The other way to get attention is to mewl about being "triggered" -- psychologically debilitated by some word or picture.

I will never stop pointing this out, but triggers are identified in PTSD patients only. These special snowflakes are not "triggered"; they are annoyed by something.

Actually, that's not right either. They aren't "triggered"; they see an opportunity to bully someone else by feigning annoyance.

Medically-diagnosed (as opposed to self-diagnosed) PTSD patients (the only individuals who have the right to claim to be triggered by anything), do not use triggers as a means to control other people -- "Oh, professor! You have to take this out of your curriculum because it triggers me." They use triggers to identify potential stressors and to deploy coping skills to prevent an influx of anxiety and negative feelings/symptoms associated with the traumatic event.

In other words, triggers aren't of controlling other people; they're identified in PTSD patients to help them better control themselves.

These trigger-tyrants (or does "trigger-fascists" sound better?) need to be shamed and ridiculed at every opportunity. They are co-opting medical terminology that is intended to help people who need it, and using it a control mechanism. There are no words to describe just how disgusting that is. It's insulting to war vets and others who have endured real trauma in their lives.

And one more point:

...Ochiagha continues, "My Black Mental and Emotional Health Matters. I shouldn't be reminded every time I leave my dorm room of how easy my life can be taken away, or how many Black lives have been taken away because of police brutality."

This may come as a shock to him, but someone who actually did the necessary math and weighed the necessary variables, determined that you are 1.7 times more likely to die in a police encounter (in which there is a reasonable possibility of a cop having to use his gun) if you are white.

Cops are more likely to shoot a white suspect than a black one.

"My Black Mental and Emotional Health Matters. ..."

Actually cupcake it does not matter to anyone other than yourself.

I can be forced to "care" if the angry mob descends upon me but in reality kittens matter more than your emotional health because you have the ability to reason and have chosen not to.

(Longer version of Amy's GTFU.)

Patrick is correct on PTSD. I wrote about this in a column:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/ag-column-archives/2015/12/the-hurt-and-co.html

Ofer Zur, a psychologist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, explains, "To meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, the stressor experienced must involve actual or threatened death or serious injury."

Let's turn to Fredrick Douglass for a comment:

A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.

So this student is so emotionally stunted as to voluntarily give up one of those boxes?

Based on the data given in the article, one cannot definitively conclude that a white person is more or less likely to get shot by the police, only that the police are more likely to shoot a white person.

The white population is 63% of the total and 49% of police shootings and the black population is 12% of the total and 30% of police shootings.

What is also missing from the data are how many police stops/encounters involve white men and black men. It's from the stops/encounters that shootings flow.

Another factor is what the person is up to when stopped and/or shot. Micheal Brown was not gunned down by the police on his way to church. He was shot in self-defense while charging an officer he had assaulted earlier that day. This was after beating up a shop owner and robbing him.

Black males make up a higher percentage of people who commit criminal acts than white males. It only follows then that they would have more encounters with the police and, even if a lower percentage of those encounters result in shootings than white encounters, a higher percentage of police-involved shootings.

None of this is evidence of an institutional police bias against black males. The roots of the problem run deeper than that.

I have to agree with Patrick that the term "PTSD" gets bandied around a little too much these days, both in self-diagnosis and therapy.

I have childhood friend who told me his therapist told him he suffers from PTSD for a difficult childhood with a borderline abusive parent. I was there for most of his childhood and his difficulties are due more to himself than to his parent. Even back then, he was neurotic and made bad decisions.

It's like when therapists told their patients that their difficulties stemmed from their parents not showing them enough affection and they went away saying their problems were the fault of their parents; blaming Mom and Dad for every bad decision Junior had ever made.

PTSD is a diagnosis that people can latch onto and inexperienced therapists can convince their patients of without too much actual effort. Easier to convince a person he has PTSD than that he's been an idiot for most of his life.

This "black mental and emotional health" idiot is not being "triggered" by a badly drawn pistol in a hippie flower-power mural. He's trying to make his issues into the major focus of entire university. He's coopting (and stealing) other people's time and effort for power, the power to make others jump and do his bidding.

Disappointed that Folsom agreed to bowdlerize the mural; it's now unrecognizable. But I understand why. She was doubtless told by the school, maybe not in so many words, "Do this or you don't graduate". Whether the original version was good art is a matter for debate, but being an art critic does not give me the right to demand that art works I don't like be destroyed.

And yes, Ochiagha appears to lack both the historical context and any basic understanding of art. Of course, that wasn't where here line of thinking was. Her line of thinking was, "Gun image, I can exploit that politically". Her examination of the artwork stopped there. Nothing else about it matters.

My Uncle was killed by a handgun loaded with petunia petals. It was a horrifying yet oddly beautiful tragedy.

"This mural is actually representative of a nonviolence movement to protest the Vietnam War in the 60s. There's a famous photo of a protester putting flowers in the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle and everything."

I served on the USS James Madison with that very protester. The picture is visible here.

-----

If you want to whine about being unsafe because you're black, the cops pick on you, etc., it's best to deny reality. Here's a quote: "The most dangerous misconception about our criminal justice system is that it is pervaded by racial bias. For decades, criminologists have tried to find evidence proving that the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is due to systemic racial inequity. That effort has always come up short. In fact, racial differences in offending account for the disproportionate representation of blacks in prison. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas found that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to be sentenced to prison, however, due to their more extensive criminal histories and the gravity of their current offense."

This mural offends me because the slide is way *way* out of proportion to the frame. An actual gun that ugly shouldn't see the light of day.

This mural offends me because the slide is way *way* out of proportion to the frame. An actual gun that ugly shouldn't see the light of day.

Steve Daniels at April 27, 2016 4:59

Looks like a Desert Eagle slide on top of Glock 19 frame.

Probably copied from a bad Manga.

☑ Shtetl G at April 27, 2016 9:39 AM

Comment of the Month, April 2016

(Also, weirdly enough, June 1967.)

Amy's gonna send you out a windbreaker. Try not to get any stains on it before summertime.

Gregory Ochiagha: do you realize you just got pwned by a college girl painting?

Yeah, I'm kewl, I used "pwned".