Hardkill

But why has the US government always provided military support to tyrannical regimes in third world countries instead of to possible resistance or revolutionary groups in those countries who would be able to have enough power to overthrow their authoritarian leaders? After all, hasn't the US been constantly trying to promote democracy, freedom, individual rights, and equality around the world?

Many people in the US, especially those who are Republican or conservative, always say that if you don't have a job or don't have a house or aren't as successful or as wealthy as you want to be, then blame yourself. While there is a lot of truth to that, at the same time I know that at the same time that the whole system has definitely always been rigged against racial minorities, the poor, the working class, and even the middle class. Then again, all of these successful self-gurus, including Leo himself, seem to imply that almost anyone in any developed part of the world can become a millionaire, successfully run a business, or become a successful highly-educated professional, own a good home, be well-off with a family of your own with enough hard work, self-education, taking full ownership, personal responsibility, being a fighter, being a creator, having patience and discipline, having a strong work ethic, having a positive and strong mindset, constantly putting in the effort yourself on self-actualization for life, etc. Exceptions to this include homeless individuals who are mentally ill, people who are dying, victims who have been kidnapped or enslaved illegally, or other people with severe psychological or physical disabilities that literally prevent them from living any kind of normal functioning life. If all of that is true then why do we actually even need to worry about the growing economic inequality in America? Why does America need to bother to seriously re structure its economy, education system, and laws, etc. if almost anyone in America can just put in the work themselves to get from rags to riches?

I've already made posts on different parts of this forum about this crisis my country has been having since 2020. These mass shooting are really scaring me and making me wonder where I should live, where should I work, where should I meet new people and date girls, and much more. I know that there's no such thing as 100% safety, but I feel like that would be such a cliche considering how crazy the gun violence in America seems to have gotten. I wonder if I should buy a gun to protect myself considering that military, law enforcement, and the rest of the government have been failing to get a handle on these mass shootings. How do most people stay calm and hopeful in such times?

But I don't want to live in a rural area of the country. Every part of Rural America, especially in heartland and the South, are dying dumps. Compared to urban or even suburban areas, rural areas have much more limited access to government funded services, don't have a lot of new people including not a lot of new women to meet, much less job opportunities available, and have a lot more ignorant people with archaic and outdated views of the world. According to credible statistics, as a collective, people in rural areas die much sooner than people in urban and suburban areas. Plus, there's much less exciting things to do in a small town that's in the countryside than in a big metropolitan area. Actually, if I am not mistaken, according to other legitimate statistics, the inner suburban areas of the US are the safest parts of the country. I tend to agree with that as I used to live in a privileged suburb, which was very safe and comfortable to live in.

I am getting very upset and very scared about these unusually high amount of mass shootings that have been happening over the past few years now in the US. It seems like the Democrats in Congress will never have the votes to ban assault weapons and pass many other gun control laws like the kind that Canada and other first world countries have. Plus, the courts have always been stack too heavily in favor of the Republican Party and have been bribed by every extreme right-wing mega donor in the US, especially with the US Supreme Court. A lot of times, I am not even sure if it okay to go to a night club or bar like in Vegas or go to any city or rural part of the country. The last time a federal assault weapons ban was passed in America was in 1994 with the Clinton Crime Bill or Biden Crime Law. Listen to what Michael Moore just recently said about how we have to stop this gun violence madness:

Since 2020, the US has had a record number of mass shootings per year, especially in urban areas of the country. Plus, there's a lot more gang violence in cities than in suburban or rural areas of the country. I remember seeing the Las Vegas Strip mass shooting on the news in 2017. It's made me very hesitant to ever try cold approaching in a big city such as Vegas, LA, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, or Phoenix. Are cities no longer safe places for even meeting any new kinds of people?

So, there's nothing that we can do about these mass shootings? Innocent people in the US are all at the mercy of this kind of stochastic terrorism? This gun madness is getting absolutely out of hand!

These are all valid points, but is there possiblt some way that we could protect ourselves better from these very random shootings which have been occurring at such an unusually high rate since 2020?

But isn't worrisome that the mass shootings have gotten to historic levels over the last few years?

Very scary.

Why such differences?

So, then what the hell happened with the one in Las Vegas?

I see. Wait, but Western Europe, Australia, and Canada are significantly more secular than the US. So, why does the US not as a collective hold more religious and family values than other 1st world countries do?

and why doesn't Canada, Europe and Australia have as much as of a toxic social family culture as America does? Why have they never glorified guns like America has? What about the fact that western Europe and Australia have an even worse drinking problem than the US?

There has been growing criticism of the US Supreme Court and the court already has a 40% approval rating, which is even lower than the approval rating of either Biden or Trump or what Obama himself ever had. Justices Thomas and Alito have been the most extreme right-wing judges on bench and have been totally corrupted by money in politics. There is growing real evidence that Clarence Thomas himself has been bribed for many years by a despicable right-wing megadonor named Harlan Crow to always rule in favor of conservative and Republican attorney general, regardless of the merits of the case being brought to SCOTUS. Thomas's wife, who a radical right-wing freak, also has been very complicit and tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-elena-kagan-rejected-bagels-clarence-thomas-paid-vacations-2023-5 Here's the scrutiny that Alito has been getting after constantly judging every case in favor of conservatives and Republicans as well:

The US has had a record number of mass shootings per year since the year 2020, especially in many cities in the country. Plus, there's a lot more gang violence in urban areas than in suburban or rural areas of the country. I remember seeing the Las Vegas Strip mass shooting on the news in 2017. It's made me very hesitant to do business in a big city such as Vegas, LA, New York, Chicago, Austin, Houston, or Phoenix. Are cities no longer safe places for trying to start a business or even work in a city in the US?

and why is all of Western Europe much less violent even its population size is close to that of the US? Why does Canada, Europe, and Australia not have a mental health crisis and as much of an extreme political social divide?

Well, they say that it's much less violence and murderous in Canada. I am now getting more afraid of practicing cold approach or meeting new people in a big city like Vegas, LA, New York, Chicago, Austin, or Phoenix or even in any urban area in the US for that matter.

Then what kind of security would stop mass shootings? What if we showed people very graphic images of disturbing massacres caused by gun violence? Why couldn't that appeal to the humanity of enough Americans to the point that it causes a nationwide movement to stop this madness like the way that Dr. King, Malcolm X, other civil rights leaders, and the graphic images shown on television of black people being brutally harm and killed during the 60s spurred the nationwide civil rights movement to push Congress to end all Jim Crow Laws once and for all?

I don't see how better security will work to dramatically reduce the amount of murders from mass shootings. The military and law enforcement apparently have already tried, but have failed. Btw, I remember when you said in your "When Does The Left Go Too Far?" series that you now see the point in the idea of bearing arms in order to protect yourself from a possibly intrusive government. With all due respect, I absolutely disagree with that point you made on that. Most people in Canada, western Europe, Australia, and Israel believe that such a notion is ridiculous, atomizes societies, and unnecessarily undermines the much needed trust in the infrastructure of our governments. This is what an article from the Israel Times said about their philosophy of gun ownership and the state: “The United States is deeply heterogeneous, and deeply aware of its heterogeneity, and that fosters deep distrust generally,” explained Daniel Correa, who teaches law at the University of North Texas at Dallas. “There is a triple fear that drives” the American gun debate, he said, and “every one of these fears is internal to the US, not external. Right-of-center people are afraid of the federal government becoming so powerful that states can’t retain their sovereignty. Among libertarians, there’s a fear that government generally, whether state or federal, will run amok unless citizens can protect themselves from it. The third level is the distrust people have toward each other in the United States.” Those fears are not limited to conservatives, Correa said. “The Democratic base has the same type of fear, but tries to promote the idea that government is good, or at least capable of being good, so people don’t need to be armed the way governments are armed — you don’t need AR [assault rifles] or tanks, but only the bare minimum for personal defense, like a handgun.” Since the state is the danger, American laws don’t just permit owning guns; they actually forbid the government from tracking those guns. For example, the so-called “Dickey Amendment” passed by the US Congress in 1996 (PDF of the law, amendment appears on p. 245) ensures that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” As columnist Charles Blow noted in The New York Times this week, that amendment denied the CDC millions of dollars over the past two decades for the study of the public health aspects of mass shootings and gun violence generally. Tourists seen at a shooting range in Gush Etzion, in the West Bank, during a training session on fighting terror. April 8, 2015. (Gershon Elinson/FLASH90) That was “disastrous,” Blow argued, because “we now propose policy prescriptions largely in an information vacuum.” But isn’t that the point? Information is power, and the gun fight in America is really about where power resides in society, about statist impulses vs. individualistic ones — competing with each other to shape the ethos of American society. The federal government is literally forbidden under law to track gun sales because knowing where the guns are would make it possible to take them away. ...... It doesn’t take much imagination to grasp how, in the aftermath of the Civil War, southerners might have come to see the right to bear arms as a kind of rallying cry in defense of their states and local cultures against the imposing Yankee-led federal juggernaut, or how many northerners and African Americans might have come to view gun ownership as a check on the efforts by those very states to rob individuals of their hard-won freedoms. Israeli Jews, meanwhile, lie deep within the liberal Democratic camp when it comes to gun control. They believe the state can and should do good. Despite their deep social and political divides, Israeli Jews maintain a deep and abiding faith in their shared fate and communal solidarity. After the Jewish experience of the genocidal 20th century, the Israeli state represents for them an instrument of collective action that literally rescued them from oblivion. A powerful state is thus synonymous with both national security and personal safety." https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to-israel-on-gun-laws-is-dishonest-and-revealing/

Why does Canada and every other 1st world country not have anywhere near as much violence as the US does?

But isn't that like saying that "You can't put that toothpaste back in the tube" with economic regulations because once you give businesses such economic freedom you won't be able to take such freedom away from them? Also, how come Clinton and Biden successfully passed the 1994 federal assault weapons ban? Also, why currently has Biden and other pragmatic centre-left Democrats like VP Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Booker, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and many others like them have been strongly urging Congress and the rest of the US government to pass many gun control laws that take away assault weapons and possibly more? Hell, even Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democratic congressman has wanted to ban assault weapons:

Yeah, I am surprised that this game didn't have much more realistic graphics.

and yet Weinstein ultimately paid a profoundly grave price for all of the women he molested, assaulted, and raped committed. Michael Jackson died from drug overdose at a relatively young age. Funny enough, he actually died at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center at the same time and day when I happened to be in the Eli Broad Art section of the UCLA campus for this one summer lecture class I took on Modern Art films.

OP, have listened to Noam Chomsky’s on take on the difference between both parties? Even though both parties have been captured by businesses interests, then Republican Congress Party has always served corporations and the top 1% of Americans much more so than the Democratic has. Democratic at least has gotten much more good things done for the good of the country by far the GOP. Obama became the first truly liberal president we had in terms of policy since Nixon’s presidency from 1969-1974. Furthermore Biden has arguably now gotten even more liberal policies done than Obama did and has accomplished more good if not great things for the country compared to any other president since JFK/LBJ in the 1960s. Unlike most Democrats, most Republicans, especially the MAGA Republicans just keep trying to destroy our country by constanly passing tax cuts and deregulation policies for the rich, deregulation policies that destroy the environment and worsen climate change, undermining people’s social security and healthcare rights, anti abortion laws, pass racist and undemocratic voter suppression laws. Democrats as a whole have continued to fight for and expand people’s freedoms, racial equality, social justice, democracy, pro-environmental policies, taxes on the rich and corporations, healthcare rights, and so on and so forth. Right now, the Republican Party has been perceived as being more out of touch, anachronistic, and tyrannical, than the Democratic Party.