VIOLENCE AND PUBLICITY

“I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”

That was what Nikolas Cruz said on You Tube.  A man in Mississippi saw the Cruz statement and did what the FBI, President Trump, and the Justice Department encourages all of us to do.  He saw something and he said something about it – to the FBI.  He reported the Cruz You Tube statement that he intended to be a professional school shooter.

As it turns out, there were several notifications from the public to law enforcement about Nikolas Cruz.  Because no one listened almost 20 young people with all of the potential in the world were killed.  The FBI has apologized for its errors.  That statement made me ill.

The FBI contacted and interviewed the man in Mississippi and decided the information he provided “was not prosecutable” and investigated the matter no further.  Perhaps they were too busy trying to find Russian connections to Donald Trump.  They just didn’t have time to identify someone who felt powerless and chose to prove he wasn’t by killing students at a school  where he was once a student.

Alicia Blonde is a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and teaches many of its 3,000 students.  She was interviewed on Fox News last week.  She too made me ill as I listened to her words that made clear she is one of the blind progressive liberals who just cannot see the core of the problem causing violence in America.

“It’s guns.  It’s mental illness.”  No one seems to see the culture that has grown up around the world of technology.  Children no longer have real relationships with friends.  They have Facebook.  Writing a message to someone on a computer or a cell phone isn’t the same as playing games or eating dinner with them or telling them your real secrets.

We can identify the timing of the change in our culture from non-violence to violence.  It happened about the same time we removed God from our schools.  As long as there were firm moral guidelines in place that told everyone do unto others as we want done to us we didn’t have violence.  We had childhood exuberance… which if you are a male has been toned down by drugs.  The feminists who run our school boards want boys to become girls (easier to handle).  They have largely succeeded.

Like most progressives, Blonde seeks simple solutions to complex problems.  You would think she might have learned from her own background.  Her parents brought her to America when they fled Cuba where no one is allowed to own a gun.  She should know that guns are not the problem.  The people who wield guns are the problem.

She reminds me of the liberal Californians who move to other states because liberal policies ruined that state.  They immediately support political candidates who implement the same kind of policies that caused California to become a nightmare from which people seek escape.

Are people just stupid?

We have had guns in this country from the first day a Pilgrim set foot on American soil.  For almost 400 years we had no school shootings. We had very little violence until the last 50 years.

Facts like that do not penetrate thick skulls like Blonde’s and her progressive friends.  That piece of factual history does not cause the “let’s take the guns from people” crowd to ask “Why did we go from 1607 when Jamestown was founded until 1990s when the Columbine high school shooting in Littleton occurred started all this violence? What has caused school shootings to occur with periodic regularity ever since?

“What has changed and when did that change occur?”

There are several answers, but it is much easier for the limited logic skills of progressives to say the words “gun control is needed.”  It is a stupid, short-sighted, emotional and non-factual answer to a problem progressives seem incapable of grasping:  It’s called “human nature.”

Throughout history, people have reacted violently when very specific things happen.

  1. When government becomes abusive, a sense of tyranny permeates social attitudes.  When citizens observe government abusing their power it becomes acceptable in their minds to abuse others; especially for children.  They learn by example.  Government tyranny creates a social order dependent on a survival-of-the-fittest mentality.
  2. When firm guidelines of moral behavior are removed from the social order, people push the envelope as far as possible.  We see that in the Middle East today.  Because Sharia Law makes violent behavior acceptable – it’s okay for men to abuse women; it’s okay to lie to non-Muslims, it’s okay to kill non-Muslims.  Violence is part of their culture (if that can be called culture).

Has it ever dawned on anyone that in those specific environments tyrant leaders like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Syria’s Bashar Hafez al-Assad are the only form of power that prevents violence in Islamic societies?  They are not sufficiently advanced socially to handle freedom.  It is a world that encourages violence!

The schools where teachers, most of whom are liberal, teach the “beauties of this peaceful religion” would get fired if they taught the peaceful, loving and individualist philosophy of Jesus Christ.

  1. In a country where its founders wrote laws to govern the nation on the basis of their Christian faith and when the people of the nation are not served by strong churches they seek leadership elsewhere.  Because no one in their church tells them anything that might be considered politically incorrect and those who define what is incorrect are liberals, people ignore what is best and seek what is easiest.  Easiest and better are not the same.  Better requires a willingness to do the right thing rather than the easiest thing.  But to do the right thing, someone has to set standards of right and wrong.  The people can then begin to see things in black and white rather than amoral grey.  Without leadership, people seek gratification rather than fulfillment.  The latter requires commitment and character.  The former does not.
  2. People get used to “easy” rather than “better.”  But not all things are easy.  The loss of a national election that everyone thought would be easy to win hit hard people who have little character and who have been spoiled by getting what they want.  If they want something, they feel entitled to it.  They vote for people who promise the biggest something for nothing deals.  Thus, there is no character in the political forum, there is little meaningful character in the nation’s churches, and people will follow almost anyone who declares himself or herself to be a leader.  As Robert Mueller’s report evidences, they willingly (enthusiastically) follow those whose primary objective is to cause chaos among voters.

As was made clear last week, all of the people who showed up for pro and anti Trump demonstrations held in New York on the same day were following Russian disinformation specialists whose objectives included injecting violence into American elections.  So much for New Yorkers being more sophisticated than the rest of the country.

Character – and lack of it – matters.  In their frustration, people have become violent.   President Donald Trump is telling people with no character that they must develop it to survive – and it scares them to death.  It motivates violence among the mentally and emotionally unstable which clearly defines the personalities of liberal progressives.  They are so unreasonable in their thinking as to believe guns are the problem rather than the general lack of character that permeates our society.

What does a lack of character in politicians, corporate CEOs, and church leaders mean?  It means a willingness to sell one’s vote or products or religion on the basis of what people like rather than what people need.

I know it’s a hard word to deal with:  Truth.  They need truth!

What does a lack of leadership based on a lack of character cause?

It causes young people who feel powerless to seek a way to matter.  They aren’t in control because government has become God.  There is no greater drive in the physical world than the need to have your life matter.  You know you’ll get your picture on the front page of the newspaper if you pick up a gun to kill other people.

The truth is, if guns are not available those who feel they don’t matter will start fires to kill people.  Or they will use poison.  Or they will use explosives.  Why?  Because they gain fame which they think makes them matter.

The problem is not guns.  It is a society that is permeated by “me, me, me” and a total lack of character.  We have two generations raising children who haven’t got a clue as to what good parenting requires.  The result is a generation of spoiled brats unable to handle problems because their mommy solved problems for them rather than letting them learn life’s lessons.  Women who felt liberation meant getting what they wanted in life.  They decided they wanted a baby to love (me, me, me) and were never told that having a baby is about the baby. not them.

Since 2012, the number of people who have been killed in school shootings is 239.

On the other side of the coin, in 2010 alone, 230 people were shot while committing a felony.  From 2007 through 2011, the total number of firearms used for self-protection were 338,700.  That means at least a half-million lives were saved because people owned a gun.  That statistic comes from the New York Times.  According to the National Rifle Association, self-protective gun use is much higher.  The NRA states that just owning a gun can dissuade someone from attacking your person or your home.

So liberal logic goes like this:  To save 239 people from school shootings, we must sacrifice the 338,700 that saved themselves by having access to a gun.

They find that acceptable and enthusiastically support it.  They are idiots!

Every year guns have killed innocent people in the hands of those who have NOT been taught by their parents, schools, churches, politicians and business leaders how to develop character.  They have certainly been given no example of character outside of the home (and often inside the home as well).  They are not taught to stand up and fight for themselves in school yards.  Rather, they are told to adopt a fetal position and to wait for help to arrive.  They are taught that when they lose a contest they really are not losers but are winners for participating.  They are given a ribbon (which denigrates the value of the ribbons of the winners).  They are told they matter when, until they do something worthy of mattering, they matter little.  Kids believe what they are told.

And liberal progressives think guns are responsible for shootings rather than the frustrated people who cannot deal with their problems because no one has taught them what the rules are or about morality?

It is as if school shootings are being used as a tool to get the guns out of the hands of the people.  It is as if planned chaos is being used for the same reason… like tying up FBI agents’ time looking for proof that Donald Trump is guilty of something — anything — that involves the  Russians.  That, of course, would only happen if our Justice Department were trying to destroy the nation.

Get Trump and get our guns.  That’s all they care about.  And they will continue to let innocents be murdered because of their closed minds.  It’s the way they fight their battles:  Dirty and with lots of publicity sure to follow.

God bless the parents of the children and the adults and their families killed in Florida.  He is already blessing the dead.  We are all losers of the potential they brought to this life.

© 2018 Marilyn Barnewall – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Marilyn Barnewall: emembee@charter.net