Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looking at root causes, and not instrumentalities. Looking Again.

I drafted this, a sort of Lex Anteinternet Magnum Opus on this topic a couple of years ago.

Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looking at root causes, and not instrumentalities: Because of the horrific senseless tragedy in Newton Connecticut, every pundit and commentator in the US is writing on the topic of what cau...

It was briefly one of the hottest subjects on this site, back when 600 or so views put you in the top ten (now that takes over 2,000 views).  But I'm sure my analysis went nowhere and what I'd conclude is a little bit too, well, analytical I suspect for the debate as it actually occurs.  And since this post the country has entered sort of a weird space anyhow.

Which doesn't mean that I'm wrong on any of it.  I suspect that I'm more right than ever.

Right now, no matter what anyone thinks about the shooting in Las Vegas, what the truth is, is that we don't know what happened.  And a big part of the reason that we don't know that is that this doesn't, on its surface, immediately seem to meet the two common elements of these events in that;

1.  It wasn't obviously perpetrated by a person with mental defects (let's be blunt about our use of words going forward, on this and everything else. . . the use of candy coated terms for various things is part of the problem here); or

2.  It wasn't perpetrated by a Muslim as part of a jihadi effort (again, let us be blunt).

Most of the recent events were like that.  Newtown Connecticut was an example of negligent parenting and abandonment that went predictably wrong.  The Florida nightclub was a Muslim terrorist act.  People can debate that, but the facts are what they are.

But this doesn't seem to fit that.

Yet.

But it's important to find out, if we can, what is going on here.

For one reason, we are, right now, pretty clueless in these regards.  There are a lot of unexplained items here, but there are some pretty big clues as well.

And determining a reason is hugely important as, no matter how much the press may wish to pretend otherwise, simply banning this or that doesn't get at the root of the problem.  If it did, there would have been no recent terrorist acts in Europe at all. . . . and that certainly isn't the case.

And indeed, we don't right now know if this doesn't fit into category 1 or 2.  It might.

So what all don't we know that we should?

Well, a motive, obviously.

And there was one. This attack wasn't random.  Based on what we know, this individual was stockpiling materials for explosives for some time, and in more than one location, apparently.  This was a planned act, and it had been planned out for some time.  This wasn't just an individual gone mad over a weekend or something.

Was it a terrorist act?  People are really quick to discount this as he wasn't named Ahab and isn't an Arab from Syria?  Well, lots of Muslim aren't from Arabia either and for that matter there are a lot of terroristic causes that aren't backed by Muslims.  And at first blush this has some indicators that should make a person wonder.  It was highly planned.  It involved at one time an intent to use explosives.

And it also involved the transportation of a lot of weaponry and other materials.

That part seems to have gone largely un-discussed, but its really significant.

I travel to hotels all over the United States and I can't get through the front door with out getting a lot of hotel offers to help me.  And I always try to limit my baggage.  On those occasions when I must travel with three bags (big depositions) I get piles of suggestions from the helpful hotel staff that they can help me with my bags, with those suggestions sometimes being so adamant that you'd practically  have to engage in a struggle with them not to have them carry them up.

So how does a guy get that many firearms, cameras, etc., up to his hotel room while avoiding everyone, including t he hotel staff?

That seems rather odd to me.

Now, my long suffering spouse maintains that this makes perfect sense, and she's been to Las Vegas while I have not.  Probably parked in the parking lot and brought them in through a side door, she says.

Well, maybe, but frankly I've stayed in every hotel layout imaginable and I just can't see being able to bring in that many large items without help and/or without notice.  That is truly remarkable.  Either the staff of the Mandalay Bay hotel is the most unobservant staff on earth, or something has to be explained here.

And, we'd note, in a city where we're at least told that everything is under observation all the time.

Not exactly the sort of close watching that Ocean's Eleven would have us believe, eh?

Not even the sort of observation that most people would get at the local Holiday Inn Express.

So, anyhow, right now we don't know what motivated this guy, and we don't know how he got all that stuff up there.  I hate to sound like I'm endorsing conspiracy theories (and I'm sure they're coming) but just because a person might wonder about them doesn't suggest they are or are not true.  Lots of weapons, thousands of rounds, cameras. . . hmmmm.

We also, of course, right now don't know what his mistress (and let's not pretend that we're dealing with boyfriend/girlfriend here. .  they were in their 60s.) has to say. But we do know that the relationship was somewhat odd

Indeed, part of the proof that the culture has become really deteriorated is the degree to which all this fellows known personal character traits don't show up on the radar.  He was the son of a bank robber.  He'd had quite an assortment of adult jobs before he became a real estate speculator.  His last two occupations are ones that are based on the generation of income from guessing alone rather than generating a real product and therefore are in the nature of occupations that have no real product to identify with (no, I'm not saying all gambler and all real estate speculators are bad guys, but I am saying that those activities are based on the fictional activities and values in and of themselves and therefore would be difficult for a person to have a real occupational identity with).  He apparently didn't care about "religion" or "politics" and therefore, to some degree, apparently didn't identify with the physical or the metaphysical.  That's all pretty scary really.

Indeed, one of the things I touched upon very recently was the phenomenon of suicide amongst the young.  In that article, which was also on other things, I frankly attributed what is, to a large degree, a white, western world, monied phenomenon to a loss of societal values.  It's too early to say that this is what's happened here as well, but it has sort of that appearance as an element.  This guy, in so far as we've been told, was good principally at generating money from speculation. He had no strong values otherwise.  That's not much of a life and by a person's 60s, as death, if isn't knocking at the door, can at least be seen driving its bicycle through the neighborhood, is on a person's mind. That's a scary thing for people who reflect what we've become, which is rootless, shallow and pointless.  Did that lead this guy somewhere?  It seems like a stretch, but perhaps its part of what stretched his psyche.

So, the search goes on. And while it goes on, while people scream that we should do something, perhaps we should figure out what we're going to do something about.  If this is an act of terrorism, for whom was it committed and about what?  Then we can figure out how to address that.  If it was a mental illness, how did it get so far gone and how could a mentally ill person have formulated such a plan?  If this is a reflection of our liberal progressive society, in which the metaphysical is of your own choice and you can choose your own physical too, we better start rethinking that.  But first, we should figure out what happened.

 

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Postscript. 

It has now been revealed that the Las Vegas shooter left a note.

This isn't surprising, indeed the opposite would have been.  But we don't know what it says as that information hasn't been released.

I'm surprised that this news hasn't been bigger yet, as it provides at least a possibility that we'll learn what motivated this individual to do this.  Indeed, it's frustrating that this information hasn't been released, but we'll have to trust that there's a good reason why this is the case.