So here’s the deal. The New York Times’ Frank Bruni is still carrying around campus a monastic model of the university. Haven! Really? From what? The University of Texas is a massively profitable sports empire with classrooms.
“All this marketing and globalization of big-time sports entertainment based at public universities has invaded and transformed the whole politeia of the university,” said UT classics professor Thomas Palaima. “Students come to campus now not feeling awe at the prospect of learning and investigating truths about our world and ourselves but to get ready for game day and have a ‘college experience’ and then get a job.”
Palaima said he had recently walked past the University Co-Op, a campus institution, and thought the storefront an apt metaphor for what critics believe are the school’s misplaced priorities. “(It) was entirely given over to images of footballs and Longhorns souvenirs,” he said. “Not a book in sight or any suggestion that there was a center of learning across the street.”
You wanna watch out for that politeia. Once you hand it over to yahooiae, you can kiss your theater of ideas goodbye.
And Texas is ground zero, ain’t it? Know how Baylor University families celebrate graduation? Dodging bullets at the local war zone. Hard keeping the noise down in the library.
Almost the exact same story as Adam Lanza, including knowing your son has mental problems and blasting and stockpiling away with him anyway.
… here are a few headlines, to get us up to date on guns in America.
IOWA GRANTS PERMISSION FOR BLIND
RESIDENTS TO CARRY GUNS IN PUBLIC
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SLAIN GUN INSTRUCTOR’S FAMILY WANTS LAW
TO BAN CHILDREN FROM AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
(Don’t worry. No chance in hell it’ll pass.)
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AFTER WACO SHOOTOUT,
LAWMAKERS CONTINUE
OPEN CARRY PUSH
(That’ll pass.)
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However.
As Andrew Sullivan used to say:
Know Hope.
It began with the Oct. 24 candidate’s debate at Virginia Tech, the site of the worst mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history. In response to a question, Cuccinelli boasted of his A rating from the NRA.
And then McAuliffe did something surprising: He said he didn’t give a fig about the powerful lobby’s rating. And, oh, by the way, he had earned an F.
McAuliffe won the election.
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The No Hope position:
[G]uns are tools conceived, built, and used for the primary purpose of killing living things very quickly and with very little effort. They are perfect, and whether men and women and children and babies use them correctly or incorrectly, people get maimed or killed. For this reason, it should be illegal, as it is in most of the world, for most citizens to own guns.
This is apparent to many people, even and especially to many people who sell guns. But it is even more apparent that nothing anyone says or writes about how it is an absolute fucking farce that it is legal for most citizens to own guns matters. Episodes like Roanoke, and Sandy Hook, and Aurora, and Blacksburg, and Charleston affirm that the fight is already lost.
… Ann Arbor resident Joshua Wade [openly carried a gun] to his little sister’s choir concert…
Rick Perry said Friday that the massacre at a black church in Charleston was an “accident” as he accused President Barack Obama of succumbing to a “knee jerk” liberal impulse to push a gun-control agenda.
A spokesman for the Republican presidential candidate said it was clear he meant to say “incident” and simply misspoke.
Ah, America. The head of the Myrtle Beach Merchants Association, gearing up for this year’s Memorial Day crowd, touches delicately on last year, when “three people died and seven were injured in eight shootings.” … And still those little things remain…
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Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. The Spinnaker Club in Panama City Beach. These places, and whatever place this year’s melees in Myrtle Beach will choose, are emerging as icons of a peculiar form of capitalism — the form you get when you combine a society of the spectacle with guns and a totally unhinged profit motive.
It’s odd. The rhetoric of these massive motorcycle rallies is one of personal freedom, yet the events instantly turn their locales into police states. Read the details of the security presence and restriction of movement in Myrtle Beach.
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People are starting to notice the same thing at university football games. Because the drunken crowd is so nasty, everyone’s under heavy surveillance.
With open carry, you’ll get FAR better pictures for your Facebook coverage of the next shootout down the street. We’re talking Mad Max Fury Road!
Of immediate concern to authorities has been the prospect for more violence here, as other motorcycle gang members have been rumored to be headed to Waco in response to the clash.
Swanton said law enforcement agencies began receiving intelligence reports Sunday night that a “green light” had been put out on officers in uniforms by several of the gangs.
Monday morning, members of of the Waco Police Department, Texas Rangers and Texas Department of Public Safety remained on the scene heavily armed with military-style rifles and other weaponry.
Step carefully over the bodies on your way home.
The big biker war in Waco isn’t over – more gang members are heading to town.
Kind of a nice break for Baylor University that graduation ceremonies were yesterday.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a campus lockdown at some point, if police aren’t able to control the second wave of gun-toting hordes.
Jonathan Gottschall talks with Sam Harris.
It’s all over but the rhetoric.
Unfortunately, hosting families there is also over, at least for awhile. There’s something about mass shootings, rapes on the beach, and the confiscation of large numbers of fire arms that seems to put families off.
I hate it, but I’ll say it. It’s time for us to bring the madness of Panama City Spring Break to a halt by staying away. Parents, if you allow your children to go into that snake pit then you are simply contributing to the problem.
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“Shame on Panama City Beach for letting itself devolve into what it has become,” said Nicki E. Grossman, now president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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“We’re in chaos right now,” says resident Wes Pittman. “This Spring Break and the way it has evolved over the last couple years has become a blight on the entire community.”
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UD finds it fascinating in a Lord of the Flies way. Allow certain ingredients to be put together in a concentrated way in a specific location, and you can actually destroy civilized life.