re: what's changed in this country

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American culture is racing to the bottom. Whether it is just the old-fashioned "eye test" or by measuring social pathologies or public behavior, how we dress or talk in public, the state of marriage and the family, the repudiation of traditional values, moral relativism everywhere, moral confusion about very simple things, the quality of our art, or anti-anxiety medications, whatever. Violence (suicide murder) tends to "cluster" , that is one event motivates the next and it becomes part of the culture. We have an established American archetype now-"the school shooter" and it is just another dysfunctional and violent expression of our culture. It's who we are.

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100% truth. The rush to destroy traditional values has led to the idea that every pathological behavior is really caused by being a victim. The copy cat culture looks for extreme and disgusting outlets to garner attention. We've normalized shitty behavior

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Drugging kids 
Violent music 
Violent first shooter video games 
Lack of parental involvement 
Giving school shooters too much attention 
Culture if victimization 
The age of social retardation via attention whoring.

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This..especially drugging most kids instead of whipping the crap out of them. Brain structures are changed with pharma drugs for ADD/anxiety/depression at early ages given so parents dont have to parent. Same with video games....I dont feel like parenting so watch this, or have whatever you ask for so you will shut up, or go ahead and talk back and act rude with no consequences. It is a parental problem AND a drug problem.

Lot's of things.

Kids have become entitled, and when not given their way act out. Some to the extreme.

Kids are taught not to excel, but merely arrive and you are as good as everyone else and get a trophy.

Parenting has fallen short.

Social media has lead to even more bullying and social pressure on kids far to young to handle the pressure of a constant eye on their life.

Morality has faded. From abortion being about "woman's bodies" and not a dead baby. To single parenting being glorified by Hollywood. We have destroyed the basics of the nuclear family. Two parent households are now "traditional", instead of common. I will say two parents, even gay, are also okay households. I know a few gay couples, and all seem to have very strong households, despite the abnormal setting. My nephews are all in football, two play baseball, all make great grades. Have two mom's. Two parents are better than one. Simple as that.

Kids aren't beaten when they act up. You know why I didn't act up in school? Because my Mom would beat the shite out of me. Lesson learned. Parents parent to be friends now. Not parents. Unacceptable.

America has destroyed morality, the family, and discipline. We are going to have a very dark period in our history soon.

It’s a combination of things. Lack of family structure and parents raising children to be responsible and respectful adults. Lack of faith in today’s society is troubling. The Church teaches not only to love yourself but to love others. Television is extremely corrupt. Every channel is filled with egotistical, self serving people that are hell bent on being disruptive. I see more and more satanic images that have become bold with their messaging. Last, as a young adult I would have argued against the effect of violent video games but they have become way more violent and graphic. My sons attitude and demeanor was different after playing them for years. About a year ago I took them from him and he has become less aggressive and more like himself again. At this point I’m not sure if we can get back what’s been taken. This society of it’s everyone else’s fault will never self correct but only get worse...

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Absolutely

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Violent music was here way before these mass shootings started occurring. If that was the case, then late 80's/early 90's would've been the time for mass shootings

First person shooters maybe. The culture surrounding first person shooters is what has me believe otherwise though. Those games reward steady grinding, not instant gratification. I know that sounds dumb, but most FPS games are team driven games designed to carry out objectives based on group oriented success. I don't see lone wolf types being born from that IMO

Proliferation of TV evangelists teaches kids at an early age that our holy men are even corrupt & immoral. Kids are smarter & better informed. We were not permanently at war back in the day. The pharmaceutical industry had not yet convinced our medicine men that drugs cure everything. Segregation and Jim Crow along with other barriers kept minorities apart from white folk. We had leaders like Truman and Eisenhower who were decent men with common sense.

Essentially, the general public was more ignorant. We had no idea that the CIA was over-throwing governments in the Middle East or deliberately infecting Central American populations as well as black Americans with syphilis.

There was no internet. Technology was an IBM Selectric. We waited until 5:30 pm to get 30 minutes of national news. There are lots of changes and we're never going back to that point in time.

Btw, when Charles Whitman was picking off students on the UT campus back in the 60's, the cops in Austin weren't equipped with a lot of firepower to shoot back at a guy 27 stories away. At least one student ran to his pickup and brought out his deer rifle with a scope to shoot back.

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There’s an entire area of child development that deals with resiliency—why some kids are able to escape the effects of so-called negative environments and influences and others are not.

Without knowing you, my bet is that your son is loved, cared for, and feels safe.

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Right, which is the real problem of the disintegrating family unit.

it's so weird...I'll get upvoted for saying guns are inanimate objects they don't kill people, then downvoted for saying games and music are the same damn thing.

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I won't argue about it anymore though. We just differ on the magnitude of it really.

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If you think it doesn't negatively affect some kids, were on different planets.

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Another perspective, one less entrenched in debates over the methodology of studying the behavioral effects of video games, comes from Gary Slutkin, the founder of Cure Violence, an organization that has successfully reduced gun violence in parts of Baltimore and Chicago. Accustomed to working in communities where physical violence is an everyday part of life, Slutkin doesn’t think that virtual violence is a cause in itself, but neither does he think it’s harmless. Instead, he thinks the games make people more susceptible to becoming violent.

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“

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The military knows this very well,” Slutkin says, noting the U.S. military’s use of video games in training soldiers, partly to break down their instinctive repulsion to killing. To Slutkin, what’s known about our brains is justification for concern: Humans are social, highly conditioned creatures who learn how to behave by watching what’s around us, turning social messages into so-called scripts that play in our minds as we engage the world.

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LINK

Watching violence doesn't make people commit violence, however it breaks down resistance and desensitizes. Playing first shooter games moreso. Well adjusted kids probably have no issues but we have a world in which increasingly kids are not so well adjusted.

Pop culture is a symptom of a very ill society.

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I'm not a fan of violating our freedoms of expression.

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This hasn't been suggested

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If you think it doesn't negatively affect some kids, were on different planets.

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I said we differ on the magnitude of it. I don't think it belongs in the rest of your list, of which I agree.