Mass Shootings

[angus]

other:  I never even know about them till I come in here to post about something important, like whether the latest 7th grade garage band from Saint Paul is scene, but once I find out about them, like the virgin guy today, I lament the shooter and the shot.  Then, I log off and I forget about them till I come in here again, and invariably find a poll about whether the virgin guy is a FF or a HP.

[angus]

William Dodd, the US ambassador to Germany during the first Franklin Roosevelt administration (1933-37) was shocked at the number of US citizens entering his embassy complaining of rough treatment by brownshirts and other German officials.  Being slapped for failure to give the Roman salute when a parade marches by was a common complaint.  Complaints to local German police by Americans (and others) went unheeded.  Dodd made regular reports to Roosevelt, who would not take action because he was reluctant to offend the German government lest they retaliate by refusing to repay debts to American lenders.  Dodd met with German officials, even once for an hour with Hitler, about the mistreatment of US citizens by Germans, but he never received any satisfaction.  Other ambassadors in Berlin from other countries have similar stories to tell.  Eventually, it became more and more difficult for US companies to recruit men who would work and do business in Germany, for fear of mistreatment by Germans.

As rough as they were treating foreigners, the Germans were even more brutal to their own citizens.  Edgar Mowrer, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and president of the Foreign Press Association in Berlin, published several articles about Nazi treatment of various groups of Germans, including Jews, communists, and other perceived enemies of the German state.  Mowrer was rewarded by being expelled from Germany.  Dodd personally witnessed a great deal of persecution, including beatings in the street and public humiliation of Jews.  Most folks eventually became desensitized to the brutality of the Germans.  Dodd did not.  His reports were increasingly hostile to the Germans, making it difficult for him to conduct business with them.  He never became insensitive and he never stopped writing to Roosevelt asking him to take action.  He internalized the brutality.  He also internalized his own hostility to the German regime.  Eventually, this made him sick.  He became forgetful.  By 1936 he was frail, and family would report later that he appeared to be at least a decade older than he appeared when he arrived in Germany.  At the end of 1937 he left Berlin without notifying the press.  By 1939 he was confined to his bed and he died in bed early in the year 1940. 

You can internalize the suffering of others, but doing so can make you frail and sick.  A sick man has less power to change the world than he would have if he had remained healthy.

[angus]

Poor Dodd.  Had he been tougher and able to desensitize himself to German brutality, he could have, enjoyed a whole lifetime helping America, per his instructions, continue to do business with the Nazi regime.    

His successor, Hugh Wilson, did just that.  Wilson put a positive spin on the German government, and was known for complaining of the Jewish-controlled press in the United States that liked to "sing a hymn of hate while efforts are made over here to build a better future."  Goebbels specifically mentioned in a speech that it was good to have Dodd gone and Wilson instead.  Hitler, who usually preferred the milaristic brownshirt uniform, always put on coat and tails and white tie to meet with Wilson.  He was ambassador to Germany only for less than a year, but while there he certainly was admired by the Nazis.  He then went on to receive honory law degrees from Yale and Bryant College, and even taught some courses at Yale before getting a influential position with the Republican National Committee.  

That's all a little off-topic, I suppose.  Desensitizing always makes me think of two things:  the Nuremburg laws and the trial of those policemen who beat up Rodney King.  I guess I got carried away, but my point was only that we see so much of it that we're becoming really desensitized.  (Probably not unlike Tom Wolfe's manly parts after about an hour with Martha Dodd, eh Torie?)

[angus]

But what do we do?  You can't very well have all young men report for psychiatric evaluation and then assign them certain liberties, and deny them others, based on those evaluations.  First, that would be extremely expensive.  Second, and more importantly, that would violate the principle of equal treatment under the law.  What could have prevented this bizarre case whereby some 20-something lunatic went on a killing spree targeting women just because he wasn't getting laid?  Short of fundamentally changing our outlook on fundamental human rights, I can't see what might have prevented it.

[angus]

increasing desensitization will also only make the problem worse

I agree.  It is becoming so frequent, though, that it's hard to be shocked anymore.  I think that was the point that Gramps was making.

I think we should be careful about how we engage.  I can tell from your post that you do as well.  This is a tricky issue.  I was having a conversation tonight in the Jacuzzi with a retired teacher from a local Catholic high school about this sort of thing.  He was interesting because he had watch teen-agers for the last 40 years.  He was convinced that the prevalence of violence in videogames and movies are a big part of the problem.  Yeah, that's the standard old guy answer, but I think that he's making a good point.  If you grow up learning how to shoot people virtually, then maybe it's not a big stretch to think you can do it for real.  On the other hand, millions of kids play games and watch R-movies every day and they don't go nuts and start shooting people.

[angus]

it probably almost never helps one improve one's outlook on life. 

Maybe, but it has been suggested that playing violent games can make you smarter.  In 2010, Lorenza Colzato of Leiden Universiteit in the Netherlands published a study which presented evidence that violent video games like "Call of Duty" and "Resident Evil" cause significantly increased performance on certain tests.  I remember that my son happened to read that in the little American Airlines magazine in the seat pocket on a flight back from Mexico.  He was 5 years old at the time, and became very excited to tell us about it.  I could see the link.  My wife would have none of it.  Since then, many other studies have corroborated these findings.

As for mass-murdering females, they are few and far between.  According to Mother Jones, of the 62 mass shootings--defined as four or more killed in a single episode--in the US since 1980, only one has been perpetrated by females.  The rest were male shooters, among whom 75% were white.  There's quite a bit written about the differences between males and females, but basically the pseudocommando ego is a manifestation of maleness.  This goes back thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, in our species.  I mentioned this phenomenon in the "gender abortion" thread as well.  Males are more vulnerable to slights and challenges precisely because boys are taught from a young age that successful males exert social dominance, achieve a high social status, command respect, and demonstrate authority.  Kill the mammoth first and you become the alpha hunter.  Become the alpha hunter and all men want to be like you, all women want to be with you.  This generally becomes a serious problem when males so outnumber females that poor males with few prospects can't find a mate, which is precisely why we ought to think about public policy with regards to sex selection of babies.  I concluded that this would not be a big problem in the US, but I'm really not an expert in that field. 

Even putting aside social issues issues like sex selection of our offspring, when we remember that men are also taught to value economic independence and sexual success we can see why those men who have failed in these aspects of manliness might become marginalized.  Granted, most men who become marginalized do not go on killing sprees, but when you combine that with the culture of death and the glorification of killing in movies and games as well as easy access to weapons, it isn't hard to understand why the killing happens.

The female construct, on the other hand, is nurturing.  To be sure there are feminine failures as well.  Halfway houses are full of them, but because of the peculiarities of womanliness, the failed woman generally harms only herself (and her children, if she has any) when she becomes marginalized.  This is probably an equally important problem, but because its effects are subtle, and because they don't show up as quickly, we think we can ignore them.

Ha!  that's my stab at uninformed pop psychology 101.