So which feature that "the Internet" has learned about the "Hunger Games" assistant producer's son, who has mass-murdered people in California, explain his horrific act?
The Internet: "This mass murder will prove my theory about 1) white males 2) racism 3) guns 4) autism 5) rich people 6) America 7) [blank]"
— CatherineFitzpatrick (@catfitz) May 25, 2014
It must be because he's American! Americans have violent gun culture!
Except, today, in Belgium, a Belgian killed people outside the Jewish museum. Mass shootings have occurred in Norway and Germany and Russia and many other places, too.
It must be because he's a white male! White male culture is evil! Homo albicans=violent mutant., you know? Except, the last big mass shooting we had in the Navy Yard was committed by a black man.
It must be because he's rich! Affluenza!
Except, poor people commit mass shootings too.
It must be his misogyny! SO MANY angry feminists are saying this, it must be true!
Except, he stabbed to death his male room mates and shot some male passers-by -- and lots of misogynists out there are annoying enough, and even commit sexual attacks, but they don't mass murder.
It must be because he had access to guns! It was way too easy.
Except, there are more guns than people in the United States, and most of their owners don't commit mass murder every weekend.
It must be due to violent American culture, anyway!
Sure, but most people who watched the Hunger Games didn't go out and shoot people.
It must be due to poor parenting!
Yes, except if that were true, we'd have millions of mass shootings, not a handful.
The Internet is to blame!
Yes, I think so. Most don't.
It must be due to psychotropic drugs!
Yes, I'd tend to agree, except most people being given these drugs don't commit murder.
It must be due to his Asperger's Syndrome condition!
Yes, I'd tend to agree, and have written at length about this in the past, and unlike the people denying any relationship, I'm happy to concede that most Asperger's suffererers don't commit mass murder -- and continue to debate it openly.
And no, you won't get me to write some politically-correct version of this statement not using the term "patient" or "sufferer" or "syndrome" or whatever "are, not have" or "have, not are" version you find PC today. No one would elect to become an Asperger's patient, and no, it is not "removed" from psychiatric manuals, it is simply moved to the autism section.
It must be due to his being a racist! Because he posted on racist forums and said racist things.
Well, except there are a huge number of racists out there, especially anonymous Internet racists, and they don't commit mass murder.
It must be due to violent video games and violent movies!
Yes, I think so, but then, most people who watch or play those violent things don't commit murder.
It must be due to liberal laws that make it impossible to detain for any significant amount of time -- or even at all! - violent persons who have made threats to themselves or others.
That would be my guess, but that's not one people are willing to accept or debate, and the fact is there, too, many people with mental illness who even say violent things or watch voilent movies or play violent games don't commit mass murder.
It must be due to a combination of all of some of these factors!
Yes, exactly. But which one?
The Internet debates on this are sterile, because at times like this, the Indigo Children lobby comes out in full force and tries to savage to death anybody who disagrees that their particularly reductive, fanciful Internet-bred theories of causality are an explanation of anything except their simple, closed minds.
Also the liberals try to insist that it's all about racism -- their club to beat every political opponent -- and can't listen to reason. The last big shooter was black -- what was his excuse? What does he have in common with other shooters, though? Mental illness.
So what if you made its so every psychiatrist mandated to report every patient with violent tendencies, expressions, reports from relatives, etc. was required -- just as they are with signs of child abuse -- to report it to a master registery that must be cleared before a gun sale? That would be helpful. Good luck with that. Too many people will claim it will lead to mentally ill not seeking help. That it would also lead to health innocent people from being shot to death by mentally ill people who buy guns doesn't count.
The precise combination of factors aren't known. But it's likely "American" or "male" or "white" aren't chief among them, and "mentally ill" and "access to guns" and "violent videos/movies" are more relevant.
There are ferocious lobbies of Aspies who refuse to ever look at the violence in a few of their number, despite some very obvious cases, like Adam Lanza. For months on end, we were told there was no firm diagnosis, that it wasn't relevant, that other factors were relevant -- until finally his file was released and it was harder to deny. And what really, really stood out was how hard it was for even wealthy parents to get this tyrant in their midst, about to mass-murder people, into any kind of safe place where he couldn't harm himself or others, i.e. a mental asylum. Yet that's the least factor that anyone ever wants to look at during these times, so fearful are they of losing freedoms.
I have written about a factor I think is key in these cases -- the problem of "hero parents" mythology around autism patients and the inability of everybody to be a hero patient -- which sets them, their child, and all of us up for these awful cases.
The parent of the 10-year-old Aspie who is fragile, mild, withdrawn, chasing butterflies, and heavily protected and interfaced by his parents who love him and do absolutely everything for him, at their own expense, is contrasted to the parents of older teenage Aspies who are now themselves withdrawn and fragile, as their child no longer chases butterflies but joins gun forums and even collects guns and then uses them.
What really stands out for me in this hugely documented case is how hard it is to get people locked up who should absolutely be instantly locked up. Parents call the police over really alarming and horrible videos that threaten killing people, and it's not enough. You know, like jihadist videos weren't enough to lock up the Tsarnaev brothers.
Because of the First Amendment.
But you could keep the First Amendment intact if the stigma of mental illness was removed -- not by pretending that some percentage of people on the autism spectrum are *not* violent, when they are -- and not by pretending violent culture doesn't lead to mental illness, when it does. But by really paying attention and having the right, proper facilities that need not abuse civil rights to do the job that also protects the civil right of people to life and freedom from mayhem caused by crazy people with guns.
These solutions are complicated, expensive, hard to implement when screaming entitlement lobbies are thwarting progress at every inch of the way, but as more and more of these awful things happen, likely the solutions are going to come whether some like it or not.
I'd like it to be in the direction of gun control and easier non-voluntary mental illness hospitalization rather than in the direction of trying to politically condemn white males, violent movies, racism, or a host of other vaguely-defined ills that aren't fixed by the broken socialist utopia "progressives" with their fractured interest group coercion that want to impose it on us, anyway.
Why? Because while I'm all for condemning violent culture, white or black, male or female, I don't think the solution of socialism that most people think will cure this will work, any more than it did in societies like France or Russia or China where it has not worked.
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