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Another Mass Killing Spree in Calif. The Insanity of Modern Life: The Epidemic of Mental Illness
Joachim Hagopian / Global Research
Yet another mass killing spree erupted in an affluent beach town in Southern California at the start of this holiday weekend. Normally every Memorial Day Americans annually mourn the loss of fallen soldiers who have become victims in never ending US wars. But this year Americans are additionally mourning the tragic loss of a half dozen college students victimized by the never ending US war on mental illness.
The insanity of modern life is creating so much strife and despair, more and more individuals are reaching their breaking points and increasingly acting out their anguish and severe disturbance through violent horror. The growing frequency of these terrible lethal attacks are always accompanied like clockwork with another flurry of loud calls for gun control and a renewed focus on mental health issues. But the horror and indignation comes and goes and nothing ever changes in any substantial way regarding either efforts to control gun access or addressing the national epidemic of mental illness… until the next heinous bloodbath. This cycle just keeps repeating itself indefinitely almost now on an ever week to two week level. Yet nothing ever is done about it.
Mass murdering killer Elliot Rodger spent his final hour on earth last Friday night first knifing his three roommates to death and then taking his BMW out on a last hurrah, drive-by shooting spree killing three more young victims in his Isla Vista neighborhood adjacent the UC Santa Barbara campus. In addition to killing four young men, three of who he lived with, and two female university students, Rodger shot and injured eight others and ran over and wounded five more victims during his reckless and brutal rampage.
Elliot Rodger was a 22-year old Santa Barbara Community College student who made frequent short videos just weeks and days leading up to last Friday evening’s tragic mass murder-suicide. Minutes before embarking on his murder spree, he emailed his 140-page manifesto called “My Twisted World” that chronicled both his life and pain to several others including his mother detailing his ”retribution plan” to kill. In addition to his autobiographical account, his selfie videos recorded near his home in Santa Barbara also became his final confessional, serving a function of venting his anguish, anger and pain that he had felt trapped in for nearly a decade. The plight of his lonely, tortured life days before his death was matter-of-factly delivered in a series of videos, indicating he had long been planning his “revenge against humanity.”
Clearly he felt far more comfortable with the camera running than speaking directly to other human beings. A family friend and spokesman told the LA Times that his family believed he had a mild yet undiagnosed case of Asperger’s Disorder, a form of mental illness that is a developmental disorder related to autism. Asperger’s symptoms include difficulty socializing and developing relationships, exhibiting very limited eye contact. Victims of this disorder often display movement that appears awkward and uncoordinated to others. His family ensured that Elliot had been in therapy for years but were unaware that he had legally acquired a gun and never believed him to be violent. The family spokesman stated that Elliot was always socially withdrawn and that the more confident persona viewed in Elliot’s videos was not the same person he had known for years.
However, on April 30th his mother residing in the Los Angeles area viewed several of his posted videos on youtube that she felt were bizarre and disturbing enough to prompt her to contact his therapist who in turn called the Santa Barbara police to pay him a visit at his apartment. Because Elliot presented polite and cooperative behavior explaining that it must have been some sort of misunderstanding, the officers were sufficiently satisfied to conclude that he presented no threat to himself or others and after a few minutes left the premises. Elliot wrote in his 140 page manifesto that included that when he saw seven police officers at his door, “the biggest fear I had ever felt in my life overcame me.” He figured that he would likely be busted right there on the spot fearing his written murder plan and cache of loaded weapons in his bedroom would be discovered but the police never bothered to inspect his apartment.
Apparently Elliot Rodger became intoxicated at a college party he attended not long ago and became so enraged that he turned violent toward both male and female partygoers, allegedly trying to push them off an apartment balcony. He created such a stir that his peers ended up pushing him off the balcony railing.
Born to an affluent family in England, his 140-page life account reflects back on his childhood as his best and only positive memories. He felt loved and taken care of by his parents who were both in the entertainment industry. His Malaysian born mother worked as a nurse on film location where she met his father Peter Rodger, a successful film director with assistant director credit on the 2012 blockbuster “The Hunger Games” as well as a longtime professional photographer, the same field with which Elliot’s grandfather also achieved some acclaim.
In his early youth, Elliot went to a nearby private school where he wrote that the most stressful activity was being forced to play soccer, writing that he avoided it as much as he could by hanging around the goalie net trying to be a second goalie. Elliot has a four-year younger sister who is reported to be well adjusted. Elliot especially struggled emotionally when his parents divorced.
In his videos Elliot repeatedly complained that he had no friends, also corroborated by his family. With his camera on while driving his BMW around town, he playfully winks and nods at the camera for effect. Then in another video he seeks solace at his favorite local park commenting on how much he loves its natural beauty.
In so many ways Elliot was the embodiment of America’s quintessential values. Just days prior to his killing spree, he casually commented how he went to such great lengths to dress well and look good, bragging how he spent $300 on his slick pair of sheik sunglasses, pleading with the camera and us as his would-be viewers to give him the answer to his pressing question why so many girls hated him so much and never gave him the time of day.
The disturbed young man admittedly lamented he was a virgin, never having a girlfriend or even kissing a girl or holding hands. What becomes readily apparent on video is that Elliot was an insecure narcissist who thought his physical appearance was so “magnificent” and “beautiful,” he could not comprehend how such a magnificent physical specimen who always made sure he wore the most fashionable clothes and accoutrements, drove the right car, and otherwise had everything going for himself, could never attract women. He obsessively repeated why a young man like himself with such a “sense of style, sophisticated, well traveled, and so intelligent” could not attract girls. He hated that beautiful women in Santa Barbara would always love “obnoxious, ugly, undeserving guys” who in comparison to him were no match for all that he offered and possessed.
A telling and rather chilling moment captured on one video is when he was walking in a golf course parking lot where he frequented to watch the sunset, marveling at the beauty of the world around him. Then as he approached his sleek black BMW and noticed his reflection in the car window, he narcissistically pointed to himself and uttered, “There’s me, in all my fabulousness… oh yeah, Elliot Rodger… [laughs] I am so awesome.” After getting into his car, he marvels how beautiful the world around him is, but how unfair life has been for him because he had been denied love, sex and companionship that he constantly saw his peers enjoying. But then he began pointing his finger at the camera as a sinister smile came over his face, and he vowed to correct the problem of women never being sexually attracted to him, “rectifying” life’s unfairness with a vengeful laugh and the following ominous statement:
“In all my magnificence and power, I will not let this fly… it’s an injustice that needs to be dealt with.”… [end of video].
A short time later he was murdering six innocent young people in a violent orgy of revenge. His bewilderment over why he was so unlovable to women turned into years of loneliness and pain that had festered inside him like a clicking time bomb. In recent months his built up hatred and deep narcissistic wound morphed into bitter anger and raging revenge acted out heinously last Friday night.
Elliot was a product of a society and culture that emphasize and value all the external assets with which he was lavishly and plentifully endowed. In all the popular movies, TV shows, commercials, and music North Americans are saturated with every single day, the mantra message that all we need in order to be happy and content in life are the right look, the right clothes, the right car, on down to the right sunglasses and we will automatically get that hot girlfriend or boyfriend we always wanted. Just as relief from any physical pain and discomfort is an instant fix away with a Big Pharma pill, so are loneliness and sadness just some buyable commodity away and instantly we will finally be able to start enjoying the good life we always fantasized and desired. Ordinarily these superficial props in a superficial society are enough to attract superficial guys and superficial girls. According to all the unwritten rules, subliminal messages, societal customs and the propaganda hype drummed into our heads daily, Elliot should have gotten the girl. After all, that is what is promised and guaranteed in a culture that judges and defines individuals by skin deep appearance, by what we wear, what we drive and where we live.
No doubt Elliot bought into all that society bullshit that assured him he possessed everything he needed to produce the desired result. By virtue of all he owned and offered according to the cultural brainwash, for all intents and purposes he should have been a happening dude. All his assets entitled and earned him the coveted status that guarantees being deemed a desirable catch for any young woman. In his and our world of crass materialism and surface level appearance that means everything especially to young people, Elliot could not fathom, understand or grasp why he had seemingly been cursed with so much rejection and utter sense of invisibility over his last eight years.
Sadly Elliot Rodger failed to realize that the empty void he felt inside could never be filled or adequately compensated for by all those externals he believed automatically entitled him a beautiful blond girlfriend by his side, complete with wild sex, companionship and love. He could never escape his inner sense of loneliness, emptiness and chronic low self-esteem. His inner angst is what he most likely projected externally, transparently manifesting as social anxiety and fear that crippled him from ever developing a relationship and enjoying the longed for experience of having a girlfriend and feeling loved. And then feeling so inwardly insecure and different from his peers, he was always the frustrated outsider looking in, never accepted or gaining a feeling of belonging to any peer group. His inner sense of social inadequacy and impairment from his mental illness that he likely minimized or was in denial of prevented him from fitting in with his peer group his entire life.
But once again this latest tragedy of violence and devastating loss of life is another national wake-up call to finally do something constructive to address this mushrooming mental health epidemic exploding in America. A first critical step is addressing the enormity of mental illness in America. Another massive problem needing radical change is addressing violence in American culture. A third intervention is to decrease access to lethal weapons.
Obviously as a nation we desperately need a comprehensive plan to begin to adequately address the growing epidemic of mental illness. Historically for several decades in this era of deficits and cutbacks, always the first “entitlement” program funding to be cut has always been mental health. Forty years ago state hospitals across the nation shut down and pushed severely mentally ill people into board and care facilities with minimal treatment. A high percentage of them have ended up homeless as discarded refugees living and dying on our city mean streets ever since. With such depleted funding sources from the federal, state and community levels, mental health services have subsequently been drying up to become nearly extinct. Thus, our care and treatment for the mentally ill has become pathetically minimal to nonexistent.
As a result, the long term costs of maintaining a revolving door broken system of providing acute hospitalization care for the mentally ill whose conditions become so severe and acute in crises that they pose a danger to themselves and/or others has never worked. Doping someone up to smother acute symptoms for a couple of days on the mental ward and then releasing them right back into the community with no further treatment or aftercare until the next crisis is applying the band aid approach that has never been an effective treatment for our chronically impaired population. It is also neither cost effective nor humane. What all this calamity, misfortune and tragedy has led to is the current national emergency to come up with a large scale plan of action to provide comprehensive mental health services at all community and statewide levels. This will then lead to early detection of mental health issues amongst our general population that will more effectively identify troubled youth and young people most prone to acting out violently and subsequently be able to deliver more effective long term care and treatment to those most in need.
Perhaps what is most necessary to help overhaul our near nonexistent mental health system currently reduced to shambles is education on a massive scale to remove the unjust stigmatization of mental illness. Every horrible crime committed by a mentally ill person means that the stigma of the mentally ill invariably goes up a huge notch, reinforcing the enduring false stereotype that all mentally ill people are violent and dangerous creatures. The fact is the mentally ill population is less violent than the so called normal population (normal in this case being the non-mentally ill). This is where education needs to make in roads into the widespread ignorance that drives stigmatization. If our nation is to realistically execute a strategic and feasible plan to collectively improve the mental health of its citizenry, the approach needs to obviously be a multi-layered, multi-disciplinary approach operating together at all levels of our society.
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Normalcy bias.
The truth is there is no going back. You can’t reach down and yank an entire society out of socialized medicine. You can’t tell people that their kids shouldn’t idolize Lady Gaga swaggering around in a bacteria-filled meat dress. You can’t criticize American boys for trying to jump their girlfriends because they’ve been watching Beyonce pumping her butt in the air for hours. You can’t call homosexuality perverse because your friend has homosexual neighbors and “oh, those boys looks so cute walking hand-in-hand down the street.” How could you be a hater and not a lover?
And while the powers that be have successfully weaned many kids off tobacco, you can’t turn around and tell them they can’t have their weed and heroin; that would be cruel. I mean jeez, what’s left?
Hitler started with the Gun agenda, then the homeless, then the Mental illness … the war veterans…… hmmmm see a trend here……. But HE went Straight for ROUNDING THEM UP and tossing them into the CAMPS,, Obama and his Commie/ Muslim Usurpers have had a long time to get the details worked out and now they have learned different ways to use STEALTH and Feigned TRUST to do the same thing as Hitler did. But They have Far more advanced Data, research and Technology to do this…. and one of the SOFTENING TACTICS is using mass False Flag Events such as mass shootings and murder sprees with people that seem to LOOK LIKE they are MENTALLY ILL , But are in fact either Satanists that are acting out their part in this agenda or are drug induced or MIND CONTROLLED.. Obama and his criminals have learned to use MASS CONTROL TACTICS to control the media / Narrative for their Ends… and this KID was JUST ANOTHER EXAMPLE of Barrys END GAME TAKEOVER PLAN…. the proof …. 99% of MK-ULTRA MIND CONTROL victims will KILL themselves after they are either finished or COMPROMISED in their MISSION…… with a single BULLET TO THE HEAD as to NOT have their agenda’s EXPOSED. but as in SOME cases as the COLORADO and GIFFORD’S SHOOTING …. some of their PLANTS are TAKEN ALIVE to push the case for the MENTAL ILLNESS part of the Agenda. and the Boston Bombing Stooge was allowed to be taken alive to push the DOMESTIC TERRORISM part of Barrys agenda, but they TRIED to cut his throat to either finish him off OR keep him from Talking….