so just a normal Back to School season in the US of A
Getting downvoted for the truth.
How often do you hear of other countries with the same issue?
so just a normal Back to School season in the US of A
For me, it has nothing to do with country. But I am disgusted by your comment just the same. There is nothing “true” about it at all.
- Mass murder is not normal. Mass shootings of innocents, be they children or churchgoers or shoppers or clubgoers, are never normal. Even if they happen daily – and the US may well be reaching that point – they will NEVER be anything short of aberrant in the most vile way, regardless of the country in which they occur.
In case this isn’t clear, and to illustrate just how lazy your cheap potshot is, I’d like to reframe it in terms of Gaza: the schoolchildren shot in Gaza as they run toward food, terrified to go but too hungry not to run into the shooting zone, is that too just business as usual for you?
For me, the killings of Gazans are equally as evil and unnecessary as any other murder – and murder is exactly what that is – thus I do not make low-effort cracks about them, or Ukrainians, or literally anyone who is murdered just trying to live their lives. That is my genuine position on the murder of innocents, so particularly lazy and disinterested cracks like yours stand out.
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By calling a school shooting “normal” YOU are literally normalizing it in your own language.
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Your apparent boredom with the murder of children is revolting.
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Your censure toward the actual villains (the shooter, the society that missed or could not adequately address the warning signs, the corrupt politicians who flatly refuse to address the problem even after DECADES of citizens begging for some level of gun control, the culture that crushes the most vulnerable among us to the point they snap, etc) is entirely missing.
Pick one. Take a lazy potshot at THAT instead.
Hence my downvote, and I regret I have only one to give.
How old are you?
Old enough to know that casually dehumanizing people we don’t know is part of how we got to where we are.
We can’t change what the media does, or what society does. But we CAN change ourselves, and choose not to heap our own thoughtless words onto the pile of disinterest that makes the most horrific acts okay as long as they are done to someone else.
I’m just asking because i get your sentiment from mostly older people.
Young people are drowned in bad news. Everyday are a bazillion tragedies so they shut down. It is a self preservation mechanism.
Are you interested in that and those people? Why they are like this?
You’re right. Young people are drowned in bad news. But part of this is by choice. I don’t consume any form of media in which I am unable to carefully curate my own content, meaning that Meta, X, IG, FB, and the rest are NOT feeding me that shit 24/7 because I like the dopamine hits and can’t put it down.
That’s another thing we can individually do for ourselves instead of waiting for someone else to change it for us. I do care about young people, quite a bit, and historically they as a moral group are on the right side of history. For example, it was the young people that clued the rest of us in that Israel was committing genocide, and worse still, just how overwhelmingly complicit we as a nation (US), our government and our corporations, really are in it. Even I had no idea, and I’ve been paying attention. It is the bravery of the young in openly demonstrating and protesting that has, again, showed the rest of us that there is still a sense of humanity in this nation.
But I can’t curate their media consumption for them.
And yes, I was in my thirties when Columbine happened. And the mere fact that I can pull the name of a wildflower out of my ass twenty-six years later and you know exactly what I mean by it is proof of how deeply it cut at the time. We talked about it daily and it led the news not for weeks but for months. It wasn’t 9/11, but it was close. IF anyone thinks I overreacted to the comment to which I responded above, that is nothing compared to the ostracization that person would have gotten twenty-six years ago.
That, of course, is when there was still an overriding sense of how we each contribute to our own environments, before most social media, and long before anyone got the bright idea to steer public opinion with it, much less the newest and ugliest form of the age-old divide-and-conquer strategy we’re seeing now.
I don’t blame anyone their self-preservation: as you can see from my first paragraph, I certainly engage in it myself. But self-preservation is one thing. Adding fuel to the fire with my own bored disinterest in your pain is quite another. And as you can see, I haven’t done that either.
As for my comment, to be honest I would have just downvoted and moved on, had it not been for the puppet behind them going, “Downvoted for speaking truth!” No, I downvoted because what they wrote was a lazy, dishonest, inhumane, and all around shitty thing to say, with zero truth in it at all. And instead of slinking away, I decided to say WHY I downvoted.
We can’t change the world one at a time. We have to band together. And that actually does happen, far more frequently than the “bad news” that is crafted to discourage us from starting would ever allow you to believe.
But until then, we can each think about how to improve our own experience, and take action to help ourselves that does not involve moving a Columbine-level mass killing to a lazy, bored, “just another day” comment in the language that we choose, or calling it “truth!” when someone else does it.
So let me ask you a question in return. Do you think that in general, readers are helped or collectively harmed by the normalization of horrific acts?
The shooter was trans, and some media + lots of online spaces are already spreading mental illness narratives. Wouldn’t be surprised if this is going to get used against trans people in general, it’s sad.
I didn’t think that’s confirmed. The shooter had long hair and was named “Robin,” which is a very gender-neutral name. Do you have a source confirming they were trans?
From the article:
Local news, Kare 11, confirmed the shooter’s name was Robin Westman, 23. Westman grew up in Richfield, and Westman’s mother worked at Annunciation school in some capacity. Westman applied in Dakota county to change their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a woman, according to court documents obtained by the Guardian. That request was granted in January 2020.
Thanks. I didn’t see that in the article originally, though I may have just missed it. It’s also possible the article was updated.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minneapolis-catholic-school-shooting-rcna227591
"FBI Director Kash Patel said the shooter was “a male” born under a different first name.
The suspect’s parent had filed for a legal name change to “Robin M Westman” in Dakota County in November 2019. The application was granted in January 2020, when Westman was 17, after a hearing."
I would still say that means nothing, people sometimes don’t vibe with their names. Hell my great grandfather vibed with his nickname so much that I legit thought his name was Stew, it was not Stew his first name was Willard. I can change my last name no questions asked but as soon as someone changes their first name that’s when it’s weird.
That’s not even getting into pseudonyms, I’ve been calling myself Vault online for years and I introduce myself as Beowulf to people I don’t want knowing my actual name.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy40znde9eko
“Westman’s name was legally changed from Robert to Robin in 2020, Minnesota court records show. In the application the judge wrote: “Minor child identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.””
Maybe if trans people weren’t constantly treated like garbage they wouldn’t lose their freakin minds and/or delete themselves.
Is there any evidence this person was “constantly treated like garbage”? There is no excuse for murdering children.
Is there any evidence this person was “constantly treated like garbage”?
Yes. They lived in the United States of America.
Thoughts, prayers, non action, repeat.
Desensitized.
Don’t care anymore.
What a shitty, heartless comment. I live in Minneapolis. Before today I might have read your comment and thought, “Well that’s callous,” but reading it today I feel angry. Keep that shit to yourself.
If that’s true then the gun lobbyists have won
Those poor children and parents. These are all avoidable deaths and no doubt the families and the survivors and will again be harassed if they speak out about improving gun safety.
I’m ashamed to say it, but when a church gets shot up the only feeling I can conjure is schadenfreude.
Sorry, but I really really dislike American Christians. No, Catholics are not exempt from this blanket term — see the guy who got fired for going on Jubilee and proudly proclaiming he is both ‘Catholic’ and ‘a fascist’.
You reap what you sow. As much as we like to tell ourselves they aren’t, the sins of the father are passed on to the son.
The good news is that your opinion is very human. The bad news is that your opinion is very human.
Thinking you are the good one cause I dont feel bad when innocent children are killed cause some ppm that share the same belief also sabre other belief without hurting anybody. You reap what you sow and you aren’t ready for what s coming
