Doug's Darkworld

Another mass shooting in the USA. In a mall in El Paso, just over the border from Texas. 20 dead so far. The shooter was a white man from Dallas. Who, oddly enough, was captured alive by police. The shooter released a nativist diatribe online shortly before he began his massacre. He was apparently targeting Latinos, some authorities are investigating it as a hate crime. These appear to be the salient facts as of my writing this. I used to hang out in that mall, so this hits close to home.

There’s a lot to say here. I will try to be clear with my facts. And hopefully clear with my reasoning. There is always room for reasonable people to disagree. Alas, we live in an era where stringing together logical fallacies passes for reason in many quarters. There is one thing we know pretty much for sure, nothing will be done, nothing will change. After the required period of hand wringing and finger pointing, America the Paralyzed will continue on to the next atrocity..

Mass shootings like this didn’t used to happen so frequently, it’s not normal. It’s very rare in other countries. That alone makes it very difficult to parse these events. What has changed in the past few decades? What is it that makes events like this all too common now? It’s not the availability of guns, guns have always been widely available in America. And they were used, blacks and native Americans were all too often massacred. Entire villages, neighborhoods, towns were killed. By white people I should add. Then it tapered off and from the mid twentieth century until about 1980 we saw a big downturn in mass violence. Things like the Texas Tower Shooting were rare events. Then the uptick in mass violence by individuals took off, and here we are today, mass shootings on a regular basis.

How the hell did this happen? My guess is that it’s a combination of three things. The economy stopped working for the poor and working class around 1980. Military style weapons designed for mass killing are easily obtainable. And a huge rise in, well, hate rhetoric. The combination of the three has been pushing unstable loners over the edge. A culture that glorifies violence and retribution hasn’t helped either. But there’s no way to deal with these issues, because most Americans are in denial about them.

Granted liberals have their own reality testing issues, but by God the right wing echo chamber is so filled with nonsense these days it’s hard to know where to start. The El Paso shooter’s manifesto goes into a lot of his “thinking” in great detail. No thought involved though. He goes into the paranoid right wing theory about how the Democrats want open borders so they can flood the country with immigrants who will vote for them. Um, if this is the Democrats’ plan, it has to be the stupidest plan ever invented. And look how well it’s working out for them, the GOP controls about 2/3rds of state legislatures, the Senate, and the White House. I’ve yet to meet a Democrat who wanted open borders either. The whole theory is embarrassingly stupid.

And then the idea that the country is being “invaded” and “white culture is being replaced.” Waves of immigrants have been landing in America for centuries. Takes about three generations for them to assimilate, but assimilate they always have. Yes, it’s possible to get good Mexican food almost everywhere in the country now. This is a problem? Were gangs of Mexicans forcing our shooter to eat tacos against his will? Was his fruit picking job taken by an immigrant? No, the people who have been making life hard for the average American the past four decades are in Washington and Wall Street. They are the ones sending jobs overseas, giving tax breaks to the rich, and turning America into one big company town.

Sadly at this point even debate with people who hold such beliefs is pretty much out of the question. Decades of Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones saying “Liberals stupid and bad, conservatives smart” have raised a whole generation of people who think anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot. There were plenty of “America, love it or leave it” people when I was a kid, but with the rise of the Limbaugh/Fox News echo chamber the attitude has gotten far more hostile. Worse, political leaders perfectly happy to pit Americans against each other while their corporate overlords destroy the middle and working class are in power all over the country now. I’m in a few conservative online groups, and no debate is possible with them..

There are perfectly reasonable measures that would make it harder for unstable losers to get their hands on AK-47 and M-16 type weapons, but the GOP won’t allow that. Might cut into gun and ammo sales. There is exactly zero chance the Dems are going to try and take away people’s guns, but fear driven agendas are what the GOP is all about now. Fear of immigrants, fear of gun control, fear that whites will end up being discriminated against minority. As if. White males still own the goddamn world for Christ’s sake, and America is their ultimate stronghold. Because gay bashing is now a crime doesn’t threaten anyone’s rights.

Anyhow, here is the link to the El Paso shooter’s manifesto. It’s mostly just sad and misguided. Like a moldy fruitcake. And factually challenged on many levels. I’d deconstruct it further, but why bother. Those that can still think logically will have no trouble spotting the obvious problems. What a whiny little loser the guy was. And yet some people are defending him. Yeah, gunning down defenseless Americans while they shop at Walmart makes the shooter a big bad freedom fighter. Snort. That Americans cheer the slaughter of Americans is appalling. That leaders try to turn Americans against each other for political gain is beyond appalling, it’s evil incarnate.

So yeah, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Steve King,  and all the others fomenting hatred and intolerance, you’re the problem. You all have blood on your hands. Disagree? Change my mind. (Hint: Calling me stupid followed by a string of logical fallacies won’t do it.)

Copyright © 2019 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Civilians killed by US soldiers during the My Lai massacre. Frankly I think images of the people killed in El Paso and other massacres should be front page news, might wake up a few folks. Credit: Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle, Public Domain under US copyright law.)