The News Thread

[CiG]

I like degenerates. I certainly don't want you to die.

But that's not true, it probably has a lot more to do with the absolutely shit handling of mental health in America. My dad deals with depression and has said he contemplates suicide when it gets really bad and he'd outwork and out succeed every useless faggot on this forum.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

What exactly do you mean by "shit handling of mental health"? Mentally ill people tend to be expensive to treat, and the US has among the highest per-person health care costs in the world (partly, I suspect, because of relatively high rates of obesity and drug use), so I think the money problem has to be factored in when judging our mental health policies.

 

[CiG]

Well something is obviously fucked up since mass shootings seem to happen there often enough but it was much less common in the past and gun ownership has always been a thing so it's not like it's due to increased gun ownership or increased gun restrictions.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

According to this, our current homicide rate's the lowest it's been since the 1950s
https://www.infoplease.com/us/crime/homicide-rate-1950-2014

 

[CiG]

Homicide overall may be down since the 1950's but mass shootings are certainly up since then. I'm not making a case that there are more homicides, but rather that there are more mentally unhealthy people shooting up the citizenry.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Your original point was about "shit treatment of mental health" in the US, and you haven't really shown any causal relationship between that and an abnormally high murder rate. Focusing on mass shootings alone is rather anecdotal.

 

[CiG]

Most mass shootings involve shooters with a history of mental health problems, drug abuse or prescription drug usage. That's the point. Mental people are mass shooting and this is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'd say there is clearly a connection here.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Mass shootings are basically irrelevant. They make up less than 0.1% of annual murders, and they're almost impossible to stop because they're committed by people under-the-radar until they snap.

 

[CiG]

I'm not fucking saying mass shootings are some problem in relation to murder rates I'm saying we're dropping the ball on people who are fucked in the head.

All crime is on the decline, but problems related to mental health seem to be increasing. Slapping thousands of people on psychotropic drugs is not a way to deal with mental health, haven't something like 80% of all mass shooters and mass shooting attempts been by people on psychotropic drugs?

 

[rms]

The poorest Asians to come here post-WW2,

but I think the vast majority of asian immigrants in the U.S. are here pre-WW2, and were hardcore laborers

the Hmong

I lived 28 years and never heard of these damn people and in the last 3 or 4 days ive seen these fuckers name dropped in every Asian discussion of the U.S. What is their population, 12?!

 

[CiG]

281,000 in 2013 apparently. Haven't you seen Gran Torino?

 

[rms]

thought that dude's family was viet congs

seems like a lot of these fuckers, i'm such a bad sjw

 

[HamburgerBoy]

but I think the vast majority of asian immigrants in the U.S. are here pre-WW2, and were hardcore laborers



I lived 28 years and never heard of these damn people and in the last 3 or 4 days ive seen these fuckers name dropped in every Asian discussion of the U.S. What is their population, 12?!

Not true on the first point, a lot of the coolies got shipped back as thanks for their work. Many Chinese were disenfranchised long after the 14th amendment; even the Supreme Court made specific exceptions for Asians saying blacks were capable of being tamed by white man's laws and religion but Asians were basically demon spawn from hell. Additionally, we had specific laws targeting them, preventing their immigration to a large extent (until LBJ ended that, one of the few good things he did).

That being said, clearly even the poorest Asians are better off than many black descendants of slaves in America, but there is still a strong correlation between ones circumstances in arriving and ones success today.

 

[Einherjar86]

Most mass shootings involve shooters with a history of mental health problems, drug abuse or prescription drug usage. That's the point. Mental people are mass shooting and this is a relatively recent phenomenon, I'd say there is clearly a connection here.

Psychologizing mass shooters is also problematic since many of the conditions driving them to commit crimes aren't reducible to an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. Often it has to do with social issues and pressures as much as it does psychic issues. These two things can be related, and social issues can lead to psychic trauma; but mass shootings aren't reducible to psychological health. You can put potential shooters through psychiatric treatment all you want, but it may not help if they're suffering some form of social dissociation or marginalization.

We could take the Orlando shooter as an example. I have a serious problem saying that mental health was the primary issue in that case, mainly because people often lump together his family's strict religious adherence and his possibly latent homosexuality. Now, the latter two issues could certainly have contributed to mental instability on his part, but it's dangerous to suggest that psychiatric treatment would have prevented the shooting--doing so conflates homosexuality and spiritual conflict with mental imbalance, i.e. implies that homosexuality and mental instability are directly related. A change in environment and social circumstances could very well have prevented the shooting.

Basically, it's a causation/correlation problem.

Personally, and I haven't researched this, but I also think the rise in mass shootings parallels the rise of mass media and the information society. Mass shooters often feel alienated from others and dissociated from their community at large, but they know that mass shootings are a means of communicating, albeit in a horribly misguided way. A shooting garners media attention and focuses all eyes on the perpetrator. I'm not saying that refusing to cover mass shootings is the answer, I just think the two are culturally related.

 

[CiG]

Eh, the Pulse club dude was just an Islamist homophobe who cased queer joints. I highly doubt he was struggling with his sexuality, but there's no way to prove it either way. But I do think he was just casing potential targets.

I think you're right that there are certain social factors with the actions of mass shooters, but I'm not trying to make a reductionist argument here, I'm saying we seem to be failing at tackling this issue and regardless of whether the mental health is the cause or social factors are the cause of the mental health issues, we seem to not be making up for the new issues arising with the increase in certain factors that may be making it worse.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

Apparently some guy on the NYMag, Sullivan, wrote an article about how asians are the best ethnic group so now black twitter is mad and shieeeeeeeeeeet

but this article was linked as to oppose the idea that Asian Americans/immigrants depended on immigration. It instead argues that 'white america' got less racist which has to be the most mental gymnastics thing i've read in awhile. maybe you guys will enjoy it too

edit; found the article:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/why-do-democrats-feel-sorry-for-hillary-clinton.html

Jamelle Bouie's article against this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...model_minority_and_black_pathology_myths.html

His argument isn't one I expect many here would accept, but I find myself mostly in line with it. My only gripe is that it's extremely brief. On a related note, I have Ellen Wu's work that he referenced on my reading list for the summer. I have the pdf if anyone is interested in reading it.

 

[rms]

i have a pdf ebook too, I find her argument that it was politically necessary for the U.S. to pit asian-americans against black-americans in the mid 20th century very out there.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Jamelle Bouie's article against this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...model_minority_and_black_pathology_myths.html

His argument isn't one I expect many here would accept, but I find myself mostly in line with it. My only gripe is that it's extremely brief. On a related note, I have Ellen Wu's work that he referenced on my reading list for the summer. I have the pdf if anyone is interested in reading it.

I think the use of wealth (something built over generations) rather than family income massively exaggerates the disparity between whites and non-whites. Getting a college degree obviously will not immediately give you wealth, it will give you debt. That study also ignores the reality that whites (and Asians) are far more likely to get a well-paying degree like engineering or accounting. If your household makes $50k/yr with two kids your entire life, you're not ever going to amass much wealth because you're eating it all up on living expenses and children, even if you keep your books balanced.

A better view would be income by job type, where there is still a racial gap, but not remotely the magnitude shown in that study.

 

[rms]

the discussion has now shifted to "wealth" and not "earnings" because of the inconsistencies and bad logic therein. "Wealth" also allows the left to attack the lack of an inheritance tax, which is what most black writers say is the best way to redistribute wealth and help out from slavery&jim crow.

 

[rms]

Bouie keeps saying Chinese and Japanese yet doesn't realize the physician was Vietnamese?

this shit is such a leap, that I was referring to from Wu;

“The United States’ battles against fascism and then Communism meant that Asiatic Exclusion, like Jim Crow, was no longer tenable.” The result, she argues, was the “entrance of Asian Americans into the national fold” and, in the 1960s, a “profound metamorphosis [of Asian Americans] into the model minority: the Asiatic who was at once a model citizen and definitely not-black.”

actually, that article stinks.