It’s Dylann Roof all over again. The killer makes it as clear as possible why he kills, yet the fear of accepting the social consequences of recognizing what the motive was leads to these silly proclamations. As if people were so stupid that they didn’t understand the motives of these killers well enough even in the face of these denials.
One response to “Motives”
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Law enforcement people aren’t uniformly intelligent (no pun intended). They are subject to stereotyping, which enables them to interpret behavior in the framework of what they expect, instead of what is. Thus the black who is reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief is seen as going for a gun and must be shot.
When lawmen have no preconceived stereotypes, they are lost. Thus these proclamations.
However, in fairness, what is missing is root cause analysis. Kids are turning to radicalism, but that’s been true for a very long time (I’m old enough to remember the Panthers and SDS from the 1960s). Radical Islam involves violence; what else is new? The recent shooters were battling depression. So is most of the US population.
What’s the underlying mechanisms driving these actions? Is it economic inequality, food additives, environmental change, poor parenting? Or is there some geologic imperative that this society will implode in violence?
The lawmen wasting countless hours searching crime scenes for additional clues is ludicrous. The key answers aren’t going to be found there.
However, I think they are right in that they don’t understand the root cause of this violence.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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