Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Situational Awareness For Sojourners–Teddy Roosevelt Knew About “Weak and Vicious Minds”


The Modern Prevalence of “Weak and Vicious Minds”


Today many Americans are discussing yet another mass shooting.  Unlike the Black Marie Antoinettes and other “perpetually surprised” African-Americans who don’t pay attention to the prevailing conditions that exist around them, Sojourners take careful note of the world they live in. Including the violent, entitlement-mentality nuts who live in the world. Including the not-infrequent common denominator among more than a few violent nuts of having served in the U.S. military after 9/11 (with or without actual combat experience).

Nobody talks about the risk factors created by the presence of modern day U.S. military veterans. In this hyper-nationalistic era, it’s sacrilege for anybody to point out that a decade of wars fought by an all-volunteer force means that the military hasn’t been screening those volunteers as strictly as they would in peace time.
The endless wars also mean that the military hasn’t been telling the entire truth about how damaged and broken many modern veterans are. Oh no, it’s all swept under the rug with the cooperation of the masses of civilian American sheeple. Facing unpleasant realities might mean an interruption in the bread and circuses of watching Snookie and American Idol.
 
From Shot in the Chest 100 Years Ago, Teddy Roosevelt Kept on Talking (emphasis in bold):
On October 14, 1912, an unemployed saloonkeeper shot former president and Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt outside a Milwaukee hotel. Rather than being rushed to the hospital, Roosevelt insisted on delivering his scheduled 90-minute speech. By slowing the bullet, those lengthy prepared remarks may actually have saved his life.
Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.
“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”
. . . The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”
Only two days before, the editor-in-chief of The Outlook characterized Roosevelt as “an electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” and for the next 90 minutes the 53-year-old former president proved it. “I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap,” he claimed. Few could doubt him. Although his voice weakened and his breath shortened, Roosevelt glared at his nervous aides whenever they begged him to stop speaking or positioned themselves around the podium to catch him if he collapsed. Only with the speech completed did he agree to visit the hospital.
The shooting had occurred just after 8 p.m. as Roosevelt entered his car outside the Gilpatrick Hotel. As he stood up in the open-air automobile and waved his hat with his right hand to the crowd, a flash from a Colt revolver 5 feet away lit up the night. The candidate’s stenographer quickly put the would-be assassin in a half nelson and grabbed the assailant’s right wrist to prevent him from firing a second shot.
The well-wishing crowd morphed into a bloodthirsty pack, raining blows on the shooter and shouting, “Kill him!” According to an eyewitness, one man was “the coolest and least excited of anyone in the frenzied mob”: Roosevelt. The man who had been propelled to the Oval Office after an assassin felled President William McKinley bellowed out, “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him.” Roosevelt asked the shooter, “What did you do it for?” With no answer forthcoming, he said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police.”
Although there were no outward signs of blood, the former president reached inside his heavy overcoat and felt a dime-sized bullet hole on the right side of his chest. “He pinked me,” Roosevelt told a party official. He coughed into his hand three times. Not seeing any telltale blood, he determined that the bullet hadn’t penetrated his lungs. An accompanying doctor naturally told the driver to head directly to the hospital, but Colonel Roosevelt gave different marching orders: “You get me to that speech.” [Khadija speaking: Now that’s an old-school man!]
. . . Blasted by political opponents and elements of the press for being a power-hungry traitor willing to break the tradition of two-term presidencies, Roosevelt told the Milwaukee audience that the campaign’s inflamed political rhetoric contributed to the shooting. “It is a very natural thing,” he said, “that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers.”
 
Ladies, be advised that the baseline level of decency, character and resilience among the majority of modern Americans (of all races and ethnicities) is  FAR below what existed in previous eras. Recognizing this reality means being much more cautious about who’s around you than the average American sheeple (or the “perpetually surprised” masses of African-Americans). There has always been a certain amount of bullying among children and teens. There have always been romantic disappointments. There have always been workplace disputes. Injustice has always existed.
All of these things existed without an unending series of mass shootings. What’s the difference between previous eras and today? The difference is that modern day America is jam-packed with the “weak and vicious minds” mentioned by Teddy Roosevelt. Modern minds that are weaker and more vicious by several orders of magnitude.

Take Careful Note Of The Post 9/11-Era U.S. Military Veterans In Your Work And Home Environment

I know this will anger and offend more than a few audience members, but it needs to said out loud. For your safety and your loved ones’ safety. Let me repeat some of the comments I made during a recent email conversation:
. . . I’m so very sick of watching gullible AA slaves continue to speak of the US military as an “opportunity” for their children. None of the AA fools I've known who have signed up for that bs can explain why they’re risking their lives, except for a meager paycheck they feel they can’t get anywhere else. None of the AA cannon fodder or their parents will acknowledge that warfare tends to drive people crazy. Or that if a job literally destroys you, then it’s not accurate to call that job an “opportunity.”
 
The same applies to the AA wannabe cannon fodder and their parents. They get very angry when my response is to say that AAs need to stop encouraging/allowing their children to sign up for that bs. As the economy continues to fail, there won’t be enough money to try to fix these people’s broken minds and/or broken bodies. Better to avoid having those problems by not volunteering for military service.
 
Quiet as most affected folks are keeping it, the US is reaping and will continue to reap the whirlwind with all these deranged soldiers coming back. The AA military families I know don’t openly talk about how crazy their sons (and daughters in some cases) are when they return from the last decade of wars. But they quietly ask friends and acquaintances to pray (and keep praying) for their now-deranged veteran children.
 
The stories I’ve heard from the mostly working class, single AA military mothers I know about some of their veteran-sons’ behaviors after they get home are scary. I wouldn’t want such persons living in the same house with me. Or anywhere around me. Too many of these veterans are ticking bombs waiting to go off. The government keeps quiet about all of this as much as possible (for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, the numbers of veteran suicides and murders of spouses, etc. will increase to the point that the powers that be won’t be able to keep all this on the hush-hush.
 
. . . Guurl, these AA cannon-fodder parents are cray-zee!
They get enraged when anybody points out that this country has been engaged in wars for over a decade. And God forbid that anybody mentions that volunteering for military service during wartime equals signing-up to get killed or maimed. They and their foolish adult children are “perpetually surprised” when bad things happen as a result of Voluntary. Military. Service. During. Wartime.
 
Meanwhile, they’re constantly asking for donations of toys, money, food and prayers “to help the soldiers” (who didn't have to sign-up for that bs). And extra prayers for their now-deranged children. I’ll add that these requests/demands are typically framed in such a manner that anybody who doesn’t donate is made to look “un-patriotic.”
 
I feel bad for the Vietnam-era veterans who didn’t have any choice. Not to mention that was a previous era–before the US government’s massive corruption had been exposed to the masses. I don’t feel sorry for the modern day idiots who volunteer for US military service–to fight wars they can’t even explain why or who they’re fighting–after 10+ years of non-stop war. Similar to how I don’t feel sorry for the Iraqi and Afghan collaborators . . . err, interpreters who are “perpetually surprised” when the US military abandons them to their fates with their angry countrymen.
 
Didn’t the educated ones among those fools see the YouTube footage of the last US military helicopter taking off from the US embassy in Vietnam–while leaving all the Vietnamese collaborators behind to meet their fates with the victorious Vietnamese communists?
 
In both situations, a little bit of forethought goes a long way. Hmmph!
Previous eras’ American military veterans didn’t present as much of a security risk to the rest of the population because they were draftees drawn from a more random selection of earlier, old-school Americans. Old-school Americans had a higher baseline level of decency, character and mental resilience. Not the widespread
and all too often vicious minds of the current day American masses.
From an article in today’s edition of Veterans Today, Veteran Suicides and Family Killings – What Can We Do? (emphasis added in bold):
But perhaps a more frightening trend is the rate of veteran suicides, which Veteran Affairs (VA) placed at 22 every day as of February 2013. Every 65 minutes, a veteran takes their own life. And at least 1 soldier lost to suicide every day is on active duty. Veterans with PTSD are four times more likely to commit suicide. So what has changed to cause this continual rise in veteran suicides? Why are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans so much more likely to commit suicide than Vietnam-era veterans?
We know it is not duration of deployment, because Vietnam veterans spent year in country without any breaks at home like today’s soldiers get.  And, in anything, war is carried out more efficiently now thanks to technology and knowledge born of experience. 
According to professionals in both the field of psychiatry and long-time military members, it may very well have to do with the way today’s generation of soldier was raised. The young men who went off to fight in World War II had far greater responsibilities and faced more significant hardships due to the Great Depression.
And just as the nation’s worst economic crash to date crawled to a close, we entered World War II. Those fighting in Vietnam grew up exposed to a great deal of hatred and violence as the Civil Rights movement reached its peak. 
According to David Rudd, the scientific direction of the National Center for Veteran’s Studies, “My worry is that they have not dealt with enough challenges, enough disappointments, in life for many of them to build the kind of resilience that is foundational when you go to war.” 
How do you build that resilience? Through adversity and difficulty. Going through trials and tribulation, while a terrible experience no one wants to see repeated, granted young men in the 1940’s the coping skills necessary to mentally survive war.
Large numbers of modern day American veterans aren’t like previous generations of U.S. veterans. The same way large numbers of modern day American politicians aren’t like previous generations of U.S. politicians. The vast majority of modern politicians are unworthy of your trust. They’re certainly not worth you sacrificing your life to support their lies and political ambitions.
 
Ladies, take careful note of the post 9/11-era U.S. military veterans in your work and home environment.
 
[*Bonus Note: Anybody who wants to thrive in the real world will have to learn how to build rapport and make connections in person. As far as I'm concerned, the main underlying source of the decline described in THIS POST is that certain types of “virtual” things can’t be effective long-term substitutes for more direct forms of interaction. The whole point of this online crowdsource thing was to replace personal appeals for contributions based on personal knowledge or respect for the persons asking for donations.
No matter how much many of the under-30 set want to evade and elude the personal touch, there’s really no way around it in the long run.  Stable, sustainable networks are based on in-person interactions. The same applies to business. 
 
Stable, sustainable businesses  are based on some form of personal investment into something. Even with purchases that aren’t so apparently personal. Like the way many readers buy fiction: They actively seek out some writers’ books because they like those particular writers’ individual voices. Not because they thought their internet campaign was cool. 
 
Readers will do a one-off experiment with ebooks based on cool marketing, etc. But they go out of their way to purchase ebooks, movie tickets, and so on based on things like word of mouth recommendations from sources they trust, like friends and relatives, and so on. 
 
Ladies, it would be wise to cultivate your in-person charm.] 
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