I was going to wrote a long article about why I think we have more young men indulging in mass shootings than before in our history. But David Goldman (a.k.a. “Spengler”) beat me to it, and explained it more briefly.
They are individuals cut off from society, destabilized by change and despairing of their own place in the world.
That’s a pretty good summation of the problem. What’s more interesting is the underlying cause:
Everyone used to matter. No-one matters anymore, not at least in the postmodern dystopia of invented identity.
And if nobody matters, of course, then killing another person, or a group of people (in the mind of the shooter) is of no consequence — and more chillingly, can be triggered by just about any event that “traumatizes” these people.
Stood up for yet another date? Load up Mom’s AR and head for the mall. Cut off in traffic? Start shooting at random cars from an overpass. Hear some politician say something that upsets you? Oh, look: a primary school. And so on.
What’s frightening about all this is that these fragile snowflakes can be set off by literally anything — sheesh, a dropped connection on their phone call could lead to ten innocent people dead.
And if there’s no chance of escape, then it’s small wonder that these shooters commit suicide because, as Goldman so accurately notes, if literally nobody’s life means anything, then your own is just another worthless existence.
What this means is that we’re seeing the end game of post-modernism and the anomie it creates — and it’s small wonder that the most outraged at its manifestation are those who have engendered the mindset.
Read the whole article at the link. Kevin Williams also points out that America didn’t get an escalation of terrorist attacks after 9/11 from Al-Qa’eda:
We got it from a lot of dysfunctional young white guys from suburbia.
What’s troubling is that I don’t see how we can reverse post-modernism quickly without a series of totalitarian solutions. Leftists, of course, want to enact their own series of totalitarian “solutions”: gun control / confiscation, First Amendment limitations (like this one), and even Fourth- and Fifth Amendment encroachment (e.g. red flag legislation), when all but the most dense people know full well that these won’t solve anything. (For Lefties, of course, that doesn’t matter because for them, intention is all that counts: outcome is irrelevant.)
Ignoring the loonies above, it seems clear that what our society needs is a return to First Principles: Honor, Family, Love Of Country, and so on. How to get there, even gradually, is not easy and I don’t think we can do it.
I just wish we had people of the stature of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to create and guide the process. What I’m afraid we’re going to get instead is Robespierre, Lenin and Pol Pot — and all the squalling from the media aside, those three are going to come from the Left.
I think I’m going to go and buy another gun. From an individual, not a FFL. You all know why. Something small, handy and pretty, but effective. Like this Henry lever rifle in .357 Magnum (so I don’t have to stock up with yet another caliber):
What worries me is that no sooner will I get it than it will be lost in an unforeseeable canoeing accident. What a waste…
Not bad but there’s a little more to it than that.
Between July 16 and July 28th, 2019, There Were 36 Mass Shootings Across the United States: Blacks Were Suspects in 34 of Them
http://www.unz.com/sbpdl/between-july-16-and-july-28th-2019-there-were-36-mass-shootings-across-the-united-states-a-black-shooter-committed-34-of-them/
Revenge of the Millennials
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2019/08/revenge-of-millennials.html
Build your own from an 80% lower. Try a Glock 21 from a Polymer 80 PF45. I know you abhor Glocks, but, remember, this would be a disposable, throw-down gun.
Well, what can we expect out of this wonderous age we live in full of enlightenment, instant information, more comfort and food and peace than ever before in the history of the world and constant dis-satisfaction, reasons beyond number to be offended by something, ethics and morals whatever one wants (that day), no sense of obligation to anything but one’s feelings at the moment.
“Spengler” is right people cut off feeling desperate to make some sort of mark or difference to something and I don’t think this stuff will turn around. The Greeks gave us philosophy, culture and the stories of Midas and Pandora which are too much of everything and the condition of man in a world of problems. Then Greek culture gave way to Roman which gave us organization and laws, recognized property rights and for a brief time a Republic and then it took a few hundred years to topple over.
They say we are in the post-modern times and the modern era started in the 1520’s as the medieval slipped away and the Spanish, French and English had their time in the sun, the Germans really screwed their up on their two tries, and our good old USA has been in the sweet spot for a little over a hundred years and now we are losing traction, on our way to something else. At the same time the EU thing seems to have more problems than solutions but that won’t stop them from implementing more solutions on their way to something else.
I have no idea where this slipping sliding stuff will end up, any predictions will probably not be right but we are raising whole herds of mush-head, mixed-up, amoral, selfish, self-centered young assholes and those who become dangerous because they feel left out of the herds of crap-heads and they have been told for a decade or two how crappy our nation is and we have no heroes taught in schools or currently making the news.
Kim, you are right, time to buy another nice Henry, time to lose it and I am so, so sorry about it falling in the lake, that was a real nice rifle. I was in a discussion with a very close old friend, my age in his mid-70s and he has become a super CNN watching lefty and wants to fix the world in his time for his grandkids. My thinking is I have three good, married grown kids in their 40’s with kids and they are raising some good ones so the challenge will be theirs and this will play out however it will, and it might be a mess. No matter what kind of laws are passed and regulations implemented our decayed culture will keep on producing demented, thrill-killers willing to go out in a burst of chaos just to make their mark because they are not happy.
It doesn’t matter what religion you follow or even if you don’t follow one at all, it’s still worth remembering that a very wise man once asked “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” When I look into the eyes of these killers I sadly don’t see a soul.
I drew many similar conclusions after one of my daughter’s classmates started a shooting at her school (STEM School Highlands Ranch) back in May that took the life of a truly top notch kid (Kendrick Castillo). The whole host of usual culprits that both the right and left bring up whenever there is a shooting are just symptoms of being at the terminal point of post-modernity. When I stopped to consider the hopelessness and disconnection from reality that post-modernism requires, it is a small wonder these shootings aren’t a daily occurrence.
I know I look at things from a different/weird angle, but when I come to think about it, wasn’t this really the whole point of the Draft: to teach young men (women, at this age anyway, don’t seem to be as sanguineous) what they didn’t learn in school (at home either, it appears).
Get them all together, get their hormones under the control of older, smarter men, teach them honor, fidelity to country; teach them about guns and the necessity to defend, not kill.
I do know that the Draft (and the opportunity to volunteer) produced an country of (now old) men, full of honor, still ready to pick up a weapon to defend family and country; it also, in one way or another, weeded out the uncontrollables. I do hope the foregoing made some sense.
Makes sense to me, but then, I’m a (soon to become) Old Man, raised when people still understood the story of “the Four Feathers” and how they damaged something more precious than life. As a boy I was in the boy scouts just before they took the “outing” out of Scouting in an effort to make it “relevant” to urban youths.
That Kevin Williams quote is just one example of why I no longer give a damn about what Kevin Williams thinks or says. If disenfranchised white men were going out and shooting people as a regular thing, half the country would be gone. Disenfranchised young white men are far, far down the list of people who go shoot up other folks; they just get the most press, because it’s a man-bites-dog story that can be used to push a Democrat narrative.
It’s not disenfranchised young white men shooting up Chicago, or Baltimore, or East LA, or Compton, or Atlanta, or Detroit.
The best thing I can say about Kevin Williams is that he has superb pectoral muscles, but that’s because they’re built up from the action of stabbing his readers in the back day after day.
Kevin Williams, or Kevin Williamson?
All empires fall and our time is coming. The question is whether anything can be saved from the wreckage. Will we go down like Assyria with the wolves howling in the ruins or like Rome which was culturally dominant for hundreds of years after the fall and still exercises influence.
I am enough of an optimist to think American exceptionalism can be preserved in the healthy parts of the country. But only if we divest ourselves of the “Clinton Archipelago”. They do not share values or interests with us. They match us in numbers and outmatch us in wealth and control of institutions. If we try to hold onto that part of the land mass, it ends in CW2 which may see our defeat and will see massive destruction of life, property and republican values. It is past time.
“Individuals cut off from society, destabilized by change and despairing of their own place in the world” … “Everyone used to matter. No-one matters anymore”. Better summation of the problem than I could muster on my best day. Strikes me the statements define a continuous-loop culture, almost symbiotic.
Revealed in a flash during one day’s read and subsequently recited thirty-eleven times to commit it to my brain-housing group is the following; “the problem with our problems is usually their solution”. “Some number of current ‘problems’ may actually be once-upon-a-time ‘solutions’ to some older “good old days” problem”.
Hand-in-hand with “problem is the solution” is our confidence in “symptom management”. Confidence, if not arrogance, may actually ignore the underlying problem. Then there’s human nature; the ego of an “expert” mindset may well ignore the actual problem. Biggest obstacle to course correction is fully admitting a navigation error. Applies equally to personal behavior.
Thought a bit about Old Texan’s comment about US perhaps passing our day in the sun much as England and Western Europe. Then Richard opined that perhaps a change is coming in our structure as the “Great Forty-Eight” plus Two. Their comments brought to mind natural disasters can set a country off track.
For example; in July 1497 explorers set out from Portugal to find sea routes between Europe, Africa and India. The success of that expedition and later explorations further established Portugal as a world power. In 1755, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Lisbon. While Portugal maintained colonies in Africa and South America, the earthquake resulted in the loss of and not regaining a significant part of it’s GDP and prominence as a world power.
And on another day, I found truth in the following; “It is best to remember that the problems of human nature today were the problems of human nature yesterday and will be the problems of human nature tomorrow.” In that vein, recall from a long ago class; “there’s nothing new in construction, just different ways of doing it”
….got too caught up on whether the issue is “problems” or “solutions” that I “forgetted” the Continuing Story.
The Continuing Story is the full spectrum of issues pols leave unresolved from one term to another. Little of substance is truly accomplished.
Not much incentive for citizens to GAF if issues are deemed newsworthy but apparently unsolvable.
Too bad US lack the option for a vote of confidence for elected officials and/or a practical method of voting on issues by referendum.
I tried to comment on Saturday but the Internet swallowed it, so I’ll try again.
First, the young people of every culture/generation believes existence is pointless, because Ragnarok/Apocalypse/Plague/Nuclear War/Population Explosion/Running Out of Oil/Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever is going to end the world before they get a chance to live in it. I know, at 16ish, I wouldn’t have given bet on me reaching 40, and only 50/50 on hitting 30.
I think what’s happening now comes down to a few things:
1) The second or third generation of boys now raised predominantly by women, lacking an older male who can tell them “Sure, the Sweet Asteroid of Doom is likely to hit tomorrow, but you’ve still got shit to get done today, so get off your ass and do it before I take a personal interest in seeing you suffer.”
2) A social media environment where “Fame” is everything, and it doesn’t really matter what you’re famous for. So if you’re not smart enough to invent something, and you’re not talented enough to DO something better than other people, and you’re not pretty enough that people want to see you naked, well let’s just go shoot up someplace and everyone will know my name.
3) Related to (1) above, those same boys raised by people who have NO idea how to raise boys and channel their natural aggression and competitiveness, so they try to drug or psycho-analyse them into the “norm” of girls. Which works until it doesn’t, then having no experience with channeling their aggressiveness they over-react. So instead of an appropriately raised middle finger when someone is an asshole, they shoot them.
4) Again related to (1), lacking an older man who will teach them, definitively, right from wrong (often via corporal punishment), there’s no natural aversion to doing what normal people consider bad things. There’s nothing inside saying “I shouldn’t do this”.
That’s my take, but I am not a psychologist, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
If only we could gather all the Post-Modernists and their like-thinking spawn, in one place and isolate it from the rest of humanity……
Is Australia available?
Don’t do that to the Aussies – how about the middle of the Amazon rain forest – all naked and with only a sharpened stick for possessions? They can live a very green lifestyle. If they think a Green New Deal and no borders are good enough for us, let them put their money where their big mouths are.