More reflections on the pre-shooting treatment of Nikolas Cruz
Long before Nikolas Cruz decided to shoot up the high school in Parkland from which he’d been suspended, he was known to be troubled and to have the potential for violence either to himself or others. But it’s a myth to think nothing was done. Quite a few things were done, starting when Cruz was quite young. Nevertheless, they were ineffective at preventing this crime.
The information in this post is not meant to include every intervention Cruz received; it’s just based on what I’ve read so far. Some of it may even be incorrect, as such reports often are. But although the FBI certainly failed to respond to any warnings it had received about Nikolas Cruz, the system in general had not ignored him.
By “system in general” I mean the formal systems: educational, mental health, and law enforcement. My goal here is not to defend the systems tasked with identifying and helping at-risk children and adolescents. My goal is to just introduce the facts (as best we know at this point) and let you decide.
I also believe that it is more dangerous for schools to be “gun-free zones” than to be able to have a few armed and trained people on the premises. For example, an armed guard (or two) should have been posted at all times at this particular school, given what authorities knew about the threat.
To have locked Cruz up in advance was impossible without a grave violation of civil liberties; he had committed no crime of that sort of seriousness. His acts of violence appear to have been limited to a few fights, and some threats (although there may be more that we don’t know about). If Cruz had specifically threatened a particular school, for example, that might have been actionable. But in that case he may have gotten off very lightly and the events would have played out anyway, perhaps a bit later in time.
There is also the troubling possibility that this sort of directive reclassified some offenses of Cruz as non-criminal when they might have originally gotten him charged with a crime:
Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state’s juvenile justice system. County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: “lower arrests by not making arrests.”
Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones. The results impressed the people who initiated the program. Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.
It’s possible this affected Cruz, but we just don’t know.
What about involuntary commitment? In answer to that question I refer you to a previous post of mine from 2007, written about the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, whose profile was in many ways not unlike Cruz’s. Please read that post, because most of it is relevant to the current situation.
As for Cruz’s mental health history, see this for some of what’s been reported so far.
As far as whether he was on SSRIs or other drugs, according to this report, Cruz refused to take drugs:
Five days before the shooting, Kimberly Snead [the mother of the friend with whom Cruz was living] took Cruz to the office of a therapist she has been seeing to deal with her grief over her dad’s death. Cruz said he was open to therapy [for his depression] but didn’t like medication. He took a business card and was figuring out what his health insurance would cover.
There’s also this:
Paul Gold, 45, who lived next door to the family from 2009-2010 told the New York Times that Cruz ‘had emotional problems’ and may have been ‘diagnosed with autism’.
He said he knows that Cruz was sent to a school for students with special needs at one point.
‘He had trouble controlling his temper. He broke things. He would do that sometimes at our house when he lost his temper. But he was always very apologetic afterwards,’ Gold said…
Those who knew the family say the loss of Cruz’s mother would have been difficult, since she was the only one close to him.
‘His mother was his entire life and when he lost her, I believe that was it for the boy’s peace of mind,’ Gold said.
As for the educational system, there were many many interventions; please see this extensive history. Note that when Cruz was suspended from the regular high school (the one he later attacked), he ” bounced between three alternative schools, most recently Rock Island OCLC in Oakland Park…” Alternative schools are small, and the teachers are trained in dealing with “at risk” kids. The day he became a mass murderer, Cruz was AWOL from his most recent alternative school, Rock Island OCLC.
More:
As early as 3 years old, Cruz was diagnosed as developmentally disabled, the school district documents state.
After attending Westglades Middle, he moved in February 2014 to Cross Creek, a Pompano Beach public school that offers a program for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children.
State records from the Department of Children & Families show Cruz was afflicted with a brain disorder marked by bouts of hyperactivity and a difficultly paying attention. The 2016 records also show him struggling with autism and depression.
He took medicine and had counselors who worked with him in school and at his home, the records state…
At one point, according to the 2016 state report, crisis workers from Henderson Behavioral Health, a major mental health center, were called to the high school and determined that Cruz was “not at risk to harm himself or others.”
Weekes said Henderson workers should have hospitalized Cruz at that point. He’d gotten into a fight, records show, around Sept. 20, 2016 and was suspended. A week later, the state received a report he was cutting his arms on Snapchat, a mobile application.
The Department of Children & Families, however, concluded that “no referrals or services were needed” for him.
“If someone would have caught it and acted on the red flags we not would be here today,” Weekes said. “There were tragic red flags, and they just didn’t catch them.”
DCF Secretary Mike Carroll on Saturday night issued a statement saying that mental health services and supports were in place for Cruz when the agency’s investigation closed. The state only investigates whether an adult is safe and has access to help.
There is no question that Cruz’s mother’s sudden death was likely to have been a huge emotional trigger and a large red flag, though, and something more might (or even should) have been done at that point. However, he seemed to have been taken in by some very good Samaritans who recognized his vulnerability.
It just wasn’t enough.
Also, do not discount the fact that Cruz was adopted at 2, and no one seems to know his history until that time. It may have been very traumatic, which could easily have affected him for life.
However, one thing that does seem reasonable is that Cruz shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase weapons with that history. The mechanism for that would have been what’s called a “red-flag law.” Here’s a description of how it would work:
The law also allows police to petition for the protective orders, which can require firearms to be removed for up to one year. Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon and Washington are the other states with some version of a red flag law.
More than a dozen others, including Hawaii, New Jersey and Missouri, are considering bills that would allow family members or police to petition the courts if they want weapons taken from an individual showing signs of mental distress or violence.
The Florida shooting also has revived debate about whether teachers and school administrators should have that authority as well, given that people at Cruz’s high school witnessed much of his erratic behavior.
Obviously, there are valid fears that such laws would be abused and overused. I certainly have such fears. But it may be that one of the more moderate versions of the law would be reasonable, because without such a law it would take an involuntary commitment to temporarily stop gun ownership by people who are a threat, such as Cruz certainly appeared to have been even before his crime.
Of course, that does nothing to stop the illegal possession of guns by those who are determined to do harm. Cruz most definitely might have gone the illegal route if the legal one had been closed to him (or used some other method to kill). But it would have made it more difficult, anyway.
The people who took Cruz in after his mother’s death tried their best to deal with the weapons issue and a host of other things. Please read this article about them, and afterwards ask yourself if you could have done any better.
This isn’t really about Cruz himself; this is about possible prevention of future incidents like this. In order to figure out what might have prevented something, it’s necessary to study what was actually done and didn’t prevent it. Thus, this post.
In his Sunday column, Ross Douthat talked about the “fetishization of guns and violence” as being “a real American cultural phenomenon, perhaps especially among alienated, isolated young men. And for them and for others (including the N.R.A. these days), the guns-and-citizenship ideal can curdle into a crude myself-alone libertarianism for an age of polarization and mistrust”. Which leads him to this suggestion:
Without guns, how are Liberals going to defend dreamers, women, blacks and LGBTs when Hitler Trump starts ww3 and throw them in the concentration camps?
Ann,
How about we apply a similar approach to the 1st and 4th amendments? How about we let those ages 18 to 25 vote only in local elections, 26 to 35 year olds vote in state elections, and alow those age 36 and up to vote at national elections?
I took a 22LR rifle (and ammo) when I was 8 years old to school once a month to attend after school marksmanship training. We had no inclination to start shooting up the school. Firearms are tools that serve many purposes. The problem is not firearms.
In my humble opinion, neo brings the thinking of therapists, and a certain amount of libertarianism, to this issue. More incarceration, less for therapists (psychologists, whatever) to do on the outside. “No, I don’t need no stinkin’ pills”, so he walks.
It was not a problem in the early 1970s to “commit” to state institutions involuntarily those who posed a danger to themselves or others. I know, because as a physician I did it, once in the face of death threats from a substantial, strong guy I committed. No lawyers involved. Signed the papers in the ER and state trooper hauled him off.
It was just doing the right thing, which is harder and harder every day. So kids die, and the addle-brained agitate for gun control.
How many mass murders have occurred in last 20 years? On average, one event per year.
This is not a time for molto agitato.
Over the years I’ve noticed that school shooters tend to be slightly built loners in a suburban school. It’s hard for a boy to compete in such a setting and guns are a great equalizer.
Cruz was listed at 128 lbs.
Neo, you have written an extensive and intelligent antidote to the disgusting hit piece on antidepressants that I just read on what used to be a pretty good libertarian site.
The piece took it absolutely for granted that N.Cruz was on SSRIs, and that of course his murderous rampage was the result of his taking antidepressant medications, prescribed as usual by the “mental health clinics” which are (as Everybody Knows) in the business of passing out psychoactive drugs which do nothing except induce violence in those who take them.
The whole sickening thing was written as a way to shift the blame for these mass shootings away from our having and exercising our RKBA (and I am a staunch, staunch enemy of any attempt to “infringe” the right of the people — that would be us — to “keep and bear arms”), and instead to make antidepressants the goat wholesale.
In three months I’ll have been infesting our planet for three quarters of a century. I have suffered from depression all my adult life, and I know that there is such a thing as depression which is really “just” a biochemical imbalance. At the age of 52 I finally started Prozac, which was a godsend and literally changed my life. The problem there was that my body acclimatized to it after a few months, so that it lost effectiveness. Then, over several years, my psychiatrist and I tried other antidepressants, trying to find something with few side effects that would work and keep on working. Finally, after a very good track record in Europe, the FDA approved Effexor for us here. It has seen me through more than 10 years of Life, at this point … it doesn’t bring on “highs”; it just makes my mind feel less like the bottom of a birdcage.
God bless antidepressants and those who prescribe them intelligently, knowledgeably, and responsibly.
. . .
parker, above at 6:09 p.m.: — Exactly.
Whatever did society do to protect itself from all the autistic and depressed children a hundred years ago, before the advent of these life-saving anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs? We should thank modern medicine everyday for these blessed drugs, because without them who knows how many thousands of mass murders and school shootings would occur.
We should also be thankful for the emotional release afforded these suffering children by the entertainment industry. Without the near virtual reality video games that give these youngsters an outlet, who knows how many more killings we’d have. And the movies. And music. Thank god our culture has evolved to a sophisticated level so that the troubled youth of today can find their way to a higher plain.
Sure, a few like Cruz will fall through the cracks. Had he only taken his meds like a good boy, and spent more time torturing animals and posting his fantasies on the internet, this school shooting could have been averted.
Rather than extend the age at which one is granted permission to engage in adult behaviors we lower the age at which we expect you to take on the responsibilities of an adult? We’ve been extending the onset of adulthood, and its concomitant obligations, for several decades and it’s not working.
The following is not about guns, I promise. But to lead in….
When the US military abandoned its 30.06 family of Infantry weapons, they also dumped tens of thousands of M1 carbines. It’s a small rifle firing semi-auto and using a smaller cartridge. There were so many that the NRA would sell you one for $20 if you joined. Ammo was dirt cheap.
Its use in WW II included a ten-round magazine.
For Korea, there modifications including a thirty round magazine.
The thirty round mag fit the M1 carbine. So we had a small semi-auto rifle firing a downsized cartridge with a high-cap magazine.
And they were around by the tens and tens of thousands.
Mass shootings….?
Okay. It’s definitely not guns. Something changed since then.Video games? Maybe. The graphics are extraordinarily realistic with exaggerated detail and perspective.
Still, my buddies and I were sons of veterans and we won WW II every third recess.
And we played “red rover”. So we’d come in from recess with ripped jeans or a bloody nose, ready to study.
We weren ‘t medicated and we had–since there were very few broken homes in lower middle class and up–fathers. Who, if only in what they said, had values. As did our uncles and neighbors.
What changed? A lot, but what makes the difference?
It’s not the guns.
more at link
https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/flashback-30-years-guns-schools-nothing-happened/
i work in a college, your gonna love whats coming down the pike and all thanks to the one movement that binds them all to its master…
It was not a problem in the early 1970s to “commit” to state institutions involuntarily those who posed a danger to themselves or others. I know, because as a physician I did it….
Frog: Would you have signed off on Cruz? Why, specifically? And who wouldn’t you sign off on?
We need statistics on how many Cruz’s are out there. I side with neo that there are a large number of them and most remain sad, unhappy people who do no violence. To commit all (for how long?) would be unjust and create something of a police state.
I had read the MSN piece based on reports from the family housing Cruz. I hate to throw stones at good Samaritans like these folks, but when parsing the words, it seems like their efforts could have been better.
So was it a gun safe or a lockable cabinet? The latter is kind of a joke. Cabinets usually have keys and modern safes may have push buttons, or fingerprint readers, or rotary combo dials, or RFID tokens or keys.
If it was a conventional key, should the guardian say, “Go buy a safe and give me the key.”? Sure, after I make a copy of the key. The guardian must be the one acquiring the safe if he or she really needs control.
_______
The idea of red flag protective order is good, but isn’t a misdemeanor violence charge and conviction better? You would need a law like California where this would bar weapons purchases. Authorities (especially school authorities) had ample opportunities to charge Cruz and didn’t.
“He got into a few fights.” Cut him or her slack on the first one, and charge them with assault on the second.
The good thing about an actual charge is that the legal structure for due process is in place. A gun permitting process like NYC’s is super capricious, as a cautionary counter example.
Removing weapons already in possession could also be contingent on an actual violence charge.
Instead of conquering fears by learning to tame this beast called gun, lets create a safe space without guns and hide inside it forever. You know how we can spoil children, you know why young men remain mentally adolescent forever? it’s because liberals took away every chance they have to become an adult, a chance to meet every fear you had head on, survive through it, and then become a man.
parker Says:
February 20th, 2018 at 6:09 pm
…How about we let those ages 18 to 25 vote only in local elections, 26 to 35 year olds vote in state elections, and alow those age 36 and up to vote at national elections?
* * *
That actually sounds like a pretty good idea, with some changes in the ranges.
I just haven’t decided if it’s better to go older or younger…
“The Florida school shooting suspect bought seven rifles in the last year, a federal law enforcement source has told CBS News. ”
“A law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told CNN that Cruz had obtained at least 10 firearms, all of them rifles. Investigators are trying to track the purchases, which Cruz appears to have made in the past year or so, the source said.
Cruz bought two weapons from Gun World of South Florida in Deerfield Beach, said Kim Waltuch, the store’s CEO. She would not provide details on the types of guns he purchased or on the time frame, but said the sales followed normal protocol for Florida firearms purchases.”
“Though they don’t know how many weapons Cruz owned — and acknowledge there were a few, including pellet guns — they had asked him to provide paperwork proving the guns were purchased legally.
A law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told CNN that Cruz had obtained at least 10 firearms, all of them rifles. Investigators are trying to track the purchases, which Cruz appears to have made in the past year or so, the source said.”
I was wondering where he got the money for this many guns.
They aren’t all as cheap as the Army surplus $20 specials.
Insurance money from his mother, I suppose.
However, he only needed ONE to kill people.
Trite as the old saying is, Guns don’t kill people — people kill people.
Perhaps we ought to consider making school discipline & medical records part of the background checks from legal age (18?) up to, say, 21; then expunge them unless something keeps them relevant.
Huxley: “We need statistics on how many Cruz’s are out there. I side with neo that there are a large number of them and most remain sad, unhappy people who do no violence. To commit all (for how long?) would be unjust and create something of a police state.”
Back in the day we tried to take care of the mentally ill who were unable to function in society. Yes, they were institutionalized – not a wonderful thing. But it beats what we have now. The growing homeless population is made up of a large percentage of mentally ill people unable to hold a full time job. So, instead of putting them in an institution where they get health care, a bed, and three meals a day, we let them live under the freeways, sleep on cardboard, and cadge food wherever they can. Here in Seattle it has become a huge problem. Those people are living like animals with no security – a dismal life. Yes, most of them aren’t a danger to others, but some are and occasionally there are murders in the homeless camps. Yes,. many are addicts who would rather stay high and die on the streets rather than clean up and get a job. We can do little for them, but IMO the mentally ill should be taken care of.
I believe the states need to work out some legal protocol for implementing a restraining order that allows authorities to temporarily incarcerate or hospitalize an identified person with mental health problems that indicate he/she is a danger to society.
I saw an FBI man talk about the charges that the FBI messed up on Cruz. He explained that he had done many “knock and talk” contacts with possible perps. The problem is, as he pointed out, the possible criminal can refuse to talk to you and there is nothing you can do until he/she commits a crime. I think the law needs to change so that these human time bombs that are identified by family, friends, teachers, therapists, or others can be given a thorough evaluation and, if necessary, steps taken to be sure they can’t get guns. This will require a team of law enforcement officers, lawyers, and medical experts to craft something that will work and be workable. At least it’s worth a try.
One thing that stands out for me about Cruz was that he seemed to be good at deceiving people. He certainly deceived the Sneads. They thought he was adhering to all their rules and was a very polite boy. That is a characteristic of a psychopath. Had he been thoroughly evaluated in a hospital setting he might have been recognized as a dangerous time bomb.
There has been a change in our society. Like many here I went to school at a time when we used to bring our rifles and shotguns to school for hunting after school. No one would have given a second thought to such activity. No one would have contemplated using their gun to kill a human. Fist fights were more common than they are today, but there were rules and the fighters usually ended up being friends or considered that their beef had been settled. Parents were much stricter. You knew that if you got in trouble at school, you would be in much more trouble at home. We used to spend most of our free time out of doors away from home and we didn’t worry about being kidnapped or sexually molested. It just seems that there is more evil out in the open today than there was sixty years ago.
Sounds like the est thing to do is modify the red flag protective orders so school officials can use them.
Here is a case in Wakulla Florida, where a kid made a middling severity threat about a school shooting and got charged with TWO second degree felonies. It’s amazing how a media uproar can focus the minds of authorities. See something, say something, and demand that the authorities DO something. Usually plenty of laws exist to enable the last.
______
I completely agree that gun free schools (or almost gun free in Parkland) is a big mistake, but the solution is a bit complex.
Summary: An armed guard at a front desk is useless. An armed teacher with a short warning is pretty good, but only slightly effective without a warning. An armed school person close to an attack without warning varies from a little effective to very effective depending on skill levels.
Frog:
Involuntary commitments still happen every day for dangerousness. I know psychiatrists who do that regularly. I have no idea what you’re getting at here. It’s always tricky to decide when someone has the requisite dangerousness, but at any rate the commitment is only for 3 days and then there’s a court hearing about it. No one judged Cruz to have exhibited that level of dangerousness plus that level of mental illness.
You write “It was not a problem in the early 1970s to “commit” to state institutions involuntarily those who posed a danger to themselves or others.” Of course it was a problem. It was then, and it is now. It always will be. There will always be people inappropriately committed and deprived of liberty, and there will always be people who are not committed who should be, both then and now. You as an individual doctor, psychiatrists, therapists, courts, whoever makes such a decision, are all fallible.
As for my own views on involuntary commitment, in this post I referred you to a previous post of mine. I didn’t discuss involuntary commitment at all in this post, and in neither post did I discuss my own policy views on the subject.
I did discuss preventive detention (in the paragraph beginning “to have locked Cruz up in advance”), which is a legal process and not a medical one, and it’s something we don’t do in this country.
I don’t know what you are trying to get at by mentioning the number of mass murders each year. I haven’t read every single comment, but I haven’t seen anyone here saying in any “molto agitato” way that there are enormous numbers of mass murders. We are discussing this particular mass murder and this particular perpetrator, and what it might tell us for the future. I believe we would all like to get the number down to zero.
Richard Aubrey, artfl and J. J. you are right about changes in the culture. But look what happened to UPenn law professor Amy Wax when she tried to talk about the same thing:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/bourgeois-values-scandal-tars-law-prof-amy-wax-racism-charge/
Neo, have you written on this at all?
A couple of articles to add to the conversation:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/19/school-shooting-was-outcome-of-broward-county-school-board-policy-now-local-and-national-politicians-weaponize-kids-for-ideological-intents/
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/02/20/no-cnn-commentator-the-nra-didnt-train-the-florida-shooter-thats-a-total-gar-n2451732
I may have already linked this one — been on a couple of boards talking about the subject today.
https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/
Because the state can’t lift the worst of us to be equal to the best of us, they are working hard to use the worst of us to make us equal enough so that everyone wants to wear a political straight jacket of their own designs. – Artfldgr
What happened to reform school and orphanages?
Here’s the Deep State interpretation of these events.
NC had “handlers” the same way MK Ultra programs had handlers for conditioned assassins and agents.
They tend to target vulnerable people, such as Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood whores, and so on.
Thus when they needed a useful patsy to take the fall for a false flag op, they had plenty of NCs to expend, complete with backstory and MAGA hat even.
I am surprised they didn’t do this before, although the timing has been quite short.
The people who took Cruz in after his mother’s death tried their best to deal with the weapons issue and a host of other things. Please read this article about them, and afterwards ask yourself if you could have done any better.
One can’t reverse the damage of MK Ultra conditioning using therapy or modern medicine. That’s because the drugs aren’t really the cause but the gateway that started it all. In order to treat the problem with drugs, first they would have to understand the depth and cause of the trauma, on a spiritual level as well as physical. Also, having other guardians and handlers (called counselors) in charge, is merely a security leak. No wonder what the guardians did had little to no effect, since they kept having NC being “treated”, although the treatment wasn’t designed to fix the issue but to provide greater levels of control over the agent.
“We had this monster living under our roof and we didn’t know,” Kimberly Snead told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an exclusive interview Saturday. “We didn’t see this side of him.”
One wouldn’t normally speaking, because MK ULtra subjects have at least two personas. This is created through a series of traumas, which survivors can only live through by shattering their own personalities. Why would an MK Ultra subject living in a healthy environment exhibit instability? He would have just forgotten what happened in the past until the handlers triggered his second persona/trauma.
“Everything everybody seems to know, we didn’t know,” James Snead said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Like an agent with two lives. A 19 yo somehow has the training to pull this off? I doubt it.
The Sneads’ son had asked whether his friend could move into their home last Thanksgiving. Cruz’s mother, who had adopted him, died of pneumonia Nov. 1, leaving him without parents. He stayed briefly with a family friend in the Lantana area but wanted to move on.
CPA and various DS programs are notorious for picking on orphans and children abandoned, selling them into sex slavery and various other utilizations.
The fundamental problem of pro Trum nationalists or just nationalists in general who advocate State insane asylums is that this was probably how the original research was done by the DS.
Now people want to give the DS more tools and expendable assets? Predictable as it is pathetic.
No wonder the Deep State believes Americans are sheep that aren’t ready for the truth. They don’t even tell us what happened in the 30 years before CW1, pretending that CW1 just all of a sudden happened because of slavery and X in 1860 due to the Tyranny of Lincoln or some such…
It intentionally avoids DS events such as the Utah War of 1857, Missouri extermination order, Missouri slave raiders vs Kansas free soil settlements. White pro slavers were ethnically cleansing white abolitionists in Kansas, which produced John Brown’s brand of vigilante justice, but nobody seems to care or know about that problem of civil conflict.
It would be easy to ascribe such eugenics based totalitarianism to the Leftist alliance, but that didn’t seem to take off until Sanger was born at least on an ideological level. Slavery 2.0 in the USA was far closer to the Fabian, eugenics philosophy of the Nazis. Of course Hitler said he got some good tips from America’s fascists instead.
There’s a lot of fasces, the Roman symbol for totalitarian state power, in District of Columbia.
The MK-ULTRA mind control program was ended and its CIA files destroyed after the program was revealed by the 1975 Church Commission. MK-ULTRA is the basis for the fictional Bourne books and movies.
An elaborate conspiracy theory has taken hold in the past 20 years that MK-ULTRA included Project Monarch, a more effective mind control program using drugs, pain, trauma, hypnosis, confinement and rituals to achieve its ends.
Monarch may or may not go back to the Nazis and Illuminati. Repeated viewings of “The Wizard of Oz” are part of the programming.
According to Monarch whistleblowers a large number of music and film stars are actually Monarch slaves. Likewise lone nut killers such as Cruz. Young Monarch subjects are also used as sex slaves by elite pedophiles.
I enjoy conspiracy theories. To watch the crazed, hyper-sexualized music videos these days almost makes Monarch plausible.
Monarch overview:
https://vigilantcitizen.com/hidden-knowledge/origins-and-techniques-of-monarch-mind-control/
Back in the day, late fifties early sixties, when I was growing up, there were a lot of fathers around. If a kid didn’t have a father, there were other men…teachers, scoutmasters, uncles, neighbors, fathers of friends. What influence each had differed, of course.
However, many years after the fact, I found that my father had been a serious father figure to a young woman–my sister’s best friend from jr. hi to today–whose father had died when she was nine, in little things and serious issues like career paths. When she came to his funeral, she said that when something was happening at college she couldn’t talk to her mother about, she called my mother.
There were some other circumstances of lesser but real substitute fathering.
My father was a great man.
But the point was…he was there. The young woman in question was not surrounded by large proportions of fatherless families.
And I suspect that some of the lost kids of today might have done well if there had been more fathers in their immediate surroundings.
I mean, you’re a little kid walking down the block on a Saturday afternoon. Some guy would want to show you how to pull a spark plug because he happened to be doing it. Maybe somebody else would show you how to run a buttonhook pattern. You’d know how to load a Garand without getting M1 thumb. And if you were playing some stupid little kid’s game, they’d tell you and give you something more grown up to do. Eventually, your parents would find out. But that was okay because everybody was on the same side.
And if you were playing some stupid little kid’s game, they’d tell you and give you something more grown up to do. Eventually, your parents would find out. But that was okay because everybody was on the same side.
There are some communities that still have that social stability, but it is more and more being downgraded into a sub culture of America rather than the main stream.
Other than breakaway groups and religious groups like the Amish or Latter Day Saints, I don’t see a huge priority on reseeding the planet or family lineages.
When the human race has 8 grand parents and 2 grandchildren in the entire tree… that’s called extinction, not evolution.
Y:
For some time I’ve had a theory that in the aftermath of WW2 a number of countries in the west, including European Russia, and Japan which to a great extent adopted western values, have been on a suicide mission. Call it subconscious guilt, but whatever the the cause any society that fails to reproduce is killing itself. It’s much more than a generalized malaise.
All First world countries have the same birth rate problem. Something to do with female education and careers.
The US would have negative population growth if it wasn’t for a few key demographics (Mormons, Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, Catholics, etc)
Since there are families and sub cultures that can produce 30+ grandchildren from 2 grandparents… in the first world, obviously the issue is not irreconcilable in the first world culture. However, there is something wrong with the mainstream culture.
It also means the connection between Russia-Europe-Japan-US is the same, and not different due to the differences in our world historical events.
Looking at China’s one child policy, that is basically primogeniture. Stability in the First World traded for something else. China wasn’t a first world nation during the one child policy era, but they ended up with the same demographic issue as the rest of us.
One factor I’ve managed to narrow down is when people marry and have children. The younger they are, the more they can sustain, which might actually sound counter intuitive to Western middle class values which focus on “affording children” with 10+ year careers from both parents.
In almost all the culture groups, the ones that marry the soonest produce the most grandchildren later on. The economic issue is counter acted by the support of the clan elders and grandparents. Instead of putting them in old people homes, their wisdom and experience is utilized to help with child rearing. And the kids are put to work taking care of their younger siblings such as Palin’s example. Without that, no way 2 parents can do that and also work to care for 3+ children.
It’s gotten to the point where I am pretty sure people have forgotten all of this was even possible in US nuclear families.
They certainly never mentioned it to me, I had to find it via independent research on sub cultures that produce the highest sustainable family lines.
Democracy being a poison accounts for most of the deleterious First World problems. But it doesn’t account for China’s situation. 1 child or 2 children in the nuclear family, I wonder who came up with those bright ideas.