'Connecticut shooting, white males, and mass murder'

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2012-12-15 20:27

Article here. Excerpt:

'I want to say this next bit very carefully. It is absolutely true that white men have lost a lot of power in the last few decades. Inasmuch as these shooters are angry about feelings of powerlessness, their feelings are at least understandable. However, white men needed to lose a lot of power. Without exaggerating, one could say that a history of America is a history of white men lording power over... pretty much anyone who wasn't a white man. If America was ever going to truly be a land of equality, white men needed to lose their power.

The thing is, losing power hurts. That's the "aggrieve" part of aggrieved entitlement. It's one thing for a bunch of white men to feel hurt because they are no longer the kings of their own private castles, rulers of all they survey. It's another thing for them to feel like they're entitled to power, and more importantly, entitled to punish others for taking it away. And that -- aggrievement plus the feeling of entitlement -- is what may well drive people like Adam Lanza to these horrific crimes.

There's another point of commonality for many -- perhaps most -- of these crimes. Most of the perpetrators end up dead. Many kill themselves at the end of the spree, while others commit what is known as "suicide by cop," forcing police to shoot them rather than submit to arrest. This tendency is consistent with aggrieved entitlement. Masculinity, for many white men, is identical to sense of self. To be a man is literally the same as being masculine. This is particularly true of men in strongly Conservative Christian areas where homosexuality and femininity are equated. For some of these men, to be stripped of masculinity is to be redefined as nothing worthwhile. When someone feels like nothing, suicide often feels like a reasonable option. For someone who's really, really mad about feeling like nothing, taking revenge first may add a bit of satisfaction and righteous vengeance.'

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Comments

The nutcase who did this didn't do it because he was white male, any more than the two black men who went around D.C. shooting people from the back of their care (Google "the D.C. sniper" if you need to) were lashing out due to some race-oriented sense of powerlessness. They were in fact just criminally insane, just like this guy was.

The firearms he used were not his. They were his mother's, licensed and legal. He, her, and his brother used to go target-shooting together. (See http://gothamist.com/2012/12/15/ct_mass_school_shooting_suspect_for.php ) So if anyone wants to blame someone for introducing this guy to guns, blame his mother. But blame her for his actions? No. For those, it's all on him.

Now, he was 20. Is 20 years enough time for a person to decide he has been "rendered powerless, righteously so, taken down from his place of privilege and dominance" or some claptrap like that and so reply by going into a kindergarten and murdering a bunch of helpless children and killing unarmed teachers?

It rather strikes me that if that was the base of his motivation he probably would have gone after people he thought were associated with the "rendering of him powerless". I doubt it'd be small children.

So as for this article, it's written by someone who is, let's just say, myopic and utterly out of touch. Maybe it's his way of trying to make sense of it all. This is why people make up stories or myths-- to try to make sense of things they don't have answers for. But in keeping with the principle set forth by Occam's Razor, there is a far simpler explanation: the a$$hole was a lunatic, and a psychotic homicidal one at that. He decided he'd take his mother's guns, drive her car around and kill her, then go kill a bunch of children and teachers, then himself. And he did it because he was nuts. Now, the police may find evidence he was angry with something or someone, maybe his mother. Fine. But that doesn't constitute "motivation". Everyone gets angry at someone at some point, especially parents. But of all the people who have been angry at their parents, even for good reason (and raise your hand if you have *not* been-- see, no one is raising their hand...), the vast majority of people have not a) murdered them nor b) murdered a bunch of kids and teachers in the school nearby. So what is actually the most rational explanation for the a$$hole's behavior? He was criminally, homicidally, and suicidally insane. And that's that.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2012-12-15 23:28

And I would add that our cultural hatred of men and boys plays a part in igniting the psychotic fringe. Men and boys have been blamed for every ill in our society, blamed for war, blamed for the bad economy, blamed for global warming, blamed for any problem a woman might face, blamed for just about everything. And yes, white males are at the top of the list of those blamed. All the while women are given perpetual pep rallies for their inherent goodness. How long can any group carry this sort of cultural shadow? The first to crack under its weight are surely those who are imbalanced, beaten down, and mentally vulnerable. By allowing the hatred of men and boys we have created an environment that is partly responsible. Expect more of the same.

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Submitted by Tom on Sun, 2012-12-16 11:57