Umpqua: give the waters time to settle
[ by Charles Cameron — where motive is a multiple choice question, all (or several) of the above may be decent responses, but i’m checking “dunno” ]
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The waters haven’t settled yet, and we don’t have a clear picture as to the shooter’s motive or motives, yet.
One recent suggestion is that Mercer left a “manifesto” (somehow, that’s what these things get called) in which he claimed “I am going to die friendless, girlfriendless, and a virgin.” That’s reminiscent of Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista killer from May 2014.
But he appears to have studied several mass killers, and maybe (with an assist from news, social media & 4chan guesswork) left “clues” pointing in enough directions to keep us all talking about him..
Nazi jihadist satanist atheist racist friendless, girlfriendless, and a virgin conservative republican spiritual IRA BlackLivesMatter
and so on..
Please note, these links were hastily gathered to make my overall point, and better ones may well be available — the amount of coverage and speculation is vast.
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FWIW, Bob Shea and RA Wilson pillaged the many conspiracy theories sent to Playboy’s legal department and amalgamated them all, however mutually incoherent, to form the Illuminatus Trilogy. Wilson later wrote that his basic assumption was:
Suppose all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists.
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Guns? Mental illness? No comment at this time.
October 4th, 2015 at 9:56 pm
This guy, rather like lots of conspiracy believers. appears to have gone down a mental “rabbit hole”, into a wonderland of walled thinking. Your immediately prior post about “sink holes” makes for a nice pairing. Don’t all such rabbit holes end up becoming sink holes — depths from which there is rarely any return? The Internet is rife with dragging people into both.
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Also, I’d refer you to three “gleanings” that end an old post, esp the quote from Randall Collins about the secret lives of rampage killers:
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2014/05/final-gleanings-from-browsing-around.html
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Onward
October 4th, 2015 at 11:31 pm
David:
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That’s a very nice doubling you’ve perceived between “rabbit holes” and “sink holes”! And thanks for the pointer to your earlier post. As you say, Onwards!