Robert Stark has just posted a new interview with me on his website. Most of this interview was taken up discussing the Eliot Rodger case which I previously wrote about on this blog. I hope this interview isn’t too too controversial, but you know me! Don’t worry, I didn’t call him a hero or anything like that. However, I did read through his entire 137 page manifesto. It was a sad, sad story, especially from age 12 on.
Everybody seems to be getting this case wrong. The only sensible proposal to come out of this is for more gun control, say of automatic weapons maybe? The rest of the proposals make no sense. I will list them below.
We need to focus more on the treatment of the mentally ill! A favorite of the gun nuts, they use this to deflect attention from a society packed to the gills with high-powered weapons. Their line – Guns don’t kill people, crazy people kill people! Some of the truly insane proposals that have followed have been along the lines of that anyone who has ever been prescribed a psychiatric drug, been in therapy or sought help for a mental illness be prevented from owning a gun.
- He was sad.
- He was bad.
- He was way, way too shy.
- He wasn’t getting any sex, but that’s not in the DSM yet.
- Foremost, he had a completely lousy, malignant personality which at the end of the day is why he went on his spree.
Main problem here. Eliot Rodger wasn’t crazy! He wasn’t nuts, loony, mentally ill or any of that. What was he? First of all, he was sad. That’s called depression and it’s not insanity. A quarter of the country is probably depressed.
Second, he was bad. Eliot Rodger was simply a bad person. Most of his problems were flowing from his personality disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But people on Axis 2 (personality disorders) are not crazy. What is wrong with them? They are sick, twisted, and warped. They have lousy personalities. At their core, they have what we might call a bad character. In other words, they are simply bad people. Most, but not all people with Axis 2 stuff are lousy people or annoying idiots, and quite a few of them are out and out bad people. Lousy human beings. Jerks. Tools. You get the picture. Since Rodger was not nuts, there was nothing that the mental health system could do for him.
He had some problems for which he was seeking help, but those problems were not due to mental illness. They were due to excessive shyness, extreme social inhibition and social phobia. None of these things mean you are crazy. They are more or less just what I might call “problems in living.” Some people get themselves worked into such a state of extreme shyness that it is just not healthy. But that doesn’t mean they are nuts. What does it mean? It means they are way, way too shy. That’s all.
Yes he wasn’t getting any sex. I suppose a lot of guys who are not getting any sex show up for therapy. There is not mental illness called No Sex Disorder. If you’re getting laid, that doesn’t automatically mean you are nuts. What does it mean? It means you aren’t getting laid. That’s what it means.
Last of all, he was bad. Most people even with that malign Axis 2 disorder do not do the things that he did. Eliot had grown to hate first females, then men who were successful with women, and lastly just about everyone in the whole world. He didn’t care about their lives anymore and he fantasized all the time about murdering them, torturing them, slowly peeling their skins off, etc. Although he started out as an empathetic youngster, the constant rejection hardened him, turned him misanthropic and led to him to lose empathy for much of humankind.
His heart was full of hate for the world and he wanted to destroy as much of humanity as he could. Does that mean you are crazy? Not necessarily. Just because you shot up a shopping meal doesn’t automatically mean you are nuts. What does it mean. It means you were very, very angry. You were also probably extremely sad, possibly suicidal. Last, it means you were a very bad person. You hated the whole world, and you had no empathy for anyone in it. In short, a person like that is evil. Probably at one time, they were not evil, but life circumstances had turned them into monsters.
The suggestions don’t make sense.
You already can’t get a gun if you have been hospitalized for mental illness here in California. Further restrictions on the “mentally ill” people’s right to own a gun are silly and probably won’t pass anyway.
The feminists are ranting and raving about misogyny. “Misogyny! Misogyny! Misogyny! Misogyny! Misogyny! Misogyny!” they scream. Their argument is that the US is a horribly misogynistic society. But it isn’t. It is probably one of the least misogynistic societies on Earth. Yes there are misogynists, but these guys exist everywhere. Do the feminists really think that jumping up and down yelling “Misogyny!” is going to make all these ugly misogynistic men think twice about their mindset and quit hating women? I doubt it.
I can see the feminists raiding the incel forums now. “You are misogynists!” They scream.
“Yeah we are. What about it, cunts?” the incels reply.
“Stop being misogynistic! It’s evil!” they scream.
“No it isn’t. What’s evil is women. And by the way, fuck off bitches and go away.”
I don’t think all this screaming about misogyny is going to have much of an effect. It would be nice if it did.
The feminists are also ranting about entitlement! Why, Eliot Rodger felt entitled to have sex with women, they screech. No man is entitled to have sex with any of us ever! they howl.
I can see the incels replying, “Ok so what you bitches are saying is you have the right to deny any of us sex with a year, a decade, multiple decades or even a lifetime. If we never get lucky, too bad. We need to die virgins then. Women have the right to hold out on us forever.”
“Yes that’s right,” the harpies shriek, “You only get sex when we feel like giving it to, which might just be never, who knows! You are not entitled bla bla.”
I simply cannot see this argument going over with the incels. Are they supposed to be overjoyed that women deny them sex for months, years, or even decades? This is all perfectly cool – it’s no problem? The incels and most men are not going to find that argument to be persuasive. In fact all it will do is make them mad.
“Ok so really we have no right to sex, then. Well, guess what? Fuck you bitches.”
There is a lot of ranting about the Manosphere, the PUA Zone, MRA’s and whatnot for fostering a culture of misogyny. There were plenty of misogynists before there was an Internet. This stuff is as old as Adam and Eve, that stupid bitch. Sure the Manosphere is a hateful, ugly, vicious place where hypermasculine tools tromp all over women and the 80% of male population they deep to be wimpy inferiors. The misogyny on those sites is horrid, as is the scary, violent presence of many very mean men trying to act like the baddest dude in the room by starting fights with all the other guys.
In fact the misogyny and male strutting is so awful that I can barely stand to read those sites. That stuff is so unpleasant and makes me so unpleasant that I usually have to leave.
So all of these ugly sites are now going to introduce a “no misogyny” policy? Forget it, ain’t going to happen. First of all, they would have to ban 80% of their commenters. Second, these sites are all run by misogynistic men who are happy being sexist jerks and do not with to change.
Nothing good is going to come of this terrible act by a sad and evil man. It’s just another sad chapter in our lives, and that’s all you can say about it. That, and you ain’t seen the end of this. I am afraid there will be more Elliot Rodgers. Which is terrible. And sad.