Author: Tom Fitzpatrick

Life

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I think this is a fair question.

If more restrictive gun laws are impossible to obtain in the present political environment, which is about the only thing everyone can agree to, maybe we can get better mental health care instead. Since many Republicans describe mass killings as a mental health problem, let them prove their concern with better and easier to afford mental health care. Now I don’t buy that gun violence is just a mental health problem but I do agree that anyone who goes into a school and kills 4th graders has a mental health problem.

What causes young men to become a mass killer? Is there anything we as a society can do to stop them? Yes, if we can, ban the type of guns that allow this type of carnage to happen. But there is also a point to addressing the mental health issues that prompt these massacres. These men still are potentially dangerous to others and themselves, if possible, they should be dealt with before they do something horrible.

I don’t understand mass killers. I don’t think anyone does. This isn’t a jealous husband who breaks from the news of his wife’s infidelity. It isn’t a greedy child knocking off his parents because he can no longer wait for them to die to get his inheritance. But to kill a stranger for no particular reason other they are in the class room the killer decided to invade that day, is baffling and frightening. And, most importantly, it is a mental health concern. If there is a way to stop these men before they snap, then we should try to identify them and prevent them from moving forward with their mad plans.

This obviously means that the present mental health system is failing to stop mass killers. The painful truth is American mental health is almost exclusively reactive — we wait until someone breaks before addressing mental health issues. Then we collect the pieces and, if there is enough of a person still there, we work on putting them together again.

A reactive mental health approach is never going to stop mass killers. We would have to take a proactive approach to mental health something are system is in no way prepared to do. Our legal system and our mental health care system would need to be overhauled considerably in order to stop these young men before they begin to shoot. We would have to be able to assess people, take control of their lives and let them know their future freedom is contingent on them changing their behavior. In order to do this, we would also need a place to house our potential killers, drugs and therapy to help change their behavior, and professionals to take on this task of managing the person’s mental health.

This is an enormous and costly task. But, given the array of mental health issues our country face besides mass killings — drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, spousal abuse to name a few, the cost would be worth it in numerous ways — less time off from work, less suicide, less emergency room visits, less homeless people in public spaces and, of course, less mass killings.

Therein lies the problem. Money. We are always looking at the costs of doing something right and saying it is too expansive. We can’t afford it. Imagine all the money that Ulvade cost — all of the police resources, emergency room resources, an entire school suddenly unusable, grief stricken parents unable to work, tearing school down because nobody wants to use it, building a new school to replace the torn down school, health care for the wounded who survived, the funeral expenses, and the psychiatric care for the teachers, students and parents. Some Republicans are advocating “hardening” of the schools in order to make it more difficult for mass killers to attack. This would mean that every school in the United States would have to be physically altered. Think of all of those costs and then figure the costs of better mental health care and see which would be cheaper.

The important thing here is that some Republicans are identifying mass killings as a mental health problem. If they are identifying this as a problem, they also need to provide a mental health solution. They can’t say that mental health is a problem and do nothing about it. They are on the hook for at least a discussion of how to get better mental health so these killings don’t happen. Perhaps we can get better mental health care for everyone in the process. It may not be the answer some of us are looking for but something worthwhile could potentially come out of this.

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My book club read Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book. The book was about a woman who travelled to medieval England around the time of the Bubonic Plague. Part of our discussion was about whether we would travel to the past if we had the opportunity. I expressed no desire to go back in the past. My friends understood my concern, no one wanted to live permanently in the past, but they were perplexed that I wouldn’t want to see how people lived in the past. I gave it more thought because everyone else seemed to be curious enough to want to see the past. After giving it a think, I can confirm that I have absolutely no desire to see how people lived in the past. I am happy to read about it from a safe distance.

First, and this, I believe, is the most important point here, I am not falling for this is only a short visit to the past and that we will be able to bring you back. No problem. Trust the technology. Having read a few time travel books in my time, the whole point of them is people getting trapped in the wrong time. You can’t have a time travel book without having a time travel problem. For me, it is definitely not worth the risk just to see people living in wretched poverty and dying young from infections that penicillin can now cure. I can imagine the misery fairly well and do not need confirmation of the horror.

Even if the mad scientists could guarantee a safe return to now, I don’t really see the point of making the trip. The preparation is more than stepping into a little time travel apparatus and ending up in 1492. Willis, in her book, describes all the work a time traveller had to put into their trip — learning the language, learning the customs, learning the appropriate behavior of that period and, even after all that study, because nobody knows for sure if historical information is correct, you could still wind up being burned at the stake for doing the wrong thing. Why would I spend all that time preparing for a two week adventure to the past? And, really, if I couldn’t learn French before going to France, I certainly am not going to put in even more time so I could to fit into medieval England for a couple of weeks.

Then there is the absence of flush toilets. In a moment of temporary madness I joined the Boy Scouts as a lad so I have dug latrines and have used them. I never want to do either ever again. Not even for a couple of weeks. Not even for a day. Thanks for the invitation to visit but I will stay in the present. Now if you want to go, I will be happy to see the slide show of your trip.

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Did you know that Otis Redding sang Day Tripper? I didn’t. Here is one cover song that sounds nothing like the original. From the horns in the background to Redding using every last bit of his vocal cords to sing it, Redding’s version is unrecognizable with the Beatles version (see below). I searched to find a Redding performing the song as I am sure I would have like it more if I would have seen a performance. All I could find was a recorded lived version with photos of him performing. Not the same thing by a long shot but I was still absolutely blown away by it. My white middle class sensibilities were shaken to the core.

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The average price for a home in San Diego county, where I live, snuck across the million dollar mark last month. This was good news for home owners but disastrous news for any young person wanting to buy a home here. The ever increasing price, however, has created an impossible situation for new buyers. They may never be able to afford a home in San Diego.

In a normal real estate market where the normal rules of capitalism apply, a slight downturn in prices would correct the market and bring about more manageable prices. California, as we all know, does not have a normal real estate market. A slight downturn in house prices would do nothing to relieve the situation. Indeed a 20% reduction in the average price would make the price 800,000. Still out of reach for the average buyer who makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $68, 564. Worse still, a big reduction of housing prices might ruin the present owners. Nobody, particularly home owners, wants that.

So we are left with the high prices. A million dollar home will need quite a down payment particularly since the banks have gotten a little stricter since the Savings and Loan collapse of 2008. Wink. Wink. Just kidding. The banks can still be gamed but this requires parents with money and who are also willing to temporarily loan their children money. Once the loan has gone through the children can return the money to the parents. The banks have evidence that the buyer is a good credit risk and every is happy.

It does defeat the idea of actually vetting people to see if they can reasonably pay a bank loans though. This type of strategy usually comes from either the real estate agent of the bank loan officers who are anxious for the buyer to get the loan. Why you ask would the bank encourage someone to take out a loan on a house they can’t afford? Well, the bank has the house for collateral. If the buyers can’t pay, then the bank get this house. The real estate agent gets their commission for selling the house. Win-win. Of course for the buyer it is lose/lose. They lose their money they paid into the house, they lose their house and they lose their credit rating.

But enough about the losers because there is another winner who also makes the real estate market difficult for the Average Joe. The people who flip houses or who buy houses for investments. These people pay cash. Sellers prefer cash to mortgages. If there is a cash offer and mortgage offer, the seller usually takes the cash. It is a lot less paperwork and the money is guaranteed. Wouldn’t you? However, this means anyone who needs a mortgage (read here young couples looking to buy their first house) is always outbid. Flippers are particularly annoying because they usually bid on fixer uppers which is just the type of house a young couple might get because it needs work and may come at a lower price than the average house.

I know of a young couple who had the money for the down payment and had jobs that were suitably high paying that they could comfortably pay the mortgage. They were, however, always outbid by cash buyers. What is a potential buyer to do? Well, the young man in the couple complained to his boss about his situation. His boss liked the young man and decided to loan him the full cash payment. The next time the couple bid on a house, they won because they had cash. So really, to get into the California real estate market, it helps immeasurably to have someone with a lot money who is willing to help you out. Seems simple enough to me. Doesn’t everyone have a loved one or friend willing to loan them a million dollars?

Then rent, you say. Because it is expensive housing market, San Diego also suffers from a highly competitive and expensive rental market. The average price for a one room apartment is $2,756. For a year this would be a little less than $36,000. Remember that the average wage is $68,564 which means the average person will spend over half of their income on rent. Leaving $32, 500 are so for taxes, food, car payment, electric, wifi/cable and whatever you can set aside for a down payment on your future house. In Duluth.

There is very little we can do to remedy the situation because it is in nobody’s interest, nobody, that is, who has a money in the game, to do anything about the high cost of housing even though it is seemingly untenable. People are leaving California at record levels for less expensive vistas. The market may correct itself, as capitalists like to say, but at what cost. And if real estate collapses, the whole California economy soon follows. The good news will be that you can pick up some prime California real estate for a song and there is no better investment than California real estate.

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The rave reviews of the new Top Gun sequel are puzzling. I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love it either It has about 15 minutes of exciting flight scenes sandwich between a boiler plate script. You can practically say the lines that the actor is about to speak. All of the characters are people you have seen a hundred times before.

The plot is anorexic thin and it focuses on the wrong characters. The old movie characters are connected to the present movie quite nicely. So far so good, but then it introduces Penny (Jennifer Connolly), who is not in the original movie and whose main purpose seems to be to show that Maverick (Tom Cruise) likes the ladies. She does gives Maverick (Tom Cruise) an encouraging pep talk but that could have been given by any number of other characters. I think it would have made Maverick a bit more compelling too. He would have been a man without any life but the navy.

Then an awful lot of screen time is consumed by the dying Ice Man (Val Kilmer). He is now an admiral and, because he is Maverick’s protector with the bigwigs, he has to die. The bigwigs then can dispense the troublesome rebel Maverick. But it takes forever. We get hints near the beginning of the movie, then we hear Ice Man’s wife talking about his imminent demise, and then we see the Ice Man is in obvious bad health, followed by a whispered conversation where Maverick learns Ice Man is dead, and ending with a completely gratuitous funeral with fighter jets, 21 gun salute, people clutching one another. I guess it was then, and only then that I knew Ice Man was indeed dead.

This misdirection of focus leaves little time for all the young pilots who are actually vying to fly this suicide mission. They are never given enough time to rise above being a stock characters in a war movie. So this story about an intense competition between the best pilots in the navy is drained of any drama because we don’t know enough about the individual characters to care about who gets selected or not. All I wanted was for them to get those bodies into the plane and let us see some explosions.

The action sequences are exciting. While I have complained about the plot, it isn’t bad, just predictable and misdirected. Acting is fine but then it isn’t Olivier doing Hamlet either. Perhaps I was tainted by all those rave reviews which I admit happens from time to time. People were so enthusiastic about the movie that I was expecting more. If you manage your expectations, you will have a fine time.

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Recently I posted about the unserious solutions that anti-gun control advocates offer whenever there is a mass shooting. In the link below, the Rev. Franklin Graham gives a perfect example of what I am talking about.

Graham: “Ban All Movies, TV Shows, And Video Games” That Depict Violence, Gun Control “Won’t Help Problem”

The Rev. Graham’s solution to gun violence is to eliminate images of gun violence. The images of violence, in his mind, are far more dangerous than the actual weapons of violence. The sheer impracticability of his proposal is apparent from the start. Oddly enough, particularly coming from a Constitutional purist such as the Rev. Graham, the biggest impediment to his idea is the Constitution. The 1st Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. If Rev. Graham wants to ban gun violence in the media he would have to address this ban in context to the Free Speech Amendment. So he would face the same difficult task that gun control advocates now face with the Right to Bear Arms Amendment. Constitutional changes, as advocates of gun control are keenly aware of, are extremely difficult to enact.

Which brings me to workable. I am really scratching my head on how banning gun violence from media is any easier than banning specific high caliber guns. Rev. Graham is not wrong that gun control measures are difficult to enact for both constitutional and popular reasons. But to propose that banning violence in entertainment as a more practical alternate is baffling. It would face exactly the same resistance on constitutional grounds and, as far as I know, nobody, aside from Rev. Graham, wants such a change in the first place. So, how, Rev. Graham is this more workable than gun bans?

And, if people are the problem and not guns, doesn’t the same argument apply to free speech? If there are millions of media consumers who can watch gun violence without engaging in a mass shooting, why should they be restricted because of a few bad apples can’t. Media doesn’t kill people, people kill people. So, then, his ban is unfair.

Then there is the problem of what does he mean by images of gun violence? It is beyond vague. Does he mean images like the famous scene in the movie Bonnie and Clyde where bodies get graphically ripped apart by bullets or does he also include drawing room mysteries were a shot is fired, a man clutches his chest and falls to the ground wounded. Does Rev Graham find one image more offensive? Both? Neither? Images of gun violence are so pervasive in modern culture that censors would be spending years parsing what is and what is not actual gun violence. There is just too much of it around to eliminate, kind of like actual guns in America. For an urgent problem, how workable is that?

Finally, Rev. Graham is wrong. Every other country in the world gets exactly the same violent media images and they don’t have mass shootings like the United States. Why?

To sum it up, the Rev. Graham’s ban is unconstitutional, unpopular, unfair, vague and wrong.

But then, Rev. Graham knows this which is precisely why he proposes it. He knows it will never happen. He will continue to pontificate on the dangers of violent media because it is both an easy target and impossible to implement. It allows him to speak in meaningless bromides that satisfies his congregants while completely sidestepping the problem at hand. It gets him off the hook quite nicely.

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I am willing to bite. It doesn’t take a lot of effort for me to believe that anyone willing to go into a school (or store or movie theater or church or any place where large number of people congregate) and shoot strangers has a mental health issue. Republicans are keen on saying it isn’t the gun that is the problem but the person shooting the gun. OK. Fine. What is the mental health solution then?

It gets irritating to hear this response when that person is also unwilling to provide any details on how to make it easier for people to get mental health treatment. Speaking as someone who has been using mental health for some thirty years, I can tell you it isn’t easy. First you absolutely have to have insurance or money. If you don’t have either, you need to apply for some form of assistance — which, unless you are destitute, can be difficult to qualify for. Then, if you do have insurance, there is finding a health care professional that takes your insurance. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes if they do, they only take a limited number of patients who use your insurance. It takes a bit of an effort to come up with a mental health professional to treat you.

Now image yourself in a healthcare crisis having to jump through all these hoops before you can get help. A struggling person is given another struggle to deal with. So, then, how are you going to make make mental health easier to get and less expensive. Oh, and this will cost money. Who exactly is going to pay?

Then there is getting the young man to mental health care. Men are notoriously bad about seeking mental health. They see a stigma associated with it. This means someone is going to have to get scared enough to turn them in or try to convince them to get help. This is where things get hairy. How do you balance the rights of the man with the fears of parents or teachers or friends? Do we have laws that make it even possible? Laws will have to be looked at and changed. What do we do with the young men who are truly dangerous? Do we have institutions to house these young men? And, the all important question, who exactly is going to pay for the process of evaluation and institutionalization? Because you know all this is going to cost money.

When you say it is a mental health problem and offer no way to make mental health more accessible and cheaper, your response is unserious. You are letting yourself off the hook. Mad men are the problem, not guns. OK, so what are you going to do about the mad men? The present system has obviously failed us and needs to be improved in order to catch them. And, by the way, it is going to cost money.

Which, if you ask me, is the real problem here. Republicans can throw that out mental health as a solution after every mass shooting because they are betting that no one will ever call them on how this is done. Which says a lot about both the Republicans and what they think about the American public.

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I am pretty much a free speech absolutist. Protecting idiots from free speech seems like a hopeless task. If some grifter is telling you to drink Clorox to prevent you from catching a disease, then I am pretty sure some day you will hear that message or a similar one and drink the Clorox. Besides the impossibility of protecting idiots, I also want to know what people are saying no matter how horrible or wrong it is. Not hearing bull shit, on the other hand, gives me the illusion that everyone in the world is in alignment with me. The ugly truth keeps me more in tune with what is actually going on.

However, this, oddly enough, still keeps me at odds with the people who endlessly whine about the horrors of cancel culture. Nobody has stopped them from talking. Yes banning incorrect and hostile speech is limiting speech. I agree. On the other hand, it clearly isn’t stopping free speech because these cancelled people or their supporters are writing incessantly about the dangers of cancel culture. The most prominent cancelled person in the world is Donald Trump. He still is talking. Journalists still are talking about what Trump says. Trump supporters still are hearing his commands. So, then, how has banning him from the Twitter cancelled him.

What people who are afraid of cancel culture are really saying is that there shouldn’t be any consequence to free speech. For example, they don’t want to be called racist or for people to boycott their businesses or for them to be removed from Twitter because of what they have said. But, isn’t that a fundamental part of free speech? You say something and then I get to react to what you say. What the anti-cancel culturers really want is to be free to say anything they want without repercussions. This is not free speech.

Cancel culture, for me, at least, has created a much more pleasant environment in which to talk. I can’t remember the last time I heard the casual use of racial or ethnic epithets. There was a time in the not so distance past when people said them openly and fearlessly. When I was 17, in the 1974, I took the El train in Chicago with my grandfather. At each stop, he would announce in a loud booming voice the ethnic group who resided near the stop. His designations were horrifyingly politically incorrect. I was mortified but nobody else seem particularly bothered by his narration and that is because there were no repercussions for the person saying them.

People wanted to be nice. I wanted to be nice. Besides, the people who used racial epithets were in every other way nice people, nothing I would say to them would change their mind. Why get into an argument with someone, particularly people who might have power over me, people like relatives or teachers or bosses, when if I can just ignore it and it kind of goes away. Until the next time. The lies we tell ourselves to keep our mouths shut.

Today people are much more careful. Most people, and that includes many people who might like to use racial epithets, know that if they use derogatory language they face consequences. Apparently, it is unpleasant to be called a racist and better to keep one’s mouth shut in order to avoid be called one. Good. I am absolutely fine with that. Let them censor themselves.

You see they are smart enough, or most of them are, to censor themselves. This means they are smart enough to know when they have slipped into racism or a topic that might be considered racist and therefore modulate their behavior accordingly. A new norm has been created about how people should talk with each other. One I much prefer because it saves me from having to hear the rubbish that comes out of their mouths. It also proves, although I suspect that they wouldn’t admit it, they do know what racism is and what is not. They are not some innocent lamb wandering into a field full of cancel culture wolves. They fully understand the situation.

In the meantime, please stop talking about how you are being cancelled. You are absolutely free to say anything you want but, now you are also aware that I don’t have to listen to your bullshit without you hearing my response. The choice is yours.

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I ran across the above word the other day and was completely stumped. Like I assume everyone else in the world does, I tried to figure out the meaning through the context. No luck whatsoever. I then used my reader’s dictionary. There was no Horren and no Dously. I tried to look up the word with the dash present, my reader’s dictionary, for some reason, probably user incompetence, would not allow me to look up the word with the dash in the middle.

I pondered it a little more. It came to me in a flash, it is a German phrase. Why it was German, I can not tell you but I was convinced. Well, in case you are wondering, it isn’t a German phrase, nor French for that matter. I tried rereading sentence for context again. No, I was still baffled.

In desperation, I went to Google Search where, miraculously, a word appeared but with no dash in the middle. Horrendously. I didn’t bother to read definition because it couldn’t be right, the word is Horren-dously. There is a dash in the middle. I tried google it again and I got the full word without a dash. I read the definition which was something like done badly or done appallingly.

Smug guy that I am, I thought well that can’t be right. The word Horren-dously came in the middle of the line, not the end of one line and the beginning of another line. That would be the only time I should see horrendously separated like that.

I reread the sentence yet again. The author did mean horrendously.

Damn dash.

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I think it is safe to say that nothing practical is being done to stop future mass shootings.

I recall when mass shootings became a more frequent occurrence that we were cautioned from getting used to the violence. People wanted to avoid normalizing mass shootings because once people thought of them as another part of every day life that people would be inured by them and lose the fight to stop them. I think we are long past this point. I know I am.

I haven’t the faintest idea what to do about mass shootings given the realities of our political system. I once thought that reasonable gun laws would solve the problem. By reasonable, I mean making it illegal to own a semi-automatic weapon. I understand and can accept hunting rifles for sport and hand guns for self-defense but semi-automatic weapons we could all agree served no useful purpose for the general population. Apparently, I was wrong. Gun laws can’t be passed and, at this point, seem irrelevant. How are you going to get the semi-automatic weapons already out there without starting a violent reaction from semi-automatic owners. Yet, after each shooting, this becomes the big push from my friends on the left. Despite the absolute certainty that these gun laws are doomed.

If gun control is dead, at least it was designed with the problem in mind. Limit the number of guns in circulation and then you would limit the number of shootings. The right can only offer bromides which which make them feel good but are essentially unserious solutions. The basic premise is that people are the problem and not the gun. There is a certain degree of sense in that notion but then it leaves unanswered how do we stop people from engaging in mass shootings.

What options do my friends on the right offer? They identify it as a mental health problem. But, then, what is the mental health solution?Nothing is offered but the right’s standard concerns regarding modern society? Bible reading, banning violent movies and violent video games, arming everyone to the hilt so they can fight back. If you say every American is free to have a semi-automatic weapon how can you very well force people to read the bible? Your belief in freedom is at war with itself. Also, I believe that some Bible readers have actually been inspired to try their hand at mass shootings after perusing the good book, so Bible reading is hardly a fool-proof solution but potentially dangerous.

I can only laugh when someone suggests that the violence in video games and movies are the problem. They are saying that images of violence are more dangerous than the weapon itself. Aside from being almost impossible to implement, it is demonstrably false — almost every country in the world sees the same violent images without the same result. And you can’t use the excuse of gun access because there are many different ways of killing someone available to these gunless citizens — poison, knives, automobiles and so forth. If the images of violence caused people to kill wouldn’t we also see more non gun murders in those countries? This is clearly not a serious solution.

Arming everyone so they can fight back is an interesting possibility but we already know it isn’t going to work. I know this because we have a well-armed population now. Why aren’t all these well-armed men with guns stopping mass shootings today? Could it be that most people don’t really have the confidence to engage in a gun fight with a crazy man? It’s more than just shooting a gun, it may be finding the guy when you hear shots, it might be the gunman has a hostage, it might be hundreds of different scenarios that complicate a situation which puts an untrained person in a terrible situation. Well-trained professionals make the wrong decisions under this type of pressure, and you want Joe Citizen to coolly kill a gunman. It is possible but, as we have seen, not a very likely outcome. Finally, what about the gunmen. I know they aren’t the most sympathetic of characters but, at least for me, it isn’t always a showdown between good guys and bad guys; sometimes it is really a good guy facing a schizophrenic off his medication. I would like to think we have a better way of dealing with crazy people than letting the person breakdown and shoot innocent victims until someone can stop him by killing him. But, then, need I remind you, I was completely wrong about gun laws.

So, where does, this leave us. Nowhere really. We all know another mass shooting is coming and no one is making a credible attempt to stop them. Mass shootings have become just another accepted part of modern American life. A terrible inconvenience that comes up every once in awhile. The only thing you can do about it is hope you or someone you love aren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that, my friends, is the terrible truth.