trends in violence culture

I've browsed through a few heavily trafficked hunting forums, checking out the "off-topic" or politics sub-forums. What's striking isn't so much the predictable identification with the white cop or the characterization of Mike Brown and protesters as thugs or animals, but something that this thread has been touching on.

What's striking throughout the discussion in those forums is how little importance (none, actually) is accorded to the values of courage and self-discipline. In other words, what surprises me is not so much the fact that Brown is assumed to be a dangerous, fearsome target (a pot smoking shoplifting black thug who may "charge" at any moment with his upraised hands), but the unembarrassed readiness of so many to announce that they too, would succumb to that fear and find no other recourse than to shower the thug with bullets. Nobody gets called out on this, either.

So yeah, it does lead me to think that we're dealing with a weird take on manhood. Consumer culture feeds into this in various ways methinks, not just the gear culture we've discussed but also the celebration of self-expression and instant gratification. I might be getting facile here, so I'll just leave it there for now. Let's just say this violence culture could not be further removed from that of the samurai.

great thread apart from the cattiness, CG killing it

thanks dp

i think this article from harpers is relevant to the thread -- it's about dan baum doing conceal-carry for the first time in his life, and the associated feelings of awareness/discipline/fear/etc it inspired: https://www.sendspace.com/file/umzust

good read so far, ty

Relevant?

One Twitter stream I came across recently was from a British radical who happily provided a running commentary, as he sat eating in a café, of the flogging he was watching take place in a nearby public square.

There are several factors to explain what drives young men raised in Britain to such cruelty.

One is the classic macho enthusiasm — characteristic of all thugs and gangsters — to revel in power. In England, Hamindur may only have been a High Street retail assistant. In Syria, he held the power of life and death in his trigger finger.

The life of the jihadist might be dangerous, but, to a twisted mind, it is also exciting. One British fighter in Syria posted on Twitter a picture of some home-made explosives with the arrogant, deadly message: ‘I hear that the British Government is worried about what skills I might be learning here.’

Was Tiananmen Square an endgame?

― Plasmon, Thursday, 21 August 2014 19:53 (Yesterday)

the difference is that there was notable violence from dissidents prior to the massacre, there are plenty of photos of lynched prc soldiers; tianenmen square was an extremely ruthless and vicious sort of instrumental response to a perceived existential threat to the state, it was not wholly performative

excellent thread, ty nakh

feel like Ferguson stirred up some cognitive dissonance going on in the American psyche between cop-as-cop (like all those TV shows and the fading McGruff image of the friendly guy on the beat) and cop-as-soldier. lotta "interesting" (in a dystopian way) & disparate elements to all this - returning vets, MMA psychology, fashion, state control, etc.

what surprises me is not so much the fact that Brown is assumed to be a dangerous, fearsome target (a pot smoking shoplifting black thug who may "charge" at any moment with his upraised hands), but the unembarrassed readiness of so many to announce that they too, would succumb to that fear and find no other recourse than to shower the thug with bullets.

I thought about this trend when Renisha McBride was killed, that it was inevitable Wafer's defense would rest on convincing everyone that he was desperately afraid of a teenage girl on the other side of a locked door. And how could that be spun as anything other than profoundly shaming/emasculating to the kind of person who cares about that kind of masculinity?

Thank everything holy for that verdict but the fact that his case wasn't widely pronounced to be more shameful by his own demographic peers can only be explained by what this thread is exploring.

Well, that plus racism.

Guys, you can't fight in here, this is the violence culture thread.

*golf clap*

ha

portentousness alert

i'm cataloging photographs taken of law students doing csi/west wing cosplay for a "counter-terror simulation" in 2012. it looks like a serial drama extension of five-years-after coed life complete with token minority. if there was a meanwhile in iraq subplot it would need a lot of curly facial hair and a playground of contemporary orientalist signifiers to go with it, ultimately making sense only as an "evil" reflection of a heartland character drama. this is our preferred reality. the ones at the top are most fluent in the sign language of the most crucial and charged simulations which are only made possible by various shifting binaries that must be whacked like moles regularly, the further down the chain the better. this is where violence culture and the men and women who carry it out reside.

thanks to Matt DC for finding this thread again.

A friend posted this on FB and I immediately thought about this discussion.

https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/

Thanks for that. Nate Powell bringing the fire.

beard is a flat circle

Quality revive