The Moneta Massacre

pl

Comments

[The Twisted Genius]

Seems to be the new American way. A black man with a fairly decent career ahead of him slowly descends into madness for reasons unknown. His madness manifests itself as increasing anger and grievance. His trigger point was the homicidal act of a young white man who also descended into madness with increasing anger and grievance. As a society we have failed to deal with mental illness in anything approaching an effective way. We have also grown to view self-righteous anger and feeling unfairly put upon as perfectly acceptable emotional states. Everybody demands to be heard and everybody demands to have their country back. No wonder we can't spot madness before it blossoms into tragedy.

[turcopolier]

TTG
I blame Reagan and his arbitrary cute in public health spending on mental illness. pl

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

Yes, Reagan's record as both governor and president in this area is shameful. In Virginia we have Creigh Deeds working tirelessly in our House of Delegates to right some of these wrongs. I pray for his success.

[Paul Escobar]

To all,

From the Daily Mail: "At one point in the manifesto he even confesses to killing his cats in a forest close to where he lives, blaming the news station for the animals' deaths."

It is not the part about the killing of the pets that interests me. It is his insistence that someone else is responsible for his own petty & absurd act of violence against these defenseless animals.

This indicates to me that there are no political lessons to be drawn from this. If anything, the lesson to be drawn is that the politically-minded can be so immersed in their sense of victimhood & self-importance - they are liable to justify any-and-everything.

I recall, at first, feeling somewhat offended by Michael Dibdin's observations of the effects of politics on the otherwise sane mind. But now, I understand what he was getting at in "Dead Lagoon". If I have time, I will fish out the relevant quotes.

Best,
Paul

[Imagine]

American video games/media teach that the way to solve problems is to shoot people. It is pandemic in the zeitgeist. What goes around, comes around.

You can't see the back of your own head without a mirror. Perhaps Japan could help? Or even Canada?

[HankP]

It's a very difficult issue. Mental health is notoriously difficult to identify in the general population and even harder to treat, and people rightfully fear the abuse of forcible commitment laws by the government. Not sure if this problem can get resolved without causing other, even greater problems.

[Tidewater]

Tidewater commenting to All,

As more and more information comes out, I keep wondering if this guy, Vesper Flanagan, doesn't show a characterisic of a troubled young homosexual who is having difficulty at his principal metier,and the other one as well, his job. He may, I suspect, have fabricated some job recommendations, and is failing miserably in the gay bar scene, is humiliated there again and again. Possibly he has a personality disorder. He seems to me to be too neat a dresser to be going into schizophrenia and he's 41 years old. Tragically old and overweight for a guy who claims to have been a male escort. Think Andrew Cunanan. Schizophrenia hits those in their twenties.

He does what these failed folks do. They keep little lawsuits going on the side, sometimes pro se. Convicts also do it routinely. Remember the little touch that Patricia Highsmith inserts right at the beginning of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley?' Ripley has been running a scam through the U.S. Post Office and when Dickey's father shows up looking for him he gets very nervous. It could be a postal inspector.

Vesper Flanagan threatens his employers once he has attached himself to them. He is passed along with satisfactory recommendations, like a counterfeit dollar bill. He knows that a country newspaper or a small television station is terrified of lawsuits. Vesper has a powerful combination punch: he's gay and he's black. This is a terrific subsidy. He got a lot of mileage out of it before it ran out. Those editors sound to me as if they are treating him like they his daddy. Newspapermen are notorious crude and to the point in the city room. These editors sound like camp counselors. Newspapermen are also a good deal more talented than the tv people, who feed off them routinely. But those television editors and their managers know they are on the razor's edge with Vesper.

I could cite a case in Virginia where the reporter of a country newspaper went to the clerk's court docket, the record of the cases that were coming up. He copied out of this formal court record the name of the defendant. The court record had been entered incorrectly by the clerk's office. The paper published the name of the state trooper who was a witness as being the defendant on trial. The trooper sued. The newspaper's insurance company forced a settlement. The trooper got almost a hundred thousand dollars. The lawyer who brought the suit probably took forty per cent and probably asked for nothing as a retainder. These cases when they go to trial are often settled at the last minute, right before jury voir dire. The insurance company lawyers know that at that point it is going to get expensive. Getting rid of the case is worth more than what happens after a couple of days of trial particularly in front of a jury that might just award a lottery jackpot just for the hell of it. There is a recess, the case is renegotiated, an agreement is reached, the jury goes home to wait for another summons during their month of duty. Vesper should have set it up better and gone that route. But his masters seem to know how to play the game just as well as he does. A borderline personality disorder means one gets impulsive and impatient. Vesper began to slip and didn't care. The only affect at his center was anger.

The red flags about personality disorder are all over the place. Empathy? He comes upon a man in a car who is in danger of drowning and he carefully videotapes the scene instead of helping? There are people in the workplace with him who are seriously afraid of him. People, particularly women, avoid him like the plague. Sounds like the serial killer Mark Evonitz.

He reveals that deep hidden anger is eating him alive. Difficulties at his job--and in the LIFE -- are creating a growing rage. A gay man in a bar who makes the wrong approach to a guy who is way out of his league will suffer extreme humiliation. A man with a personality disorder can very well be oblivious to certain signals in the course of human interaction. He is rebuked gently by his bosses for the fundamental failure of a reporter: not knowing what a story is. That is incredible. He has no judgment. Some kind of autism? Hence the humiliation.

He kills the only things in the world that love him--his cats. Why? He is now free to destroy himself? He has cut himself loose from humanity? From life itself. It is traditional and the only correct procedure and well known among gay men that before one gasses oneself in the kitchen oven you put the cat out. Think Beardsley.

Was this a rehearsal to kill humans?! He is practicing with a Glock, which is said to have a tricky trigger mechanism. Did he kill them with the Glock? You will understand from my past remarks here how I (and the Cossack) would find this the most terrible thing.(I've blanked the actual event.)He killed the only things in the world who loved him. He was the center of their universe. These dear personalities were like his children. If he had done this earlier in life, of course, it is the sign of the Deadly Triad. Cruelty to animals, bed wetting and fire setting. I knew a guy who buried cats and puppies up to their heads in the ground, then worked on them with a weed eater. He was executed. His father had shot his mother to death when he was one year old or so so, and he was found underneath her body in the car. His name was Payne.

[Johnny Reims]

Col.

Re: Rothko

Could be wrong but these events, imo, only corroborate what I wrote earlier in the pdf essay about Rothko you kindly provided a link to in 2008

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/2008/03/sidney-o-smith.html

The only addition I would make is that the process to societal fragmentation is accelerating since 08.

Understanding Rothko is hugely important, imo.

JR

[Paul Escobar]

Imagine,

My brother and I have played 'Call Of Duty' for years. It is the premiere shooting game - renowned for the "realism" and "accuracy" of its weapons. And as a result, we know jack shit about handling, loading, aiming, or firing a weapon. Because the game is experienced so quickly and superficially - it teaches nothing practical.

These American media products (typically created in California) do not teach people that shooting solves problems. What they instill in unsuspecting consumers is a sense of victimhood & martyrdom - for the most erroneous & trivial grievances. Their crime is massaging the ego without conveying any meaningful sense of personal responsibility.

I confess to being lost about your meaning about Japan or Canada. Are you implying that those nations have figured out something that the U.S. has not? Perhaps "gun control"?

If so, I can say that we in Canada are not free from such acts of egotistical violence. We have had all manner of senseless attacks commited here - from the mowing down of university women by a peer, rape and torture of girls by a loving couple, organized murder of prostitutes by farming brothers, and hacking down of a young man by a fellow passenger on a bus. The perpetrators in these cases hailed from ethnicities ranging from White, Jew, to Asian - and were in comfortable economic circumstances.

If anything, what Canada has taught is that the secular welfare state and strict gun control only leads to further innovation in the seduction and torture of victims. Essentially, our victims die more slowly and painfully.

Best,
Paul

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Aum Shinrikyo?
Ishmael Zechariah

[turcopolier]

Ishmael Zakariya

you did not answer my question about the woman character's name. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

A psychotic dope head, without a doubt.

Likely his violence is tied to the phases of the moon.

[ISL]

Imagine: Japan has very violent manga, anima, and video games.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Col. Lang;

I am sorry, I am not aware of the question. I will go looking for it. Did you send it to my e-mail address?

Ishmael Z.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Tidewater

Wow!

Ishmael Zechariah

[RCR4]

I understand the psychoanalyzing the situation to understand Mr. Flanagan's motives, but why doesn't the media categorize the shooting, analogously to Charleston, as a "hate crime"?

[Tidewater]

Tidewater to Ishmael Zechariah,

Thanks. You guys are the best. That gives me a real lift. It's a bit reckless, of course. (And the girls are just as good. Maybe better! I guess they like to run with the wolves.)

[Babak Makkinejad]

For the same reason that the 250 murdered African-Americans in Detroit (or in East St. Louis or in Camden or in Oakland) so far this year do not deserve to be classified under "Black Lives Matter".

[Babak Makkinejad]

As well as child pornography - including rape - in the manga.

[Nightsticker]

Col Lang,

The Washington Post today gave its usual
unintentionally humorous slant to
this story.Not until page 12 did we find out
that the murderer was black and crazy. The fact
that he was queer and a nasty anti white
racist never did surface. While the crime
was several times mentioned as a gun crime
there was no mention that it was a black
on white hate crime. I snickered as I tried to
imagine the meeting of the Editors where they
worried "We have to be careful how we do this one........"
I didn't detect anything like the enthusiasm
they had for the Charleston shooting story.

Nightsticker
USMC 65-72
FBI 72-96

[rjj]

counterspec[ulation]: as usual I wonder he was on any of those spiffy new psychological support prescription meds with the interesting lists of side effects.

[turcopolier]

RCR4

Bob - See Nightsticker's comment above. Black, crazy, racist, gay; former male prostitute, pet killer, none of these are things that the MSM are eager to say. Ramos? A fifth columnist (amusing thought)US citizen since 09. That figures. He reminds me of the Egyptian officer to whom I once remarked that his son was a US citizen because he was born in the US while the father was in school. He thought that over for a minute and then grudgingly said "He has the passport." I would like to have kicked him in the ass. BTW, there already is an exception to 14th Amendment birthright citizenship. Children born to accredited foreign diplomats stationed in the US have no right whatever to US citizenship. pl

[Patrick Bahzad]

Guess we got another variation of the "just a crazy lone gunman" syndrome !

Guess the WP guidance for stories like this is to give as little relevant information as possible ... you don't want to antagonize whole communities.

[Charles I]

Babak, you dope-obsessed fiend, was waiting for such an observation. What evidence do you have of his dopeheadedness?

I ask you why Canada, and other developed western nations with presumably the same ratio of psychotic dopeheads - I was one - nonetheless do not suffer commensurate GUN VIOLENCE so prevalent in these outbursts.

Its not ALL about dope; there's also psychotics and guns, which you never seem to focus on. People are generally fucked in the head long before they begin self-medicating. Homicidal animal killers are often found to have had latent mental illness as children after they go off.

I do confess to sometimes gardening and taking magic mushrooms according to the phases of the moon, and god help me i have killed a few racoons. . . .

[Patrick Bahzad]

PL,

I hope that Egyptian's name wasn't "Ali Mohamed" ... ;-)