Posted on 07/26/2012 10:38:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
What does James Holmes, the Colorado killer, have in common with Jared Loughner, Andres Behring Breivik, Seung-Hui Cho, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris? They all have massacred innocent people on a massive scale. Yet they have something else in common. They are all nobodies or losers, as the phrase has it.
All were on a downward incline from a not very lofty ascent. They were troubled, but there are other troubled souls in our society. They were fascinated with violence, but so are others. Why else would major entertainment corporations invest so much money in clang & bang, blood & guts entertainments like childish movies, idiotic video games and even rap music?
They were quiet, loners, and dreamy isolates. My guess is they have watched a lot of TV with canned laughter and implausible sound effects. I do not see a lot of participation in sport with these young heroes' lives. At their most active, they are probably vigorous onanists.
They were fascinated with guns but also other tools of destruction. Holmes had sedulously strung up his apartment with explosives so that it would be turned into an inferno when the authorities arrived. Now one thing that troubles me is that others are out there dreaming similar dreams. I fear we shall discover that there are ever more of these creeps.
Commentators across America are all rummaging through their minds to ferret out something arresting to say about James Holmes. Well, all I can say is that he is a creep with no special talent, but what if there are more like him out there? Though I have not seen anyone mention it in all the commentary about the Aurora massacre, my fear is that the massacres are increasing in frequency. Could it be that there is gathering a sub-culture of a subculture of a subculture of young men peering out at the drama of Aurora, Colorado and preparing to surpass the carnage of Holmes and his peers? Perhaps it is time that the cameras and the commentators shut down about them. Forget them. They most assuredly seek attention. Let us agree not to give it to them.
It takes only a person of mediocre intelligence, no particular courage, and what Hannah Arendt, the twentieth century political theorist, famously called the banality of evil to commit a crime of the magnitude of the above losers. Let us stop commenting on them and turn to other things, such as the way journalists report these events.
Shortly after the Aurora massacre, The New York Times headlined that the atrocity was "Reviving Debate." What debate is the Times talking about? Five paragraphs into its story, the Times elaborated, "The nation was plunged into another debate about guns and violence." Actually, the Times, along with the other brain-dead liberals, wishes that the nation would be "plunged into another debate about guns and violence," but the debate is in the eyes of the beholders. There are now over 200 million guns in America. The time for debate was around 1900, and does anyone think that western cowboys, for instance, would have given up their guns easily? Perhaps among thoughtful people, the debates would never have taken place. Today Americans cannot even secure their borders. How are we going to collect all those guns? My guess is that if there is a debate, it will be among liberals. The rest of the country does not know what to do about public massacres. That is a problem. The liberals' solution is no solution at all.
Back in 1955, in Chicago, about the time of the famous Schuessler-Peterson murders, I heard a famous police reporter tell my parents that reporters of his era reported on such grisly crimes reticently. They did not reveal things that they knew might betray the investigators' plans to investigate the murder. And another thing -- they did not write much about the perpetrator of the crime once he was nabbed. They knew the creep and others like him were encouraged to undertake "copycat" crimes.
Right now, I fear that we may be at a point where copycats are planning to outdo Holmes and his colleagues. Let us leave them to sulk in their lonely cells. After all, there really is not much to say about them that is very interesting.
Timothy McVeigh should be included in the list of perps.
In no way, shape or form was Holmes a “nobody” or “loser” and, he definitely stands out from the rest of the guys mentioned.
At age 24, to be in a PhD Neuroscience program with an NIH grant is probably putting you above 99.9% of the rest of the 24 year olds in the country.
The Holmes family has been reported as extremely active Presbyterians. He went to church; I doubt he went to church in the last month, and perhaps he didn't go regularly once he started undergrad, but it was a religious family.
The boys at the New York Times live in their glory days - for them it's forever 1968 - and liberals are righting all wrongs. They prefer that to the truth - they're old and 'out of touch with today's reality'...
I am very intrigued what made Holmes do what he did. No one seems to have pegged him as capable of doing this heinous crime. I no longer am going to speculate, which I did at the beginning of all this....for which I am very sorry.
Speaking of religious murderers, we also have Dr. Nidal Hassan (sp?) who held the indoor record here in the USA until now-— or is this list just for younger people of the non-muz persuasion?
How about adding Ted Kaczynski?
I guess he became a loser/nobody after the massacre. He sure looked the part in court.
Hope you're not implying that non-attendance at church makes one more likely to be a mass killer.
What stops him from being a loser, his high IQ or his education?
“In no way, shape or form was Holmes a “nobody” or “loser” and, he definitely stands out from the rest of the guys mentioned.”
Shirley, you geste.
He was a B-student, unacceptable to a multi-degreed, adoptive father. The so-called “snap” incident, it’s been reported, was his failure of a final, which prompted his “withdrawal” from UC.
I’d say non-attendance at church or synagogue probably does raise their chance of being mass murderers.
On the other hand, regular attendance at a mosque also raises the mass murderer possibility.
Shows you the different bases of the religions - Christianity and Judaism do not appeal to the delusional mentally ill, but Islam does.
That distinction is described in Clayton Cramer's newest book in which he points out that every one of these non-political mass murderers had some sort of serious mental illness that in earlier decades would have resulted in their involuntary committment. He also points out that astonishing rise in violent crime in the 60's and 70's coincided almost exactly with the left's (led by the ACLU) push to deinstitutionalize these psychotic individuals.
The brilliance of the Left, and the MSM's shilling of the leftist points, is that they institute a policy that is sure to lead to an increase in human misery (in this case, deinstitutionalization), and then find a way to blame liberty itself for the inevitable tragedies.
So, according to the MSM, the way to keep psychotics from obtaining firearms is to prevent everyone from obtaining firearms. So we get proposals to enhance "background checks" for people with mental illness -- surely the definition that the left will insist on will include minor neuroses to which virtually everyone at some point in his or her life is subject, rather than the obvious altnernative of figuring out a civil commmittment procedure that treats the treatable, and protects society in the interim.
On the other hand, regular attendance at a mosque also raises the mass murderer possibility.
Shows you the different bases of the religions - Christianity and Judaism do not appeal to the delusional mentally ill, but Islam does.
Thanks for your civil reply, sometimes lacking on FR. I agree with all but your first statement; for example, I don't think my non-attendance at a church (I have been in a church many times but not on a regular basis) raises my chance of being a mass murderer.
Well maybe this why he was confused. They go to Penasquitos Lutheran Church in SD. Course it is elca, so confusion is rampant. Being elca and reported as active Presbyterians is gonna cause problems.
Ted Kaczynski cabin had a marked-up book by Al Gore - the nut was a Gore fan and believed in Global Warming. And he graduated Harvard - and taught at Berkeley - in short a liberal. Which is why he’s not talked about much by liberal elites in the MSM... This new killer is not exactly a ‘loser’ by most standards... well, up until he became a killer - at which point he’s a monster...
No, in your case I’m sure it doesn’t! What I meant, actually, is that a person who regularly attends a church or synagogue is probably plugged into a community and is not out there following his crazy fantasies. Generally, if someone goes off the rails in the church, it’s because of a personal dispute (was fired from a church job by the pastor, thought the organist was having an affair with his wife, or some such thing).
I was for deinstitutionalization before I was against it (sorry, Kerry) when it started in Florida back in the 60’s-’70s. I was working indirectly on helping to reduce the population at institutions for the developmentally disabled. Sure, there were higher functioning people who could have coped in the community, but the vast majority did a lot better in the institution. It was much worse for the mentally ill whom we now find under bridges and along river banks (as well as in jails). I am all for opening up the institutions and repopulating with appropriate individuals who need a safe place to be (and so do we out here in Society). Unfortunately, Loughner and Holmes would not be in there because they did nothing prior to their crimes for a judge to commit them. Right?
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