the pattern of abuse that underlies rampage killings, and continue to regard the perpetrators as incomprehensible monsters, thereby alienating others in similar situations, some of whom will fantasize about or commit similar acts, then these episodes are doomed to recur.

Given the current economy they will likely escalate.

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In many of these "unexplained" massacres, a common thread is that the "monster" was on Prozac, Xanax or similar mood-elevating drugs. Even the recent chimpanzee rampage - it seems that the chimp was on Xanax. But Big Pharma doesn't want this kind of publicity, and the authorities usually will refuse to release the killer's medical records in order to protect "patient privacy." As if a dead patient was concerned with privacy.

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workplace shooting sprees have fused in this instance. McLendon's act may prove to be innovative and seminal.

I would like to add that it's possible the few killing sprees in Europe may be more similar to the many over here than the author seems to appreciate.

Every stratified society includes exploitation and abuse. The greater the inequalities, the greater the abuses, and the more resentment accumulates among the disempowered masses, especially those people at the bottom of the pile. Resentment in some instances leads to successful episodes of lashing out at society, a society which the perpetrator feels (probably correctly) has alienated him.

The U.S. is far more stratified and unequal than Germany, hence we get many more lashings out, spree killings being a preferred method.

The two school big-time shooters in Germany in the past seven years might have been victims of social abuse; in fact I would bet they were, although I am unfamiliar with the details of the cases. The point is, if indeed they were, then their acts of revenge, even while these actions have not led to the development of identifiable trends, would represent pockets of the kind of abuse of the powerless that we see more widespread in the United States.

All hierarchical societies have some level of exploitation and, among the masses, anomic alienation and misery. In a place like Germany it's just that the hierarchy is less pronounced and there are social programs that soften the hierarchical edge. Thus it is more difficult for trends to develop when mass killings occur.

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...in issues of suicide and homicidal rage.

We always ask "Why?" in these cases because we want the human mind and its motivations to make linear sense... though they rarely do. The actual answer is unfailingly complicated, virtually incomprehensible, and ALWAYS unsatisfying: MENTAL ILLNESS-- depression, delusion, schizophrenia, etc. Millions of people under the same (or worse) stresses as this poor guy DO NOT embark on killing sprees, so why did he?

I'm not saying the stresses weren't a factor in Mr. McLendon's case, but I AM saying that only combined with an already "cooking" psychological problem did those stresses push him over the edge into a homicidal rampage.

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Come on now, get rid of the guns, and in regard to the violence, problem solved. Down through the ages, there have been poor people persecuted by the rich - that never gave victims the right to resort to such violence, particularly against innocent people. Stop making excuses for these heinous perpetrators, and put your talents to good use in a campaign to get rid of the guns in your country. It won't solve the problem entirely, but it will bring such crimes down to a minimum, at least. Then you can start on the social justice issues that you perceive to be involved here. But the violence has to stop, immediately. That should be your first port of call.

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One could make a case for banning guns by stating that a bad economy will increase gun violence.

I don't think this is true.

I do think that it is possible that some people may be driven to the brink by the corporate culture that exists in companies like this.

An awful lot of successful companies that pay minimum wage and no benefits (there are a lot of them) are owned by Financial companies like Merill Lynch, etc.. They take most of their profit from companies like these.

You have to follow the profit. A lot of them are owned by holding companies, who are in turn owned by Financial companies who use them as a source of sure minimum wage profit.

The problem is that in this economy, we will be seeing a lot of people breaking. It sucks, and it will probably make a few Republicans happy, because they like to see this kind of thing, and it gives them an excuse to blame any violence it may cause.. on poor people..minimum wage earners.

I wouldn't be surprised if the news media subliminally equates it with terrorism. When I think of lowlifes, I think of the mainstream media.

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Aided by technology, the organizational structure of any corporate structure these days rationalizes all components and elements of the Enterprise. A whole human individual "employee" is simply one among the vast array of these elements "trained" to perform a variety of functions wholly integrated into the process of profit maximization. Anyone who has worked in a corporate job-site is experiencing or has experienced this. Just like a desk, a monitor and tower, a pen or a pencil, he or she is simply one asset being put to use for one purpose only: extract value. Other than an extremely minimalized list of "concessions" such as breaks and lunch-times or bathroom breaks, this "asset" is required to function as designed and inserted into this process. The whole individual is Labor. Any "subjective" elements of this or that particular individual are simply ignored, denied and not part of the rationalized Model.

And when something like this "short-circuit" happens as it did in Alabama, the very first thing is to particularize and specialize the explanations so as to point to that isolated and de-contextualized individual that carried it out. I hear the socio-biologists: "he had a genetic make-up that pre-disposed, pre-destined him for just such an event". I hear the psychologists: "if we had just been alert enough to signs, symptoms, indications, in that individual, we could have prevented such a thing from happening". I hear the moralists: "he made bad choices all his life".

In sum: the defect is with him, this one particular and carefully delineated individual. All of us can rest comfortable and continue to rely on this "American Way" and its eminently moral, just and ever so developed society. Blame him, and spark a thousand explanations.

But, above all else, don't look to the job-site. That's a shining example of responsible, efficient, and productive, perfectly legal and responsible management and business Models! They're just tryin' to run a bidness...

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and inflamatory - the article that is..

"If you keep squeezing workers to fatten filthy-rich executives' already-obscene bonuses, there can be very violent consequences." -FILTHY RICH EXECUTIVE? And progressives aren't conducting a "class war".

Blaming Reaganomics for a killing spree? nice stretch.. last time I checked Reaganomics created one of the best economic times this country has seen. Obamanomics will give us one of the largest debts this nation has ever seen! Maybe that was the reason for the killing spree in alabama.

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...why is the "investigation" suddenly hushed up? Seems to me that someone somewhere doesn't want something to come to light.

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This piece would be much stronger if it were not for Mark Ames' lazy use of rhetoric like "plutocrats" and "vampiric" and "filthy rich" to describe Alabama employers, not to mention his relentless references to Reagan. The case he is trying to make seems to be on the page. We get it. I would love to send this piece to a friend from Alabama who is totally puzzled by this massacre, but the language undercuts the legitimacy of the argument.

Labor relations in the Deep South are horrid. Combine worker abuse with easy access to weapons intended for warfare and a pervasive fire and brimstone religious ethic, and this is what you get.

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So where were all the concealed carry guys who could have taken this guy down?

Everybody gets in a fit of depression. When I was his age, I had similar periods of depression. The difference is, I didn't have a closet full of semi autos. If I had, I don't doubt I might have been compelled to use them during several dark chapters of my life.

So which well regulated state militia did this loser belong to?

The difference between a law abiding citizen and a crazed lunatic are 10 or so bloody corpses.

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. . .someone posts a response on the order of "Who could be surprised by this? Who didn't already know this?" but that is exactly how I feel.

This article, and its "rhetoric" is appropriate, by the way, is just illustrating how things are done in the USA. A capitalist and his or her family exploit the living shit out of people, animals, land and anything else they can exploit, and pay themselves millions. This is the American Way, and American capitalists are doing it rampantly all over this country and all over the world. Their contempt for the working class is abetted by the complacent ignorance of those workers who are willing and who seem happy to work like animals for long hours just to make beer and cigarette money. The legal system and the government is just a front for those businesses and corporations and workers have little chance of winning lawsuits against companies. The people are too narrow-minded and utterly brainwashed to do anything for themselves. They have been atomized as individualists who care nothing for others and who trust virtually no one. They hate unions and fear socialism because they have been told to hate them. It is just that easy to herd them. If a few of them snap, big deal. We have "mothers" churning new ones out eight at a time nowadays.

In this case we are being told to move along, that there is nothing to see, and let me tell you: we will move along and we will put it behind us because we are used to being herded. It is familiar and comfortable to follow orders coming from "authority," and to trust "authority" implicitly. We fail to recognize that a brother has been driven insane by "them," and it could have been us. It may you or I who snap next. And then we will be sold down the river as a "rogue," or "mentally unstable" individual who had nothing in common with the rest of the herd. It is precisely the way that cattle watch other beeves die and never think that they could be next.

There will be no solidarity among the people of the United States. It can't happen. When you go down, everyone will sell you out and forget you within minutes. They will find some way to blame the victim.

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I'm an organizer against the for-profit prison industry. I've waged battles with them in a dozen states. In the course of those struggles, I've seen how unbelievably exploitative and dangerous they are.

The largest employer, CCA, has 17,000 workers and all but the top get treated like human garbage. Forced overtime, low wages, laughable benefits, inadequate training, high turnover, dangerous working conditions...you name it. A pervasively tolerated atmosphere of sexual harrassment of female employees existed in its prisons in many states. In 2006, guards at a rioting Beattyville, Kentucky prison were being paid $7.65 hourly. The president/CEO was being paid $22.5 million in salary, benefits and stock awards.

GEO Group, the second largest, just abandoned a city-owned prison in Littlefield, Texas in December after repeated disasters: Riots, escapes, corruption, assaults, etc. Poorly trained guards were being forced to work 21 hours of overtime a week. One night only ten of 15 guards showed, the rest calling in sick. The warden had to come back to do a line worker's job. An inmate who had been in segregation for many weeks was thusly able to commit suicide because regular cell checks weren't being made due to the lack of staff. The fabrication of records, common in the industry, was called "pencil whipping." GEO Guards at a Indiana prison were being paid $8/hr. Its CEO was making about $5 million!

At another CCA prison in Florence, Arizona, guards generated their own riots against inmates in 1998 and 2000. A Brazoria county, Texas prison holding Missouri inmates had inmates beaten and set on by attack dogs expressly so that a "training" video could be made. After a few minutes of film were shown on 60 Minutes, the late Missouri governor Carnahan returned them quickly to his state.

Last month it was revealed that two judges in Pennsylvania were extorting a bounty for every juvenile of thousands they sentenced for innocuous offenses, to a total of $2.6 million in bribes. A Cornell for-profit prison in that state was being paid $264 per day for kids who were denied education and other services. In two years of operation there were 15 cases of substantiated sexual and 16 cases of physical assaults against the kids. It had $10/hour guards and its CEO made millions.

After 20 years of barely interrupted Reagan-Bush corporatism, we are returning to an antebellum slave society. The only significant difference between the Pilgrim butcherers, the Arizona or Indiana guards and the Pennsylvania or Texas children is that the latter groups aren't able to go home for months or years.

This industry, just like the slaughterhouses, is a time bomb waiting to explode. That's why we have millions of undocumented workers in this country. Americans find these sweatshop working conditions that fail to pay living wages to be intolerable. Then the immigrants get busted for working and they and their kids find themselves in a hell hole such as CCA's Taylor, TX, T. Don Hutto "family" prison.

Check www.privateci.org for the gruesome facts.

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The good people of Alabama have the right to work. What makes them think they have the right to complain? Slavery ended over a 100 years ago, when will the good people of Alabama stop choosing to be slaves?

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Yes, Pam the Poet, you are right on target. And this author has left out one group of greedy corporate goons who continue to rake in billions, covered in the "2nd amendment". That is the gun manufacturers and their lobbyists. And I note yesterday that thousands of guns, ammunition, killing machines are being smuggled INTO Mexico..who makes a gross profit...well, duh, Smith & Wesson and their ilk.
And in a bio of the Alabama killer, a family member said this poor soul was given his first gun at AGE 11! And if all those innocent people who died had been 'packing heat' to defend themselves, it would have done nothing but cause more deaths. Thank you for pointing out the obvious, yet totally denied and ignored truth about our U.S. society.
And these worldwide rampages with firepower will continue with copycat incidents by the deranged who should NEVER have been given access to all the guns they had in their possession.

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One slave isn't working hard enough, causes a Ruckus, they are pulled out and beaten, or sold off. What happens all the others stand by in silence.Fearful they will be next should they speak out. Same mentality in the work place. Dare to resist and you are gone, or your hours cut.
But how is it this One 'overseer' has so much power over the masses- because the masses refuse to work in unison.Slave Uprising were a real fear of the plantation owners- Hundred slave vs a Few Overseers- it would not only be a slaughter, it would be the end of production. Even if it was just a 'walk out' the 'plantation' would experience serious financial set backs- the Few managers could never cover all the work required to keep the place afloat.
Why might this guy have gone after his own mother..Because as he was being 'flogged' she stood silent. But once she became the target she cried 'Injustice'.There is a certain level of resentment towards those who stood and watched and did nothing, in some ways are just as guilty of the 'beating'.When they are then singled out, they look for some one to champion them and find No one, esp the one they had not stood up for before.Had his mother expected him to see she was being treated unjustly, even though she had not done that for him? Were her Reasons valid, when she had considered his not? Did she convey the thought that She didn't deserve this treatment, but he had?What goes around comes around.
Sooner or later Unfair labor practices will effect all employees. Those who stand up and rebel are not just doing it for themselves but for all the other workers too.Workers who remain silent are not only setting themselves up in the future for the same treatment, they are encouraging the Overlords to go even farther in their methods of abuse.
Welcome to what illegal Mexican Workers live with everyday. Bitch about the pittance pay, hours, work or living conditions- you're gone. "Mexicans are a dime a dozen". Once they get rid of the 'trouble maker' the others are willing to do anything to save their jobs- so hours get longer, living conditions get worse- Mentally beaten into submission.
Epitome of the American Corp mentality Lockeheeds CEO to congress "I Can get 9 Mexicans for the Price of 1 American"-Not just A Goal,but a threat....Take what we throw you, or be out of a job entirely. flip side of that is that it takes 9 Mexicans to do the work of one American (better educated, more 'invested' in the economic health of the Corp, and the country).
Instead of allowing Corps to use illegals as visible Threats against our employement, and as scapegoats, We would be far better off to help bring up these needed menial labors to our standards- making theCorps abid by Fair labor and wage practices regardless of who they hire. Then who do you think they will consider a 'Bigger Bangf for their Buck'?Allowing corps to utilize this shadow workforce, who are unable to speak out against their slave practices, only undercuts US.Level the playing field for Them and see how the corps hiring practices change.No Worker should stand by as another is Unjustly Beaten, because that only means you will be next.In this economy EVERY worker is a 'dime a Dozen', a Cheap disposable commodity. We all stand together and threaten their 'Plantation' and they start respecting the value of those who actually produce.

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what then? Is it possible that the fear of armed revolt is the only thing preventing it from getting worse? The person from Australia wants us to give up our guns, so what, so we can be like Australia? When I thought of escaping this madness Australia was one of the places I thought might be nice until I found out the fascism is more rampant there than in America... as well as in Great Britain. Maybe Americans should keep their guns. In the early days of unionizing in America the corporations and the government addressed worker uprisings with Pinkerton's and the military with instructions that the workers were a "free fire zone". McVeigh didn't need a gun...
When a people are oppressed, and have no recourse through their government, eventually they will find their own recourse, with guns or without. Without guns they simply become victims, with guns they are victims that take a few with them when they go. We look at this as "violence" but we look on the corporate violence of oppression, greed, and the corporate monopoly over wages as something hum-drum and not to be even noticed. The worker struggling to keep a roof over his children, his children starving, poorly clothed, and unable to get an education, ho-hum.
I propose that far more deaths result from corporate violence, and fates worse than death, than will ever result from a few people that suddenly "can't take it anymore". And we all look on this as if the ballistic individual is a quirk, nuts, on some mood-altering drug, and next week some other news story comes along that grabs our attention and we forget last week's story. We in the "flat earth" world are extremely ill, made ill by the greed of the rich, and until the illness (and not the symptoms) are treated we will continue to see the symptoms.
I'm surprised that we don't see much more of this already, and perhaps unfortunately most of the oppressors isolate themselves from the general population in ways that make it impossible for them to become victims of this "lashing out" and thus the only victims are those that are victims themselves.

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I told a friend that I would expect violent, desperate behavior like this to increase in upcoming months. I said that I only hoped the resentment would be channeled toward appropriate targets (major shareholders, CEOs, investment brokers, etc.) and not toward other folks like ourselves.

His response is that we've had all that already, and it didn't work (he always means Russia, a century ago). As if this sort of thing is a kind of fad that we get caught up in.

I let the matter drop. Until it effects people like him personally, there is no crisis happening here. What he chooses to believe is misleading, but what is actually going on is unmistakable regardless of what anyone believes.

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Whereas your basic premise as to why people go balistic is correct, you are totally wrong to place the blame on anything Reagan did! Even if that were correct, where was Clinton? Didn't the Democrats have eight years to change things? Things must have been good.

The problem stems from greed and lack of oversite. Executives continue to be rewarded for lackluster performance because the board chairman is usually the CEO of the organization and pretty much controls what happens in board meetings, i.e. you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. The ordinary shareholder really has no say in excutive compensation and reward systems.

Executives should be held accountable for ensuring the longevity of the company they are charged with managing --- not rewarded when they are thrown out the door for gross mismanagement and running the company into the ground ---- Merrill Lynch for example!

Enough said! It has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan!

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The reason folks went crazy and shot people last month was Rush Limbaugh.

Have progressives found a psychopath yet who didn't reinforce their religion/belief structure?

You're making hay with others suffering, so I'm just asking.

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Certainly people suffer emotional consequences of downsizing, closing, cutbacks. But while one man in Alabama responded by going on a shooting rampage, how many others responded by not going on a shooting rampage? In terms of mental health epidemiology, an economic downturn is followed by an expectable increase in depression, domestic abuse, and similar symptoms. But keeping a list of people you think have persecuted you and executing revenge is in a different category. Killing your mother and her four dogs and creating a pyre of them jumps right over the interface between "feels bad because he's laid off" and "evidences psychotic behavior". The title of this article seems to me on the hysterical side. It might also frighten people into thinking that they're at risk of completely losing control if they're currently in a bad economic situation. Most people facing the many real-world problems that come with loss of employment will still find a way to tighten their resolve and face every day with some kind of courage and grace and plenty of creative problem-solving. I've read that environmental factors give you cancer, or are more likely to give you cancer, if you already have a cancer-causing gene. Think of the matter that way: seeds of madness were in the Alabama man long before the last firing that tipped the balance. At least some of his past job troubles may have had to do with his behaviors and attitudes, and the firings were probably triggers, but not the cause, of his rampage. By the same token, everyone who serves in military combat does not come home insane but some, already at greater risk of falling apart, do.

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I'm not surprised that the Alabama investigators closed their file. They are there to protect the interests of the company not the workers. It appears that the only recourse workers have is to file a law suit. The employers then take actions like voluntary bankruptcy to protect themselves from pay claims. They do nothing about workplace bullying. They do nothing to help workers who are laid off. They don't care about the lives of people who are hurt by their actions. Governments do nothing to protect workers from these employer tactics. Thank you for your article. It was very illuminating and very sad.

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It took years to make these shooters. Look at their histories. With the exception of the occasional person who is really schizophrenic all these people have been contributing members of a society that has punished them for their attempt to earn a living and have some kind of life.

This goes for everyone from the Columbine killers, to the Virgina Tech shooter to the work shootings and even the unitarian church shooting.

No one "just snaps" the build up takes years then one thing triggers it and then all the people who ignored the person's problems say "he just snapped"

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The author attempts to paint a picture wherein extreme cruelty to workers is so common that it accounts for most or all of these murder rampages. This IS NOT the case, there are plenty of honest, decent employers who do their best to provide adequate wages and working conditions. To focus on one chicken slaughtering company and it's criminal owners is really not legitimate in the larger picture.

What the author skims over is that this latest killer shared in common with many other such killers a depressive personality which simmered with revenge fantasies. These fantasies themselves become grandiose in the potential killer's mind.

The killer kid in Germany had quit his psychological counseling not long before he "snapped" - he too was pudgy and tormented by his peers. All of these killers are "outcasts" and they are frequently reminded of that every time they try to succeed or fit in.

It is that cycle: of torment by peers and repeated failed attempts to "be somebody" which is the common (documented!) element here.

This is a mental health issue, a cultural issue. It's not a matter for the too-late police or the gun-confiscating ideologues (like Clinton), it's a (very important) matter to be looked at by mental health experts and cultural anthropologists. Germany has had much stricter gun laws since their previous mass-shooting seven years ago: it did no good. Neither did virtual gun confiscation prevent the Kindergarten Massacre in Scotland a few years ago. We had 30 years of increasing restrictions of guns at the state and federal levels: yet the shootings continue unabated.

The "bad companies" surely contribute in some cases, and we can say that "work place shootings" are obviously due to "some kind" of bad management. Often as not, companies try to deal with employees en mass and impersonally. An employee who trips over misplaced objects and breaks their arm is treated like a slacker and would-be extortionist. So, yes, company management needs to be "fixed" - in many but not all cases. And yes - Reagan brought us Yuppie arrogance which led to further abuses down the line. But that's only part of the story. It's not the whole, "simple" answer.

Before and after: Before JFK's assassination, there'd been about 100 years without political assassinations. Before Charles Whitman went on a killing spree from "the Texas Tower" - there'd been decades without such a mass slaughter. It was the early - mid Sixties that brought us the culture of killing fellow citizens and political leaders. Such killings meant a "new opportunity" to disaffected and abused people.

Something changed. I believe it may well have been the mass culture and mass media that are most responsible. And I believe that population pressure is also responsible. When all we can do is "process" millions of people through K-12 and the rest of one's life: we devalue individual humans in so many ways. When millions are treated as "demographics" or "eyes" or even "movements" - we all lose our individual identity. It becomes harder and harder to be "recognized" or even "seen." No one can question this fact: we have lost respect for each other because we've experienced loss of respect as individuals. We are losing our freedom: to be ourselves.

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As usual, when people snap, they tend to kill those close to them as well as themselves. If this guy had killed the CEOs instead, maybe big business would have second thoughts before screwing over their workers.

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I think it is about time that some one has written a true example of what is occurring in many places in this country. You simply cannot take away all legitimate avenues for addressing issues for the worker or citizen and then expect all to be happy, happy, happy. I have always wondered why more attacks like this do not happen, not only at the workplace but at government too. Is it because the American workers and taxpayers have been neutered so effectively that they can only be left with a sense of helplessness, while the masters of the universe get richer and more powerful. I just hope if someone is going to take this drastic measure that they do not harm the innocents which struggle just like them to survive with the cards stacked against them from birth. It is a symptom of our times when someone has to kill their own in order to kill others that have caused the harm, just to spare them from the reprisals for his actions.

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I am by no means disagreeing with the author's social commentary! It was outstanding. But it is a fact that SSRI antidepressants have been implicated in many of these shooting cases. There should be mandatory SSRI checks to see if they were involved. And there should be mandatory disclosure if that is the case. The public has a right to know the risks.
The use of these depressants does not mean social factors were not also a part. From what I understand, they just take away a person's inhibitions so they do what they normally would never do. Social factors may have taken them to the point of so much stress in the first place.

http://www.ssristories.com/index.php

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All of this is straight out of Repub party Reaganonomics.

They, and their Religious Right, claim to be the party of Pro-life and Family Values. St. Reagan and the Repubs have been attacking working parents and their families, nonstop. And despite this economic mess that they caused by Reagans no regulation/de-regulation of every business and under every circumstance they still are not willing to stop their attack on anything which is not a give away of everything to the business world.

Of course Reagan was not very bright, he got all of his economic ideas from Milton Friedman and The Chicago School of Economics. Friedman was a very intelligent man and seminal economist, but he saw business as being an entity that can do no wrong under any circumstance.

BTW, Friedman economics were used by Pinochet in Chile(the Chicago Boys) and we all know how well that turned out. Hundreds of thousands, possibly even a few million died.

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Dont be moronic. It is guns, pure and simple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Guns and half-wits are a toxic mixture. To get a better idea of what I mean, read or re-read Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders on the Rue Morgue".

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The rules of the global economy and corporate power in this country need a working class ass kicking and a traitors justice. I have a gut feeling that this nation will go bankrupt and end up balkanized before the working class figures that one out.

We need a strong brutal nationalist movement in this country to rebuild our domestic industrial base and deal with the traitors and the thieves that sold out this country for a buck. We will not be able to fix this corrupt circus without blood on our hands.

I have done my share of homicide investigations. Here is how it went down. The mother and son made a suicide pack. After he killed his mom he went into the justice mode, then took his own life.

Aim for the head, empty a clip and reload is the only viable solution to this corrupt circus that we live in. America will learn that the hard way.

I wrote this little piece almost ten years ago.

We outnumber the rich (Corporate dogs) ten thousand to one, the party is over, we still have our guns. The rich folks got greedy so we took your heads. You were to condescending, you ended up dead.

No justice, no peace so we ended your wars. We pulled out our guns and we wasted your whores.
So here is my lesson to the ruling class and your bitches. We will fest on your carcasses and rebuild with your riches.

Jay Lindberg
jaylindberg@hotmail.com

Author of "Drug War Economics: The Machine behind the Madness.". If you send me your email address I will send you a copy of it as an email attachment for free. After you read a little bit of it, you will realize that I am right.

PS. I already have a little blood on my hands.

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whatever you do or say to another you are doing or saying it to yourself..If you have self respect none of this kind of activity is possible...It is completely incongruent. Blaming it on the boss or any external source is selfish and denying a universal truth...

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Those words are seared in my memory. They were spoken by a women old enough to retire at a carpet mill in some Southern state during a union certification dispute.

That's all I clearly remember, those two sentences and, I saw the woman on one of the major network evening newscasts in the Nineteen Eighties. It was a year or two after President Ronald Reagan had fired the air traffic controllers and it was open season on union members and union organizers.

I'm sure that old woman got her wish, no union representation and hard work at slave-wage levels to her grave or layoff whenever the company outsourced her job to China.

In the topsy-turvy world of American economics, the mainstream media, M$M, and right wing radio, job losses, outsourcing and the decline of the middle class are laid at the feet of organized labor, since Reagan to the present. At no time has the M$M laid blame on the real villains of this set piece, every sonuvabitch who ever graduated form a business college with a master's of business administration degree, MBA.

After all it is the MBA-class, especially those who have floated to the top of the business toilet to become CEOs of America's major manufacturing and financial industries, who have had the ultimate say in downsizing, outsourcing and man hours per worker.

It is the MBA-class who defines what constitutes worker productivity and, in the years since Reagan, the number of hands to do any given task has shrunk while the hours worked by an individual goes up. The MBA mentality permeates our culture to such an extent that many young people think working less than sixty hours a week is laziness! Of course, if one is to keep up a sixty to eighty hour per week work schedule, perhaps working two, three jobs, one may need artificial stimulants.

Which leads me back to Michael McLendon.

When I heard this story on the TV news I thought, "This guy was tweaking."

While there is no evidence that Mr. McLendon was an methamphetamine abuser in any televised or printed reports, aggressive behavior, paranoia and depression are often cited as symptoms of amphetamine abuse. It is known that Mr. McLendon fancied himself as something of a "survivalist," owning a couple of legal "black" rifles, and held grudges against co-workers and family members for trivial slights.

Now while amphetamines have been around for many, many years there has been a marked increase in their use since the Nineteen Eighties worldwide. I speculate, merely as a thought experiment, that increased amphetamine abuse in the United States goes hand in hand with MBA/management pressure on non-unionized labor to work longer and longer hours. It would be interesting if an academic study can back up my supposition.

And this leads me back to the deliberate legal weakening of organized labor. Today, even in union shops, management deliberately breaks contracts in order to "increase worker productivity," such as forced, mandatory overtime. Union officials can only react after the fact to ameliorate the worst abuses.

The current MBA-style of labor relations and management is leading to cultural collapse. If we wish to continue living in a civil society the dehumanization, degradation and overwork of labor must end!

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What's the problem here? It's not like the dead people were Vice Presidents or anyone else important. We were planning on downsizing anyway.

- Joe CEO

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I may have voted twice for Raygun but I had the courage to vote 3rd party starting in 1988 as neither the Democrats nor Republicans had any intention of ending Raygunomics and to this day, neither do. Dubya's tax cut packages and Obama's similar prove just that. Out of control shooting is no surprise. This Alabaman feels totally ashamed of the politics in the state ruining the otherwise bright and sunny weather this state has to offer. :(

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Everyone should print out a copy of this story and send it to their Senators and Congressmen/women! Let them know that WE know what is going on. I will bet a slew of these filtering into the mailboxes and fax machines of those who rely on corporate contributions to make laws against We the People might take notice? Just sayin...

Sushi
"Crime doesn't pay. Does that mean my job is a crime?"

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that McLendon was at one time under a psychiatrist's care for depression, and did receive some kind of police training.

Prozac anyone? Read Dr. Rebecca Carly's thoughts concerning pharma drugs and vaccinations.

Wake up America!
Turn off ABCNNBCBS and Fix News.

infowars.com
whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.drcarley.com/

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Excellent article. Corporations enjoy privileges such as tax breaks and bailouts but have proven they don't deserve them. They do not give 2 shits about the health of this country and the health of their employees. As a consequence of their actions, they deserve to be heavily regulated...they brought this on themselves.
I live in New England and have seen this kind of behavior at other corporations...a retail pharmacy company and a computer-software company come to mind. Outsourcing or laying off employees and forcing others to work more hours. Corporations that do this should be punished. It's time to take back our power.

However, I have NO sympathy for the Pilgrim's Pride employees that tortured those poor chickens. That is felony animal abuse and they should be behind bars as much as McLendon if he had lived. If your employer is screwing you, CONTACT A UNION REP AND FIGHT LIKE HELL TO GET A UNION IN YOUR COMPANY...Don't take your frustration out on helpless animals. These people are sick shits and I would not want them walking the streets of my town.
And if you fear that bringing in a union will get you fired...well, understand your job is not safe anyway and you WILL be fired to satisfy the greed of your employer-oppressor. At least get fired trying to do the right thing rather than just sitting there waiting to get fired when your employer decides you're disposable.

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Ronald Reagan left ca in a terrible deficet just the way he broke unions, and spent money we did not have on illegal wars and lied about it and left America with a hugh debt. He began deregulation and began lack of reasonable oversight. We are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the turn of the century 1890 to 1929 and suffer the concequences. The author of the original article has a good handle on the facts. Killing is wrong. Many peoples hard have grown cold both with greed and being the victims of greed.

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. . . as an action without a motive. The narrative of the "lone psychopath" who acts for no reason is simply an obvious way to cover up the real motivation. It's interesting that although McLendon's "hit list" contained the names of three of his workplaces, as soon as this fact was discovered, the official spokespersons emphasized that the killings were "not work related." Their zealous attempts to quash such speculation is evidence enough that work issues were indeed at least a large part of his motivation. And how could they not be? The situation described in the article is indeed not only common but usual. We're surrounded by modern-day vampires. Is it so difficult to imagine that some people occasionally take out their wooden stakes?

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America is the only country outside third world countries ( that can't afford it ) that let their citizens die because they have no money to pay for medical treatment.
They have been feed a boat load of bullshit about socialism and they think they are patriotic by condemning it.
The COE's of this slave nation are laughing all the way to the bank as the sheep are led to the slaughter.
God bless America, the home of the free and the barave. My ass.!!

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I worked with Mike, he was a great guy-- he was tortured, teased constantly at Kelley Foods. Alabama Bureau of Investigations spoke to the company president--woo hoo-- we see him once a year. Mike was the kind of guy who didn't know how 2 talk back, he was bullied EVERYDAY DAY after DAY. A person can only take so much. He was shown no mercy at work, there is a reason 4 this massacre

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Just wait until we begin villifying the unemployed -- as what happened during the Great Depression.

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Those that can, do, those that can't become sadistic managers. Who then go on to be sociopath ceo's. Too bad the rich are not on massive amounts of antipsychotic drugs, they could be killing each other while the rest of us could be spectators and cheer them on. Pass the popcorn.

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The thing about America that leads to so many tragic scenarios is that we have lost our since of what it means to live, to really live outside the workplace. Everything is tied to our jobs - our self esteem is tied up in working the hardest or the longest hours. We take the least vacation in the western world. Our health care is tied to our jobs and indeed even our spouses and childrens health care is tied to our job. Our ability to pay for transportation is tied to our jobs. In many other countries if use your job, you might not be able to afford a car but there is at least public transport, not so here. We parse every decision in our country down to "Who pays for it?" And foget that we are all in this together. It is a sad and lonely existence that many Americans lead. No wonder this happens all too often.

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As an ex-pat in Malaysia, I have been wondering where in the hell this story was. After the immediate news flurry on the usual MSN and Yahoo feeds, I didn't see anything about the killing. NPR and CNN remained uninterested in the AL or Germany incidents as far as when I was tuned in. I got all the details when some guy killed his elderly grandfather and a tenant and his brother in some kind of property/money/emotional dispute, but then a huge killing spree got virtually no coverage. While I think it's important not to become guilty of glamorizing these violent actions, I think covering them up or not giving the victims left behind a fair due of collective sympathy is irresponsible humanity.

As to the likelihood that the chicken company caused a hush on the case, well that makes sense. The violence at the chicken place, the bullying, mistreatment of workers, etc. would surely contribute to a fragile state of mental health.

The problem I have with the article is of course the fact that guns are in no way implicated as a problem, but also that you create sympathy for the shooter while ignoring the victims. Especially his mother and the dogs. He executed them. It doesn't matter if he did it with some degree of respect and care. In fact, that kind of makes it worse. He also shot a baby. Did you hear that? He shot a baby. Why not do a story on that poor deputy? Indeed, why is there still no story for the victims? I think the shooter's story is important to understand. I was bullied really badly as a child and threatened and ostracized to the point that I certainly had revenge fantasies, and the world needs to wake up to the fact that when you throw rocks at a dog that is backed into a corner it might very well maul you. But when the dog doesn't maul the rock thrower but instead gets some lesser target nearby then instead of a heroic act we have a tragedy. That's why Fight Club is about a revolution that never happens because for whatever reason even those psychopathic killers or people who snap or whatever you want to call them, even they do not go for the right jugular because it is too big, too complex, because it is itself a complex. An instituted institution of injustice that allows things like the reganomics you finger to occur, allows bullies to bully, holds victims responsible.

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Thanks for making the important link between supply side wealth transfer to the big corporate plutocracy since Reagan and workplace violence. Excellent post. Should be factored into the discussion WIDELY, but the MSM is part of the corporate plutocracy itself - an old truism.

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This is perhaps the best article I've ever read on AlterNet, easilt the best by an AlterNet author. Well researched, provocative, timely and thought-provoking. Thanks!

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just another drug crazed cop with a hit list so what else is new murdering bastards

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Pam from some other country suggests that guns are the problem. I agree that guns are a problem for these goddamn corporate assholes who get away with ruining the lives of millions of Americans. Let's do what Pam the poet says and ban guns before someone gets the idea of shooting the cock-suckers who are responsible for ruining the lives of so many people. That way everyone from judges to police to top level corporate decision makers won't have to fear such consequences to their fucked up way of doing their jobs.

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I am really saddened that so many believe that an external force can have such an effect on a person..Its all a state of mind.. most of it is illusion.

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That's the Democrat/NAFTA agenda......so we don't have to deal with this stuff.

HERE'S WHAT YOU'RE IN FOR

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...these a$$holes with guns do not know who REALLY are responsible for their plight, and they get angry with the wrong people.

If they channeled their anger toward the corporate whores: the execs., congress, etc., then you might see real change.

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