Look who's talking.

Raising a freak like you hardly qualifies Momma and Papa Freeman as "Parents of the Year".

That's true, but stalking me and wasting your life as a masturbatory troll online hardly wins you any such parenting awards, either...

Why do we always say "parents?" That's such a fucking cop-out. It's like saying, "oh, yeah, there's a problem but not shit we can do about so, you know, oh well."

OK, what makes the PARENTS in this country so unable to raise their children properly?

Their parents?

mapleleaf's troll posts are far too scarce to be more annoying than entertaining. The responses are hilarious too. Good comeback obi.

My first thought is the parents as well. My second thought was our culture of violence. I was raised on violent movies, TV shows, and videogames, but not until I was fairly late in my childhood. I was gradually desensitized to violence beginning at a relatively mature age.

We're dealing with the very real and very scary psychological phenomenon of desensitization occurring at a premature age. I have serious misgivings about the government regulating violent media, but I do believe that as a whole the parents of this generation have been derelict in their duty to protect their kids from premature desensitization.

Scale, things in America are bigger, contrasted with ireland's 6 million population, we'd expect to wait 50 years before seeing an event like this IF you see 1 per year in America.

But that isn't the whole story, scale amplifies some effects, so it is possible to develop a culture with 100,000 members supporting one-an-other whereas in Ireland that would be 2,000 people who might have less support or extreme views, and thus meet each other (by chance) less often, and reinforce their extreme views less often.

This at least is my explanation for groups like the Westborough Baptist Church, as an example of extreme cultural variations. This can of course have positive extremes aswell, but your example is not a positive one.

How many 10 year olds are perfectly well and healthy? and what does health (mental, physical, emotional etc.) have to do with a complex system of cultural diseases. The idea that violent video games has no impact on individuals is often put forward, and I would agree, I managed to develop into a healthy adult regardless of the violence in any video games I played, but that doesn't mean all individuals will have the support (parents, family, teachers, and friends) which I had. TV, news reporting, glorification of warriors, all kinds of cultural factors (which are each amplified in the US, bigger and more extreme) each influence an individuals chances of developing to be a 'healthy' adult.

I don't think you can simply blame parent's or video games (there is violence in the news and in the streets) can account for this changes. Urbanization tends to increase the levels of stress and depression in individuals, illnesses of civilization where the only difference is who in your community is there to support you - this could be seen as a illness, a societal level illness, but it is far from simple. No one factor is to blame.

Also, who is Maple? i haven't seen anyone by that name around for some time...

Empathy and compassion are evaporating. People are extremely selfish. And conversely we become politically more and more unified all the while. I think as our political units become larger, violent tendencies that would at one time have been expressed as going to war are now expressed as murders.

This is my opinion, I've got nothing but intuition behind that.

I guess I retract my first sentence - if you think there haven't always been murderous young people you'd be wrong. I think so, anyway.

Bounce. This discussion needs to be played out

My first reaction to stories like this is "bet there's no dad in the home". I don't know about this particular case, but I'm right nine out of ten times (not a scientific poll, results may not be entirely accurate). Take the Sandy Hook event, we heard all about how the shooter stole his mom's guns and killed her before the rampage, but has anyone heard boo about the dad? Where the heck is HE? Somebody provided the sperm, right? I suppose not everything bad in the world happens because someone doesn't have a loving dad living at home with the woman he made the babies with, but the correlation of between messed up kids and absent father seems pretty high. So I'm going to stick my neck out and say gender matters, dads matter, we can tell ourselves otherwise and experiment with a generation or two of essentially fatherless people but I have a bad feeling that it's a social experiment that's not going to work out very well.

If you glorify violence in your society, implicitly or explicitly then maybe committing knife or gun crime is not such a big deal to a lot of people. Also when you associate your national identity with war and bombing and killing and torture and religious intolerance and racism who is to blame here.
If this was happening in Switzerland I'd be blaming the parents but when you live in a violent fucked-up society that a lot of people think is OK and normal should you be surprised when children mimic violent acts they have seen hundreds of times on tv or on their latest video game.
Maybe you need to re-define what an acceptable civilized society should be like rather over-simplify the situation by blaming just the parents.

Religious intolerance? I think you confuse America with the UK. The Brits are the ones who discriminate based on religion. We don't have terrorism in our streets between Catholics and Protestants like Ireland nor do we have a state sponsored and mandated official church like England. People here are free to worship or not worship whatever doety theu do or do not believe in as they see fit.

I was referring to intolerance towards Islam ...... not Christians squabbling.
I don't know if Yanks really understand the Irish situation as I'm not sure how it is played out in your media. As the USA have been long running financiers of the IRA I expect there is pretty fucked up thinking over there. A bit like Arab countries financing anything anti-US because they make assumptions that the US must be wrong because of their skewed anti-Islamic foreign policies.
It might be a big deal in the US but protests by bored unemployed teenagers on the streets of Belfast hardly constitutes religious intolerance in the UK, I can't work out on this one whether you're having a super-troll or you're just super-ignorant but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a troll.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21485731
Carlsberg don't do sectarian violence but I guess if they did it would look something like this. How many column inches will story this get in the US media?
Genocidal atrocities like this are all too common and it puts things into some perspective.
Maybe a couple of 10 year olds packing a loaded gun at school is not such a big problem if you tale a global overview.

I'm not saying it's a world-shaking story...

But it IS a bit disturbing that in the US shooters seem to get younger and younger...

And even if that weren't the case, it'd still be a creepy story.

no matter what your political stripes, you have to believe the media is largely responsible for this.

you have kids watching violent movies, playing violent video games and they think this is how you solve your problems

Santa, I just finished watching "Titus." (No joke, I'm lending it out and have to watch my copy before I can bear sending it out.)

Taymor tries that angle as well.

I don't buy it for the same reasons the play gives--

People were violent in Shakespeare's day...
They were violent in Roman days...
They were violent in Spartan days...

And kids were violent in all three--the difference?

Well, in truth, I think you're half right--

The media is responsible, but more due to its role than its content...

Gladiator fights and school games never substituted for actual parenting...
Going to the theatre never substituted for actual parenting...
They were all diversions of the day, NOT a full-time nanny service for in-attentive parents.

The TV has become Mommy and Daddy...and it's a Mommy and a Daddy (and, liberal as I am, an occasional spanking if the brat falls too-too far out of line) the kids need.

It's lack of parents parenting and not a surplus of Halo and action films I blame.

Well, your President murders poor defenseless INNOCENT people every day, you fucking dipshits.

Don't all good little americans want to be President?

Add to that, your moronic 2nd amendment, written by your racist founding fathers. The RIGHT to bear murder weapons, which MOST of you cowardly morons defend. An entire NATION of FAT GEORGE ZIMMERMANS. Pathetic cowards.

Ooooo, there are terrorists hiding under my bed. Quick Martha, get the bazooka.

It's not too difficult for the REST of us to figure out.

Keep watching Star Drek, obi-kike. I've given up trying to get you to read CHOMSKY; widely recognized as the leading intellectual of the last century(and the beginning of this one).

He's a JEW, shit-for-brains. That HAS to make him more appealing to you, no? You simple little cunt.

He's a Jew, so I have to like him?

So's Adam Sandler, and I'd argue forcing someone to watch any of his solo movies is akin to a war crime...

Have you EVER read anything that this man has written?

Have you EVER read Chris Hedges? These two men, Chomsky and Hedges, are among those who answer the questions about society which you REPEATEDLY pose on this Forum.

I'm trying to HELP you.

You DO read, right?

"So's Adam Sandler, and I'd argue forcing someone to watch any of his solo movies is akin to a war crime... " - abuse really brings out the best in you Obi but of course any of us who have watched an Adam Sandler movie know exactly what you mean :-)

Wait, mapleleaf likes Chomsky?

I'm a little shocked actually.

Obiwan you should actually read chomsky.

A Social Anarchist is still an Anarchist.
Pragmatic socialists must realize that the success of any business, organisation, club, government is based on how well it is managed not how well it is owned.
Of course some things should be run in the 'national interest'. Things such as the trains, the buses, water supplies, energy supplies, communication infrastructure, health care, police force & security services, etc.
We as Socialists should not look to stifle invention, innovation or scientific progress.
Libertarian dreamers confuse democracy and public accountability with Freedom but that is too simplistic a view.
Social progress must be our goal, not social egalitarianism.

When kids kill kids society is truly sick. I'm reminded of James Bulger, the toddler who was beaten to death by two 11 year olds then placed on the train tracks where he was cut in half by the train. That story still makes me sick to my stomach when I think about it. America is truly a fucked up place that something like that can happen here ... Where was that again? Violence-ridden New York or DC or Chicago? Or was it in the south, maybe Alabama if Georgia, some fucked up place like that? Possibly it was in one of the gun loving states, Arizona, Texas, something like that. Maybe someone can look up the story and remind me.

I maintain that I think that type of thing would happen at fairly constant rates worldwide and through time if it were systematically studied. Of course some places more than others because in some places it is easier to kill than in others, for example with access to guns or with a weakly functioning justice or with a heightened incentive to kill.

Have you read POWER SYSTEMS yet, Thucy?

...or DEATH OF THE LIBERAL CLASS by Chris Hedges?

definitely time for a break. My games are winding down and now my trolling is unsucessful, but I couldn't let this thread die without answering the question I posed, lest anyone actually thought it was commited in the US. James Bulger was killed in England. And to this date is, in my opinion, the most horrific crime committed by children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

Hey Thucy?.....