A friend of mine messaged me in a somewhat panicked state a few months back. She is a professor at a university in Texas and her state was about to pass a “right to carry” bill that would allow concealed firearms on her campus. Wisconsin had recently passed a right to carry law that allowed for similar things and she wondered how it worked by us. I understood why she was worried, as I also had concerns about students packing heat in my class. However, the classes I taught were pretty benign. I didn’t imagine a kid pulling out a … Continue reading Murder-Suicides: Stop giving these tools such good tools

(Note: I had this in the hopper last week, but out of respect for the Katrina posts, I decided to sit it out. This was what I had, with a recent rewrite of the back end. — Doc) As I drove through the Fox Valley last night, I passed a local car dealership with three giant U.S. flags that flew at half-staff. Truth be told, I can’t remember the last time they were at their full height, due to the wide array of mass shootings and homicides we have experienced lately as a country. I moved past the dealership, onto … Continue reading “Fuck You” Nation

Floyd Matson and Ashley Montagu wrote the book “The Dehumanization of Man” back in the early 1980s, attempting to explain the way in which narcissism and lack of social awareness were deadly in ways that we could never see coming. Anyone who has spent a minute in a debate tournament over the past three decades has been subjected to the “Dehum Card” that calls dehumanization the “Fifth Horseman of the apocalypse.” However, a deeper read of the book reveals many other subtle explanations that have long gone ignored, including the analysis of the “common man” they refer to as “Edmund.” … Continue reading Raging at Emptiness.