"Entire message boards and online sites are dedicated to lionizing mass- and school-shooters as heroes, holding them up in the pantheon of other suicide shooters as people who are owning the libs (Anders Breivik), killing Blacks (Buffalo supermarket, Dylan Roof) or Jews (Tree of Life Synagogue), all while making an unmistakable political statement (the Texas “RWDS” shooter, along with all of the above)."
This is why we need to follow the lead of New Zealand after their mass shooting and black out these individuals in the media. The guns are of course the main problem but the media is also a substantial part of it, too. It incentivizes this crap. Now people worship mass shooters the way serial killers were.
This essay, as usual, is spot on. The polarization of Americans is not just functionally the same as the Muslims vs the Hindus, or the Israelis vs the Palestinians, or the Serbs vs the Croats, or the Taliban vs the Afghanis, it is becoming politically identical. What is different is our establishment (government, media and all) keep describing the events as the result of individual action (mental illness). There will be no mitigation without recognition.
Whatever happened to the basic function of ANY government is to have a monopoly of violence?
Finally you cite Peterson and Densley whose parsing of the data gives us great insights. Like most analysts you overlook a deeper, more political truth they uncovered: 73% of studied mass shooters were the victims of child abuse trauma. The epidemic of child maltreatment reflects a deep, deep failure of our society in its basic responsibilities.
This is important medical and scientific information to be aware of so also important to be aware of sociological literature.
Of course so much needs to be said about the way the corporatized and technological society lacks the human warmth and connections that children should have.
I noted in my comment a point made by the Pulitzer Prize writer, whose view was that modern society as a whole through national politics also in a way kills the individual, in general, and that suicide and violence are seen as distinct acts of "agency" by people who are atomized and removed from essential human connections in a world of mass media and identity politics.
Paranoia - psychosis - just the same as todays replacement theory - filled the minds of Nazis and thise supporting them in Germany.
About time. Add the co-morbid addictions that these shooters share; alcohol, drugs, violent, first-person shooter video gaming, violent porn (child porn too) and yes, shooting guns! Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold were alcoholic - drank at least a fifth of booze a day. I know a gal who dated Eric Harris and hung out with them both (she's in recovery now). Dylan Roof; was often drunk, bragged about drinking on his site. Adam Lanza; child porn/gaming/gun addiction. Lanza shot up his worst enemies - the kids who tortured him in his child porn addiction. Finally anything and everything online. Social Media, extremist web sites - all are addictive. I am talking about brain altering, see-it-on-an-MRI addiction. Many, if not all addictions cause depressive states that eventually lead to suicidal thoughts. Suicide by cop is nothing new.
Domestic Terrorism is what I call it, and there is a lot of it going around these days.
FBI definition: Domestic Terrorism- Violent criminal acts committed by individuals/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic infuences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
I agree. Just because the domestic terrorist is suicidal doesn't mean his motivation isn't to terrorize politically. In fact the terroristic effect validates and aggrandizes and may be the final key to the suicidal acting-out.
Excellent! This perspective makes sense. And you have pointed out some actions that may decrease the carnage.
Your point that these types of abhorrent behavior tend to last about a half a generation has encouraged me to stick around a bit longer. Of course my inherent glass half empty personality says, and what awful thing will replace mass shooting suicide? But for now I will ignore my pessimism and go about my day with a bit of optimism instead.
Anyone who shows up in a public place with a loaded automatic weapon should be shot immediately. No need to wonder what will happen next and let innocent people die.
Many of the mass shooters believe that if you commit suicide you will not go to heaven, so instead they die by cop, being shot while shooting a bunch of innocent people they don't even know. Unfortunately with capitalism, a few owning almost all the wealth and the poor cannibalizing each other, leads to a sense of hopelessness. We have very poor leadership in this country and world, because only the wealthy get elected and they have had most things given to them and are about as deep thinkers as a teaspoon of water. With more delight than guilt over causing others to suffer and dreaming of enslaving them. America has turned its back on good and God chasing after the almighty dollar.. Only with a maximum income, socialized healthcare and a room for everyone, in other words financial security, can we slow this down. Phony religions, capitalism and the family unit are not going to work no matter how many prayers the Republicans keep pushing for. Raising the children up together in communes in order to end all child abuse, racism, crime, religious hatred, grooming, mental illness, obesity... That will take over a hundred years to organize and install the first generation, it may already be too late. I can't see any of the religious people changing the way things are run for the better. We better just take all semi-automatic guns off the market and hope the nuts don't start using swords and machetes.
are so far outside the model of the White Aryan Protestant, Anglo Saxon model as to be laughable. Even weirder to me is that they not only identify as WASP, they are encouraged by (uh oh😦) Whites to carry out these mass murder suicide missions…
Clearly they are identified and “groomed” as useful idiots to go from ideation to reality, probably using some MK Ultra handbook that some NeoNazi stole when he left some branch of military intelligence.
These monsters came from a world where they well understood death squads, and were likely part of them.
And before I get lectured on racist tropes, it might we worth mentioning that my son’s wife is black and from a central American nation. Does that mean I get a “pass”? No, but I do love her and coming from poverty to this nation she has created the classic life promised by Meritocracy.
The Latino soldiers I served with were often held degrees, were an intelligent and extremely brave under intense pressure, but there is clearly a process by Fascist Neo Nazi Republicans to recruit and exploit the unhinged minds desperately seeking to be considered as whites and not “brown”
Much of the motivation for mass shootings, other suicides, self-mutilization, homelessness and other manifestations of hopelessness (short of mental illness) is caused by the economic effects of greed and fascism.
NBC's mid-day news show just used the term "domestic terrorism" about the Allen shootings. They were saying it has yet to be determined as a factor.
The idea to not give the shooters recognition is understandable. However, to me, it makes more sense to analyze them publicly. It would serve as a way for others to understand what makes them tick. But most of all, no one wants their weaknesses put on display. We should have experts out there emphasizing their mental illness and suicidal tenancies. These individuals are not going to want to be remembered that way.
What I really want to see from the media is a blitz of information from people like the ones quoted in Thom's Report. We need to understand these shooters and do whatever we can to bring them back into the fold. It's easy to hate them after the fact, but what are we doing to help them before they reach their breaking point?
I agree that these shooters are craving suicide, so we should allow self-identified suicide shooters to aggregate in a large, enclosed area and shoot at each other until they are all dead. We could offer them psychological treatment when they identify themselves as an alternative, but isolate them during their treatment.
But we have a momentum of domestic terrorist sabotage "bombers" who aren't suicidal at all. I think there have been at least three(?) shoot-ups of electrical switching stations causing major, widespread damage and not a hint of getting caught. There was the suicide guy who blew up half the cell service on the East Coast by taking down the ATT center in Nashville. White guy that had major "red flag" snitch to authorities, who did a perfunctory door-knock (no answer) and respectful peek over the fence where they saw a camper just like described in the tip. Ho hum. I loved the observation by a commentator on MSNBC (Moyhedin? sp.?) that if the tip had been about someone with his surname his front door would have been bashed and his family on the floor cuffed and lucky not to be harmed, while their house was trashed. It should be noted that if interdiction is selective, the Good ol' Boys are going to continue to run wild.
You have insightfully seen why there will be an unending supply of mass murderers because there’s an unending supply of suicidal people and angry groups. (The religious fanatics of Islam discovered this long ago, as you point out). And so, the mass murders are going to continue unabated.
But you might go further to bring attention to the apathy in America. Look at Serbia. Two mass shootings and the people take to the streets. What is it going to take for the Americans to do the same?
And it doesn’t even mean leaving the comfort of your home. Rational citizens could form a coalition and agree on a nationally accepted specific policy that would include banning automatic weapons outright. Then it could be put to every politician. And if they did not agree to support it, they would not receive votes. There are sufficient voters, both Democrat and Republican, who support serious gun control. It’s not enough to write and wring hands.
Hannah arendt's work holds many important lessons. I highly recommend professor Dan Kriers's sociology lectures online and his verbal and hand-drawn depictions of Arendt's "origins of totalitarianism" with arendt's discussion of atomized and isolated individuals who are disconnected from the life of engagement with the world and others - through nation-state politics and mass media, and how nationalism bred a form of "race thinking" that obliterates or removes from view any form of class thinking or class consciousness.
"Entire message boards and online sites are dedicated to lionizing mass- and school-shooters as heroes, holding them up in the pantheon of other suicide shooters as people who are owning the libs (Anders Breivik), killing Blacks (Buffalo supermarket, Dylan Roof) or Jews (Tree of Life Synagogue), all while making an unmistakable political statement (the Texas “RWDS” shooter, along with all of the above)."
This is why we need to follow the lead of New Zealand after their mass shooting and black out these individuals in the media. The guns are of course the main problem but the media is also a substantial part of it, too. It incentivizes this crap. Now people worship mass shooters the way serial killers were.
This essay, as usual, is spot on. The polarization of Americans is not just functionally the same as the Muslims vs the Hindus, or the Israelis vs the Palestinians, or the Serbs vs the Croats, or the Taliban vs the Afghanis, it is becoming politically identical. What is different is our establishment (government, media and all) keep describing the events as the result of individual action (mental illness). There will be no mitigation without recognition.
Whatever happened to the basic function of ANY government is to have a monopoly of violence?
Finally you cite Peterson and Densley whose parsing of the data gives us great insights. Like most analysts you overlook a deeper, more political truth they uncovered: 73% of studied mass shooters were the victims of child abuse trauma. The epidemic of child maltreatment reflects a deep, deep failure of our society in its basic responsibilities.
This is important medical and scientific information to be aware of so also important to be aware of sociological literature.
Of course so much needs to be said about the way the corporatized and technological society lacks the human warmth and connections that children should have.
I noted in my comment a point made by the Pulitzer Prize writer, whose view was that modern society as a whole through national politics also in a way kills the individual, in general, and that suicide and violence are seen as distinct acts of "agency" by people who are atomized and removed from essential human connections in a world of mass media and identity politics.
Paranoia - psychosis - just the same as todays replacement theory - filled the minds of Nazis and thise supporting them in Germany.
About time. Add the co-morbid addictions that these shooters share; alcohol, drugs, violent, first-person shooter video gaming, violent porn (child porn too) and yes, shooting guns! Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold were alcoholic - drank at least a fifth of booze a day. I know a gal who dated Eric Harris and hung out with them both (she's in recovery now). Dylan Roof; was often drunk, bragged about drinking on his site. Adam Lanza; child porn/gaming/gun addiction. Lanza shot up his worst enemies - the kids who tortured him in his child porn addiction. Finally anything and everything online. Social Media, extremist web sites - all are addictive. I am talking about brain altering, see-it-on-an-MRI addiction. Many, if not all addictions cause depressive states that eventually lead to suicidal thoughts. Suicide by cop is nothing new.
Domestic Terrorism is what I call it, and there is a lot of it going around these days.
FBI definition: Domestic Terrorism- Violent criminal acts committed by individuals/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic infuences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
I agree. Just because the domestic terrorist is suicidal doesn't mean his motivation isn't to terrorize politically. In fact the terroristic effect validates and aggrandizes and may be the final key to the suicidal acting-out.
Excellent! This perspective makes sense. And you have pointed out some actions that may decrease the carnage.
Your point that these types of abhorrent behavior tend to last about a half a generation has encouraged me to stick around a bit longer. Of course my inherent glass half empty personality says, and what awful thing will replace mass shooting suicide? But for now I will ignore my pessimism and go about my day with a bit of optimism instead.
Thank you.
Anyone who shows up in a public place with a loaded automatic weapon should be shot immediately. No need to wonder what will happen next and let innocent people die.
Many of the mass shooters believe that if you commit suicide you will not go to heaven, so instead they die by cop, being shot while shooting a bunch of innocent people they don't even know. Unfortunately with capitalism, a few owning almost all the wealth and the poor cannibalizing each other, leads to a sense of hopelessness. We have very poor leadership in this country and world, because only the wealthy get elected and they have had most things given to them and are about as deep thinkers as a teaspoon of water. With more delight than guilt over causing others to suffer and dreaming of enslaving them. America has turned its back on good and God chasing after the almighty dollar.. Only with a maximum income, socialized healthcare and a room for everyone, in other words financial security, can we slow this down. Phony religions, capitalism and the family unit are not going to work no matter how many prayers the Republicans keep pushing for. Raising the children up together in communes in order to end all child abuse, racism, crime, religious hatred, grooming, mental illness, obesity... That will take over a hundred years to organize and install the first generation, it may already be too late. I can't see any of the religious people changing the way things are run for the better. We better just take all semi-automatic guns off the market and hope the nuts don't start using swords and machetes.
Yes. they are.
Interesting how many of these “latino” murderer’s and criminals like Enrique Tarrio
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Enrique_Tarrio_-_International_Chairman_Proud_Boys_%28retouched%29.jpg
are so far outside the model of the White Aryan Protestant, Anglo Saxon model as to be laughable. Even weirder to me is that they not only identify as WASP, they are encouraged by (uh oh😦) Whites to carry out these mass murder suicide missions…
Clearly they are identified and “groomed” as useful idiots to go from ideation to reality, probably using some MK Ultra handbook that some NeoNazi stole when he left some branch of military intelligence.
These monsters came from a world where they well understood death squads, and were likely part of them.
And before I get lectured on racist tropes, it might we worth mentioning that my son’s wife is black and from a central American nation. Does that mean I get a “pass”? No, but I do love her and coming from poverty to this nation she has created the classic life promised by Meritocracy.
The Latino soldiers I served with were often held degrees, were an intelligent and extremely brave under intense pressure, but there is clearly a process by Fascist Neo Nazi Republicans to recruit and exploit the unhinged minds desperately seeking to be considered as whites and not “brown”
Much of the motivation for mass shootings, other suicides, self-mutilization, homelessness and other manifestations of hopelessness (short of mental illness) is caused by the economic effects of greed and fascism.
NBC's mid-day news show just used the term "domestic terrorism" about the Allen shootings. They were saying it has yet to be determined as a factor.
The idea to not give the shooters recognition is understandable. However, to me, it makes more sense to analyze them publicly. It would serve as a way for others to understand what makes them tick. But most of all, no one wants their weaknesses put on display. We should have experts out there emphasizing their mental illness and suicidal tenancies. These individuals are not going to want to be remembered that way.
What I really want to see from the media is a blitz of information from people like the ones quoted in Thom's Report. We need to understand these shooters and do whatever we can to bring them back into the fold. It's easy to hate them after the fact, but what are we doing to help them before they reach their breaking point?
I agree that these shooters are craving suicide, so we should allow self-identified suicide shooters to aggregate in a large, enclosed area and shoot at each other until they are all dead. We could offer them psychological treatment when they identify themselves as an alternative, but isolate them during their treatment.
But we have a momentum of domestic terrorist sabotage "bombers" who aren't suicidal at all. I think there have been at least three(?) shoot-ups of electrical switching stations causing major, widespread damage and not a hint of getting caught. There was the suicide guy who blew up half the cell service on the East Coast by taking down the ATT center in Nashville. White guy that had major "red flag" snitch to authorities, who did a perfunctory door-knock (no answer) and respectful peek over the fence where they saw a camper just like described in the tip. Ho hum. I loved the observation by a commentator on MSNBC (Moyhedin? sp.?) that if the tip had been about someone with his surname his front door would have been bashed and his family on the floor cuffed and lucky not to be harmed, while their house was trashed. It should be noted that if interdiction is selective, the Good ol' Boys are going to continue to run wild.
You have insightfully seen why there will be an unending supply of mass murderers because there’s an unending supply of suicidal people and angry groups. (The religious fanatics of Islam discovered this long ago, as you point out). And so, the mass murders are going to continue unabated.
But you might go further to bring attention to the apathy in America. Look at Serbia. Two mass shootings and the people take to the streets. What is it going to take for the Americans to do the same?
And it doesn’t even mean leaving the comfort of your home. Rational citizens could form a coalition and agree on a nationally accepted specific policy that would include banning automatic weapons outright. Then it could be put to every politician. And if they did not agree to support it, they would not receive votes. There are sufficient voters, both Democrat and Republican, who support serious gun control. It’s not enough to write and wring hands.
Hannah arendt's work holds many important lessons. I highly recommend professor Dan Kriers's sociology lectures online and his verbal and hand-drawn depictions of Arendt's "origins of totalitarianism" with arendt's discussion of atomized and isolated individuals who are disconnected from the life of engagement with the world and others - through nation-state politics and mass media, and how nationalism bred a form of "race thinking" that obliterates or removes from view any form of class thinking or class consciousness.