(I mean to say that it is A factor, not THE singular cause)
Or rather it resembles a mythical beast, part of the hydra of American societal collapse. We're all alienated and isolated from each other, further and further removed from viewing each other as fellow human beings or fellow citizens in a nation. What causes someone to snap and arbitrarily decide to find a crowd of people (frequently schoolchildren) with the express purpose of committing mass murder? We know that entitlement and rage play huge parts, as does this alienation. If you view other people more as competition, as enemies, as obstacles or threats, you'll more likely find it easier to commit mass slaughter.
Capitalism splits us apart like this. As does car culture. Americans are so fucking car-brained, another cause/effect of this alienation. Waiting in a queue, already intolerable in a standing-and-waiting context, infuriates even the most patient person if they're "stuck in traffic". Fellow citizens become threatening obstacles by default. When driving, the only real means of communication are expressions of rage (horns, screaming, middle finger, et. all). You're not just waiting to place your order in a cheap restaurant or coffee shop, you're stuck in traffic that's backed up onto the street waiting for the drive-thru.
When driving, pedestrians are inconveniences to your personal space and entitlement. Other cars are even worse; barely recognizable as human-operated, they're metallic monsters rushing at lethal speeds around you, cutting you off, getting in the fucking way, going to slowly or too fast, and making your day that much worse. Bicyclists are demoted to literally subhuman in the driver's mind.
American society is rapidly innovating new and exciting ways to reduce face-to-face interactions between humans. Kids are packed off to school, leaving the adults to work remotely or in jobs whose main role is getting screamed at from a car window. We're preferring more and more to remain in our pod-homes, interfacing with our friends and coworkers and bosses and the world through a computer screen. It's easier than ever to shop for anything from the computer too, further reducing time spent outside with its distasteful human interaction.
When it's time to leave the home-pod, our default behavior is to seek the comfort of the familiar and travel in the mini pod. This pod will rocket around cities at high speeds, coming uncomfortably close to other such traveling pods which are concealing their own fetal occupants. These metallic wombs grow ever larger, more spacious, more luxurious and even decadent, at the expense of all life and environments around them. They may park at a store where an underpaid clerk will rush out goods to be loaded like ants shuttle crumbs to the nest, the drive-thru experience brought to groceries with equally minimal human interaction. Or perhaps they'll crawl through a fast-food line, delivering automatic orders on apps or chatbots and waiting for a hand to thrust a bag into a side orifice to deliver nutrients straight into the human's gullet. Maybe one car will smash into another, at which point other cars will arrive to deploy their own special symbiotic humans who may deploy even more depraved violence of their own.
Like a triple-headed ouroboros, the alienation and violence and cars all feed and birth each other.
It's not just a factor, it's intended. Thatcher and Reagan's entire political project was to create a society of alienated paranoid freaks who can't stand each other. That's true individualism, not working together for one's best interests.
Yeah I've used a f350 to tow some shit and the conscious awareness that you could just kill someone with this easily without risk to your safety was interesting. Is that why chuds like truck? The feeling of being able to run someone over?
If I steelman this it's basically an arms race at this point and has been for a while. There's political tendencies that'll get you to do something more for the "common good", like drive a prius or something, but yeah if you're number one priority is you, yourself and I and all the negative externalities you don't care for or actively take for some plot against you, big truck is basically where you arrive
A lot of this is also applicable to suburbia and I have also personally suspected that most of the right wing mass shooters come from "middle class" suburban homes. They feed into each other to practically guarantee a high level of atomization and loneliness in most of the people living there in my experience.
To expand on this, I remember seeing the claim that the FBI found that the serial killer phenomenon's rise correlated with the rise of suburbia, saw that either on here or the trueanon sub. No idea on the validity of that but it makes sense to me, also synergizes well with the idea that mass shootings have replaced serial killers in a way. The brain-breaking alienation and atomization was always there, the extreme manifestations of it just switched to a much shorter and more violent burst now for whatever reason.
Suburbia, car culture, and the nuclear family are the perfect methods of passive misery. For anyone trapped in it it's practically inescapable and like a fish with water it'll be the last thing you notice if you've never experienced anything else, especially for children.
If either the home-pod or mobile pod are under threat, the occupant is allowed and encouraged to kill the threat.
When you live in suburbia you can effectively tune out all other people and live in a bubble, with the internet being your only connection to the outside world, along with grocery trips and work. That's harder to do in a city.
Yes, but also if you throw a rock in the US chances are you will hit something contributing to mass shootings. Everything is broken.
Car culture might be, idk, 9th on the list? At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, everyone has their pet solution but none of them ever get implemented because there's no political will to do anything to address the problem in any way.
Ok, let me know when you start putting together a movement to ban cars to stop mass shootings and I'll go out and hold a sign, seems like a decent way to pass the time.
You're being confrontational for no reason, I'm just acknowledging the reality of the situation. Nothing gets done about guns in the wake of mass shootings. Nothing gets done to make mental health care more accessible. Nothing gets done about any of the many, many, other, much more directly related contributing factors. Because Americans don't actually care and aren't willing to do anything to address the problem, and any minor cost or counterargument is enough reason to justify inaction. If you think you can cut through that barrier by going after cars, then good luck with that.
While I agree that cars are a contributing factor, I just don't think it's important to pin down every contributing factor when there are other factors that are much more clearly connected and much more politically viable to address (though still not very). If you want to interpret that as, "A way to feel superior to anyone talking about the problem," or as saying, "Nothing will ever change or get done so stop talking about the problem" then that's on you.
Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying, thank you for a good faith conversation.
Most cities are actively trying to move away from car culture by improving density, adding trains and bike lanes. It's the thing we talk about here that we're most likely to see since it's already urban planning concensus, at least on the bureaucratic end.
This has been on my mind a lot recently given the continued random violence. I'm thinking about writing a longer form piece on it with data to back it up, just not sure where to start
meanwhile rubber tire particles and brake dust poison the environment
America is also a very violent country with a history of glorifying it that predates cars. My country has a much higher murder rate than the US and car culture isn't as prevalent here, but poverty and a long history of vigilantism is.
True. I'm sure it contributed. I just don't think it's the entire explanation.
Americas been a car culture for long before these mass shootings so I'm not buying the car thesis. But in a broad sense yes, this is the result of liberalism/alienation.
A catalyst doesn't cause any reaction on its own, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a significant element once all the reactants are present.
IMO, it has more to do with the abominations where humanity goes to die called suburbs than car culture, which is already a component of suburbia along with being lawn-brained. I would argue that the average suburban dweller's death drive is far more reflected in the way they treat their lawns than their cars. Besides the murderous contempt towards plants that don't fit within their monoculture vision (ie weeds), they also have murderous fantasies about animals like squirrels who dare trespass upon the suburbanites' pristine lawn. I know the lawn-brained who openly brag about killing squirrels because they wanted to eat the assholes' shitty apple or relish finding any excuse to blow some songbird's head off with a 10/22. You can see how someone who's has been self-groomed to kill squirrels and birds that step on their lawn would also shoot kids trying to play hide-and-seek as well.
I would argue that even the act of cutting grass is a reflection and reinforcement of their death drive. You would think that their bizarre aesthetic tastes could be fulfilled by installing fake grass that doesn't need to be watered or mowed. But that misses the point. It's not that they desire a monoculture lawn, but they desire the taming of nature through the destruction of weeds and killing of animals. Cutting grass fits into this picture since repeatedly cutting grass is represents a form of regenerative destruction. Much like the eagle who rips out Prometheus's liver can look forward to ripping the liver again and again for all eternity, grass can be repeatedly culled over and over again.
This is profoundly sick and with enough stress, there comes a point where just maintaining a lawn no longer fulfills their death drive and they must move on to bigger and grander avenues.
The hive must remain secure, the hive must remain safe
They're trying to come in put up the cameras fence off the grass protect the grass protect the home secure the hive buy the guns shoot the intruders burn the yard burn the insects salt the field they're at the gates they're here get ready to defend yourself shoot the animals shoot the humans wall yourself off they're coming in
crossing at a crosswalk with a signal in broad daylight, i almost get hit by a car a few times a week. half the time the driver gives a "mea culpa" type of gesture, but the other times they act really indignant and my first impulse is to walk over to their window, pull them out by their shirt collar to see if i can fold them up and push their head into their own rectum. i let this thought flow down the river, like the MF boddhisatva of compassion that i am and go on about my day.
on the occasions i do drive, i keep it very brief and local anymore. i drive very defensively, because maybe 2-5% of the other drivers are completely insane and don't follow basic rules. like the rules about yielding to oncoming traffic when making a left. very basic shit that endangers everyone present. these carefully avoided brushes with destruction also fill me with anger for a few moments.
there are basically no other immediate threats to my personal safety in my life that come close to cars, in terms of frequency of potential maiming and death. i grew up somewhere that was #1 for road rage incidents that resulted in assault and homicide, so i fully believe in the need to keep a cool head while driving. but i can see how it could drive someone with limited impulse control to go ballistic.
It’s the same thing on a bike. I bike frequently and objectively I’m probably an asshole about cars not following the rules but the mea culpas you mentioned people give don’t mean shit if you or I are plastered on their hood. Biking or walking is so much more preferable to me to get around a city but holy shit people in cars are unhinged
Cars shouldn't even encourage individualistic thinking. Traffic flows so much better if you leave space, make space, and zipper. That means thinking as a collective. Americans are militant individualists before they even set foot in a car.
Like. Let's put it this way: The Netherlands are rates the best country for driving in Europe and a lot of their "pedestrian friendly" infrastructure is also designed so cars have to stop less. They love cars and driving but have a less fucked approach to it.
