# Another School Shooting \[Stoneman Douglas\] (2/14/2018) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 14, 2018, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843 "2018-02-14T20:22:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/261 "2018-02-17T19:52:18Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > He also strikes me as the sort of person who insists on bringing every single discussion back to his favorite topic: how (exaggerated and overrated) cultural changes in the 60s ruined everything forever. He’s a senile crackpot, furiously jerking off a load of dust and bile as he uncritically watches the latest outrage against Real Americans that’s shown on FoxNews. He’s the political equivalent of the cranks we regularly get here who have long-winded screeds claiming to disprove evolution, relativity, quantum theory, or whatever other obsession they only half-understand but are absolutely sure ruined everything in science. And maybe they’re perfectly reasonable people outside this board (though it’s more likely that they spend their time yelling at bus stations), but this is the only context we see them in, and they’re useless tools. But that’s what ignore lists are for. > > Anyway, back to school shootings. I’d probably despise him in “real life” too. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/262 "2018-02-17T20:12:52Z")
My grandfather used to tell me what life was like for him growing up during the Depression. It certainly didn’t sound so rosey. (I also love how **Starving Artist** thinks that people only really started swearing in the 1960s. Perhaps it was just his own family – my mother said she was shocked when she married my dad, because his family is so much more comfortable dropping F-bombs and such.) ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/263 "2018-02-17T22:03:06Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > (I also love how **Starving Artist** thinks that people only really started swearing in the 1960s. Oh, horseshit! What happened was they started swearing, and by swearing I don’t mean damn and hell, I mean shit, piss, cock, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, as well as fuck every other word in public, all of which is a result of the same idiotic thinking that’s resulted in video games like _Grand Theft Auto_ being widespread too. I’ll guarantee you no one ever pulled up to a gas station in 1960 and heard ‘Get down on your knees and suck my badass cock’ blaring from a car at the next pump. As for all the rest of this shit since I was here last, including **Monty’s** continued lies which I’ll be happy to list, I don’t have time now and will address them later. Oh, one more thing: [33 dead, 130 injured in China knife-wielding spree!](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/33-dead-130-injured-china-knife-wielding-spree-n41966) It ain’t guns, it’s people. At least in this case the cause was political and not the result of general societal fuckupery like it is here. Can’t blame you people for being defensive though. No one likes to hear their ill-considered and hugely damaging social warriorism has only made things worse. By my count the ratio is usually one thing made marginally better with ten corresponding things made worse. And there are millions of people my age who grew up in this country when it was almost completely drug-free, crime was low, most children grew up in intact families with parental guidance and discipline from the time they got home from school (and at school for that matter. Ooh, ooh, also they had to actually pass courses in order to pass to the text grade), criminal culture wasn’t promoted and glamorized, and the overall death and misery index from drugs and crime wasn’t even in the same ballpark as it is today. Funny how I can list a dozen positive differences between those days and now and all you people ‘supposedly’ hear is that I love racism. I don’t know if you truly believe that or if you just pull it out of your ass because you think it’s a fool-proof way to defend all the crap you’ve foist upon this country, but either way you’re full of shit and couldn’t prove a word of it. But there are millions of people out there who hardly ever saw a black person and thus had no reason to love racism that feel exactly like I do, and for the same reasons. Thus your silly insults and accusations are meaningless if you think you’re ever going to stop me from calling you people out for the damage you’ve done. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/264 "2018-02-17T22:10:59Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The overwhelming draw for Trump is that he appears to be the last hope for turning all this nonsense around. By “nonsense” you mean “black President.” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/265 "2018-02-17T22:13:09Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, horseshit! What happened was they started swearing, and by swearing I don’t mean damn and hell, I mean shit, piss, cock, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits Least you could do is get the Seven Words right: > [@George Carlin](#): > > Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, And Carlin continued: “Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.” The scary thing is, apparently **Starving Artist** takes that bit of facetiousness seriously. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/266 "2018-02-17T22:14:25Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, horseshit! What happened was they started swearing, and by swearing I don’t mean damn and hell, I mean shit, piss, cock, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, as well as fuck every other word in public, all of which is a result of the same idiotic thinking that’s resulted in video games like _Grand Theft Auto_ being widespread too. I’ll guarantee you no one ever pulled up to a gas station in 1960 and heard ‘Get down on your knees and suck my badass cock’ blaring from a car at the next pump. > > … Holy fucking shit, what an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/267 "2018-02-17T22:22:45Z")
No wonder you guys couldn’t figure out Trump’s election. You couldn’t be worse at sussing out what the other side thinks. As for Carlin, I’ve never heard the soul inflection bit, I’ve just picked up the phrase from reading about through the years. So see? Wrong yet again. (The ridiculosity! It burns, and it never ends!) At any rate, way to go, schmuck! > [@bobot](#): > > Holy fucking shit, what an idiot. No u ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/268 "2018-02-17T22:28:08Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > I’d probably despise him in “real life” too. Back atcha, chum. Due to the fact that I grew up in an era where people were said to be allowed their own opinions, I’m perfectly capable of having different views from someone else while still liking them as people. So there are only a handful of people on this board who I personally dislike, and you are most certainly one of them. (It would be ever so groovy if someone would quote this post so **SteveG1** can learn of his achievement. I’m sure he’ll find it most rewarding.) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/269 "2018-02-17T22:56:58Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And there are millions of people my age who grew up in this country when it was almost completely drug-free [Not really](http://blog.palmpartners.com/tag/1950s-drug-abuse/): > [@](#): > > In fact much of the drug use that is seen in the 60s didn’t start in the 60s but in the 50s […] In the 1950s, use of marijuana and heroin increased, along with that of amphetamines and tranquilizers. There was also the invention of LSD in the 1940s and tests done with that were performed in the 1950s. The most popular illegal drugs were marijuana and heroin. Heroin became predominant in the urban areas after World War II where it was widely distributed. Marijuana saw an increase in usage during this time period, particularly among the youth. […] > > Amphetamines and barbiturates were called “mother’s little helpers” as many women developed a habit for the stimulation and sedative effects of these medicines. > [@Starving Artist](#): > > crime was low Maybe, if you ignore the fact that acts like lynching, domestic violence, rape, child abuse, and violence against LGBQT people were often condoned or covered up rather than being punished as criminal. > [@Starving Artist](#): > > most children grew up in intact families with parental guidance and discipline from the time they got home from school Heh. Let’s not forget that the 1950s had the highest teen pregnancy rates of all time in the US. Many of those “intact” families originated in an unintended out-of-wedlock conception (teens then were actually, as always, pretty good at eluding “parental guidance”) followed by a wedding of necessity and an absence of alternatives for young mothers. As the spike in divorce rates among the middle-aged beginning in the 1960s indicates, many of those young couples who “had” to get married hadn’t really wanted that “intact” family in the first place. > [@Starving Artist](#): > > criminal culture wasn’t promoted and glamorized Nonsense. The pulp magazines and “noir fiction” of the 1920s through the 1950s were riddled (so to speak) with the promotion and glamorization of criminal culture. Urban gangsters, Wild West outlaws, domestic villains like the protagonists of _Double Indemnity_ or _The Postman Always Rings Twice_, and other baddies gave rise to fads in hairstyles, clothing, children’s amusements, and more throughout popular culture. What you really mean is that back then, **black** criminals weren’t glamorized in popular media that was sufficiently widespread for white people to become aware of it. It’s not the criminality that’s a new thing these days in mass popular-culture glamorization: it’s the blackness. > [@Starving Artist](#): > > and the overall death and misery index from drugs and crime wasn’t even in the same ballpark as it is today. We’ll never really know, given how much drug use and criminal activity back in the day was concealed or ignored (or [treated as a joke](https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2015/10/19/domestic-violence-no-joke/)). > [@Starving Artist](#): > > But there are millions of people out there who hardly ever saw a black person and thus had no reason to love racism 😃 Ha ha ha ha!! I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but the notion that in the pre-Civil Rights era white Americans who didn’t encounter black people simply defaulted to being non-racist is pretty damn hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/270 "2018-02-17T23:10:35Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Back atcha, chum. Due to the fact that I grew up in an era where people were said to be allowed their own opinions Yeah, ‘allowed’ like this: > [@Merle Haggard](#): > > \*We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee > We don’t take our trips on LSD > We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street > We like livin’ right, and bein’ free > \* There’s your missive from the hinterlands that the counterculture had bypassed: here’s what ‘We’ collectively think, and that’s what ‘bein’ free’ means. ---
**Author:** ![Marcus\_Flavius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a4c791/32.png) [@Marcus\_Flavius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marcus_Flavius)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/271 "2018-02-17T23:30:35Z")
_sigh._ Everyday I feel more and more that I’m living in a giant mental asylum. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/272 "2018-02-17T23:33:06Z")
Merle Haggard was busted for pot, wasn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/273 "2018-02-17T23:34:56Z")
I have no idea whether Haggard wrote those lyrics straight, or tongue in cheek. I’ve heard both stories. But if the latter, certainly the country music fans meant the lyrics seriously. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/274 "2018-02-17T23:38:46Z")
I saw Merle Haggard open for Bob Dylan. He had a very sarcastic rap about how bad societal things could be blamed on marijuana as his intro to Okie From Muskogee. Merle was alright, don’t let that “anti-hippie” reputation fool you. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/275 "2018-02-18T00:08:11Z")
I will grant **SA** one point: that a song like that huge Cardi B hit in 2017 can become so big and blast in public places where children may be present, with no bleeps, is a bad societal development. (Also a bad sign for the musical taste of much of the country.) ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/276 "2018-02-18T00:49:26Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > [Not really](http://blog.palmpartners.com/tag/1950s-drug-abuse/): > > Maybe, if you ignore the fact that acts like lynching, domestic violence, rape, child abuse, and violence against LGBQT people were often condoned or covered up rather than being punished as criminal. > Heh. Let’s not forget that the 1950s had the highest teen pregnancy rates of all time in the US. Many of those “intact” families originated in an unintended out-of-wedlock conception (teens then were actually, as always, pretty good at eluding “parental guidance”) followed by a wedding of necessity and an absence of alternatives for young mothers. As the spike in divorce rates among the middle-aged beginning in the 1960s indicates, many of those young couples who “had” to get married hadn’t really wanted that “intact” family in the first place. > Nonsense. The pulp magazines and “noir fiction” of the 1920s through the 1950s were riddled (so to speak) with the promotion and glamorization of criminal culture. Urban gangsters, Wild West outlaws, domestic villains like the protagonists of _Double Indemnity_ or _The Postman Always Rings Twice_, and other baddies gave rise to fads in hairstyles, clothing, children’s amusements, and more throughout popular culture. > > What you really mean is that back then, **black** criminals weren’t glamorized in popular media that was sufficiently widespread for white people to become aware of it. It’s not the criminality that’s a new thing these days in mass popular-culture glamorization: it’s the blackness. > We’ll never really know, given how much drug use and criminal activity back in the day was concealed or ignored (or [treated as a joke](https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2015/10/19/domestic-violence-no-joke/)). > 😃 Ha ha ha ha!! I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but the notion that in the pre-Civil Rights era white Americans who didn’t encounter black people simply defaulted to being non-racist is pretty damn hilarious. Not to mention the laudanum epidemic of the 19th century. > [@](#): > > Innumerable Victorian women were prescribed the drug for relief of menstrual cramps and vague aches. Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants. The Romantic and Victorian eras were marked by the widespread use of laudanum in Europe and the United States. Mary Todd Lincoln, for example, the wife of the USA president Abraham Lincoln, was a laudanum addict, as was the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was famously interrupted in the middle of an opium-induced writing session of Kubla Khan by a “person from Porlock”.[9] Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage. > **[Laudanum | History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudanum#History)** > > Paracelsus, a 16th-century Swiss alchemist, experimented with various opium concoctions, and recommended opium for reducing pain. One of his preparations, a pill which he extolled as his "archanum" or "laudanum", may have contained opium. Paracelsus' laudanum was strikingly different from the standard laudanum of the 17th century and beyond, containing crushed pearls, musk, amber, and other substances. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/277 "2018-02-18T01:44:35Z")
Opium dens. Morphine addicts. Freak shows. You didn’t see that in the 1960s. Maybe in the _1860s_. Hell, what about _alcohol_? > [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, horseshit! What happened was they started swearing, and by swearing I don’t mean damn and hell, I mean shit, piss, cock, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits, as well as fuck every other word in public, all of which is a result of the same idiotic thinking that’s resulted in video games like _Grand Theft Auto_ being widespread too. I’ll guarantee you no one ever pulled up to a gas station in 1960 and heard ‘Get down on your knees and suck my badass cock’ blaring from a car at the next pump. I think I know my own family better than you do. And you really think nobody used the word “fuck” prior to 1960? You, my friend, need to read some old manuscripts. Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud co-authored a poem that was literally an ode to the anus. What about the Marquis de Sade? Or [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_mich_im_Arsch) lovely work of Mozart’s? :dubious: Look, you obviously remember your childhood fondly. A lot of people do. And there were good things to come out of the 50s – the Civil Rights Movement began, the polio vaccine was discovered (the school nurse at my high school actually worked along side Dr. Salk!), the Interstate, the double-helix structure of DNA was discovered, etc. I myself have nostalgic views of the 90s. But I don’t feel like everything went to hell with September 11. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/278 "2018-02-18T02:48:54Z")
Emma Gonzalez for President. This girl is a superstar. [https://twitter.com/dividepictures/status/964985824386273280](https://twitter.com/dividepictures/status/964985824386273280) ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/279 "2018-02-18T02:55:05Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > As for Carlin, I’ve never heard the soul inflection bit Yet you argue that it’s true: that these words warp a culture’s psyche. Pretty fucking impressive words! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843/280 "2018-02-18T02:58:08Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > And you really think nobody used the word “fuck” prior to 1960? I can’t tell whether **SA** is claiming that people really seldom used swear words before the '60s or just that people seldom used swear words **in public** before the '60s. Neither claim is totally true but the latter is much closer to true than the former. People definitely knew and used words like “fuck” and “cock” and “cunt” before 1960, but they were mostly verboten for public use. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > I will grant SA one point: that a song like that huge Cardi B hit in 2017 can become so big and blast in public places where children may be present, with no bleeps, is a bad societal development. I’d agree that publicly blasting lyrics that contain profanity, obscenity, or descriptions of violent or sexual acts is problematic. However, I think claims for the “wholesomeness” of pre-1960 music are overstated. Racism and misogyny were staple features of “comic” and novelty songs, for example (“You May Be a Hawaiian on Broadway, But You’re Just Another N\*\*\*\*r To Me”? :eek: “Chink Chink Chinaman”?). Blues and country genres have been singing about violence since forever, as have many folksongs. Anybody who thinks there’s more murder in 50 Cent’s music than in Johnny Cash’s, for example, hasn’t been paying attention to the lyrics. The Louvin Brothers bluegrass duo in 1956 sang in “Knoxville Girl”: > [@](#): > > […] We went to take an evening walk about a mile from town > I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down > She fell down on her bended knees, for mercy she did cry > “Oh Willy dear, don’t kill me here, I’m unprepared to die” > She never spoke another word, I only beat her more > Until the ground around me within her blood did flow > I took her by her golden curls and I drug her round and around > Throwing her into the river that flows through Knoxville town […] It’s been largely normalized for white people to listen, in lilting ballads, to descriptions of violence that would appall them if imitated by a black hip-hop musician. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-school-shooting-stoneman-douglas-2-14-2018/808843.md?page=15)