Ok, one more before sleep.
Gordy, you said:
"My opinion is that we need to stop playing footsy with the terrorists, including Iran, North Korea and Al Qaeda, etc and quit sending money abroad to countries which hate the US and start acting like a super power country again."
Hmm. Based on what I am aware of from our history, an awful lot of the terrorists against us personally (rather than each other, which is a whole different problem) are because we were meddling in their government or we attacked them. As I said elsewhere, they are doing an eye for an eye. We attacked them, hurt them, etc, so they are furious with us (typically, their kids are), and want to get back at us. Kind of like kids in a school yard, except that they have money and resources and they aren't in a school yard.
When you say that we need to stop playing footsy, what do you mean? The problem with such generalities is that I have no idea what they mean. Fighting terrorism is _hard_, unless your goal is to kill off everyone you can. In which case, anyone who survives (and people always do) will have excellent reason to hate us and want to hurt us. And may even have nothing to live for. Also, genocide is wrong entirely aside from being futile.
Who are we sending money to that hate us? (I don't ask retorical questions, in general. I actually don't know of anyone)
"The "guns" issue and arming everyone is simply a matter of re-invigorating respect. You don't do road rage with a guy holding a 44 mag! "
Heh. The thing about that... unfortunately, having guns tends to mean that people believe themselves perfectly capable of handling dangerous situations. This means that they don't back down. As with any dangerous situation, if you think you can win, then you will be less careful and more likely to provoke the other person/people.
So... what if both people think they can win because they are both holding weapons? Or, they both are in groups of people who have weapons? One shooting starts, everyone will shoot, probably killing or injuring everyone involved, and some innocent bystanders, too.
Everyone having guns is a terrifying thought, from that perspective. Sure, knowing how to use them is great. But what about learning how to handle dangerous situations? Cops are trained to deal with this exact sort of thing, and they still make mistakes.
"Well, that isn't exactly my point, but I think it gets the message across in a metaphor. If you think the other driver could blow your head off, you won;t flip him the bird, but you shouldn't do so in the first place, right?"
I think the 'shouldn't do that in the first place' part is far more important, because it's far less likely to cause escalation of violence. Too many people will retaliate with bigger force in response to an attack, or a perceived attack. Making that easier doesn't seem the right way to go.
I do think that we need to be better about being polite and... human? to each other. I think this is in part up to the parents, but in part up to the community at large. No set of parents raises their kids in a vaccuum, and kids who are raised by a group of people tend to learn how to interact in human society much better than those who are raised by people who have no reason other than money to care about what is often far too many children in their care. And very few couples can afford to only have one parent work, which means that crowded daycare and schools are involved in a lot of how children are raised. It _can't_ be about just the parents, and I think that assumption is part of the problem. It's not an easy thing to teach, and very few people are tasked with teaching it.
Being told that something is true is far less effective than having it demonstrated, preferably by everyone a child comes in contact with. That's both hard and time-consuming, and most people's lives are crazy in just trying to survive day to day.
"I think what I am trying to exude is that what you do, your actions, have consequences. Our society is becoming overly liberal and allowing too many excuses so that people may not be held responsible for their actions. Therefore, you hear more reports of insanity and sensless shootings and bombings and beatings, etc. Nobody thinks they will be held accountable for their actions. It is always someone else's fault, someone else "drove" them to do it and therefore they are not guilty. Many times, this holds up in a court because the jury buys this crap!"
Sorry, using the word 'liberal' feels a bit like a copout. So I'm going to ignore that, and address what I think is relevent.
There are many facits to this problem, which is why it's not solved yet. Easy problems aren't problems.
Any human who believes that nothing is worse than what they are doing through is, by definition, at a point where they have nothing to lose. When someone has nothing to lose, they are capable of doing _anything_ that they think might change something or help or anything at all.
So sure. To some extent, other people probably _did_ drive them to it. Bullying. Abuse. Untreated mental illness. The list continues. If these things were addressed better, we would probably have fewer people committing crimes of the sort which are of the 'last stand' type. (this is relevant to within our country. We cannot do much about this kind of thing elsewhere, at least right now)
At the same time, yes. These are crimes, and pretty horrific ones. In many cases, the people who are in that kind of mental state where nothing is left to lose will kill themselves, as well. Because, by definition, that includes their own life, which is by that point pretty intolerable. (some people's 'couldn't get worse' only includes suicide. Others include homicide. Anger pointed inward versus anger pointed outward)
For those who do not kill themseves? Yes, if they are that badly off, they are a danger to themselves and to others. No question. Our jails are overflowing. Anyone sent to jail tends to come out a hardened criminal, even if they were not beforehand. Do you really want to send someone whose life has driven them to murder to a place which will teach them that their belief about things getting worse is just how life is, and they shouldn't expect better? Or, maybe, for those who might be possible to save, put them somewhere that they cannot hurt others or themselves, and heal them?
Wait, except that our mental hospitals are horribly underfunded. So where to put them? Apparently, jail. Where they will be trained how to be a hardened criminal. Or, I suppose, we could kill them. Since they weren't kind enough to kill themselves for us. Because clearly, the bullies and the abusers were right. They are worthless.
"I am sorry, but you killed someone, and unless they were trying to kill you first, you are going to hang! No more loopholes and ten to 30 years wasting the taxpayers money to find some way out. Tomorrow at sunrise, you go to the gallows! End of story. This is the message we need to propel so that lunatics have to think twice and three times before they try bombing someone. I don't think that they think that this world is real. I think that they believe it is never-never-land and they can do anything they please. It is our responsibility as citizens to enforce the notion that this is not true."
It's not that they think the world is not real.
For terrorists outside the country, it's probably that they think we are the symbol of ultimate evil because we killed someone they knew and loved. And they believe that by fighting evil, they will go to their version of heaven. (Christianity did this, too. Holy wars? Yeah.)
For those inside the country? The world is _intolerable_.
I have no doubt that there are actually people who are just sick and twisted and neither of these things are true. However, I believe that those are not the vast majority of people. Most of them? Damaged in some way, and we really have to address what is causing the damage in our kids.
(Why yes, I am in psychology. Well, ok, human-robot interaction. But psychology still invades my brain)
