I try to stay away from the internet for at least 24 hours of every weekend, but the news of the mass shooting in Santa Barbara penetrated a lot of my defenses. As soon as I heard the rough outlines of the story — young man with extensive internet history does horrific crime, displaying ties to an internet subculture? How could it not be an internet story?
It’s also not particularly hard to see that when the story touches on the lowest slime-swamps of the internet — the so-called men’s rights movement, and no, I don’t recommend googling — the commentary is going to be fairly horrifying. The Santa Barbara mass murder is particularly so. Here’s a walkthrough, if you’re interested.
And here’s a quote attributed to one of Charlotte’s neighbors, the novelist Thomas McGuane: “I like young girls. Their stories are shorter.” Google that one, and it turns up time and again in quote collections; it’s supposed to be funny. I remember reading it years ago, maybe stripped of the context, although that part I don’t remember. I always thought it was horrible, because it’s so obvious what he’s saying here: Young girls won’t bore you quite so long before you get to fuck them.
I mean, am I missing something here? I’m a feminist, and not a crazy one, but I’m not stupid. Here’s another amusing quote: The problem with women is, they have all the pussy. They say that a lot in Texas, I’ve heard.
The case of Elliot Rodger seems to suggest a guy who, shall we say, internalized fun statements like that and went off in the wrong direction. Well, that’ll happen.
Of course, this story has nothing to do with sexism or cultural static, it’s about mental illness. It’s not about guns, either, or so the zeitgeist has ordained, because the guns were legally obtained.
For the millionth time: America has made its bloody bed, and now we have to lie in it.
Memorial Day evening right now. I can hear fireworks going off in the distance. It doesn’t sound like organized stuff, so I can only imagine some misguided soul believes he’s lighting fuses because yeahhh, America!!!! and not because of dead soldiers. It was a pretty good weekend, all around. Kate and her band were supposed to play at a local bar for some sort of lesbian fun-stravaganza, but at the last minute the phone rang. It was Kate at the bar, telling me the show was cancelled, their part of it anyway.
“We got carded at the door,” she said. The bar has a strict 21-and-over policy, and they would. Not. Bend. She was totally bummed, and so was I, as it’s been a long time since I’ve partied with a bunch of gay women, and was sort of looking forward to it.
“The least they could have done was tell us before we got all our equipment unloaded,” she said. I’ll say.
How was yours? It finally turned warm here, and the last of the yard is now planted. Photos to come.
brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 7:36 am
Sunday evening Shelby (the freshman at Wayne New Tech high school) returned from grandma’s and grandpa’s place in Cass County, ahead of the rest of the family, as her Flag Corps was going to march in the Memorial Day parade in Waynedale on Monday.
I’d never seen that parade before, and it was quite nice; the usual collection of impressive fire engines, sherriff’s department police cars, VFW guys on tricked-out motorcycles and in cool cars, and the Wayne Generals in all their glory. They marched to a cemetery and took part in the decoration ceremony there, and it was all very well done.
(If I was more internetty, I’d have all sorts of photos to link to, but I’m not)
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coozledad said on May 27, 2014 at 7:44 am
The CDC should probably investigate the overlap of men’s right’s groups and gun fondling, just for future reference. Something tells me they’ll find a strong correlation.
No serious effort is going to be made to limit feebs’ access to guns, because they’re the principal market. No one else is interested in watching gobs of flesh separate from a living being,and no rational being is interested in the potential for disaster that a gun represents: it’s
mostly flip bastards who wind up punching bullet holes in their kids, neighbors, their hunting buddy who they could swear was an arboreal turkey or diabetic buck, or as is increasingly the case in this delirious shitbag of a country, someone who’s insulted their grossly misplaced sense of self worth.
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adrianne said on May 27, 2014 at 8:04 am
Good post on the madness in Santa Barbara. Yes, Elliott Rodger was a misogynist, but his mental illness seems to be the trigger for his spree. It shows how it’s nearly impossible to stop a committed madman.
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coozledad said on May 27, 2014 at 8:08 am
Over at Raw Story a couple of days ago they were quoting some men’s right’s douche saying that the shooter was rightly angry at “not getting enough game”, and that he probably would have been alright if he “could have gotten a Thai girlfriend”.
It’s amazing how seamlessly their misogyny blends with racism and human trafficking, as well as the delusion that there’s any particular national group of women who are content to spend their lives watching a loser beat off in his BMW.
And now Mrs. Glenn Harlan Reynolds steps up to the plate with the Republican position:
The Elliot Rodger Case: If Pick-Up Artists Are Guilty, Then So Are the Feminists
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nancy said on May 27, 2014 at 8:24 am
That commentary referenced at Raw Story is at Return of Kings. I had to look at it for a good long time to convince myself it wasn’t some sort of Onion-based trolling satire.
Warning: Clicking their Facebook links will get you some very weird “suggested for you” content until the cookies expire.
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4dbirds said on May 27, 2014 at 8:53 am
I read something over the weekend that stated, when black men commit crimes its a cultural problem. When white guys commit crimes, it mental illness.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 9:00 am
4dbirds, for the win.
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A different Connie said on May 27, 2014 at 9:27 am
Oh, 4dbirds, was it this comment at Rod Dreher’s site? This was written by a nonwhite, and I thought it was spot on.
People look at the cultural dysfunctions of Appalachia as being charming and indicative of some delightful flavour of the American soul. A bunch of rednecks get drunk and fight each other because Cooter spilled some soda on Elmer’s riding boots? HOW DELIGHTFUL! THERE’S PROBABLY EVEN A LYNYRD SKYNYRD SONG ABOUT IT!
Deontay beats the hell out of a guy who’s been stalking his wife and daughter? “The cultural dysfunctions of African-American culture…” blah blah blah and Norman Podhoretz makes a career out of writing about it.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 9:31 am
And Charles Murray and – in couched terms – Mitt Romney and the 47%-believers
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nancy said on May 27, 2014 at 9:31 am
That is, indeed, spot-on, and Dreher is a particularly clueless practitioner of that sort of thing. He’s always giggling over some white-people hijinx in Louisiana, perhaps adding a colorful local expression (“yeah you right” seems to be popular), then tut-tutting over the black folks.
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Jeff Borden said on May 27, 2014 at 9:33 am
The most odious statement I’ve read in the post-Santa Barbara slaughter was by a leader of the South Carolina Tea Party named Todd Kincannon. This upright offal tweeted that he didn’t know exactly how his son would die, but he was sure he would be like those “cowering bitches” in California.
No sympathy. No empathy. Those killed were “cowering bitches” because they weren’t packing, I guess. As if Kincannon and his son would be immune to a drive-by attack with a semi-automatic pistol.
As Charlie Pierce often says, “This is your country. Cherish it.”
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Judybusy said on May 27, 2014 at 9:38 am
I don’t usually talk about my work–screening people for court-ordered mental health or chemical dependency issues–but my current case was such a near miss: alcoholic guy, recently fired from job after 3rd DUI, takes loaded gun to head in front of wife. She called 911, he wrestles phone away from her, but not before enough info given to the dispatcher. She manages to run outside. Police arrive, and after a two-hour standoff with the SWAT team, he does give up the gun. I interviewed them both on Friday. She is very isolated, has no one to talk to, thinks it’ll be just fine if he goes to treatment on a voluntary basis, even though he’s put this off for years and years. Tells me there are still guns in house, but the husband wont’ tell anyone the combo on the safe. Upon interview, he was very angry about the petition, minimized everything, played the victim “You just want me never to go to treatment. What good will it do me to stay locked up here [in hospital] when I could go to treatment in three days?” He also said he’d given the combo number to one of his sons, and that “there are lots of ways to kill yourself” while also telling me he’d never do that to his wife. He didn’t really like it when I pointed out he’d already done something pretty traumatizing to his wife. That so could have been a murder-suicide, made infinitely easier because of our easy access to firearms.
Happily, I immersed myself in the garden for three glorious days, installing a flagstone seating area, planting stuff, and taking numerous breaks to admire it all! Damn, but those gin and tonics taste so much better on a patio!
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 10:02 am
Something cheerier: White House Science Fair streaming live at 10:00 AM EDT.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/science-fair?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email336-text2&utm_campaign=whitehouse
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Deborah said on May 27, 2014 at 10:11 am
Judy Busy, my hat is off to you and Jeff (tmmo) listening to stories like that, talking to the people involved and then having to go on with your own lives. I wouldn’t be good at doing that, at all. I’d have a hard time moving beyond.
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Charlotte said on May 27, 2014 at 10:38 am
Ugh that McGuane quote. There was a book a year or so ago, Mile Marker Zero, a hagiography of McGuane in the Key West years. Guess who got to work through all that misogyny and bad sexual behavior with McGuane’s granddaughter? Makes me so angry — these pretty little girls who see Harrison and McGuane around, then get to their teens and encounter this crap? The whole bunch of them have never recovered from the mere idea that Harrison wrote that horrible novel about the 14 year old who falls in love with him. They just look at me with horror and confusion and ask “But why?”
Interesting post at Firedoglake about a tweet suggesting that the solution to the shooters’ parents’ inability to get the cops to take them seriously was to tell the cops their son had converted to Islam: http://bit.ly/1kHxTRb. Sad, but probably true. Piers Morgan was also very good on the BBC News podcast I listen to, pointing out that the NRA only has a membership of 5 million, in a nation of 310 million, but that they hold the political system hostage through $$ and outright bullying.
Weekend lovely here. Yellowstone is running at flood stage — high and the color of chocolate milk with huge dead cottonwood trees flying past. Six Mile creek, which is behind Chuck’s cabin, and burned last year, was running so fast we could hear it (a mile away?) all night long. Lots of gardening done, and got 2 great sets of comments on my memoir in progress that I think have gotten me past this hump and out of my basement sewing room (I get crafty when I’m stuck, busy hands seem to give the back of my brain the space to process). So, back to the real work …
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 10:55 am
The RodDreher Strikes Back:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/
(answering back an essay by Jeff Yang)
First off, I think we ought to have learned by now not to interpret these horrible incidents as confirmation of whatever theory we previously believed. This just goes to show it’s all the NRA’s fault, or See, violent pop culture drove the killer to do it. Etc. Of course that doesn’t mean that people who say these things are altogether wrong, only that we should be careful about accepting a total explanation, especially one that confirms our own pre-existing opinion.
That said, it’s worth thinking about Yang’s point. I think the fundamental issue here, the one connecting Rodger’s particular psychopathologies, is a craving for status. All of us want to feel a sense of purpose in our lives, and want to be respected and loved by others. Rodger believed that without sex, his life had no meaning. What undid him was the belief that he was entitled to sex, the ultimate status marker (in his world) because he possessed all the status markers that in his reckoning entitled him to sexual attention.
One can understand his confusion.
etc etc; Dreher goes on to list all the shooter’s pluses – not bad looking, rich, cool car – and so on.
I don’t think Dreher sees the corner he has painted himself into
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 11:04 am
Gawd, that Return of Kings site . . . even the name is revolting.
Did you hear about all the postings using the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter this past weekend. Apparently, it was a response to someone countering woman-focused analyses of Rodger’s attacks using a #NotAllMen hashtag. The initiator agreed that not all men are harassers, rapists, or killers, but said that all women had some experience with harassment or sexual violence–or just intrusiveness based on assumptions of male privilege.
Anyway, thousands–maybe millions– of women posted tweets using the #YesAllWomen hashtag. This interactive map shows how the number of entries grew over the weekend. Pretty remarkable.
http://srogers.cartodb.com/viz/8199ddcc-e489-11e3-92f9-0e230854a1cb/embed_map?title=true&description=true&search=true&shareable=true&cartodb_logo=true&layer_selector=false&legends=false&scrollwheel=true&fullscreen=true&sublayer_options=1&sql&zoom=2¢er_lat=6.664607562172585¢er_lon=5.9765625
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 11:26 am
Here’s a short article about what the “discussion” that ensued under the #YesAllWomen meant to one woman.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/05/the-power-of-yesallwomen.html?utm_source=www&utm_medium=tw&utm_campaign=20140526
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coozledad said on May 27, 2014 at 11:29 am
Aww. Another one of John McCain’s jobless grifter sidekicks weighs in on the mass killing:
As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.
Is he on the drafting committee for the Republican Party platform? l
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coozledad said on May 27, 2014 at 11:30 am
Forgot linky:
http://wonkette.com/550106/joe-the-plumber-has-opinion-no-one-asked-him-for-and-no-one-is-interested-in-hearing
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adrianne said on May 27, 2014 at 11:54 am
Like we’ve been waiting breathlessly for Joe the Plumber to weigh in. What. A. Tool.
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Sherri said on May 27, 2014 at 12:06 pm
The NRA isn’t a lobbying organization for its members, it’s a lobbying organization for firearms manufacturers.
Maybe we need to start spreading rumors that scientists have discovered a chemical compound in guns that turns you into a woman. Maybe then the misogynists won’t use guns.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 12:16 pm
As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.
Honestly – this sounds like it came straight from Jeff Davis or Bobby Lee, circa 1861.
The result of that sort of thinking was that we made lots and lots and lots of “dead kids”; and many more disabled ones
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Mark P said on May 27, 2014 at 12:18 pm
Apparently the CDC is prohibited from studying gun violence, at least in any way that would threaten anyone’s right to carry a gun anywhere they want to.
My opinion of the NRA leadership? They are either evil or crazy. Take your pick. I choose both.
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Dexter said on May 27, 2014 at 1:31 pm
Oh HELL no! Obama has just announced he has extended the war in Afghanistan by two more years. He waits until after Memorial Day to announce this escalation/prolonging of this never-ending war. Nobody can now believe that as soon as Obama is out of 1600 Penna Ave. and the new USA President is elected, that person will “show weakness” and end the war…hell no! That new President will have to show how tough the USA is and extend that war another long spell. Remember, Hillary was the biggest hawk and supporter of the Iraq war, even going on TV and saying how much “great progress” was happening when that country was being reduced to a barren wasteland and killing field.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/us-to-complete-afghan-pullout-by-end-of-2016-obama-to-say.html?hp&target=comments&_r=0#commentsContainer
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Sue said on May 27, 2014 at 2:17 pm
But it’s true – our dead kids DON’T trump the perceived constitutional right to carry guns everywhere, to brandish them on playgrounds in Georgia, to wave them around farmers’ markets in Wisconsin, to menace moms in restaurants in Texas and above all else, to use them in all their fearful symbolism to raise money for Wayne Lapierre and his many, many purchased politicians.
If it wasn’t true, if JtP wasn’t speaking The Truth, there would have been a change after the slaughter of innocents in Newtown. Or maybe when Gabby Gifford made the mistake of going out in public. Or when some people went to the movies – which time?
Sit back and wait for the next one, and listen to the silence of those in power who could speak – could run a campaign just pointing out that Wayne isn’t there for the gun owner but for the gun manufacturer – but don’t.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 2:23 pm
Dexter – you were years ahead of me in seeing the utter pointlessness of continued operations in Afghanistan.
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Sherri said on May 27, 2014 at 2:44 pm
There’s a reason that Afghanistan has been called the Graveyard of Empires. Attacking Afghanistan never made sense to me. Afghanistan didn’t attack us. The Taliban didn’t attack us. A group of criminals did. It was like attacking Italy because of the Mafia.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Five years ago, I’d have argued that point.
I’d have said we went after the criminals where they were.
I’d have said we weren’t being vandals there – but instead, that we wanted to buck-up the Afghan “government” there, so as to preclude anymore buckaroos from operating from there. (“Nation Building, Nation Building, rah rah rah!!!”)
And of course, I’d have been as wrong then as I would be right now.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 27, 2014 at 3:39 pm
At risk of diagnosing without a license, the kid in California was a sociopath. Clinically, we still have no idea how to treat them. You can mute a psychopath with Haldol, but a sociopath? We got nuttin.’
In theoretically unrelated news, Henry Kissinger turns 91 today.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 4:00 pm
And indeed – although it remains fashionable to whack RMN and his minions, it is worth remembering that from the day he took office, he drew down and drew down and drew down the number of US troops in Vietnam, until we were essentially out by the time he went down in flames.
Worth remembering, as we saw President Obama surge troop numbers in Afghanistan, before this latest exit-plan
https://www.google.com/search?q=afghanistan+troop+levels+by+year&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jO6EU-KkM4GcyATU9YDIAw&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=644
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Sherri said on May 27, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Brian, if we remember that, we should also remember what Nixon did to Cambodia.
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brian stouder said on May 27, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Sherri – A superb point, regarding Cambodia.
And indeed, if the Pottery Barn “you break it, you own it” rule applies, that pretty much ‘bombs’ (so to speak) RMN’s “Vietnamization” accomplishment all to hell
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Jeff Borden said on May 27, 2014 at 4:39 pm
Wouldn’t it be grand if we could get all the gun fondlers in America to become a sort of American Foreign Legion and send them overseas? I’ll go out on a limb and guess that many of these fine and upstanding patriots might find actual combat something of a stretch, but hey, they’d bring their own shooting’ irons, saving the taxpayers money and humping tough terrain would get `em all in better shape, which would have the added benefit of helping our fight against obesity.
These brave patriots –who currently must feel frustrated that the only arenas of combat where they show up with their groovy AR-15’s tend to be Chipote’s, Chili’s, Jack-in-the-Box and other chain eateriesrrea– could help bring down real bad guys with guns. Of course, those guys would shoot back, which the gun fondlers don’t need to worry about much here in the States, but surely these plucky warriors would rise to the occasion.
Why not float this by the tea baggers?
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Dexter, there is nothing new in this announcement re leaving troops in Afghanistan until 2016. It has always been the intent to leave behind a smaller contingent; the only questions have been the size of that contingent and whether Karzai would agree to the conditions imposed by the US for leaving them there.
But Karzai’s term is near its end, and both candidates involved in the runoff election to succeed him have said that they will sign a status of forces agreement on US terms.
What is surprising to me is that Obama has said he’ll withdraw them by the end of 2016 (before a new president is inaugurated). I had expected that they would stay there indefinitely.
Obama is giving a big foreign policy speech at West Point tomorrow. Wait to see what he says before freaking out.
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 5:56 pm
Jeff(tmmo), your comment prompted me to look up the difference between psychopath and sociopath, terms that neither degrees in psychology (social, not clinical) nor years in therapy had taught me.
I learned that, according to the DSM, neither is an officially sanctioned diagnostic term and that both are used loosely, to say the least, by both clinicians and the lay public. In short, this distinction is not going to take us very far in understanding the motivations if Elliott Rodger.
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Deborah said on May 27, 2014 at 6:21 pm
Jeff B, excellent idea.
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Sherri said on May 27, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Perhaps Jeff(tmmo) meant “psychotic” instead of “psychopath”. Haldol is a anti-psychotic drug. However, the killer did not seem to disconnected from reality in the usual psychiatric sense of the word.
Maybe the kid was a sociopath. I’m still not sure it’s a helpful label. How would you pick this kid out of the stew of misogyny and hate you’d find in the MRA and PUA world and say, here, this one’s going to pick up guns and start killing people? From the outside, they all look like sociopaths. He was already in therapy.
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Dexter said on May 27, 2014 at 7:27 pm
Jolene, that’s right. Never was there to be an escalation of troop strength , however. It is an act of aggression at a time when we have been promised, by Obama himself as recently as 30 hours ago, that the war will END at the end of 2014, meaning that the scope of the war will be narrowed, yes, that’s waht this has meant all along.
Now, the USA treasury will continue to empty out into Afghanistan, for a war that is going nowhere.
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Dexter said on May 27, 2014 at 7:47 pm
Here’s one for all you royals haters. Kate has a problem with the wind, exposing her ass. Kim’s ass looks ridiculously huge, right? Well, things are tough all over, Kate apparently cannot afford bloomers!
http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/leute/catherine-mountbatten-windsor/und-kim-kardashian-schoene-kehrseiten-36136770.bild.html
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 7:57 pm
Dexter, I’m not sure I understand you. There are currently 34,000 US troops in Afghanistan, so leaving 10,000 there is not an escalation. He is saying now that combat troops will be withdrawn by the end of 2014. Those remaining are meant to continue training Afghans, and they will carry out special operations if they gain intelligence of al Qaeda activity. But they will not be engaging the Taliban. At least that’s how I understand it.
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 8:03 pm
Maybe the kid was a sociopath. I’m still not sure it’s a helpful label. How would you pick this kid out of the stew of misogyny and hate you’d find in the MRA and PUA world and say, here, this one’s going to pick up guns and start killing people? From the outside, they all look like sociopaths. He was already in therapy.
That was my point–that it’s a term without a reliable, clinically meaningful definition. Applying it to a person doesn’t tell you much about his particular form of unpleasantness or predict his future behavior.
I say this with sympathy. I know how difficult reliable psychiatric diagnoses and prognoses can be.
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Dexter said on May 27, 2014 at 8:17 pm
Jolene, from your point of view, this will illustrate how people are still emphasizing “no cut and run” without vocalizing it…Jeffreys thinks the 2016 deadline should be off the table, and a non-ending, never-ending open war should rage on interminably…this war was supposed to be wound down by December, 2014. Not any more, and 2016? Of course people like Jeffreys will convince the next administration to keep pouring on the coals. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-illogical-decision-on-us-troops-in-afghanistan/2014/05/27/dab66f40-e5bc-11e3-8f90-73e071f3d637_story.html?hpid=z4
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Sherri said on May 27, 2014 at 10:49 pm
The difficulties of distinguishing who is going to be dangerous: http://www.clinicalpsychiatrynews.com/views/shrink-rap-news/blog/distinguishing-the-killers-among-us/09d97b6971c9b3aae6f8f61236afc6dc.html
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 11:34 pm
Dexter, whether foreign policy types like Jeffrey and Neumann can convince the next president to keep pouring on the coals depends quite a bit on who the next president is and what happens between now and then. As long as John McCain is alive, there’ll always be at least one person calling for the US to take a stronger stance. But I don’t think how that call is answered is a foregone conclusion.
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Jolene said on May 27, 2014 at 11:43 pm
Sherri, good article re the difficulty of predicting violence. It’s especially useful to have a detailed example of the sort the author provides.
Here is another on the same theme. I’m posting it even though it’s point is pretty much the same as that of your article because I think the quote about how missed signals “only become red flags once the blood is spilled” is useful to keep in mind.
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Dexter said on May 28, 2014 at 12:50 am
Just watch, Jolene…I lost all faith/optimism when the Democrats won the US Senate in 2006 and yet still continued to fund that horrid war in Iraq. Kerry voted for increased funding and a stronger presence, Hillary was the cheerleader for more dollars…it made me sick. Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay Prison “within thirty days of my inauguration”, and years and years later…nothing honored along that line.
We left Vietnam because we were kicked out unceremoniously, but the only reason is that Congress finally said enough is enough, and simply cut the cashflow. For some reason there are many Congresspeople who want the US in The Region permanently. You don’t see anymore US Embassies in Ho Chi Minh City, but there’s a giant white elephant of an embassy right smack dab in the middle of Baghdad, and always will be.
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