Some of the injured (I think there are 53) are in crticical condition which means more may die! Howya gonna celebrate this great day y'all?

I am going to go to work today.  Now I can think about how at any second someone may take a drug or hate me so much for not voting Trump that they feel the need to bust into my Shopping Complex and start blasting people to death.

It, on the one hand, makes me grateful for my life. On the other hand?  It makes me realize that I am in the minority and ANTHEM ARIZONA is loaded with Republicans.  

Luckily most of them are sweet and gentle souls, albeit ignoramuses as to the real plight of the nation.

I've not heard the news... This yet another mass shooting for no particular reason?

Someone on another forum asked me about such incidents in the UK. They have happened but are fortunately extremely rare. I carried out some basic research.

Excepting terrorist outrages, which have a motive however twisted, there have been just four in the last forty years, with a total death toll of about 50 including 3 of the 4 gun-men, at least two shooting themselves.

The most notorious was the first, in Dunblane Primary School: so children aged 7 to just turning 11. The others have all been in streets.

Monday morning:

I've just heard an illuminating interview on the radio with an American security official and analyst who said the El Paso shooting is being regarded as terrorist (i.e. with an extreme political motive; far-Right in this case.).

He said such people have drawn a lot of their inspiration from the shootings by Anders Brevik in Norway, and this year by the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch. 

Also that like Al Quaida before them, indeed before that group destroyed the World Trade Centre, the extremists are using the Internet but tend to avoid using companies like Facebook which close such accounts as soon as they can.

The News (on BBC Radio Four) has reported that Trump blames these latest attacks on "mental illness". I had no idea he thinks he can diagnose psychiatric problems or solve crimes, but it comes over as a cheap excuse to deflect attention from the shooters' stated motives, and is likely only to give genuine mental illness a dark stigma. I doubt more than a handful of these murderers (250 so far this year?) are mentally ill in a genuinely clinical way, but are known to harbour either festering grudges or more often now, hard-line racist and nationalist views with phrases like "Hispanic invasion". Has anyone has told Mr. President that - having told the rest of the world? 

I doubt Trump knows this, but "mental illness" was a common excuse used by the USSR against political dissidents it was imprisoning. Only those dissidents were peaceful. They did not express their views by murder.

"America First" was Mr. Trump's campaign slogan and could be that of some of the far-Right, but I wonder if they know something I learnt only recently, that it was coined by an intensely nationalist, isolationist group in the 1930s?

We cannot go around blaming politicians, however eccentric or incompetent, for the actions of criminals. It is though fair to ask what it is about the country that its government seems unable or unwilling to tackle beyond leaving the unfortunate emergency-services to react to each incident? Many outside the US, including in Britain, put the primary blame on the lack of any real control on guns, the NRA and a romantic attachment to a early amendment to the Constitution; but whilst I agree there, I wonder if there is something deeper? A widespread tolerance of casual violence? Uncaring attitudes in a strongly "sink-or-swim" society that derides communal support services as "socialist"? I do not know. Only you Americans can really establish what's wrong at root, and only you Americans can do anything about it...   

Mona Sadiqui, British and a Professor of Islamic studies, made a telling point, also on the radio this morning in the 5-minute religious Thought For The Day slot. Commenting on mass-shootings generally, she said many offer sincere thoughts and prayers for the victims and communities affected, but even religious people question if that's not hypocritical when uttered by politicians who do not also try to address the problem. 

Who is celebrating and why?

I was aware Trump rapidly ensured his top Government officials are all place-men, but I don't think even they can be blamed for purely random attacks for no clear reason other than the individual's grudge against someone or something.

These latest shootings are different matter though. I understand why you see Trump and his senior circle tacitly encouraging a new and rapid rise in a very ugly extremism though; by their not even criticising it or by trying to invent false motives. That's why I called the "mental illness" slur, just an excuse.

Surely though there must be Senators and Representative of both parties who are not aiding and abetting the crimes? Who see and condemn what's happening? The President's most die-hard supporters won't; but are there any moderate people in your equivalent of Parliament, who could speak up and at least condemn the Far-Right extremists? I can understand anyone fearing being shot by some ruthless racist; but what can Trump really do to elected politicians of any party who speak against him, in front of most of the rest of the world? Dismiss them as he has dismissed Cabinet-level appointees? Would he have the power anyway? It would be seen internationally as the actions of a dictator, and I wonder if even Trump would risk that. 

I may be wrong but this seems a new phenomenon - you'd had many, many mass-murders by people with no obvious reason, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose but their lives (often by suicide). Now though you are seeing a larger and faster rise in people with the mentality of the Nazis or the Ku-Klux-Klan, than anywhere else, and I would most certainly blame your Government if it does not move hard and publicly against these groups and Internet circles. 

Not just for your country's sake either. Thanks to the Internet, these people indirectly encourage similar ones in other countries.

Their excuse in America is the many South Americans trying to enter the USA via Mexico, fleeing poverty and violent drugs cartels. The parallel in Europe is refugee and economic immigrants crossing the Mediterranean from African and the Middle East, fleeing sectarian and territorial wars, and famine. Most are exploited by traffickers, many have died on the voyage in over-loaded, unseaworthy boats.

In both situations, very many citizens' genuine fears over how to accommodate and look after all these people, are perceived as brushed off by their Governments, so easily exploited by hard-Right groups. Less so by the Left, though their generally internationalist views and desire to help the immigrants, can play into the Right's hands. Whereas in the States the exploitation of these fears can find expression in gratuitous violence against totally innocent people by individuals, in Europe it is more likely to lead to far-Right political parties forming.

This in some ways is more sinister because it is stealthy. These parties do not encourage gun-worshippers' murder sprees like that in Christchurch and now in Ohio and El Paso (though might turn a blind eye to attacks on businesses or sacred buildings). Instead, if legally-constituted parties, they might gain political influence at least, in rather conformist societies and election systems tending to favour coalitions. The latter give minority parties a larger voice than in straight vote-counting systems.

I think this is what's called "Populism", a term apparently coined in the last US Presidential election, but so vague and so often used merely to sneer at political opponents who try to answer real, social concerns,  it's trite and meaningless.


I do not know the answer and I doubt anyone does - also fuelling the divisions. At a practical level I'd think the first action of the FBI etc. if are not already doing it, is to hound the Far-Right types off the internet, tracing them and as far as possible stopping their having access to the WWW and to cell-phone services.

The rest of the free world is watching - these new terrorist attacks and their background are being reported abroad. We've had occasional trouble with neo-Nazi types in Europe, even in Germany. We have Hungary and Turkey descending into Far-Right despotism. What's happening in the States now though seems to be particularly serious because it's much more of a blend of, at best, inaction by the Government with extremists' exploitation of popular fears, in a country that has always championed democracy and individual liberty.

Erdogan of Turkey was democratically elected, turned to his advantage an unfortunate referendum that changed the role of President from mainly-honorary to executive; and now runs a country noted for pandering to hard-line Islamicists and jailing more journalists than any other. Let's hope Trump does not think him as much a hero as Kim and Putin, though he might not after this NATO state bought Russian rather than American missiles. I do not believe Trump could go as far as Erdogan at all, even if he'd like to, but as an executive or would-be executive President himself, the buck, as they say in America, stops with him. 


Many say there is a rising tide of so-called "populism" and hard-line divisions around much of the world. There are undeniably big population moves in many regions too, for various reasons mainly concerned with needing a better life or even just survival. If so, it is very much for countries like ours to understand both and counter the extremism.
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