Bad Boys II

[hollodero]

(06-03-2020, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: I don't think anyone, certainly not me, treats racism as the "sole explanation" for U.S. violence. However, it has primacy when we are analyzing police violence in U.S. cities. Images of dead black men and women incite protests, largely from citizens of the same color.

Granted. I'm just saying, a racial sensitivity program won't cut it, or an infomercial campaign.

The propensity to violence is inherently a different problem, sure intertwined with racism, sure often intertwined because a black person is percieved as easiest victim for snapping policemen and others. I might be wrong, but I feel that gets addressed too seldomly.

(06-03-2020, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: I agree that we have a readiness to violence unmatched by all other 1st-world countries, though still a long ways form Afghanistan and Somalia. Though we are hardly a monolith in this regard.  Millions of our city folk would be fine with outlawing weapons altogether. And we are beginning to challenge the long-held presumptive right to shoot and kill trespassers.

Yeah you're better than Afghanistan. This is actually a sad statement.

(06-03-2020, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: U.S. citizens defined their relationship to guns and gun violence rather differently than European states. We had a "frontier" until the 1880s

Yeah you define it differently, as you are romanticizing guns. It is a symbol of pride, of self-reliance, of enpowerment and at times (I guess LeonardLeap told me that once) also a fond childhood memory. And I get that, I don't slam those feelings at all, I can understand it. I still see it as a problem for sure, for many the childhoods are not that rosy and the gun is still a part of it and the mindset developed.

I disagree though a bit when it comes to your historical analysis. Yeah you had that whole cowboy and settler history that was gun-affine and violent for sure. But we Europeans had enough frontiers. We used to lead war against each other all the time, big ones and smaller ones. Eg. around 1800 Napoleon came along. Tyroleans, which you mentioned as an example of peaceful idyll, became proud self-defending partisans in that time and feel that history until this day, eg. 65.000 guns are registered in that part of our country alone. We have enough history of violence and death and destruction, it wasn't all peaceful and placid easy living here either. In the end, say 1945, we stood at the ruins of our civilizations after two world wars that braught the most severe inhumanity in human history and devastated the continent once again.

We did not make an everyday experience out of guns though, we never made it a symbol like you did, we also were not taught to be aware of murderous intruders all the time. Michael Moore (who I generally do not like) mentioned TV series like "cops", and I think that might be a fair point, we don't have this kind of indoctrination that death awaits us and our families on every corner and in our homes and only a gun can protect good people. We sure have a whole different attitude towards them and a few things are more puzzling tzhan seeing those right-wing gun nuts that take to the streets like this was Falludja.

(06-03-2020, 05:47 PM)Dill Wrote: But there are few films of 19th-century Austrians all rushing into town in Tyrolean hats, Lederhosen and squirrel guns to posse up with the Stadtwacher (or whatever your sheriff equivalent would be) to chase the bank robbers, or back him when the Stitzelberger brothers get out of jail and come back to town for revenge.

Oh we do have quite a lot of hunter vs. poacher stories though, and they usually end bloody. (Of course we also have all the western films you mentioned and know all those; some are even Italian.)
Also, "Gendarm" would be the word probably.