Cause and Effect

"It’s quite apparent, quite obvious that the targeting of these two police officers was a direct spinoff of this issue of these demonstrations.”

No pundit made this charge, no talking head on radio or television. It didn't come from the head of the police union in New York.

Many are angry not just with Bill DiBlasio but also with veteran race agitator Al Sharpton and his MSNBC enablers, with Attorney General Eric Holder and even with President Obama. Defenders of police, and of civil society generally, are wondering who is responsible for this spiral back to the old days of a racially-divided country, one in which conflict and even combat between white and black was common?

At the same time, conservatives especially are very slow to argue causation of killing and violence beyond those directly responsible for the murders. They remember all too well the attempt by the left to spin the shootings in Tucson that wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), killed United States Court District Judge John Roll and five others and wounded another 11 into an attack on "Tea Party extremists." That was an appalling effort to make a madman into a political actor, and there wasn't a shred of evidence that killer was other than psychotic.

On Friday, in a very important column, Charles Krauthammer wrote about the psychotic who are sufficiently "organized" in their thoughts to identify targets and funnel their illness into rage against categories people like unnamed police officers or on behalf of vague causes like the Islamic State. "Crazy" lone wolves are very hard to predict but perhaps all too easy to "suggest" targets to. "Evil" lone wolves like Major Nidal Hassan, develop their own plans and carry them out.

"Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, had been functioning as an Army doctor for years," the psychiatrist turned columnist continued. "Psychotics cannot carry that off. Hasan even had a business card listing his occupation as SoA (Soldier of Allah). He then went out and, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” shot dead 13 people, 12 of them fellow soldiers. To this day, Hasan speaks coherently and proudly of the massacre. That’s terrorism."

The debate raging this week about de Blasio and Sharpton concerns their complicity not with the latter category of evil people bent on their own twisted ideology-fueled carnage, but the psychotics capable of hearing enough voices to be nudged in one direction or another.

President Bill Clinton once famously tried to argue that Rush Limbaugh and talk radio had nudged Timothy McVeigh in the direction of the catastrophe of the Oklahoma City bombing. This was a disgusting, calculated political strategy, and it worked, though it remains so shameful that Clinton denies it. There was no tie between the killers of 1995 and any talk show host.

But the NYPD Commission sees a direct causal link to the weekend killings from the weeks of protests and demonstrations, some field by extreme anti-police rhetoric and rage. The killer's own scribblings and rage filled postings buttress Bratton's theory.

Every episode of violence deserves a close examination of the factors "causing" the killer to act. Most of the mass shootings of our era in our country are psychotics blazing away. A few are lone wolf terrorists working out their fanaticism and their warped plans. Abroad --in the attack on the Pakistani military school and the cold-blooded murder of children by single shots to the head-- we see the work of true horrors: the very sane fanatic, committed and absolute in his loyalty to his cause, however misconceived, however objectively evil. Such people have gained control of nation-states in the past. Their names are Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. ISIS is the latest to seek to combine nation-state status with ideological fury even as the Taliban did prior to 9/11, even as they would like to do again.

Responding to every act of violence with appropriate anger and punishment --legal, political, or social-- depends on delineating carefully which motives are moving the killers, and a careful, precise examination of who --if anyone-- is to blame for the actions of the killers beyond themselves. This process is underway now with a focus on New York City, just as it followed in the wake of the horror of Sandy Hook, Aurora, Tucson, Fort Hood and of course 9/11 and Columbine, just as it unfolded in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown and in Staten Island after the death of Eric Garner. It is always a necessary process, but one that has to admit of distinctions and which has to proceed with care --not the strong points of modern MSM. The inquiry can itself feed a destructive narrative, thus the need for care and responsibility in judging, but judging must be done.

The next few days will mark either a significant cooling in the anti-police rhetoric and protests, or an acceleration of the confrontations. For the first time in years I will be broadcasting live on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day because of these events, asking the question whether the last six weeks have been a spasm that has passed or a convulsion that is growing in its intensity. A Christmas prayer for the former would be a very good idea as a return to the old days --enabled by social media-- would make the Occupy Movement seem almost childlike.

Interesting. However. Any person willing to murder an innocent human in cold blood. No matter if crazy, psychotic, or fanatical. Can be summed up in one word. Evil.

As well as anyone else championing them or agreeing with them.

Yes, that means most of those “protesters”, high positions in our government, much of the media, and any random person not decrying this act of evil. If your first gut reaction to this is not something akin to vile revulsion, but a pleasant feeling. You are indeed evil.

I would agree...there are categories.

Three years ago....some guy from around where I grew up...with PTSD-related problems made enough threats to neighbors that the cops showed up. Gun-fight erupts, and the cops shot the guy. Can’t really blame the cops. The guy brought this down upon himself.

Last year, from same region....some older teen kid shows up at a guy’s house and wanted to have serious words with the guy’s older son (20 years old). Son wasn’t there...this 17-year old kid announced that he was going to beat this guy up as punishment. Older guy slides back into kitchen and fires buckshot into this teen thug. Kid is alive but hurting awful lot. Kid’s parents were awful sorry....kid was on ‘meds’ and just wasn’t acting right (bi-polar).

This year, from the same region...some guy came out of his house trailer and finds some nutcase sitting on a limb of a tree in front yard....nude. Just sitting there. Home owner calls the cops. Cops come....talk nicely to the nutcase, but he won’t come down. Rather than shoot him...they just pulled out a chainsaw and acted like they were going to cut the tree down. That was enough to get the nut down. Yeah, meth user, if you were curious.

All I see here is nuts who ought to be locked up but we can’t do it....drug-users who can’t control their behavior and think they can’t get killed for doing stupid stuff.....and thugs who think they are in some ‘Game of Thrones’ fantasy land without dragons or fair maidens.

Those are the types of people who used to be banished to a penal colony in an era when governments and law-abiding citizens didn't have the money or the patience to deal with their pathological antics.

Someday there may be sociological studies done about this strange civilization where people had so much time and money on their hands, and cared so little about maintaining any standards for civilized behavior, that they tolerated the worst misfits and losers among them.

History is replete with people willing to take a life at the drop of a hat. Nazis did this with abandon.

Here in this country, there are literally hundreds of thousands of our denizens whose culture prepares them for this every day. And they are managed like sheep by portions of this government and by so-called “leaders” of the community.

Ever see Maury or Jerry Springer? Ever wonder how some of the shows’ guests can come out on stage so obviously combative and angry? Ready to fight? That’s because there are handlers back stage who have been pumping them up and getting them enraged. In the case of Springer, they go farther with the fight bell. Evily Pavlovian if you ask me....

We have the equivalent in ‘real life’ too. The backstage enragers are Obama, Holder, Sharpton, and the MSM.

Yes, I agree. I am well read on many of your references.

But, the question is why?

Why take an innocent life, in the name of psychosis, fanaticism, or false victimization?

Is it because a huge majority of people, if allowed, want to feel the power I hear from many serial killers that comes from taking a life? Once you start, you don’t stop? Or is it because an evil person says it is okay? Are so many humans so brainwashed and naive to take an innocent life? Just because?

Could it be that really most people just don’t care, but as a society many have conditioned themselves to appear compassionate, and normal? But really most people are evil, and what I consider normal is not what a majority of the world considers normal? Or is there a deeper, more sinister cause at work? Akin to demons manipulating men to allow said supernatural evil to get said man or woman to act before thinking? Becoming completely lost they kill with reckless abandon?

I cannot understand. If I were forced to take a life in defense of myself, or another. I know I would. But I fear I would feel a deep, soul wrenching sorrow and shame for having to. I just cannot comprehend it. Hoping I never have to take a life for fear of what it may do to my mind and soul.

Could it be that most of the people in the world are stupid, naive, ignorant cold sociopaths due to their cultures and society? Being an American is unique. I cannot fathom how any person goes from innocence to taking innocent lives indiscriminately, no matter the lie used to justify it and sleep soundly. Everyone has free will. Anyone can choose to feel the plight of others. Or is sin so terrible that it warps the heart, the mind, the soul? Never to return to normal? Is it not possible for someone so evil to come to terms with their actions, and change their heart?

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