On the Orlando Ramadan massacre –
I know everybody’s trying to spin this thing to support their favorite political hobbyhorse, be it gun control or anti-immigration, but it you take a deep breath and step back and look and the evidence in the cold light of day without political spin, this guy seems to fall into the profile of the typical mass shooter:
He was a person with psychological problems. Clearly he was socially awkward, not well-acculturated, had gay desires that he couldn’t reconcile with his religious upbringing and lashed out in an attempt to resolve his personal demons and maybe give his sorry life some meaning.
He had an ideology, but I think that ideology should be seen as a seed. If it didn’t fall on the fertile ground of a guy with profound psychological issues, it probably wouldn’t have sprouted.
At the end of the day, though, that’s all psychobabble. What matters is how do we protect ourselves from guys like this without destroying our freedoms. Don’t expect to find an easy answer to that one, but here are a few suggestions:
1. Stop all the nonsense about “assault weapons” and gun control. We’ve had that debate for 50 years and the American people have consistently rejected draconian gun control. Ain’t gonna happen. People aren’t going to disarm themselves when the government is incapable of protecting them.
2. My question for Hillary Clinton (which I am sure she won’t want to answer) is “Is it ok to fire an armed security guard who publicly espouses support for jihad even if he hasn’t broken any laws?” If we don’t have the same answer to that question as we would if we substituted Ku Klux Klan for jihad, we aren’t in the right place. And if the answer to both questions isn’t yes, what exactly is the point of licensing security guards?
3. We need to do a better job of acculturating foreigners and getting them to become Americans. We used to be really good at that back when we believed in America as an idea, but we’ve gotten so mired in multiculturalism that we’re afraid to insist that people embrace American values, even people to whom we grant birthright citizenship. That’s a problem. Of course, that will require us to come to some agreement on what “American values” are. And if you think the answer to that question is just going to be White Evangelical Protestant Values, you need to take a look around you and count heads. If we can’t come up with a definition of “American values” that has a place for gay people and people whose parents don’t speak English and atheists and Muslims who don’t support violent jihad, then we’re screwed. We will just balkanize ourselves into armed camps and become Lebanon.
4. We need to stop the war on men. It’s creating a lot of disaffected, alienated young men with no real purpose to their lives who become fertile ground for radical ideologies. Omar Mateen and Dylan Root are both fruit of the same tree.
I’m not sure any of this would have prevented this particular incident. But I am sure that we’re going to have more of this stuff if we don’t get the above items right.
From commentor JLPandin, on this thread at Instapundit.
The thing is, everything you’ve listed are cultural attributes of the left:
1. Stop all the nonsense about “assault weapons” and gun control.
Ain’t gonna happen. That would require them to face the fact that these problems relate to personal values and cultural values, personal behavior and personal responsibility. Most gun crime is among and between leftists. So that would require them to face that and the reevaluation that entails. Ain’t gonna happen.
2….”Is it ok to fire an armed security guard who publicly espouses support for jihad even if he hasn’t broken any laws?”
Jihad is a muslim process. Muslims are a voter group valuable to the left. Leftist politicians much prefer to see citizens and civilizations die than risk loss of power for themselves.
3. We need to do a better job of acculturating foreigners and getting them to become Americans. We used to be really good at that back when we believed in America as an idea…
Consider that honoring the American Idea is now considered an aggression at UC Berkeley.
4. We need to stop the war on men.
Feminists are a valuable voter group. If your husband or son or brother suffer, too bad. If it destroys the stability of our civilization, too bad.
War on men.
You’ve got to convince the non-believers. My wife often remarks, when we’re discussing one of her single or divorced sisters or girlfriends, that; “decent men are are to hard to find” I’ll sometimes then ask rhetorically, “I wonder why that is?”
My daughter was telling me that at my grandson’s pre-school, the boys were playing as boys do, and he had on a fire dept. shirt. Apparently this gave him some type of authority status in whatever game they were playing. The teacher picked up on this and removed his shirt, replacing it with a plain one.
I told my daughter that I found this troubling, and added that a lot of kids in this part of the country are home-schooled nowadays. No response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1VVQTHRDgs
No, none of those suggestions/proposals are easy, or readily accomplished … but what may unfold in the next few months might shake loose some of the non-believers.
It is going to be a long hot summer, I’m afraid – and all indications are that there will be a few more Orlandos.
More Orlando’s, probably one or more Dallas’, and maybe a Krystalnacht or two from the Left.
Do not look to the Republican Party to stand for what is right. McConnell has come out in favor of restricting the 2nd Amendment.
http://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2016/06/14/mitch-mcconnell-says-he-may-be-open-to-post-orlando-gun-control/
Mom,
You, and all the rest of us, are hiding under the bed hoping that the monsters will go away. They never do.
In the 20th century the whole earth was turned into a charnel house by forces bent on conquest. More than Two Hundred Million people died. Two hundred million.
If long bloody history is any guide, it’s happening again. There have been millions of words written about how we could have prevented it. We didn’t. The quicker we set about our duty the less bloody it will be. It will still be a horror.
“this guy seems to fall into the profile of the typical mass shooter”
I disagree. He had psychological problems in the sense that anyone who murders does, but there wasn’t much else to link him to other mass killings. He was a married gay Muslim security guard with a criminal justice degree. That description doesn’t fit any criminal profile I can think of. The only thing that could raise red flags was his link to Islamic terrorism, and that was dismissed.
I’m not so sure he was such a conflicted closet case. He apparently didn’t make much attempt to hide it from his wives. He was open and cavalier about it at gay clubs and online dating sites. He hit on and asked out male college classmates. He did express hatred towards gays to a coworker, but that could be explained as putting up a tough front to keep his job safe. Or maybe he was hitting on him in a weird way.
He was violent towards his wife, but that’s not surprising if considering his ideological bent. We also know he previously pulled a knife on patrons of the gay club when they made fun of his religion.
Sometimes the simple and obvious answer really is the best. His criminal profile should have been Islamic Jihadi terrorist.
The real story in my estimation, is the failure of the Orlando police to use the Columbine lessons and go in right away. He was in that club for three hours killing at leisure. He made several phone calls and only ftre hours did they try to get in.
The Mayor sounds like an idiot claiming they rescued the hostages. They rescued what was left after he killed a bunch.
The “assault weapon” thing is phony as he could have killed all those people in three hours with single shot gun.
I have to keep pointing out that gun control is working. Of the hundreds of people in the nightclub, only ONE had a gun.
Mateen and Root (the Charleston church shooter) were two of a kind. The root cause of their actions was not their ideology or religion but their violent insanity. The ideology, or religion, wasn’t a seed for either of them but a vehicle to ride to their violent ends. They both seized on their respective ideology/religion to rationalize insane violence. Nobody’s talking about mental illness.
As for acculturating foreigners, they’re not malleable clay to be shaped by us, they have their own desires and priorities and they have to come to the U.S. wanting to change. If they don’t want to adopt American values, they won’t, we can’t “do a better job” of changing them. Muslims are especially resistant to adopting American values, and there is a strong pressure to reject American values from people setting themselves up as Islamic “civic leaders” and from imams most of whom were trained in Saudi Arabia and who are funded in part by Saudi Arabia.
Multiculturalism is merely a tool to tear down American values and culture. Every time I ask someone who thinks they’re a multiculturalist to explain how “multiculturalism” works it always comes down to American culture and values giving way to other cultures and their values everywhere, always. It is a white-washed name for anti-Americanism. Immigrants must told to be prepared to find American values replacing their old values, especially among their children, and they better like it, or recognize they made a mistake in choosing to live here. It’s never too late to find a more accommodating country to live in.
“The root cause of their actions was not their ideology or religion but their violent insanity. ”
The Charleston shooter looked to me to be psychotic, just like the school shooter in Connecticut.
Mateen was clearly not and, unless you want to say all ISIS types are crazy, he was just a fanatic Muslim.
The rest of your comment, I agree with. Except that I think we need to learn and keep those unlikely to assimilate out.
France has a geographic problem as does much of Europe. We do with Mexico but there is no reason toinvite them in.
Mateen was clearly a fanatic muslim and I´m sad to say he´s not the first, nor will he be the last one to sacrifice himself killing scores of Americans in the name of his god or system of beliefs. There´s a profoundly evil anti-American narrative persistently repeated across the entire world, both online and newspapers, magazines, and in the streets and academia, in political parties, in culture, everywhere, spreading lies and hatred against the US and their people, to the point of effectively brainwashing young men to kill innocent people. For every newspaper, magazine or blog intent on asserting american values, there are hundreds of other magazines, blogs and newspapers spreading hatred against the US. It really doesn´t matter how hard Americans look into themselves for answers, you won´t find any. It does not matter what the US does to help muslim countries around the world, or to promote peace and geopolitical stability in the Middle East, it really does not matter. This seems to be part of a generational trend with millions of muslims in and out of the US. Killing Osama Bin Laden certainly helped, destroying alQaeda and ISIS will certainly help, but it won´t stop this. The US needs to start rebuilding a new narrative and let go of the old assumptions and glories of WWI and WWII and the Cold War when the US freed countless nations from fascism and totalitarianism. Speaking about freedom and democracy no longer works either, the hatred and anti-american narrative it´s so powerful it is impervious to everything you throw at it. There are a lot of questions but no answers. I think America has to continue being America, forge ahead, persevere. This is a time of perseverance.
Mateen was clearly not and, unless you want to say all ISIS types are crazy, he was just a fanatic Muslim.
I’m not sure about that. I think in this case he suffered from a cognitive dissonance. His many behavioral issues point to to an unstable personality. He was apparently bisexual, unfaithful to his wife with other women, was a wife beater, and filled for hatred. I think he blamed western civilization in general and gay people in particular for providing a temptation he could not resist. I suspect his hatred of them might be a form of projection. He projected his personal shame onto them as hatred. Islam provided the psychological impetus and moral foundation for the killing that followed. I would classify it as mass murder followed by suicide.
“I think in this case he suffered from a cognitive dissonance.”
I think your comment applies to most educated but devout Muslim men today. It is no coincidence that most of the major jihadis are educated Muslims. This guy was actually an exception to that rule but many, perhaps even more in Europe and Britain, are well educated. Lots of doctors and engineers are involved.
Islam is just not compatible with education. Young males in Muslim countries spend years memorizing the Quran but education in the western sense is not common and westernized Muslims must be under a lot of pressure mentally.
Bisexuality is also quite common although hidden. Muslim young men are the most repressed sexually on earth. The older males dominate females and keep them out of circulation. There is a lot of homosexual activity that occurs under the surface and adds to the mental pressure. That is probably one reason they go wild once they are in Europe. The situation resembles prison where young males engage in homosexual action to cope with sexual urges but are not psychological homosexuals.
From what I have read, Iran actually has more male-female sexual activity but there is also a very low mosque attendance in Iran and the general population seems to have rejected the devotion seem in the militant brigades. I have read that Iranian girls do anal sex to avoid evidence of loss of virginity. Arabs seem to keep the separation of sexes more rigidly.
The “projection” you cite is probably a universal phenomenon in Muslim lands, especially in the middle east. The jihadis in Indonesia are usually outsiders; Arabs or Pakistanis.
It’s Islam; that’s all there is to it. Trying to scratch around for social or psychological reasons to explain this religious fanatic’s violence demonstrates how just how deeply the Left has contaminated our ability to reason. A spade is a spade; a Jihadi is a Jihadi.
Islam is undergoing some kind of “Great Awakening” of its own right now, and Unbelievers are its victims. Wise up or die.