The problem is not Mental illness! In the best-case gun control is a stupid attempt to address a symptom of the breakdown of society. The ills of society that we are seeing is due to that very society and addressing the symptoms cannot fix the ills. It is society that has gone amuck. It is society that needs fixing.
Look back 50+ years. Guns could be purchase if you had the money. You could live in a shack if that is what you could afford. There were definite expected roles for men and different expected roles for women. Boys were given a gun on becoming of age usually in their early teens. There were jobs even for people on the lower half of the IQ curve. A single wage earner was sufficient to raise a family though it was preferable not to be a hired hand.
So today, it is women and POC that get the jobs and the promotions. What is a young man to think when society is saying that he has no role? That he is not wanted? Yet, he can look at what is being achieved and be alarmed.
Does recognizing reality make him mental ill?
Chet
June 12, 2022
Comment to Insightful observation
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
“it is women and POC that get the jobs and the promotions”
Welcome to the 21st century fear of the American white male. Those damn women and brown people are demanding equality, and now you have to compete on a more level playing field (still not entirely level, but more) rather than rely on historical hegemony. Sure, you’re ignoring the glass ceiling that continues to exist for women, and brown people are still vastly underrepresented in positions of power relative to their population, but sure, be afraid. Heaven forbid another black guy become president.
“society is saying that he has no role” Society isn’t saying that. Sure, you can point to a few radical leftists saying that, but then you’re just cherry picking quotes to support an unsupportable argument. “Western society” is still run by old white dudes, and that’s not changing in a dramatic way any time soon.
“he can look at what is being achieved and be alarmed.” Only people who want to maintain white male power are alarmed. Everybody else is glad to see women and POC get treated with more respect.
Hey Johnny! Nice pile you just dropped there. Let me rub your nose in it.
I was a cement mason, carpenter, and a rod-buster for 40 years. I worked everything from private sidewalks to monster crushers. My last big job was on a 1.5 billion dollar copper mine. My end of it as gen. foreman over 40 employees controlling $125 million in day to day direct work. From pouring concrete myself. To safety. And all the paperwork.
Know how many POC’s and woman I seen on those jobs in 40+ years? I can count them on my hands and toes.
Discrimination? Hardly, If you were a three-eyed purple midget that had even a desire to learn the work. You got hired, taught, and paid the same as everyone else.
To say nothing of the hundreds of Mexicans I worked side by side with? That I showed the old tricks of the trade to.
Or to say nothing of the Native America ironworkers program? And the Mohawks that did highrise work all over the world, to rodbusters placing/tying reinforcement bar the size of your wrist.
Unfair maybe? Au contraire. Construction is a team sport. A woman that can’t tie bar can always learn to do instrumentation. Making double what I would.
To say nothing of crane and equipment operation and 100’s of other jobs that pay very well. Regardless of race, color, or gender or national origin. And it been that way all my life.
You work in computers? The highest paid people on earth. See Gates or Steve Jobs giving pay and favors to just white people?
If you think so you be lying to yourself, and expecting us to believe you.
Truth is, if you can do the work, you get paid for it.
Hell, I learned much of my work skills from a wetback.(his term for himself, actually he called himself a scratch-back. Cause he said he crawled under the wire.) And started his own company.
America is and was a merit-based country. With more rags to riches stories than the rest of the world combined.
The problem is flat out laziness. And only lazy f–k’in morons think it should be otherwise.
The real problem is POC’s think J-Z is better than Thomas Sowell. Woman Bette Midler, than Marie Curie.
And everyone else that politics can solve problems. Their f–k’in lying. Every one of them.
Chet is absolutely right about everything he said.
You need to grow up, man up, and start looking at reality for what it is.
America and the world needs people like you with great intelligence to build a better world. Not get dragged down by slimeball, lizard brains skinsuits. I got to believe your better than that. I know you can be.
Quit puppeting the government crap, son. The girls don’t like shit-breath. They will think your gay.
Hmm. Lot to unpack there.
“Know how many POC’s and woman I seen on those jobs in 40+ years? I can count them on my hands and toes.”
First, it sounds like you use the term POC to just mean black people, yes? You mention “hundreds of Mexicans,” so I’m guessing anyone who isn’t black doesn’t fall under your POC label? Just trying to understand terminology here.
Wrt how many black masons you’ve worked with: If you’re in the PNW, that’s probably a function of where you live. I can’t say with authority, but I’m guessing that in the south there are lots of black masons, because there are a lot of black people. In the northwest, not so many, because we have a small black population to draw from. I’m guessing in Africa all the masons are black, and in Norway they’re probably all white. Gotta control for the population variable before you can make assertions about causation.
You seem to be saying, further down, that you haven’t seen black masons come into the trade because they’re lazy, and think more highly of J-Z than of Thomas Sowell. That’s the opposite of my experience: most of the black people I’ve worked with tend to actually work harder than their white counterparts because they know they’re playing against racial bias. But there you go: personal experience isn’t really an argument.
As for puppeting government rhetoric, I don’t see where talking about the glass ceiling is “government rhetoric.” I’ve seen it myself, where clearly more qualified women have been passed up in favor of men who were dumber than a sack of hammers. Talking about POC being underrepresented in positions of power relative to the size of their population, that’s just a question of statistics, not rhetoric.
And old white dudes running the world? I’ve this blog allowed it I’d paste in pictures of Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden….
What, you thinking Kamala Harris and Jean-Peirre are going to do so much better?. Or that we would rather have a red-hair Irish communist like Jen Psaki lying to us???
This whole color crap, male/female BS you’ve all be whining about is just lazy communist propoganda.
The only thing about Trump was 2.19 a gallon. You can hang him tomorrow if you like.
So, ya, I’ll take him over Obama anyday.
Results are what we live our life’s by.
And communist division threw race/gender is giving very bad results.
Sorry about getting my reply post in the wrong comment. Enjoy.
John, check your email. I shared something I don’t currently want in the public view.
Bottom line: I think Chet may have overstated things a bit, but I’m strongly inclined to side with him rather than you.
Does John wish to comment on the current disparity in bachelor degrees awarded in the US? Asking for a young woman of Latin heritage with a STEM degree who is finding it difficult to date any young men near her age who posses a bachelors degree in a subject that will allow them to earn as much as her…
I don’t know why fewer men are getting degrees, but the anti-intellectual rhetoric coming out of Fox and the Republican Party certainly doesn’t help. Maybe hang out with more liberals?
John, reverting back to the smelly old stereotype that Republicans are all dumb cousin-humping rednecks is not an effective way to persuade anyone.
There are in fact plenty of intellectuals in both parties. In my field (computer engineering) I work with lots of conservative gun owners; I also work with plenty of liberals. And I work with a lot of immigrants whose politics are more of a mystery.
I said nothing about “all Republicans.” I know lots of very intelligent Republicans. What I said, if you go back and look, is that Fox and the Republican party are putting out a lot of anti-intellectual rhetoric – the evidence for which assertion is easily gathered simply by turning on the TV and turning to the Fox “news” channel. Much of the class warfare talk from Fox centers on the idea that the urban intelligentsia are trying to oppress the less educated but nevertheless more honorable rural masses. I’m not sure they can go 20 minutes without some proclamation to that effect.
And truth be told, I’ve been waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for the smart Republicans to put up some resistance to Trump (who is the epitome of anti-intellectual). I miss the Republican party that supported intellectuals like William F. Buckley rather than populist hacks like Trump.
Been all over the US. But mostly west of the Rockies. Lake Cushman? Renton close enough to blacks for you? It ain’t demographics.
My son in law is black. Went and got a electricians degree up out of Blain WA. Got in the union. Kicked ass. Moved to the DC. area.( Recession proof.) And is still kicking ass 25 years later.
My friend Skip moved to the rogue valley in 72. (Just three years after the BS sign about, be out of after dark Ni–ger. Was supposedly taken down.)
6’5” 280lbs. of muscle. black as night. And 20 years later owned his own crane business. He was the best crane operator in the valley.
If you had a big pick. You called Skip.
Cousin Lou. (Black guy that I worked with in AZ. that had my family’s last name.)
When my brother mention the last name thing to him at lunch. With a loud exclamation you heard, F–K! I always knew there was a cracker in the wood pile somewhere!
Ya, pure f–ck’in laziness. When I didn’t have work. I loaded my truck and tools and went and found it.
Just like millions of other people all over the world.
And you are forgetting were even talking because a black man on the Supreme court used his brains to read plain english, and refused to be moved from what he knew to be true???
I would follow that guy to hell.
How did he get there?
You want Kamala Harris operating on your daughter’s cancer? Because she’s black? And your not a racist?
(AA is a slap in the face to every hard working person that ever walked. Especially blacks.)
Or do you want the most intelligent/skilled doctor you can find? No one cares about that other crap.
Only lazy people.
You one of them?
Glad I’m short on this place. Cause nobody wants to live with you’all are building.
And i don’t like Trump either. Why don’t you piss on Biden and CNN for a while?
Throughout my life, fairness in jobs was defined in terms of equal opportunity. When city or county officials only select 3 ‘qualified’ candidates for chief of police, a new regional transportation director, or appoint a new sheriff and they are all black and mostly women that selection is NOT based on equal opportunity. And those are not the only examples here in the Seattle area and across the country over the last few months. Words matter but so does behavior.
Let’s see: Teach young boys that their natural instincts are “toxic”. That the things they instinctively and biologically are inclined toward: competitiveness, aggression, assertiveness, confidence – are bad qualities that must be suppressed and everything that makes them “them” also makes them bad.
Administer mood altering drugs to the ones that resist this paradigm.
Then tell white kids that they are inherently racist. That the only reason they can succeed in the world is because they are privileged by the color of their skin. That they should live in shame and constantly be on guard for any potentially harmful thing they may say or do, like, for instance, continue to breathe.
Simultaneously tell the black kids that it is impossible for them to succeed. That the entire societal structure is designed to keep them down and that no matter what they do, they’re destined for failure and oppression.
Then tell all of them that their great grandparents and grandparents have destroyed the earth with their evil industrialization and modernization of the world. That all the modern conveniences that we can’t (and they don’t want to) live without are dooming us. That we’ve passed the tipping point (and have several times) and there’s no saving it now…by the time they’re old enough to have grandkids the world will be a desolate wasteland.
I don’t wonder how an 18 year old kid could be so despondent and hopeless as to take out his rage on the world in such a fashion…I wonder how we’ve been so lucky that more haven’t done it or something similar. And from what I can see, nothing’s going to make it better any time soon. I don’t expect incidents like this to stop occurring.