Thursday, January 20, 2011
Why the Tucson murders?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The senseless murders in Tucson, AZ, by a demented 22-year old psychopath immediately raise the thought of possible political connections. In reality, as stated by President Obama, the national tragedy elevates this event far above a political murder. Actually, it has been the speeded-up life of the past decades that has confused the values of disaffected adolescents of all ages.
Dissident youths and latent adolescents have been the subjects of parental fears since Adam and Eve. In Britain, adolescent idealists like George Gordon Byron went to fight for Greek insurgents, against Turks, and Richard Burton put on native garb to explore Africa, and the younger scions of good families, deprived of inheritance by primogeniture laws, went into military and colonial service to found an Empire. In the US some of the dissatisfied adolescents, young or older, went West, or joined the Army and fought Indians, or built railroads.
In our late XX-early XXI century era, the adolescents of all ages have been exposed to an incredibly large variety of social influences that might account for both antisocial and socially benevolent varieties of juvenile revolts. Alas, some of them go beyond high school shootings and entail monstrous senseless murders, as seen in recent Arizona.
,
So, why are the adolescent revolts different in the current generations? To begin, there was the resurgence of murder as a political weapon, possibly noted from WWII murder squads, various forms of genocide and Holocaust, WWII and Cold War assassinations (WWI deaths were from largely trench warfare). Our generations have seen the assassinations of President J. F. Kennedy in 1963, his brother and Presidential candidate Robert in June, 1968, and Martin Luther King two months earlier. Nation of Islam’s leader Malcolm X was also assassinated, in 1965. We can also add the shooting of John Lennon (1980) and attempts on Presidents Reagan and Ford.
As part of the Civil Rights struggle and protest against Vietnam, Black Panthers of late 1968 engaged in bombings, and armed militias of patriots prepared for an internal revolt. The sexual revolution of the 1960s contributed to the generational struggles. Student riots of 1969 were less bloody, while the Weathermen, a heavily Marxist outgrowth of the SDS, advocated a revolution and a proletarian government. Three of its founders blew themselves up while making bombs for a Fort Dix event. “The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder was mere incompetence, “per expert Harvey Klehr. Some survivors have, post incarceration, seemingly accepted mainstream lives.
A distraction from the social heaving was the November 1978 Jonestown suicide in Guiana, of 913 followers of sectarian Christian prophet Jim Jones, by being forced to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
Fast forward to Waco, TX, February 1993, where the Feds tried to arrest David Koresh, prophet of the Branch Darvidian sect, for kidnapping young women, and the resulting firefight killed 78 suicidal sect members and four agents. Two years later in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, a militia member, blew up a federal building, killing 168 clerks and injuring hundreds, in an anti-government action, to revenge for Waco.
If anything, the latter three massacres were the preludes for Arizona 2011. But let’s go on. Closer to us, there ate the annual Anarchist anti-G8/G20 convergences, and you can view the flames bursting through a bank window from the June 2010 Toronto conference on MyTube. The demonstration was announced on the Community Solidarity Network as an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, colonist, racist, patriarchy, ableist and queer-positive event. Very affirmative, for every flavor of discontent.
Departing from the blood and bone events, the fictional conflict between the real and mythical also feeds discontent. The idealistic Harry Potter series are just a lure to realistic mind-boggling wizards and witches narratives. We are no longer in Kansas with Dorothy, and there is no sweet Jeannie or six-foot rabbit named Harvey; today there are mean and scary doings in the apparitions world. We now have avatars wandering around us, and popular movies like Inception. The title has given new meaning to the word, and it now means, for many, the planting of ideas through dreams; perhaps, by government, in Tucson, AZ?
Lines of private property and public goods also have become confused; starting with such free downloads as Napster. You can also lie with impunity, and use an assumed name, in posting on Internet, under the First Amendment; stealing private correspondence, whether government, commercial or individual, is thought to be protected, as in WikiLeaks. The latter is protected by Anonymous, an organization of hackers who use Operation Payback a Denial of Service attack on Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, to revenge for WikiLeaks having been denied a base by these organizations.
Confusion between entitlement and privilege is not unusual in the college environment, in 1976 CUNY students rioted after free tuition was ended, for budget reasons. Now, New Yorkers have matured; as tuition is raised, concerned students file court papers.
One more culprit: the social network environment, an artificial community providing acceptance and approval for whatever harebrained issues an author may develop, helps the maniacal among us in finding a base. Starting with Friendster and MySpace in the early 2000s, then MyTube and eventually Facebook and Twitter, the users find that no strange thoughts are rejected.
To summarize, we have confounded our people’s minds with bloody wars, social revolts, student riots, belligerent religious sects and militia, confusion of property vs. public rights, technology that mixes real and fictional resources and artificial gossip communities. Our social contract is fuzzed over; what do we really believe in?
In perspective, we are all right. There are much, much worse parts of the world, ideologically and physically. A blow to the head like the Tucson murders should clear the minds wonderfully.
The senseless murders in Tucson, AZ, by a demented 22-year old psychopath immediately raise the thought of possible political connections. In reality, as stated by President Obama, the national tragedy elevates this event far above a political murder. Actually, it has been the speeded-up life of the past decades that has confused the values of disaffected adolescents of all ages.
Dissident youths and latent adolescents have been the subjects of parental fears since Adam and Eve. In Britain, adolescent idealists like George Gordon Byron went to fight for Greek insurgents, against Turks, and Richard Burton put on native garb to explore Africa, and the younger scions of good families, deprived of inheritance by primogeniture laws, went into military and colonial service to found an Empire. In the US some of the dissatisfied adolescents, young or older, went West, or joined the Army and fought Indians, or built railroads.
In our late XX-early XXI century era, the adolescents of all ages have been exposed to an incredibly large variety of social influences that might account for both antisocial and socially benevolent varieties of juvenile revolts. Alas, some of them go beyond high school shootings and entail monstrous senseless murders, as seen in recent Arizona.
,
So, why are the adolescent revolts different in the current generations? To begin, there was the resurgence of murder as a political weapon, possibly noted from WWII murder squads, various forms of genocide and Holocaust, WWII and Cold War assassinations (WWI deaths were from largely trench warfare). Our generations have seen the assassinations of President J. F. Kennedy in 1963, his brother and Presidential candidate Robert in June, 1968, and Martin Luther King two months earlier. Nation of Islam’s leader Malcolm X was also assassinated, in 1965. We can also add the shooting of John Lennon (1980) and attempts on Presidents Reagan and Ford.
As part of the Civil Rights struggle and protest against Vietnam, Black Panthers of late 1968 engaged in bombings, and armed militias of patriots prepared for an internal revolt. The sexual revolution of the 1960s contributed to the generational struggles. Student riots of 1969 were less bloody, while the Weathermen, a heavily Marxist outgrowth of the SDS, advocated a revolution and a proletarian government. Three of its founders blew themselves up while making bombs for a Fort Dix event. “The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder was mere incompetence, “per expert Harvey Klehr. Some survivors have, post incarceration, seemingly accepted mainstream lives.
A distraction from the social heaving was the November 1978 Jonestown suicide in Guiana, of 913 followers of sectarian Christian prophet Jim Jones, by being forced to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.
Fast forward to Waco, TX, February 1993, where the Feds tried to arrest David Koresh, prophet of the Branch Darvidian sect, for kidnapping young women, and the resulting firefight killed 78 suicidal sect members and four agents. Two years later in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh, a militia member, blew up a federal building, killing 168 clerks and injuring hundreds, in an anti-government action, to revenge for Waco.
If anything, the latter three massacres were the preludes for Arizona 2011. But let’s go on. Closer to us, there ate the annual Anarchist anti-G8/G20 convergences, and you can view the flames bursting through a bank window from the June 2010 Toronto conference on MyTube. The demonstration was announced on the Community Solidarity Network as an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, colonist, racist, patriarchy, ableist and queer-positive event. Very affirmative, for every flavor of discontent.
Departing from the blood and bone events, the fictional conflict between the real and mythical also feeds discontent. The idealistic Harry Potter series are just a lure to realistic mind-boggling wizards and witches narratives. We are no longer in Kansas with Dorothy, and there is no sweet Jeannie or six-foot rabbit named Harvey; today there are mean and scary doings in the apparitions world. We now have avatars wandering around us, and popular movies like Inception. The title has given new meaning to the word, and it now means, for many, the planting of ideas through dreams; perhaps, by government, in Tucson, AZ?
Lines of private property and public goods also have become confused; starting with such free downloads as Napster. You can also lie with impunity, and use an assumed name, in posting on Internet, under the First Amendment; stealing private correspondence, whether government, commercial or individual, is thought to be protected, as in WikiLeaks. The latter is protected by Anonymous, an organization of hackers who use Operation Payback a Denial of Service attack on Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, to revenge for WikiLeaks having been denied a base by these organizations.
Confusion between entitlement and privilege is not unusual in the college environment, in 1976 CUNY students rioted after free tuition was ended, for budget reasons. Now, New Yorkers have matured; as tuition is raised, concerned students file court papers.
One more culprit: the social network environment, an artificial community providing acceptance and approval for whatever harebrained issues an author may develop, helps the maniacal among us in finding a base. Starting with Friendster and MySpace in the early 2000s, then MyTube and eventually Facebook and Twitter, the users find that no strange thoughts are rejected.
To summarize, we have confounded our people’s minds with bloody wars, social revolts, student riots, belligerent religious sects and militia, confusion of property vs. public rights, technology that mixes real and fictional resources and artificial gossip communities. Our social contract is fuzzed over; what do we really believe in?
In perspective, we are all right. There are much, much worse parts of the world, ideologically and physically. A blow to the head like the Tucson murders should clear the minds wonderfully.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 8:56 AM 
