There is no denying the fact that the vast majority of media speculations on terrorist James Holmes‘ reasoning for committing the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado were due to the fact that he is mentally ill, despite not having any evidence of this. The same assessment was made after the Columbine shootings and others which involved non-black perpetrators. I have to be honest in saying that it strikes me as ironic that black or Latino gang-bangers are labeled as “monsters” void of any conscience who deliberately terrorize the people in their communities (and they do) but when the shooter is white, great effort is made to downplay the killing as deliberate,cold-blooded & the narrative becomes “they are mentally ill, unaware of what they are doing or delusional” – Now before some of you go getting defensive on me, I’m talking about perception which is driven by the media coverage, not the specific facts of the case. I do NOT defend the killings taking place in Chicago by any means.
The fact is, despite having ZERO evidence that Holmes is mentally ill, this seems to be the consensus already! That’s because many (myself included) tend to reason that one MUST be mentally ill to dress up like the Joker and go on a shooting spree in a packed movie theater. The problem is that this “justification reasoning” is almost never applied equally across racial lines. Quite frankly, black people don’t do mass shootings of this kind. When we kill it’s a very much intended target or we miss and kill unintended victims, which is no less horrific but this is a cultural difference worth mentioning. More often than not, when there is a mass shooting, the perpetrator is a young white male who shoots at random and attempts to kill as many people as he can, their relationship to him (or lack of one) not withstanding.
Well, I don’t think Holmes is mentally ill – not anymore than the normal craziness floating around. It takes clarity of thought to plan such a catastrophe which he did meticulously, down to the last bullet. I think he dyed his hair and dressed up in a costume and booby-trapped his apartment to convince everyone that he is mentally ill, in order to receive leniency when the time comes to pay the piper.The fact that he told the authorities that his apartment was booby-trapped instead of just allowing the first responders to walk into a death trap shows that he can appreciate the consequences of his actions and knew exactly what he was doing. He is a domestic terrorist and should be treated as such. Independent Liberal blogger Yvette Carnell and I often disagree but in this case, she’s absolutely right:
“Yesterday, I wrote this about the possible intersection of white male pathology and the Colorado massacre:
The news coming from Colorado is tragic, shaking us from within, but why are our only initial assessments about the shooter related to mental illness? And even if he is mentally ill, so what? Don’t life’s pressures often trigger crazy? No one has presented any evidence, as yet, that James Holmes was a perpetually troubled young man, so why aren’t we exploring other possible inducements for his bloody rampage? How does a neuroscience student morph into a mass murderer? I don’t know, but I’m not going to narrow the possibilities in order to reassure white people that everything is just fine in their brains.
Premeditating the murders of strangers isn’t normal, it’s sick. And so is slaughtering your school mates, and sicking a police dog on a woman with her infant in tow – which we saw done by the police in Anaheim this week.
And, like clockwork, a commenter chimed in to add that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by blacks. That sort of blunt force comment is usually employed to neutralize a more neutralized comment. But the thing is, it only works if you actually adhere to the idea that a crack dealer killing another crack dealer is synonymous with a gunman premeditating the massacre of an entire theatre full of moviegoers.”
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Conservative Calmversation 