Open Letter To The Delusional

The inane clowns self-righteously bloviating "This must stop!" (See: The Internet, Everywhere, & Moderation, Calls for ...) in reference to the most recent evidence (that will be denied w/ every beat of their lying hearts) that American "exceptionalism" mostly means you all are a nation of twisted mass-murderers would do well to read this letter from the paper of record.

Violence, as American as Apple Pie

Published: June 08, 1990

To the Editor:
Anthony Lewis's column ''A Rage to Kill'' (May 18), on the death penalty in the United States, touches on a cultural attitude that appears in many areas of American life, and not just the popular sentiment about criminal justice. An obsession with killing appears in the popularity of movie violence, the fascination with contact sports (and the injuries they produce), the use of the word ''competition'' as a euphemism for bullying (or just general nastiness), the mistreatment of animals (for example, ''road-kills,'' ''rattlesnake roundups'' dogfights) and in the emphasis given to violent events in the news media.

All of these are symptoms, but what is the disease? Part of the answer might be that the people who love violence as adults learned it as a way of life during childhood: psychological studies indicate that those who were abused as children tend to be abusive as parents. One might ask, ''What does this have to do with ordinary people?'' The answer is that one probably cannot draw a clear-cut line between abuse and normal discipline. As a result, it is conceivable that an attitude euphemized as ''being tough,'' or ''making a man of him'' (one's child) may pass from one generation to the next and eventually become a cultural norm.

This implies that we have developed a culture of violence, which might be traceable to the pioneer experience of living in a rough, new land. One wonders how the stress of living on the frontier might have affected the behavior of parents toward children and, ultimately, the attitudes of subsequent generations to life in general. When 12 families of new settlers live stuffed together in a cabin in the middle of the Great Plains in the dead of winter, one would expect some long-lasting psychological trauma as a result (see ''The Old West,'' U.S. News and World Report, May 21, 1990). Circumstances like this must have occurred repeatedly since the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607.

Another component of this background might be the secularization of Calvinist values, in the form of such notions as restraint (especially of emotional expression), stoicism, the elect (good guys) versus the nonelect (bad guys) and of extremely stern (often physical) family and community discipline as virtues in their own right.

A third element underlying our proclivity for anger and its violent expression would appear to be frustrated expectations: the disappointment of not obtaining one's dreams has affected all generations of newcomers to America. Moreover, deferred dreams appear to be linked to periods of social unrest and violent incidents, at least since the Civil War.

We have a population whose cultural experience has produced generations of anger with only a few socially acceptable outlets, most of which have been physically violent, even when they are supposed to be ''fun.'' Moreover, everyday experience here in New York City suggests that violence may be contagious, through retaliation or by imitation.

Perhaps we are still too close to our origins to be free of their detrimental effects. We also appear convinced that the attitudes resulting from our beginnings are necessary for success, and as a result, we're not willing to change (yet).

LEONARD BROWN
Brooklyn, May 22, 1990

Twenty fucking yrs. ago, & the only change is that the New Media Universe has given every twisted fuck of an All-American murderer an almost-infinite smörgåsbord of possible delusions on which to feed their blood-lust.

Scab of A Nation, Driven Insane Dep't.:

Cop kill a creep/Pow! Pow! Pow!We simply can not play enough of either of these swingin' numbers, whose message strikes close to the heart or other vital organ (Duck!) even today!