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disgusted.

Posted on by Marko

Over the past few days, the Internet has educated me that the Aurora massacre was really perpetrated by:

  • President Obama, to be able to push tighter gun control
  • The CIA, to eliminate the service members who were killed (the other audience members being “collateral alibi damage”)
  • The Jews, because, hey, Zionist World Conspiracy
  • The Tea Party, because those people are just so damn angry and violent
  • The Occupy movement, because those people are just so damn angry and violent
  • The BATFE, to draw attention away from the “Fast & Furious” investigations.

It seems that the natural tendency in the face of such appalling, senseless carnage is to assign responsibility to the people and political viewpoints one doesn’t like, and then to project one’s own attitudes onto them, all before the first bit of evidence comes in.

This is one of those weeks when I spend a great deal of time wondering how our species has ever made it down from the trees and off the African savanna. I can’t decide whether a species that has learned to harness the atom and fly to the moon, but whose members kill each other over trivial shit is too smart or too stupid for its own good. Somewhere in the galaxy there’s some civilization that uses humanity as a cautionary educational tale: “What happens when apes get smart enough to invent projectile weapons.”

And with that, I think I’ll turn this Intertubes thing off for a bit and go make something.

Category: in the news.

13 thoughts on “disgusted.”

  2. I believe the conspiracy talk is so prevalent because it’s an easy way to justify something, even if that thing has or needs no justification. It can also make one feel more intelligent, or as if they’re a part of a cause. It is human nature to over-complicate things that generally have a very simple explanation. And I believe Aurora is one of those things.

    We know that the perp studied neuroscience. Several people who choose this (or similar) field of study are, in fact, looking for a means of self-diagnoses, because they know that something within them is innately flawed. We also know that his mother was unsurprised by his actions, which gives this theory some credit.

    So, the simple explanation is that he finally snapped, used the movie premier as an opportunity and did what he did to all those poor souls. I don’t believe a motive or cause is really all that important in a case like this, because anyone who would plot and execute something like this has to be a messed-up individual indeed. And in situations like this, we tend to lose focus of what is really important whilst playing the blame-game, and that is the victims, the ones left behind and mourning, and the community itself.

    I send my love and deepest sympathy to the people of Aurora.

  3. I have this crazy theory that the shooter was a lunatic and shot a bunch of people for no better reason than it seemed like a good idea to him.

  5. I have been inundated with conspiracy theories about this being a setup from my friends on both the left and the right. My first point back to them is that if this was a .gov setup do you honestly think he’d have been taken alive?

  6. I wonder if conspiracies are more comfortable than acknowledging that evil can be utterly random, or that the actions of one warped mind can cause terrible atrocities? That and conspiracies are the easy way out – they explain so much in whatever world-view they come from.

  7. We’re pattern-seeking animals, Marko. There’s no evolutionary advantage to assuming that Ook and Eek disappeared from the troop because Random Incomprehensible Shit.

  12. Anything sensational causes everyone with a bonnet bee they want to feed to come out of the woodwork.

    Everyone wants their turn to dance in the blood.

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