Saturday, June 18, 2011

Gamma War

If you want to know why gammas are so intrinsically contemptible, consider the case of the late Tom Ball. After getting arrested for an exaggerated case of "domestic violence" that would have seen at least half the mothers in the 1980s jailed and separated from their kids, he wound up getting a divorce and being ordered to pay child support. As a protest, he ended up immolating himself in front of a New Hampshire courthouse; he left behind a post-mortem message which included the following:
I am done being bullied for being a man. I cannot believe these people in Washington are so stupid to think they can govern Americans with an iron fist. Twenty-five years ago, the federal government declared war on men. It is time now to see how committed they are to their cause. It is time, boys, to give them a taste of war.
A taste of war! Brave words indeed. Now I will admit that my sense of humor is inclined to the black, but even the more delicately minded must find this quintessentially gamma drama to be at least a little amusing. It would appear that Ball failed to understand Gen. George Patton's dictum: the purpose of war is not to die for your country, it is to make the other guy die for his.

Ball demonstrates that even to the fiery end, the gamma is ultimately more concerned with trying to make others feel sorry for him than he is in actually accomplishing anything material. There are men who die like lions and men who die like sheep. But what can one say of the man who chooses to die by his own hand like an inanimate piece of firewood?

72 comments:

Joseph Dantes said...

From a War Nerd perspective, he may have done exactly the right thing.

His life was never worth much in the grand scheme of feminism vs. MRA movement.

What he chose was probably the ultimate PR stunt he was capable of pulling off.

Modern wars are about media: Flaunting who's the bigger victim. Bringing out your dead. Counting the atrocities.

Feminists are very good at that kind of fight, but it'll be hard to beat a self-immolation in Vietnam-style. I expect this to create a power-shift in the victim game. And that will influence laws.

Plus it will rally the MRA troops. Gamma speaks to gamma.

As disgusting as it is, this is how you win modern conflicts.

mmaier2112 said...

Nope. He'll be written off as a pathetic nutjob.

Sad but true.

Yohami said...

yes, on point.

Men cant succeed by playing the woman.

And the more the Gamma immolates himself and make others understand how much he suffers, the less sympathy he gets.

Vespasian said...

Well the trigger for the Arab Spring was a guy in Tunisia setting himself on fire on the court house steps.

This of course set off a string of protests, uprisings and a civil war.

In America it will set off a string of giggles, snide comments and derision.

Gamma action most likely but the core of his argument has some substance to it.

Anonymous said...

After reading the guy's last statement (sent to a newspaper that printed the entire thing) at the inmalifide link, I now have a rather different opinion of the guy. He fought, and fought, and fought. He not only uncovered a lot of information that can only help the MRA fight, but was able to send away a few of the judicial and bureaucratic cogs in the system that persecuted him, which is more than I have heard in other similar stories. He is also ex-military, so this might be seen as the equivalent of rushing a machine gun emplacement or falling on a grenade for one's brothers-in-arms.

Read the whole thing and then decide.

http://www.inmalafide.com/blog/2011/06/17/tom-ball-new-hampshire-man-who-burned-himself-to-death-the-ex-wife-lawyer-wants-me-jailed-for-back-child-support/

modernguy said...

Gamma? Uh, so would the "alpha" have done? Started banging his wife's friend and made a new family? What an idiotic assessment. You don't have to relate everything people do to their SMV. J wonder what Vox would die for, Austrian economics maybe?

modernguy said...

Cool, I guess Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were "alphas" by that measure.

VD said...

Uh, so would the "alpha" have done?

Killed someone else. Generally speaking, killing someone on the other side has historically been considered to be an effective martial tactic.

Klebold and Harris were more alpha than Ball. Which isn't saying much. They were whiny little bastards, after all.

Trust said...

@: " the gamma is ultimately more concerned with trying to make others feel sorry for him than he is in actually accomplishing anything material."
__________

I never thought of it in that term, but that pretty much nails it. Back when I was the gamma I was raised to be, I was always trying to get sympathy, especially from women.

I found out early in adulthood that a woman's sexual desire for a man is much higher when she is red-in-the-face furious at a man than it is when she feels bad for how awful this GreatGuy(TM) has it.

Had Ball remained in prison, I bet anything that the men who were kicking his ass daily would be receiving more letters from lovestruck women than he would have.

Trust said...

modernguy said...Gamma? Uh, so would the "alpha" have done?

@Vox said...Killed someone else.
___________

Yep, and if imprisoned for murder, the Alpha would have had love letters, marriage proposals, and conjugal visits to look forward to in prison. Ball will get less flowers on his grave.

Anonymous said...

killed someone else. Generally speaking, killing someone on the other side has historically been considered to be an effective martial tactic.

*slow clap clap clap* wonderful. yes indeed. that really would have gotten his point across.

no, it would have simply let people paint him and all men like him as perpetrators.

effective martial tactic my arse.

VD said...

effective martial tactic my arse.

Let me get this straight, just to be sure I understand you clearly. You are asserting that killing the enemy is NOT an effective military tactic?

If only you had been at Waterloo, surely you could have set Napoleon straight and led France to victory!

modernguy said...

Meh, sniping at someone after they're dead (from the internet no less, and a "game" blog at that, where nerds learn to be "alphas") is pretty pathetic too. The guy got his family taken away unjustly and was caught in a labyrinthine bureaucracy. He chose a fitting way to protest it. Killing a judge or prosecutor who, as he says, was just doing his job anyway wouldn't have accomplished much. He would've been labeled a psycho and forgotten about. This way he got his letter in the paper.

Anonymous said...

TPO

Time Place Occasion

An 'effective martial tactic' is one that achieves the desired goal(s).

Yes, killing the enemy is an effective military tactic in many and probably most situations. However, it relies on the assumptions that 1) you can kill enough of the enemy to bring about an end to the conflict, and 2) the killing does not instead worsen one's own position such as by painting the perp as exactly that - a violent perp - thus turning public opinion against him and inviting escalation.

As JD pointed out above, "Modern wars are about media: Flaunting who's the bigger victim. Bringing out your dead. Counting the atrocities." In this case, going on a killing spree would simply allow the media to paint the perp as another violent crazy who can and should be put down to 'protect the rest of us.'

So unless and until there is a mass uprising of enough of the population so as to effect a total overthrow of the government and court system, no, I do not think a killing spree is an effective martial tactic unless your goal is revenge and short-term satisfaction against a small number of people that you feel have screwed you over.

TPO

Joseph Dantes said...

"killing someone on the other side has historically been considered to be an effective martial tactic. "

Emphasis on "historically".

"Let me get this straight, just to be sure I understand you clearly. You are asserting that killing the enemy is NOT an effective military tactic?"

Let me ask you a question, Vox.

Do you think the Buddhist monk who self-immolated during the Vietnam war in protest of the Catholic South Vietnamese government had a significant military impact?

For those of you in agreement with my first comment, I owe my understand to the brilliant War Nerd.

I put together a collection of some of his relevant quotes here: http://www.josephdantes.com/blogs/shorts/mra-self-immolator-struck-an-effective-blow-in-the-victimization-war/

Anonymous said...

This man made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of men (and, by extension, children, women, and civilization itself), so it's hard to say this, but the logic of this man's choice was deeply flawed and sadly, his sacrifice will not serve the purpose he intended (nor likely any other purpose - the MRM, though provoked, has no clout with which to redeem Ball's death). What he did understand was that public self-immolation has been used successfully in the past to effect political change. What he did not understand is that people simply do not have a category called 'male victim' (aside: they don't have one called 'female perp' either - women we'd call perps go to the 'empowered woman' category in the public mind). People just do not have the capacity to think of Ball as a principled dissenter. So they will put him in the only other file that fits: lunatic.

"Bad divorces will do that to you," they'll say. "Poor guy. Now, don't you know my cousin Bettie went through a divorce two years ago and she is just in such an awful depression..." "Well, that man was such a jerk, you know! At least she's getting alimony out of him." "::giggles:: Did you hear she bought a Lexus?" etc etc ad nauseam

Now, because of Ball's letter, and only because of his letter, I do think he was a principled dissenter rather than a lunatic. But his choice, admirable though it is in its own way (I don't entirely agree with Vox on this), is, ultimately, only regrettable, and a private loss rather than a public victory. I hope other men going through the divorce meatgrinder see how little Ball accomplished and know not to give up their lives this way.

Behold the world of the feminist binary. We simply cannot process any information that does not meet the below criteria:

men guilty / women innocent
men bad / women good
men perps / women victims
add your own examples

All that Ball's death serves to do is show just how real and dramatic this blind spot effect is. But the only people who are seeing it are the ones who know it exists in the first place. The general public? Ball's death occasions a yawn and a turn of the page.

David Casson said...

Above was me, sorry, can't stand leaving Anonymous messages.

JCB said...

The really stupid thing is that his -ex is probably smiling now that he's gone. Unless I am mistaken, she will now get a government check (SSI) for each child now that they are fatherless.

modernguy said...

Good points David. But wait, does that make him alpha or gamma? How much pussy could a forty year old man who burned himself in protest be pounding right now if he were alive. That's what we need to know. Also, how much more alpha are Vox and I that we didn't burn ourselves?

David Casson said...

Haha, yes, well, here we have the meeting of two camps in the Manosphere. As Susan Walsh commented at Hooking Up Smart:

"It seems to me that the manosphere is divided into two groups of men:

1. Those who focus on the unfairness of women’s treatment of men. Getting laid is secondary, and in some cases, irrelevant.

2. Those who focus on getting laid. MRA concerns are secondary, and in some cases, irrelevant."

A bit torn myself. I have often felt that the blueprint for masculinity necessarily can be discovered in female sexual attraction (and vice-versa: the blueprint for femininity can be discovered in male sexual attraction). Women find the male victims (omegas) repellent. Therefore, the male victim is, in fact, operating contrary to his nature. In the same way, an aggressive, assertive, dominant woman attracts only a strange kind of man and thus she, too, is operating in a manner contrary to her nature.

That being said I experienced a kind of blankness when I read this post. What? Ball is an omega? What does that have to do with the discussion? Must we view everything through the prism of our sexuality?

Interested to see if anyone has any clarifying thoughts here.

David Casson said...

The MRM needs to begin exploring what game can do to help its cause. If it can do that, I am sure success will come easily for it.

Trust said...

@David Casson said...The MRM needs to begin exploring what game can do to help its cause. If it can do that, I am sure success will come easily for it.
________

No doubt game helps men. But the fact remains, regardless of where a man falls on the social scale, it shouldn't be legal to ass rape him for the benefit of his lying, cheating wife.

Trust said...

This is also a good opinion at AVfM different from AGP's opinion.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/2011/06/18/the-indifference-to-male-pain/

Joseph Dantes said...

Here's another effective idea for MRA's.

I think people ought to be free to sell themselves into slavery. So my problem is not with the marriage contract per se, but rather the lack of clarity regarding its terms.

The most effective thing MRAs can do, in my opinion, is educate men to avoid marriage and otherwise avoid getting suckered by American women.

The howls of pain should be music.

I'm thinking an actual count of marriages stopped... passing out flyers in frats, etc.

Really obnoxious stuff. Drive it home.

Anonymous said...

"Generally speaking, killing someone on the other side has historically been considered to be an effective martial tactic."

Wasn't it Sun Tzu who said it was best to win a war before you strap on the armor? And didn't he also suggest you feign weakness when you are strong and feign strength when weak? Or was he, in your eyes, just a crazy kook? An alpha general often loses battles (and sometimes wars) because he cares more about this LEGACY and HOW the battle is perceived than actually WINNING it. I'm not sure if Ball is alpha, omega, chi, epsilon or what. I don't care, as long as he wins the battle.

Anonymous said...

"I'm not sure if Ball is alpha, omega, chi, epsilon or what. I don't care, as long as he wins the battle."

He didn't.

David Casson said...

On the other hand, if Ball had been a charming and successful alpha who routinely explained to his women adorers why he will never marry any one of them under the current laws, then even if his circle of influence was relatively small (say, the local club scene), he would have helped us to win the battle.

A man burns himself to death in front of a New Hampshire courthouse on behalf of victimized males throughout the world and the press hardly says a word.

Get, say, a Matthew McConaughey to reject Marriage 2.0 for principled reasons and they will interview him on Entertainment Tonight.

Things like this is what it means for MRAs to use game to their advantage.

David Casson said...

Also, alpha males are trendsetters. Guys see alphas and they want to be like them, and they start to pattern themselves after them, if only initially. If it is known that a local alpha gives at least moderately intelligible reasons for rejecting M2 the tendency will be that lower-ranking guys will do the same (given a fairly stable social situation of course).

VD said...

My point is that for all his words and his extreme actions, Ball wasn't fighting a war any more than any of us are. He was the male equivalent of an emo girl cutting herself, looking for attention.

Consider northern Mexico. Entire cities can't find anyone willing to serve as a police officer because they know it is a death sentence. Divorce 2.0 would be gone within a year or two if men like Ball were to model their "war" on the Zeta cartel instead of the aforementioned Vietnamese monks.

I'm not saying that would be a net positive for society, I am merely observing that suicidal gestures have never worked to win any war in history. And the North Vietnamese didn't win the Vietnam War with self-immolating monks, they did it with tank divisions.

Joseph Dantes said...

Vox, it seems we are in agreement that willingness to fight is the crucial ingredient. And you haven't disputed that martyrs are what's needed to fire up the cannon fodder.

Mencius Moldbug disagrees with your take on the Vietnam war:

"In the Chinese civil war, different departments of Washcorp backed opposing armies, with the State Department supporting Mao and the Pentagon Chiang. State succeeded with the aid of the New Deal political general George Marshall, imposing an arms embargo on Chiang, who was reactionary and corrupt, and ensuring his defeat at the hands of Mao, who was a murderous megalomaniac. Not only did Mao murder 30 million Chinese, but only three years later his slave armies were fighting directly against the Pentagon's own.

It was slightly difficult to explain to Plainlanders that, while Hitler's Nazi myrmidons were so evil that it was necessary to level Germany and accept no terms but unconditional surrender, Mao's progressive volunteers could not even be frowned at until they had actually crossed the Korean border - and preferably not even the 38th parallel. Progress, however, can explain anything, and by the 1950s Washcorp had had a lot of practice.

The even more bizarre gladiatorial bloodbath of Vietnam, in which it was almost impossible to recognize anything resembling a military strategy or objective, was so hard for Plainlanders to understand that it actually wound up as a political victory for the ultra-loyalist radicals, now recognizable as our modern-day "blue-state" Coasters. Vietnam was so confusing that after the Pentagon had won a complete military victory over the South Vietnamese insurgents, State prevailed by simply capturing Congress and imposing a surprise arms embargo on the corrupt, reactionary leaders of South Vietnam, treating them much as it had treated Chiang. The resulting North Vietnamese invasion surely reminded a few diplomatic silverbacks of the good old Popular Front days, when the Red Army rode into Poland on Plainland-made Jeeps."

If it was the arms embargo that brought South Vietnam down, then surely the two epic photos of the immolating monk and the executed POW helped put the liberals in power in America, and added to the moral outrage necessary to betray an ally.

Joseph Dantes said...

And you must admit that

"Don't get married at the church unless you want to burn alive at the courthouse"

is a bit more memorable than talk of divorce statistics and asset rape.

American men will be quietly warning each other about this story for a long, long time.

modernguy said...

The guy wrote a rational fifteen page letter detailing his 10 year ordeal with the family court injustice system which took his family away from him, then when he had enough, burned himself alive in protest. It's a little glib to equate that with a fifteen year old cutter.

Zorro said...

Don't be premature in your judgments. This only happened a couple days ago, and this guy was a hell of a writer.

This is going to go fucking viral on the Web.

And this guy will not be forgotten in your lifetime. His situation is shared by millions of other men.

Ball's letter will grow legs. You watch.

mmaier2112 said...

Maybe, but only in the sense that fewer men will step up to the plate. The legal raping of men in the family courts will live as long as our current regime.

mmaier2112 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mmaier2112 said...

sorry, double post.

Anonymous said...

Vox, as a Sigma, can intellectually understand social phenomena, but he is not socially embedded and does not comprehend through personal involvement. Thus he will occasionally expose a tin ear to passionate events.

This is one of those.

Anonymous said...

As stated above, "He fought, and fought, and fought. He not only uncovered a lot of information that can only help the MRA fight, but was able to send away a few of the judicial and bureaucratic cogs in the system that persecuted him."

At first it was personal, but the more he fought and the more he learned, he realized that he was fighting one front in the greater MRA war, and after in his opinion exhausting other options, he took the action that he felt would produce the greatest overall effect. No, it's not going to win the war, but it can be viewed as a strategic victory in the PR front. Even if the only change is that, as IndyGuy77 says, "fewer men will step up to the plate," then fewer men will end up legally raped by M2.0, which is still a change in the right direction.

His symbolic death gives greater weight to his struggle than would a killing spree, which in the eyes of the public/media would largely invalidate his principled struggle up to that point.

Double E said...

some of you are confusing the effectiveness of the approach with whether or not it is Alpha or Beta. The Alpha would attack his tormentors, not himself. The long term outcome of each individual approach is irrelevant to that assessment.

Anonymous said...

No, we understand the difference. Furthermore, your assertion shows that you have not actually read the man's last statement in toto, and are therefore arguing from a position of ignorance.

In arguing his case, he did attack his tormentors in a fashion, and succeeded in directly and indirectly removing some of them from their positions. However, the more he fought, the more he came to understand that individual tormentors are simply cogs in the machine, and the real tormentor is the system, or the Second Set of Books as he put it. So, realizing that battling replaceable functionaries was a non-winning strategy, he decided to strike a symbolic blow at the system itself. The effectiveness remains to be seen, although it should be noted that his story and statement *is* spreading.

Would I do what he did? No. But that does not mean that I cannot understand and respect it. As others have said, to equate it with emo cutting or other contemptible gamma behavior appears to miss the point.

JCclimber said...

I'd prefer to go more the route of the protagonist in "Law Abiding Citizen".

I really don't understand why more men don't go that route....

SarahsDaughter said...

I am not interested in whether this man was a gamma, an alpha, or whatever. I find his letter compelling, informative, and very sad. I've passed it along. Perhaps his method will be highly effective among women, this isn't someone we would desire to date but none the less, those of us who are anti-feminist and pro men's rights will pass this along for more exposure to the cause. Should he have shot up the place, I wouldn't feel as compelled. In my female mind, murder wouldn't have been as effective as burning his own self. Perhaps it will take a gamma and his antics to give light to a matter that alpha's fail to do.

VD said...

So, realizing that battling replaceable functionaries was a non-winning strategy, he decided to strike a symbolic blow at the system itself

That's the point. It was a symbolic blow and therefore without substance. In comparison, look at how few American doctors are now willing to perform abortions because of a grand total of FOUR of them being shot over the course of 16 years. That's remarkable considering more doctors probably inadvertently killed themselves through improper sterilization during that time.

The entire concept of "war as media event" is only applicable to the genuinely powerless, which is why it works for women and primitive low-tech militias, not for men and first-world military forces.

Get it through your heads that women are NEVER going to respond to sympathetic appeals to their better natures. Indeed, one can easily identify your BETA mindset by the very idea of doing so. Women primarily respond to a) their material interest, and, b) fear. To win them over en masse, you must appeal to either the carrot of the former or the stick of the latter.

Joseph Dantes said...

"which is why it works for women and primitive low-tech militias"

Well gee, what do you think these potential MRA assassins are working with, Stealth Bombers? They'd be lucky to get a full auto AK-47, which makes them lower tech than many African militias.

Anonymous said...

*shrug* so sometimes Vox just dun' get it.

modernguy said...

"Get it through your heads that women are NEVER
going to respond to sympathetic appeals to their
better natures."

Lone-gunner killing sprees rarely accomplish anything. What did Sodini accomplish? Did he change women's minds, except for maybe making them afraid of yoga gyms? Was he alpha? What about Kaczynski? It just gets the perp labeled a psycho.

And he's not trying to change women, he's trying to bring public attention to the injustice of the system.

VD said...

Well gee, what do you think these potential MRA assassins are working with, Stealth Bombers?

You're clearly in well over your head here. It's not as if these men are at war with the IDF or fortified Marine bases in Afghanistan. They're up against lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.

Absolutely nothing will happen as a result of acts like these, even if more men choose follow Bell's suicidal example. Just wait and see.

The 4th generation warfare so beloved of would-be military strategists is only applicable in certain specific circumstances. The situation created by Marriage 2.0 is not one of them. In this case, no one is going to be impressed by the symbolic gestures or the corpses paraded about, at least not enough to sacrifice their potential material interests.

VD said...

Lone-gunner killing sprees rarely accomplish anything.

Tell that to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Or compare the percentage of doctors willing to perform abortions in Europe compared to the USA. I'm sure no one in Mexico was much bothered by a few police shootings either, until everyone suddenly realized that there was method in the violence and then they panicked. Now the military has had to step in and there are cities where no one is willing to take a police job.

And he's not trying to change women, he's trying to bring public attention to the injustice of the system.

Most people already know it isn't just. The problem is that so few people care. The injustice of the system will not be changed until women want it to change or it collapses entirely. I believe the latter is far more likely than the former due to their perceived material interest in the system.

This is an interesting test of the question if women would have ever given men the right to vote had their positions been reversed.

Joseph Dantes said...

"You're clearly in well over your head here. It's not as if these men are at war with the IDF or fortified Marine bases in Afghanistan. They're up against lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats."

I know what they're up against. And the low-tech militias are doing a pretty good job in Afghanistan... due to rules of engagement shaped in large part by media.

You're the one who said primitive low-tech militias benefit from "war as a media event," not me. I'm just pointing out that MRA assassins would be exactly that. Which is an apparent contradiction in your argument.

I could well be in over my head, if you're holding something back, but I don't see it yet.

"Absolutely nothing will happen as a result of acts like these, even if more men choose follow Bell's suicidal example."

I'm as pessimistic as you are about the capacity of the American male to fight for his rights.

But why this talk about more men following Bell's example?

His function as a martyr is to incipiate violence. Not to incipiate additional acts of martyrdom.

The Texans didn't commemorate the Alamo by attempting to repeat it, after all.

Joseph Dantes said...

Look, you said yourself it would be more productive for the MRAs to shoot their tormentors instead of offing themselves. Obviously.

But it's terrible PR and bad for morale to look like you're throwing the first punch.

So they do what guerrilla movements and imperialists alike have always done... score an own goal, manufacture a pretext, escalate the conflict with bloodshed and pathos.

The MRAs WON'T win outside of violence or spontaneous systemic collapse, as you've pointed out. Nobody will give them anything. (Although any weakening of the opposite side's morale and moral certainty still helps.)

What Ball did is a good way to get your own side fired up for violence. That's just how people work.

The subsequent assassinations can assume the cloak of moral legitimacy granted by Ball's sacrifice.

Feminism to patriarchy, the complete loop: from bra burnings to Ball burning.

VD said...

You're the one who said primitive low-tech militias benefit from "war as a media event," not me. I'm just pointing out that MRA assassins would be exactly that.

That's exactly the point you're missing. You have the relative positions of power reversed. In the context of this "war", it is the dispossessed men who are actually in the stronger strategic and tactical position, as counterintuitive as this may seem. The bureaucracy is a helpless sitting duck that can neither defend itself nor attack successfully. Like the Palestinians or the Taliban, its only power rests in the forbearance of those it has declared its enemies.

Divorced, dispossessed men have it in their power to end the family court system next week in the same way that the USA can end the Taliban in Afghanistan. They simply do not wish to pay the terrible price involved. So, instead of actual warfare, we see symbolic gestures.

Which is fine. I'm not advocating that anyone should do or not do anything, I am merely observing and commenting upon the obvious strategic aspects of the situation. I'm a wargamer, it's what I do.

Stingray said...

"The injustice of the system will not be changed until women want it to change or it collapses entirely. "

The women who want the system to change are the ones happily married and staying home taking care of their husband and children. What can we do? Attempt to pull the feminists away from their ideology?

I am not arguing with you here, in the least. I would like to know how we could possible change the system. How could we really get enough women to see what their selfishness is doing?

modernguy said...

There's always an extreme that could hypothetically solve your problems. It's not saying much to say that dropping a couple of A-bombs on everyone could eradicate the Taliban. Sure, we could turn America into a lawless wasteland like Mexico, but I don't think most fathers are really looking to do that. They want attention drawn to the issue and the laws changed, with as little loss of life as possible.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

LOL at LP.

(I cannot believe I failed to check AG before sending that zerohedge link. I crack myself up...)

Anyways, I recall a quote, "the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."

I strongly beleive that Americans 'lost their fight' - lost their ability to cope and stay strong in the face of truly evil systems.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

VD sais, I'm not saying that would be a net positive for society, I am merely observing that suicidal gestures have never worked to win any war in history. And the North Vietnamese didn't win the Vietnam War with self-immolating monks, they did it with tank divisions.

LP: Indeed. Isn't suicide is an act of drama, desperation and failure? He should have found himself a girlfriend, laughed at the judge and enjoyed time away from his kids. Cold of me. But why not some diversion from the nut scene? But that is not how men who are not properly interpreting the times views life. They are freaking out and cannot understand the society they find themselves in.

Ball needed Disturbed!

modernguy said...

Ball's mistake was only that the situation isn't ripe for an uprising. He provided a spark but the timber isn't dry enough yet. The same thing happened in Tunisia but there the circumstances were right. And the same with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Although it may be that Americans are not as sympathetic to these kinds of actions either.

VD said...

I don't think most fathers are really looking to do that. They want attention drawn to the issue and the laws changed, with as little loss of life as possible.

Agreed. And that is why they will not achieve their goals. It's not a concern of mine, of course, since I fully expect the entire system to collapse anyhow.

Joseph Dantes said...

"That's exactly the point you're missing. You have the relative positions of power reversed."

Oh, now I see what you meant. Yes, of course they could end it next week.

But an opening martyr move is still good for escalation and morale.

YOHAMI said...

"But an opening martyr move is still good for escalation and morale."

If the martyr is a woman, sure

If the martyr is an alpha dude who fought to the end in the name of higher ideals with the support of people and gets sacrificed by the enemy, sure

If the martyr if some guy who cant handle his own problems, nope.

But if it was a woman, yupe.

Suffering men dont trigger our white knight instincts. It doesnt matter if they are legit.

Joseph Dantes said...

Which is why he had to go the literally unprecedented extreme of *burning himself alive on the courthouse steps* to give the gesture any chance of being effective.

Joseph Dantes said...

It's not like the pattern is hard to detect.

First the slow rise in workplace and school shootings. Mostly immigrants, some natives. Then a Sodini, and a dude flies himself into an IRS building. Now an MRA immolates in front of a courthouse. The violence is getting sharper, less incoherent, more targeted, and more intense, as the economy worsens. The next MRA won't go out alone.

Markku said...

The Finnish tradition has always been that the husband kills his wife and children before killing himself in these kind of circumstances. One of my friends was shot to death by his father when I was a kid.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

Another sad aspect that Vox brought to mind was about the system collapsing. We are seeing its demise on a small scale; murder suicides, the chronically unemployed lashing out, a family court system that is set up against the man and sometimes the entire family.

If those suffering could only pull themselves above their circumstances and see that to some degree things are not their fault and they are part of a failing system.

But that does not mean they should accept being a victims of a victims life - don't give up, just keep on living.

Oh well, my pollyanna view on things.

Snickers said...

The Finnish tradition has always been that the husband kills his wife and children before killing himself in these kind of circumstances.

I've read this one in the news here in America, but it's common enough not to make a national news story out of. That and generally no manifesto.

Christopher said...

Agree he picked the wrong tactic, but disagree the Palestinians or the Taliban are good examples.

Meanwhile, I read his note and thought this part was interesting: with regard to his first arrest, a condition of his bail was that he couldn't ask his wife about who called the police, and that his wife only told him two years later, and after the divorce about the dilemma she was in when she called the police.

I'm not married, but that seemed fairly omega. I would aim more for this arrangement: that if one of us is sworn to keep a confidence about a 3rd person, such as legal, medical, or counselor, then sure. But if it's about someone in the family, then it's full disclosure time.

I couldn't figure out from his note whether he wanted to forgive his wife after learning all about the call but it was just too late, or whether she had just used the whole situation as a pretext to get out of something she wanted out of anyway, or what.

jay c said...

Ball wasted his life. His death won't accomplish anything worth noting 20 years from now. At least people will still be talking about Harris and Klebold 20 years after their deaths, even if they also died for nothing.

Ball didn't have to commit suicide to make positive change. For someone with nothing left to lose, the possibilities are endless. Ball threw it all away to make a pointless gesture.

He lost. His kids lost. The only people who gained anything out of his swan song are reporters, editors, and advertisers.

Joseph Dantes said...

That depends on how the MRAs take his gesture.


Ferdinand Bardamu seems to be taking it in the manner I described.

Anonymous said...

"the percentage of doctors willing to perform abortions in Europe compared to the USA."

Citation needed.

indyguy77@work said...

So Dodo is trolling here, too?

Anonymous said...

What can you say about a man who chooses to die by his own hand like an inanimate piece of Firewood?

I dunno. "Smells kind of like burnt pork," I guess.

Joseph Dantes said...

"I dunno. "Smells kind of like burnt pork," I guess."

Certainly, it was well-done.

Anonymous said...

Should Christ have descended from the cross and killed all the Romans?

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