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Another mass shooting in the US
Details are still coming in regarding the murders in Isla Vista, California on May 23. Elliot Rodger, the suspect who was found dead from a bullet wound to his head in his BMW after the shootings, apparently stabbed to death his two roommates (Cheng Yuan Hong and George Chen) and a third man (Weihan Wang) in his apartment, before shooting and killing two young women (Veronica Elizabeth Weiss, Katherine Breann Cooper) outside the Alpha Phi sorority house and continuing on to the local IV Deli Market, where he then shot and killed Christopher Ross Michael-Martinez and injured an additional thirteen people. His victims ranged in age from 19 to 22 years old (Rodger himself was 22).

With the sheer number of mass shootings bearing all the hallmarks of psyop stage-managing (see SOTT's own Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley's Manufactured Terror), it's easy to wonder if there's more to this story than meets the eye. Most of the reports so far seem fairly straightforward. Elliot Rodger had a history of mental illness, 'odd behaviour', and his moral decline leading to the horrific events last Friday was documented by Rodger himself in vlogs uploaded to YouTube in the weeks before the murders and a 140-page 'manifesto' distributed to several people that day, including his parents. While there's no suggestion in his videos and writings of an accomplice, an early report did mention that a second suspect had been apprehended:
One woman, identified as Sierra, told NewsChannel 3 that she was approached by two men in a black BMW. The driver waved a small handgun and asked, '"Hey, what's up?"'
Then there's the weird near-coincidence of an active-shooter drill scheduled to take place at the same campus 5 days later:
Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara Metropolitan Transit District, April 29, 2014

[...]

"Operations attended a table top exercise for the May 28 "Active Shooter Drill" at Santa Barbara City College. Multiple agencies were there, "fine tuning" the different roles, protocols, and schedules."
Assuming for now that this was the work of a 'lone nut', I want to examine some of Rodger's bizarre behavior in the run-up to his going postal. We've heard a few opinions in the media regarding what if anything could have been done to prevent this tragedy. Most of them, in my opinion, are flat-out wrong. For example, Richard Martinez, the father of one of the victims, blames "irresponsible politicians and the NRA" for his son's death:
'Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA.

'They talk about gun rights. What about Chris's right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say 'Stop this madness, we don't have to live like this.' Too many have died.

'We should say to ourselves: Not one more.'
It's an understandable sentiment, especially coming at a time so soon after the loss of his son. But aside from the fact that Rodger seems to have been intent on committing the murders no matter what and with whatever means available (e.g., the knives he used to murder his roommates), gun laws are unlikely to make a difference when it comes to crimes of this sort. The problem runs deeper than laws and policies.

Then there's the shallow response from 'Roosh V.', writing for the website Return of Kings, who claimed that no one would have died if men like Rodger were just provided with more "sexual options":
Until you give men like Rodger a way to have sex, either by encouraging them to learn game, seek out a Thai wife, or engage in legalized prostitution - three things that the American media and cultural elite venomously attack, it's inevitable for another massacre to occur.
As if a lack of 'sex options' was the main thing causing Rodger to murder six innocent people! Elliot's father's lawyer, Alan Shifman, after describing how Elliot was seeing "multiple" therapists, got closer to the heart of the matter, however, saying the following:
'My clients' mission in life will be to try and prevent any such tragedies from ever happening again.

'This country, this world needs to address mental illness and the ramifications from not recognizing these illnesses.'
Another commentator who missed the mark was Breitbart contributor and conservative blogger, Warner Todd Huston, who wrote:
[College] isn't a sexual play land where a guy should expect to act out a porn star fantasy.

Unfortunately, that is what people have come to expect in college. It is just a place to have sexual romps, not a place to learn.

The colleges themselves reinforce this idiocy with foolish, anti-intellectual classes like "porn studies," gay "studies," and other such non-academic nonsense. The colleges also reinforce this moral corruption by allowing gay clubs, lesbian clubs, and celebrations such as "sex week," sex toy displays, and visits to campus of people in unsavory and sometimes illegal professions.

This is all nothing new, of course. Colleges and universities stopped being places of learning when America's worst generation - the yippies and other cretins from the 60s generation - successfully destroyed the authority of the college administration.

As the old saying goes, the inmates now run the asylum.

And so, this social misfit went to college with his daddy's big Hollywood money and expected that his every sexual fantasy would be fulfilled there. And why shouldn't he? That is what everyone has come to expect, isn't it? This is how college is thought of, isn't it?
Yes, the general sexual climate of 'Western' societies these days is increasingly unrealistic, unhealthy, hedonistic, violent, and steered by sadistic perverts. But not every sexually frustrated twenty-something virgin develops a hatred for women and decides to murder his roommates and random people on the street because he wasn't having 'college sex'. About 4% of adult Americans are virgins, as are about 12% of students in Rodger's age range, yet we aren't experiencing an epidemic of virgin 'revenge' killings. Obviously, these people are missing the big picture, though perhaps they're identifying symptoms of a deeper problem. Huston unintentionally got close when he wrote: "the inmates now run the asylum." I think the question we should be asking is 'what made Rodger different?'

rodger
Elliot Rodger.
It turns out that Rodger was diagnosed with a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, meaning he had difficulties with social interaction. (Alleged Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was also diagnosed with Asperger's.) This is clear from descriptions provided by those who knew him. He was reportedly shy, socially awkward, and had few friends. Should we blame his Asperger's? I don't think so. Apparently, when 'Aspies' engage in violence, it's usually reactive and uncontrolled, not the misanthropic premeditation we see in Rodger's case. They may even be less likely to engage in violence than non-Aspies. I've known a few Aspies and watched plenty of videos of them on YouTube to try to get a feel for their personalities. On the whole, while they do have some fairly obvious traits, like difficulties in social situations (missing social cues and emotional context, making inappropriate remarks), hypersensitivity in stimulating environments, and narrow or obsessive interests, they can also show self-insight, a sense of humor about themselves, care for others. They just seem like genuine people in the way they express themselves, albeit with some 'quirks' in how they process social information. They aren't overly self-important, arrogant, or cruel. As one Aspie humorously put it, they often just fit the stereotype of being "wimpy and scared."

Psychiatric disorders can be confusing. There's so much overlap between the different labels that it's questionable whether many 'disorders' even exist as such: some may simply be different reactions to the same cause, or there may be distinct disorders that get grouped under the same label. For example, psychiatrist Colin Ross discusses the problem of comorbidity in his book The Trauma Model, concluding that many psychiatric disorders are reactions to trauma. The Polish psychologists Andrew Lobaczewki and Kazimierz Dabrowski were more precise, distinguishing between reactions to trauma (e.g., brain trauma leading to personality changes, unhealthy cognitive-behavioral patterns developed as a result of emotional abuse) and people who are just born that way (e.g., psychopaths). So was Rodger 'born to kill'? Or did some pre-existing condition like Asperger's combine with factors in his environment in a recipe for disaster? Did he even really have Asperger's, or was he misdiagnosed? I don't know the answers, but I still think we can come to some tentative conclusions about Rodger.

Take a look at these two videos that he posted on his YouTube account and see what you notice. (Since some of his videos have been deleted, see this link for an archive of some of them in case these ones disappear.)

... This world is such a beautiful place. It's such a tragedy that I've had to live such a pathetic life in it, all because of the cruelty of humanity and woman. ... My life is so lonely and mundane. I have no friends, no girlfriends, no love, no sex. All I have is this, being able to walk in beautiful places like this. ... <sees reflection in his BMW> Oh! Check it out, there's me, in all my fabulousness. Oh yeah. Elliot Rodger. <chuckles> I am so awesome. ... I mean, this world is so marvelous, full of beautiful places like this, and yet all I can do is just sit by myself and admire them. I'm not allowed to enjoy life in this world, all because I've been cast out. No one likes me. No on accepts me. All my life I've been struggling to fit in with the popular kids. I've been struggling to get a girlfriend. ... It's so sad. I can't enjoy life in this world anymore. Every time I go out, I always have to see these young couples, and I get jealous of them. They remind me of exactly what I'm missing out of life: sex, love, companionship. I desire those things. I desire girls. I'm sexually attracted to girls. But girls are not sexually attracted to me. And there's a major problem with that... major problem. That's a problem that I intend to rectify. <chuckles> I, in all my magnificence and power--I will not let this fly. It's an injustice that needs to be dealt with.
Elliot Rodger here. <sighs> Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection--and sex--and love to other men, but never to me. I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college, for two and a half years--more than that, actually, and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous.

College is the time when everyone experiences those things, such as sex and fun, and pleasure. But in those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy. And yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it. <chuckles> On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut I see inside there. All those girls that I've desired so much. They would've all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them. While they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes. I'll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally know see that I am in truth the superior one, the true alpha male. <chuckles> Yes. After I've annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I'll take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I have had to rot in loneliness for all these years. They've all looked down upon me every time I've tried to go out and join them. They've all treated me like a mouse. Well now, I will be a god compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals. And I will slaughter you like animals. I'll be a god, exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it. And you DO deserve it. Just for the crime of living a better life than me. All you popular kids, you've never accepted me, and now you will all pay for it.

Girls, all I have ever wanted was to love you and to be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend, I wanted sex, I've wanted love, affection, adoration. You think I'm unworthy of it. That's a crime that can never be forgiven. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. <chuckles> You denied me a happy life, and in turn I will deny all of you life. <chuckles> It's only fair. I hate all of you. Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood. And rightfully so. You deserve to be annihilated. And I will give that to you. You never showed me any mercy, so I will show you none. <chuckles> You forced me to suffer all my life, now I'll make you all suffer.

I've waited a long time for this. I'll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you, all you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, and, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men. And all of you men, for living a better life than me, all of you sexually active men. I hate you. I hate all of you. I can't wait to give you exactly what you deserve: utter annihilation. <chuckles>
First of all, this guy had an ego the size of Texas. He's a total narcissist, externalizing all blame onto other people and outer circumstances, taking no personal responsibility. He also has a clearly impoverished view of human nature. Ironically, his description of others more closely matched his own ("disgusting, wretched, depraved"). He uses exaggerated language that seems stilted and forced, as if he's putting on a show or rehearsing lines.

Now, check out these excerpts from his 140-page 'manifesto' (with my notes in brackets):
On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery. The first people I would have to kill are my two housemates, to secure the entire apartment for myself as my personal torture and killing chamber. After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives.

... I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it. I will cut them, flay them, strip all the skin off their flesh, and pour boiling water all over them while they are still alive, as well as any other form of torture I could possibly think of.

When they are dead, I will behead them and keep their heads in a bag, for their heads will play a major role in the final phase. This First Phase will represent my vengeance against all of the men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I've had to suffer. Things will be fair once I make them suffer as I did. I will finally even the score. [That's some logic! As if his 'suffering' is comparable to being violently tortured, murdered, and beheaded.]
After doing a lot of extensive research within the last year, I found out that the sorority with the most beautiful girls is Alpha Phi Sorority. I know exactly where their house is, and I've sat outside it in my car to stalk them many times. Alpha Phi sorority is full of hot, beautiful blonde girls; the kind of girls I've always desired but was never able to have because they all look down on me.

They are all spoiled, heartless, wicked bitches. They think they are superior to me, and if I ever tried to ask one on a date, they would reject me cruelly. I will sneak into their house at around 9:00 p.m. on the Day of Retribution, just before all of the partying starts, and slaughter every single one of them with my guns and knives. If I have time, I will set their whole house on fire. Then we shall see who the superior one really is! [Rodger was obsessed with social hierarchy, to the extent that he deliberately wore designer clothes and drove an expensive car in order to be a part of that superficial hierarchy.]
On the morning before, I will drive down to my father's house to kill my little brother, denying him of the chance to grow up to surpass me, along with my stepmother ... as she will be in the way.
To end my life, I will quickly swallow all of the Xanax and Vicodin pills I have left, along with an ample amount of hard liquor. Immediately after imbibing this mixture, I will shoot myself in the head with two of my handguns simultaneously. If the gunshots don't kill me, the deadly drug mixture eventually will. I will not suffer being captured and sent to prison.
After only a week passed since I uploaded those videos on Youtube, I heard a knock on my apartment door. I opened it to see about seven police officers asking for me. ... I had the striking and devastating fear that someone had somehow discovered what I was planning to do, and reported me for it.

If that was the case, the police would have searched my room, found all of my guns and weapons, along with my writings about what I plan to do with them. I would have been thrown in jail, denied of the chance to exact revenge on my enemies. I can't imagine a hell darker than that. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, but it was so close.
How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I've had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!
On one of my very last days as a teenager, as I was sitting at my usual place at the food court outside Domino's, I saw a sight that shattered my heart to pieces. A tall, blonde, jock-type guy walked into one of the restaurants, and at his side was one of the sexiest girls I had ever seen. She too was tall and blonde. They were both taller than me, and they kissed each other passionately. They made me feel so inferior and worthless and small. I glared at them with intense hatred as I sat by myself in my lonely misery. I could never have a girl like that. The sight was burned into my memory, and it caused a scar that will haunt me forever. [Another hint that Rodger used emotional language without really grokking it.]
[Women] are attracted to the wrong type of male. I always mused to myself that I would rather die than suffer such an existence, and I knew that if it came to that, I would exact my revenge upon the world in the most catastrophic way possible. ... Ever since my life took a very dark turn at the age of seventeen, I often had fantasies of how malevolently satisfying it would be to punish all of the popular kids and young couples for the crime of having a better life than me. I dreamed of how sweet it would be to torture or kill every single young couple I saw.
I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me ... and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger... Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent... Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.
Getting the picture? I hardly think an Asperger's diagnosis covers the things Rodger reveals about himself above. Now, here's an excerpt from Andrew Lobaczewski's book, Political Ponerology, which I think offers a much more accurate description of Rodger's inner landscape. Lobaczewski is describing what he and his colleagues in Eastern Europe called a "schizoid personality", psychological loners who often become fanatics for one ideology or another. I'll take it sentence by sentence, with commentary:
Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others.
This should be pretty clear from the above. Rodger is quick to judge others, bemoan their treatment of him, and yet he never once shows an appreciation for the fact that they have feelings too. In his manifesto, he maliciously insults an Asian boy for the simple fact that he was with a blond, white girl. He feels women should be punished for not liking him. He's totally self-centered.
They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses.
monette moio
© FacebookMonette Moio.
This goes hand in hand with hypersensitivity. In his manifesto, he describes his two roommates as "utterly repulsive", and "due to their behavior" he has no regrets about the prospect of "stabbing them to death while they slept." Their behavior? One had "a very rebellious demeanor" and "went out of his way to start arguments with me whenever I raised the issue of the noise he made." He also "made a citizen's arrest when his roommate allegedly stole three candles from him worth $22." And then there's the girl who allegedly started it all, at least according to Rodger.

Rodger singled out a "pretty blond" girl, Monette Moio, as one who "teased and ridiculed" him, when he was 12 years old, and she was 10. Her father responded to the press, saying: "She was ten years old for God's sake - she can barely remember the guy. He's a sociopath. She hasn't seen him since school. ... How is a ten-year-old girl going to bully a 12-year-old boy? Maybe the girls she hung around with did poke fun at him, but they were kids. My daughter was not a bully, she's one of the sweetest people you could ever meet. She probably rejected his aggressive advances. If you want to call that bullying then fine."
Sometimes they are eccentric and odd.
Mr. Moio also said he and Monette only remember Rodger as a "strange kid." And friends of his roommate, Cheng Hong, said Hong was planning on moving out after this semester because Rodger was "strange." A neighbor who talked to Rodger at a party once said he was "like a ghost" and "just stared at people".
Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people's intentions.
Cheng Hong
Roommate Cheng Hong.
Again, pretty clear from non-interactions with members of the opposite sex. It sounds like Rodger probably didn't even approach the girls he 'loved'/hated so much. He just KNEW they'd reject him, and created these negative fantasy narratives where he was the victim.
They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others.
He frames his massacre in moral terms, as "justice" and "retribution", righting the wrongs of the downtrodden (himself). But his moral reasoning is twisted and just plain wrong. In no sane world is violent murder a just response to the 'wrong' of having a girlfriend or not being interested in someone. But for psychopaths and schizoids, 'morals' center around one thing: themselves.
Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: "Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea."
In Rodger's own words: "Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it."
Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when schizoids embitter other people's lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid's failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia ...
Delusions of grandeur, anyone?
The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand.
Witness his misplaced emotional language that doesn't seem quite sincere or genuine.
Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to "ordinary" people.
Rodger again: "I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger... Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent... Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god."
On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children.
Perhaps Rodger was a pawn in someone else's game, similar to Adam Lanza?
Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider "proper" - i.e. "black or white" - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results.
On the surface, Rodger's intentions were ostensibly 'good'--he simply wanted a girl to love and love him back. At least, that's how he presented it. But notice how quickly that 'love' turned to hatred, with no concern for the women who were once objects of his affection. Love had nothing to do with it. I think he used the words he picked up from others to describe something fundamentally different: a basic urge to control and dominate.

This is why I think Rodger's lawyer got closest to the heart of the matter: "this world needs to address mental illness and the ramifications from not recognizing these illnesses." As a society, we are almost completely lacking in the basic psychological knowledge that would make people like Rodger stick out like a sore thumb, at which point action could be taken to protect them from themselves, and us from them (whether that means engaging in effective treatment or being institutionalized). Not only are we ignorant, but we are also 'infected', in a sense, with the same pathology. What Rodger did consciously, we often do unconsciously. We identify with a ridiculous social pecking order, superficial looks and material possessions, an unrealistic 'porn' culture of sex. We 'love' others for what they can do for us, not by doing for them. How many of us have tried to 'get someone back' who obviously didn't love us? Or have taken some petty form of revenge for them daring to 'reject' us? If we're honest with ourselves, our society is sick, psychopathic even. But we don't see it.

The fact that we lack psychological knowledge has even greater consequences, however. The problem isn't just people like Rodger--social outcasts or nobodies who flip out and go on a rampage. The problem is people like Rodger who never get caught, or who control their pathology well enough that they succeed in society. They BECOME the men and women at the top of the pecking order. Lobaczewski continues:
In a civilization deficient in psychological cognition, hyperactive individuals driven by their internal doubts caused by a feeling of being different easily find a ready echo in other people's insufficiently developed consciousness. Such individuals dream of imposing their power and their different experiential manner upon their environment and their society. Unfortunately, in a psychologically ignorant society, their dreams have a good chance of becoming reality for them and a nightmare for others. ...

Individuals with deviant characteristics, scattered throughout society, however, unerringly sensed that the time had come for their dreams to come true, the time to exact revenge upon those "others" who had abused and humiliated them before. ...

In the psychopath, a dream emerges like some Utopia of a "happy" world and a social system which does not reject them or force them to submit to laws and customs whose meaning is incomprehensible to them. They dream of a world in which their simple and radical way of experiencing and perceiving reality would dominate; where they would, of course, be assured safety and prosperity. ... "We", they say, "after all, will create a new government, one of justice". They are prepared to fight and to suffer for the sake of such a brave new world, and also, of course, to inflict suffering upon others. Such a vision justifies killing people, whose suffering does not move them to compassion because "they" are not quite conspecific. ...

Every society worldwide contains individuals whose dreams of power arise very early as we have already discussed. They are generally discriminated against in some way by society ... They would like to change this unfriendly world into something else. Dreams of power also represent overcompensation for the feeling of humiliation ... A significant and active proportion of this group is composed of individuals with various deviations who imagine this better world in their own way, of which we are already familiar.
Rodger's worldview is our leaders' worldview--at least, those really pulling the strings. As bad as Rodger was, some of our 'leaders' are far worse, engaging in the very things Rodger fantasized about, and more, including the torture, rape, and murder of infants and young children. They know they're different, they think they're superior to us, and they'll stop at nothing to create a society in which they are 'protected' from justice, something they've pretty much succeeded in doing.

So no, the problem isn't lax gun laws, or hippie culture, or sexual repression. The problem is the psychopaths in charge of our planet who create an environment of violence and perversion. If we want to prevent things like this from happening again, we need to start at the top.
Psychopaths
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