infowars this afternoon.
Very sick stuff.
You'd think, with all the mass surveillance going on, that our government might actually make itself useful and track some of these weirdos, instead of focusing on Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and parents who rant at school board members.
The Order of 9 angles is a global death cult. William Ramsey has done quite a bit research on this, and other occult/esoteric groups and their origins.
There is no question, guns definitely kill humans but it does not depend on the gun, the gun laws or the number of guns per capita. IT DEPENDS ON THE PERSON USING THE GUN!!!!!!! Now control that.
Amen. Gun control laws are the height of illogically proposed "solutions". It is like outlawing vehicles because bad drivers kill humans or outlawing bodies of water because people drown or my favorite pulling, all of the sheep's teeth because they witnessed a wolf's teeth tear one of them apart and determined teeth are dangerous.
Pulling the sheep's teeth to stop wolves. Spot on analogy.
Unfortunately, talk therapy is more art, intuition, patience than science. Drugs promised an easier, quicker, more reliable scientific "cure.". The reality is that drugs also have proven to be as much art, intuition, and patience as science.
I didn,t, and wouldn't ever,, claim that therapy can,t be effective. I would be willing to claim that success will almost always involve some combination of art, intuition, science (experience), and patience. I'd also be willing to claim that there are too many practitioners out there who have no idea what they are doing.
Amen to that, Ann. You do need both but more care and follow through with meds. All patients do not respond the same way. In a few or more cases there may be adverse reactions. Much can be said about practitioners especially when they are taken in by the patient and tell the patient what they want to hear. Patients can be manipulative.
Addressing mental illness is crucial and although it is popular to say guns don’t kill, they do in the wrong hands. Let’s have more clear thinking rathe r than making point for one side or the other.
"there are too many practitioners out there who have no idea what they are doing"
Agreed. Which circles back to just what kind of education, training, and certification is occurring, for treatment that is supposed to be medical, and consequently covered by insurance as leading to terminating/sustaining desirable outcome. It always floored me that in "talk therapy", "if you don't like one therapist, just find another you like!"
Is there no theory considered "truth", at least clear consensus among professionals? is there any way for medical professionals to triage a sufferer toward that truth, without the (ignorant patient/"client") winging it? It's looking increasingly to me, the older I get, like a massive con job -- just like most other industries today, where "one makes one's own reality", and foundational truth is optional.
Insurance and therapy enjoy an unhealthy relationship imo. Reimbursement has not done therapy any favors
That’s why I say that effective therapy is as much art as science. Experience and sharp intuition are not learned in school. There are techniques, certainly, such as behavior modification therapy, which can be taught but successful application takes time, imagination, intuition, self-discipline, and talent. A therapist who knows how to listen will know how to adjust.
Nope, not much lodestar truth in therapy.
To put it differently (from my previous comment below), for the client who specifically *asks* for it, the therapist (and group members in a therapy group) needs to stop worrying about stirring up the client's feelings, and start worrying primarily about telling the client the truth as they see it, arguing it out as necessary, no matter what the consequences to the therapy relationship.
These therapists have no idea just how destructive their eternal poker games can be, at least for a number of their patients like me. In my case, it took many years of *my own* contemplation outside therapy to crystalize what was going on in the therapy system to be articulate about it here. I had to figure out *why* I was not the only one at fault, and that, no, my thoughts and feelings about therapists are not always proxies for childhood experiences. Therapist behavior can easily constitute their *own* independent evils.
Ironically, here we are in 2025, in a political world that is self-destructing for, IMO, *exactly* the same reason -- pretenses to perfect knowledge, the out-of-control lying that results as well as the compartmentalized shunning, cutting off democratic communication. (See for example the Bill Moyers interview of Elizabeth Warren's encounter with Larry Summers on the way the world really works - https://billmoyers.com/2014/09/05/i-had-been-warned/) The lying sickness has now been thoroughly normalized in the West, so its monsters (Summers et al), who used to hide in the shadows, now openly rule the world, and don't care who knows why.
Thank you for the helpful clarification. I think I understand what you are saying and agree for the most part.
I am not at all a fan of Therapy Poker. It can do a great deal of harm, tho diff patients respond differently to therapists and therapies. Your point is well taken that when it is in play, the therapist had better be a lot quicker than the patient. It's a game hard to play in good faith and so offers little in a clinical setting.
As for truth in therapeutic theory, assumptions must hold and they rarely if ever do. Imo theories are a lot more useful in training than in practice.
Elizabeth Warren (aka Pocahontas) tells the truth perhaps in the context of the left but I personally wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her. Larry Summers got into a lot of trouble when he told the truth - he knows better now.
Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful replies.
Theory is clearly also incomplete, full of errors, and moreover full of differing *schools of thought* which argue with each other. To understate it, this is not a good look. This is rarely if ever revealed to a patient, which is my primary gripe about it.
In a clinical setting, but if and only when requested, a therapist should be able to explain to the patient theory as it applies to the patient EXACTLY as they would to a peer, taking all time necessary time to get through background and jargon, of course, at the patient's expense. You know, actually treat their patient *as* a client, as many of them ironically like to tout. No matter *what* they think is wrong with the client.
Instead, what we have is a thoroughly non-equal relationship, where the therapist views the patient as a specimen in a Petri dish to manipulate, or an encounter with a wild animal they must outsmart, by any mind-trickery possible. The patient is always performing some kind of role-playing, as if they must, and for some reason can only, understand what is wrong with them by acting out some damned stage play, after which the client "graduates" and the therapist finally explains what happened, reveals the super-secret point of it all which *had* to be kept hidden. Therapy is *chock full* of activities like this which "pull one over" on a patient. It appears to be a fundamental assumption in fact. Often I wish I had the time and discipline to suss this out and comment on it publicly with discipline worthy of attention.
For a client with trust issues, and especially by a therapist who isn't a good deal smarter (and I don't mean simply 'experienced') than the client, this is absolute poison. *This* is the thing that has driven me mad over the years, far angrier and messed up than I ever was growing up.
Not all therapy is merely Art or intuition. First, the person with a serious mental malady (I say serious because we all seem to have some mental malady today) very often is unwilling to except the illness and searches for the nut that caused the condition leaving them vulnerable to quacks. Perhaps it would be easier for them if society didn’t label them and they were considered as human beings with a disease like any other disease. That’s a start.
Many of these patients have difficulty with obsessive thinking or crooked thinking. It is possible to help them cope with these problems which medicines alone will not cure
Maybe some people need the hard knocks of life. Life is so easy now that an obvious sociopath who clearly couldnt have held down a job somehow was living, eating and buying guns. How, who would have hired this person. I bet he was supportes by his parents or us the tax payer
In this case, Westman was living in a rental with "a friend," and had been working at a marijuana dispensary.
According to the Minnesota Star Tribune: *Westman left his job at a marijuana dispensary called RISE only 11 days before the shooting. An unnamed coworker told the paper that he worked as a "personal care specialist" and worked with patients who were part of a state medical marijuana program. That coworker cryptically said "recent events have been the catalyst for this thing he has been planning for a long time."*
https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-catholic-school-shooters-life-marked-chaos-before-mass-killing-timeline
In general, the purpose of government programs and parental enabling is to disrupt the natural process of cause and effect.
The rise of polypharmacy and Big Pharma coincided with the Rockafella approach to medicine: "Got a problem? Here's a pill. Next!"
Johnny's depressed and the kids at school are picking on him. No psychiatric workup, no blood work, nothing. You and Johnny leave with enough Prozac to paralyze a horse. That should fix things.
There are literally dozens of cases indicating an adverse reaction within 24 hours of the first dose, or 24 hours after you discontinue use. No followup and no warning about what could happen if you went cold turkey after 6 months.
I had a folder of newspaper articles, and it's all anecdotal evidence, because no one's ever going to tell you what the shooter was taking (I mean, take a look at Adam Lanza's eyes, big as pie plates). One stuck out in particular: a couple was going through a messy divorce, which was doing a number on their 12 year old son. It was decided he would go to stay with his grandparents. He had followed his grandfather so closely as a child they called him grandpa's shadow.
He was prescribed "something for depression" right before he left home. Within the first week, he'd shot both of his grandparents dead with a shotgun, set their house on fire, and was later found driving their car. Twelve.
I've got more, but like I said, all anecdotal. Maybe there's nothing to it?
I like the way the mayor notices at the last minute he hasn't even mentioned Catholics - and oh yeah, EVEN Catholics.
Wait, Catholics were involved?
One meek thing which needs to be remembered in the phenomenon of public revulsion against the pharmaceutical companies is that their rise to massive power and wealth in the 1950s and 1960s happened as part of the high tide of modernism.
Better Living Through Chemistry.
It sounds like the perfect example of modernistic bilge. In fact, if you do research by going over some copies of general interest magazines from circa 1960, you'll find that the American people in 1960 presumed that the next one hundred years would be better and better and better, and that an indefinite large amount of this would come through scientific and medical research.
I agree. Over the last 125 years, from 1900 to 2025, male life expectancy has increased by approximately 29.5 years (from 46.3 to 75.8), primarily due to vaccines, antibiotics, improved nutrition, sanitation, reduced child mortality, and advances in chronic disease management.
My grandmother lost 5 of her 7 brothers to the Spanish Flu in the early '20s. Her mother was a visiting nurse and the thought is she probably brought it home with her. My grandmother survived because she was doing all the dishes and laundry at the time (with her hands constantly in lye soap). We didn't know squat about infectious diseases back then, and we lost a huge number of kids before age 5 due to our ignorance. Today our numbers are limited by fentanyl overdoes, a huge, murderous drug underworld, and adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine (Died Suddenly).
The biggest problem we have, in my opinion, is that millions have lost faith in science and medicine. Not because we're idiots and don't understand science (as the Left surmises), but because in the last 5 years we've been lied to every time we turned around. Trust the science, they told us. If you get the vaccine, you won't get the virus, you won't be able to spread it. We got 2 years in the basement while Gavin Newsom got the French Laundry and Fauci went to baseball games. They arrested a guy sailboarding offshore in California, for God's sake. I got yelled at twice for going the "wrong way" down an aisle in the grocery (because the virus only goes one way down an aisle?). Unfortunately, we need some sort of authority before the next thing hits, but everyone saw what happened and assumes scientists and doctors are full of shit. I didn't do that, science and medicine did that. I mean, isn't Florida supposed to be underwater by now?
Apocalyse Soon. Just you wait!!
Everything else was basically a rounding error compared to improved sanitation and food supply. How very odd that the modern elite are now heavily in favor of public defecation and chemically manufactured food-like substances.
Extremely well said. I can add nothing of substance, and have learned that when that is the case, it's best not to say anything.
This "shooting" is a tragic example of what happens when poseur ideologues (lesbian feminist Marxism now the DEI)--avaricious finance (surveillance capitalism)--and a corrupt bureaucratic political system join hands to loot a national economy and are allowed to seize--distort--and reduce-- a Republic's national conversation to a psyop. All three feed on the lives--labor and productivity of We the People. The six decade war on the American psyche is now visible in the American landscape. A political leaders fear and inability to speak openly about a tragedy of this magnitude is the result of the ideological/bureaucratic/surveillance poisoning of public discourse to cover the theft and looting of American treasure. Likewise--the assault on free speech and thought--culture-- and civilization in general. One can say anything but the truth. The seizure and exploitation of important social/political/financial issues for profit by poseur politicians--financiers and grifters pretending moral concern? Consider Soros--the various Clinton charities--Billy Gates or the Mayorkas NGO hustle that painted itself in high moral color and lost 350 thousand children without trace or concern. The USAID reveal should--but hasn't--sobered We the People. The bottom is--as planned--falling out. The "five eyes" are morally blind as the proverbial bat. They'll gladly incarcerate or euthanize a citizen at the drop of a hat. Know your enemy!!
There is the Republic--the Constitution and the free citizen. Everything else is just passing through. Depart the psyop and live.
All true. Catch Megyn Kelly’s podcast this past week. A way to think about it is a dereliction of care of patients with real mental problems. Instead of treating them, helping them, they affirm the bizarre lifestyle and mental state calling it trans and trans rights etc. And even after that bankrupt logic leads to innocent children being killed, our so called mainstream media and left political leaders cover it up and double down on trans agenda. Take the word trans out for a moment, their slogan is “crazy rights”. They apparently will continue to champion that along w open borders, lionizing illegal immigrants who are violent criminals, and so on. This is why there is a second Trump presidency. Thank goodness millions of Americans see this for what it is and new media does a great job exposing the madness. As a lifelong conservative I welcome the Democrats doubling and tripling down.
«About 20 or more years ago psychiatry gave up on listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils. Instead they turned to the use of SSRI drugs which were easier and faster. If they had done due diligence, they might have discovered that in many cases the mental illness was aggravated. Shame on the medical profession!»
In medicine like in everything else there are "gold", "silver", "bronze" and "stone" plans and people on "gold" and "silver" plans get the “listening and helping patients out of obsessive or crooked thinking helping them with methods fo coping or dealing with their devils” help which is simply too expensive for the "bronze" and "stone" plans, which are basically about handing out pills as substitute for expensive in-person time.
The USA is pay-to-play so everything, from schooling to medicine, depends on the type of plan you are on. Why should middle and upper class people who pay for their own "gold" and "silver" plans hand-out even a cent of their property and stocks profits for which they wait every day so hard to help upgrade the plans of working class and under class people who can only afford "bronze" and "stone" plans?
In Reagan and Clinton's America winners (the upper and middle classes) must win and suckers (the working class) and losers (the under class) must lose.
You wrote:
"Instead we should be concerned with the actual causes of this terrible madness aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers."
Obviously mental health is an important issue, but "...aside from the violence promoted by paid groups and brainless followers" is one hell of a line to drop.
We don't have enough money, resources or inherent mental health to fight off a constant drumbeat agitating violence at very specific people promoted by both political parties, major media, domestic and international institutions, social media, [and the list keeps going].
Trump and Musk's names were not accidental.
And a conspiracy to promote and agitate violence by the RussiaGate alumni aimed at the crazy and sane alike is a much more interesting story than drugs or trans people.
Enticing Clay,
I am not ignoring the horrific damage the violent behavior and dishonesty of politicians , MSM, social media and don’t forget Hollywood. Those belong in a different category of crazies. The shooters severely mentally disturbed due to chemical imbalance or genetic mishaps. They are probably living in a hellish nightmare and the forces you mention are egging them on. As far as the shootings, I believe they do fall into the mental heath category. The other problems are another kettle of fish that is also boiling over.
That's a very good reply. And we really do need people thinking about this issue from an individual perspective. And my conspiracy talk, right or wrong, doesn't help with that aspect.
Considering the endless drumbeat of straight up calls for violence and assassination just on Reddit and Bluesky alone and the implicit blank check society wise, it's actually impressive as hell how few people, crazy and sane alike, are taking the bait.
I think we are passing this test really well considering our population size.
But we could do a lot better with more help for people and less agitation. And the more help for people the less the agitation works.
Well Clay, I have a secret that gives me privilege to insights. I am 92, born in 1933 gives me A LOT of Bo a fides
Wow, that’s so specious it leaves me nearly speechless. The fact that the states with the highest gun ownership per capita also have the highest homicide rates per capita is precisely my argument. See if you can follow this: Mississippi’s gun death rate is six times higher per capita than New York’s — even though Mississippi’s population is six times smaller. That isn’t coincidence, it’s causation. The pattern is unmistakable: more guns in circulation translates into more people killed with guns.
Saying the forbidden: the number of gunshot deaths correlates in an extremely revealing manner with the number of blacks in the area being surveyed. The South is loaded with guns. The upper Midwest, the near Northwest, and the Pacific Northwest are loaded with guns. The latter three areas have nothing like the gunshot murder rate we have in the South, and in cities with large numbers of blacks.
Wiki: "The per-capita offending rate (homicide)for African-Americans was roughly eight times higher than that of whites, and their victim rate was similar. About half of homicides are known to be single-offender/single-victim, and most of those were intraracial; in those where the perpetrator's and victim's races were known, 81% of white victims were killed by whites and 91% of black or African-American victims were killed by blacks or African-Americans."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States
I'm still haunted by something which happened when I was twenty - three. One Saturday evening, I became aware from the flashing lights that cop activity was going on nearby. I was still living at home, and my father came in at just about the moment I realized that the police were nearby. He told me and my mother what had happened.
A guy just a year older than I was then, who was an engineer, had realized that oh sh*t, he'd forgotten to buy food for his cat. After dark he walked to the neighborhood, family owned grocery store to buy a few cans. On his way back, just a block from his apartment, a driver had pulled up to the curb, gotten out and robbed him. The bastard could have left it at that. Instead, he blew the kid's brains out.
I've always had an unshakeable sense that I knew who committed the crime, a guy named Johnny DeMouchette, whose reputation was such that all the Texas police departments, and the Texas Rangers, regarded him as "the meanest man in Texas." A few years later, one of his murders caught up with him, and he was executed.
The heartlessness of the murder of the young engineer, whose name was Stephen Duss, has stayed with me all these decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Demouchette
I hope Walter and Matt will read this and moderate their thoughts on surveillance with some common sense. This guy should have been locked up at birth.
It is also true that we can collect data til the cows come home, but if no responsive action is taken, what's the point?
James. Funny how the mind plays tricks. Thank you, Ann.
I’m not going to waste time on you; I just want others to see my response. They can decide who actually understands logic and statistics for themselves. ✌️
Shame on the NRA. All ya need to know about US off-the-charts homicide rates (which Matt is apparently oblivious to because he’s busy stoking culture wars):
Mississippi. Very permissive gun laws (no permit required to carry). Homicide rate: ~20–23 per 100,000 (highest in the U.S.).
Louisiana. Loose carry laws, low restrictions. Homicide rate: ~18–20 per 100,000.
Massachusetts (one of the strictest states) Requires permits, bans assault weapons, has “red flag” law.
Homicide rate: ~2 per 100,000 — among the lowest in the country.
Hawaii & New York (strictest laws). Both under 3 per 100,000.
Firstly, you completely ignore that the states with the most guns per capita will have higher gun fatalities per capita. Guess what? People who have a pool in their backyard have higher rates of drowning than those who don’t.
Secondly, Mississippi is arguably the poorest state in the nation. Kindly let me know when you perform a multi-variate analysis that controls for the other indicators present in Mississippi and similar states that beget crime.
Thirdly, cherry picking data without this work is not only pointless, it’s easy to refute with random examples. What’s the murder rate in Chicago compared to the balance of Illinois? What’s the murder rate in NYC compared to the balance of NY State?
Your obvious propaganda doesn’t work.
Once again, we see that figures don't lie but liars do figure. You select five states and those are your proof. What about Utah? Lax gun laws but according to CDC figures, the third lowest homicide rate in the US (2.2/100K), considerably lower than Hawaii (2.9) or New York (3.9). Missouri (10.4), Maryland (10.1), Georgia (9.9) and Illinois (9.8) are all clustered together, even though Missouri and Georgia have lax laws while Maryland and Illinois have among the strictest in the nation. Vermont used to have very lax gun laws and a low crime rate, but in 2018, the laws were tightened up with absolutely no effect on crime. But it made people feel good and that's all that matters. And by they way, Mississippi is the state with the highest murder rate in the US but the Washington, DC murder rate is roughly twice that of Mississippi.
These are complex issues. Arguments based on factoids are not persuasive. Poverty is at least as highly correlated with crime as gun laws.
You can’t escape facts — outliers do not erase a statistical correlation. U.S states with more permissive gun laws and higher gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings. Specifically, it has been shown a 10% increase in gun ownership is linked to a 35.1% higher rate of mass shootings.
You're doing the 'you're cherry-picking' people a favor: 10% and 40% are not close, which suggests that something else is causing the shootings.
Excellent insight. With the exception of gun laws, Mississippi and Louisiana are virtually identical to Massachusetts and Hawaii.
The race card is would only mentioned when it would help his "argument".
Watching these people come out IMMEDIATELY with the same talking point shitting on people praying for the victims and their families was sickening to me.
I'm agnostic, maybe even atheistic at times.
Even I know that people pray to ease pain in times of tragedy and cannot fucking believe that THIS is the point the want to hammer on.
Like, WTactualF?
MN is a portal to hell and has gone from a wholesome heartland state full of proud industrious immigrants to a third world shithole in 30 years.
I'm gobsmacked.
I HATE religion, but hearing some politico saying, as evidence that we don't need prayers, that the KIDS WHO DIED were praying was disgusting.
I don't even hate religion but I know that religious people get a LOT out of prayer and it harms NO one when people pray.
The fact that it was a knee-jerk reaction to this is telling and really shines a light on the suspicious lack of empathy coming from those who'd claim to be "progressive" and "inclusive".
If it were a synagogue or Muslim school what would the coverage be like?
Why THE FUCK ARE WE EVEN HAVING TO TALK ABOUT THIS?
Like, why are they doing this?
That was the response on Israel and Gaza immediately after October 7th. “Genocide” by Israel was proclaimed as the pre-crime at hand. The attacks on women’s rights, the demonization of Israel and rising antisemitism, the extolling of political violence by characters like Luigi and others as acceptable and “justified”, are all related aspects of a general campaign (it’s too consistent and omnipresent not to be) and atmosphere of hysteria fostered for hard division of working people.
While I agree that the elites are pushing us to fight each other instead of them, I disagree with your Palestine points: the genocide has been on-going for decades, and hating the actions of a state are nothing like hating its population (although some people will go overboard, of course).
Schiff, I appreciate the civility, but it’s a strange “genocide” when the population of Gaza has increased every decade in the past 70 years. It’s also clearly incorrect that the intent to commit a genocide comes from the Israeli government, despite the fact that members of the War Cabinet have made statements that lend themselves to that claim. The Israeli government and military warn civilians of impending military action sometimes days ahead, drop leaflets, make thousands of individual cell phones calls and texts to warn civilians of imminent attacks on Hamas troops, they drop door-knock rounds on roofs, and various other measures to limit civilian casualties. Hamas, PIJ, and PFLP and DFLP do the opposite, placing weaponry, HQs, and forces in or near hospitals, schools, UNRWA buildings, and private residences, while also allowing NO CIVILIAN ACCESS to the vast tunnel system built for the various Gaza military forces. “Genocide” is what Hamas wants, and at various times members of their leadership have stated that openly. It serves the propaganda purposes of Hamas, the PIJ, DFLP and PFLP to have a higher civilian death toll in order to run what is a gigantic propaganda operation that is willingly received by a vast complement of NGOs, News organizations, Youtube “influencers” both left and right, and UN bureaucrats. The only genocide in Gaza is a “genocide”.
Thousands of texts wouldn't mean much, because there are 2M people in the occupied territories - but perhaps you mean 'millions'. And I would not be surprised if the violent on both sides have made illegal actions and genocidal statements.
But I don't see how a portrayal of isnotreal as an honorable belligerent can be correct. Going off statements from the UN and other relevant bodies, isnotreal has bombed Palestinians AT the places they were told to flee to, the vehicles of clearly marked aid vehicles, and journalists. Palestine is blockaded, and people are killed at some of the distribution sites of what supplies are allowed in. And perhaps Palestine does have military outposts at hospitals, which would be illegal; but bombing them would still be illegal! WikiLeaks just released footage of people attempting rescue at a hospital after an airstrike being bombed themselves!
The groups that supposedly stand for the world's conscience could be wrong about this event, but isnotreal could just allow in observers to verify that; there would be plenty of time for slaughter after. And I do mean slaughter: the death-toll ratio is wildly one-sided. This doesn't seem like a war to me.
Walter is right, we are being manipulated, by the murderers and by the media, politicians, and activists. The latter group gives these people free publicity as if they were celebrities on the same level as Pat Mahomes, and almost literally maintains a scoreboard for them. I suspect that at least some of the psychos have realized that using an AR or other scary looking weapon gives them more attention because of the political implications. Ironically it's the people who claim to be the only ones who truly care about these incidents, anti-gun politicians and activists, who do the most to give the killers exactly what they want.
Yes, the transformation of Minnesota so quickly really is unbelievable.
Had to stop watching the video to comment. Walter, that sticker with the rifle on the progress pride flag is a thing. Trans pride stickers are often emblazoned with violent imagery intended to express their hatred of 'terfs' and anyone else who is based in reality. Pink and blue baseball bats wrapped with barbed wire, double bladed axes, and sledge hammers are brandished in pride parades particularly by a group of young men who call themselves the Degenderettes. These violent men insist they are women. There was a gallery installation of their equipment and wearable 'art' ('Kill a Terf' tee shirts) at the San Diego Public Library in 2018. https://www.ebar.com/story/38760
Hell, look at the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota. https://x.com/still_boneless/status/1960752260331528667
Women with children and grandchildren have been navigating this shite in schools, doctors' offices, libraries, and even churches for more than a decade. It is no small thing that many democrats like myself have left the party because the trans agenda specifically was such a huge part of the platform and a complete turn off. When NPR began banging on about 'trans kids' and the AP's Style Diversity Recommendations resulted in every reported crime being reported as a person's gender identity rather than the perp's sex, (resulting in headlines describing arrests of women for thousands of images of child sexual abuse, woman arrested for knifing postal worker in Harlem, sixty year old Brooklyn woman killed and dismembered her neighbor, woman sexually assaulted 13 year old girl in changing stall} how could we trust anything in the media? Early on I realized that NYT, the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Colbert, John Stewart, etc. were ideologically captured. Which is when I began to realize that Trump's policies were not to be dismissed out of hand simply because we hated the messenger. The 'trans rights issue' in particular didn't seem like a 'grass roots' civil rights movement but rather a highly funded, internationally coordinated psy-op.
Also guys...it doesn't matter how much effort these men put into being 'authentically' trans. You seem to think that if a man takes wrong sex hormones, he's more authentically trans than a man who puts on a wig, makeup, and dress, and less authentic than a man who has a vaginoplasty and FFS. The entire argument of TRAs is that one's 'gender' is whatever they 'feel' it to be and once you declare it then, voila, you are not only trans, you are the opposite sex (or non-binary) and can have your name and sex marker changed on your license, passport, and in some states, on your birth certificate. TWAW (trans women ARE women) and NO DEBATE.
Please, please stop perpetuating the notion that people based in reality are on the right. This is a big deal and not the annoying little diversion you think.
Yup. Violent rhetoric and imagery are part and parcel for the trans community. They don't hide it. An art exhibit in 2018 at the San Francisco Public Library had a bloody looking shirt that said "I punch TERFs" on it, as well as a bunch of frightening things (trans colors painted on baseball bats, etc.). https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/patriarchy/male-violence/trans-activism-is-excusing-advocating-violence-against-women-and-its-time-to-speak-up/
There is more violent imagery collected at https://terfisaslur.com
And let's not forget a "trans" novelist who got a lot of good ink about his book that was largely about murdering women who don't think men can be women, Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin. He envisioned JK Rowling being burnt alive in it. https://nypost.com/2022/04/22/writer-gretchen-felker-martin-under-fire-for-killing-j-k-rowling-in-novel/
“A smart book about the politics of gender and the perils of transphobia, Manhunt could easily have turned didactic — but Felker-Martin, a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, delights in the genre’s free-flowing carnage, and that glee is tons of fun.”
—The New York Times
"A filthy, furious delight; within its tense, gruesome premise live roundly human characters, with big, unwieldy emotions. It’s a shockingly tender exploration of genders and bodies, of violence as a part of nature, of the way love is a tool of survival."
—The New Yorker
Search: Snehal Ansh Srivastava. He's a 26-year-old male who goes by the name “Sasha Shakur”. Same day as the church shooting.
Saw this on X. Clearly trans id as woman out and proud but suddenly main stream media describes this as a killing by a male using correct sex pronouns. 'Nothing to see here, folks. Just another normal murder of a father walking with his 6yr old son by perpetrated by some random dude.
Driving around Seattle doing my city bus routes and I can feel the tension. Something is boiling right underneath and it smells like a septic tank. Even here I'm seeing anti-trans graffiti. Media makes it worse everytime by not acknowledging the reality of the shooter's identity when it doesn't fit the narrative.
Sorry, everyone, but when you rub your opinions up in everybody's face, expect backlash. Be trans. I don't care. Marry whom you like. Worship as you please. But don't expect me to listen to you whine about it all day, or insist you are commanded by God to proselytize in public, nor tell me what I have to like, whom to associate with, or what to believe. Christians are as bad about this as BLM, Muslims, transgender, or any other radical position. It's always their way or the highway, and all else be damned. No, the only road to peace is respect for other people's choices, and don't make others pay for your way. A secular political structure is the only way to achieve peace on Earth.
As it was in Soviet Russia and Communist China?
There is a considerable school of thought among historians of the time and place that Europe in 1914 was primed for cataclysmic war because of the secularization of the European mind in the nineteenth century.
Gay marriage succeeded largely because it was live and let live. The trans ideology is encountering resistance because it demands your participation and affirmation.
William Ramsey has done quite a bit of research on the "Order." It's real and dangerous. He drills pretty deep.
the knee jerk reaction of pivoting from the massacre of some children in a church to criticism of people who oppose the trans movement is reflective of a much larger Spiritual problem.
Title: "A Tale of Twin Cities"
Type: A Very Short Play
Setting: The Western World
Characters:
Person A — visibly worried, practical
Person B — progressive, aggressive
Tone: Absurdist, Deadpan
Theme: Misaligned priorities
Length: About three seconds
Style: minimal staging, surreal, dialogue-driven
Curtains open:
Person A: "I'm a little concerned about person Z. He is acting erratically, abusing drugs and proclaiming that he wants to kill others then himself, plus he has guns all over the place."
Person B: "Stop misgendering her!!!!"
Person A: "but...."
Person B: "IM SPEAKING NOW"
You both brought up the weird feelings engendered by looking at the graffiti and comments made by the murderer on the bullets.......if I recall correctly that you felt that seemed new.
Really?
When I was a much younger man, and our soldiers were spray painting "ROCK THE CASBAH" on ammunition headed for Iraq, I thought to myself how immoral that was - knowing those were going to be used on innocent civilians.
But nothing could have prepared me for last year when Zelensky came to Pennsylvania for some kind of Kamala Harris campaign event accompanied by the governor of the state of PA - Josh Shapiro. They had a big party in a munitions factory. And both literally autographed munitions that were going to be sent to Ukraine to bomb even more civilians.
I would say we have a fine tradition in the USA of signing bombs and bullets and other ammo. The problem is for those who do it - it leaves a very sick feeling in those of us who are not really into killing innocents. Accordingly, I, a Dem, will never even consider voting for Shapiro after that stunt - and the entire event greatly decreased my chance of voting for any Democrat in their current form.
LOL The US has been one long orgy of death dealing since WWII ended.
We export violence and weaponry.
And fuel.
We imported the nazis. More than just operation paperclip
Ha ha yeah, I remember that. It was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's "hometown." They were smiling and holding missiles the way politicians in Philadelphia hold up cheesesteaks. It was unbelievable. That missile factory is the only business left in Scranton. All the jobs in that town were shipped to third world countries. Chris Hedges even dedicated the entire first chapter of one of his books to how much Scranton sucks.
Are you implying that that factory was supplying Russian army? Or are yuo just one sick puppy?
Also Nikki Haley did that
Good discussion during a more somber episode. I especially liked what Walt said about America becoming a "traumaocracy." It has felt this way ever since 9-11.
Thousands and thousands of little babies with their arms and legs melted off don't phase us, in fact we support it, even Matt Taibbi has nothing to say about it, but that's not a factor in our violent culture, nothing to say about that, no it's the video games and reddit. Every other country has video games and reddit but not so much the mass murder and maiming of babies that we have. But nah that's not it, let's listen to Walter stammer and stutter through ignorant fox news grandpa garbage for 45 minutes instead.
This shooting seems as suspect as the Luigi one. This time, our monster writes in perfect Cyrillic? He's pro-Palestinian? He's trans? He's anti-Trump? He shoots praying children? His manifesto is out lickety-split? Remember. We have entered an information age. Every age has its own weapons of war. This feels like warfare.
Look into the Order of 9 Angles aka O9A, look into their iconography, then look at the shit this shooter had on their weapons and the fact that they wrote the odd Cyrillic letters to form English words. To use a Walterism - In other words, there is strong circumstantial evidence that this person was groomed by a group of sadistic esoteric loner psychopaths into doing this, either directly or by simply encouraging the concept, and potentially that our government is aware of and monitoring this activity but is unable or unwilling to stop it before it turns from sick chatter on a Discord server into an actual attack in real life.
Andrew Dolgin - What gives with the pronouns? At times you refer to this individual shooter as "this shooter" or "this person." At other times you refer to this individual shooter using the grammatically incorrect but politically correct pronouns "their" or "they" as in "their iconography," "their weapons," and "they wrote."
Why are you so focused on the pronouns I use to describe this guy? Are you that culture war slop brained?
Andrew Dolgin - I think you and I are in agreement about the shooter's motivation. What is puzzling to me is instead of using "his" or "he" in referring to the shooter, you would use "their," a sure sign of what you correctly call the "culture war slop brained."
I used neutral pronouns to avoid the exact culture war slop you're dragging in now. Man, woman, some other made up identity, it doesn't matter to me because it is a distraction. If this person was actually fueled by trans ideology of some sort and there was evidence of that I would not use neutral language, but since the issue of them being trans is now being politicized I avoided it completely so people could focus on my actual message.
MK Ultra is always ready to deploy an asset for optics and terror.
Always.
It's why it was created.
Manson? Pfff OLD HAT
There is no "Trans" or "cis." There's only male or female or Democrat.
I don't believe you.
As pronouns, he/she/Dem are just too confusing ;)
The silhouette image in that psycho's notebook is an AK-47 (the "commie gun"), not an AR-pattern rifle. I told myself to shut up about it, but Walter misidentified it two or three times. As iconography it's associated with the revolutionary left-wing.
Thank you. When I first listened to the (otherwise very good) segment, I too repeatedly told myself I was going to resist and not correct Walter on this matter.
And here I am. Yes, with all due respect to WK, his repeated invocation of that particular model combined with his reminisces about growing up around guns and his consequent familiarity did drive me here.
Yes, it's clearly an AK-47 (aka "Kalshnikov": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47).
What I would say would be a better tack would be to notice that the image of so-called "assault weapons" is what has become a symbol, an icon.
The two best known examples of which are of course the AR-15 family (including the M16 used in Vietnam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15%E2%80%93style_rifle) and the AK-47.
While the AR-15 includes an optional handle that also functions as a site (but can be replaced by a conventional scope), the key characteristics that make these weapons so identifiable are:
1.) A pistol grip: conventional "hunting" rifles do not incorporate this
2.) The protruding magazine ("clip": though the M1 Carbine looked like a conventional rifle but possessed a clip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_carbine)
Anti-hilariously, the use of the Kalashnikov on "Defend Equality" stickers is apparently not rare:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/759014445/ak-47-defend-equality-transgender-pride
Additionally, the manufacturer allows you to select from a variety of weapon and flag styles.
So this was not a creation of the Westman monster. Still seems...kinda weird and provocative though. Thematic?
For the record, I shot a rifle once, when I was around 12 or so. Do not nor ever have owned any guns. I do support the rights identified in the Second Amendment as the first thing tyrants (e.g., Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) do is disarm their population.
Please don't overlook the influence of shadowy trans cults that groom these children. They know it takes years to grow a psychopath and they know that news cycles only focus on today's news and gloss right over the entire path taken to get to the event.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/leaders-764-arrested-and-charged-operating-global-child-exploitation-enterprise
I’ve seen so many posts of detransitioners who got pounced on in these chat rooms and convinced that their malaise is the result of them being trans. It’s evil- and even more evil is the medical community embracing whole heartedly. This individual clearly had issues prior to transitioning but was likely told this was the answer to his problems.
It's so sad.
This was a boy who didn't need to be sold a delusion.
True, but they convinced him of a new delusion (with the promise that this was the answer) instead of diagnosing and treating him for the pre-existing ones. It’s an abomination. I’m looking forward to the 1-800-LAWYERS commercials. “If you or a loved one had your (fill in blank) cut off…” it’s just a matter of time.
True, but they convinced him of a new delusion instead of trying to treat him for the pre-existing ones.
Another great discussion, there are always angles I had not considered.
I see Matt as the investigator and Walt as the philosopher, complimenting each others skills in these wide ranging discussions.
Keep it up
Ignore the haters and the mentally insane/retarded.
Great discussion as always
I am heartened that RFK Jr is calling for research into the dangerous ocer prescribed SSRI drugs and of course the dramatic increase in dangerous hormone “ treatments” for people wanting to change their gender
The one thing I get from this stuff is that our choice to homeschool our kids is the only way that guarantees they will be safe. I don’t wish it were this way but this along with how crap the education system is, you don’t really have any other choice.
Motive? Mentally ill.