How about a hateful racist that was mentally ill? Covers all the bases.
How about a hateful racist that was mentally ill? Covers all the bases.
Why not? Killing each other is one of the things people do best. Were the Nazis all mentally ill? What about hundreds of thousands of young Hutus in 1994? All the gang shooters to ever bust off a shot in Roseland on a summer weekend?
Mentally stable people are full 100% capable of killing people. I'm capable of killing people. ****, many members of this forum have killed people. Well, not without a reason you say. Reasoning is subjective. Good reason, bad reason, whatever. All we need is a reason. The same guy on the sidewalk walking by my house at 4:00 pm would be bleeding out on my hardwoods if I found him in my bedroom at 4:00 am. There's my reason. Mop top's reason for shooting up a church? Not as good, right? That's my opinion. Still the same act. Killing other people. I'm just as capable of it as he is.
The mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. I get real tired of every person that commits a violent act being pawned off as "crazy". This kid was an outcast loser who, for whatever reason, decided to subscribe to white supremacy to make himself feel better and more in control and give his daily life a sense of meaning. He used the capacity for violence we all have in a way that is contrary to the type of society we should be working to build.*
"How could a person be capable of such violence" cracks me up. We're a disgusting animal. Maybe "mental illness" is our default state. Somewhere right now some dude is raping a baby and we sit around talking about morals. We are an evolutionary mistake. We congealed in the primordial soup a bit too long and this is what happened.
Morality is subjective and flexible and easily overruled by something as seemingly silly as fake authority. Stanley Millgram, Yale University, 1961. We know right from wrong, but that's not what governs most of us. Social norms do. If everyone else has a machete or a can of Zyklon B, we pick one up too, even if we feel bad about it. This is proven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
*Now with our big brains and our luxury of not having to work to eat 24/7, we can attempt to develop a society that's a bit kinder and gentler to our fellow man. It's proving to be a little tough, though. Feels unnatural and scary to many.
Race superiority. Separatists and supremacists and gang members - they all are trying to fill something inside of with something easier than introspection and personal evolution. A life in prison is easier than coming to grips with your own failures and shortcomings.
Mental illness is real and the mentally ill do commit violent crimes. But you don't have to be crazy to murder. In fact most murderers are just like you and me. I sat in on a first degree murder trail. Dude shot his wife 7 times one morning before breakfast. Nice, polite, normal suburban dude. Sane. Just decided one day he'd like to see his wife with some extra holes in her. Was he crazy? Nope. We come hardwired for violence. We're mammals, with too much time on our hands, and brains that doubled in size in a remarkably short time for no ******* good reason. Cognitive dissonance is us and we are it. Locked in eternal battle. Id, ego, superego, superheros, superhighways, drugs, planes, trains, automobiles, is anyone still reading this ****? I've seen people beat each other's teeth out for reasons they couldn't articulate for a million dollars. We're f*cking chimps, man. Shaved chimps with mortgages and .45s.
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Well said ridge.....normal is a state of being that we attempt to convey to mask our eccentricities, but in the end we are all f*%#$% weirdos.
We all have the capacity to do f*cked up ****. How many of us have ever had the urge to just haul off and beat the crap out of someone? Dumbass uncle at Thanksgiving, rude guy in line at the bank, guy who cut you off in traffic? Who among us hasn't felt real, burning anger? Ever been in a heated fight with a girlfriend or wife and had a flash of a violent thought you'd never act on? Ever been cheated on and felt anger over that? What the fawk kind of primal, socially-fueled emotion is that? Lotta people been killed over affairs in the last 100 years in America. People touching other people in a way we invented contracts to prohibit. Results in murder. A lot more people have taken a step back, thought about things for a minute, let that emotion cool off and gotten on with their lives without violence.
We all have violent thoughts and urges and we all feel insecure. If you don't, you're a liar or an alien. You have two choices when a f*cked up thought comes into your head: own it, think about it, acknowledge that it is likely a result of something like your own personal insecurities. Evolve. Move on. Grow. Be a better person. Become more comfortable with your insecurities and stop being as defensive. Change what you don't like about yourself. Embarrassment be damned.
Or you stoke it. You stoke that fire. Outcast? Downtrodden? Poor? Ugly? Social skills lacking? Assign that unsettling feeling to something that in no way caused it. Black people, maybe. Find other people who have done the same. Find powerful groups and organizations and intellectuals who have written books about the subject. South Africa, Rhodesia, 3rd Reich. Feel a part of something. Convince yourself that people that you probably have little to no interaction with have ruined your life, your country, your peers. That's why you don't fit in. You never had a chance. They ruined it for you. Take back what's yours. Feel your new found power. Become deluded with it. Murder. Crazy? No. Sad, disgusting, and reprehensible? Yup. But sad is our milieu.
Our brains are supercars and most of us can't handle them. Into the wall we go.
We all have violent thoughts and urges and we all feel insecure. If you don't, you're a liar or an alien. You have two choices when a f*cked up thought comes into your head: own it, think about it, acknowledge that it is likely a result of something like your own personal insecurities. Evolve. Move on. Grow. Be a better person. Become more comfortable with your insecurities and stop being as defensive. Change what you don't like about yourself. Embarrassment be damned.
Or you stoke it. You stoke that fire. Outcast? Downtrodden? Poor? Ugly? Social skills lacking? Assign that unsettling feeling to something that in no way caused it. Black people, maybe. Find other people who have done the same. Find powerful groups and organizations and intellectuals who have written books about the subject. South Africa, Rhodesia, 3rd Reich. Feel a part of something. Convince yourself that people that you probably have little to no interaction with have ruined your life, your country, your peers. That's why you don't fit in. You never had a chance. They ruined it for you. Take back what's yours. Feel your new found power. Become deluded with it. Murder. Crazy? No. Sad, disgusting, and reprehensible? Yup. But sad is our milieu.
Our brains are supercars and most of us can't handle them. Into the wall we go.
Why are you particularly struck by the shooters motive? Motive is important for proving intent in court but beyond that why? I see this as a crime of murder and perhaps terrorism because he wished (shooters own words to police) to start a race war with another Zimmerman-like incident. But his crime isn't evil, wrong or bad thinking, it was the act of committing the murder of nine people. To use your words "one side", of which my many very Liberal friends from where I grew up and went to school (New York City) are a part, see it as very important to stress the racism even over the murder because it feeds a narrative they already believe. Namely, that the large mass of white, rural, Christian, Southern or Western, with perhaps an exception for Colorado, are arming up to commit atrocities because of lax US gun laws.
I do think it was an error for Fox News to initially push the "maybe this was anti-Christian" line. Why engage in such speculation? Simply wait until some facts are known - there was no need to speculate, it just makes things worse and since it turned out to be wrong in this case it also makes Fox look foolish. We've seen many instances of Liberal attribution of crimes to racism that turned out later to be incorrect (they usually get a page 15 retraction) like with the famously mis-reported "racist" Church burnings. However, here the Liberal boogeyman was real. It is what they needed(I am NOT saying wanted) to press hard for laws to disarm those who have committed no crime under the Logic that all non-Liberal North Eastern or large urban area dwellers are basically the same racist powder kegs waiting to explode. Did I weigh-in enough for starters?
I'm just confused ... Are you just trying to be a "Top Mod" or something by threatening to close the thread? What's with the negative attitude?
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Needlessly tragic.
I can't think of any other way to describe things like this.
I can't think of any other way to describe things like this.
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