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Title: Going Postal: Is the Arizona Shooting A New Kind of American Murder? ("Going Postal" as modern-day slave rebellions by the hopeless)
Source:
exiledonline.com
URL Source: http://exiledonline.com/is-the-ariz ... a-new-kind-of-american-murder/
Published: Jan 17, 2011
Author: Mark Ames
Post Date: 2011-01-20 16:18:51 by Godwinson
Keywords: None
Views: 13703
Comments: 24
Going Postal / January 10, 2011 Is the Arizona Shooting A New Kind of American Murder? By Mark Ames Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, Arizona, has been variously described as an “assassination” and a “shooting rampage”—but which one is it? This may seem like a semantic quibble, but what occurred in that Safeway supermarket appears to be an entirely new type of American murder: a hybrid of political assassination, of the sort that plagued America in the 1960s and 70s, and a “going postal” rampage massacre, of the kind that first appeared in the mid- to late-1980s, with the rise of Reaganomics inequalities and the deterioration of workplace culture. Continue reading this story at Vanity Fair. Book Description: An eye-opening look at the phenomenon of school and workplace shootings in America, Going Postal explores the rage-murder phenomenon that has plagued — and baffled — America for the last three decades, and offers some provocative answers to the oft-asked question, "Why?" By juxtaposing the historical place of rage in America with the social climate that has existed since the 1980s — when Reaganomics began to widen the gap between executive and average- worker earnings — the author crafts a convincing argument that these schoolyard and office massacres can be seen as modern-day slave rebellions. He presents many fascinating and unexpected cases in detail. Like slave rebellions, these massacres are doomed, gory, sometimes even inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood. Taking up where Bowling for Columbine left off, this book seeks to set these murders in their proper context and thereby reveal their meaning.
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#1. To: Godwinson (#0)
How can it be "entirely new" if it "plagued America in the 1960s and 70s"?
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2008/01/04/school-mall-and-workplace-shootings-why-so- many-no-why-so-few/ The second in our “Cult of Crime” series (Part 1: Foxy Knoxy and the case of the honorary Missing White Woman) Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion by Mark Ames Soft Skull Press, 2005 360 pages, $15.95 In April 2007, when a Virginia Tech student killed 32, it was one of the worst ever, to coin a phrase, “social shootings.” Earlier, in February, five were killed in a Salt Lake mall and then, in December, nine in an Omaha mall. Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion by Mark Ames was published by Soft Skull Press back in 2005. But the continued popularity of school, mall, and workplace shootings as a practical solution for troubled souls obligates us to revisit this essential work. When social shootings first burst upon the scene, they seared the national psyche like a wildfire. Though since overshadowed by 9/11, Iraq, and Katrina, the regularity with which they flare up keeps them from slipping off our radar. In 1986 postal employee Patrick Sherrill couldn’t have imagined the trend he sparked when he opened fire on the Edmond, Oklahoma post office. “Going postal” soon spread to the workplace at large. Few are aware of the numbers, but from 1998 to 2003 there were 164 shootings resulting in 290 dead and 161 wounded. In 2003 alone, 45 workplace massacres left 69 dead and 46 wounded. The frequency of school shootings is just as mind-numbing. For example, bet you didn’t know that two weeks before Virginia Tech, two were killed at the University of Washington, Seattle. Afterwards, while the bodies are autopsied, the culture audits itself. In the case of school shootings, perennial culprits like the broken family, gun availability, and bipolar disorder inevitably boil down to, “the parents,” as in “I blame the…” or “Where are the…” Never mind that, according to Ames, love for their parents is expressed in the suicide notes of Klebold and Harris (who the adolescent Internet has canonized as Saints Dylan and Eric of the Columbine order). Ames is a founder and the editor of the eXile, a Russian alternative weekly for the English-speaking that’s so wild and wooly it forces us to confront the painful truth that there may now be more freedom of the press in Russia than in the US. Ames, pugnacious by nature (at least in his writing) is battle-tested by a decade in post-perestroika Moscow. He’s thus equipped to handle the accusation for which a superficial reading of Going Postal leaves him wide open — that he’s justifying the killings. “Rather than looking outside of the office world for an explanation,” Ames writes of workplace shootings, “why not consider the changes within America’s corporate culture itself?” Because it results in the death of innocents, a massacre by a heretofore unknown entity obscures what causes it. Difficulty identifying exactly who was targeted masks the motive. But Ames chronicles case after case of a worker who’s singled out for scut work and judged by separate standards. Wilting under the pressure, he invites further abuse, before ultimately erupting in a random shooting. Except, Ames maintains, there’s nothing random about it. Besides hunting down a hated supervisor or executive, the killer also mows down co-workers. Why? Because he seeks to destroy the company as an entity. This is the stuff of which uprisings are made. In fact, Ames devotes part two of Going Postal to building the case that today’s workplace shootings are akin to slave rebellions. At the time, outbreaks like Nat Turner’s were viewed as inchoate and devoid of political context by a public blissfully unaware that the victims of slavery might have a problem with the institution. But institutions, like the state whose instrument they are, have a way of steamrolling the little guy. In fact, good old American bullying is at the heart of Going Postal. But, we remonstrate, hasn’t bullying in the workplace and schools become a thing of the past since civil rights laws and an ambient political correctness? On the contrary, according to Ames. Besides labeling the killings uprisings, he has the audacity to invoke slavery to describe the working environment that’s evolved since the Reagan years. “Reagan’s legacy to America and modern man is not the victory in the Cold War, where he simply got lucky.” (Remember Ames has an inside view of Russia.) Instead it’s “one of the most shocking wealth transfers in the history of the world…” “Historians,” he conjectures, “may look back at this time and wonder why there weren’t more murders and rebellions.” Regarding school shootings, he reminds us of what many forget: When Reagan was running for president in 1980, he pledged to abolish the federal Department of Education. But by exactly what mechanism does school carnage become a toxic byproduct of the economy? Ames explains. While, for example, the “Top 2083; universities remain the same in number, the entrance bar is constantly raised because of an ever-expanding pool of applicants. Furthermore, “The kids are stressed out not only by their own pressure at school, but by the stress their parents endure in order to earn enough money to live in [a prestigious] school district….Everyone is terrified of not ‘making it’ in a country where the safety net has been torn to shreds.” But it’s not enough for Ames to justify the shootings to a certain extent and comparing the millennial work environment to slavery. He gives the reader even more bang for his or her buck. Ames concludes Going Postal by going out on a limb and tracing the killings back to one infamous moment in American history. The Reagan years and the rocketing stock market of the nineties convinced most Americans they were rich people waiting to happen. They became too proud, Ames says, to identify themselves as the working people they remained in the interim. But those who are old enough to remember Reagan’s first term can’t help but feel the sting of Ames’s coup de grace at some level. “When Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981,” he asserts, “he told America he was literally willing to kill us all [in plane crashes, presumably] if we didn’t give in to his wealth-transfer plan….The air controller’s union broke — and so did a whole way of life.” Ames renders the shooting incidents with the skill of a crime novelist. But while many in the competitive world of crime writing escalate the violence from one death to serial murders, Ames, as dictated by his subject, has no choice but to top them with serial massacres. It’s no reflection on the author, but the horror wears you down. After a while, it begins to seem like there are as many bullets flying around the country as there are cockroaches crawling around. At times, Ames works too hard to convince us of his thesis, when the facts speak for themselves. But it’s only in the service of giving voice to a generation of workers left to twist in the wind without unions, their children buffeted by the harsh realities of the No Child Left Behind Act. Virginia Tech generated as much hand-wringing as any shooting. And it resulted in the passage of an important gun-control act, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Erecting obstacles to gun ownership is a no-brainer. Closing gaps in mental health care as well as remedying misinterpretations of privacy laws (like those that left the Virginia Tech killer’s deteriorating condition untreated) are steps in the right direction, too. But it’s hard not to agree with Ames that failing to address the structural issues of, no, not society — but the economy — will continue to impose intolerable strains on Americans. As long as the gap between the rich and the rest of us continues to widen, social shootings will remain the meltdown of choice for many. Just like suicide bombings in the Middle East.
I've always said self government will not work. 80 to 90 percent of people are too stupid to govern themselves. Only We the Enlightened few have the qualifications to operate the levers of government. The problem with the shooter in Arizona is that in America as it now stands, he had no function. In the Utopia to come, he (and others like him) will make the perfect Palace Guards.
Reagan destroyed the public mental health system in America and we don't have socialized medical care for men like the Arizona shooter brings us to this level of existence in America.
Hmmm. NIETHER. He was a drugged-out punk, who had an infatuation with the Congresswoman, exhibited a variety of psychological issues is (technically speaking) crazy as a shit-bug. I think NOT. If this is the typical quality of your posts and articles, please say so now, so I can bozo you, and have done with you.
ME: Thanks for admitting that you ARE trying to spin this (AZ shooting, and terrorism) onto Palin, and conservatives in general. "There will be no more money when the U.S. dollar has no value, until that time we can keep printing more." -- go65, resident "economist" --
If only Reagan did not shut down the public mental health system maybe this sick man would have found treatment.....
Another victim of liberal policies that keep crazy people on the streets
The law that Reagan signed was the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS), passed by the legislature & signed into law in 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. The idea was to "stem entry into the state hospital by encouraging the community system to accept more patients, hopefully improving quality of care while allowing state expense to be alleviated by the newly available federal funds." It also was designed to protect the rights of mental patients. It was considered a landmark of its time--a change in the attitude toward mental illness and its treatment. The law restricted involuntary commitment, among other things. It allows people to refuse treatment for mental illness, unless they are clearly a danger to someone else or themselves. It facilitated release of many patients---supposedly to go to community mental health treatment programs. Reagan's role, besides signing the bill, was using it as a reason to cut his budget. What Reagan did was, at the same time the bill was passed, to reduce the budget for state mental hospitals. His budget bill "abolished 1700 hospital staff positions and closed several of the state-operated aftercare facilities. Reagan promised to eliminate even more hospitals if the patient population continued to decline. Year-end population counts for the state hospitals had been declining by approximately 2000 people per year since 1960." This law presumed that the people released from hospitals or not committed at all would be funneled in community treatment as provided by the Short Doyle Act of 1957. It was "was designed to organize and finance community mental health services for persons with mental illness through locally administered and locally controlled community health programs." It also presumed that the mentally ill would voluntarily accept treatment if it were made available to them on a community basis. However, because of the restrictions on involuntary commitment, seriously mentally ill people who would not consent to treatment "who clearly needed treatment but did not fit the new criteria or who recycled through short term stays -- became a community dilemma. For them, there was nowhere to go." Once released, they would fail to take meds or get counseling and went right back to being seriously ill. Also, unfortunately, at the time LPS was implemented, funding for community systems either declined or was not beefed up. Many counties did not have adequate community mental health services in place and were unable to fund them. Federal funds for community mental health programs, which LPS assumed would pick up the slack, began drying up in the early 1980s, due to budget cutbacks in general. The Feds shifted funding responsibility to the states. Sources: http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~cmhsr/history.html Reform of the Lanterman, Petris, Short Act
The Left put the loonytoons out on the street long before Ronald Reagan was POTUS.
Ronald Reagan certainly was an anomoly. While we couldn't prevent his rise to power, we did effectively neutralize him by surrounding him with our people in advisory positions. George H. W. Bush, for instance. And Mr. Bush was able to put things back on track. All presidents since WWII (Reagan excepted) have been Enlightened. The Perfect Society gets closer each day. The larger point is that young men like the Arizona shooter will - in the Perfect Society to come - have a place. They will occupy positions in the Army - in the Palace Guard - in the police forces. Everyone will have a place in the Perfect Society. No one's talents will go to waste.
Ya,.....but then Lavrentiy Beria 's who you party with put a bullet in your head or poison you. Good luck with the revolution.
Do you really think your time is best spent being a parody poster? Are you hesitant to post your own thoughts and opinions? Parody posters are an insult to the intelligence of every other poster on a forum. You will be filtered after this post, so any reply will be as meaningless as your previous posts.
Karl is a parody poster? Fooled me, I thought he was just an average Democrat.
I've posted on and lurked here for a couple of years, and I can say without equivocation that posting one's own thoughts and opinions here is a waste of time. The level of discussion here is about the same as one would get at a typical union hall, MSNBC restroom, or Klan meeting. There are a couple of intelligent posters - sneakypete and jwpegler come to mind - but the majority are mind numbed partisans who wouldn't know an original thought if it bit them on the ass.
______________________________________________________________________________ Sneakypete? The guy was just made fun of at peoples-forum because every one of his posts used insults to the person he was replying to.
Your use of the "Peep-pulls (long live the revolution,comrades!) Forum" as the Gold Standard of intelligent says more about you than any insult I could throw your way. BTW,stupid SHOULD be insulted,and ANYBODY who is an adult and claims to be a socialist is too fucking stupid to be allowed to cross the streets by themselves. Which is why they are socialists. They want a government employee make the decision for them about when it's safe to cross,and then hold their hands as the make the move.
"I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago." (Sarah Palin,Dec 2009) ************************************ DID Palin say or write these things or not? (Me) I don't know or F ing care. (Mad Dog posted on 2009-12-26 16:36:33 ET,post # 105 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5510&Disp=114#C114)
He would have had more success if he had gotten government out of health care completely so prices could fall and more people could afford it.
I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.-Andrew Jackson
So the stupidest people you ever met were in the socialist military. No free thinkers in that outfight, eh pete? In any case, you just showed you can't respond with facts or civility which is why I found Ignore Amos' comments funny. By the way, Germany, which I assume you consider socialist is still an export driven economy. America is not. Who is stupider?
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
If only Reagan did not shut down the public mental health system maybe this sick man would have found treatment..... He would have had more success if he had gotten government out of health care completely so prices could fall and more people could afford it. Ever since the Reagan revolution, health care in private business hands has gone up. In Europe, the cost of govt run health care is less expensive with better results.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
No,the stupidest people I ever knew where the Dim politicians that misused the military and gave conflicting orders. No free thinkers in that outfight, eh pete? Damn few once you get away from SF. The conventional military does not and never has tolerated free speakers and original thinkers. In any case, you just showed you can't respond with facts or civility I have a low toleration for fools,and even less patience with socialists that keep insisting they are for freedom and against communism. I have more respect for proclaimed communists. At least they know who they are and aren't ashamed of it.
"I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago." (Sarah Palin,Dec 2009) ************************************ DID Palin say or write these things or not? (Me) I don't know or F ing care. (Mad Dog posted on 2009-12-26 16:36:33 ET,post # 105 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5510&Disp=114#C114)
Yeah,which is why people in Europe who have the money come to the US for surgery.
"I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago." (Sarah Palin,Dec 2009) ************************************ DID Palin say or write these things or not? (Me) I don't know or F ing care. (Mad Dog posted on 2009-12-26 16:36:33 ET,post # 105 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5510&Disp=114#C114)
You swallow GOP propaganda too easily: "Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
Yeah,that must be it. Which one of us believes in the righteousness of the collective,comrade?
"I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago." (Sarah Palin,Dec 2009) ************************************ DID Palin say or write these things or not? (Me) I don't know or F ing care. (Mad Dog posted on 2009-12-26 16:36:33 ET,post # 105 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5510&Disp=114#C114)
E pluribus unum Latin for "Out of many, one",
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
an entirely new type of American murder: a hybrid of political assassination, of the sort that plagued America in the 1960s and 70s
#2. To: Happy Quanzaa (#1)
(Edited)
How can it be "entirely new" if it "plagued America in the 1960s and 70s"?
#3. To: Godwinson (#0)
#4. To: Karl Marx (#3)
(Edited)
#5. To: Godwinson (#0)
Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, Arizona, has been variously described as an “assassination” and a “shooting rampage”—but which one is it?
Continue reading this story at Vanity Fair.
Brian S(ocialist): I have never hidden that fact...
#6. To: Capitalist Eric (#5)
(Edited)
#7. To: Godwinson (#6)
#8. To: Happy Quanzaa (#7)
#9. To: Godwinson (#8)
#10. To: Godwinson (#4)
Reagan
#11. To: Karl Marx (#3)
I've always said self government will not work. 80 to 90 percent of people are too stupid to govern themselves. Only We the Enlightened few have the qualifications to operate the levers of government.
#12. To: Karl Marx (#10)
#13. To: We The People, Karl Marx (#12)
Do you really think your time is best spent being a parody poster?
#14. To: We The People, sneakypete, jwpegler, Karl Marx (#12)
Do you really think your time is best spent being a parody poster? Are you hesitant to post your own thoughts and opinions?
"We've got a governor in Rod Blagojevich who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois"
--Barack H. Obama, August 2006
#15. To: Ignore Amos, We The People, sneakypete, jwpegler, Karl Marx (#14)
There are a couple of intelligent posters - sneakypete and jwpegler come to mind -
#16. To: Godwinson (#15)
Sneakypete? The guy was just made fun of at peoples-forum because every one of his posts used insults to the person he was replying to.
#17. To: Godwinson (#6)
If only Reagan did not shut down the public mental health system maybe this sick man would have found treatment.....
#18. To: sneakypete, Ignore Amos, (#16)
They want a government employee make the decision for them about when it's safe to cross,and then hold their hands as the make the move.
#19. To: Andrew Jackson (#17)
#20. To: Godwinson (#18)
So the stupidest people you ever met were in the socialist military.
#21. To: Godwinson (#19)
In Europe, the cost of govt run health care is less expensive with better results.
#22. To: sneakypete (#21)
Yeah,which is why people in Europe who have the money come to the US for surgery.
#23. To: Godwinson (#22)
(Edited)
You swallow GOP propaganda too easily:
#24. To: sneakypete (#23)
Which one of us believes in the righteousness of the collective,comrade?
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