By Prof. Jason Kissner
If the inordinate secrecy, multiple inconsistencies, and baffling residual mysteries associated with the Establishment’s narrative regarding the Sandy Hook event are any indication, the inner nature of the event is likely to be very dark indeed.
[Image credit: NPR]
The complexity of the event means in part that analyzing it rationally demands the application of the talents and experiences of a broad array of individuals united in their dedication to the truth and the right to know. Happily, much progress has already been made in this regard; much quality work has been produced.
It is hoped that the present effort, rendered from the perspective of a criminologist, constitutes a small contribution to scrutiny of the event from a quantitative vantage point.
To be sure, quantitative methodologies are no more ultimately dispositive than qualitative methods of inquiry. Quantitative and qualitative methods complement, and typically augment one another. Thus, quantitative scrutiny of the Sandy Hook event might tend to bolster claims emanating from careful analysis of statements, reports, video footage, and the like.
What follows is a quantitative analysis of “Active Shooter” data gathered by the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit (Anyone can access the data by clicking here.) The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defines an active shooter as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases active shooters use firearms(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims.”
It will be apparent that since there is no victim specification requirement (in terms of amount) associated with the “active shooter” designation, while active shootings may amount to mass murders, not all of them do. Similarly, in part because there are no location and weapon requirements connected with the definition of mass murder, not all mass murders are active shootings.
The NYPD’s counterterrorism unit narrowed DHS’s definition by excluding gang-related shootings, shootings that occurred solely in domestic settings, robberies, drive-by shootings, attacks that did not involve a firearm, attacks categorized primarily as hostage-taking incidents, and attacks that did not “spill beyond intended victims” (Kelly, 2012; click data link above).
The data analyzed range from 1966 to the Newtown shooting. The data were decomposed such that only cases of shooting mass murders in schools were included, since that is the type of case Sandy Hook ostensibly presents us with.
The question broached and rigorously tested with the NYPD data was, to the best of my knowledge, initially brought to light by Dr. James Tracy. The question concerns the likelihood of having observed, in an active shooting that was also a mass murder that transpired at a school, figures on the order of 26 dead (not including Adam and Nancy Lanza) and only 2 wounded (keeping in mind that, to the best of my knowledge, the second wounded victim has still not been identified).
Thus, the idea behind the analysis was to determine whether a statistically significant relationship exists for the 34 above-described cases (Sandy Hook is not included in the dataset, since its validity is precisely what is in question), such that as the total number of victims increases, the likelihood that a greater number of them will end up wounded rises. Intuitively, as the total number of victims rises, chance alone would dictate that we would expect more of the victims to end up categorized as wounded, since there would be an increasing number of potential victims to assign to that category. Clearly, there is also a surfeit of non-chance reasons why we might expect this relationship to hold, but in the interest of space elaboration of those reasons is omitted.
To answer this question, logistic regression was employed. With logistic regression, the dependent variable is dichotomized so that it has two levels. Here, if a case had more than 2 wounded victims, the case received a score of “1” for the dependent variable, while if it had 2 or fewer wounded victims, the case received a score of “0” for the dependent variable. The independent variable was the total number of casualties in the active shooting (dead plus wounded).
Essentially, logistic regression was used to model the probability, given the total number of victims in a case, of observing 3 or more wounded victims as opposed to two or less (and since the two possibilities are mutually exclusive, one probability manifestly implies the other).
The analysis was conducted in STATA 12 and produced the following results:
The key result of course pertains to the casualties variable. The odds ratio of around 1.34 (itself significant at p <.05) indicates that for each additional casualty (whether dead or wounded), the probability that the wounded count will be greater than two rises by 34%. Clearly, since Sandy Hook supposedly involved a total of 28 casualties, there are grounds to be suspicious that only 2 were wounded (the schooldi variable is interesting in its insignificance, and shows that whether the active shooting mass murder took place at a high school as opposed to an elementary or middle school was irrelevant with respect to whether more than 2 were wounded).
Furthermore, with this result in hand we can estimate the probability that with 28 total victims 3 or more of them would end up wounded rather than dead. Here is the output in connection with this issue:
The key figure is .9976669, which signifies that the probability is around 2 in 1000, or 1 in 500, that fewer than 3 would be wounded when the victim count in an active shooting mass murder at a school is 28.
While the 1 in 500 figure already indicates that odds are very low indeed that an active shooting mass murder at a school with 28 total victims will yield fewer than 3 wounded, more can and should be added. First, as was alluded to above, the second wounded victim has still not been identified. The statistical results, put together with the reasoning in support of them, suggest that the odds of fewer than 2 wounded victims (that is, 1 or 0) when there are 28 victims in total would be lower than 1 in 500; they might even be much lower. Furthermore, even if we go with the 1 in 500 figure, given the rarity of active shooting mass murders in schools, we might well expect to wait hundreds of years before such an event genuinely arises.
We shouldn’t leave this particular issue without noting that, from a statistical and criminological point of view, while the distinction between one and two wounded victims may seem inconsequential to the untrained eye, its statistical import might well be huge, especially when more data is compiled. This suggests that Sandy Hook researchers may want to redouble efforts with respect to investigating all available evidence concerning who this second purported wounded victim was and so forth.
Finally, the NYPD data supplies more statistical trouble for the Establishment’s Sandy Hook narrative. Unless I’ve overlooked something (and I don’t believe I have), according to the NYPD there are no other instances period of active shooter mass murderers who killed in schools and also committed matricide beforehand.
In sum, traversal of the byzantine, highly detailed investigative highways, byways, and “lieways” of Sandy Hook leaves dedicated researchers with the sense that all is far from right regarding Newtown. It is believed that the current offering provides some reason for concluding that the numbers don’t add up either.
Jason Kissner, Ph.D., J.D., is associate professor of criminology at California State University, Fresno. You can reach him at crimprof2010(at)hotmail.com.
Thank you for taking the time to do that research, although it is over my head, I get the jest…we need to keep digging cause something just ain’t right.
It’s hard to argue with the math. I wonder how many of those other shootings were carried out by 120 pound weaklings without any verifiable weapons training.
112 pounds and over 6 feet. Look up the anorexia parameters. This person would have been in a hospital bed on IV fluids to keep him alive.
Thank you. Curious what your analysis is on other “false flags” . Most recently the Vegas shooting seems like a set up of sorts. Just so happens Reid calls protesters at Bundy ranch “domestic terrorists’t , then they just so happen to interivew the guy , Jared? He was wearing a Sheriff Mack tshirt in the interview (the sheriff who said to put the women up front to get shot 1st). Next, it happens in Reid’s backyard. Then pics of them wearing Batman costumes. Followed by shooting police (disgusting, btw!) which helps the anti gun groups. These incidents all boil down to taking our guns . Must be really , really important to them . You watch, the police will now look like all the SWAT guys or ROBOCOPS. Armored vehicles will be on our town’s streets more and more
Maybe it will look like this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfJBsZFfwew&w=560&h=315%5D
ha,ha. that’s great! things have come a long way since then. In a bad way.
That is a little police tactic called “kettling”. Hollywood is so good at predicting the future!
We have to actively end the militarization of our law enforcement agents – what We The People are experiencing is NOT “Protect and Serve”; it’s “Murder and Terrorize”.
The false-flag events are a means to that end.
My opinion is “they” whoever “they” are, are trying to incite racism, rioting, civil disorder and disobedience with these obvious manipulations, so they have an “air-tight” reason to disarm the public at large. It’s all a manipulation, keep in mind, the majority of news sources are all the same, owned by a few parties, whether it’s TV, radio, internet, etc. It’s contrived and condescending. Don’t fall for it. Peace will always be the answer. The people who benefited the most from Sandy Hook were arms dealers who had record numbers of guns and ammo bought after this incident by outraged citizens. It’s all about warmongering, whether domestic or overseas.
The “They” have a roadmap that calls for each and every manipulation you list. They call it The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
What you see in that “forgery” is precisely what is occuring to America (AND THE REST OF THE WORLD) today.
Mae Brussell was preaching this same peace and love versus engineered chaos for so long… Her broadcasts are not only awesome (even if she rambles like a yenta sometimes) but have been proven eerily prescient.
I have not heard of her but I take a listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9LhspftaxI&list=PLA3AE1666479EF849
The Mae Brussell archive. 🙂
We are definitely on the same wave length…I do believe love is the answer, and the product “they” are selling is warmongering and hate…to support the industrial war machine.
if we kill each other, it not only wrecks the world we could be living in, it saves them time and effort required to cull us directly. Plus it creates emnity that will never be healed.
So many divisive issues would be NON-issues if people had real freedom of choice.
Professor Kissner, very interesting analysis. Not that I believe any of the script but are there any statistics relating to children being shot 3 to 11 times while crouching under their desks in a fetal position? I’m not even trying to play devil’s advocate here I just have a differing view on the relevance of the kill ratio with this event. The way they train children to hide under their desks I really believe it would be easy to obtain a 100% kill ratio. Since emt’s weren’t allowed to enter the building any children that might have lived were left to die. I think a more relative analysis could be obtained by comparing statistics from an execution line with only one executioner, not that those statistics are available.
So to an investigator, how much attention is paid to the mathematical probability of an event when determining fact from fiction? What weights are given to quantitative vs qualitative evidence? I guess I have a hard time seeing the significance of much quantitative analysis as life is dynamic not a static process. You are the expert on this but it seems to me that quantitative analysis would give more relevant results the more common the crime.
In deference to you, I am not trying to dismiss your research but I genuinely wonder what other aspects of this case would be important to look at from a criminologists perspective?
Last year, I did an analysis of school shootings which included Sandy Hook. My idea was to award a Marksmanship prize to the school shooter with the highest kills-to-wounded ratio. Clearly, Adam Lanza won hands down. There was nothing else that came even close.
For anyone curious, here’s what I chose as criteria for my analysis. I chose the period 1980 – 2013. I only counted incidents where at least 2 people were wounded or killed and at least 1 person was killed. The event had to have taken place, primarily on school grounds, although a couple began elsewhere or moved to another location. This fits the Sandy Hook scenario, as we’re told Adam’s first murder took place at his home.
This might be a closer comparison, since what I looked at was restricted to school shootings. So, it’s still unique that children so young were said to be the victims. But, from a statistical standpoint the high kills-to-wounded ratio is still noteworthy.
” I only counted incidents where at least 2 people were wounded or killed and at least 1 person was killed.”
well you have already broken your parameters by including sandy hook in your study.
“But, from a statistical standpoint the high kills-to-wounded ratio is still noteworthy.”
it is no more noteworthy than the exploits of peter pan and old yeller.
Not sure what you’re getting at. Peter Pan and Old Yeller are fictional characters. Statistics are a measure of cold hard facts.
The author was pretty clear that it isn’t the end all be all, but with a sample greater than 30 to choose from, the findings are significant. They tell us that, statistically, the occurrence as described in Sandy Hook is extremely unlikely.
The follow-up to that is two fold. The first is what you are doing as devil’s advocate. Assuming it did happen, how can we explain this tremendous anomaly? Execution style killings. Children frozen in terror. Expert marksman.
The other side is to acknowledge that statistically, it is highly unlikely that these events occurred as described. Which, I am quite certain that you believe.
Incidentally, part of the official narrative is that we had teachers lunging at a shooter. We had children fleeing to the safety of Gene Rosen’s drive. So even the official narrative doesn’t exactly support an account of children lined up waiting to be executed.
But again, most of us here don’t believe any of that anyway, do we?
Maestro, sorry I sort of switched my argument between comments. My original point was that unless you can find statistics where the victims were shot 3 to 11 times as they crouched in a fetal position waiting for their death and none of them were allowed medical treatment regardless of whether they were still alive or not then any inferences you can make regarding the numbers are really irrelevant, as there is nothing to actually compare it to.
I then switched to my actual position which is that we are arguing about a fairy tale anyway -but in retrospect my latter comment is irrelevant because the author was trying to prove the unlikelihood of the official story being genuine using numbers. Sorry about that.
I think my initial argument holds true, someone who actually believes the gooberment’s story would rightly question the relevance of the statistics provided.
“Incidentally, part of the official narrative is that we had teachers lunging at a shooter. We had children fleeing to the safety of Gene Rosen’s drive. So even the official narrative doesn’t exactly support an account of children lined up waiting to be executed.”
that’s a good point. I guess I don’t really know what is part of the “official” narrative and what is media spectacle.
I do know that they make the children hide under their desks waiting to be shot in these lockdown drills. I have repeatedly tried to convince my stepson that if they ever force him to participate in a lockdown drill again he needs to throw a chair through the window and jump out/run home and I will deal with the school later. I can reasonably conclude that he won’t follow my instructions.
An edit to the above:
Perhaps you compare the significance of the kills-to-wounded ratio to Peter Pan because you believe it is all fiction anyway. If that’s what you mean, then my apologies. Still, there is significance in that it helps to point out the lie, with unbiased mathematical precision.
Why, when they cooked up this pageant, they wanted their killer-character to be such a super marksman is an interesting question, which I think is the main implication of this study. It reminds one of elections in North Korea, or Saddam’s Iraq where the dear leader always gets 97.9% of the vote.
Of course, if the imagined shooter had not been such a superman, there would be the little problem of trusting crisis actor children who were merely “wounded” to keep their stories straight night after night under the hot studio lights, as their fame spread–and no little kids can be assumed to be as craven and shameless as Carlos and Jeff, of Boston fame.
An interesting side-note on the issue of what constitutes being wounded in these school shootings and other shooting events; I learned this recently about Columbine.
Apparently, a female student wound up with a bullet lodged between her skin and skull. The bullet was said to have been fired from far enough away to lose velocity. She was NOT counted as having been wounded. From that alone, if true I would have to judge these as very different types of events.
Per the official report, Adam Lanza was 72 inches tall and weighed 109 lbs. I challenge anyone to find me a living male who is 6 foot tall and weighs 109 lbs. and is NOT hooked up to life support, IVs or in a wheelchair. Someone of Adam Lanza’s physical size could barely lift an umbrella, would be unable to walk even with a cane, and would not even have the strength to pick up a gun or even shoot one.
Now that’s a Slenderman!
I appreciate the analysis but some may remember that the number of alleged “wounded” was higher in “The Report”. Also, the statistics really analyze the veracity of the story, not the event.
In other words, if we had bodies, etc., we could use the data to see if the stated methodology was consistent with other known crimes. In this case, we have a story. In other words the drill. In this regard the regression analysis indicates that the story is unconvincing.
Early on we explored this aspect quite a bit. Before things started to solidify, some of the speculation was based on actual deaths. Once it became quite apparent that the tale was as likely as having two suns come up in the morning we started assuming it to be a total hoax.
I really think the present rash of “events” we’re seeing confirms our initial suspicions. “Shooters” dressed as The Joker and “Slender Man”, with “ties” to the Bundy Ranch and Gadsden flags is a little “over the top”.
Schools being order to “shelter in place” while reporting people running through neighborhoods brandishing rifles, etc., might strike at least some as highly unlikely under “normal” circumstances.
But, as we’ve said so many times before, it’s pretty apparent that they don’t care if they are believable. I think it would be statistically more likely that nothing of the sort happened at SHES, or these recent extravaganzas either for that matter. Remember, what physical evidence do we have? Images on TEE VEE?. Shots of ambulances and cops? It’s all so “Bostonesque”.
There was an event in Oregon where a student killed both parents before the shootout at the school – if we are told the truth that is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurston_High_School_shooting
The Thurston High School shooting took place on May 21, 1998. Expelled student Kip Kinkel first murdered his parents before engaging in a school shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon that left two students dead and 25 others wounded.[1] He is serving a 111-year sentence without the possibility of parole.
Who knows if that was real or not. I believe his parents were military contractors from my memory.
There was another shooting hoax this morning outside of Portland. They claim it was one student shot another then self. one of the eyewitnesses on the radio claimed he saw three or four shooters. The official story is one. I think they give us these conflicting stories to make the events seem real.
Let me clarify the term “real”. There was (is?) such a program as MK Ultra. Operations like this were precisely the aim of that work. It is quite possible to have a “lone nut” actually shoot someone, or many, then himself and be “fake”. It can be “fake” even if many die.
My definition is “naturally occurring”, in other words, without outside control. I think the likelihood of all these events “naturally” happening is nil.
Given the sheer volume and the ludicrousness of the spin they’re using lately my vote would be an automatic “hoax”, unless something more substantial (like evidence) surfaces.
They are really out of control. It is the full-court press for gun confiscation and “mental health”. Does anyone seriously believe that these events are happening as described? If so, why? I’ve never seen anything like it before and I doubt that I will in the future. It may as well be raining crocodiles.
Yes, absolutely, couldn’t agree more on the last three comments.
The lone wolf/mk activation is what gives us the supposed “real” version,
Seems too often a drill of some sort is also simultaneously occurring in the next town over on so very many of these events .
It was the “lone wolf” designation of the Oregon shooting that convinced me that this is another manufactured event. The earliest reports were that there were two or three shooters, and I was willing to keep an open mind and not jump to any conclusions. Once the story changed to a single, 14-year old boy as perpetrator, well, I’m just not buying it either.
Has anyone kept a tally of suspected manufactured malfeasance that they’d care to share?
No, but I wish this blog had been around during the Beltway Shooter rampage of 2002.
Lophatt, excellent distinction.
here is a great interview that exemplifies your point about “real” events being anything but naturally occurring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJksf2nyE7E
Recynd, here’s a little insight as to numbers:
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_06_11/74-shootings-took-place-in-US-schools-since-Newtown-massacre-7522/
I meant to add another category. This would be an event that “could” have happened naturally but was spun in the usual “uber-hype” fashion we’re growing so accustomed to.
I simply can’t help seeing the connectedness of things. I’ve noticed another meme lately has been the female teacher sexually exploiting her students. I bring this up because, if you think about it, are we to believe that something “in the air or water” is suddenly compelling these actions?
I rather think not. Of course another is any evil doer has “white supremacist” or “rightwing militant” attached to it. These spins are so crude as to be laughable. They show up in all the mainstream papers and broadcasts. It would be physically impossible for all those involved to simultaneously start using those buzz words and catch phrases without direction.
As we move further into the realm of government permissible thought and opinion we will see more “examples” of “the other”. Those are those who would have the temerity to think for themselves. That trait is rapidly being demonized.
So, just like it is fairly unlikely that female school teachers suddenly became rapists overnight, it is just as unlikely that “lone-nut shooters” have become all the rage. You really don’t need statistical analysis to see how unlikely these things are.
One final note, there seems to be an uptick in the reporting of more than one shooter in these operations, with the accompanying disappearance of all reference to that fact. It is a “signature identifier”, right along with the fully-formed storyline, complete with the perpetrator’s life history.
Lastly, the latest NDAA contains a “license” to propagandize the citizenry to sway public opinion. In other words, they’ve made lying legal. Given all that, does anyone still believe that these mutts work for us?
I have often wondered about the “Hot” teacher jumps on schoolboy stories that abounded for a couple of years too. I think that real or not, these stories have a measurable reaction, and it can be used to mold young minds. Not only will it degrade young men’s minds even further regarding women, thinking of them only as objects, it can also work on the young girls even more. “Miss Jenkins did Tommy, I want to do Tommy, I want to be a slut like Miss Jenkins. From now on I will try to be hotter, and think less about real things that hurt my head”. Eventually they all grow up to be bigger sexual risk takers.
Boys may think that the state is not so bad, after all they gave us Miss Jenkins, who partied and gave us sex. 30 years ago Miss Jenkins would have been quietly fired, and Tommy sent to an all boys school in outer Mongolia. But not today, because the story has value. It helps turn the next generation into mindless automatons following each others sex organs around, as their role models teach them that sex is nothing more than a bodily function, like going to the bathroom. This is part of the war on men and women, and it chips away at heterosexual relationships and family as it has been practiced since God created us. As this behavior becomes more accepted, the age of consent will eventually be seen as outdated. Th
Tommy and Miss Jenkins are purely fictional, and any resemblance to a real story is purely coincidental.
Another favorite of the media seems to be police brutality/misconduct. I have long wondered if these kinds of events being reported (whether a “hot” teacher, lone-wolf, or bad cop) are actually on the rise or if they are simply being reported upon more frequently. It’s so incredibly obvious to me that the public is being manipulated by not just HOW things are reported, but WHAT is being reported, but I’m still in the dark as to the motives: for example, how does it benefit TPTB for the public not to trust police? Or teachers? I thought that’s what was being promoted. Or am I missing something?
I don’t know where the claim that there have been “74 school shootings since Sandy Hook” came from, but I’m hearing it thrown around as if it were fact. It did get me to thinking, though, about the increasing numbers of “sensational events” in recent years. I started my own list of this kind of event, beginning with 9/11, with the greatest number taking place since 2011. Perhaps it’s my poor memory to blame, but there seems to me to be a definite ramping up of this kind of reporting. When did you say that NDAA provision was ratified to allow for domestic propaganda efforts?
I’m glad you added the teacher thing, lophatt, and I REALLY like the treatment Rich gives it. Very, very true.
While I have noticed this new plague in the schools, I never really pondered it. Now that you guys have inspired pondering, it makes me think that it has something to do with the change our society has undergone in terms of courting rituals–or the elimination of them.
Perhaps it’s something like this: just as certain men tire of the profile modern women have assumed, and focus on more innocent young girls they can mould and control, certain women feel hopelessness in the prospect of finding a man who doesn’t fit the modern profile, and feels drawn to the innocents in her care. If so, it would be a function of despair. The whole social environment that structured the West is collapsing, and tragic weirdness results.
I don’t know how much this would connect with the mind-controled killer thing. One way these SRA/DID slaves are created, of course, is to identify children from deeply dysfunctional homes, so these sexy teachers might be “handlers”; I have no idea. Another way is to identify very screwed up (or ambitious) young people, which these teachers might represent, thus, again, they could be recruiters into the program. The torture-program does not have to start in childhood to produce a mind controlled slave, but it usually does.
If so, it would be a function of despair. The whole social environment that structured the West is collapsing, and tragic weirdness results.
Interesting. I think our social and emotional ills will play a bigger role in the future tyranny, than the wars, and posturing of the world leaders we see on the news. The problem starts from within. There is a little three letter word for it.
Thanks guys, all good thought-provoking ideas. My sense is that none of this is accidental. As Rich correctly points out, sexual deviancy used to be a “private” affair. If it is now public, there’s a reason.
The speculation on the reasons are all good. It is probably “all of the above” and some other elements we haven’t fully considered yet. I personally don’t believe that there has been a sudden explosion in female sexuality that has caused this current “problem”.
As to the cops, they have always been a group of potentially violent misfits. I’m talking in general terms now, so I can only claim what I’ve personally observed. There is no question that they have taken “good” material and trained it to be what they want as a product. The publicity is also effective as, even if its repulsive, serves as a cautionary lesson to the eaters.
So, what do all these things have in common? They are all part of a psychological operation. We know that one of the major goals of the cabal is the destruction of Western Civilization as we know it. This includes all religion, mores, and affiliations. This is also designed to create a feeling of helplessness in the face of chaos. In other words, a loss of hope.
I don’t have a solution for this. In a way, I think my solution is to keep doing what I know to be right. That involves using my faith and my belief that God is still in charge. In fact, these “news” articles and memes are simply a mockery of God and His believers. Any theological study of this would result in the conclusion that there is much evil afoot.
Thank you Prof. Kissner. This is an interesting approach to consider what we have been told and demonstrate how it is not probable.
Another aspect of what we have been told, is that a very skinny, tall guy, wearing strangely large pants, an extremely small shirt, carried hundreds of pounds of gunnery.
A firearms expert spoke shortly after how this would be physically impossible. Seems he has been silenced, all articles referencing his name and Sandy hook, state they have been modified as he has “transitioned from outspoken activist to environmental scientist….”. Very strange!
The reenactment of this impossibility would go viral as a video.
The other important item is the automatic weapon said to being used is very loud and would certainly echo in unbelievable bombardment in that building. One child witness thought it sounded like someone banging on the locker doors. The very limited 911 calls released after a court order, also have a sound that could be someone banging on a locker door!
The fact that ZERO attempts were made to administer first aid to any Sandy Hook shooting victim and ZERO parents questioned the gross negligence causing death by first responders PROVES it was a hoax.
If it was a real shooting most of the children would have been rushed out of the school to EMTs or EMTs ushered in to attempt life saving …. standard protocols of law re: first aid were ignored that day. And a real parent would have demanded answers.
22 students were taken to a hospital in Torrington, CT after a school bus crash today. So aid is possible when needed. Torrington is 37 miles north east of Newtown.
http://www.wfsb.com/story/25742379/2-buses-involved-in-crash-in-torrington
Exactly! Too much acceptance and compliance. That says more in many ways than all the evidence out there.
I agree, of course there is SO much wrong with the story that its hard to have a “favorite”, THIS is my personal fave. I mean, really. We are to believe that they just told the parents “sorry, you can’t see your kids. They’re dead in there and we’ve just sort of decided to let them lie there”.
No attempts to evacuate anybody. And, wait for it, no lawsuits. I suppose the message is “if you have a car wreck we’ll send everyone to the hospital. If we’re doing a DHS drill we’ll make the rules as we go”.
Wouldn’t you expect that someone who wasn’t in on this would scream bloody murder about this? Just askin’.
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5797306/map-school-shooting-sandy-hook
So the Newtown vaudeville road show a year ago was for naught. And Kaitlin Roig are only speaking to the choir on her solo road show after joining American Entertainment Speakers Bureau for hefty fees.
“motivational speakers from American Entertainment Speakers Bureau professional keynote speakers … Kaitlin Roig public keynote speaker …”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/13/sandy-hook-families-anniversary-tour
Correction: Ms. Roig is (not are). Maybe there is more than one of her.
Query: What is the statistical probability of ZERO wrongful death lawsuits in the Sandy Hook fiasco ( Of course we are coming up on the 24 month statute of limitations if I’m not mistaken,
so maybe…).
I reckon it’s right up there with “raining crocodiles” and the likelihood of the recent spate of “shootings” being real.
Raining crocodiles – good one. Australia banned guns after the Port Arthur incident. Wonder when their crocodiles will be banned as well. There have been several events lately where people vanished into the mouths of these earthly creatures. What’s the difference between facing the mouth of a pistol or the mouth of a crocodile? Just wondering.
That will happen, Anne, when the first group of people who have finally had enough start feeding their politicians to them.
Excellent, excellent piece. I have one sad but simple theory as to the unbelievably high dead/wounded ratio: the ratio was much closer to the average, upon police arrival, but that due to delay in treatment & transport, all but two wounded ended up in the other category. The second wounded was Deb Pisani, fwiw (GSW to foot, Room 1).
Doesn’t this assume that all use about the same kinds of firearms, and fires roughly the same number of rounds?
If someone shoots up a school with a 9 mm handgun, spraying bullets, more would likely be injured, compared to a situation where a rifle were used more deliberately?
Adam Lanza allegedly shot all but two of the victims more than once, one kid was shot perhaps 11 times according to Wikipedia. He was deliberate, but did fire 150 rounds, most of them inside two class rooms. Over penetration can be massive with a .223 Rem in light targets. Considering the hole in the car outside, the shooter must have used FMJ or similar ammo.
I can understand that factors like this start to diminish in importance when the sample of observations grows. A sample of 34 observations seems low to me, but I could be wrong?
Are you talking about the holes in the car body with the rust on them? I don’t know about making ammo determinations at this point, but of course fmj is the most plentiful ammo for the caliber specified, however, I could probably put an icepick though the metal skin on any car built in the last 20 years, and that is without the icepick moving at 3100 ft per second . Ammo would be impossible I think to determine at this point, with no wounds to examine, casings, or any part of the school left.
Doh! look at me talking like I actually might believe their was an Ar-15 on location at the time. Not! Nice try Herr Colonel!
I said “the shooter” not AL. there is or was never any AL.
I never said AL, or shooter.
Considering that it didn’t happen it’s even more difficult to explain the rusty bullet holes. I looked at that too. They “appear” too large for .223 but, I can’t say for sure. Whatever that car got hit with before being towed to the police impound lot and later dragged to the scene looked to be bigger.
Of course they could have plugged it full of holes at any time. We have no real idea when they shot any of the footage or pictures. They do this in Hollywood all the time.
I think its a safe bet that no one was “shot eleven times”, unless you believe the loony coroner. My guess is that no one was shot, period. It is interesting that these stories keep coming up. I like the one about the kid with the bullet under the skin of his scalp but not penetrating her skull so it isn’t a wound.
In this case we have the theory that a .223 round went through kids, a wall, traveled through the parking lot and punched several .45 sized holes in a car. Of course this immediately rusted (as magical rounds are wont to do).
Let’s not forget the various stories of teachers bailing out of windows and going for a sandwich. Nurses who hide in closets for hours and are frightened by the sight of blood. Dead people calling the newspaper. Now, there’s a publicity-starved public servant. Under attack and her first thought is “call the newspaper”.
And, irony of ironies, what if the mysterious janitor had been armed? Why, it would have been “game over”.
This story only makes sense in a land far away, over the rainbow.
” I like the one about the kid with the bullet under the skin of his scalp but not penetrating her skull so it isn’t a wound. ”
I think that is a Columbine story.
Maybe, there are SO many, they all run together!
Reblogged this on Flying Tiger Comics and commented:
Facts, Damned Facts and Sandy Hook, pace Charles Fort
Using a quantitative methodology like logistic regression is admirable, via-a-vis, the anecdotal alternatives fed to us by the MSM and the corrupt Connecticut ME Office.
However, using only 1 and 2 or more as your choice of cut points not only severely restricts the range, it violates the assumptions of homogeneity of variance and multicollinearity.
Multicollinarity because the number of injuries that result in death and non-death is highly correlated to the total number of victims – all other factors being equal.
Except they were hardly equal between Classrooms #9 & #10. Everyone in Classroom #9 were dead (except for the girl in the back corner who pretended to be dead) because they were all huddled in a corner and there is NO WAY that all of the multiple wounds in victims were from individual gunshots and not the result of through-and-throughs. ME Carver’s quote: “Everyone was shot 3 to 11 times” is total BS.
In #9, there were 14 little kids essentially stacked on top of each other as they were herded into a bathroom barely big enough for one person by the substitute teacher (whose initials are LR) while 30 5.56mm rounds were sending their 55 grain full metal jacketed bullets a distance of less than 10 yards at hypersonic speeds of 3,200 feet per second at large, virtually stationary targets.
In this scenario, I would bet the ranch that all child victims had at least one through-and-through and most had multiple wound tracts from single bullets.
Not to be flippant about the phrase or the horrific outcome, but this was insanely easier than “shooting fish in a barrel” because at least the fish could move around. All of these kids were doomed by one the dumbest protocols ever intended as a defense against an active shooter armed to the teeth.
On one of the 911 recordings, the teacher (in another classroom) could be heard getting instructions directly from the 911 operator to “huddle in a corner.” This was probably also SOP for the DHS’s “active shooter situations” because all of the other classrooms had kids hiding in closets and bathrooms. It works only if all the kids and adults can fit in a room with an inside lockable door and it makes the gunman think the classroom is empty.
On the other hand, now that the world knows this is the SOP for hiding kids, the gunman will head straight for the closed door and blow off the lock behind which is an enclosed “shooting gallery” with no place to run.
Now, in Classroom #10, there were nine to ten kids seen running from #10 even before the shooting started, according to three eyewitnesses. This inconvenient fact totally screws up the ever-changing narratives of what actually happened in Victoria Soto’s classroom that was supposed to have 13 students in it when Lanza entered and asked Soto where were her kids (the first story was that she had hidden all of them in a closet) and was telling Lanza that they had all gone to the auditorium.
Here’s where the narrative goes sideways. Remember that we already have 9 to 10 students from Classroom #10 running up the front sidewalk to the firehouse either before the shooting started or during the reported pause caused by Lanza having to stop and swap magazines. It must have been a jam that got him to stop because, again according to the official story, one of the kids (now venerated as a hero) told the kids in the closet to make a run for it).
From the resulting count of escapees and victims, five of the runners, aka moving targets, were shot dead as they ran for the door – including the one who gave the “bug out” order – along with Vicky Soto who still stood in front of closet door behind which were seven kids who had stayed put and stayed alive. But five to seven other runners did make it out of the classroom and school and headed up the same sidewalk on which the three eyewitnesses said they had seen 9 to 10 kids running towards the fire house.
Let’s do the math here. Inside Classroom #10 there were five child fatalities and seven child survivors. That’s 12 kids right there. Suppose that only five kids made it out safely. Adding five to the seven kids in the closet equals 12 plus the five child fatalities raises the total number of Soto’s kids to at least 17, and not the 13 she was supposed to have. Worst case scenario, number-wise, is that there were 10 kids from Classroom #10 seen running up the sidewalk. That would raise the total to 22 kids.
The “hero” stopry came out several days later. The official initial report simply stated that tghe running kids took itr upon themselves to escape despite Soto’s ruse which either seemed to be working as Lanza was heading towards the door – which is why his body was reportedly found 2 feet from the doorway.
A more likely result is that Lanza turned to pursue the escaping kids and took out five at close range. What happened then before the moment whewn Lanza allegedly stopped, took out his 10mm Glock, put it to the back of his head, and fired – killing himself, execution-style.
There are no stats on shot placement, but I’d guess that 99.9% of all self-inflicted gunshots to the head are done by putting the barrel in the mouth, under the chin, or against the side of the forehead. Firing at the angle the bullet traveled would require Lanza to wrap his arm behind and below his right shoulder while firing upwards at a 40 degree angle at the right atlas of his skull.
And doing so in a hurry.
The 230 grain slug went through his skull, through the ceiling in Classroom #10 and ricocheted inside the ceiling crawlspace of Classroom #9.
There was an exit hole in the top of his cloth hunting cap that is the size of an entry hole and had very little blood, brain, and bone matter on the inside. Since his autopsy results are guarded like JFK’s were, there is no way to know what a big powerful bullet did to his head. Judging by what the bullet did to his hat, and what was not found in it, Lanza would have had to knock it from his head before the bullet went through it by lurching his head in response to the gun blast.
Speaking of the 10mm Glock, they found two spent casings: one of which was found in the hall across from the office (& Clasroom #10) next to the body of the School Psychologist. Next to the body of the Principal, also found lying in the hall a short distance from the Psychologist, was a 5.56mm casing. Although not stated as such, this report gives the impression that the Psychologist was killed by the 10mm Glock while the Principal was killed by the 5.56mm rifle – which makes perfect sense for her as she was the first person shot after Lanza gained entry by firing his rifle through the front glass window.
On the other hand, from the photo of the improvised doorway, aka, the shot-out window, at the top of the opening is a bullet hole and shatter pattern that could only have been made by a low-velocity handgun round. If there were any forensics done to the window, they were not reported to the public, but any bullet-pattern expert would agree with my assessment that a handgun round made the hole and shatter pattern in the front window.
Also curious is that after the Central District Crime Unit had examined and found casings in the front of the school, and especially around the area in front of the broken window, the Western District Crime Unit who had been doing the inspections inside the school, was asked in the early evening, to go outside and comb through the mulch ground cover directly in front of the blown-out hole in the window.
Were they looking for more rifle casings, or that elusive handgun casing whose bullet made the big hole in the top of the glass opening?
Between the date of the shooting (12/14/2012) and June 2013, all of the rifle casings found were said to be .223 caliber – which they knew from the head stamps at the base of the casing.
Yet, come November 24, 2013, when the Danbury AG office released its Final Report for Sandy Hook, lo and behold, all of the 301 rifle casings found (both spent shells and live rounds) were identified as having the exact, same head stamp of “S&B 60 5.56mm.” A footnote that followed said that the reader should ignore the different designations of “.223 cal, 5.56mm, and 5.56 NATO” as all are the same for the purposes of this report.
Well, not exactly. Although the .223 and 5.56 share the same casing design, there are slight variations in the 5.56mm that make be a tighter fitting round and possessing more energy than a .223, such that gun manufacturers advise owners of their rifles specifically chambered for the .223 round to not use any 5.56mm rounds in them because of the greater energy they generate that can damage the rifle. The Bushmaster XM-15 and other companies’ AR-style rifles are made to fire both rounds (with a few exceptions for the 5.56 NATO round as distinguished by the circle and cross on the head stamp and the little green tip on the bullet.
One of those green-tipped NATO rounds was shown among the forensic photos taken of Lanza’s guns and ammo. The question is, “What was it doing there if all of the rounds were non-NATO 5.56mm with no green tips?”
The bigger question is, “Why were they and the media both pushing the .223 caliber meme when they knew from Day One that they were all 5.56mm? Could it be because the .223 cal round is the most popular and most ubiquitous rifle round sold because millions of people own the rifles that shoot them -to where .223 becomes synonymous with “assault rifle?”
“….while 30 5.56mm rounds were sending their 55 grain full metal jacketed bullets a distance of less than 10 yards at hypersonic speeds of 3,200 feet per second at large, virtually stationary targets.”
“…were identified as having the exact, same head stamp of “S&B 60 5.56mm.”
Sounds like S&B 60 (Sellier&Bellot a Czech manufacturer) could be a 60gr bullet? Is it SS109 standard?
I heard reports that the fictional AL used hollow point bullets, but that seems out of the question now!?
I understand what you are saying, but did the report ever say if any green tip projectiles were found in the bodies? That would mean they should have weighed in at 62 grains as opposed to 55 grains. Green tip penetrator 5.56 should also have a steel core whereas the 55 grain bullets should have no steel, just lead and copper. Steel in any of the bullet fragments(if there really were any shots fired at this event) would be… interesting.
SS109 will not stay in a target that light. All bullet fragments would be imbedded in the building. A good reason to tear it down if you wanted to hide that fact…
Agreed. Would probably go through two of them before one could slow down enough to lodge in a third victim. Purely speculative though. Tearing down the building would hide that there were no bullets fired at all. We will never know now.
I would be interested in the mathematical odds of the occurrence of 74 school shootings in the 18 months since Sandy Hook.
As an aside – I think we can totally bust the author of the New Yorker article about Peter Lanza. It seems highly unlikely that wealthy homosexual heir to a major pharmaceutical company, who bathes in goats blood, is also a Catholic priest. Andrew Solomon’s interview with Peter, reported to have been based on hours of conversations and several meetings was devoid of photos, and had very few quotes.
‘Pastor Solomon” was an early star of the Sandy Hook saga. It was his story of the live female child, covered in blood, that made headlines. This is most certainly Andrew Solomon in the video above. Who interviewed him? Was it an important serious journalist? Nope. Home and Garden TV sent a rep to cover the story.
I think whenever you look at these false flags, you have to consider the odds. like the odds of 3 assassinations in 3 short years JFK, Robert Kennedy and MLK, the odds of 2, no three sky scrapers crumbling to the ground like a planned implosion within minutes of each other during 911, like the odds of a WASPY woman like Nancy Lanza even owning a Bushmaster…all very improbable…like Osama Bin Laden being buried at sea….fairy tales all
Or a 10mm Auto pistol! Not really a lady gun…
Yeah, who buys a 10mm anymore? They were very “in” in the 80’s after the big FBI shootout in Florida. But once the .40 came out they kind of fizzled. Maybe she was a Miami Vice fan, Sonny Crockett and his Bren 10.
Yes Sandy, the “74” figure has been thoroughly debunked. If the “New Yorker” wrote that “the sun came up today” I’d have to stick my head out to verify it for myself.
Peter Lanza, like “Adam” is a character. “Goat’s blood”? Maybe he needs that to channel the “ascended masters” in his search for material.
Sandy, if the two Solomons (obvious dig at Scripture) are really one person, it is a staggering find. Maybe others here at MHB already knew that. Shame on me for not knowing. I will look into this further. I have in my Sandy Hook library (and I do mean library) an article which allegedly details “pastor” Solomons dealings with the allegedly wounded child.
Yeah, that alleged interview with Peter Lanza was so ridiculously false it was laughable. And leave it to NPR and Terri Gross to give this liar a forum to perpetuate the lie.
Think about it. How is it possible that neither Peter or Ryan have surfaced anywhere. No paparazzi photos, no interviews other than Solomons. If one guy’s son and another guy’s brother committed the most heinous mass murder in the annals of American criminal justice, can they just fall off the face of the earth? Rhetorical, of course.
A Brooklyn Bridge for demonstration – not for sale. 100 Newtowners, the town that loves its privacy, participated in this Bloomberg production.
http://www.signalscv.com/section/287/article/121794/
“The event was organized by several groups — including Moms Demand Action, Everytown For Gun Safety and Mayors Against Illegal Guns — which are all funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.”
“Shannon Watts, who organized the group Moms Demand Action; Erica Lafferty, whose mother, Dawn Hochspring, was slain at Sandy Hook; and actress Amanda Peet urged the crowd to bombard their elected officials with requests for stricter firearms restrictions. The cheers from crowd, which ended the march with a rally outside City Hall, were occasionally interrupted by shouts about the right to bear arms from a lone counter-protester.”
MHB readers investigated Shannon Watts previously. I seem to recall patrickchatsamiably, to his chagrin, discovered that she lives in his neck of the woods.
“Just Another Accidental Activist,” MHB, 2/16/14.
Funny, I don’t see any pepper spray, tasers, or batons at this one. They must have had a “permit”.
Interesting analysis, Prof. Kissner.
I wonder if you’ve considered (or are in the process of) extending the analysis presented here by framing a further issue so as to incorporate additional information we know of, specifically, the presence of other suspects at Sandy Hook Elementary. Such information would include:
—multiple hoodies (or other garments) outside of what’s alleged to be Lanza’s Honda
—the DA’s representation in court filings that secrecy was warranted in view of the risk that “other suspects” would be tipped off
—the identification of men by an officer on police radio who were “coming at me on Crestwood”
—the fact, reflected in the dispatcher’s feed, that police were searching for suspects in a purple van fleeing the scene that morning or early afternoon
—the handcuffed man in camo pants, identified by one of the parents, who was apprehended at the scene and then seated in the front seat of a police cruiser
—the identification of another handcuffed man, in this instance on the ground in front of the fire house, by a SHE student
—the identification of a contemporaneous rumor, repeated by a Sandy Hook parent, that “word is that it’s multiple shooters” or something to that effect
—Etc.
In light of your analysis, and by way of that background, I wonder if the issue might be fruitfully recast as follows: given that the a priori odds of an “active shooter” achieving a 28:2 kill: wound ratio are negligible (<1/500), AND GIVEN THE VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE OF OTHER CRIMINAL SUSPECTS AT THE SCENE, what are the odds that Adam Lanza was the lone shooter?
Stated differently, isn’t the “active shooter” scenario at Sandy Hook complete nonsense?
After all, it is one thing for someone to claim he plucked a penny from a jar and tossed 28 heads in a row. But even accepting that such an improbable thing happened, it’s quite another thing to insist—as the official story would have it—that the penny is regular in the face of abundant evidence that there were a few double-headed pennies in the jar before the first toss. I think that’s in the field of Bayesian statistics, but you’d know that better than I.
Well, well, ladies and gentlemen, & hello Anne; look what I just found.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530129/Newtown-aftermath-pictured-time-Harrowing-images-inside-Sandy-Hook-Elementary-School-released-final-report.html
How did the officer know there were “15 bodies” in the bathroom if they were all piled up? No real evidence of any deaths in any area. Where are the blood soaked classrooms? This is the first I’ve heard of kids being killed in a “class bathroom.” They were all in closets last I heard.
Who is this photographer and how did he gain entrance to Lanza’s house? Nothing about this looks real. Any thoughts?
Where are the “military clothes” the child said the shooter was wearing? The article said the officer pulled the bodies out one by one, so have to assume that’s when he was doing his counting. Pretty clear headed and not in a huge rush to get any of them out to ambulances. We never saw any images of officers covered in blood, which the officer counting and pulling out bodies would have to have been.
I remember seeing photos of the clothes the shooter was (reportedly) wearing: a polo-style shirt (I think…I wouldn’t swear to this) and combat-style pants. I remember the pants specifically because they were the short-ish kind, that military often wears with boots. But AL wasn’t wearing boots, he was wearing black sneaker/loafer type shoes. This stuck, because that would mean that either his hair legs or his socks would be sticking out the bottoms of his pant legs. There was also a picture of a snap-back-style hat, with a very small (.22?) hole with some very straight, very blond hairs sticking out of it, that was supposed to be Lanza’s. (Never mind that Lanza didn’t have blond or straight hair.)
If you’re interested, I can try to dig up the photos for you…I think they were part of the official report.
I was just looking at the photos of his clothes in the article referenced above and were black. I would have thought camo somewhere in order for a kid to describe him as military.
How many bathrooms were kids hiding in? I know Kaitlin Roig’s story was that she stuffed all her kids in the tiny little bathroom off her classroom (I assume it’s the “little kids’ bathroom” for the youngest kids) and read them a story until danger had passed…but I don’t think I’d heard about another bathroom-crime scene.
In fact, I don’t think I have a real clear mental picture of just what the crime scene looked like…am I the only one?
These two medical professionals were standing outside the front doors of SHES while a mass murder took place inside – if we are to believe Laura Nowacki, MD with a practice in Newtown. Why did the beleaguered police not ask for assistance from these two with prestigious medical backgrounds? Just wondering.
Laura Nowacki, M.D., FAAP, Newtown Center Pediatrics
Raul Arguello, M.D., FAAP, Chief of Pediatrics at Danbury Hospital
The words stacked, piled and squished follow the stories of the children. The dead ones were piled or stacked. The live ones were squished. Except for the ones at Gene Rosen’s house, the ones who were never seen by anyone with integrity – as far as I know.
I had never realized that “hole reinforcers” could be used to enhance fake evidence photos. What, pray tell, would be the point of that? Was it to suggest that he had blood spatter on his shoes, shirt and pants? I would expect to see a fair amount of that on the clothes of someone who put a bullet in their head.
It was a nice touch to finally throw some broken glass shards on the inside as well. They were conspicuously absent in the first batch.
Leaving the pistol with the ejected magazine lying in the doorway was pure movie magic as well. There are candles in the windows that were not seen in any of the other shots.
And yes Anne, it is certainly hard to explain why two pediatric doctors would not be pressed into service under “the circumstances”. Like you say, the mysterious “flying bus” (it had to be a flying bus as no one could have driven down the drive with all the official cars blocking the way), leaving with kids only to drop them at Gene’s. Did we mention that Gene’s house actually abuts the firehouse?
When were these shots supposed to be taken? Was it before the cleanup crew arrived? I would think so. For all that carnage there certainly seems an absence of blood.
Well, it’s hard to argue with subtitles. We must all learn to suspend critical judgement when faced with official reportage. After all, there are little yellow markers, sticky labels and SUBTITLES. What more could anybody need to see to believe?
cartiermccloud, I know that something is amiss – such as no children. What intrigued me was a story about a seemingly legit pediatrician mentioning another seemingly legit pediatrician, and that both were outside the SHES front door during the alleged carnage. Her story was published on June 13, 2013 in a seemingly legit journal, The Official Newsmagazine Of The American Academy of Pediatrics, by Alyson Sulaski Wyckoff, Associate Editor.
Did both doctors believe a mass murder was going on inside? Why does she not mention offering help of any kind? Was she not there? Is she part of the official script? Is her story part of the script? If anything, this left me wondering even more than previously. Even wondering what Ira Levin would have thought of Stepfordized Sandy Hook.
The Newtown Bee featured the doctor on June 3, 2013:
http://newtownbee.com/news/features/2013/06/03/snapshot-dr-laura-nowacki/140883
I have no words! When you put it all together, how can it be explained? She claims to have been there. That implies that kids were there. They say there was a mass shooting. She didn’t participate. Under the circumstances that seems as unlikely as leaving them on the floor and declaring them all dead.
She says she’s been there since 1991. So she’s not a “newbie”. How could someone like that be compromised? Is it just money?
It is hard, nay impossible, to consider myself in her position. Do they think that no one will notice the inconsistencies and utter impossibility of the tale? How could you maintain such a lie?
The only plausible answer that comes to mind is that one would need to either be a narcissist or psychopath. How else would you not be plagued by guilt?
Stuff like this takes the humor out of it.
jeanbush, I began to read the article and I didn’t get very far because I have read a hundred pieces like this one in which an alleged “survivor” recounts the HORROR of that non-event. They are all either contradictory or could not possibly have happened as described…or both. I wont even bother commenting on anything this child has said, other than complete and utter nonsense.
One photo however piqued my interest. It is the photo which is described as being the entry door to room 10. The photo shows a door well…a recess from the hallway separating the hallway from the entry door. I have in my files the schematics for SHES, as per the states attorneys report, as well as a number of other school layouts. I have also watched the CSP crime scene video of the interior of the school. A door well to room 10 is nowhere to be found in any of them. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Another perhaps somewhat droll observation on my part. The bushes outside of the shot out window are leafy green. I am not a flower or bush guy. This was December 14th…would the bush have still been green?
Anyone out there know what type of bush that is?
And I really DONT have a lot of time on my hands.
Reading these last remarks of joe and lophatt, it strikes me how intensely strange things have become in our time. Things that are so wildly, obviously, a complete pack of lies wash over the public mind like water off a duck. No one seems to notice, much less care.
Has such a thing ever happened before?
lophatt, in a comment yesterday on another thread, talking to our great fellow researcher Anne, mentioned that people who grow up reading Sherlock Holmes know what logic is. The sad fact is that virtually no one in today’s world can be described that way. I asked the question recently, what do we call the Paris Hilton/Kardashian social phenomenon? Is there a word for it?
I like another of lophatt’s recent remarks, something to do with what a future anthropologist would make of the Daily Mail’s frequency of articles on the Kardashians. I love the D.M., if only to delight in watching the Brits laughing at us. I think it was around the time that paper clued me in to the existence of Honey Boo Boo that I started to figure it out: we have elevated nitwitery to a sort of grand ideal. (Incidentally, if you can believe it, Mark Steyn says that it’s the most widely read internet newspaper–by Americans!) An ironic love of nonsense combined with utter disdain for serious thought. Jon Stewart points it out all the time, and his audience responds like a tank of trained seals, not knowing that he’s actually laughing AT THEM.
So here we have a culture–if we can call it that–that absorbs every inch of commentary about the buffoonish owner of a sports franchise who every year makes illiterate young blacks into millionaires, yet is being destroyed for being a racist. They don’t notice how weird that is. A society that idolizes trivialities, yet whose members have no patience to work through ideas that will be essential in determining their future condition, because that’s too hard–and because of course they have better things to do, like catching up on the latest “news” about Sterling. A people content to be ruled by morons and carpetbaggers and genuinely evil conspirators, just so long as material comfort prevails in the “now,” the future be damned.
I try to laugh through the storm, but as lophatt just said, sometimes it’s tough to do. SNAFU is an ironic response, a way of enduring an insane condition we can’t control, and using that phrase is a way to force ourselves to focus on the forest (which always I endeavor to do). It is when we examine an individual tree, its bark and its leaves, that the insane “normalcy” stops being funny. SNAFU, I believe, is an acronym coined by soldiers in war time, about the ridiculousness of army “logic.” Those fellows thought they could ignore the stupidity until they would get out and arrive home in a world where things made sense. Well, we’re all in that crazy war-state now, all the time.