WASHINGTON — What does James Holmes, the Colorado killer, have
in common with Jared Loughner, Andres Behring Breivik, Seung-Hui
Cho, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris? They all have massacred
innocent people on a massive scale. Yet they have something else in
common. They are all nobodies or losers, as the phrase has it.
All were on a downward incline from a not very lofty ascent.
They were troubled, but there are other troubled souls in our
society. They were fascinated with violence, but so are others. Why
else would major entertainment corporations invest so much money in
clang & bang, blood & guts, entertainments, for instance,
childish movies, idiotic video games, even rap music?
They were quiet, loners, and dreamy isolates. My guess is they
have watched a lot of TV with canned laughter and implausible sound
effects. I do not see a lot of participation in sport with these
young heroes’ lives. At their most active, they are probably
vigorous onanists.
They were fascinated with guns but also other tools of
destruction. Holmes had sedulously strung up his apartment with
explosives so that it would be turned into an inferno when the
authorities arrived. Now one thing that troubles me is that others
are out there dreaming similar dreams. I fear we shall discover
that there are ever more of these creeps.
Commentators across America are all rummaging through their
minds to ferret out something arresting to say about James Holmes.
Well, all I can say is that he is a creep with no special talent,
but what if there are more like him out there? Though I have not
seen anyone mention it in all the commentary about the Aurora
massacre, my fear is that the massacres are increasing in
frequency. Could it be that there is gathering a sub-culture of a
sub-culture of a sub-culture of young men peering out at the drama
of Aurora, Colorado, and preparing to surpass the carnage of Holmes
and his peers. Perhaps it is time that the cameras and the
commentators shut down about them. Forget them. They most assuredly
seek attention. Let us agree not to give it to them.
It takes only a person of mediocre intelligence, no particular
courage, and what Hannah Arendt, the twentieth century political
theorist, famously called the banality of evil to commit a crime of
the magnitude of the above losers. Let us stop commenting on them
and turn to other things, for instance, the way journalists report
these events.
Shortly after the Aurora massacre the New York Times
headlined that the atrocity was “Reviving Debate.” What debate is
the Times talking about? Five paragraphs into its story
the Times elaborated, “the nation was plunged into another
debate about guns and violence.” Actually the Times, along
with the other brain-dead Liberals, wishes that the nation would be
“plunged into another debate about guns and violence,” but the
debate is in the eyes of the beholders. There are now over 200
million guns in America. The time for debate was around 1900, and
does anyone think that western cowboys, for instance, would have
given up their guns easily? Perhaps among thoughtful people the
debates would never have taken place. Today Americans cannot even
secure their borders. How are we going to collect all those guns?
My guess is that if there is a debate, it will be among Liberals.
The rest of the country does not know what to do about public
massacres. That is a problem. The Liberals’ solution is no solution
at all.
Back in 1955 in Chicago about the time of the famous
Schuessler-Peterson murders, I heard a famous police reporter tell
my parents that reporters of his era reported on such grisly crimes
reticently. They did not reveal things that they knew might betray
the investigators’ plans to investigate the murder. And another
thing, they did not write much about the perpetrator of the crime
once he was nabbed. They knew the creep and others like him were
encouraged to undertake “copycat” crimes.
Right now I fear that we may be at a point where copycats are
planning to outdo Holmes and his colleagues. Let us leave them to
sulk in their lonely cells. After all, there really is not much to
say about them that is very interesting.
