0:17
Self-immolation is an incredible form of protest because it shows how extreme and unbearable the conditions you are protesting are and how powerless you feel. See, for example, Thich Quang Duc. But doing it when you’re not protesting your own conditions is just suicidal, plain and simple. You don’t see Greta Thunberg setting herself on fire because she knows that she’s in a privileged position in the west and that her energy is best spent using that for advocacy and not just throwing her life away.
This poor lad was not in Palestine, not Palestinian, nor was he deployed in any theatre overseas participating in any operation. He had the agency to do a litany of things in protest instead of setting himself on fire. He could have deserted and leveraged publicity in the court martial/discharge process; its not like they’d do much more than a slap on a wrist on a deserter stateside anyway.
I don’t want to speculate on his exact case, maybe we’ll find out his wife left him or something, but I think there is very little to interpret on this point: this man felt trapped and had no options left because of and cognitive distortions as a result of mental illness. We should not celebrate a mentally ill person committing suicide, period.
0:19
@PunishedFelix I hear what you’re saying and I think you’re seeing this through a lens of internalized ableism. I’m a big believer in a social theory of mental illness, and I don’t think that it takes from his nobly meant sacrifice to point out that it was a deeply irrational one that didn’t change anything. I think that Bushnell’s sacrifice is the result of a deeply prosocial, mentally ill person in the same way I think a mall shooting is the result of a deeply antisocial mentally ill person. It’s possible I’m wrong and that his sacrifice really will be the thing that influences us to move the levers of power, but if Atlanta was any indication, it won’t be.
2:06
Number of mass shootings in the United Sttes between 1982 and December 2023, by shooters race or ethnicity. White is 80, Black is 26, Latino is 12, Asian is 10, Other is 5, Native American is 3 and Unknown is 13.
2:08
Number of mass shootings in the United Sttes between 1982 and December 2023, by shooters gender. Male is 143, female is 4, male and female is 2. Note: may not include trans/nonbinary statistics.
2:10
Screenshot from an article titled “Mass shootings: Maybe What we need is a better mental-health policy” with one shooter with a clear Nazi swastika behind him. Three of them are white men.
article: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/jared-loughner-mass-shootings-mental-illness/
3:16
Deciding not to send an insensitive or trollish comment, even if it seems like a joke, is one step people can take to help people who appear to be struggling, according to Alan Bunney. Bunney is a former professional gamer who became a doctor of internal medicine and now runs the popular Panda Global e-sports brand and works with a number of prominent Twitch streamers in the gaming space. People are quick to forget that YouTube personalities and streamers are human beings with feelings, he says. And because of that, it might be easier for people to say something without thinking of the consequences.
“What you’re joking around with is a persona, not a person,” Bunney tells The Verge. “You know, you’re laughing with what you think you understand. A persona is only part of that person; you don’t really know who they are or what they’re going through.”
article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18759603/desmond-etika-amofah-death-youtube-creator-mental-health
6:04
On twitter, a photo of Hillary Clinton holding a photo of a boy. The caption reads: Hillary Clinton holds a picture of the 16 year old Tibetan boy who set himself on fire yesterday in India.
Jeet Heer retweets this and responds, Weird how this moment didn’t provoke a discourse about self-care, mental health and the contagion effect.
6:18
On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an attack into southwest Israel, targeting Israeli communities and military bases, killing at least 1,300 people and taking at least 236 hostages. On 9 October 2023, Israel declared war on Hamas and imposed a “total blockade” of the Gaza Strip, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declaring, “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”As a result, Gaza is undergoing a severe humanitarian crisis. By 13 November 2023, one out of every 200 people in Gaza were killed, becoming one out of every 100 by January 2024.
As of 21 December 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 20,000 Palestinians, including over 8,000 children, have been killed. More than 85% of Palestinians in Gaza, or around 1.9 million people, were internally displaced. As of January 2024, Israel’s offensive has either damaged or destroyed 70–80% of all buildings in northern Gaza.
Wikipedia article on Gaza Strip
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