[Frigidweirdo]

Considering the kind of wild assumptions I’ve made in this thread, it would be super hypercritical of me to ask for a source so I’m just going to go with it

The top 33 you say? That’s unreal.

If it makes you feel any better, said Christianity will also make them pay for their sins

Well, any international statistics are going to be fraught with inconsistencies. But yeah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... ov=srpw1_0

Interestingly 34 is the Ivory Coast which isn't majority anything, but I'd bet that most murder happens in the Christian part of the country. Then the next three are Christian. There are a few Muslim countries in the top 50. High up in Far East Asia is the Philippines, the only Christian country in the region, for example.

[ness31]

It’s so interesting that when it came to a descriptor for those countries you went with Christian

[B0ycey]

It’s so interesting that when it came to a descriptor for those countries you went with Christian

Indeed. Being that high homicide rates are found in Africa and South America, being poor isn't a factor at all. It is all about Jesus!

[ness31]

All that Jesus freedom

[blackjack21]

You're the kind of person who causes this, with your ignorance and stupid comments.

So we don't need gun control then, we need ignorance and stupid comments control?

I wonder how many mass knife attacks occur in China daily? Oh that’s right, we’ll never know because they don’t air their dirty laundry for the world to see.

If they did, they'd just blame it on Western imperialism anyway.

The UK has 0.06 gun deaths per 100,000, whereas USA had 4.43 in 2017. Can you do the math on that one? It's over 73 times as many.

Brits do not have the right to keep and bear arms. Neither do Canadians.

It won't stop really because it is about not restricting the alternative to solving your emotional and financial and any problem issue with a gun killing spree.

The guy was obviously mentally ill.

Maybe the Chinese, with their 1.4 billion people are superior to decadent Westerners who can’t seem to keep their shit together. Yeah, maybe that’s it.

It's the government that does the mass killing in China.

But being that mass shootings are a frequent event in the US that it is becoming a "Dog bites man" news story, that to me suggests that there is something going on beyond gun ownership in all of this. There are too many angry people in America where the system is letting them down that they are now becoming more extreme and becoming violent.

Mass media and wokeism is pretty terrible. I cancelled cable and got Fubo, but I think I'm even going to cancel Fubo, because YouTube tries to force feed me mass media anyway. I see no reason to pay for it, since I'm more or less trying to avoid it these days.

Terrorist attack not shooting.... by someone who would not have been in this country if sensible immigration policies were in place.
thank you Obama for bringing these Syrian Terrorists to our country, you fucking Dumb ass.

This is not even a drop in the bucket compared to what Obama did to Syria.

I just think it’s a bit unfair how we all gawk at the States with their gun issues when other countries with massive populations are either rape fests or non forthcoming with their societal shortcomings.

Fairness aside, I think that it's a media obsession and that gets propagated world wide. I point that out in cases of police violence, because it's mind-bendingly worse in other countries and there's virtually no coverage of it anywhere. How's the EU doing on coronavirus? Not too well. However, you never here anyone talking about Ursula von der Layen. While we can quip that she's not democratically elected, mass media does not seem to care about European political leaders; and, hence even Europeans do not seem to care about European political leaders. They are focused on the United States.

Your country isn't as free as you'd like to believe.

Funny. If I say something like that to you, you call me a conspiracy theorist. Did you change your mind?

Any claims of Islamic extremism fall apart when you realize he's as American as you can get.

Culturally, America is Christian, not Muslim. So that may have contributed to his mental illness, which looks like paranoid schizophrenia from what little I know of the story.

Who came up with this ‘whataboutist’ shit? It’s called comparing and contrasting. It’s an actual thing.

Critical theory types who want you to focus on their criticisms of the United States, and virtually nothing else.

But gun ownership has been a thing in the US since basically forever, so what's going on?

Possibly the effect of first person shooter video games on the mentally ill and maybe a mis-prescribed anti-depressant.

He had no business being able to purchase a firearm. Common sense dictates that if somebody has a mental health issue, they probably should not be allowed to buy such weapons.

Maybe he didn't buy it. The kid in the Sandy Hook shooting didn't buy his weapon, but he was also a mentally ill kid with a penchant for first person shooter video games. Maybe we need video game regulation.

Even sane minded people who become irrational and angry for a little bit can take one of those weapons and endanger the lives of innocent people.

Yes, but having the personality type of a rule follower, you are assuming that regulations are going to be followed and thereby stop crimes. America is a society that embraces maximum freedom for the mentally ill, and does not want to reflect on the problems with that type of ideology. That comes with good reason, because the Soviet Union was known for incarcerating political dissidents as mentally ill when they were no such thing. The US used to incarcerate chronic alcoholics in sanitariums.

The reason why we have these mass shootings is because we lack gun regulations and laws in this country that make it harder to purchase and own firearms.

America is not a place with a lack of laws. Ironically, what you do when you make it harder is that you create an underground economy for illegal guns. Who often gets busted for them? Black people. Push this agenda, and the logical conclusion is that you will be putting more black people in jail. Then, you will claim the system is racist for the very laws you supported. I caution you to be a lot more thoughtful about what you support politically. As I pointed out, our current president is the person who wrote the legislation that made the US into a mass incarceration state. Just because he's a Democrat, you shouldn't ignore that fact.

They need to be heavily regulated and controlled due to their lethality and the threat they can pose to public safety. That's just common sense. The government has a duty to assure public safety.

They are heavily regulated. It's crazy people who are not heavily regulated anymore. This stuff didn't happen nearly as frequently before de-institutionalization of crazy people. The homeless epidemic has similar roots.

Its downfall? Greed, and lack of ethics. Betraying the idea of a representative truly democratic republic.

That lack of ethics in my view is pushed by the political left and it's opposition to traditional morality. Greed is certainly an issue, but I think it's greatest manifestation is free trade with China so that we can all have iPhones and cheap shoes made by quasi-slave labor.

Being racist and denying it and more importantly NOT doing something real to change and not make racism so integral to its greed.

I think that's an orthogonal issue. Lebron James or Michael Jordan do not seem to have any problem making money off of quasi-slave labor in China, or kids killing each other over Nike Air Jordans or Nike Lebrons. That's typically a crime that involves black people killing other black people for status symbols created by black people and made with cheap Chinese labor.

Putting too many efforts into hyperindividualism and losing a sense of community.

That is an issue. Humans are social animals.

Having too many angry and dissatisfied people in its borders when other nations have a lot less materially and who make the best of what they do have.

I think a lot of that comes from mass media narratives. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a poison all its own. I don't watch it much at all anymore, which maybe makes me less informed. However, I think I'm a happier person for it.

If Americans are willing to put up with this needless killing, week after week, year on year, why should I give a damn?

You shouldn't. It's only a media narrative for gun control, and they only use mass shootings because the victims are usually white. Blacks shoot each other all the time, and the media doesn't care at all.

Most mass shooters are mentally ill regardless of nationality.

That's correct, and many of them are on anti-depressants too. Doctors hand those out like Chiclets at the border, because SSRIs don't have a lot of drug-drug interactions. Yet, they don't have a way of measuring neurotransmitter levels to see what kinds of drugs are needed if any. It's just like throwing darts at a board. They warn you to call your doctor if you have any suicidal ideation, but not if you have homicidal ideation. So there is some political mischief there too, because lawyers never fail to capitalize on something like that.

However, the left will say he was tormented by white supremacists and hence they are culpable.

Yeah. That's why I'm probably going to cancel my Fubo too. They are trying to do the same thing with the confessed sex addict who shot some Asians in a massage parlor.

There is a bit of an epidemic of crime against Asians. According to my cop friend, there has been antipathy between blacks and Asians for at least 30 years. He says that around the Chinese new year, the Chinese carry more cash than usual for good luck. So they come in for muggings, mostly by black assailants. He says that many Asians simply carry more cash than most people, because they don't trust banks.

BTW, the shooter looks white. That is a bonus for the left,

Maybe, but ratings are way down. A lot fewer people are willing to sit through a news cast anymore, because it's usually just Democrat party propaganda. It's like the Soviet Union used to be with Pravda and Izvestia.

It is alienated people with no real relationships and a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves. Angry as hell and violent as hell.

Well, you really can't watch mass media anymore without coming away angry and disaffected. That's why I have chosen to tune it out. I just don't really need to know what's going on everywhere and listen to mindless narratives from leftists who want to divide everyone.

It does have more incarcerated people per capita than any other industrialized nation on Earth.

That wasn't the case until Joe Biden's 1994 crime bill. Let's make sure we underscore who underwrote the mass incarceration. We don't want to white wash his sins away now that he sadly suffers from Lewy body dementia.

The private prison system makes money off of law breakers. Lawyers make money off of criminality or even just breaking some rule that is not worth penalizing someone for....like throwing a shoe at a wall after an argument with a spouse because you find out they cheated on you and the neighbors in the apartment complex call the cops in Colorado and now automatically you got to go to court and you wind up paying $5, $10 or $15k in fines and anger management classes because the state has to make money and the private penal system does too.

The public prison system does too. Your antipathy for profit margins doesn't extend to prison guards and their labor unions, but it probably should. As for domestic violence, the Democrats will use any excuse like that to feather their nests for "women's rights" in your example. However, they are doing next to nothing in places like San Francisco for non-violent offenses. I was hanging out with my cop buddy yesterday, and he said he hadn't been to court on a non-violent misdemeanor in 5 years.

Infant mortality is extremely high in the USA. Something is not working.

Yes, but among which population groups? Drug addicted? Certainly not among upper middle class whites or Asians.

Maybe the music if you can call it that, has gotten angrier. I listen to some hip hop or rap these days (rarely) and some of it includes references to violence and illegal stuff.

Ha! Black music is the most racist, sexist, homophobic and violent music out there. Nobody says a thing about it. If white artists even say something racist, they lose their record contracts. White liberals expect blacks to behave that way, but hold white people to totally different standards. White liberals are some of the most racist people on the planet, and their wokeism is just to hide that fact from everyone.

Like Timothy McVeigh. A homegrown terrorist.

McVeigh was taking revenge for the massacre at Waco.

A Nazi revisionist who consistently exhibits extreme carelessness with facts, Peterson, an academic who declares that he chooses his words "very, very, carefully," misrepresents chronology, misuses his historical sources, and rewrites Holocaust history in a specious apologia for Hitler.

Well, your tagline seems to be blaming it all on IBM selling tabulating machines to the German government. Why not update your tagline to Google selling surveillance technologies to the Chinese government? Google is far more complicit than IBM, even getting rid of their erstwhile "Don't be evil" tagline, because they apparently know they are providing enabling technologies to a government that will use them to systematically violate human rights.

[Tainari88]

@blackjack21 wrote:

The guy was obviously mentally ill.

Yes, and so were the vast or all of the mass shooters. You aren't really mentally healthy if you are killing a lot of people who are strangers and you are not really defending yourself. A lot of serial killers are Caucasian BJ. I don't paint violence as belonging to a single national or ethnic group. It is foolish to do that. Violence exists in the homo sapien species. ALL OF IT. What the USA needs to do is implement proven laws, and policies that reduce or eliminate the vast majority of mass shootings. Getting these people identified and treated with either medication, rehab, and diet, exercise routines, and systemic activities that reduce drastically their violent tendencies and sociopathy. In Norway, they have a very high percentage of people who don't re-offend after committing ghastly violent crimes. Other incarceration systems have a very high probability of having violent criminals reoffending after being released. After 10,20 or plus years. Why doesn't the USA learn from these successful violence reduction programs? Because it means investing $$$$$ in mental health and incarceration systems that are not about making money BJ.

A very tiny percentage of sociopaths are incredibly difficult to change. But most respond well to treatments. But it doesn't matter how much one spends on these programs. In the end? It is better to spend on these effective programs than have the pain socially and economically of dozens or hundreds of people getting shot and killed by the mentally ill and not all there nuts who are allowed to buy automatic weapons in many states of the union.

That lack of ethics in my view is pushed by the political left and it's opposition to traditional morality. Greed is certainly an issue, but I think it's greatest manifestation is free trade with China so that we can all have iPhones and cheap shoes made by quasi-slave labor.

I am not a liberal and my morality is not a liberal morality BJ. So that argument doesn't work with me. Go and use it on the liberals with double speak. I don't do that. Greed is an issue. You think neoliberal/neocon economics is not about greed and selling out your own country for profit margins? It is. And prison labor in the USA is cheap labor. You also get to make sure they never vote again in many states if you incarcerate them for a while. Quasi-slave labor exists in this country I live in. Paying millions of Mexicans $2 an hour for decades. Adults with strong bodies and abilities and minds nothing at all. Where does that go to? Then the hypocrites don't understand how to stem the flow. Finally they are getting a clue. You better start dealing with the MESS left behind in these dirty civil wars in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Lawlessness, and lack of wages and commodity dumping for agricultural monopolies like United Fruit etc. I don't want to hear about it is not your issue. IT IS. You got thousands of refugees flooding in and continuing to do so non stop. Forever. Till you cope with that exploitation, violence mess left without a solution for Central America. The USA is geographically going to remain in its land position for a very very forever long time. Central America is not going anywhere. Their problems are not being addressed. The human species doesn't stay in societies that don't offer hope for a better life, or money to live on, no safety for children or women, and no real possibility of having some kind of stable communities. Eventually, it collapses and people go to where there is MONEY. Period. The alternative BJ is shooting them and killing them to stop them. Because the USA is your nation and not theirs. So just kill them like animals who are full of germs and become the inhumane type that thinks like that. Otherwise, the humane and logical thing is to call up the government of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador and start working on a world effort of stabilizing those nations and getting the people there to feel safe, get living wages, adequate housing, and education for their children. Don't march for thousands of miles in vain. Stay in your nation. Get some education, feed your family, get vaccinated and get help. Stop the madness. That is the solution. Not BULLSHIT and hating on the poor in the world trying to survive.

I think that's an orthogonal issue. Lebron James or Michael Jordan do not seem to have any problem making money off of quasi-slave labor in China, or kids killing each other over Nike Air Jordans or Nike Lebrons. That's typically a crime that involves black people killing other black people for status symbols created by black people and made with cheap Chinese labor.

Those Black pro athletes are following a cultural pattern. The American versions of 'success' is about being wealthy and successful, thinking individualism is what being a leader is. Jordan and others like him are as Ameican as apple pie there. They are reaping the success of being star athletes in teams that make millions and sometimes billions in profit from professional sports and merchandise, etc. That is the capitalist way. Meanwhile the PRC is busy building infrastructure projects all over the world. So they can push control financially over other markets. Markets that were abandoned by the United States of America too busy with selling arms, and having neoliberals in charge of the war machines. Selling out the duty of nationalist concerns over profit. They knew the weakness of the greed of the American hyperindividualism was a fine way to overtake them around 2025. That is when the Chinese are projecting overtaking the Americans in market share. They are Mandarins BJ. Authoritarian long-term planners. As long as they are making money for a vast swathe of middle classes and above in these megacities in China? The USA is in striking distance. They are seeing the finish line. The issue with the USA politicians? Everything is for sale. Even their most important national interests. Because it is not about acting for the best interests of the American Empire...it is obeying the need to profit for the neoliberal capitalist class and their cronies. All of them are for sale. Game over.

That is an issue. Humans are social animals.

Yes they are BJ. And one has to plan one's political policies addressing well their human needs. Why is variation in human cultures, languages and life (DNA too) so important for reinforcing our social animal ways? This explains it well:

But it fragile. Don't be thinking BJ, that we are healthier being all the same. It is the opposite. And human culture should be diverse as well. It follows the same bio laws. Social animals yes. But we got to learn to not want to be such rapacious predators and allow the weave to be strong. Otherwise? It means fluctuations will destroy us. Untied knots. We are interconnected. Stop thinking we are islands in isolation. We never were. Do you think it is about coral reefs? Humans are fragile when you get ruthless with wanting only one group to dominate. It is not going to go well.

I think a lot of that comes from mass media narratives. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a poison all its own. I don't watch it much at all anymore, which maybe makes me less informed. However, I think I'm a happier person for it.

I think the mass media is losing enormous credibility as it chases the eyes and ears of a very increasingly disaffected population. Everyone in the world that has a cell phone etc is living with access to a lot of information. Each individual can choose to act on the information they receive on a daily basis or not. In the end, people have to respond to the pressures of their day-to-day lives, and thinking adults with educations have to start choosing their values and acting on their preferences. But they are just one tiny part of a greater whole. Make it count! Make those decisions count. To live with thinking that billions who make daily decisions that affect other humans far away like this virus? Is for fools now. What happens in one nation far, far away? Can wind up in less than 2 years affecting the entire species. And all that it built over many generations. Time to get serious with deliberate actions made to improve our societies. Not destroy and compete and have greed the driving factor in life. It is time for reflection and action for something good. Not more garbage values BJ.

We better start dealing with the mentally ill, the physically impaired, the ones with obstacles, and start thinking about what will make us happy BJ. Not unhappy and increasingly despondent and alienated. That is not going to help us stem the tide of mass shootings.

[Frigidweirdo]

:lol:

Indeed. Being that high homicide rates are found in Africa and South America, being poor isn't a factor at all. It is all about Jesus!

Plenty of poor countries in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... P_(nominal)_per_capita

Using the IMF list.

Burundi is the poorest. Murder rate 6.02, 82nd in the world
Malawi is second poorest. Murder rate 1.73, 153rd in the world
Mozambique is third poorest, murder rate 3.4, 110th in the world.

You know, I'm just not getting a pattern here.

El Salvador which is top of that list has a GDP of $3,821, much, much higher than Burundi's $264.

Comparisons of similar countries.

Sudan and South Sudan. Muslim and Christian.

Sudan, 5.16 murder rate.
South Sudan, 13.90 murder rate.

For example.

Poverty does play a part in crime, first world countries are generally going to have lower crime rates. But then again, the US has a higher murder rate than Niger, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, India, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Malaysia, Kuwait.... to name a few......

Why?

And sure, it's not just about religion. But religion plays a part in the culture and mentality of a country. Christianity offers a sense of "do whatever you like, but go to church on Sunday and get a reset". It doesn't punish criminals like Islam does, for example.

[Frigidweirdo]

It’s so interesting that when it came to a descriptor for those countries you went with Christian

The pattern is there. I didn't make the pattern. It exists.

[ness31]

Lol, okay mate let’s go with the cause being Christianity. It’s a very obvious and convincing pattern

[blackjack21]

Yes, and so were the vast or all of the mass shooters. You aren't really mentally healthy if you are killing a lot of people who are strangers and you are not really defending yourself. A lot of serial killers are Caucasian BJ. I don't paint violence as belonging to a single national or ethnic group. It is foolish to do that. Violence exists in the homo sapien species. ALL OF IT. What the USA needs to do is implement proven laws, and policies that reduce or eliminate the vast majority of mass shootings. Getting these people identified and treated with either medication, rehab, and diet, exercise routines, and systemic activities that reduce drastically their violent tendencies and sociopathy. In Norway, they have a very high percentage of people who don't re-offend after committing ghastly violent crimes. Other incarceration systems have a very high probability of having violent criminals reoffending after being released. After 10,20 or plus years. Why doesn't the USA learn from these successful violence reduction programs? Because it means investing $$$$$ in mental health and incarceration systems that are not about making money BJ.

It's more complicated than that. Prison guards make quite a nice living, but they aren't the sharpest of people. When I pointed out that Biden wrote the legislation for mass incarceration, the loaded part of my statement is that the Democrats use labor unions to fund their operations. Prison guards are overpaid relative to their skill set, and they know it. There is no other job they can do where they will make that much money or have those benefits. So they have to be loyal to the Democrats and pay excessive union dues that go to fund the Democrat party and their politicians.

If you invest in mental health, you're talking about doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, etc. They are not traditional Democrat constituencies. Some nurses are unionized in hospitals, but it's not across the system. Democrats are interested in permanent power.

Think about why many people dislike Trump. He's boorish. A lot of the Republican party are basically middle or upper middle class and socially more refined than the Democrats. Much of the Republican party is a social club. To really push back on the prison system, you have to fight like Trump did. You're taking away votes and money from the Democrats and they will fight tooth and nail against it.

A very tiny percentage of sociopaths are incredibly difficult to change. But most respond well to treatments. But it doesn't matter how much one spends on these programs. In the end? It is better to spend on these effective programs than have the pain socially and economically of dozens or hundreds of people getting shot and killed by the mentally ill and not all there nuts who are allowed to buy automatic weapons in many states of the union.

Yes, but that means in practice, you need to make treatment compulsory.

You think neoliberal/neocon economics is not about greed and selling out your own country for profit margins? It is.

Do you hear me championing neoliberals or neoconservatives? I've been railing against them for years. Capitalism is not a governing system. It's an economic engine.

And prison labor in the USA is cheap labor. You also get to make sure they never vote again in many states if you incarcerate them for a while.

The Democrats are starting to look at the voting issue, because most violent criminals vote Democrat.

Central America is not going anywhere. Their problems are not being addressed.

Neither is Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. The US spends copious amounts of money in places around the world and it makes no difference. This is why I laugh at late or Drlee when they talk about using the US military against American civilians. They think that helicopter gun ships are almighty, or that you can use nuclear weapons against an insurrection. It's ludicrous. The Taliban has been fighting its cause for 20 years. We went to Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Yet, we were sold a bunch of nation building rhetoric. What good has it done? Very little.

The West--even the Empires--did quite a lot to spread medicine, vaccines, etc. world wide even as some of them exploited people and resources. One of the effects of that was dramatic overpopulation--an unintended consequence. When infant mortality collapses, populations boom. Then you end up with not enough food for the people, and starvation. The opposite was also true. Before modern medicine, empires spread diseases everywhere and entire civilizations were wiped out.

I have very little faith that the American political establishment can help you in any way. They are too busy helping themselves. In places where they try nation building, etc., the indigenous populations rarely cooperate without at least some of them fighting a resistance. I have very little faith that communism would work for the same reasons, and in addition that communism is less efficient than capitalism. Even anti-colonial Christian missionaries like Albert Schweitzer could do little on his own.

The human species doesn't stay in societies that don't offer hope for a better life, or money to live on, no safety for children or women, and no real possibility of having some kind of stable communities. Eventually, it collapses and people go to where there is MONEY. Period.

Indeed. That's the history of empire. They don't just go where there is money. They go where there are resources to exploit too.

Those Black pro athletes are following a cultural pattern. The American versions of 'success' is about being wealthy and successful, thinking individualism is what being a leader is. Jordan and others like him are as Ameican as apple pie there. They are reaping the success of being star athletes in teams that make millions and sometimes billions in profit from professional sports and merchandise, etc. That is the capitalist way.

Yes. It's why "woke" politics is a total fraud.

Meanwhile the PRC is busy building infrastructure projects all over the world. So they can push control financially over other markets. Markets that were abandoned by the United States of America too busy with selling arms, and having neoliberals in charge of the war machines.

Yes. Even communists go on exploitation binges. That's why ideology isn't an answer either, because human nature trumps ideological adhesion every time.

They knew the weakness of the greed of the American hyperindividualism was a fine way to overtake them around 2025. That is when the Chinese are projecting overtaking the Americans in market share.

China depends on exports. With their genocide against the Uighurs, the violation of separate systems in Hong Kong, sabre rattling against Taiwan, and infecting the entire fucking planet with coronavirus, they are not exactly in the world's good graces, if you haven't noticed. They are also the most rapidly aging society on the planet.

They are Mandarins BJ. Authoritarian long-term planners.

They were Mandarins when the Europeans arrived too.

Don't be thinking BJ, that we are healthier being all the same. It is the opposite.

Why on Earth would you think I would suggest such a thing. I'm the one person on this board that says that egalitarianism has significant limitations.

And human culture should be diverse as well.

It is, and in ways that horrify Westerners. My cousin was working as a missionary in Kenya, and my sister went to visit her. Then, my sister went to visit an area where Masai tribes lived, and she was utterly horrified. The men were obviously first class, then came the cattle. Then, came the women and children. My sister panicked. She saw a baby sitting in a pile of cow dung crying and covered with hundreds of flies. That's a culture. It's very different from the West.

That's not unique to Africa. When I read Sean Parnell's "Outlaw Platoon," he described his first real combat experience arriving at a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan before he even met his platoon leaders. They came under attack from 103mm rockets, and a bunch of Afghan civilians were injured. He picked up the most injured child, a little girl, to run her to the mobile hospital, but her mother begged him to drop the little girl and care for her sons first. He ran her to the hospital, but the little girl bled out in his arms. He was similarly struck by how women are completely second or even third class in such places.

Combat stress is very significant. PTSD is a very real thing. However, so is the cultural shock that troops experience. Afghans would kill a woman and a little girl, blame it on the Americans, and try to get money from the Americans as compensation for collateral damage. Astute doctors could see from the entrance and exit wounds that they were from 7.62 x 39 rounds, not 5.56.

Having read a number of stories like that, I saw an anti-American bit of propaganda during the Obama years railing against drone strikes. A teenage boy was looking into the camera feigning pain, while they claimed that a drone strike killed his grandmother. You would probably accept that as true, and I instantly thought it was false.

We are interconnected. Stop thinking we are islands in isolation. We never were.

There are plenty of cultures that are totally incompatible with Western values, including both capitalism and communism. There are plenty of places where Erich Fromm values are mocked and ridiculed. You can try to pretend that's not the case, but there are plenty of horrors around the world.

One of the reasons people come back to the US with PTSD is that nothing prepared them for what they were going to see, and most Americans cannot understand what they've been through or what it's like in other places. They think being "cultured" means vacationing in France.

To live with thinking that billions who make daily decisions that affect other humans far away like this virus? Is for fools now. What happens in one nation far, far away? Can wind up in less than 2 years affecting the entire species.

You'll get no argument from me there. I'm not convinced coronavirus was an accident. I know that the government will lie and pay and threaten the media to lie too.

I'm reading Jennifer Doudna's book, "A Crack in Creation--gene editing and the unthinkable power to control evolution" about her discovery of CRISPR-cas9 and the ability to edit genes with it. We are on the threshold of a major change in humanity.

[Julian658]

Poverty does play a part in crime, first world countries are generally going to have lower crime rates. But then again, the US has a higher murder rate than Niger, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, India, Tunisia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Malaysia, Kuwait.... to name a few......

Why?

And sure, it's not just about religion. But religion plays a part in the culture and mentality of a country. Christianity offers a sense of "do whatever you like, but go to church on Sunday and get a reset". It doesn't punish criminals like Islam does, for example.

You are comparing a multiethnic nation (USA) with nations that mostly have one ethnicity. How about comparing to individual ethnicities in the USA?

[late]

You are comparing a multiethnic nation (USA) with nations that mostly have one ethnicity. How about comparing to individual ethnicities in the USA?

That way you can imply blame the victim, racism implied.

The basics never change, you treat people as assets, not liabilities... Until we deal with the horrific damage of racism and Jim Crow (which never completely went away), you will always have your brain dead excuses.

[B0ycey]

And sure, it's not just about religion. But religion plays a part in the culture and mentality of a country.

"Correlation is not causation"

What about the sun? It seems to me the highest murder nations are sunny considering they come from Africa and South America.

Nonetheless we are assuming that the figures about crime and murder are correct in poor countries. I doubt they have many statisticans. But I will say there is more to murder figures than being poor in any case. I was only highlighting that that being poor is more of a factor than religion in murder given there is a motive there - like stealing. Plus your whole argument is based on a wikipedia table. For me the biggest issue in murder is having the means to kill. Without a weapon you are left with bare hands and that takes a lot of effort. Africa and South America have gang culture so there is your high murder rate right there. I don't expect to see much murder occurring in mud huts within Ethiopia if it helps.

[Tainari88]

It's more complicated than that. Prison guards make quite a nice living, but they aren't the sharpest of people. When I pointed out that Biden wrote the legislation for mass incarceration, the loaded part of my statement is that the Democrats use labor unions to fund their operations. Prison guards are overpaid relative to their skill set, and they know it. There is no other job they can do where they will make that much money or have those benefits. So they have to be loyal to the Democrats and pay excessive union dues that go to fund the Democrat party and their politicians.

How is it more complicated? The private prison system is not an oasis of money making opportunities for prison guards BJ. For example a Lousiana private prison pays its prison guards $9 dollars an hour and no benefits for about six months. They rarely give raises too. It cuts into their profit margin even though the day-to-day interactions with angered humans who lost their freedoms for years or months makes for real violence on the job hazard pay wages. Which they fail to pay them. @wellsy the Aussie on here who lives in New Mexico with his wife and daughter found prison counselor work. It is tough as hell for the guards as well, psychologically dealing with prison populations that are combative. In fact, German prisons train their guards on de-escalation techniques that have to do with calming down people and soothing them, and letting them talk and talk and also actvities that help them feel some control over their lives. Why? Because if they don't? the mental and emotional disturbances they already have present in their personalities, based on bad family lives, or genes or lack of structures that support different choices for them are not THERE. You have to create it for them by calming them down all the time BJ. The alternative is to have an escalation that winds up forcing isolating them, and isolation for sociopaths doesn't improve their condition. it worsens it. I can guarantee you BJ that the best prison guards are always about de-escalation not the opposite. So, why doesn't the state invest in these psychologically effective programs and techniques? Again, greed, lack of will both political and financial. Until that is addressed things don't improve BJ.

BJ, I have read you on this post reply here completely. Do you know what stands out to me Senor? No solutions or proposals you propose. Why did I ask you what your vision was for the kind of society you would like to see in the USA post ousting of neoliberal/neocon greed? You never really gave me an answer Relampaguito. Why? Don't be afraid of your arguments.Bring them forth. What are the solutions to sociopaths shooting up grocery stores, schools, concerts, clinics, parks, malls, etc that is so very very consistent in the USA? Where are the remedies for this BJ? I am interested in betterment of societies. Not just the USA but all of us. All of the nations. Not just Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Honduras, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, etc. Everyone. How does one go about implementing effective change in society. That is what being a truly just Advocate is about. It requires time, planning, policy, efforts, adjustments, meetings, testing, and work galore. It is about being committed to solutions to all these problems you mention below. But it has to be about coming from a place of acceptance for human beings' failures at justice, failures at listening to each other's points of view, failures at connection to other cultures, peoples and modes of thought. Find out what motivates people and get that going. All human beings respond to respect, concern, loving them and giving of yourself without self interest. It is rare to find people who do that completely and with a good corazon. But it is the impetus for change Relampaguito. Being cynical and giving up on human beings is not the answer to all these violence and imperialism issues and rivalries and class snobs oppressive the subordintates. Giving up on humanity is never going to work.

In fact, our DNA and our very essence is made to struggle mightily. If that were not the case? Never would have made it out of the Stone Age and in fact, the Stone Age humans and many of the BC societies got up every morning and hunted, and went out to forage. Effort, to live. Effort, to hunt, effort to eat, to sleep to have sex, to be warm to be productive to protect each other. Efforts to make it to the next step. So why is 2021 the year of giving up? It is not. It is time to reflect on what will make all of it much better. Don't you agree with me Relampaguito? Or do you want to say that it is useless to struggle? If that is your argument? You never really understood Harari's Homo Spaiens book did you?

If you invest in mental health, you're talking about doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, etc. They are not traditional Democrat constituencies. Some nurses are unionized in hospitals, but it's not across the system. Democrats are interested in permanent power.

Tell me which in power group isn't interested in permanent power? Why do you think the anarchists don't trust human governments with power in their hands? Because it corrupts the people wielding it. If they let it and cave in to the temptation of keeping power and sacrificing human rights. In the end? They become increasingly ineffectual and irrelevant and obsolete wielding it and have to concede or chang or perish and lose it all. People want results. Everyone does. The styles, languages and culture might vary greatly but in the end people want results. If the power structure fails to give that to them? they seek to undermine it. That Relampaguito is Real Politiks. For sure. You don't give me the results sought? Then you will face undermining and resistance. The alternative is dysfunctional and not acceptable any longer. That also is human nature BJ. Remember the myth (Greek myth) of Pandora's Box. They released every horrible quality of humankind by opening the box but the last to come out of it was HOPE. That wonderful concept that gives people the light at the end of the tunnel.
I am going to tell you a very personal story for me BJ? I had lost hope of being a biological mother. Years and years of no pregnancies at all. And I loved the idea of being a mother. I lost a lot of hope in those tremendously unfair realities. Then when I thought all hope was gone? I got everything I wanted. I kept thinking what it might be that opened up the against all odds reality. It was accepting unfairness and lack of justice and then acting correctly and doing good and struggling IN SPITE of that knowledge about life. Struggle for something better, keep your spiritual center and don't stop the actions to help and to do good in the world. What happens when you do that Relampaguito? The HOPE decides to respond to you. The statistics become irrelevant and the only true thing was being true to an inner compass of love and compassion and respect and caring. It is the most powerful thing for change in the world. USE IT Blackjack21. You are full of lack of hope. All paths are dark for you. The pic you paint with your lack of connection is not a good one. It is not about lack of realism BJ. It has to be what you have not done yet. Open up your heart to others and their needs and do for them. Despite knowing you might lose or might be hurt or die in the struggle. In the end? Transformation of our species is what must happen. And no one transforms without hope for a change. That never happens. And that is objective truth staring you in the face.

Think about why many people dislike Trump. He's boorish. A lot of the Republican party are basically middle or upper middle class and socially more refined than the Democrats. Much of the Republican party is a social club. To really push back on the prison system, you have to fight like Trump did. You're taking away votes and money from the Democrats and they will fight tooth and nail against it.

You reveal your class snob shitty thoughts here BJ. Middle class and upper-middle class is more refined than the Democrats? They are more interested in lack of changing the Republicans because they know that power is in the white and wealthy conservative hands in the USA. The demographic changes are coming and if they allow one vote per person to be the guiding principle in life and in the country and get rid of filibusters and supermajorities versus simple majorities being the standard for democracy in the USA? The ones whom they see as inferior and not their equals will wield power. They prefer burning the system down completely and closing up shops on democracy rather than letting the inferiors and less wealthy dictate government power. The democrats are not much better. So the USA is in a big problem. It will be mired in chaos and lack of morality and ethics and class conscious bullshit until the others who see the hyperindividualism and lack of unified goals and infighting destroy their hold on global hegemony. Because the only way they can save their republic is by uniting and changing. If they fail to do that? Their fate is sealed. Loss of power and loss of profit.


Yes, but that means in practice, you need to make treatment compulsory.

Once a person is mentally ill and deemed a danger to themselves or others it is imperative that they get treated or supervised by medical professionals in the most caring and thoughtful way. Giving up on the mental cases is not an option. So? Where is the will to cope with it? Nowhere? Where is the political and financial will to cope with mental illness? Other societies cope with the mentally ill in a compassionate, thoughtful, and excellently planned manner. It makes everyone a winner in that case because hopefully, you get good treatment. I love that series called THE ALIENIST on Netflix. I saw the entire series. Two seasons. For the 19th-century psychiatrists/psychologists having a mental illness was considered that the person was alienated from their true selves. Because all humans are if self-aware enough? Capable of changing back to their true natures. A very interesting perspective. With more time and scientific work, people have learned a lot about human psychology. But it very much is still a complex art and science form. And it will be a long road to understanding what makes us tick in all ways. But, I can tell you now, again, not even trying to make things better? Is a guaranteed fail BJ. What do you propose to make things better eh?


Do you hear me championing neoliberals or neoconservatives? I've been railing against them for years. Capitalism is not a governing system. It's an economic engine.
I find you highly illogical with this statement BJ. The economic engine does have a lot of influence on the way politics are done. I see the evidence. It is staring at me....with the millions of dollars that politicians have to spend to get to the positions in the first place. Where does the money for their dumbass campaigns come from? That needs to be addressed. Citizens United has poisoned the waters of campaign contribution concepts. MONEY=POLITIICAL INFLUENCE, no money=you are out of luck on your issues. Unless you make a rule to never accept money from corporations and capitalistic super-wealthy organizations who just want you to make laws favoring them over the regular joes and janes voting. That is not logical what you said BJ. Economic engines do influence all the other aspects of society that are not about the economy. It influences just about everything else. Marx called it the superstructure of capital. He was right about that. But you think somehow it is what? Not influencing? Or can be relegated to not being an interfering force? Who is the one not being logical mi Relampaguito eh?


The Democrats are starting to look at the voting issue, because most violent criminals vote Democrat.

Lol. Most violent criminals are from the lower classes too. Because statistically most poor people are a majority in the world. And if you are poor and think the system is against your class or you feel like the system never worked for your problems in life? You might think the Democrats are the answer. I can tell you that in Mexico even among very wealthy and conservative Mexicans with identical points of views as yours BJ? Don't respect or like Trump. Why? He insulted an entire nationality of people with accusations of rapists and so on....you can't do that and expect loyalty from them. The Latinos who vote for him do it out of self-interest, ignorance, or because they too want to be a capitalist nouveau riche asshole with Gold Ts. But for regular old conventional conservatives in Latin America, his lack of manners and insults are seen as a lack of respect for their stations in life. I think a lot of conventional Republicans are similar too. Never Trump types. Your guy lost BJ. You can think it was rigged and fraud or whatever. He left office and did not get a second term. That is reality. What is next? I can tell you that @SpecialOlympian is right he wrote in that Election 2020 thread that the conservatives have lost the culture wars. They have. People in cultural ways are very much liberals. That is true. You think that the majority are the old-fashioned morality and so on of the past? They are not. Most people accept the liberal paradigm as the dominant one BJ. You can disagree with some aspects of it and or all of it. It doesn't change the fact that it is the dominant cultural paradigm of the USA. How are you going to win the culture wars? Proposals? I want to hear it?
Neither is Afghanistan or Iraq or Syria. The US spends copious amounts of money in places around the world and it makes no difference. This is why I laugh at late or Drlee when they talk about using the US military against American civilians. They think that helicopter gun ships are almighty, or that you can use nuclear weapons against an insurrection. It's ludicrous. The Taliban has been fighting its cause for 20 years. We went to Afghanistan to get Al Qaeda, not the Taliban. Yet, we were sold a bunch of nation building rhetoric. What good has it done? Very little.

The West--even the Empires--did quite a lot to spread medicine, vaccines, etc. world wide even as some of them exploited people and resources. One of the effects of that was dramatic overpopulation--an unintended consequence. When infant mortality collapses, populations boom. Then you end up with not enough food for the people, and starvation. The opposite was also true. Before modern medicine, empires spread diseases everywhere and entire civilizations were wiped out.

I have very little faith that the American political establishment can help you in any way. They are too busy helping themselves. In places where they try nation building, etc., the indigenous populations rarely cooperate without at least some of them fighting a resistance. I have very little faith that communism would work for the same reasons, and in addition that communism is less efficient than capitalism. Even anti-colonial Christian missionaries like Albert Schweitzer could do little on his own.


Indeed. That's the history of empire. They don't just go where there is money. They go where there are resources to exploit too.


Yes. It's why "woke" politics is a total fraud.


Yes. Even communists go on exploitation binges. That's why ideology isn't an answer either, because human nature trumps ideological adhesion every time.


China depends on exports. With their genocide against the Uighurs, the violation of separate systems in Hong Kong, sabre rattling against Taiwan, and infecting the entire fucking planet with coronavirus, they are not exactly in the world's good graces, if you haven't noticed. They are also the most rapidly aging society on the planet.


They were Mandarins when the Europeans arrived too.


Why on Earth would you think I would suggest such a thing. I'm the one person on this board that says that egalitarianism has significant limitations.


It is, and in ways that horrify Westerners. My cousin was working as a missionary in Kenya, and my sister went to visit her. Then, my sister went to visit an area where Masai tribes lived, and she was utterly horrified. The men were obviously first class, then came the cattle. Then, came the women and children. My sister panicked. She saw a baby sitting in a pile of cow dung crying and covered with hundreds of flies. That's a culture. It's very different from the West.

That's not unique to Africa. When I read Sean Parnell's "Outlaw Platoon," he described his first real combat experience arriving at a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan before he even met his platoon leaders. They came under attack from 103mm rockets, and a bunch of Afghan civilians were injured. He picked up the most injured child, a little girl, to run her to the mobile hospital, but her mother begged him to drop the little girl and care for her sons first. He ran her to the hospital, but the little girl bled out in his arms. He was similarly struck by how women are completely second or even third class in such places.

Combat stress is very significant. PTSD is a very real thing. However, so is the cultural shock that troops experience. Afghans would kill a woman and a little girl, blame it on the Americans, and try to get money from the Americans as compensation for collateral damage. Astute doctors could see from the entrance and exit wounds that they were from 7.62 x 39 rounds, not 5.56.

Having read a number of stories like that, I saw an anti-American bit of propaganda during the Obama years railing against drone strikes. A teenage boy was looking into the camera feigning pain, while they claimed that a drone strike killed his grandmother. You would probably accept that as true, and I instantly thought it was false.


There are plenty of cultures that are totally incompatible with Western values, including both capitalism and communism. There are plenty of places where Erich Fromm values are mocked and ridiculed. You can try to pretend that's not the case, but there are plenty of horrors around the world.

One of the reasons people come back to the US with PTSD is that nothing prepared them for what they were going to see, and most Americans cannot understand what they've been through or what it's like in other places. They think being "cultured" means vacationing in France.


You'll get no argument from me there. I'm not convinced coronavirus was an accident. I know that the government will lie and pay and threaten the media to lie too.

I'm reading Jennifer Doudna's book, "A Crack in Creation--gene editing and the unthinkable power to control evolution" about her discovery of CRISPR-cas9 and the ability to edit genes with it. We are on the threshold of a major change in humanity.

[Pants-of-dog]

If multiculturalism is responsible for gun violence, why are more multicultural cities just as safe as more homogeneous ones?

[blackjack21]

How is it more complicated?

Most of the prison system is publicly run.

No solutions or proposals you propose.

We need to move past the de-institutionalization movement that started with the Kennedy Administration, and for which Democrats blame exclusively on Ronald Reagan when he merely signed Democrat legislation into law as Governor of California--not as president of the United States.

You are full of lack of hope. All paths are dark for you.

I have no hope in the current establishment. Remember the 2020 election? Who was the only one I didn't want to see in the White House? The person with deep ties to the neocons/neolibs.

Yes, that guy. Who refers to the general, former general, my guy that runs the outfit over there... (the Secretary of Defense who runs the Department of Defense).

Who pushed for de-institutionalization politically? It was the Kennedy Administration (Democrat). They pushed it, because he finally listened to people complaining about the conditions in sanitariums/mental hospitals/funny farms. It was Democrats who did this. In the United States, you would have to have 50 separate pieces of legislation from 50 different state legislatures. FWIW, the United States isn't supposed to operate that way. Each state is supposed to be a nation, and we could have institutionalization in Texas and crazy homeless people running around in California. In practice, the federal government likes to coerce states into having very similar legislation across all 50 states. So the Democrats pushed de-institutionalization rather than improving the conditions in mental hospitals. Then, they blamed it all on Ronald Reagan for signing the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act, as though it was his legislation and as though it somehow impacted the whole country. That's the effect of the evils of the Democrats. It's not only that they did this. They lie to the entire country about who actually did it, because the natural outcome was an explosion of crazy homeless people. Democrats are just bad people all around.

Getting back on point, if you want to understand my sentiments to a tee, read this: FBI whiffs again on Colorado mass shooting suspect
Why isn't that front page news everywhere? Mostly because the media is controlled by the same people who fund the Democrats and those same people are part-and-parcel of the deep state. So the story comes out, but it is more or less buried in the back pages.

Can these things be prevented? Yes. Gun control is not the issue, but that's what the deep state is pushing, because they want absolute control of North America and they are afraid of an armed populace as we saw from an unarmed mob storming the Capitol on 1/6 protesting the stealing of the 2020 election to put a guy with Lewy body dementia into the White House.

The FBI knew about the Tsarnaev brothers, they knew about Omar Mateen (whose father supported Hillary Clinton and was photographed in close proximity to her), they knew about Nidal Hasan, they knew about Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (who also violated gun control laws), as they knew about this shooter too. They knew and they did nothing, because even though these people were a danger to others, institutionalizing them isn't an option in America any more. So we just have to deal with crazy homeless people, drugs everywhere, illegal aliens overrunning the country, a president with Lewy body dementia, and a press that lies with such alacrity that there is almost no point in paying attention to them.

Like the media, the FBI lost interest in Ahmad Al Issa as soon as they saw his name, his religion and the terror state he had been imported from, not to mention his deranged anti-Trump, hate-America diatribes on social media.

Sad, because the Democrats had been so excited when they thought Al Issa was “white,” which of course he is, just not the kind of “white” the Democrat media and FBI had been looking for — deplorable MAGA-hat-wearing rednecks.

This is another shooter story that will get buried, because it doesn't fit the narrative and he was an ardent anti-Trumper.

I find it hard to be optimistic about things with the Washington political establishment. If we're going to improve as a nation, we have to get rid of people like Biden and the people behind him. That was the point of supporting Trump over Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. Now we have a president who gives a press conference where all the questions are known before they are asked and the president reads the answers off of queue cards and still fucks it up and none of the very few conservative outlets are allowed to ask any questions.

We cannot do better than this mass shooting with the people we have running the country in Washington--the permanent unelected bureaucracy, banking oligarchy, etc.

[Tainari88]

Most of the prison system is publicly run.


We need to move past the de-institutionalization movement that started with the Kennedy Administration, and for which Democrats blame exclusively on Ronald Reagan when he merely signed Democrat legislation into law as Governor of California--not as president of the United States.


I have no hope in the current establishment. Remember the 2020 election? Who was the only one I didn't want to see in the White House? The person with deep ties to the neocons/neolibs.

Yes, that guy. Who refers to the general, former general, my guy that runs the outfit over there... (the Secretary of Defense who runs the Department of Defense).

Who pushed for de-institutionalization politically? It was the Kennedy Administration (Democrat). They pushed it, because he finally listened to people complaining about the conditions in sanitariums/mental hospitals/funny farms. It was Democrats who did this. In the United States, you would have to have 50 separate pieces of legislation from 50 different state legislatures. FWIW, the United States isn't supposed to operate that way. Each state is supposed to be a nation, and we could have institutionalization in Texas and crazy homeless people running around in California. In practice, the federal government likes to coerce states into having very similar legislation across all 50 states. So the Democrats pushed de-institutionalization rather than improving the conditions in mental hospitals. Then, they blamed it all on Ronald Reagan for signing the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act, as though it was his legislation and as though it somehow impacted the whole country. That's the effect of the evils of the Democrats. It's not only that they did this. They lie to the entire country about who actually did it, because the natural outcome was an explosion of crazy homeless people. Democrats are just bad people all around.

Getting back on point, if you want to understand my sentiments to a tee, read this: FBI whiffs again on Colorado mass shooting suspect
Why isn't that front page news everywhere? Mostly because the media is controlled by the same people who fund the Democrats and those same people are part-and-parcel of the deep state. So the story comes out, but it is more or less buried in the back pages.

Can these things be prevented? Yes. Gun control is not the issue, but that's what the deep state is pushing, because they want absolute control of North America and they are afraid of an armed populace as we saw from an unarmed mob storming the Capitol on 1/6 protesting the stealing of the 2020 election to put a guy with Lewy body dementia into the White House.

The FBI knew about the Tsarnaev brothers, they knew about Omar Mateen (whose father supported Hillary Clinton and was photographed in close proximity to her), they knew about Nidal Hasan, they knew about Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (who also violated gun control laws), as they knew about this shooter too. They knew and they did nothing, because even though these people were a danger to others, institutionalizing them isn't an option in America any more. So we just have to deal with crazy homeless people, drugs everywhere, illegal aliens overrunning the country, a president with Lewy body dementia, and a press that lies with such alacrity that there is almost no point in paying attention to them.


This is another shooter story that will get buried, because it doesn't fit the narrative and he was an ardent anti-Trumper.

I find it hard to be optimistic about things with the Washington political establishment. If we're going to improve as a nation, we have to get rid of people like Biden and the people behind him. That was the point of supporting Trump over Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. Now we have a president who gives a press conference where all the questions are known before they are asked and the president reads the answers off of queue cards and still fucks it up and none of the very few conservative outlets are allowed to ask any questions.

We cannot do better than this mass shooting with the people we have running the country in Washington--the permanent unelected bureaucracy, banking oligarchy, etc.

Blackjack, you are too fast for me Relampaguito! I got to wash Sunday breakfast dishes and I am on the old little tiny Chromebook and not the better computer and have to resort to bolded text to answer you?

Give me a chance. You fast on the draw man!

Maybe you love the lack of diversity? I don't think you do in real life. You are a lover of various meals not just the same old thing every day, aren't you? You love watching movies that are not the same damn movie every day eh? You like to travel and the change of scenery and street life? You like a change of pace in everything mostly. Why do humans like variety in many things? It is more engaging.

People who come to this region of Mexico love the variation in birds, plants, scenery and everything that is different about where they are from? Why? Again, sameness ain't fun at all BJ.

You have argued about people being better off segregated and separated from each other for a more peaceful and orderly life. But the truth is that people have disputes and violence within their own families. The Hatfields and McCoys were both the same background. People will find a way of quarreling and disagreeing about just about everything. No, what must prevail is knowing what peace requires. It requires advanced humane policies, will, and resources being put to good use and not wasted on violence and destruction.

How does one define being a truly kind, good, intelligent, sharp and wonderful human being that everyone from many cultures goes out and points to as an example to follow? Universal human qualities BJ. That influences and changes society. Can you think of those now and see and identify what human qualities they may have possessed that caused so many people from many different nations, cultures, walks of life to feel that the person exhibited such leadership qualities that transcend language, culture, and socioeconomic backgrounds? I do.

That is what is required.

[Julian658]

That way you can imply blame the victim, racism implied.

The basics never change, you treat people as assets, not liabilities... Until we deal with the horrific damage of racism and Jim Crow (which never completely went away), you will always have your brain dead excuses.

Who in the world is talking about racism? Wow, that one came out of left field.

[Julian658]

If multiculturalism is responsible for gun violence, why are more multicultural cities just as safe as more homogeneous ones?

Stop the straw men POD.

All I said was that to compare a multiethnic nation to a single ethnicity nation was not sound.

[late]

Who in the world is talking about racism? Wow, that one came out of left field.

There are none so blind...