What Do You think Would Lower the Violence Level in the US?

Where does it begin?
Why is there so much of it?
What can be done about it?

What do you think?

1/13/2011

Alice..

As I said in the previous post , Murderers, Pedophiles
and Rapists should never, ever be let out of prison! They
keep doing the same crime again and again....

Now for those who have committed minor offenses
they should be put in a chain gang to work from sun up to sun
down I think this would make them think twice about doing
crime.

Cheers..Joe

Where does it begin?

It begins in impoverished homes in crowded neighborhoods with historic gangs, drugs and crimes in place.

Why is there so much of it? So many desperate people who work low pay jobs, two and three at a time without good child supervision. Schools that serve impoverished neighborhoods are often dangerous places to work and provide inferior educations.

What can be done about it? Diversified housing that does not create ghetto's; jobs near place of residence and child care on the job; increased tutorial assistance and employer/employee participation in children's education.

Create hope for children and they will grow up with dreams instead of guns.

I agree with dkchristi

Quote :

Create hope for children and they will grow up with dreams instead of guns.

Look at the intolerance on this panel - Crop Circles are as real as water - but the mention of them brings out the worst in you!


Lorraine Evans, Kingdom of the Ark: That Startling Story of How the Ancient British Race is Descended from the Pharaohs - same thing!

Have any of you studied Crop Circles – No!

Have any of you read Lorraine Evans, Kingdom of the Ark – No!

Still the intolerance level, and the willingness to argue is there - and you wonder about others?

Look at home first

James
/

James,

You cannot be serious. Discussions about crop circles and not having read a book (that holds absolutely no interest for the majority of people) is not comparable with the level of violence in American society. Plesase compare like with like.

dkchristi wrote:

Create hope for children and they will grow up with dreams instead of guns.

I recall a time when my all my nephews would do is watch The Simpsons on television all day long and play violent computer games on Nintendo.

Then I introduced them to the wonders of the natural world. A picture of my allotment pond from 2003:




And there's more on space, the earth and the universe:

http://www.astroscience.org/abdul-ahad/AAInstitute.htm

I believe the DNA of people in the United States carries a violence gene. The country was born in violence, grew in violence and gained profits from violent treatment of human beings. Violence is tied to guns and masculinity. Every little boy wants to have a gun; if you don't give him one, he makes one from twigs.

For my son's second birthday, unthinking friends gave him a box of plastic machine guns modeled after The Godfather movie. You can guess where those went!

Violence begins at homes with parents abusing substances, screaming at children and each other, hitting each other, giving punishments that are excessive. It continues in the community through bigotry and intolerance. It runs through schools with bullying and gangs to make up for parents too busy trying to make ends meet to provide the time young people need with positive adult role models.

Violence is enhanced by the profits from violent shows, games, etc. How many shows on television are violence oriented? CSI, Law and Order, Defenders, Southland, and it goes on and on. Same with movies. Even a beautiful movie like Avatar had to incorporate a violent segment to attract a full audience.

I love science fiction. I start watching a movie with some very creative, futuristic ideas and kapow, I'm in the middle of a futuristic gang war or a war between planets. Isn't it possible that we may find peace in other worlds? That they may be so advanced our little violent planet looks stupid to them?

We are a product of our culture. Our culture will need to change if we wish to reduce violence.

Our President spoke well. It's time to be a little kinder in all our communications; our behavior will be seen by our children who model us. It will honor that little girl who had so much life ahead of her and her grieving parents to create the United States of America in which we may all be proud.

When Dave was a child, I didn't allow him to play with guns. When he was 14, he and his neighborhood buddies went to the Army Surplus store and bought camouflage jumpsuits, and to the toy store for automatic water guns that could shoot long, multiple squirts while they made a rat-tat-tat sound. Then they went to the woods behind the subdivision and played war games.

I discussed this on the Joseph Campbell boards, when someone started a thread about my book, and we had some good discussions going about the warrior archetype. Most of the guys there agreed that its hard-wired into their systems, and some of those guys were from Europe, Africa, and Asia as well as the US. They are also all pacifists today.

The need to be able to protect and assert ourselves is also, I believe, a part of a woman's animus, to use a Jungian term. Warrioring is a necessary part of our psyches - make or female. We need to accept that part of ourselves, and not attempt to repress it, if we are to control it.

Just me.

And, BTW, Dave and I have talked about those war games in recent years. Only one of that group went into the military. None of them today approve of violence as a means for solving problems.

Ann

I think children are influenced by what they view. If their role model is a tough character, they try to emulate that person's behavior. I believe that most kids have a role model. In days past, it was the father, mother, uncle or aunt. Today they are TV characters. TV shows of violence have a great impact. It is often portrayed as a "way of life" and therefore something to be copied.
How many of us grew up watching Star Trek? To go where no man has gone before, to seek new worlds, etc. And, the voyage of the Star Ship was one of peace. They were not to engage in any violent action except in self-defense. Just because the aliens they encountered were different, it didn't make them enemies. The fictional adventures were entertaining and educational.
Computer games of violence is not something positive. The home is still the place whre children learn how to behave and how to live. Parents cannot shun this responsibility.
Courses in parenting may be a good idea.

I think children know the difference between pretend and really doing a thing. Our son played with toy guns and our grandsons do now too.

The rules were always guns are not to shoot people.

Children should see or feel no violence. I like Abe's parenting class idea.

Maybe America should work on gentler issues such as humanitarian relief, health care, etc and forget the wars. We need to refocus.

Everyone should become a Hippy and start hugging trees then progress onto each other.
But keep off the drugs.

When I was growing up, where I was growing up, movie cowboys and soldiers were the heroes the boys emulated. Killing bad guys was what the heroes were supposed to do. During the Vietnam Era, they learned it wasn't easy to tell who the bad guys were.

Alvin Toffler (Future Shock) said that there were three means for obtaining power: violence, wealth, and information. Without an education or access to information, without real property or money, violence becomes the only source people have to gain some form of control over their lives.

The tendency toward violence is not so much about what one experiences growing up as it is about feeling powerless in ones current situation and unable to gain any sense of control over ones life and/or future choices.

The world we grew up in no longer exists, and old rules don't always apply. The wealth is being siphoned away from the majority. I recently read that 90% of the wealth today is controlled by 10% of the people.

The increase in violence is about an increase in frustration over the chaos and the loss of the means to satisfy needs.

Ann

All one has to do is look at the demographics of the Congress and those in power in Washington, D. C. They have the best health insurance in the world, the best retirement packages, the most perks, and a lifestyle among their peers that bears no resemblance to the people they represent.

Yet, they see cutting costs as freezing the salaries of government workers (not their own by any chance....) reducing grants for education and workforce services, repealing health reform (after all, their health insurance is 100% of their medical costs), reducing Social Security (they don't need it - yet, take their check when it comes) and the loss of needed services to those whose incomes are steadily on the decline continues as a matter of faceless numbers.

As the great divide in income gets greater and greater, the frustrations among those with the least are also greater. When there is a sense of powerless among the former middle classes, what does someone in poverty see as possibilities for them? When school teachers are in line with them for food stamps, to what can they aspire? When unemployment insurance runs out and no jobs are available, how do they feed their families? Keep warm?

To answer your question ...
Maybe more moments like the one in the video I posted.

I hope so, JoElle,

Thanks for jogging our minds about the video.

On a tangent to lowering violence levels. I just read an article that John Roll, the judge who was killed in Tucson, had allowed a lawsuit to go forward where 16 illegal immigrants sued an Arizona rancher. Apparently thousands of illegals had been crossing on his property for years, vandalizing, killing his cattle, leaving trash behind, etc., and he held this group at gunpoint until border patrol agents arrived. They're suing, saying he violated their civil rights.

LOL. Good riddance to this POS (the judge, not the rancher).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/?page=2

LC wrote:

On a tangent to lowering violence levels. I just read an article that John Roll, the judge who was killed in Tucson, had allowed a lawsuit to go forward where 16 illegal immigrants sued an Arizona rancher. Apparently thousands of illegals had been crossing on his property for years, vandalizing, killing his cattle, leaving trash behind, etc., and he held this group at gunpoint until border patrol agents arrived. They're suing, saying he violated their civil rights.

LOL. Good riddance to this POS (the judge, not the rancher).

[url=http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/?page=2

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/09/16-illegals-sue-arizona-rancher/?page=2[/quote[/url]]

No, not good riddance. The judge should not have been killed.

Allowing illegal immigrants to sue a rancher whose property they continually violate doesn't contribute to a lowering of violence levels.

LC wrote:

Allowing illegal immigrants to sue a rancher whose property they continually violate doesn't contribute to a lowering of violence levels.

Neither does shooting the judge who allowed the lawsuits.

Post deleted by the author.

dkchristi wrote:

Allowing a lawsuit to go forward means that it fell within the jurisdiction of the laws under which it was filed; it does not mean that the judge had an opinion regarding the outcome. He is first a human being; his activity as a judge is a career that he performs. He may or may not agree with every element of the law that he enforces. He deserved life, the same as you and me.

Surely, LC, you did not mean that his death was a good thing. His death was a terrible tragedy. Regardless of his work or his political positions, he was a human being in a public place. I think you should rethink that post and it should be pulled if that was what you meant. A post with that type of thinking is just the vitriol that our President has asked that we put aside to become a kinder and better nation.

Thank you DK. I agree with your position.

Hate is a vicious taskmaster that sucks away the truth. Balance of this post deleted by the author.

Quote :

Wake up. The "illegal" problem is over. All that remains is the die hard bigotry that remains in the language - ...

If we want to talk about someone's citizenship status, let's say, "Mexican people who have come into this country in search of employment without following the rules for citizenship or green cards."

LOL. What a crock of shit, and I'll leave it at that.

1/15/2011

This is even getting too hot for me to handle !
Put it this way anyone and I mean anyone if
your from Europe, South America, Haiti, Mexico
Eastern block nations , etc. if you come here through
the back door you should start all over again, this ticks
me off because my great-grand parents came here through
Ellis Island the hard way ! They had to earn the English language
the hard way , they had to learn the customs the hard way.
So if anyone wants to come here and be apart of the American
large family, please do it the right way not the wrong way.
Proud 4th generation German American...Oh yes some French and
English thrown in...


Cheers..Joe