I’m not sure how they’d have gotten away with doing that.
Putting someone in an institution without their consent is extremely difficult and I’ve seen no evidence they’d have been able to produce the kind of evidence that would have allowed them to do that.
Similarly, I agree with you that we shouldn’t blame the parents either who clearly were trying. Amongst other things, it seems that they’d been providing him with psychiatric treatment since he was a child.
Additionally, people have suggested that perhaps the police could have done more to stop him, since they’d come into contact with them in a few different instances(reporting his roommate for theft and claiming he’d been attacked by others) but police can’t arrest someone who hasn’t broken any laws and I’d really rather not live in a society where police can just lock up someone on a hunch or where doctors can lock someone in a mental institution just because they think the person might potentially in the future be a threat.
emcee2k, your posts are too long to quote but I also read his entire “manifesto” and I agree 100% with your descriptions of it and your analysis, especially that bit about the last Indiana Jones movie; it was terribad.
Is this caused by a weak sense of self, or is it the cause of a weak sense of self? Which came first, the racist or the dreg?
I’d say that, David Duke, for example, was self loathing and confused about his sexuality before he started running around in a Nazi uniform, preaching white supremacy on the street corners of Baton Rouge. No high school boy does that unless he either can’t get girls, or wishes he was one.
Watching NBC Nightly News tonight (half watching, so missing details), there was an interview with a mental health professional who verified that everything that could be done legally was done in this guy’s case. Short of illegally psych holding him, everything was done, he was too old and there wasn’t enough evidence to hold him against his will. His YouTube videos (I watched three of them) were just whiny harmless loser kind of stuff, until that last one which was posted after the police interview and too late, I think, for anyone to realize they needed to do something immediately.
Based on what I’ve seen from his videos, he seriously thought he should be able to just strut across campus with his $300 sunglasses on, and women should just flock to his side. He really didn’t understand you have to start with “hello” to meet people. And have conversations, and be nice to people, for them to become attracted to you. Neither money, nor just love, can raise a good human. Real parenting has to be involved, and I don’t think he got it.
And what kind of “rich kid” has three roommates? It doesn’t fit.
I could see well-intentioned parents thinking that roommates would be a good way to give their socially impaired kid “ready made” friends. So they agree to help him with rent on the condition that he gets roommates.
Or maybe he is the one who decided to take a chance and move into an apartment shared by other people, thinking that this would be a good way to make friends and get girls. Like what happens on TV. It would be just one of many fantasies just waiting to be shattered by reality.
I haven’t read the manifesto. Maybe he offers an explanation there.
There really aren’t single rentals in IV. If you want the college town experience you live there and to live there you have roommates. I suppose that you could rent a two bedroom place all on your own but it’s not done.
His dad divorced his mom and then remarried and had more kids. Two households to support meant less money for luxuries. Then, his dad ran into more money problems due to the failed documentary he made. He went from directing TV commercial for big bucks to flogging a bad doc that couldn’t get wide distribution.
His mom was in the process of cutting the apron strings and pushing him out of her house for good. A one bedroom apartment within walking distance of the beach is seriously expensive anywhere in So Cal, so even well off family isn’t likely to do it for a kid who should be making his own way by this point.
Raising a spoiled rich brat of a kid who ends up becoming a mass murderer is pretty damning evidence of bad parenting, in my honest opinion. It’s not like this kid existed in a vacuum.
Not that my voice will have any effect whatsoever on the inevitable parent-worship that always follows these events. //rolleyes//
The only evidence I have is what this kid put on video and paper. Crying bouts were appeased by giving him what he wanted. Tantrums were appeased by giving him what he wanted. Childhood “friends” weren’t earned or made by him, they were put in front of him.
Bad parenting doesn’t have to include any kind of abuse at all, it can be done with love as the intention. It backfires completely when the child gets older and doesn’t have the tools to figure out how to make friends, keep them, or calm themselves when they don’t get what they want handed to them and instead work at gaining what they want on their own. I have no doubt his parents loved him and cared about him and tried to do what they thought best, that doesn’t make “good parenting,” and the work it takes to teach a child, happen.
I don’t think it takes much reading or watching what this guy put out there to see he was not taught social skills or proper expectations from his fellow humans. He was left to figure it out without the mental tools needed and he just couldn’t do it on his own.
And thanks to the above clarifications about student living in that area. So glad I didn’t go to school in an area like that, having all those roommates would have made me suicidal!
If by parent worship you mean some sympathy for people who must be gutted right now, I guess I’m a worshipper. What I’ve noticed in this case, though, is a rush to blame the parents for the actions of a legal adult. I can’t even get my stepson to get a B in math class, but you expect these parents to be able to prevent a full-grown psychopath from going on a killing spree. Are they superheroes?
I’ve never noticed a link between being spoiled as a child and becoming a mass murderer, either. Is there one? I’ve read that mass murderers often have a history of family abuse or ineffective parenting, but that doesn’t make it a certainty in this case. From what I’ve read about this particular crazy person, his parents sought help and even called the police on him. About all I can think of that they could have done more is to have had him involuntarily institutionalized, which, as has been pointed out, is not so easy.
In closing, you’re a dickhead, mister. I blame your parents.
Even so, I have to wonder if that was an accurate diagnosis or if he had some other problem misdiagnosed instead of being properly treated. If it was even possible to treat.
Aspbergers was the least of his problems. He clearly had other mental health issues as well. He was seeing a therapist regularly. He sent that manifesto to members of his family and his therapist shortly before the murders. According to the family statement he has been in therapy for years.
As you said, it certainly possible that he wasn’t getting proper therapy or that there wasn’t anything that could be done.
I don’t know, you can examine the motivations of people like that with a scalpel, however there’s a lot of people in this world who aren’t very successful with the opposite sex for various reasons, there’s a lot of people who feel disenchanted and alienated, but the vast majority don’t choose to resolve their problems in this way.
Also the elephant in the room to me is that the problem isn’t so much that people like the shooter exist, the problem is how easy it is for them to carry out their intentions in a country with minimal gun control laws.
Most of the people he killed were men. He openly fantasised on the internet about killing all men other than himself. Okay, it was so he would have a monopoly on the world’s women, but this is at least as much hatred of men as women. Those of you who like to pretend the majority of the victims don’t exist or don’t matter because they’re men are making a very good case for the MRAs.
He reminds of a racist Holden Caufield, except he has a single minded obsession with having a hot blonde girlfriend.
When I first saw his video I thought: this has to be some kind of postmodern, satirical performance art but no, he really was that empty headed and deranged.
My favorite part of his manifesto (quoted up thread) is when he says he is descended from British aristocracy and that makes him superior to Black people. What a douche.
Then there is the part where he throws coffee on a couple and runs for it because he is mad that they are together and happy.
It is clear that whenever his Hollywood movie expectations and reality start to diverge, his frail identity can’t take it.
If it was a play, it would be a damning critique of materialism and narcissism taken to extremes.
That real people died for this idiot’s delusions is truly tragic.