Man Down (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

June 20, 2011 -- Last week, in an incident that didn't get much attention in the national news, a man named Tom Ball set himself on fire in front of the county courthouse in Keene, NH.

He left a 15-page suicide note explaining his actions. He was angry at the state child protection bureaucracy and the courts after a ten-year battle over a child abuse charge that became, for him, a Kafkaesque struggle with cruel authority. The long suicide note he left was a thoughtful and disturbing indictment of the legal procedures now common across America that have had many unanticipated consequences -- from breaking up families to homelessness -- but it was also a grim comment on the condition of American manhood.

A casual Martian observer hanging around any convenience store in the "fly-over" zones of this nation must be impressed with the striking way that American men present themselves to the world. Forgive me for revisiting an oft-dredged-up theme -- male costuming and adornment in our time -- but I wouldn't keep bringing it up if I didn't think it was significant. On the whole, American men present themselves as savages. I think they do it because they feel very insecure about themselves -- similar to the insecurity that prompts a politician to wear a flag lapel pin. Should there be any doubt that an elected official cares about his country? Or maybe we should ask: what kind of country produces such craven, weak, pandering elected officials? What kind of culture produces men who get themselves up like chain-saw murderers?

The same country that furnishes an endless diet of super-hero movies to pubescent males who are not expected to develop normal adult coping powers. The same country that supplies gruesome, sado-masochistic video games to occupy the idle hours of young men -- and then lets them take those "skills" to some tilt-up bunker in Nevada where they sit in air-conditioned comfort and direct drone aircraft 10,000 miles away to incinerate suspected "enemies" in mud villages. (Sometimes "mistakes are made" and they blow up a wedding party or something -- but the drone controllers still get to leave the bunker at the end of their shift and roll down the strip for a plastic tray full of burritos.)

more

http://worldnewstrust.com/man-down-james-howard-kunstler.html

[bertman]

1. To Mr. Kunstler: maybe gay marriage is a matter of fairness and recognition that

gay people are as human as straight people. Did that ever occur to you? Or do you think only in terms of male display behaviors?

[phantom power]

2. I'm going to disagree with Kunstler on this one.

I read Ball's note, and to me the entire thing screamed "Abusive father with a giant chip on his shoulder."

[Demeter]

3. And blaming it all on Feminists

Feminists are just women who are tired of themselves and their children being treated like punching bags.

Those laws are there for a reason.

[TheMadMonk]

4. Certainly a bit rantish towards the end, but not exactly unexpected...

...as the writer feeds on the words already put to paper. However, a lot of what he does have to say makes a great deal of sense. If even a fraction of what he claims bears any resemblance to the truth, in his shoes, I'd be mad as hell too.


Women not familiar with the system will and do, give into pressure to press charges. They ARE told they will be made a part of the problem if they don't. And they are very fearful of losing their kids.

The wealthy are somwhat insulated by their lawyers who give them reasonably good advice to "dare" the cops to carry through on the threat. Those at the other end of the scale also know to dare the system to act, and to give it nothing.

It's the ones in the middle who cooperate with the system who get burnt every time.

I do think he's over the top, but not by too much on the "man hating". However, it's moved WAY beyond that. It's now just one more tool being used in the very deliberate destruction of the middle class.

Why else do most of us know perfectly decent people who have been destroyed by things like this, and at the same time know others we'd cheerfully shoot on the spot if we could get away with it, who remain almost entirely untouched right up to the moment they loose the plot entirely?

His situation may be extreme, but I know a number of people who individually have had subsets of his experience happen to them, and between them most of it.

Why is the stable middle class family torn apart on the basis of a single oftimes unsubstantiated claim, but multiply reported and substantiated abuses at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale are left unchecked until someone dies or is permanently maimed?