Chaos and the Anti-Thread

[Emil El Zapato]

This guy is very compassionate, knowledgeable, 'experienced' and ostensibly not a Behaviorist (an avowed Atheist, I thought I heard him say) but he still 'shades' if not confuses the nature of 'motivation' regarding the intersection of natural endowment, character, and practical reality. It was interesting to 'hear' where his true sympathies lie. I think he is a good caring person.

He likes Hilary Clinton!?!? Say What!!!!!! None of us are perfect, not even a work obsessed doctor with an addictive personality... We are human after all.

[Wind]

Any thoughts on this piece? My question is: Why people still can't see the forest for the trees?

Tribalism is terrorizing America

This kind of violence doesn’t stem from either an exclusively left or right perspective, but from an undercurrent of tribalism in our society that can cause young people to feel worthless and hopeless. When people feel isolated, they reach out desperately for somewhere to belong.

Tribalism is a substantial threat to the peaceful fabric of North American life. It leads to censorship, panic, and conspiratorial thinking. We have abandoned our commonality in favour of elucidating and entrenching our differences. We point fingers and otherize, telling those different from us exactly why those differences make whatever our group is better than whatever their group is.

When we box and package ourselves, we make it easier to be divided. We assemble according to shared characteristics, and bond over how different our group is from other groups. It isn’t long before groups take pride in those aspects of self that they all share, and it isn’t long after that pride in shared characteristics within the group morph into feelings of group superiority over others.

[Fred Steeves]

What I continue to find odd is that it's almost taboo to consider the effects from the explosion of psychiatric drugs on people, especially young people. We've always had guns and this wasn't happening, we've always had clicks, and groups, and we've always had bullying and this never happened, so what's changed?

[Aragorn]

What I continue to find odd is that it's almost taboo to consider the effects from the explosion of psychiatric drugs on people, especially young people.

And an increase in the use of recreational drugs ─ don't forget that. We're seeing that over here in Europe as well among young people ─ the latest hype being nitrous oxide ─ and scientific research has shown that this has long-term psychiatric effects on the brains of young people, increasing their chances of psychosis and/or depression.

We've always had guns and this wasn't happening, we've always had clicks, and groups, and we've always had bullying and this never happened, so what's changed?

There have always been shootings in the USA, Fred ─ and even in other countries. But indeed, what has changed is that there currently is a xenophobic trend playing out ─ again: not just in the USA, but especially so there ─ and having a Mussolini-/Batista-wannabe in the White House who also happens to be a closet white-supremacist isn't exactly helping matters.

I would even go so far as to say that the QAnon phenomenon is partly responsible, because QAnon has been drawing more people to far-right message boards like 4Chan and 8Chan than ever before, exposing these people to far-right ideologies such as white-supremacism, McCarthy-ist commie hatred, and so on. And then there is the nature of the (mis-)information itself that QAnon disseminates ─ far-right and pro-Zionist.

Of course, El Donaldo the Banana Republican™ blames it on video games. Well, sure, there has been an increase in the production and sale of violent video games, and some of those games may subliminally have an adverse effect on a teenager's outlook on life, but I seriously doubt whether those games would be instilling racial hatred and fascist ideologies into kids' minds.

But then again, all of what I've written here-above is just the mundane explanation. In keeping with the spiritual inclination of many of our members ─ myself included ─ and now that Sammy is back to remind us of the spiritual aspects of our mortal existence, I am going to go out on a limb and state that from the vantage of the universe, all of this was intended to happen, and that in whatever way, shape or form, it was intended to happen now. I don't buy into religions, but it is my firm belief that there's an apocalyptic scenario being played out right now.

And there's no sitting on the fence and watching the show for this one. We're all actors on the stage now. Call it woo-woo ─ and many people will, of course ─ but the writing's all over the wall in lettering the size of an adult ungulate. Crimes are not just escalating in frequency but also in intensity and cruelty ─ especially sexual abuse and hate crimes. People are politically polarized. Decadence rules ─ from substance abuse over rapists filming their own crimes on their smartphones and then putting them online, via the shameless and unrelenting invasion of people's privacy by the technology industry, all the way to the still very recent creation of human-simian chimeras. Scientifically established facts are constantly being ignored in favor of alternative and nonsensical explanations ─ Earth is flat, we never went to the moon, climate change isn't real, vaccines cause autism, and so on.

All of it serves the polarization, so that one way or another, sooner or later something's got to give. And ─ once again ─ having a US president who aligns himself with all those fake alternative vantages and who declares anything he doesn't like as "fake news", the polarization is taking on international proportions. Because like it or not, Trump plays a role in international politics, from military conflicts over the war on common sense down to the trade wars he has started.

There's too much friction, and the clouds are getting ionized. There are going to be a couple of lightning strikes pretty soon, and it's not going to be pretty when they hit. And what is happening today is only the prelude, in my opinion.

[Emil El Zapato]

It use to be common wisdom that 'war' had a major correlation to 'domestic violence'...it seems to be discounted nowadays and I don't know why. Our culture in America has been at war 'how long"? Perhaps vested elements have manufactured the new reality that war has no affect on the cultures that practice it. Doesn't seem to make much sense does it?

[Fred Steeves]

There have always been shootings in the USA, Fred ─ and even in other countries.

Well, I didn't mean just shootings, I meant these mass shootings but I get your drift. How I should have put it is that the frequency seems to have begun rising more and more dramatically starting in the 1980's, toward it's current crescendo.

and having a Mussolini-/Batista-wannabe in the White House who also happens to be a closet white-supremacist isn't exactly helping matters.

I would even go so far as to say that the QAnon phenomenon is partly responsible, because QAnon has been drawing more people to far-right message boards like 4Chan and 8Chan than ever before, exposing these people to far-right ideologies such as white-supremacism, McCarthy-ist commie hatred, and so on. And then there is the nature of the (mis-)information itself that QAnon disseminates ─ far-right and pro-Zionist.

That surely is not helping matters, but what media seems loathe to spotlight is that these guys aren't always extreme right wingers. The guy who tried to kill our entire republican congress a couple years ago was a Bernie Sanders supporter, the recent Ohio shooter was a lefty, and if you read the recent El Paso shooter's manifesto it quickly becomes clear that the only white supremacist aspects about him are his hatred of immigrants; practically every other political point of view he held was lefty. It's like he married Antifa to skinhead.

[Emil El Zapato]

Trump gives me the {{{}}} heebee jeebees...there is something seriously wrong with that guy...and lol, he's running a world power....but so many seem to think he's ok. That is the poorest testimony to humanity that I could possibly imagine.

[Aragorn]

Trump gives me the {{{}}} heebee jeebees...there is something seriously wrong with that guy...and lol, he's running a world power....but so many seem to think he's ok. That is the poorest testimony to humanity that I could possibly imagine.

Donald Trump is not the problem. Donald Trump is a symptom of a problem that already existed, and in his role as resident of the White House, he is now also acting as an accelerator to the problem. But the problem was already there before Trump rose to power. George W. Bush wasn't exactly a progressive leader either.

[Aianawa]

And an increase in the use of recreational drugs ─ don't forget that. We're seeing that over here in Europe as well among young people ─ the latest hype being nitrous oxide ─ and scientific research has shown that this has long-term psychiatric effects on the brains of young people, increasing their chances of psychosis and/or depression.



There have always been shootings in the USA, Fred ─ and even in other countries. But indeed, what has changed is that there currently is a xenophobic trend playing out ─ again: not just in the USA, but especially so there ─ and having a Mussolini-/Batista-wannabe in the White House who also happens to be a closet white-supremacist isn't exactly helping matters.

I would even go so far as to say that the QAnon phenomenon is partly responsible, because QAnon has been drawing more people to far-right message boards like 4Chan and 8Chan than ever before, exposing these people to far-right ideologies such as white-supremacism, McCarthy-ist commie hatred, and so on. And then there is the nature of the (mis-)information itself that QAnon disseminates ─ far-right and pro-Zionist.

Of course, El Donaldo the Banana Republican™ blames it on video games. Well, sure, there has been an increase in the production and sale of violent video games, and some of those games may subliminally have an adverse effect on a teenager's outlook on life, but I seriously doubt whether those games would be instilling racial hatred and fascist ideologies into kids' minds.

But then again, all of what I've written here-above is just the mundane explanation. In keeping with the spiritual inclination of many of our members ─ myself included ─ and now that Sammy is back to remind us of the spiritual aspects of our mortal existence, I am going to go out on a limb and state that from the vantage of the universe, all of this was intended to happen, and that in whatever way, shape or form, it was intended to happen now. I don't buy into religions, but it is my firm belief that there's an apocalyptic scenario being played out right now.

And there's no sitting on the fence and watching the show for this one. We're all actors on the stage now. Call it woo-woo ─ and many people will, of course ─ but the writing's all over the wall in lettering the size of an adult ungulate. Crimes are not just escalating in frequency but also in intensity and cruelty ─ especially sexual abuse and hate crimes. People are politically polarized. Decadence rules ─ from substance abuse over rapists filming their own crimes on their smartphones and then putting them online, via the shameless and unrelenting invasion of people's privacy by the technology industry, all the way to the still very recent creation of human-simian chimeras. Scientifically established facts are constantly being ignored in favor of alternative and nonsensical explanations ─ Earth is flat, we never went to the moon, climate change isn't real, vaccines cause autism, and so on.

All of it serves the polarization, so that one way or another, sooner or later something's got to give. And ─ once again ─ having a US president who aligns himself with all those fake alternative vantages and who declares anything he doesn't like as "fake news", the polarization is taking on international proportions. Because like it or not, Trump plays a role in international politics, from military conflicts over the war on common sense down to the trade wars he has started.

There's too much friction, and the clouds are getting ionized. There are going to be a couple of lightning strikes pretty soon, and it's not going to be pretty when they hit. And what is happening today is only the prelude, in my opinion.

You ever visited 8chan Aragorn, had a look around ?, looking at your post I would be surprised if you have.

[Aragorn]

You ever visited 8chan Aragorn, had a look around ?, looking at your post I would be surprised if you have.

As the matter of fact, yes, I have, only a few days ago, when I was looking for the "planted evidence" that Brian Brainwash™ left there in order to implicate Bill Ryan and then point the finger at The One Truth.

[Aianawa]

Was it as bad as you have been led to believe ?

[Aragorn]

Was it as bad as you have been led to believe ?

Yes, it was.

[Emil El Zapato]

I'm posting this for anyone not intimately familiar with aspects of the American legacy. I'm not posting this from spite, anger, or hatred, I just want to make it plain why I have reservations of anything that self-proclaims 'greatness'. Any such notion needs to be examined from all angles. The examination doesn't decry or discount said greatness but it can provide a much needed perspective.

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The El Paso shooting is exactly what descendants of a 1915 massacre at the US-Mexico border had warned about
Rosa FloresMichelle Krupa
By Rosa Flores and Michelle Krupa, CNN

Racism led to their ancestors' murder. They warn it could happen again.

(CNN)Melba Coody didn't think the old plotline could unfold again: a mass killing along the US-Mexico border at the hands of a white gunman apparently driven by bigotry and willing to take justice into his own hands.

It's how her great-grandfather's and great-uncle's lives ended in 1915. The men, both American citizens of Mexican descent, were fatally shot along a Texas road during La Matanza, or The Massacre, a bloody period when members of the vaunted Texas Rangers slayed hundreds of Mexican-Americans amid a climate of racism and hate.
Their ancestors were slain a century ago along the US-Mexico border. They say now is the time to retell the horror

Coody had believed -- even in an era of racist presidential tweets, private border militias and a humanitarian crisis among migrant children -- that the kind of horror her ancestors experienced could be consigned to history.

"And look at what happened," the 76-year-old woman told CNN as she wept over the weekend massacre in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead and 24 more injured. Their accused killer is a white supremacist who wanted to stop a "Hispanic invasion of Texas," according to a manifesto police believe he wrote.

"I can't believe people are doing things like they used to do many, many years ago: the racism," Coody said. "What the Texas Rangers did to my great-grandfather -- killed him just because they were riding around thinking that they were murderers of other people and robbers, most of all. And now this. I don't know what to think except it's very hurtful, and it's bad that things are happening again like they did many, many years ago."

Physical violence again "has reared its ugly head, and it's as real now as it was then," said Texas state Rep. Terry Canales, a Rio Grande Valley Democrat whose great-uncle spearheaded an inquiry in 1919 into extrajudicial killings by the Rangers. "What we are watching in El Paso is one of the most gut-wrenching, sad, horrible, cowardly acts, and it's not far from what was exactly happening 100 years ago."

Some descendants of those slain during the Matanza period had warned in the months before horror hit El Paso that mounting anti-immigrant sentiment could set the stage for the sort of targeted violence that played out in the crowded Walmart. They cited, in part, President Donald Trump's use of the term "invasion" to describe the arrival of Central American migrants to the southern US border and his chuckling response to a rally-goer who suggested simply shooting migrants. Those examples and more, they said, could tacitly give license to people inclined to mistreat those they deem unwelcome in the United States.

To be sure, last week's atrocity was not authorized by any government, as the official investigation found the century-old Ranger killings had been. Texas prosecutors already have charged the alleged El Paso gunman with capital murder, while US Justice Department officials are treating the case as domestic terrorism and "seriously considering" lodging hate crime charges that could carry the death penalty. Trump, meanwhile, called on the nation following the El Paso attack and another mass shooting hours later in Dayton, Ohio, to condemn racism and white supremacy. He has slammed video games and the internet for stoking an atmosphere of violence, pointed to mental illness for motivating killers and signaled support for so-called "red flag" laws that would keep firearms away from "those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety."

But the President has stayed away from discussing the impact of his own divisive words on the political climate. Indeed, the accused shooter's online writings reflect ideas that have been shared by Trump, Fox News and the Republican Party, including the warning of "a Hispanic invasion." The writer noted that he'd held these beliefs for years -- notably, before Trump became President.

The themes hark back to what experts call "the period of widespread, state sanctioned anti-Mexican violence on the Texas-Mexico border (1910-20)," said Monica Muñoz Martinez, a Brown University assistant professor who wrote about the era in her book, "The Injustice Never Leaves You."

"What's really troubling is that the rhetoric that is coming from this current administration is echoing the eugenic sentiment and language that was used by eugenicists and nativists from the early 20th century," she said. "Like the word, 'infestation,' and the word, 'invasion,' it was something that was used to mobilize and not only to police the border but also to police anyone who looked Mexican in the region."

"I am also very concerned about the ongoing policies on the border, like family separation, which I think gives license to people being dehumanized," Martinez said. "We need to study how that inspires racism and an extremist to also not value Mexican life and immigrant life and Latinos." While Trump didn't coin the "white nationalist rhetoric and racist ideologies against Latinos, ... it is very clear that he uses the same language as part of his politics," said South Texas College historian Trinidad Gonzales, who counts a relative among those murdered during La Matanza.

"You see it very clearly by the shooter having to clarify that the ideas did not come from Trump, because Trump has the same ideas," he said, "and that is disturbing."
'We've been tormented as a people' The violence in El Paso hit at a deep-rooted unity among residents of Hispanic descent who, for many decades, have lived in what's effectively a single community that spans the Texas border city and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. An economic and cultural hub, the metro area is a far cry from the dangerous and "infested" place that white nationalists and others describe, Martinez said. That bigoted rhetoric echoes the false claims made a century ago by Rangers who'd accuse law-abiding people of Mexican descent of being "bandits" as justification for murdering them.

Abbott has called the El Paso shooting "a heinous and senseless act of violence." The Texas Department of Public Safety is assisting El Paso police in the shooting investigation, he said in a statement, adding that the Texas Rangers and other state resources were deployed in a support role. But damage -- even beyond lives stolen and families shattered -- has been done.

Their culture made them targets. Now, it's what is helping them heal
"You can grow up all your life on the border and not feel that someone is going to shoot you simply because you're brown," Gonzales said. "That security is gone."
"I think this shooter has taken more than just lives," Canales said. "He has taken a piece of who we are. He has taken a part of our sanity, a part of our hearts, a part of our souls and a part of our security." Perhaps a part, but not all.

Just two days after the Walmart carnage, Aztec dance groups performed prayers for the victims in a powerful and defiant display of the region's heritage.
"We've been tormented as a people," performer Gisela Sarellano said. "I like the idea of using our culture -- that they're so threatened by -- to combat that, to fight their hatred with beauty." 'I don't think it's going to stop'

Beyond apparently being targeted because of their ethnicity, Coody sees another link between her forebears who were killed by a Ranger -- one a county commissioner and teacher, the other a Spanish-to-English translator for his neighbors -- and the shoppers gunned down while perusing backpacks and notebooks and graphing calculators at Walmart.

"These people that were killed in El Paso, that horrible tragedy, were educated people and not just anybody," she said. "They were people that were shopping and getting ready for school, and look at what happened. My great-grandfather and my great-uncle were also just, you know, they were educated, and this happened to them," she said. "That's why I say that if it happens again, it could happen to anyone."

Abbott's office and the state Department of Public Safety's Ranger Division did not respond to CNN's requests for comment about the Ranger's century-old history of violence. Those acts have no connection to the modern-day force, a department spokesman told the San Antonio Express-News in 2004.

Coody's grown daughter, Christine Molis, did not think immediately of her family's Matanza link when she heard of the carnage in El Paso, she told CNN. But the questions that flooded her mind mirror those that have driven a recent push for official markers to acknowledge the early 20th-century slayings and -- the hope had been -- thwart similar injustices.

"It made me think about: Why would he target just them? What have we done? What did they do to him? They are just normal people going about their normal lives, like everybody else," Molis said. "How do you know they are not American citizens? Just because they're of Mexican descent?"
Reflecting on the bloodshed in El Paso, the answers seemed no nearer than they were a hundred years ago. "It's been going on for over a century," Molis said. "And I don't think it's going to stop, not in the world we are living in today."

[Emil El Zapato]

I don't know how you did it Aragorn but thanks and thanks to DT for her earlier fix for the 'Psychology of Galactic Empires' on the Collapse thread...

ah, I'm not a complete idiot (though close)...I saw the way to post facebook content...thanks again

[Aragorn]

I don't know how you did it Aragorn but thanks