Yesterday, we discussed how various people have used the massacre in Connecticut to call for everything from gun control to new social programs and prayer in school. Now, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a long advocate for censoring music and speech, added his own take: crackdown on violent video games. Lieberman described Adam Lanza of having a “hypnotic involvement” with the games and called on Congress to get involved.
Of course, it was not Lanza history of mental illness. Lieberman’s focus is on the games he played — the same games played by hundreds of millions of kids and adults who do not run to their local school to mow down students. However, Lieberman insists that “[v]ery often these young men have an almost hypnotic involvement in some form of violence in our entertainment culture – particularly violent video games. . . And then they obtain guns and become not just troubled young men but mass murderers.”
The basis for his concern with regard to Lanza? “Rumors” that he played the games. It was enough however to go to the floor of the Senate to call for yet another area of government regulation of speech and association.
Lieberman recognizes that the games seem to leave a surprising number of people in a non-murderous state, but that is just a fortunate side note: “Thank God, not all of them become murderers, but some of them do and we have to ask why.” I prefer to ask why we are talking about video games instead of the history of mental illness demonstrated by Lanza. And that is not even a rumor.
Regarding the above comment from Anonymous. There are going to be some who will argue the depth of his blackness since he is a RepubliCon and that party is no longer the party of Lincoln but is the party of Willard Romney et al. And if you dont know what et al is then you dont know nuthin bout birthin babies Miz Scarlet. This guy is not Richard Wright and he is not a black labrador like me.
Having cast themselves with the cement of cronyism, “campaign money”, dogma for the tribe, and skit for the people (enough for you)——
the duopoly will hardly change. Joe Lieberman is an outstanding example of this. When you are bought, you stay bought or die.
The most recent senatorial appointment confirms that renewal does not spring from within the party. I posted the news with the same theme previously. Now the NYTimes editorial side has gotten around to evaluating the situation. Note, he is the first black senator from the South since 1880.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/opinion/the-puzzle-of-black-republicans.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121219&_r=0
Op-Ed Contributor
The Puzzle of Black Republicans
By ADOLPH L. REED Jr.
Representative Tim Scott will become a South Carolina senator, but modern black Republicans have been more tokens than signs of progress.
Memo to all those glad to see the back of Holy Joe:
Hahaha, fooled ya. He’s never going away. That’s not his style, nor is it Obama’s, who keeps striving for the Nobel Prize for codependency. I mean if he could appoint Dana Perino, who has made a career out of knifing Obama, to a Federal commission? We’re all on the same team here, team America,by the force of my magical thinking, seems to be his motto.
Anyway, I expect, and have predicted for a couple of years, that Holy Joe will next be featured and, in his self important way not let us forget it, as Ambassador to Israel (or, in his case, also of Israel. You read it here first, unless you read it somewhere else. 😉
Its nice to know that this useless waste of space will be irrelevant in a couple of weeks. I imagine the sunday blab fests will bring him in occasionally when they need a “Democrat” to say bad things about Democrats but that will dwindle rapidly to a well deserved obscurity.
He is emblematic of how far a very small man can go in politics without a clue or an idea but the support of the wealthy and their enablers in todays media
My opinion Grand Theft Auto is one that should be banned or severely restricted…..
Change of personae between “merchants of death….” and “I have offered…”
Ariel said:
===========
“Ariel1, December 18, 2012 at 8:36 pm
Idealist707,
How would you explain Anders Behring Breivik, and how could any laws in Norway stop him? He certainly killed more than the 26 at Sandy Hook, so is Norwegian society sick, are their laws insufficient, or is it BTW of a gun culture?
I don’t, they don’t, it is the results of a deranged man in a peaceful society. Blame the American influence is my feeling.. Breivik was interested in creating a name for himself and for his lonesome cowboy movement (he could not even make the grade with the other fascists there.
All societies are sick due to violence. See my post of Swedish newspaper editorial expressing sorrow and frustration over the Swedes let the same violence culture take over here. And where did that culture come from, not from any country but the USA. Don’t try to weasel out when the world regards (ie the people) you as the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
The USA is the third most populous nation, Norway the 118th. Yet the greatest mass killing in the last 10 years was in Norway. Shouldn’t you spend your time on what is wrong with Norway? Was it an anomaly, or a portent of what will come? Is Norway the sickest nation now? What laws did they fail to pass that would have stopped ABB? Really, lay them out in detail; obviously Norway failed in having enough laws to stop him.
Norway in common with most nations has inadequate psych facilities.
Here in Sweden, routinely those needing ER psych help are given a days help and released to the streets. No treatment facility has room for them. ´Norway nor we have not seen this change in the world society (with internet sicknesses spread fast). And as to laying it out in detail, I suggest you start with your own. The culture is still so simple in our Nordic lands that people still find it relaxing to come to a low-stress land, where no opinions are so irritating as to cause fights, much less murder. There is lively dissent, but Swedish politicians CAN compromise, as can the Swedes themselves
This is a total non sequitur: ” Most of you seem aware that every guilty party: whether it is gun sellers, non-regulating politicians, Big drugs, Big psychotherapy, no taxes for psychotherapy, etc. etc—-the list is long and includes us and our fascination with violence. But each and everyone of us has realized that each “dealer” in death will be looking to keep his profit stream unaffected.” Could you put anymore mind-numbing shibboleths into one sentence? (I use Merriam-Webster.)
I hear you firing, but don’t know what you are aiming at. Please clarify by explaining what non-sequiturs and shibboleths you have detected. I simply made a list (my choice) of the merchants of death who are advantaged by this violent culture. I thought that a shibboleth was a passphrase to sort the enemy from tribesman.
Let’s say you’re right, so let’s shut down each group now. Permanently. But especially, and with fervor, no new drugs, no new insights in psychotherapy (I’m assuming you mean psychologists and psychiatrists, please correct me if you don’t), and however long your list. All are about, and only about, keeping their profit stream unaffected; my doctor talks to me all the time about how he can make me sicker so I’ll keep coming back. Dealers in death most certainly.
I have not offered any solution, only areas which need to be examined for their contribution to our sick society. Who and what needs to be changed is your problem. How and if you solve them will be top news around the world. I trust my doctor too, whatever that has to do with it. But he is an employee and not heading a large medical racket.
There are both private clinics, private practices and extremely good public hospitals. I just spent 5 days in one for an arythmi. I would not suggest that you part with yours, of course. But a viewing suggests that many life necessary functions in your society need examining, which many have already done in various studies.. And that is ALL parts of the medical system. insurance, caregivers, drugs as a cure for mental problems. A society where people at JTs banter the name of popular psychotropic drug names is a sick society.
Don’t wrap all your prejudices around this one event. Doing so won’t even rise to the occasion of a “loose mind”, not even “no mind”.
What you mean here is unclear. Please describe my prejudices.
Your jibes as to my mental capacity is yours to expound. But I need no defense from that loose accusation.
If you had had less anger and more willingness to discuss the substance, it would have been well. As it was, it was only a good exercise in handling angry diatribes/rants/attacks which have no purpose than to hurt. Had I stepped on your toes perhaps?
Feed society a truck load of violence in all its forms year on year then give the unstable ones access to automatic firearms and wonder why you have a problem.
Of course the unstable ones had access to a smorgasboard of firearms 40- 50 yrs ago and the same mass tragedies occurred and at the same frequency did they not? Oh wait. No they didn’t.
But, hell, we are a much more progressive and sophisticated society now with less crime and fewer people jailed. Oh wait. That’s not correct.
Joe Liberman, what a disappointment. Why the people of CT continued to send him to the Senate is beyond me. Out of touch and so committed to the right wing story that cannot see the guns and the havoc they create.
looks like all the right wingers who’ve been saying obama’s coming to get your guns for the last couple of elections may be getting their wish.
OMG i’ve got it
the president did this as a false flag operation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag_operation
as a pretext so he could go after real amerikan’s guns
ha, i knew it. it’s that chicago politics again.
derp
Lieberman represented a state that was very much at the heart of the firearms business, so his embrace of “video games” is understandable even without the moronic “hypnotic” rhetoric. this is the same guy who wants to term limit Seanators having done as much damage to teh Republic as possible in his 24 years at the well. The chat shows and the MSM love this guy but thank God no one else will have to take him seriously, anymore.
Violent video games suck.
i will be glad when Lieberman is out of Congress. I hope he does not get a job on some tv talk show. I saw his farewell speech to an empty hall on CSPAN. I am sick of this guy. He is sort of a secular preacher. I hope he does not have a dog that has to listen to him 24/7 when he is retired.
Warmongering chickenhawk “Droopy Dog” Lieberman advocates violence every day of his life. Let’s ban him.
Ol’ Joe is welcome to his opinion but I’m with Roger Ebert:
http://www.goldismoney2.com/showthread.php?40825-Roger-Ebert-on-mass-killings-Please-read
The original link to BoingBoing doesn’t work for me (can’t now log on to BoingBoing at all for the last 24 hours).
There’s a lot of blame to go around and the same players are brought up every time there’s a mass killing: games/movies, god (or lack thereof), mental illness. Still, a Venn diagram of things like ‘insane man/boy + guns’; ‘Godless, angry man/boy + guns’; ‘Violence de-sensitized (by games/movies) man/boy + guns’, seems to overlap with ‘guns’. Joe is barking up the wrong tree. Attention to first principles would have him look at guns, specifically the kinds and availability, first. But Joe is a politician to the bone and he knows who has the biggest and most powerful lobby of the players he could be looking at.
As an aside and a point to ponder: if sex-education in this country helps children to make responsible decisions about sex into adulthood, why wouldn’t gun-education do the same? Why shouldn’t that be a required course in middle school and High School?
I’ve repeatedly drilled into my children’s heads the proper handling a gun, the use of a gun, and the ramifications of using it well or poorly. Why, in this 2nd Amendment nation, don’t we do it in the schools? What, you teach them about it and they’ll do it more?
Eric,
“My point was that regulating guns would not have prevented this tragic occurrence and we should not politicize it. The guns were purchased legally, Conn has an assault weapons ban but the gun in question was not an assault weapon. Further, studies have shown that the federal ban on assault weapons did not reduce gun violence.”
Nice point avoiding all the hysterics.
If any of you missed it, my thrust was the American tendency to forget what happened even a decade or so ago. Tipper Gore, and really you think Al ignored his wife, went after violence in lyrics in music, yet that is somehow different from Lieberman and video games?
You want to repeat history, be my guest.
Idealist707,
How would you explain Anders Behring Breivik, and how could any laws in Norway stop him? He certainly killed more than the 26 at Sandy Hook, so is Norwegian society sick, are their laws insufficient, or is it BTW of a gun culture?
The USA is the third most populous nation, Norway the 118th. Yet the greatest mass killing in the last 10 years was in Norway. Shouldn’t you spend your time on what is wrong with Norway? Was it an anomaly, or a portent of what will come? Is Norway the sickest nation now? What laws did they fail to pass that would have stopped ABB? Really, lay them out in detail; obviously Norway failed in having enough laws to stop him.
This is a total non sequitur: ” Most of you seem aware that every guilty party: whether it is gun sellers, non-regulating politicians, Big drugs, Big psychotherapy, no taxes for psychotherapy, etc. etc—-the list is long and includes us and our fascination with violence. But each and everyone of us has realized that each “dealer” in death will be looking to keep his profit stream unaffected.” Could you put anymore mind-numbing shibboleths into one sentence? (I use Merriam-Webster.)
Let’s say you’re right, so let’s shut down each group now. Permanently. But especially, and with fervor, no new drugs, no new insights in psychotherapy (I’m assuming you mean psychologists and psychiatrists, please correct me if you don’t), and however long your list. All are about, and only about, keeping their profit stream unaffected; my doctor talks to me all the time about how he can make me sicker so I’ll keep coming back. Dealers in death most certainly.
Don’t wrap all your prejudices around this one event. Doing so won’t even rise to the occasion of a “loose mind”, not even “no mind”.
Lieberman is full of crap as usual.