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…
