Mass Shooting in California

[JackRiddler]

What? Is this English gematria?

Now you're going to have to translate, because I even googled it and I still have no idea what it is or what you mean. (So I guess the answer is no, unless I did it unintentionally.)

[minime]

Your post strikes me as gibberish, as if you are distraught.

What do you think of 'New Girl'? You know the throwaway with Zooey Deschanel?

[JackRiddler]

I've no trouble with gibberish if that's what you see, but please don't project unknowable states of mind on me. Thanks.

[Laodicean]

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

NEWS IN BRIEF • Guns • Violence • News • ISSUE 50•21 • May 27, 2014

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said North Carolina resident Samuel Wipper, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-way ... his,36131/

[minime]

I've no trouble with gibberish if that's what you see, but please don't project unknowable states of mind on me. Thanks.

Quite so! Especially through the written word!

[8bitagent]

Welcome to the world of "hashtag activism"...I'm all for guerrilla street action if particular groups of people feel they are under duress. I admire the civil rights activists who faced brutal police action, bomb threats, violence, etc. Sometimes even death. America is spoiled. How come youths or people of an oppressed nature bandy together for targeted street action, but the most these college millennial trendoids can do is hashtag or reshare on their smart phone? If there is something rotten about the structure of society that needs changing, hashtagging ain't going to solve it. Nor will distorting facts. The way to combat college aged male aggression or disrespect toward women is to shame both women who support it and men who act like cavemen. Make the behavior seem embarrassing, much how public racism is seen as pathetic.

But I'm also kind of offended by what Hornaday wrote:

How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, “It’s not fair”?

She is essentially saying that fat/out of shape/nerd/"loser" type guys shouldn't even think about having dating experiences, that it's only in the movies and how dare movies portray that.
I've personally seen for a long time a militant hatred of anything even coming close to "nice guy" speak. I've in passing online mentioned that it sucks feeling lonely, or that it was an extra bonus seeing cute alternative girls at such and such shows and people react aggressively negative online. But if say a woman or gay guy said "was oogling hot dudes all night long" then well, that's fine. It's this post PC millennial online culture, especially with the hipster, college or general millennial set that's gone to the other extreme.

Of course people are missing the big picture: These 19-23 year old lone nut massacre situations happen like fucking clockwork. When the Tsarnaev killed four people in Boston, I was relieved there wasn't a backlash or "dialogue" about anti war people like myself...because essentially that is what his reason was according to his statements

Also those "hoaxer" conspiracy shitheads should just kill themselves. Almost everything about modern day conspiracy culture online makes me want to vomit

[8bitagent]

I expected social media to be consumed by a trite and boring shitfest about gun control. Instead everyone is having a trite and boring shitfest about feminism. Did you know that when a man is hitting on you saying you have a boyfriend is more effective than no because the guy hitting on you respects the man more than you? Thanks to #yesallwomen I now know this. Its really inspiring how we as a generation of socially aware people have managed to turn this tragedy into an opportunity for real discussion about real issues, which will theoretically eventually effect those issues. Unless of course you disagree with the discussion, in which case you are #partoftheproblem and you need to just listen. The brutal murder of 7 people shows that more than ever we NEED to have this discussion about people getting called "baby" by strangers.

I no longer fear the #NSA or #CIA or #Big Brother. I fear the #hashtagilluminati. Geez, now I worry if I even hint at feeling a little lonely or wishing I could meet someone...uh oh! I could be a potential terrorist!

[conniption]

...Also those "hoaxer" conspiracy shitheads should just kill themselves. Almost everything about modern day conspiracy culture online makes me want to vomit

Likewise, I'm sure.

[BrandonD]

...Also those "hoaxer" conspiracy shitheads should just kill themselves. Almost everything about modern day conspiracy culture online makes me want to vomit

Anger towards "hoaxer" conspiracy theorists is entirely misdirected.

Our leaders lie because powerful people are protected from the consequences of their lies. And in general, the average man doesn't have much concern for "the truth" as long as he is comfortable, or if the lie makes him feel safe.

In a society with the above characteristics, distrust of our "leaders" and the official presentation of major social events is a completely sane instinctive reaction.

To present theories that differ from the "official version" as fact is another matter, of course, and can cause harm. But doubting the official version of events is not at all irrational in contemporary society.

[IanEye]

Anger towards "hoaxer" conspiracy theorists is entirely misdirected.

I think it was photoshopped, myself. I don't think he was either a helper or a crisis actor.
I think all those people got fucked over, and that they all have skeletons in their closets which are preventing them from coming forward.
Big skeletons, with teeth. Either that or they are just greedy mother fuckers who are keeping quiet for the money.

To present theories that differ from the "official version" as fact is another matter, of course, and can cause harm. But doubting the official version of events is not at all irrational in contemporary society.

These pictures are faked. I honestly think that there was a staging somewhere that had "key" victims in it, and then there was the explosion at the actual marathon.
There is a combo plate here - the real event and the staged one. IMHO some of the victims were not even AT the bombing, therefore they weren't victims

i feel summer creepin' in
eye'm tired of this town again

.

[BrandonD]

Anger towards "hoaxer" conspiracy theorists is entirely misdirected.

I think it was photoshopped, myself. I don't think he was either a helper or a crisis actor.
I think all those people got fucked over, and that they all have skeletons in their closets which are preventing them from coming forward.
Big skeletons, with teeth. Either that or they are just greedy mother fuckers who are keeping quiet for the money.

To present theories that differ from the "official version" as fact is another matter, of course, and can cause harm. But doubting the official version of events is not at all irrational in contemporary society.

These pictures are faked. I honestly think that there was a staging somewhere that had "key" victims in it, and then there was the explosion at the actual marathon.
There is a combo plate here - the real event and the staged one. IMHO some of the victims were not even AT the bombing, therefore they weren't victims

i feel summer creepin' in
eye'm tired of this town again

.

You are aware, of course, that there is a difference between doubting the official version of events and concocting an entirely new narrative based upon faulty or incomplete data?

Example:

1) The government is lying about what it knows regarding UFOs - IMO this is an entirely sane conclusion based upon the facts.

2) The government is lying about UFOs because Truman made a pact with an alien race to eat a certain number of humans in exchange for technology - not quite as sane of a conclusion.

To a person with a shallow degree of thought, each of these instances amount to the same when they are in fact entirely different.

As I said before, doubting the official version of events is totally sane, and in my opinion, healthy. It is foolish to blindly trust people who have been proven to lie again and again. This does not mean one is required to construct a false narrative to fill in the area where data is lacking. One simply refrains from drawing a conclusion. Zealots are generally the least informed, no matter what side of the argument they stand on.

[American Dream]

http://www.leninology.com/2014/05/takin ... ously.html

WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2014

Taking Elliot Rodger seriously.

TW: This is an article about about the beliefs and ideologies which enabled the actions of a misogynist mass killer.

Already, the possibility that the misogynist killer Elliot Rodger was 'mentally ill' is being floated in the media as an explanation for his actions.

Mental illness seems highly plausible, and the absence of a decisive intervention on this axis may be an important element of the horror. However, as with the Breivik murders, the category of mental illness can perform a certain ideological function: that of quarantining an inescapably social and political outburst within the category of psychological deviance. The sickening logic of Rodger’s misogyny, the way it draws on ubiquitous cultural tropes, has been outstandingly assayed by Laurie Penny. But invoking mental illness has allowed some commentators to deny the centrality of misogyny to Rodger's actions.

This is why it is essential, though not sufficient, to listen to what Rodger says. The killer left a detailed life story, and many video diaries, and his obsessions with gender, class and race, his framework of privilege and entitlement, structure the entirety of his account. The hatred and resentment toward women in particular, and the masculinist fantasies of retribution and cleansing, provide the quilting point, through which he explains his issues to himself: everything can be resolved if only they can be made to pay. And there is no obvious reason why a mental illness should express itself in such a toxic fusion of gendered, classed and raced resentment and rage, leading to the premeditated "slaughter" of seven people (including himself), like “animals".

Before going any further, I would add that in explaining himself the killer clearly sought to aestheticise his actions, and courted precisely the wide audience for his own gargantuan melodrama that he regarded as befitting his proper status, and which he has now obtained. As he put it, "infamy is better than total obscurity". To talk about him, to review and punctuate his own words, is to be partially complicit in this. But there is one way in which to avoid being complicit, and that is to categorically reject the demonological approach and to notice the appallingly quotidian, commonplace nature of the ideologies informing this atrocity, and the equally too common systemic and individual violence against women that these ideologies are linked to. Because Rodger is not so unusual among twenty-something males. You've met men like him. His issues, his insecurities, the huge burden of resentment and shame, the ideology of violent women-hatred that he gives realisation to, are all too widespread. And this is what is most frightening, and what is missed by the rush to confine this case to a psychological black box.


The supreme gentleman
We could begin with Rodger relaxing in a comfortable BMW. He addresses the camera on his dashboard, ostentatiously taking a refreshing sip of a vanilla latte in a cardboard Starbucks cup. He savours the taste, and remarks on his beverage. He seems to be reaching for the air of a connoisseur, taking time to indulge the finer things in life.

Not long afterwards, he is expatiating on his own virtues. "I’m civilised. Intelligent. Sophisticated. I have a sense of style." In other video clips, he refers to himself repeatedly as "beautiful", "such a magnificent guy", "the supreme gentleman". This is a performance, but it is also real in the sense is that it is very much what he wants to believe, what he thinks is his due and appropriate status, denied him by others.

This sense of his proper worth is directly linked to his social class. His understanding of his place in the world and what it entitles him to is directly explored in the narrative history he gives of his family in his life story. His father hailed "from the prestigious Rodger family; a family that was once part of the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression." His grandfather was "...a renowned photojournalist who had taken very famous photographs during the Second World War, though he failed to reacquire the family's lost fortune." His mother “was born in Malaysia, and moved to England at a young age to work as a nurse on several film sets, where she became friends with very important individuals in the film industry, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. She even dated George Lucas for a short time.”

Later, when describing the "turning point" in his life, when contentment gives way to constant misery as he reaches puberty and is inducted into high school, he invokes the abject decline in his status consequent on his mother deciding to move to an apartment. "An apartment! I had never lived in an apartment before, and I always thought of apartments as being poor and low-class. I would be embarrassed to admit it to anyone." And then, as his despair escalates: "Father suffered through a deep financial setback ... Could things get any worse for me? As a result, my father abruptly cut off all of the child-support payments he was paying my mother. My mother was forced to find a better-paying job to make up for it, and she had to move out of her house to a condominium close by."

His concept of where women fit into this story of himself begins with his mother and grandmother, who each seem to have set aside their entire life, practically negating their own prior existence, in order to serve him as an infant. “My mother gave up her nursing career to stay at home and look after me. My grandma on my mother’s side, who I would call Ah Mah, moved in with us to help out my mother.”

He describes those early years as "blissful". Indeed, they might have continued to be blissful but for the arrival of a sister just before his fifth birthday. He experienced illness the night of her birth: "a bad omen", he remarks. The arrival of a sister means he is no longer able to monopolise attention. It means that his sister gets to choose sometimes. It means that he has to compete. Because he is "by nature ... a very jealous person". And he first experiences this aspect of himself in a strong way at the age of nine, when he finds that family friends prefer to play with his sister rather than him. He cries bitterly. Already, a girl is stealing his enjoyment, but it's just the beginning. "Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings [sic] that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain. The feelings of jealousy I felt at nine-years-old were frustrating, but they were nothing compared to how I would feel once I hit puberty and have to watch girls choosing other boys over me". It is at this point, and no other, that he begins to discover that the world is not a meritocracy. And it is this outrage, this "insult", this "injustice", that must be retributed, "punished", visited with destruction.

This classed, gendered sense of his proper place in the world is, in fact, nothing more than an expression of privilege. He has been socialised to understand that his masculinity and his social class entitle him to everything, that no one should have more than he does. He constantly evokes his privilege as obvious reasons why a "girl" should want him and not someone else. "I’ve travelled all over the world, I’ve so much to talk about," he explains. In his manifesto, he records how as a four year old he was "already a world-traveler", having visited "six countries" already. "Who else could say that?" "I’m sophisticated," he says in a video diary. "I have a nice car, a BMW. … These sunglasses here. They’re $300. Giorgio Armani. I’ll put ‘em on. See? … Look at how fabulous I look." Rodger has much to say about this, and about the symbolic violence constantly visited on him by "girls", and to a lesser degree by the "losers" and "slobs" who have unjustly monopolised their affection and attention.

Prestigious. Renowned. Important. Poor. Low Class. Losers.


Beautiful
But his sense of place is also raced. This is only subtly alluded to in his video entries. The women - "girls" - he demands attention from are "blonde". Repeatedly, he utters the phrase "beautiful blonde girls", often followed by a reference to the "absolute stupid, obnoxious-looking douchebags" they're with.

What matters here is what "blonde" means to him. It seems to mean that to have a "blonde" girlfriend would 'reflect' well on him, on his ego-ideal. It seems to mean that the girl would make up for his lack of blondness. He expresses, in his 'manifesto', unease about his own 'mixed-race' background, his mother being from Malaysia. This made him "different from the normal fully-white kids". It was part of his being "uncool" and unpopular from an early age, and later part of the narcissistic injury which he describes as the "turning point" in his life, and which is never staunched. His "first act" upon discovering that he was "uncool" was to "ask my parents to allow me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful."

His disdain for non-white people is evident - recorded, for instance, in his displeasure at, aged 20, discovering that his new apartment mates were "of the Hispanic race" (and also "rowdy, low-class types"). Or his rage at seeing "this Asian guy" "talking to a white girl". "I always felt as if white girls thought less of me because I was half-Asian, but then I see this white girl at the party talking to a full-blooded Asian. I never had that kind of attention from a white girl! And white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially the blondes. How could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them?"

This is internalised racism. “As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin,” Fanon wrote, “I catch myself hating the Negro”. Rodger hates the “Asian” in him. He hates himself for not being "normal" and “fully-white”. A notable recollection of a high school bullying incident no doubt alludes to this fascination with blondness. A "tall", "blonde" boy bullies him and the "pretty girls" with him side with the "evil bastard". Women and girls, he infers "flock to these men". He hates "the girls even more than the bullies because of this". His automatic, socialised reaction is to hate the women who don't bully him more than the men who do.
He may well have thought that this tall, blond-haired bully was "beautiful". But in his video diaries, he insists that it is he who is "beautiful", and turns the "loser" label back on the men whom "girls" and "women" "flock to". It is these men who are "unworthy" "slobs". "I see this disgusting looking loser. Well, he’s a loser in my opinion. And he walks in with these two beautiful blonde women by his side. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was so… insulted by that, because I should be the one with the girls."

His insecurities prevail. He describes himself in his life story as being "shy by nature", wanting to be friends with the cool kids, but terrified that they will think him "weird". He withdraws from everyone rather than risk a slight. He says: “I want to feel that sense of being worthy of a girl’s love”. And though he grandiosely affirms that he is, it seems obvious that the whole world is telling him, and he believes, that he is not. His class and gender should assure his dominance - this would be "fair", "good and pure", this would be meritocratic - but his not-quite-white racial status deprives him of it. Because women and girls flock to the evil, beautiful blond boys and men - or worse, to men even less racially "normal" than he. This complaint, that 'women dig jerks', is the cri ce coeur of so many men socialised to believe that female attention is theirs as a birthright.

Normal. Cool. Uncool. Weird.


Narcissistic injury, rage and retribution
The original narcissistic injury driving Rodger, incurred upon being admitted to high school, thus seems to have pivoted upon his evident racial self-hatred, sense of class decline and above all his feeling of thwarted gender entitlement. The ensuing narcissistic rage spirals, terrifyingly and wrenchingly, in each recorded segment. The offence to his status, to his entitlement, to who he is, and what his place is in the world, is limitless. "Every single day I have to be insulted". "It's such an injustice." He laments how "sad and unfair my life has been, all because girls haven't been attracted to me". He blames "girls" for stealing his enjoyment in life. "You girls have starved me of sex and enjoyment and pleasure for my entire youth." "You’ve taken eight years away from my life. Eight years I’ll never get back. D’you know how much misery you’ve caused me? I’m such a nice guy, why won’t you give me a chance?"

At last, he hands down judgment. His abandonment by females is "the supreme crime". "If I can’t have you," he warns women, "I will destroy you." They will get "what you deserve: utter annihilation." And he will "slaughter" not just women, but also those beautiful blond slob loser men who have persecuted him. He will be "a god", and they will be "animals".

This desire to annihilate women is already signalled at some length in his life story. He writes, in the manner of a comic book villain, that it's time to "abolish sex" by abolishing women. They must be "quarantined like the plague they are", sent to "concentration camps" and deliberately "starved to death" while a new despotic ruler exerts total control "over every aspect of society" to "direct it towards a good and pure place". He envisions himself as the ruler in question, the man of steel. He aspires to the immortality of the machine.

This is a common masculinist fantasy, iterated in a thousand science fiction scenarios. "The most urgent task of the man of steel," Klaus Theweleit argued in Male Fantasies, "is to pursue, to dam in, and to subdue any force that threatens to transform him back into the horribly disorganized jumble of flesh, hair, skin, bones, intestines and feelings that calls itself human." Since, in this fantasy, women represent everything that is degenerative (Rodger has much to say about degeneracy and its connection to the sexual act), it is they who must be subdued. Rodger’s gendered snuff dreams are the stock of so many male internet trolls. Indeed he evinces the classic psychology of the troll in his 'manifesto': "It felt horrible to be teased and bullied … but at the same time I got a kick out of getting so much attention." The difference is that he then enacts the fantasies that make below-the-line comments cesspits.

The element of performance, articulating the baseline ideology of the internet misogynist in the idiom of pulp fiction, continued to the horrifying end. In the final video before the massacre, his assumed persona, always unconvincing, became a caricature. The words caught in his mouth, the syllables drawn out or garbled. His cold sneer became a gurn, and his educated patter gave way to incoherence. He exhaled so much genuine abject misery and hate, and yet the heel mannerisms, the forced 'evil laugh', the 'triumphant' words of revenge, were more stagey and hammed up than ever. He impersonated the "godlike" power that, in a sense, he always believed himself entitled to. Except that, it wasn't just an act. It really was heartstoppingly terrifying. He really did mean to kill.


So, on 23 May, Rodger embarked on his "slaughter". His first three kills could have been achieved far more easily with a gun, but he chose a method that required proximity and exertion. He began, seemingly armed with machetes, a hammer and a knife, by repeatedly stabbing three men to death in his apartment building. For these, his inaugural murders, he chose 'Asian' victims. Having done this, he set out to stalk the streets around the sorority houses where those "beautiful blonde girls" lived, this time using an assault weapon to "destroy" the women he could not have. He killed six people, and wounded thirteen. Then he killed himself.

Elliot Rodger was not so unusual.

[Searcher08]

[JackRiddler]

To talk about him, to review and punctuate his own words, is to be partially complicit in this. But there is one way in which to avoid being complicit, and that is to categorically reject the demonological approach and to notice the appallingly quotidian, commonplace nature of the ideologies informing this atrocity, and the equally too common systemic and individual violence against women that these ideologies are linked to. Because Rodger is not so unusual among twenty-something males. You've met men like him. His issues, his insecurities, the huge burden of resentment and shame, the ideology of violent women-hatred that he gives realisation to, are all too widespread. And this is what is most frightening, and what is missed by the rush to confine this case to a psychological black box.

Nothing remarkable about Rodger. As I was saying before, though it came across as gibberish to at least one.

"You've met men like him." Many of us have been men like him, deep inside or at the surface, for moments, for times; generally without the threat of violence, always also with the potential to not be that way, to be better humans. Imagine him as the same person with the same attitudes to women and society, but without an uncontrolled drive to commit violence. Imagine him also, through happenstance, as a sexual "winner." Imagine him enjoying something closer to his ideal life, feeling superior and enjoying the available services of his perceived inferiors. What would his dream life look like?

But I'm also kind of offended by what Hornaday wrote:

How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, “It’s not fair”?

She is essentially saying that fat/out of shape/nerd/"loser" type guys shouldn't even think about having dating experiences, that it's only in the movies and how dare movies portray that.

In fact, she's showing such a strong prejudice against "fat/out of shape/nerd/'loser' type guys" that she can't even perceive that Rodger is not that type of guy at all! Confronted with his statements, she projects her societally conditioned image of the "loser" on him (poor Seth Rogen) and misses the point, spectacularly, that she shares this image of the "loser" with Rodger, and that Rodger is exactly the asshole "winner" type he affects to hate. He's good looking, in shape, educated, owns a BMW, successful in consumerist terms. His problem is that he hasn't gotten his share of available women, probably because he's too obviously a time-bomb. He was just a few adjustments away from being an admired member of his society, at least for a time.

[semper occultus]

……please don't project unknowable states of mind on me…… Thanks.

……well if that’s not allowed then this whole thread & 30% of related global media output would be extinguished at a stroke …..possibly no bad thing after :-

He writes, in the manner of a comic book villain, that it's time to "abolish sex" by abolishing women. They must be "quarantined like the plague they are", sent to "concentration camps" and deliberately "starved to death" while a new despotic ruler exerts total control "over every aspect of society" to "direct it towards a good and pure place". He envisions himself as the ruler in question, the man of steel. He aspires to the immortality of the machine.

…gosh that sounds so….normal….

The difference is that he then enacts the fantasies that make below-the-line comments cesspits.

…er… no shit sherlock, there’s a commonly used term for that “…not being able to distinguish the outside world & its consequences from what’s going in your head…” sort-of-thing….

And there is no obvious reason why a mental illness should express itself in such a toxic fusion of gendered, classed and raced resentment and rage, leading to the premeditated "slaughter" of seven people (including himself), like “animals".

Your medical qualification for this is what exactly ?

& …oooh ooooh you missed out “…othered…”…ffs man what’s the matter with you ?

Taking Elliot Rodger seriously

I do,I do….but you, dear Leninist-writer are a rather different matter…