By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, July 05, 2022
Yesterday’s horror at Highland Park’s
Fourth of July parade is yet another case of an angry and seemingly disturbed
young man “known to law
enforcement” whose social-media feed “videos foretell
his alleged violent acts.” In one, he “appears to dramatize a school shooting.
In another video, [he] appears to animate his own demise in a confrontation
with police.” He “left a long trail of
tributes to mass shootings and
public killings on social media platforms, according to numerous profiles that
appear to belong to him.”
This is going to spur yet another round of
arguments about gun control, but many of us who don’t hang around angry young
men are left wondering about a separate issue: How many guys like this are out
there? How many social-media accounts feature “long trails of tributes to mass
shootings and public killings”? Just how many posts along those lines does a
person have to publish before the company that operates the social-media
platform contacts law enforcement? (Doesn’t this
put the suspensions of the parody site the Babylon Bee, which seem to occur with metronomic regularity, in perspective?)
Are there far too many social-media
accounts with material glorifying mass shootings to investigate? Is this just a
way people strike rebellious poses or try to be edgy these days?
Back in 2018, the New York Times published
an in-depth and surprisingly revealing look at what it characterized as the
contagious nature of mass shootings, and what it characterized as a “Columbiner”
online subculture:
The May 18
mass shooting at Santa Fe provides the latest evidence of a phenomenon that
researchers have in recent years come to recognize, but are still unable to
explain: The mass shootings that are now occurring with disturbing regularity
at the nation’s schools are shocking, disturbing, tragic — and seemingly
contagious.
Interviews
with law enforcement officials, educators, researchers, students and a gunman’s
mother, as well as a review of court documents, academic studies and the
writings of killers and would-be killers, show that the school-shooting copycat
syndrome has grown more pervasive and has steadily escalated in recent years.
And much of it can be traced back to the two killers at Columbine, previously
ordinary high school students who have achieved dark folk hero status — their
followers often known as “Columbiners” — in the corners of the internet where
their carefully planned massacre is remembered, studied and in some cases even
celebrated.
Investigators
say school shootings have become the American equivalent of suicide bombings —
not just a tactic, but an ideology. Young men, many of them depressed,
alienated or mentally disturbed, are drawn to the Columbine subculture because
they see it as a way to lash out at the world and to get the attention of a
society that they believe bullies, ignores or misunderstands them.
Jillian Peterson, an associate professor
of criminology at Hamline University, and James Densley, a professor of
criminal justice at Metro State University, studied mass shooters and put together a
profile of their most common traits:
Peterson:
There’s this really consistent pathway. Early childhood trauma seems to be the
foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides,
extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair,
isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a
really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes
they have previous suicide attempts.
What’s
different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group.
They start asking themselves, “Whose fault is this?” Is it a racial group or
women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward.
There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.
Where does this anger come from — an anger
so dark and so deep that it makes someone want to point a rifle at a child and
pull the trigger? Where does this sense of entitlement come from, to believe
that your problems are so severe, so unique, and so abominable, that they
justify mass murder?
We don’t know a lot about the Highland
Park shooting suspect, but apparently, his father ran for mayor in 2019. The
alleged shooter was an aspiring rapper with a face full of tattoos and an IMDb
page on which he calls himself a “phenom,” and that features the seemingly
false boast that one of his songs “amassed millions of plays so far across
online streaming platforms.”
Was it just that this young man thought
that by age 22, he should have been a superstar? Did he conclude that the world
and his life was epically unjust because he hadn’t achieved fame and fortune
yet? His songs and videos, full of blood-spattered violence, reimagine his life
as being full of carnage and mischief and deadly conflicts — power fantasies
that showcase his toughness and fearlessness.
Meanwhile, his reality was mundane; he is
the son of a businessman who lives in the affluent suburb where John Hughes set
many of his 1980s teen-movie classics, and the Chicago Bulls have their
practice facility. Vanity Fair once declared that, “Highland Park
has the feel of a gated community without the actual gates.” No doubt, compared to his lurid, bloody fantasies, his life was
boring and safe and disappointing.
Was it just to deal with that gap between
fantasy and reality that this young man — allegedly — picked up a rifle and
shot 32 people, killing six?
Meanwhile, in the Governor’s Race . . .
One of my readers in the area noted that
the Illinois Republican gubernatorial nominee, Darren Bailey, posted a video
that, after calling for prayers for the
shooting victims, declared, “Let’s move on and let’s celebrate — celebrate the
independence of this nation.”
As much as there may be that sentiment of
“If we cancel our holiday celebration plans, then the gunman wins,” many people
in and around Highland Park and other parts of Illinois didn’t feel like
celebrating yesterday. It’s hard to begrudge people feeling too overwhelmed
with grief, shock, and anger to feel good about their country at that moment.
Incumbent Democratic governor J. B.
Pritzker was already ahead
by 13 points in the first post-primary poll; as recently as
March, Illinois Democrats were worried about
Pritzker. Despite the perception of Illinois being a heavily Democratic state,
Republicans won the gubernatorial races in Illinois in 2014 and every race from 1976 to 1998, and Mark Kirk won the Senate race in 2010. In a good year for the GOP
like this one, Republicans should have a shot at beating Pritzker, or at least
make him sweat.
Bailey is the Trump-endorsed candidate who
“benefited from
tens of millions in Democratic Party advertising, with Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and allies figuring Bailey would be
the more beatable candidate to face in November.”
This reader fumes, “Bailey is truly one of
the dumbest state level politicians elected in the country. . . . The Pritzker
plan is to destroy the ‘Trump loving’ Bailey in Illinois and show Democrats
nationwide he’s the candidate who can take it to Trump in 2024. He’s unique in
the sense that he has the resources to outlast a weak field [of Democratic
rivals]. . . . It’s obvious to many, but maybe not to a lot of Republicans, but
the horrendous ‘Trump picks’ are adding up. Walker in Georgia, Dr. Oz in
Pennsylvania, and Bailey in Illinois.”
Herschel
Walker hasn’t led a Georgia Senate-race poll since April. The
Pennsylvania Senate race is still considered a toss-up, but Oz was last seen trailing by
nine points to a guy whom no one has seen on the
campaign trail for more than a month because he’s recovering from a
life-threatening stroke. And so far, there’s little sign that Pritzker is
sweating his reelection bid much.
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