USA: Definitely DSM

Shooting Scene at Sutherland Springs, Texas 

Is The USA approaching certifiable DSM? By which I mean do we need to read the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) to understand US society in many of its important manifestations?

I think so.

Consider the following:

NBC News  "Think"
Charles Clymer: I'm an Army veteran and gun owner. The 'good guy with a gun' theory is a myth.
I never see a "good guy with a gun:" I see a human more likely to exacerbate a tragedy than to stop it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-m-army-veteran-gun-owner-good-guy-gun-theory-ncna821976

... The U.S. Army’s basic marksmanship training — just learning how to care for a rifle and shoot it — is three weeks long. That’s 18 full days (Sundays are usually semi-restful) spent getting comfortable with your rifle, learning how to dissemble and reassemble it, clean it, perform a functions check, correct malfunctions, load and unload it, conduct peer training with fellow privates, adjust its sights and, finally, how to actually aim and fire it.

During this period, your rifle goes everywhere you go. Because the Army does not trust new privates enough to sleep with their rifles, you are issued a replica for evenings — affectionately called a “rubber ducky.” And so long as it is in your possession, that replica must also go everywhere you go, even if it’s in the middle of the night to use the restroom. This builds respect for the devastation a soldier can inflict with their weapon. They learn to honor those skills.

The Army also does not trust recruits while at the firing range. Once shooting and instruction have concluded for the day, “brass and ammo” checks are conducted: Every soldier lines up, strips off all their extraneous gear, literally turns out their pockets so the lining is displayed, takes off their covers, and upon presented for an inspection, must announce: “No brass, no ammo, Drill Sergeant!” They are then thoroughly searched, and god help the private who has not accounted for a spare round or bit of brass somewhere on their person. This ritual continues throughout your military career, and it is required of everyone, no matter their rank...

... Yet, even in these controlled environments, with officers and sergeants who have ostensibly seen everything and typically exercise competent command of training operations, stupid mistakes still happen and people die. Even after all of this training, soldiers are still human beings who make mistakes.

When I see a young man openly carrying a firearm in public, whether to prove a political point or because he honestly believes at he could be called upon to stop an active shooter, I can only think of how much could go wrong. I do not see a “good guy with a gun”: I see a naive human who is more likely to exacerbate a tragedy than stop it. Is this person a civilian who has forgot to clear their weapon? Are they disciplined enough to avoid accidents? And if a mass shooting does occur, how do I know they will have the skills to take out the bad guy rather than, say, an innocent bystander?

Yet laws have been passed and will be passed at the local, State, and Federal level which are based more upon the myth of the "Good Guy with a Gun" than any reasonable analysis of the place of weapons in a society.

Did we really expect that the country could be flooded with weapons and there would be no mass shootings? Did we really expect that we could pass ambiguous laws about "standing your ground" and not have people shot and killed when there should have been strategic retreat?
Did we ever stop and calculate the number of acceptable deaths by accident?
Did we ever ask how many old men might shot their wives in church? Or how many two year olds would kill their mothers in Walmart?

No. We never did. We never did because we would have thought it crazy that an old geezer discussing guns in church would shoot his wife; we would have thought it ridiculous to imagine a two-year old shooting his mother in the store...

 The Girl Gun Trio, Eenie, Weenie, and Teenie

Remember:"I don't want no ricochet romance, I don't want no ricochet love..."

God punishes us with what we can't imagine......  (quote by Wireman, Duma Key)

Is this a rational way to act? In any sense of the term "rational" or "reasonable", does the way we act make any sense in a world of facts? Is it not more akin to dreams and nightmares?

Just stop and ask what happens when a society values myth and dream over hard facts. Ask what happens when facts are secondary to ideology. 

Definitely DSM

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ps.

"Intellectualization" does not imply "reason" nor "rationality". Myths are intellectualizations and narratives. We may intellectualize something, but that does not imply we have rendered it "rational" by any means.

WTR !!??

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Thursday vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election.
"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing," Obama told National Public Radio.

Describing potential countermeasures by the US, the President said "some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be."

It isn't fair that Russia should bully the US. The US is relatively new to the Internet and digital tech and this is really just Russia being a cyber-bully. Shame !

WTR !?
What The Rus!?

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Forefathers

I saw some Civil War memorabilia in a fellow's office two days ago. The was a large document from Austin Blair, the Governor of the State of Michigan during the Civil War appointing the man's great-great-grandfather to a commission in the Union Army.

We spoke briefly. I told him of my ancestors - the one about whom I knew - who had served in the Union Army in regiments from New York State.

The other day a young girl wore a Confederate flag to school. She said it was no big deal. There was all kinds of heck, however. And I think the young girl knew it was a big deal, because you see a lot of people displaying that flag these days.

However, my friend and I realized that our ancestors put their lives on the line to fight to support the Union, and to them that Confederate flag was a flag of rebellion, slavery, secession, and Disunion.
That flag was an insult to our forefathers and it should have been felt by us as an affront.

Now we realize it.

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No One Expects The American Inquisition !

pic: zimzer


Ever since 9/11 - which, by the way, is the Main Theme of the Age - we have had a flirtation with torture. It has been depicted on films and even brought into our homes on TV. Yay!
We have had low-brow hijinks - Abu Ghraib comes to mind - and we have had high-brow discussions and debates about it, sort of like Mr. Dershowitz arguing the pro side: Torture: will it bring bombers to their senses before the clock... (such as Ahmed Mohammud made and took to school one day, school one day... made the teachers laff 'n' say it wuz against the rule!)

... before the clock runs down the last 15 minutes (or less, depending on which Die Hard movie you're watching) and explode.

What is the history of torture in the Anglo-Saxon nations? We know all about Spain and the Hapsburgs and what-not, but what about the English speaking democracies?

We have recourse to old tomes and old bones for antiquities:

wherein we see

p.211

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More On Republicans and Democrats

If I have read the news from Egypt correctly, President Obama has asked Senator John McCain to try and negotiate between the present government - which I believe he referred to as "a coup" - and the ousted Muslim Brotherhood - whom he referred to as "terrorists".

That's why I say the government is losing the ability to govern.

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The President's Praetorian Guard

The US President, now and future, has their own Praetorian Guard: a military force which may immediately respond to his commands. The Praetorians are the Drones.

Just as Tiberius and Caligula and Nero were able to conceive and execute an event of violence and compulsion using their own military force, so may the US President, or whoever in the future is given the power to control drones.

Before the Praetorian drones, elements of the Army and the Navy had to be assembled, plans had to be drawn up and orders given, and these steps required many middle men to put into action.

Drones need fewer intermediaries, and they can be dispatched quickly.

The drones will be irresistible temptation to use for oppression.

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Egg on Yer Facebook

We have a Wall Street culture that no longer seems to be able to function.

We have Christian groups and ministers getting into politics with their notions that when Jerusalem is totally Israeli controlled, the Messiah will come again...

(totally ignoring, by the way, that the kingdom of God is neither here, nor is it there, but it is within us, not in some geography...)

We have Christians avidly reading about End-of-Times and the re-establishment of the kingdom of God after the final victory over the evil one...

(but again, the kingdom is not outside and, thus, is not the type of thing which is proper for the looting and pillage of armies...

And we have a government which is becoming unable to govern. The partisan divide which has been the toxic bane of democracy since its birth in antiquity is going to continue to divide our country because the damages we have inflicted on it since 1980 will take  at least a generation to mend.

We have lost control on a group level in many important areas of our lives.
Individually, mostly we can navigate through the maze of morality, but as groups, we are totally lost to greed, concupiscence, and fear. The future of spirituality is in the freeing of the group mind and turning it to the Holy.

Inspect every nook and cranny of your dusty "belief systems", and throw most of it out. Have no beliefs. If you have expectations and actions, the beliefs will take care of themselves... sufficient for the day are the beliefs and hackneyed moralisms thereof.

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Beit Shemesh

Jewish Lady in Beit Shemesh Wearing Hijab

In PRI News:

In recent days, many Israelis have come to see the once-sleepy town of Beit Shemesh as a symbol of a national conflict. It’s an internal Israeli conflict, one between extremist members of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community and other Jewish Israelis.

 http://www.theworld.org/2011/12/ultra-orthodox-beit-shemesh/

I have had a post on Beit Shemesh before, one dealing with women taking to wearing the hijab.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/uncle-joe-lieberman-speaks-then-plays.html

How do you deal with believers who exhibit extreme and rigidly held beliefs?
Well, you do not deal with them. I think we have found that out by now. They cannot compromise their beliefs by the smallest iota, and hence they cannot negotiate democratically. It was rather like this year, 2011, in Washington, where we found that people with ideology rigidly held cannot enter into a democratic process of give-and-take. There are other extreme believers who come to mind; when the belief is about God and God's will, there can be no negotiation. The only negotiation which exists will exist between people who are humble enough to admit that they do not perfectly know God's will in all things, from the smallest to the end of days.

Having said that, we shall have to come to a parting of the ways, hopefully non-violent.
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Grasping at Straws and The Alien Invasion !

Climate Change is/will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, if the governments of the world cannot finally get their acts together. In the future of increasing damage caused by storms and weather events, there will be an increasing burden on all of our resources.

When you stop to think of it, Climate Change and its consequences will act the part an alien race in the science fiction scenario of "Alien Invasion that Makes the Countries of the Earth Work Together as One" which we have been so fond of over the past 60 years: Climate Change is something we should all be working together on now, but we do not.
I suppose if it came down to that and an alien race from Alpha Centauri did invade the Earth and offered the USA some sort of super-duper technology, we would let the UN and the rest fight their own battles while we took care of Numero Uno, believing that this was all due to our Exceptionalism!
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I Remember When...

...When Comrade Stalin Rode The Subway

That's how old I am. Those were the good old days. Before megalomania took its toll. We should know. I remember the days when there was a peace dividend, when the US and USSR were well on the way to standing down, dismantling nuclear weaponry... just like back after The Fatherland War when we embraced in the ashes of Berlin!

Well, the USSR disappeared and Russia was down on its luck for a while. Meanwhile, back here in the US of A, most of us sat around bemused, wondering what to do. We began to strut around in a daze, muttering to ourselves "Able I was ere I saw Elba"... we began to hear bumps in the night.

We began to see Metternichs in every cupboard and Wellingtons on the dinner table.

In short, we went a bit nuts, and everytime they tried to throw the good old strait waistcoat on us, we ran off towards the Middle East like lunatic bonapartes.

Now there is a START treaty to approve. The threat of nuclear weaponry is too great for political games. It must be approved now.

In future times, historians will look at the 20th century and say that one of the greatest moral achievements in the history of mankind was the mutual refusal of the USSR and the USA to perpetrate nuclear crimes.

And right now, most of us do not even think about it.

Future historians will have something to say about that, also.


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Gooseing The Economy

As unflattering and tasteless as that title is, I have to thank my Title purveyor for sending it along. It is all I could have dreamed. I have the presentiment that the action of the Federal Reserve in throwing all its resources into shoring up the financial sector and "gooseing" the economy...... (hopefully not giving it a "wedgie", nor a "swirlie", nor a "wet willy", nor a "twister" in the process.) ......is rather like the situation in the original Star Trek in which Scotty "gooses" the dilithium crystals or what not and all available might and main thrusts the Enterprise forward to some blazing sun, only to suddenly veer off at the last moment, and thereby achieving some sort of critical hoodia or mogambo sufficient to reverse the flow of time and thrust them back into the past......or forward to the future......depending on the needs of the Writers, the only gods of such universes. When the garage door coil spring of Bernanke's stimulus is compressed to some critical point, what will ensue when it bursts forth unrestrained and the pendulum swings in another direction and with a vengeance... or, as some Russians would have it, according to fugitive peace, like a certain anatomical area on skis!