Good morning. This week will probably be the first full week in May and if nursery rhymes are any indication of reality, it will be full of flowers. I got a lot of positive feedback from my Good Morning Supreme Court post last Friday and I hope you all took the weekend to think about the kind of person you want to replace David Souter. My pick is Judge Ito, because he already presided over the biggest trial of the century.
[Judge Ito would also fill the demographic preference of appointing the first Asian to the Court.]
I already told you this month was going to be full of flowers. As a feminist I've never given women flowers as a gift because I think it's insulting and kind of stupid. Before I really understood what feminism was I didn't give anyone flowers either. I also only had one fleeting relationship before I became a feminist. The lesson of this story? Don't give flowers and be a feminist. I hope women and other florists can back me up on this.
Today's School Shooting
Recently we all cried tears and thought seriously about more gun control in remembrance of the Virginia Tech and the 10 year anniversary of the Columbine school shootings. April, in general, was a bad month for school shootings. But we shouldn't forget the most famous school shooting of all that happened 39 years ago today:
On May 4th, 1970 National Guardsmen fired upon a student protest at Kent State in Ohio, killing 4 people and wounding 9 others. Though 1968 is remembered (rightly so) as a great time of unrest in American history, this shooting kind of crystallized just how depraved our society had grown. I'm not accusing the National Guardsmen on that day of simply being a bunch of Seung-Hui Chos because I know there was a lot of violence on Kent State's campus, just as there would be in the aftermath of the shooting everywhere else. But all of the extenuating circumstances in the world can't dilute the fact that armed troops came to a college campus and killed unarmed students. To me this will be one of the absolute darkest moments in post WWII American history. Except for, of course, the Vietnam War itself.
Today's Military Exercise
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, will do some military exercises in Georgia this week. On this podcast from CFR I heard someone say this wouldn't have been a big deal two years ago but would have been a HUGE deal last year. Now it's somewhere in between. In case you forgot, Russia invaded Georgia last summer. So they don't want NATO coming in with their squat thrusts, military presses and other types of exercise to get Georgian troops all worked up.
Today's Prediction
Staged protests by the opposition to Georgian President Saakashvili on the University of Georgia campus (in Tbilisi, not Athens) will lead to NATO soldiers firing into the crowd. Several students will be killed and the May flower will be adopted by anti-NATO memorials as a symbol of lost youth.
Way to post pictures, DUMBASS!
ReplyDeletetin soldiers and nixon coming!
ReplyDeletei like getting AND giving flowers. actually, live plants. i don't really know what to do with a bouquet of dying flowers, but a nice houseplant beautifies my living space and reminds me of the giver. i am not following your "feminists don't get or give flowers" argument.
Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a institutions of higher education to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, faculty, staff and counselors.
ReplyDeleteInstitutions of Higher Education clearly want safe and secure campuses. Members of student affairs are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their campuses. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the campus police officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing campuses violence, nor do they make a campus safe and secure.
Traditionally institutions of higher learning have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep them safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves faculty, student affairs, counselors and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges have begun forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Yet, most have not.
They simply changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, and they continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, these steps are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/Higher_Education/
That dude just did the equivalent of a school shooting in the comment section.
ReplyDeleteThe blog he runs: Welcome to Aggression Management.
ReplyDeleteThat guy made analyzing Virginia Tech look like a fucking birthday birthday.
ReplyDeleteBirthday birthday is like Little Ceasar's pizza pizza.
ReplyDeletei just laughed so hard at what bub said.
ReplyDelete