Last night, in Isla Vista, California, seven dead including the white male shooter, others critically injured. You know the drill. Right is already blaming Hollywood and liberals. Steve M shudders at the thought Ross Douhat will blame sexual permissiveness.
It’s way early to discuss why the shooter, a 22-year-old from an affluent family, did this. Police haven’t released any information about the victims. However, the alleged shooter had made some videos said to be of him ranting about women rejecting him. A Daily Kos diarist determined that the shooter was subscribed to a bunch of Men’s Rights and “pick up artist” You Tube channels. This may prove to not mean anything, of course.
Gotta hand it to the Party that advertizes itself as the Party of “Personal Responsibility” and “Rule of Law.” For a group that is as far from those values as is functionally possible, it sure can convince the Ignorati that it holds those values and the “Other Party” does not…
I keep telling people that, instead of calling these murder-suicides, we should call them suicide-murders.
Maybe THAT will confuse some sociopathic loons, and save some lives.
“After I do me, I can kill dozens!!!” *
*Having said that, it’s unclear from what I read earlier, whether this nut killed himself, or was killed by a cop, or bystander (a good guy with a gun? I doubt it).
Part of me feel sorry for him. He looked at himself as a loser, just because he didn’t have sex.
Maybe he should have done what pretty much every guy has done at some point in his life – AND LIE ABOUT IT!!!
NOT that I ever exhaled (that!) 🙂
Isla Vista is a rowdy college community that has a reputation for trouble, particularly by spoiled rich males. Thirteen years ago, some kid, a film director’s son, drove his expensive car into a crowd, killing four.
The shooter’s blog has one entry, describing a lonely male who just couldn’t fit in, or get a girlfriend. Here’s his video, entitled Why Do Girls Hate Me So Much?
Wingnuts can try to blame Hollywood all they want, but these sad little boys are their prime demographic: rich, white, entitled.
He was a pleasant-looking young man with money, so if he really couldn’t get dates he must have been sending really creepy vibes. I guess eventually we’ll find out if he ever got psychiatric help at some point.
It’s a pretty strange phenomenon to see a video, particularly such a personal one, made by a person who would later carry out such a crime. He seems like a socially awkward adolescent mired much deeper than most in some issues. If he didn’t get “professional help,” we all wish that he had.
Coincidently, he was also the son of a film director.
Thanks for the link, Moonbat.
His parents say he had Asberger syndrome and had had therapy at some point. “Multiple therapists” were mentioned in one news story, and apparently both the parents and a social worker had contacted police about the young man recently because of his YouTube videos.
“He was a pleasant-looking young man with money, so if he really couldn’t get dates he must have been sending really creepy vibes.”
From a family with some real money. He was in a rather expensive car.
Not that I advocate it at all, because it’s beyond debasing to women – among many other things – but even if he went to female prostitutes, they, too, get “creepy vibes.” And they probably have a lot of experience with it – tragically.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out about him – so that we can learn.
Maybe he was just a homicidal maniac who wanted to target women, regardless of whether he did or didn’t have sex with them.
And it’ll be interesting – from the point of science and psychology – to see what his family has to say about him. And then, try to read between the lines, for what they’re really saying.
No parent or family wants to admit raising a homicidal monster.
One victim was killed at a deli where I get lunch all the time.
Cops are pulling more bodies from the killer’s apartment now.
There are sad, socially isolated young men like this all over the world, yet only the US seems to breed mass murderers out of them in such numbers.
So do we get to start calling white guys thugs yet, or is that still reserved only for black football players who yell on TV after games? When does the media’s national conversation on the “white culture of violence” and “white-on-white-crime” start?
White males have been responsible for more death, darkness, despair, and destruction than any other group in history: from the Inquisition, to the Crusades, to the witch trials, to the slave trade, to WW1, to WW2, to Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, to Hitler and Stalin and all kinds of genocides, to 99% of serial killers and mass murderers, to the atomic bomb, to the Great Depression and Great Recession, to political policy which exacerbate the poverty and hopelessless that allows crime to flourish. They have the fingerprints white guys all over.
White murderers (Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman) and white criminals (like the Wall Streeters who indirectly caused and are still causing thousands and thousands of deaths by crashing the economy) don’t get tried and convicted. They go free. Heck, the Zimmerman case proved that if you’re a white male gun nut you can have a long and still growing record of violent encounters; you can stalk, scare, and pick a fight with an unarmed kid and kill him when he fights back in defense; and then walk free because the kid was black, thus obviously dangerous, at fault, and deserved to die.
Where there is poverty and hopelessless there will be crime. Conservative whites do everything possible to exacerbate economic inequality and poverty, then concern troll about the crime that is the inevitable result of their institutionalized greed and selfishness. Statistics can reflect a biased criminal justice system all you want: but they can’t erase the entirety of world history in white white men have caused more death and destruction than any group.
Here’s a thought: if right-wingers so suddenly concerned about “black criminality” how about they stop thwarting the policies designed to alleviate the poverty and hopelessness that leads to that criminality? How about they stop cutting taxes for the rich so we can grow the middle class, how about they stop obstructing jobs bills so we can alleviate poverty, how about they stop demonizing public education and start funding it they way they fund wars for their rich friends, how about they us get guns off the street instead of letting little white male nuts shoot up schools and theaters?
I just wish they could catch these mass killers alive; so, they can spend 50 years in jail. No death penalty just life in jail.
Bonnie, I spent much of the afternoon feeling sorry for the kid. I know what it’s like to be that age, and to be completely frustrated and hopeless around women. I’m no shrink, but I have to believe that some competent therapy at the right time could’ve turned that kid around.
I wish the same, bonnie. At least they could be kept in a secured area and studied. It seems they usually kill themselves before they can be caught.
Moonbat, I think your feeling sorry for the kid mostly shows your capacity for empathy, which is a good thing. However, I never had a date in junior high or high school. I was shy and hopeless around men. Because of my age, I had to wait to be asked. Yet, I didn’t go out and shoot up all the men who represented my wallflower status. The fact that all these shooters always kill themselves just proves what cowards they essentially are–which is all the more reason we should work harder to take them alive and send them to jail for the rest of their lives.
DJK,
Are you also 12counts, on Steve M’s blog?
I’m known as Victor there, because his system wouldn’t accept c u n d gulag.
Well, at least with the youtube videos, there will be some information that psychologists can learn from. That’s not much consolation, but, it is some.
I found the last lines of the video gripping. He said that he made the video to ask the question, because it was they only way he could ask the question. For most of us the idea of publicizing our personal problems by sending them out via youtube does not seem like a wise choice. I realize that some of this might be generational, but, it seems to indicate the extreme degree of difficulty he had interacting with others. The other obvious red flag is his descriptions of himself in terms of his “obvious superiority” to others. It smacks of the old standard “delusions of grandeur.” He desperately clings to the idea that he is superior and unappreciated as his sense of self is going down for the third time. He slides deep into victimhood, and when that becomes unresolvable, he lashes out. At least that is how I would handle his character if I were writing a novel. But, maybe that explains why I never became a novelist, or a psychologist.
It’s pretty chilling. He had a lot of unresolved adolescent problems, combined with the wild emotionality that occurs in the minds of young people. I think it’s likely that we all felt awkward and socially inept at that point of our development. That’s how we can recognize it in him. Fortunately, none of us slid off the edge in the way he did.
DJK’s questions and observations brought this to mind, I am sorry to go off topic, I will certainly understand if it doesn’t make it past moderation:
In the last post we got to discussing some attributes of the human mind that often seem to be amplified in certain groups of people. We live at a time when the means of production may soon undergo even more rapid change due to technological advance, e.g. 3-D printers, etc. This comes after the experience of a few decades of changes, largely due to conservative economic policies, that have dumped a large sector of the workforce into the service sector, and locked them there. Wages are no longer coupled with productivity, upward mobility is ancient history. Capitalism promises to resemble feudalism a little more each day.
Conservatives must see this too. But, their choice is to cling to belief in the system. They seem invested in the “just world hypothesis,” which allows them to shift the blame for the failure of the system on to those whom the system has failed. It allows them to avoid examining their own beliefs and often, to find gainful employment simply by spewing out well crafted nonsense, and doubling down on the message. When all hell breaks loose, they plan to land on their feet. Alas, “the best laid plans of mice and men …”
We hear well connected, often intelligent people, say ridiculous things and follow absurd arguments. Many are not acting in good faith, but, maybe others have truly convinced themselves that nonsense is truth, because the alternative is too painful and threatening. Our society rides the back of a march hare.
Our society rides the back of a march hare. (lovely phrase).
Two datapoints:
– The bus shelters in my town usually display current movie posters. I don’t remember the name of the film, but the current poster shows two cold looking young guys with very menacing guns drawn high, ready to fire. Our culture is so drenched in violence we don’t even notice it any more. This is what we’re teaching our kids. Is it any surprise that the more unstable of them take the lesson and act it out?
– The current cover of the conservative mag, The American Spectator, shows a guillotine, I suppose in response to Piketty. While the rank and file conservatives are completely wrapped up in getting theirs and to hell with everyone else, the ones closer to the top of the pyramid aren’t unaware of how the game is deliberately rigged in their favor and the fear that goes with it.
One of the other problems I have with the current gun culture is that the guns in question are increasingly designed and purchased to provide the capability to kill another person. I remember the old advertisements where the guns were intended for hunting or “plinking.” Now their purpose is displayed without disguise, and it’s grisly. If people are buying guns intended to be used against “bad guys,” if they buy ammunition specifically designed to be used against other people and they practice techniques of shooting that are efficient agains human targets, their intentions certainly seem clear. It’s the kind of scenario that becomes more likely the more they prepare for it, because crucial decisions are being made and actions practiced beforehand.
I read an article about the reaction to the Chipotle restaurant affaire the other day. The open carry supporters commonly referred to people who don’t like being around guns as “sheeple.” Guns in various kind of rigs were referred to as “cool guy gear.” Wow.
So, if some jackasses are enjoying their second amendment rights over a cheeseburger, dressed in camo and posing with their AK’s, I am not supposed to find them offensive for projecting the image of vigilantes or an occupying military force. But, a jackass with a kindred soul is fully justified in feeling threatened by a young man wearing a hoodie. Because, a hoodie is actually much scarier that “cool guy gear.”
I found that article’s statement about the “cool guy gear” interesting. I wasn’t there to hear the tone of the instructor’s voice and his body language when he said that, but to me it sounded on the page like his was saying it mockingly. But the guy he said it to, and who wrote about it, obviously didn’t take it that way at all.
The sheriff’s statement was (this is as quoted by the gun nut later): “But you’re going to cause my guys to respond when someone calls about a guy wearing ‘scary stuff’ where the sheeple are unaccustomed to seeing it. So do me a favor and leave your cool guy stuff in your car, okay?”
goatherd,
“So, if some jackasses are enjoying their second amendment rights over a cheeseburger, dressed in camo and posing with their AK’s…”
I wish I had the guts to walk by, take a look at the guy, and say, “Nice AK, man. Shame about your dick, though.”
I just watched a heart breaking news comment from a father of one of the victims. Sadly, in the wake of the Sandy hook shootings, we got the insane sandy hook truthers, I think we’ll see the same with this incident. We are no longer a home to the free and the brave.
I was viewing a commentary about mass shootings last night. It seems we’d best be wary of white males and Asian males….. and one woman.