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May 28, 2022 - Lionel Nation
14:00
The Insanely Futile Process of Finding the "Cause" of Horror

Causation. Or is it correlation? Therein lies the issue.

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One of the most stupid, inane, absolutely baseless questions ever asked.
And a question that has been asked forever.
And I've been doing...
Original, I guess, commentary since this is my 35th year from the days of talk radio, right around the time of Rush, through every iteration there is, terrestrial and satellite and this and internet and TV and the nascent period of podcasting and vlogging.
Since that time, this question comes up.
Perennial question that is so devoid of any degree of deliberate mentation.
That is, what causes blank?
Obviously, we're talking about the Uvalde shooting.
Terrible!
What causes that?
What caused this person to do this?
What made him?
Translation, were it not for X, this would not have occurred.
What caused him?
Not what facilitated the event.
One could argue that there was, what, 17,000 drunk driving deaths a year?
What caused it?
Well, alcohol.
No, no, no, no.
What?
What caused it?
In a variety of drunkenness?
No, no, no, no, no.
Because people are drunk and they don't...
No, no.
What caused it?
The car?
No, no, no, no, no.
Parking lots?
Streets?
How about the person?
How about the person driving?
Yeah, but what caused him to do that?
What caused him?
What was the reason for that?
The reason?
You think there's a reason?
Somebody drank too much, probably didn't intend to go out and deliberately drive drunk, but he did.
Yeah, but what causes this?
What causes people to become drug addicts?
What's the cause of it?
How about getting high?
No, no, no, no, that's not it.
What caused them?
Didn't most of these folks start off with marijuana?
Isn't that the gateway drug?
Didn't that...
What caused them to become heroin addicts?
And fentanyl addicts?
And by the way, it's fentanyl, not fentanyl.
What caused it?
What caused it?
Years ago, Ozzy Osbourne, suicide solution or something, that caused this kid to kill himself.
This kid who was listening to that blew his brains out.
Ozzy Osbourne or whoever.
I think it was Ozzy.
Anyway, what caused him?
Video games.
Cause people to do this.
They're responsible.
The cause.
Video games.
That's what did it.
You put these kids in front of a TV or some screen and they go crazy when they kill.
They don't think that this is just make-believe.
They're so habituated, so conditioned, so made to think that this is reality.
That this psychotic fugue is inspired.
Wait a minute.
They play these same games in other countries.
Japan and others.
They don't do this.
Yeah, but that's a different culture.
Plus, they don't have guns.
Yeah, that's it.
It's the gun.
The gun did it.
But we've had guns forever.
Yeah, but not like this.
These guns are different.
Really?
Really?
These guns are different?
Oh, they're just different.
Wait a minute.
I know I did it.
Here's a new one that's going along today.
Look at the timeline.
The year 2007, or I don't know what it was.
The timeline.
What is it?
Lo and behold, it's the advent of the phone.
The cell phone.
The internet.
That's when it happened.
All these school shootings, all of this insanity happened during the advent, or at the time of, the cell phone.
Why?
Because that's when it, don't hold me to the year, but that is when it happened.
Anything else happen?
No.
The only thing that occurred in that year, I say 2000, whatever it is, 97, but who knows?
But the only thing was that?
That's the only thing that happened?
Nothing else changed?
Nothing?
Weather patterns?
Political leadership?
New music?
Seismic?
Anything?
Just one thing?
Well, maybe.
Sort of, I guess.
It's these phones and this internet.
Well, I'll tell you something.
I've been listening to this forever.
Since the beginning of time.
People have been trying to say, well, what do you think causes that?
If we can get rid of the thing that causes it, we can get rid of these problems.
You see, one of the things that people don't ever want to think is that you can't predict certain things.
And as soon as you label, wait a minute, I've got a new label, right?
I know what you're thinking.
It's a new label.
This is the cause.
You ready for this?
Mental illness.
That's it.
It's mental illness.
That's the reason why.
These kids are mentally ill.
What do you mean mentally ill?
I just mean they're crazy.
You mean they're psychotic?
You mean they hear voices?
No, no, no.
They're just...
Well, what is it?
Well, they're just...
They're mentally ill.
Mentally ill people don't do this.
Well, certain, certain mentally ill people.
Oh, so it's certain mental illness?
Certain mental illness causes it.
I see.
Not mental illness in general.
Mm-hmm.
You know, there are other countries that, believe it or not, have more murders, and more murders using handguns and firearms than in this country, El Salvador and Venezuela.
Go down the list.
I mean, it's pretty serious.
But you know what their difference is?
You know what they do?
They don't get a gun and start shooting people because they've had a bad day.
They don't flip out and go with it indiscriminately.
I mean, it happens, but not like this.
Oh, no, no.
Their killings, much more.
It's because of drugs, drug turf, drug territory, drug dealings, crime.
There are some countries that have honor killings and all kinds of things like that.
See, there's something about the United States.
It's just different.
It's just different.
We just shoot for reasons we don't know.
And we announce it.
We announce it on social media.
Aha!
Social media.
Are they to blame?
They're to blame?
Well, they didn't stop this.
They knew about this.
They have an affirmative duty to stop stuff.
Well, this guy was acting crazy.
Do you know how many people are acting crazy on a regular basis?
There are people walking around yelling, who ordered the veal cutlet all day long?
You're going to do what?
What do I do?
Hello, police?
Yeah, my Uncle Larry's acting crazy.
What?
Do you want to arrest people just because they're, quote, acting crazy?
What if you're acting crazy?
That's not what I'm talking about.
I mean, he's making threats.
Okay, now we're on to something.
What kind of threats?
What kind?
What were they saying?
What were they?
What did they say?
Now, do you have the manpower and the wherewithal?
You know, a lot of people want to defund the police.
And by the way, just saying, in some parts of Texas, perhaps Uvalde, they may have defunded themselves by virtue of what people are suggesting in terms of the police response and non-response.
So what I'm trying to tell you is that you're wasting your time if you think you can find...
A reason for this.
You can also throw in the all of the above world of evil, Satan, Satan evil, drugs, the decline of the family, the decline of values, the decline of religion, the lack of prayer in school.
You can point to a number of...
Positive and negative effects, meaning things that were added, things that were taken away, things that don't exist anymore, and you can spend your time in this glorious, wonderful, complete waste of time, this parlor game called causation.
And it bothers people.
It bothers people when you tell them, no.
The reason why some things happen is because things happen.
With 330 million Americans and 400 million firearms, the numbers don't add up.
The numbers don't.
We always try to use...
We forget the numbers.
The numbers of people.
It's so interesting.
You know what?
During COVID, people...
We're talking about the number of people who died because of COVID and the number of people who were hospitalized by virtue of COVID.
These are very, very serious numbers.
Now, at the same time, I would tell people that it is estimated every year that there are 750,000, three-quarters of a million people who die from preventable heart disease, heart conditions, lifestyle additions or changes that could change it immensely.
But lifestyle, heart disease, heart attack, atherosclerotic effects, cardiac incidence, by diet and lifestyle alone, 750,000 deaths preventable every single year, and nobody says anything.
Yeah, well, that's different.
What about preventable did you not understand?
What do you mean it's different?
Well, it's just what?
So what I want you to do is I want you to sit back, take a deep breath, and think about what you mean by causation.
Correlation or cause?
What caused it or what was correlated with it?
Most people who eventually die of drug overdoses started off with marijuana.
And most people who started off with marijuana started off with beer.
Or some type of liquor.
And most people who started off with liquor at one point enjoyed cartoons and mother's milk and went to school.
That's correlation.
Cause.
Causation.
Something that caused.
The cause of death was.
And even that sometimes is not as obvious as you think.
Cause is a...
Cause is like the word belief.
Belief sometimes, like when you believe in something, it means I hope that something is true.
But causation is different.
This is a battle of and an analysis matrix of definitions and understanding and thinking very critically, very specifically, and with a targeted purpose.
A purpose, like Percocet, which has nothing to do with what I said.
I meant to say purpose, but I'm trying to cover up for it with a lame attempt at humor.
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