Thread: Killing of Australian baseball player

When my wife told me of this, I was quite concerned as it bothered me. Are we as a nation and/or world becoming de-sensitized to murder/killings? The bad happenings, around the world & here in the US, are getting worse and worse.

The US is in a state of political/social turmoil right now, example: As a act of self-defense, a Hispanic man kills a black man...gets plastered all over the news & slanted towards a racial thing when it was nothing near that. Now this happens & I'd bet the initial report is about all we will hear about it.

I'm personally very concerned with the direction society as a whole is changing. I really want to go biblical on you guys...refraining though...

Yeah, every time I hear his poor poor girlfriend talking on the radio about it tears well up in my eyes and I think of my own young son about the same age. Let's just love, really, let's just try and love, we're not trying, are we? Are we?

Recall when I was about 14, fifty years ago, three teens stomped another teen to death because he wouldn't give them the dime ($0.10) they demanded of him. IIRC it happened on the street, on the front steps of a NYC library, in the middle of the day. Made national headlines. Google Kitty Genovese and see what comes up. This murder of the baseball player is terrible but is certainly nothing new or different.

As far as being hardened to violence, how can we help but be so ? Can we wrap our minds around Rwanda where 500,000 to 1,000,000 Hutus being slain by their Tutsi neighbors, or the daily carnage still going on in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan ?

Alvin Toffler wrote "Future Shock" about 40 years ago in which he said that the dissemination of information through modern technology would become overwhelming. I think we are there. I know I am. The now familiar news radio blurb that X amount of people were killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq today made headlines ten years ago. Now it is at the bottom of page 3 if the newspapers print it at all. It seems that the senseless murder of one individual is something that we can wrap our minds around. Larger scale carnage is just more than we can process in a personal sense.

May have flagged post by mistake, dang cell phone.

It also is the breakdown of the intact home. That is fact. Argue if you must, but it is proven. When there are no parents due to work or single parent dynamic there is trouble. Also when parents try to be "buddies" and not parents there is trouble as well. Next time you go out look around and if you spot a parent with child look how closely they resemble one another. This generation of "parents" don't want to grow up and they are destroying the next generation of children because of it. They are tweeting and LOLing this nation into the abyss (ok that last part was a bit over the top)....Look at all the teachers having "relationships" with students. Young, attractive women bedding 15 year old boys?!?!?! America, we're messing up!!

it's all a general slide that has been going on in this country for some time. A decrease in the standard of living, increasing disparity among groups wealth wise, polarization in the country, breakdown of the family and social fabric and economic decline. We haven't seen anything yet, wait until groups really get fed up with whats going on and the real violence and political unrest starts.

As I've said many times Humans need no motive to kill each other. It's been going on since we have evolved. Do you look different, dress different, think different, talk different,pray different,act different. Those and many other factors are good enough to kill for. If you can't find a reason, well, it don't matter cause you really don't need one to kill.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

This is a pretty good read

The 22-year-old college baseball star was shot in the back as he jogged along a road in the Oklahoma city of Duncan on Friday.

One of three teenagers arrested over the shooting reportedly laughed and danced during as he was led from a court hearing on Tuesday.

The death of Mr Lane has struck a chord with many Australians on social media, who have expressed shock at the senselessness of the alleged murder.

Violent stories from the US are a daily inclusion in the Australian news cycle and it is easy to assume Americans have just become used to the carnage.

But a ninemsn reader from the US has written to express that this is not the case.

Florida-based war veteran John Melchiorre has told ninemsn that most Americans were also hit hard by the death of Mr Lane.

His letter highlights the struggle ordinary Americans face in dealing with the types of stories Australians read about the US every day.

Here is his letter, republished in full:

I live in the U.S.A., and have never had the honor of visiting your country. I'm here to talk about the tragic death of Christopher Lane. First let me say that Americans are not "used to" this kind of violence, and we don't work around it to live normal lives.


The death of young Christopher hit most Americans very hard, especially happening in the Oklahoma area, where a short few months ago, we had school children and adults killed by two EF 5 tornados, at 300 mph.

We are still reeling over the school children and teachers, who were gunned down in Connecticut, and about the death and destruction from the Boston bombings.

We do not take any of this in stride, it is not a part of our way of life, where we can shrug it off. We can't, because there are times, like now, when we as parents seem to have lost control of our parenting. At the ripe old age of 17, I served aboard an Air Craft Carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the beginning of the Viet Nam War.

After my discharge in 1967, I served for 30 yrs. in a Wartime Police Dept. It was a time in history where Law Enforcement Officers were hunted down, murdered, assassinated, and even had bounties put on us by terroristic subversive groups, who wanted nothing less than to "CHANGE" our way of government. This is where I learned the answer to the question, that the Lane family, and the people of Australia are asking;

WHY?

This is the only answer, so please look at it carefully, and the answer is that whether your from either country.....NO ONE REALLY UNDERSTANDS THE CONCEPT OF EVIL. Evil has existed since Adam and Eve, when Cain killed his brother Abel, and the reason why most of us don't have this conception is because we need to blame someone, we need to point a finger, we need to touch it, we need to show it on the news.

The same evil that brought down the Towers on 9-11, is the same evil that killed millions of people by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Po Pot, is the same evil that murdered Christopher. Evil is a tough subject to talk about, either from the pulpit or from the news media.

We can kill its source, but never evil itself, only GOD can do that. The faces of evil can be that of a 10 yr. old, 75 yr. old, any sex, or ethic origin, any social strata. Parents are the only ones who can keep evil at bay, by having a strong influence on their children, whether it be spiritual or not, but a strong family unit must be at hand, always.

All of this guarantees us nothing, BUT WHAT WE HAVE IS A CHANCE...A CHANCE...at it. I'm a father of two, and a grand father of three, so it is with the heaviest of hearts, that we send our thoughts and prayers to the Lane family, and the people of Australia.

There is the old saying, "That evil exists when good men do nothing", and two days after the Boston Bombings, there a tweet sent, it had to do with 3 sleeping Monkeys, next to an alarm clock, who; "SPEAK NO EVIL - SEE NO EVIL - HEAR NO EVIL-, AND WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK GOES OFF, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE"...but instead of springing into action, we turn over and hit the snooze alarm.

May GOD bless you, and may GOD bless Australia.

Yea, they won't be dancing when they're in the Big House and their cellmate Bubba decides he and his buddies will have their way with them every night.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Yea, they won't be dancing when they're in the Big House and their cellmate Bubba decides he and his buddies will have their way with them every night.

I wonder if things would perhaps begin to change if their Family's were made to pay for their incarceration ???? Money I mean of course

I have to chew on that a bit

Originally Posted by EMC45

It also is the breakdown of the intact home. That is fact. Argue if you must, but it is proven. When there are no parents due to work or single parent dynamic there is trouble.

Firstly I must say, that the above MAY be a contributing factor sometimes, however not all who grow up in a broken home will be in trouble, similarly not all children who grow up with both parents will not be in trouble. I can say this a product of such a home. It is easy to paint with broad strokes.
Anyway what I was going to mention, slightly off topic as I havent seen the report, but in response to Carl's last comment, I saw on the news a story from Syria, where the government aledgedly used some sort of nerve gas on the population, I don't want to comment either way on the Ins and outs of what happened and who did it because no one really knows yet. But there was also footage of streams of people leaving the country with nothing but what they could carry.
Nothing new I know. But it did bring a tear to my eye, and leave me both angry and upset that stuff like this still goes on, and really make me wonder about why I worry about the relatively inconsequential tribulations of my life.

Elderly man dies after being attacked outside ice arena | Spokane/E. WA - KXLY.com

And the FB up date



KXLY 4 News

55 minutes ago near Spokane, WA.



BREAKING: Spokane police have confirmed an 89-year-old man who was attacked outside the Eagles Ice-A-Rena has died this morning. Police are looking for two black males ages 16-19. One was wearing all black and the other a silk do-rag. The attack happened around 8 p.m. last night.



This Morning:



KXLY 4 News

2 hours ago near Spokane, WA.



BREAKING: We have a crew heading to the parking lot of the Salvation Army on Indiana where gun shots were reportedly fired. Police and medics are responding




KXLY 4 News

42 minutes ago near Spokane, WA.



BREAKING: The victim in this morning's shooting outside the Salvation Army has died.


(The police shot this one, just heard)


Perhaps the AU Ass't PM is correct in the statement that you should think twice before visiting the US