The Walmart murderer left a death note behind. It’s disturbing.
“One of the most loving people in the world” who didn’t intend to murder anyone (except he did), he just wanted a wife.
The endorsement of laetrile to cure cancer at the end is just one more indication of his delusional mind.
And he purchased the pistol used in the murders that morning.
A side effect of ignorance based gun regulation, as most states had waiting periods of at least 3 days for handgun purchased – right until the instant background check system was put in place.
I really didn’t mind or care about waiting, hell, I usually returned to pick one up the following weekend.
I wonder why the NRA is so silent about that?
Well, off to brave Black Friday. Ran out of tea bags and I want iced tea with dinner.
Orcastraighted?
Of course “the Satan” gets blamed. Why not. He’s literally the scapegoat for God’s epic failings in the Creation.
My mom died from cancer. It was her third bout and chemo plus radiation worked the first two times. I recall the laetrile thing being in the news back when I was a kid I think.
Mix delusions and misplaced reverence for the 2A and what do we get? More of this sort of tragic thinking translated into action I am afraid.
So when you write a telegraph to god – asking for forgiveness – does god read it before or after you murder innocent people?
Or does it sit in god’s IN BOX waiting to be read – while you burn in hell?
(Or does it just get rid by the Internet because you died, and there is no afterlife)
And his “dignity was taken away completely beyond repair by [his] phone getting hacked”!? Or he thought it was hacked?And yet he complains about the love of material possessions.
There’s a Guardian story today that an American Journal of Public Health study estimates that 6 million Americans carried guns daily in 2019, twice as many as 2015, with increasing numbers saying they carry guns for self-defense, not hunting or recreation. Of course…you don’t need to carry a gun every day for hunting or recreation. Yet, guns are seldom used for actual self-defense other than to act on the paranoid delusions of people like this person.
This is utter madness.
That whole thing is like something written by a time traveler from the middle ages who just got here. “ My dignity was completely taken away by my phone being hacked”? I can see someone who just turned up from the plague years not knowing how cell phones and social networks work but this guy has no excuses. I really want to know what that cell hack looked like now. Did they post his bio on a gay dating site or something? Did someone hack his Facebook or Twitter and post about how much he wants to fuck his own mother? Is he a 40 something who felt guilty after jerking off for the first time?
No matter how you slice it, he was a fanatic. I just want to know what kind of fanatic.
What did I just read?
He seemed remarkably calm for someone who was about to kill 6 people on his last day on earth and then kill himself.
Strange how often a completeely imaginary entity causes the death of so many people. Oh, and who could have guessed he was an incel?
That’s a decent guess. There’s definitely something there about “convincing them that I was normal.” It reeks of self-loathing.
#1: wzrd1
I went grocery shopping. Depending on where you shop the grocery stores are mostly empty since the vast majority of people used up all their cash before the holiday. Quite frankly, it’s the best time to go, since there’s plenty of parking! Good luck!
Equally yoked
I’m sure many people would like to be equally yoked, but for some mysterious reason, they don’t cite loneliness as an excuse to kill their coworkers and themselves.
Toxic masculinity and normalized male violence are at the root of every mass shooting.
His paranoia over the behavior and appearance of his colleagues is a clear sign of mental illness.
The healthcare system failed his victims, but mass murders don’t happen in a society where social media doesn’t amplify personal problems into a persecution complexes and grievances, and where guns aren’t fetishized as the solution to those problems.
@10 I can’t think of a single counter example. At the same time there are a LOT of mass shootings these days. Surely one of them has to have been perpetrated by something else.
<clickety-click>
https://www.statista.com/statistics/476445/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-gender/
He sounds a lot like the Santa Isla shooter ( no I’m not using his name), and his whinging about how decent he is, whilst planning people’s murders.
“Said I was like Jeffrey Dahmer”
It looks like his co-workers saw him more clearly than he saw himself.
@13 Thanks John. That’s disturbing as hell.
On the subject of cultural normalization of male violence.
https://msmagazine.com/2022/11/21/gun-violence-men-mass-shooting/
Another disturbing statistic is the fact that the #1 cause of death for women in the workplace is not industrial accidents or hazards, it’s murder.
Ray, disturbing, but informative.
There’s no getting away from it: data shows that either men are significantly (by a lot more!) prone to violence, or that manly inculcation is uniquely prone to violence.
I doubt it’s the former. I too was brought up in that milieu.
(A bit of the ol’ culture/nurture argument, there)
So, the segue: I too reckon feminism is good for blokes. Just makes sense.
Prescription? Forget that dichotomous inculcation, just make it generic.
(Or discriminate by other than gender basis, I grant. But I’m a natural-born egalitarian)
@17, same. Long time male feminist. I was raised by my grandmother. I know my perspective is different but toxic masculinity never made any sense to me. That sense of entitlement always bothered me. Any time I see it in public or in media I cringe. It’s very difficult for me to stay silent when men are creeping.
About 15 years ago I was working at a brewpub and the female restaurant staff always asked me to walk them to their cars. I thought they were worried about being mugged, but it turns out it was the bar manager they were scared of. He eventually got himself fired for sexual harassment. Then he opened his own bar and started another business beyond that. I hate his fucking guts. This is why things never change. Assholes like Jeramiah are never punished.
Maybe things have changed and I was left behind again. Is that the new way to attract a wife?
simplicio:
Well, I doubt that by ‘that’ you mean going on a killing spree and then killing yourself.
Care to clarify to what you refer by ‘that’?
@12. Ray Ceeya :
Yes. So much to answer for – as the stats provided by John Morales & Tethys upthread show. Seconding that and the view put by #17 John Morales that we need a lot more feminism for the sake of men as well as women. Toxic masculinity harms men and women alike – and feminism helps all the sexes and the rest of our societies too and it’s time that was focused on much more as part of the deeper social issues we face.
@ 8. LykeX : “There’s definitely something there about “convincing them that I was normal.” It reeks of self-loathing.”
Yes it does – and the notion that “normal” is something to aspire to rather than being yourself and different but y’know NOT a murderer. That horrible intolerance of difference at work again. Of course, even in the USA, murdering other people is NOT a thing “normal” people do. Combine it with obscenely easy access to firearms and, very probable, mental illness notably paranoia* and yes, that’s a recipe for tragedy -and one that is still going unadressed.
More Feminism, better gun laws and better access and less stigma for mental health issues are all definitley required to avoid more such needless tragedies and wasting of lives.
Caveat : I am not a pyschologist or expert in mental health, diagnosing mental illness over the net is NOT a great idea and the vast majority of mentally ill people are NOT a threat to others.This shouldn’t need saying but for clarity.
@ simplicio : Off topic here but is your nym taken from the character in Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by any chance? If so, I like it!
As for this killing people “attracting a wife”” there is are some people who seem attracted to serial killers and become “groupies” of them – hybristophilia is a real thing see :
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a17804534/sexual-attraction-to-serial-killers/
although not sure it leads to many marriages. However, in this case, I din’t think so given his suicide and incel misogyny. His desire seemed to be self-destruction and murder only and the killer writes himself that he doesn’t deserve a wife and “I wish I could have saved everyone from myself.” Which, yes if only – but also he had the power to choose differently and, of course, he didn’t so obvs he didn’t wish that enough. Also he ends with hoping God will forgive him which, again, if any real diety was out there and good and kind in nature – and also if prayer which he presumbly tried beforehand actually worked as effective communication.. Well, you’d think such a deity would let this murderer, know that, no that wasn’t an acceptable thing to do wouldn’t you?
Re: simplicio @ #19…
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I showed up at my first SCA event and stood by the field using a drop spindle. This led to meeting a wonderful woman. We were married the following year, and remained married for 51 years until her untimely death 5 months ago.
@ 17 John Morales
I have to say it’s cute to see you discover toxic masculinity.
https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
So feminism is good for blokes, ya reckon. Gee you might be on to something there mate. Keep at it. X-D
Silentbob, I’m nothing if not consistent.
Well, had you paid a bit more attention to what I have posted since around 2005, you’d have seen it’s not exactly a new discovery.
Of course, it depends on the specifics. And on the person.
(I don’t have to say — though I do say it — that it’s cute that this comes as news to you. But hey, nothing wrong with seeing you happy over such trivialities)
A bit like Morton’s Demon, with you.
Some of the stuff I write gets through to you, some doesn’t.
@Silentbob
but you can’t call it toxic masculinity, don’cha know? :) It makes them clamp up and not want to talk or try to resolve their issues. I really hate “Poisoning the well” debating tactics. And bully “word reclamation” cycle.
1) Psychologists and generally well meaning person comes with a name for either condition or the way of combating it or coping strategy. A good tool for managing the issue, in short.
2) A bully gets hold of the word and abuses the shit out of it, thus poisoning the word. A lot of bullies do the same.
3) A tool from the toolbox is lost because of that, until a new word without the poisonous baggage is invented.
It happened with so many things. Triggered, trigger warnings, re-tard, self-care… The oldest word off I know off that it happened to is the word cretin and its etymology.
@23 Silentbob
81%… keep chipping away, you’ll get there.
Whheydt @ 23
My condolences. Death of a close family member is a hell of a thing.
I first heard of this note while listening to NPR. There was no mention of the deeply religious underpinnings. This would seem to be a serious lapse of journalistic accuracy and objectivity.
I agree with Tacitus , failed mental health ! He’s definitely delusional and I don’t know what the company could have done .
If he lived his defense could have been God made me do it.
Religious people who use phrases like “equally yoked” and “burning with the Holy Spirit” are not considered mentally ill, nor is mere paranoia an indicator that we can just wave this off as mental illness.
Everybody will experience mental illness during their lifetimes. Grief, trauma, and tragedy can have terrible side effects when humans are not given support, or taught any method to effectively deal with negative emotions and situations.
This person is slightly delusional, but it seems that they are also deeply religious. The note mentions their Mom died recently, and some daily horror show occurred at work that involved his phone and attempts to online date?
It’s completely predictable that he was having some issues with mental health.
The US is an utter nightmare for physical health care, but mental health care is just pills and perhaps finding some support group of equally miserable people in a church basement.
Grief is not something that just goes away after a couple weeks, months, or even years. It’s a long hard slog through pain, and there aren’t any other options but to go through it.
Social support is crucial, and non-existent for emotional crying or mental suffering.
reads note
DUMBASS.jpg
OT
Moar sad news.
Singer and acrress Irene Cara has died. She was 63.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #28…
Thank you.
In order to carry out what I promised her, I need to survive into 2042. It’s not impossible. There have been relatives that lived to older ages than I’ll be then.
They are by me.
@16 What difference would it make if we socialized little boys to not believe that they were entitled to everything they ever laid eyes (or hands) on?
From your link:
“something gender violence perpetrators and mass shooters often have in common: a feeling of aggrieved entitlement”
Little girls are never socialized to believe that they are entitled to anything, including bodily autonomy, from a very early age. If they fail at something, they are told, early and often, that it was because they weren’t good enough, didn’t try hard enough, weren’t smart enough/thin enough/pretty enough, not sexually available enough/too sexually available, etc. (Which is a whole other toxic brew of toxic femininity which doesn’t get mentioned or gets brushed aside in favor of “real problems”, partly because women’s problems are never considered real problems and partly because it isn’t girls and women who are going on mass murder sprees. And because toxic femininity kills women, quietly; not messily with lots of other innocent bystanders. Which is a whole other topic for a different thread.)
No question at all that toxic masculinity harms boys, it unquestionably does. The difference is that it harms women and girls and femme-presenting nonbinary people too.
The other difference is that American/US culture kind of normalizes this particular type of male violence. “well yes, he shot up a school/mall/movie theater but he had reasons/a bad childhood/a bad day””–there are always excuses for that kind of distinctly male behavior.
There are never excuses for ANY kind of female behavior, including being the victim of sexual assault or the victim of gun violence. The prevailing narrative is ALWAYS “well, she must have done something to deserve it”. (Yeah, because watching a movie on opening night while being female is a crime beyond forgiveness.)
What if, in addition to teaching little boys that there are other emotions other than anger, that emotions can tell you things and that there are other responses other than violence; what if we also taught them that if you want something, you have to actually work for it, whether that work is physical or emotional; and if you screw up, you own that and it’s on you to fix it–you don’t get to offer up a half-assed non-apology apology and skate on a “well, boys will be boys” get-out-of-jail free card with a side of “well, it wasn’t really your fault” (especially when it almost certainly is)?
What would that world look like?
@30 There is plenty Walmart could do, starting with treating their employees like actual human beings and paying them a living wage, with decent healthcare. Walmart didn’t cause this–let’s keep the blame squarely where it belongs, which is 100% on the shooter. Dude had choices and this is what he chose. But I will bet you dollars to donuts that the added stress of living and dealing with Walmart as an employer didn’t help any.
Walmart is a crap company that needs to die in a fire and Sam Walton’s noxious heirs along with it. (Hoping that they invested heavily in crypto but they’re so rich it probably wouldn’t make a difference.) But it literally employs millions of other people who are undoubtedly treated just as badly and they didn’t shoot their coworkers in a break room.
@36 Religion is apparently the means of expressing his mental illness but it didn’t actually cause it, any more than the apricot pits did. There are plenty of religious people out in the world; many of them are good and kind people. Just because they don’t share your philosophy doesn’t make them bad people. And it’s a cheap and easy excuse that lets the shooter off the hook and I don’t buy it.
NO.
Incel dude CHOSE to do this.
OWN IT.
@37 silvrhalide
Women being valued primarily as decorative sex objects is a result of cultural misogyny. Women are perfectly capable of being sexist and enforcing the social norms of toxic masculinity. Women liking clothes and make up is just another facet of toxic attitudes about pointlessly gendered behaviors. Men aren’t allowed bright colors, or pretty clothes?
Toxic masculinity is the idea that real men don’t have girly things like emotions, or that big boys don’t cry.
Real men are stoic/allowed only anger and violence.
Humans need physical hugs, social support, and emotional warmth to be healthy and mentally well adjusted, but only girls are allowed to express their emotions without social penalties.
I’m glad people are reading the link @16, it provides a lot of data and social science on the subject of 98% of mass murders being aggrieved men.
The entitlement is a feature of Patriarchy. Every form of US mass media from movies to video games is marketed with images of manly heroic men with guns. Occasionally there are swords and women with guns, but a brief glance shows that about 90% feature weapons + violence. Bring up a movie menu on a television, and start counting the guns on the thumbnails.
@38: “@36 Religion is apparently the means of expressing his mental illness but it didn’t actually cause it, any more than the apricot pits did. There are plenty of religious people out in the world; many of them are good and kind people. Just because they don’t share your philosophy doesn’t make them bad people. And it’s a cheap and easy excuse that lets the shooter off the hook and I don’t buy it.”
I didn’t say, and didn’t mean to imply, that because I do consider “Religious people who use phrases like ‘equally yoked’ and ‘burning with the Holy Spirit'” to be “mentally ill” I therefore consider them to thereby to be “bad people”, nor that those among them who are such “bad people” that they commit mass murder. (As a matter of fact, I do think that the use of such phrases by a religious person probably points towards that person being “bad” to others. I don’t have any reason to believe that that particular group of “bad people” are much more murderous than others.)
“Mentally ill” and “bad” and “murderous” are three different qualities.
silvrhalide@38:
I remember an article several years ago that Walmart is the greatest beneficiary of the ‘Food Stamp’ program (SNAP? I’m not American) in the U.S., effectively using it to transfer a large amount of government money to Walmart’s coffers. The basic process runs like this:
– Walmart pays its employees well below a living wage
– Walmart’s employees have to turn to government assistance to get decent food
– Walmart in many towns is effectively the only grocery store in town, or the only one that actually has proper readers for the benefits cards. If they aren’t, their employees have staff discounts making it cheaper to shop for groceries there anyway
– Walmart employees thus buy all their groceries at Walmart, and Walmart bills the government for the amount
End result is that Walmart gets a lot of government money by using SNAP as an intermediary, to the point where literally no company in the U.S. benefits from SNAP as much as they do.
As if anybody needed another reason to hate them.
(I refuse to shop there myself… among other things, I’m Canadian, and Walmart falls under ‘foreign invader’ territory for me.)
@42: Did a 13 year stint in Walmart. Our 10% discount only applies to groceries during the holiday season. Seriously.
And yes, Walmart sucks. Massively. They don’t care who they screw over in the name of the almighty dollar. Oh, and the Clintons have ties to them so yeah. I voted Hillary Clinton because she was the lesser of two evils but not by much.
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/clinton-remained-silent-wal-mart-fought-unions/story?id=4218509
I don’t think the issue has anything to do with the phone hack. It’s not that odd for someone to have an emotional investment in a problem that far outscales the logical impact it has on their lives. That’s kind of normal. Any counselor or psychologist will tell you that you can’t compare traumas. What bothers you bothers you and that’s fine.
What’s not fine is when you get the feels and then decide it’s okay to lash out violently at people who are not being violent to you. If they’re not being actively or passively violent (ie, they’e not killing you directly but they’re your only source of food and they’re trying to starve you to death or something like that), then violence is not the right response.
I’m not sure anyone else thinks this and it might be too simple a solution. But I personally feel like stopping bullying is the way to stop toxic masculinity. And yes, this is an example of toxic masculinity if an extreme one. I feel like most of toxic masculinity only makes sense to those who buy into it because it presents bullying as an answer to problems. Someone’s bullying you? Fight back! Can’t fight back? Bully someone else, make it their problem! Got a problem unrelated to bullying? Bully the source of your problem, it’ll make them stop soon enough. Can’t bully anyone? Umm… uh… Lie a lot and pretend you could if you wanted to?
@40 Women are perfectly capable of reinforcing the patriarchy, particularly if they’ve achieved any standing in the kyriarchy. Because now they have something to lose. I never claimed otherwise. But the massive sense of entitlement? That’s largely men, who literally use women as a measure of social standing. Signifiers of social standing vary among different cultures but the one universal status marker for men in a society is having a wife. It’s pretty much the universal signifier of male adulthood as well as socioeconomic status as well. The primary sign of status varies pretty widely throughout various cultures but the secondary signifier–for men–is nearly always marriage. (Frequently it’s the primary signifier for women.) You see it crop up pretty frequently with incels–they don’t want a relationship with a particular women, they want a status symbol that they can show off to their fellow dudebros as well as what they imagine is sex on demand and no emotional work.
And if you’re a guy who can’t get a woman? Not long-term, short-term, nothing? Then by societal standards, especially among men, you’re not a man.
It’s the reason incels always think they are entitled to a supermodel for a girlfriend. Because it’s not even really the girl, it’s the status symbol to show off to all his equally asinine buddies. I think people think it’s the lack of sex, which is certainly a sore point among incels but I’m not even sure that’s the primary problem. It’s the social status issue, and women are signifiers. In some ways, the sex is almost a fringe benefit, not the primary motivation. Their real relationships are with other incels.
The patriarch is also the reason why we have this:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-GeFM4Mco48
Because if a woman’s primary function in society is to functionally be the property of a man, then naturally you have to tear down or minimize all her accomplishments, talents, education and work.
“Men aren’t allowed bright colors, or pretty clothes”
Have you ever seen the West Indian Day parade in NYC? Neither gender leaves any colors out.
Men are allowed to care about clothes, but only in a narrowly-focused way. Dated a decidedly metrosexual lawyer in the 90s, guy easily spent three times the amount of time on his hair and clothes as I did.
@42 You probably read the same article that I did. Found this in a quick search:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/17/business/17cnd-walmart.html
“The 2-to-1 ruling by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is a major setback — if not a fatal blow — for a nascent campaign, called “fair share,” that sought to move millions of America’s working poor off of state-sponsored insurance programs, like Medicaid, and on to employer-based plans.
Facing ballooning Medicaid costs, the Maryland state legislature last year passed a law forcing major employers to spend the equivalent of 8 percent of their payrolls on health care. But it structured the legislation so that it was aimed at only one company — Wal-Mart, which has many workers rely on Medicaid in states from Maryland to Georgia.”
Yeah they suck.
I would have gone with “enemy of the people” but sure, “foreign invader” works too.
I’ve never shopped there either. Closest I ever came was accompanying the Better Half into one, where they picked up their mother’s prescription. Literally no other place to get it, because we were on the road and because that’s what Walmart does–eliminate all the competition.
@43, Holy shit, that is Olympian. I genuinely don’t know how you managed it. I work for the government, which is sufficiently mind-numbing but Walmart is the special hell. (I had friends who worked there as a secondary job.) Respect.
And yes, I knew about Hillary’s anti-union work. I was not happy about voting for her but looked at the other options and pulled the lever for the least awful choice. I really says something about the candidates in 2016 that she was the least objectionable candidate, the others being “dimwitted stoner isolationist” and “misogynist ambulatory tire fire”.
Typical Christian “I’m a victim” whinging from another deranged mass murderer.