====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
[reply inline / bottom-posted] on Fri, 21 Dec 2012 01:03:42 +0100, dan wrote: > > 1) The phenomenon of school shootings (massacres) really started in > the late 1980s-early 1990s in the US. > > [...] Storytelling based on how troops behave(d) in Vietnam, Aden, Six Counties, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. can clearly be important in ingraining in the public perception what is right, proper, and so on. The state (US, British, whatever) has the means to crush, to destroy, and is not afraid to use its power to kill at will. Bourgeois democracy is only as strong as democratic struggle makes and re-makes it and it is a perversion of the idea of a 'well-regulated militia' from that of a most democratic citizen militia into a right for every atomized individual to own a gun. But once both this individualized right is in place and the state's forces are seen in the news and in fictionalized accounts on screen to blast 'evildoers', it is not much of a stretch to expect some eggshell personalities to take it upon themselves to do what they see as right. (And which then is the bigger criminal?) So it is not primarily the on-screen action that threads directly to the murdering nut-jobs attacking schools (one perceived source of discontentedness) and schoolchildren, but the way that the leading imperialist country (USA) and its satrap (UK), amongst others, behave around the world. Capitalism is the murdering nut-job par excellence. Over a million Iraqis, including hundreds of thousands of children, died thanks to US, UK, etc. sanctions (which is merely a 'soft' form of war) and war. The war criminals Bush and Blair have yet to receive any justice for their barbaric acts; grotesquely, Blair is even now a peace envoy. And still the barbarism continues, thanks to continued occupation of Afghanistan and drone murders of men, women, and children in Pakistan. -- Jim Moody (j...@redunity.org.uk) on 21/12/2012 ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
