Michael Moore grew up in Michigan, not far from Oxford, the site of the most recent school shootings. He writes in this post about what happened there, and he includes the full text of the fan letter that Ethan Crumbley sent to President Trump when he was elected. Reading it provides some insight into the climate in which Ethan was raised.
He begins:
In a nation born and built on violence, where there are now more guns in homes than there are people, a parent buys the son a gun as a gift. A Sig Sauer 9mm.
But the son is disturbed. Nonetheless, she takes him to the gun range. She wants him to be a good shot. She wants to spend time with him. She loves these mom-and-son days shooting guns.
Then he wakes up one December morning, walks into his mother’s bedroom and blows her head off. He has four of her guns including the Sig Sauer 9mm she gave him as a gift.
That did not happen this past week in Oxford, Michigan (about 19 miles as the crow flies from where I went to high school). It’s what took place on December 14, 2012, when the 20-year-old Adam Lanza took those guns his mother gave him to use when they went to the gun range together in Newtown, Connecticut — and after he killed her, he took them to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he murdered 20 first-graders and 6 teachers and staff before he killed himself. The only gun he didn’t use in this bloody massacre was the Sig Sauer 9mm.
Open the link to read what Mrs. Crumbley wrote to Trump. She’s thrilled to have someone in the White House who supports her rights as a gun owner. But that’s not all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There is a mental health problem is this country, alright.
And the blame for the insane is the stench on the bench.
More pronounced now that “the Mensch on the Bench” (RBG) passed away. She was ALWAYS a voice of reason and sanity.
I used to believe that … but no more. The turning point for me came this year on September 23 when I heard Justice Breyer’s interview on PBS. I realize that even the so-called liberals on the Court are oblivious to reality and they might as well be wearing the powered wigs and satins of Ancien Regime aristocrats.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/justice-breyer-on-procedural-decision-behind-texas-abortion-law-politics-on-the-bench
good summation: oblivious. It has been hard to watch politics closely the past couple of decades due to an interest in school issues, and find out how many times those in “power” show through action and words about all social issues that they are disconnected and therefore oblivious
Justice Breyer is 83 yrs old. He grew up and was influenced and educated in a very different time/world. You are correct that he seems removed from reality, but I think Justice Breyer doesn’t realize that the world has changed dramatically over the past few years with the rise of social media. He has not lived in “the real world” among the people who pay his salary (tax payers) for several decades….he doesn’t get it anymore. He has reached his expiration date/shelf life. I DO think he is a Liberal, but from a prior era. I don’t fault him for being out of touch. RBG lived with/was educated with change, worked for change and she made “change” happen as SCOTUS. Comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges.
Check$ and Ballance$
“Check$ and Balance$
Really work”
Said the Valance$
On the Court
“Freedom of speech
Shall not be infringed
Citizen$ reach
Shall not be impinged”
The People’$ Court
United we $tand
Divided we fall
The Citizen$ Band
Brings Ju$tu$ to all
Unfortunately, guns in America have an almost mythological status. They helped us rid ourselves of the British, and they helped us complete our “manifest destiny” by eradicating native populations. Weapons are even baked into the fabric of our Constitution. Along with this narrative is the notion that guns will help young boys “grow into real men.”
Any parent with a child that exhibits angry, anti-social behavior should not head to the gun range. Instead, a parent that really wants to help a troubled young person should start seeking out the services of a competent therapist.
And then of course, there are the thousands of nukes that our mothers gave us to shoot on mother son shooting day at the Nevada nuclear shooting range — which, unfortunately has been closed for many years because of the anti-gun nuts.
The right to bear nuclear arms is part of the second amendment: Mutual Assured Suicide, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear nuclear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Common Core is destroying children and families.
Agreed. Along with the anti-human cyber instruction that often accompanies the standardized Common Core. Machine learning equals disaffected youth, IMO.
I tend to agree. And I’m hoping to see lively discussion on that here. Eager for it.
What is the fallout of Common Core?
Are you sure it isn’t CRT?
I don’t like Common Core, but really? Making it the scapegoat for violence? What an insult to all the kids who have been learning with a Common Core curriculum whose parents didn’t buy them an automatic handgun and have not gone out and killed a bunch of kids.
The young murderer who killed 20 6 year olds 9 years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School was already 18 years old when the Common Core standards were adopted.
The commonality isn’t “Common Core” but GUNS and parents who buy guns for their kids and have lots of guns in their homes.
GUNS are destroying children and families.
but if it gives them fuel for excuses, we need to look at why
but if they use that as a reason, we need to understand why it’s an easy target of an excuse (no pun intended)
Involved Mom– I think Common Core in the context of Mrs Crumbley’s letter can be seen as [yet another] govt policy that works against her. In one sense you could substitute any curriculum causing her son to struggle. But she’s aware that it’s imposed by govt, and sees the stds + aligned exams ‘accountability system’ as making it impossible for school to adapt difficulty level or provide him 1-on-1 extra help. [Not unreasonable assumptions.]
Agree Bethree. It’s not the common core per se. But the dehumanization of education (which the common core is part of) is adding to a perfect storm of what youth and their parents are facing in this country.
That letter is haunting and so very sad.
Let’s all remember that this model mom got that way because she was educated in schools long before Common Core curriculum existed.
I don’t understand why anyone would try to legitimize anything that Crumbley wrote in the letter. If you are going to find reasons to scapegoat Common Core because the mother who bought her child an automatic handgun as a present, took him to practice with it, and blatantly lied to school officials who called her in for an emergency meeting when they found a concerning drawing of a shooting was angry about Common Core, why couldn’t anyone do the same with all the other scapegoats that Crumbley mentioned:
“My parents teach at a school where the kids come from illegal immigrant parents. Most of their parents are locked up. They don’t care about learning and threaten to kill my mom for caring about their grades. Do you realize Mr. Trump that they get free tutors, free tablets from our Government so they can succeed? Why cant my son get those things, do we as hard working Americans not deserve that too?
My husband suffered a stroke and a broken back and we were with just my income. Do you know how hard it is to support a family on only $40,000 a year? I couldn’t qualify for State Aid. I made to much.
Mr. Trump, this is why I voted for you.”
I don’t like Common Core. So what? I didn’t like new math and I sure didn’t like the way I was taught in my K-12 in the 1970s.
So what?
It doesn’t give me license to buy my kid a handgun and lie to the school.
If anything, the fact that someone like that is ranting against Common Core should make all of us more skeptical about its detractors and not agreeing with them.
Bad parenting isn’t caused by Common Core. Trump voters are largely older white folks who were taught long before Common Core.
The young people who have showed up their elders in seeing through Trump in far larger numbers are the ones who learned under Common Core.
Again, I don’t like Common Core, but there is a far better arguyment for Cp,mon Core turning out GREAT kids when you compare our coiuntries 18 – 20 year olds to the pre-Common Core older age groups that largely voted for Trump.
But I would never try to blame the fact that the older pro-generation did NOT get Common Core for their support for Trump.
And it is that older generation whose actions have deeply affected young people — not the fact that their schools had a Common Core curriculum.
Many things can be true at the same time.
Just because she may not be a model parent and you may have done something differently….. does not mean you cannot see the suffering and humanity and sad reality in that letter.
Just because that letter makes me sad – does not mean I blame the schools. I don’t.
Clearly guns and gun culture are the biggest problem here.
But there are also other issues. And dehumanizing education (common core standards and the endless assessment and numbers game that go along with it) ….loading classes, overworking teachers and not having supports in place for struggling parents to equip them with tools is also part of the struggle.
One does not negate the other.
The problem is that the Democratic side of the political industrial complex doesn’t seem to understand what Michael Moore its talking about. The geriatric leadership in Washington talks about these issues that exacerbate the violence we continue to experience through mass shootings, urban violence, and growing white nationalist extremism, but never seems willing to fight hard enough to make needed economic and social change, much less understand the need for change. The scariest part of this may be that the Republican Party understands this all too well and takes the traditional autocratic short cut to power by stoking the aggrieved, perpetuating an ignorance that history tells us will explode violently. Most of the gun obsession in America is not driven by the purity of the 2nd amendment, but fear. A fear driven all too willingly by a handful of grifters who profit from this division and derision that is leading us to mass violence. According to a 2020 American University Radio report, it is estimated that 40% of Americans own 393 million guns in this country of 330 million people. 67% of that 40% say they own guns for protection. The number of gun owners is growing and all too willing to point their weapon at the other. In other words, we are a country that fears one another with a Republican Party that is all too willing to exploit that fear for power. Meanwhile, Democrats fight over the Build Back Better plan which is targeted to people like this gunman’s parents because it just might raise the deficit of the wealthiest country in the history of the world. No gun laws will matter if we don’t reduce the temperature raised by fear mongering. Jon Stewart had an excellent interview with head of the department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire arms that addressed the profound pandemic of domestic violence Americans deal with daily and how the gun culture has exacerbated the death rate that comes from this crisis. Again and again, Michael Moore points out the profound pain felt by every day Americans that has resulted from an economy that is more and more about exploitation antithesis to community. Reason has left the building.
We have ceded the discussion on gun rights to the loony bin. At no time in our history had there ever been a constitutional right for an individual to own a fire arm. No less to own a weapon that could fire dozens of rounds in seconds. Previous to 2008 no court had ruled so. There were rulings that interpreted the fugitive slave/ slave rebellion amendment to mean that the Federal Government could not limit an individuals right. But that states could and did have that power. Especially when those ex slaves sought weapons of their own. Something that survived Jim Crow . All it took was Huey Newton to show up with assault rifles at the California legislature and California banned the open carry of loaded fire arms. The Federal Government soon got into the act as well.
Clearly the mother is unhinged as are most Trumpanzees (ask me if I care). The blog post pretty much touched on all the grievances. Including Common Core which I doubt she actually had a clue about other than it was synonymous with Obama. I am not making a defense of CC but why one comes to a conclusion counts.
The blog post clearly was troubling . Yet there was nothing in it that would cause her to fail a background check. But it provides hints as to why her son would find no problem snuffing out the life of others. Isn’t that what we do when we think the whole world is taking advantage of us??????
Perhaps the SCOTUS might rethink their decisions if their security detail was removed.
Is this one of those Buddhist koans?
How can SCOTUS re-think if they can’t think to begin with?
It took Republicans a few months to pass laws in many states making the teaching of CRT illegal.
Republicans could have passed laws restricting the teaching of Common Core many years ago.
These days, the blame would be on CRT.
40 years of trickle down has created a very broken system. Millions of people are on the verge of desperation. I read that mother’s letter and I can see it in her.
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Charlie Chaplin, Jr.
English comic actor
This populist loves Michael Moore and Bernie too. I am all for taxing the crap out of the rich to redistribute income to the working class.
But enough of the delusion about the battered working class being driven to right wing Nationalism.
How is her husband paying child support with a stroke and a broken back ?
She earns 41k a year .
At $15 an hour a worker would earn 30k a year. My bet the poor ‘victim’ here, Jennifer would ask why an “unskilled” worker deserves more than the minimum wage of $7.75.
. “I see jobs coming back, people having to (work) for their handouts, money going to who really deserve it…”
Who would that be that deserves it ? I don’t see desperation I see delusion ,grievance and hate. I doubt they were scrounging for their next meal
In fact Crumbley listed his occupation as software engineer and I suspect his ex knows a bit about their “despair”. Sarcasm noted.
“Cobb said while the Crumbleys were giving Ethan whatever Ethan wanted, it was a hopeless struggle to get James to pay $67 a week in child support when he was earning a six-figure income.”
Oops I bet that is verifiable from court records.
Thanks Joel re; husband’s career/ salary. An important piece of the puzzle I missed. Assumed when she spoke of his stroke & broken back that he was paying child support out of SSDI. Heh, heh. Puts a different light on things entirely. It’s like she’s appointed herself as spokesman for the righteously aggrieved, but her own springs from different wells. I’ve been totting up the sources of her resentment, picturing her drawing on it as she pepper-sprays bullets at shooting-range targets. Expect the face of her ex(?) is mentally spread across some of them.
OK. . .so six years ago when I first found this blog there was a lot of talk on what was going wrong with public schools.
May we examine this comment the mom made in her letter?
—-You see Mr. Trump, I need you to stop common core. My son struggles daily, and his teachers tell me they hate teaching it but the HAVE to. Their pay depends on these stupid fucking test scores. I have to pay for a Tutor, why? Because I can’t figure out 4th grade math. I used to be good at math. I can’t afford a Tutor, in fact I sacrifice car insurance to make sure my son gets a good education and hopefully succeeds in life. ———
OK. I’ll bite. Here, what’s wrong with the Common Core in English:
And here:
And the testing based on it:
I strongly recommend Bob’s blog posts referenced here, Involved Mom. I keep links to them in my “hall of fame” page of articles I refer to regularly. He is that rare bird who actually cites specific standards and explains the problems. So much of what you read on the subject is just broad-brush criticism (or praise) that is meaningless without such context.
thank you both (and those above who addressed my questions)
“In a nation born and built on violence”
That true statement is based on facts.
Research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” reveals that the United States has been at war for about 225 of the 243 years since its inception in 1776. —Jan 9, 2020
1st place goes to the United States spends almost $800 billion annually.
2nd place china spends about $250 billion annually.
3rd place goes to India spending less than $73 billion annually.
1st place goes to the United States selling more than $10 billion in weapons annually.
2nd place goes to Russia selling less than $6.5 billion annually.
3rd place goes to France selling less than $2 billion annually.
I think the next two facts are interesting enough to mention:
The US also has the biggest prison population in the world. A distant second is China.
Then there is the global industry that produces pornography. The US is in 1st place again producing almost 25% of the world’s pornography. The UK is in a distance 2nd place producing less than 6%.
And Traitor Trump lied during the presidential debates in 2015 when he said the US doesn’t make anything anymore.
Did you know that “Trump Hotels Buck Industry Trend, (and) Continue To Offer Guests Porn?” This news story was dated November 2016.
“As much of the U.S. hotel industry has moved away from offering adult films to guests, one notable chain has resisted the change.
“Most Trump hotels in the United States continue to make adult films available in their rooms as an on-demand amenity. Of the eight U.S.-based Trump hotels, six offer the service to clients, making the chain a holdout in an industry that has increasingly taken steps away from profiting from pornography.” …
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-hotels-porn_n_581e2a45e4b0e80b02ca69e6
Damn the English
Built on vowelence
E’s and I’s
O- and u-ulence
A’s and y’s
We keep having this conversation. And the school shootings keep happening. And part of the reason is that the people who despise the epidemic of guns in our country continue to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Let’s be clear about this: we are not going to get sane gun laws in the United States, and we are not going to get a major reduction in the number and availability of guns.
And we cannot expect that we are going to get different results by continuing to do the same things.
So, here’s an ACTUAL solution–one that could ACTUALLY happen: Create a TSA-style force operating at EVERY school, nationwide, to do bag checks at school doors, and install metal detectors at those doors. We do this at courthouses. We do this at airports. We don’t respond to the fact that we do by saying, “Well, it’s unnecessary at my airport or my courthouse, where things like this just don’t occur,” and we don’t respond by saying, “What? You want people to think that they live in a police state?” Or any of the other incredibly stupid things that people say about this proposal.
People seem to be a lot more comfortable with wailing and gnashing their teeth after each school shooting than they are with actually doing something doable to prevent them.
“Nothing can be done about school violence” says only country where this is a routine occurrence.
Of course, we can (and some of us regularly do) expect that we will get different results by doing the same thing.
We can also expect that the sun will burn out tomorrow.
But that does not mean it will happen, of course.
I find it interesting that crowded inner city schools with limited resources have not been targeted with school shootings. Many of these schools have metal detectors, backpacks are searched, and police are present in hallways. To expand on Bob Shepherd,s idea, why isn’t this being done in our suburban and ruler schools to protect all our children?
What a letter from the mother to Trump. It’s actually a plea for help.
You see Mr. Trump, I need you to stop common core. My son struggles daily, and his teachers tell me they hate teaching it but the HAVE to. Their pay depends on these stupid fucking test scores. I have to pay for a Tutor, why? Because I can’t figure out 4th grade math. I used to be good at math. I can’t afford a Tutor, in fact I sacrifice car insurance to make sure my son gets a good education and hopefully succeeds in life.
I have to pay for a Tutor, why? Because I can’t figure out 4th grade math. I used to be good at math. ”
She can thank Jason Zimba for that.
He thought it would be a good idea to teach fourth graders about matrices — and, as a mathematical physicist himself, probably thinks it’s a good idea to teach them about quantum field theory as well.
Hell, why not teach fourth graders about non-commuting operators while they are at it?
Otherwise they won’t get a job when they grow up, because all future jobs will require this essential knowledge.
Non-commuting operators for the future’s commuters. Because in the future everybody will commute long distances to work except CEOs who will their palace right next to the headquarters and the bunker where they will escape from the possible uprising of the commuters.
Billionaire CEOs against the billions of commuters. Intimate knowledge of non-commuting operators may be the secret weapon that will decide who’ll win.
I hope I’ll live long enough to see the movie about this war. The Lord of the Commuters. It will be epic. There sure will be sequels.
Such pointless bemoaning over the symptoms …
Other countries have disturbed juveniles and bad parents …
We’re the only country that empowers them to become mass murderers on a massive scale …
Keep Your Eyes On The Cause!
The Blame for the Insane is the Stench on the Bench!
Other countries keep guns out of civilians’ hands and take care of mental patients. The cry for help of the kid just right before the shooting is heartbreaking.
“My life is useless.
The world is dead.
The thoughts won’t stop.
Help me.”
I immediately thought about that after first reading the note. How could the school counselors (social workers, psychologists–whomever Crumbly saw) have missed that? Had they not been given the note? So many missed chances to have prevented this.
On another note: am sad that the teacher (s) or teacher is/are being sued, along with the administration & the counselors (or, again, whomever). Teacher(s) did the right thing, notifying the administration, which totally dropped the ball. I once was looking for a student’s glasses, (I had the parent’s & principal’s permission) I felt something that could have been a gun. I went immediately to the principal, he removed the backpack in the office, took out a B-B gun, went to the student’s classroom, bringing him to the office, called the mom to school, got the social worker (who the boy was already seeing, & he was a sped. student) & the school police liaison & immediately took care of the situation.
“notifying the administration, which totally dropped the ball.”
I don’t think people realize that they are pushing right wing anti-gun control propaganda.
For the record, the administration did NOT “totally dropped the ball”. They did the opposite.
A teacher did not feel a weapon. The teacher found a very concerning letter and drawing by a child who had no previous history, no social worker the student was already seeing. The teacher correctly took the student to an administrator immediately.
Did that administrator “drop the ball”? Nope. The administrator immediately called both parents and demanded they immediately come to school for a meeting, keeping the student in her office until the parents showed up. That is not dropping the ball. That is quite a strong immediate reaction for a drawing and note.
Furthermore, when the parents did show up, they presented a completely plausible explanation. That guidance counselor spent time asking both the student and the parents questions, and they stuck to their story about the drawing not being anything violent. And instead of “dropping the ball” after that, the administrator still required the parents to be required to have the student in counseling withing 48 hours.
Furthermore, that school administrator wanted the parents to take the student home, and the parents blatantly refused. The guidance counselor made a perfectly reasonable judgement call about a student with no previous history whose parents had just been there completely reassuring the administrator about their son, and decided it was better not to send him home to an empty house.
Could the administrator have called the police to arrest the student? Sure, with 20/20 hindsight, but the idea that the police would have immediately acted to arrest a white middle class student who had no record of trouble whose parents had just been in the school explaining that the child was working on a video game is a nice fantasy pushed by the pro-gun sheriff who wants to blame everyone but the easy access to guns in this country. The very sheriff who was so certain of those white parents’ basic honesty that even after he knew that they had lied, the sheriff trusted them so much that he couldn’t be bothered keeping an eye on their whereabouts. The fantasy that the sheriff would have arrested this kid whose white middle class parents had just vouched for him simply because of a drawing is highly unlikely.
The school didn’t “drop the ball”. They acted quite aggressively. It wasn’t aggressive enough, but if the parents had been even the least bit honest when the school aggressively called them in to find out if there was any reason at all to act even more aggressively than they already had, the school’s reaction would have been a model reaction.
Kid who has never been in trouble before does violent drawing and letter asking for help. School removes him from class and keeps him in the administrator’s office with parents required to drop everything and immediately come into the school for a consultation.
It ended badly. But the narrative that the school “dropped the ball” suggests an ignoring of a threat. The school aggressively responded to a drawing and letter. It wasn’t a kid who was already seeing a social worker with a bb gun. It was a kid who had no history making a drawing and asking for help. And the school did immediately get him help. It wasn’t enough because what the school didn’t realize is that the kid didn’t immediately need help, he immediately needed the police to be called.
Any principal, I once among them, worries about this scenario. The tools to deal with a troubled student are far from perfect. When you have parents who refuse to acknowledge that their child is troubled or they have an unhealthy fetish for guns, any school would be facing a powder keg. Our communities, even the most privileged, are in tatters. Our focus in the school house, and the work world, has become so outcome centric that we miss the human connection required for healthy development and living. Lawsuits in this context put everyone on the defensive and blind us from the consequences of societal negligence.
We are only country that actually puts the mental patients in charge.
Half the Congress and more than half the Supreme Court is certifiably insane and most of the other half acts like they aren’t .
We need to lift our eyes from the killing fields in our schools, and malls, and theaters, and communities at large and place the blame squarely where it belongs.
If the Supreme Court cannot be indicted on their own game board then it needs to be charged in the court of public opinion with an outcry so load and persistent that a President with the power to so will have no peace until some semblance of sanity is returned that that Diseased Body.
ed: to that Diseased Body
ed: power to do so