So, by now everyone who isn't living under a rock has probably heard about the massacre that happened in Colorado during the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises that left 12 people dead and 58 people seriously injured. The dastardly deed was allegedly committed by this idiot:
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| James Holmes' mug shot shows that he's not a real Batman fan. |
So many people were anticipating The Dark Knight Rises including my boyfriend, Daniel Verga, an aspiring film director and gifted story-teller who patiently waited for years to watch the final installment of Christopher Nolan's gripping Batman trilogy; trolling IMDB damn near every day for the past six months in order to catch each new trailer for Dark Knight Rises. Thursday night, in fact, he asked me to go see it with him this upcoming Wednesday. Of course, I gladly accepted. Yesterday morning, I awoke to the news that someone had killed a bunch of people in a movie theater in Colorado wearing a gas mask in order to look like the villain, Bane in the Dark Knight Rises.
Personally, neither of us are really worried about getting shot when we go to the theater on Wednesday. Much like any other major disaster, this ugly, awful tragedy is an isolated incident. I'm not going to stop living my life just because there are crazies out there and I'm certainly not going to cancel the plans I've had to see the Dark Knight Rises with my boyfriend for several months in all of it's $25-a-ticket-IMAX-3D glory. 'Nuff said.
But I know that this event is going to re-open the age-old censorship debate that we all thought was dead since the neocon-inspired culture wars of the 1990s. The social conservatives and the rest of the pro-censorship crowd will argue that violent movies and video games are to blame for the shooting. Anti-gun neoliberals will argue that this is more evidence that harsher gun laws are needed in the U.S. Yet, few will address the fact that the real culprit in this situation was the shooter's mental illness and lack of a viable social support system to encourage him to get help which points to the gaping, structural problems in our society and our government.
Censorship, like prohibition, is a curious beast. It will pretend to comply on the surface, while it eagerly searches elsewhere for it's desires and interests. In an age of free and open internet throughout most of the known world, anyone can watch anything they want from any country they want at any time they desire to watch it; whether it be a French horror film, a Korean drama, or a Hungarian romance. If the U.S. does decide to bring back the 1950s style censorship for films, then we will truly be going down the path of no return. There will be nothing left to inspire the last of the great minds to invent and present anything new or interesting. Don't we have enough apathetic remakes and shitty reality shows? Now is not the time to cut back on creativity simply because some mentally ill guy from Colorado decided to go on a shooting spree.
The failure of our nation to treat the mentally ill goes back to the Reagan era, when the neocons of the 1980s decided that it was a nice idea to throw mentally ill people onto the streets instead of investing any money in mental health and drug rehabilitation programs. It's not difficult to see the results of this policy in this postmodern Age of Austerity. This answer, however, is not the glamorous one. It is not the easy one. It is one that requires us to break out of our comfort zones and take responsibility for the way that we treat others.
Censorship is not the answer. Kindness is.
The first thing I look at is the immediate response by the propagandists and the politicians, the second thing is the follow up by the same two cattle herders. First an attack on guns and ammo, and second an attack on the internet itself. The third thing is then to start the analysis, which is going on with articles such as this.
ReplyDeleteHowever, with in even a few days the public inquiry begins to unravel the plausible explantions. Bamboozled with an overload, we miss the developing "Storyline," and it is with the story line that the fingerprints of the powers that be can be seen. The last part of this storyline is the insertion of the psychotic as a development of early adulthood. There must be a goal, or objective to such acts, that is in my opinion manifestly obvious. The backdoor attempt to legislate restrictions on gun sales via the completion of a mental evaluation. Naturally you will have to pay for that yourself, then they will select the "Approved" Mental Health Experts. This will of course be the slippery slope to complete subversion of the 2nd Amendment.
The fact is this exact model has be in play for some time. It has been used by the major corporations to undermine "Free Employment" through the incorportion of rules and regulations adopted by state and county legislators under the pretext of creating "Safety through Training" with a requirement for "Certification" in order to even be able to apply for a job.
There's a problem with all this. That it by and through the exact same methodology that complex societes collapse. They collapse through abandonment, through revolution, and after becoming so controlled and manipulated that their warlike ways end in ultimate destruction.
In short, just as Dern Brown has so easily demonstrated, humans can be fooled, controlled, even zombified.
So, a PHD Student at the top of his class in neuroscience is a "Regular Guy," complete bull crap, and this so-called regular guy then decides to go wacko without any previous hint of psychoysis?
Please, the bull crap is so thick you need hip waders.
Hello and thank you for reading and commenting! Your analysis is very compelling and leaves me with quite a bit to think about. Much of what we hear from the mainstream media today is nothing but a well-hidden sideshow from the real disasters going on behind closed doors, committed by the super rich and the corporations. I'm not sure if I would go as far as saying that society is on the brink of collapse. However, if someone asked me I would say that there are enough unresolved structural issues in our society to suggest it. Simply put, the cracks are beginning to show.
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