"Death Of An American: The Killing Of John Singer" by David Fleisher and David M. Freedman

In January 1979 John Singer, a hard-working, self-reliant Utah farmer, was shot and killed by a state law enforcement officer during an arrest attempt.
 His death came after six years of conflict with the courts over his insistence on educating his daughter at home, in accordance with his Mormon beliefs.
John Singer clearly broke the state law, but was the principle worth dying for?
A powerful examination of the events, after which Singer's wife filed a lawsuit through famed lawyer Gerry Spence against Utah officials, including the Governor, in a landmark case of parents' rights, and a loving family man who died in a fight for personal and religious freedom.

Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

"Death Of An American: The Killing Of John Singer" by David Fleisher and David M. Freedman

HARVEY MILK AND JIM JONES KOOL-AID

Koinonia House
from the October 13, 2009 eNews issue

May 22 has officially become "Harvey Milk Day" in California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Sunday to honor the state's first openly gay politician elected to office by having California school children annually celebrate the man's birthday. Milk is only the 2nd person in The Golden State, after naturalist John Muir, to get a day dedicated to his honor.

Tens of thousands of people from both sides of the issue contacted the governor's staff regarding this controversial bill. Conservative groups had rallied without success to persuade the governor to veto the bill as he did last year. New attention drawn to Harvey Milk by the Oscar-winning movie and plenty of pressure from GLTB activist groups apparently changed Schwarzenegger's mind, however.

Harvey Milk Day will not be a state holiday; banks will be open and the kids will still have to go to school. In their classrooms on that day, according to the new law, teachers will offer lessons "remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments and familiarizing pupils with the contributions he made to this state." In other words, Harvey Milk's homosexual activism gets to be celebrated by an entire day set up in his honor, (while thousands of other historically significant Californians are comparatively ignored).

Geoff Kors, executive director of the huge gay-rights organization Equality California, has said his group would develop curriculum for schools and teachers to use on Milk's birthday.

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who authored the legislation, said, "This will go a long way to better inform Californians as to the nature of the civil rights struggle in the LGBT community."

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, was not so jubilant. "Under SB 572, schoolchildren could perform mock gay weddings, have cross-dressing contests, and have gay-pride parades right on campus. Why? Because 'Harvey Milk Gay Day' pressures schools to make children honor and support anything and everything that Milk believed in. The sky is the limit. And there's no parental consent in the bill."

No Hero For Children:
Regardless of what Californians may or may not believe about GLTB rights, Harvey Milk was a painfully poor person to teach unsuspecting school kids to honor. The real Harvey Milk was a guy with a bad temper, who freely had sex with teenagers and, according to his biographer, "had a penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems." The movie about Harvey Milk also conveniently leaves out the fact that Milk was a big supporter of Jim Jones – that same Jim Jones, leader of Peoples Temple, who led over 900 people to their poisoned Kool-Aid deaths in Guyana merely nine days before Milk was slain.

According to Daniel J Flynn in City Journal:

"Milk occasionally spoke at Jones's San Francisco–based headquarters, promoted Jones through his newspaper columns, and defended the Peoples Temple from its growing legion of critics. Jones provided conscripted 'volunteers' for Milk's campaigns to distribute leaflets by the tens of thousands. Milk returned the favor by abusing his position of public trust on behalf of Jones's criminal endeavors."

Milk also willingly used deceit to move himself forward politically. In his last campaign, Milk's camera store was bombed with low-grade explosives.  Milk blamed the bombing on his political enemies, but biographer Randy Shilts notes that, "Years later friends hinted broadly that Harvey had more than a little foreknowledge that the explosions would happen."  That is, the bombs were a set up. "You gotta realize the campaign was sort of going slow, and, well . . ." one friend told Shilts.

It is also relevant to note that Milk was not shot to death because he was gay. He was not a martyr for the gay rights cause. Milk was shot because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time moments after Dan White shot Mayor George Moscone. In fact, White's own campaign manager was homosexual and White had donated money to support gay rights.

Yet, Sean Penn's Oscar-winning performance has done its job, whether or not that performance truly represented history at all. Harvey Milk Day has been signed into existence, and parents and teachers have a rough job ahead of them. If Harvey Milk is to be commemorated, perhaps the full truth about him should be told. If that's not what was intended, then perhaps the governor should be more picky in signing bills to honor any one man.

In addition to the Milk bill, Schwarzenegger signed a bill that expands funding to domestic violence programs aimed at GLTB communities, as well as another Leno bill that allows same-sex couples married before Prop 8 passed to retain their marriage status.  Same-sex couples wed out of state who move to California will also keep all their marriage rights except for the name "married". 

Related Links:

 • Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid - City Journal
 • Governor OKs Harvey Milk Day, Marriage Bill - San Francisco Chronicle
 • Gov. Schwarzenegger Urged to Veto Bill Honoring Homosexual Activist - The Christian Post
 • Schwarzenegger Signs 478 Bills, Harvey Milk Day is Law - The Sacramento Bee

HARVEY MILK AND JIM JONES KOOL-AID

Is Murder All In The Mind, Or Is There "Something" More?

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Philippians 4:8).

By Thomas Horn
© 2007 RaidersNewsNetwork.com

Last Wednesday on the Fox News Channel, Evangelist Franklin Graham said Cho Seung-Hui, the killer at Virginia Tech University, was "filled with evil,” and that Satan was responsible for the mass killings of 32 people at the V-Tech campus.

"There is evil in the world, no question about it,” Graham said. "I believe Satan, the devil, is behind this … This young man was filled with evil. There’s no way to describe the fact that he could go and murder this many people and do what he did without this man being possessed by an evil spirit who brought this carnage on this university.”

Graham's view is based on religious tradition that sees murderous intentions as inspired by the Devil, "a murderer from the beginning" (John 8:44).

Not everybody agrees on the origins of violent behavior, and strides in understanding human brain chemistry and genetics now have some neurologists hoping to eventually defuse violent behavior and to someday eliminate tragedies like the university massacre in Virginia.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, in March 2005, Jeffrey James Weise, a 17-year-old junior at Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minn., went on a shooting spree that killed nine people and wounded 15 others at his school before he killed himself. Also like Cho, he left an electronic trail across the Internet on websites such as nazi.org, calling himself "Angel of Death," expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler, and offering public insight into his fascination with dark imagery in the months and years before the shootings.

WHAT COULD FILL A YOUNG PERSONS MIND WITH SUCH VIOLENT INTENT?

"There is no doubt in my mind that if we could have examined his brain (the killer at Virginia Tech) we would have found anomalies, and we would have been able to suggest for him to get therapies," said Dr. Allan Siegel, a neurologist and researcher at the University of Medicine of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in an AFP report this week.

"We might have been able to avoid this ... if he had been treated properly in the hospital setting."

Siegel told the AFP that clinical research as well as animal testing, particularly on cats, over some 40 years has shown that the front region of the brain, or the prefrontal cortex, including the limbic system, appears to play an important role in violent behavior.

Charles Whitman, who gunned down 16 people at the University of Texas in the 1960s, was found to have a tumor in the temporal lobe in the region of the limbic system. In 1999, when defense attorneys argued that 17-year-old Kip Kinkel - who similarly entered his school on a shooting rampage in 1998 - should not spend the rest of his life in prison, it was because Kinkel reportedly "heard voices" telling him to commit murders. During sentencing hearings Dr. Richard J. Konkol pointed out that "holes" in what is normally a smooth surface of Kinkel's brain revealed conditions consistent with schizophrenia. When defense attorney Mark Sabitt asked if this would make a person "more susceptible to a psychotic episode," Konkol responded, "I think it would."

Kinkel pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder in the May 1998 shooting rampage in Springfield, Oregon. Kinkel's parents and two students at Thurston High School died as a result of the attack. 25 other students were wounded.

"My dad was sitting at the (breakfast) bar," said Kinkel. "The voices said, 'Shoot him.' I had no choice. The voices said I had no choice." Kinkel testified that after he killed his parents he was instructed by the voices to "Go to school and kill everybody."

Murderous voices first began speaking to Kinkel at age 12 when he got off the school bus and was looking at a bush. It said, "You need to kill everyone, everyone in the world." Kinkel believes the voices came from the devil, a satellite, or from a computer chip implanted in his head by the government.

Like Kinkel, Cho Seung-Hui felt compelled to shed the blood of innocent people this week, and then to kill himself. How could such ideas enter the mind of a young boy? Notorious "Son of Sam" killer David Berkowitz claims "bloodthirsty voices" commanded him to kill too, and according to Berkowitz, a convert of Christianity, a 6,000-year-old demon named Sam communicated through his neighbor's black Labrador retriever instructing him to carry out the murders. Berkowitz was subsequently diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia, a disease in which the person often hears pejorative or threatening voices separate from their own. Both Kinkel and Berkowitz were also known to read pornographic and violent depictures of torture and murder. It appears from the initial evidence that Cho enjoyed the ponderings of mass murderers as well.

MURDER'S VOICE IN HISTORY

Schizophrenia is an accepted diagnosis of mental disorder and one cannot underestimate the positive contribution of such science. Yet for many devout persons like Franklin Graham and Christian psychologist James Dobson, the causes of violence in people suffering physical and mental illness, the appetite for disturbing images, and possible conditions such as schizophrenia, should be approached spiritually as well as scientifically during diagnosis and treatment. This presupposes a psychological influence of supernatural evil in some cases, and applies a literal interpretation to the words in the Bible that demonic influence affects the mind that has rejected the voice of God and fills it with "envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice" (Romans 1:29).

Early cultures often interpreted such difficult psychological expressions through metaphysics. In Greece, Dionysus was the intoxicating god of unbridled human passion. He was the presence that is otherwise defined as the craving within man that longs to "let itself go" and to "give itself over" to evil human desires. What a Christian might resist as the evil thoughts of the carnal man, the followers of Dionysus embraced as the incarnate power that would, in the next life, liberate mankind from the constraints of this present world, and from the customs which sought to define respectability through a person's obedience to moral law.

Until then, worshippers of Dionysus attempted to bring themselves into union with their god through ritual casting off of the bonds of sexual denial and primal constraint by seeking to attain a higher state of ecstasy. The uninhibited rituals of ecstasy (Greek for "outside the body") supposedly brought the followers of Dionysus into a supernatural condition that enabled them to escape the temporary limitations of the body and mind, and to achieve a state of enthousiasmos, or, "outside the body and inside the god." In this sense Dionysus represented a dichotomy within the Greek religion, as the primary maxim of the Greek culture was one of moderation, or, "nothing too extreme." But Dionysus embodied the absolute extreme in that he sought to inflame the forbidden passions and murderous thoughts of the human mind. Interestingly, as most students of psychology will understand, this gave Dionysus a stronger allure among many Greeks who otherwise tried in so many ways to suppress and control the wild and secret lusts of the human mind.

But Dionysus resisted every such effort, and, according to myth, visited a terrible madness upon those who tried to deny him his free expression. The Dionystic idea of mental disease resulting from the suppression of secret inner desires, especially aberrant sexual desires, was later reflected in the atheistic teachings of Sigmund Freud. Thus, Freudianism might be called the grandchild of the cult of Dionysus.

Conversely, the person who gave himself over to the will of Dionysus was rewarded with unlimited psychological and physical delights. Such mythical systems of mental punishments and physical rewards based on resistance and/or submission to Dionysus, were both symbolically and literally illustrated in the cult rituals of the Bacchae (the female participants of the Dionystic mysteries), as the Bacchae women migrated in frenzied hillside groups, dressed transvestite in fawn skins and accompanied by screaming, music, dancing, blood letting, and licentious behavior. When, for instance, a baby animal was too young and lacking in instinct to sense the danger and run away from the revelers, it was picked up and suckled by nursing mothers who participated in the hillside rituals. But when older animals sought to escape the marauding Bacchae, they were considered "resistant" to the will of Dionysus and were torn apart and eaten alive as a part of the fevered ritual.

Human participants were sometimes subjected to the same orgiastic cruelty, as the rule of the cult was "anything goes," including rape and other acts of interpersonal violence. Later versions of the ritual (Bacchanalia) expanded to include pedophilia and male revelers, and perversions of sexual behavior were often worse between men than they were between men and women. Any creature that dared to resist such perversion of Dionysus was subjected to sparagmos ("torn apart') and omophagia ("consumed raw"). In B.C. 410, Euripides wrote of the bloody rituals of the Bacchae in his famous play, The Bacchantes:

"Bacchantes [with] hands that bore no weapon of steel, attacked our cattle as they browsed. Then wouldst thou have seen Agave mastering some sleek lowing calf, while others rent the heifers limb from limb. Before thy eyes there would have been hurling of ribs and hoofs this way and that, and strips of flesh, all blood be-dabbled, dripped as they hung from the pine branches. Wild bulls, that glared but now with rage along their horns, found themselves tripped up, dragged down to earth by countless maidens hands."

Euripedes went on to describe how Pentheus, the King of Thebes, was torn apart and eaten alive by his own mother as, according to the play, she fell under the spell of Dionysus.

The tearing apart and eating alive of a sacrificial victim may refer to the earliest history of the murderous voice of Satan. An ancient and violent cult idea existing since the dawn of paganism stipulated that, by eating alive, or by drinking the blood, of an enemy or an animal, a person might somehow capture the essence or "soul-strength" of the victim. The earliest Norwegian huntsmen believed this, and they drank the blood of bears in an effort to capture their physical strength. East African Masai warriors also practiced omophagia, and they sought to gain the strength of the wild by drinking the blood of lions. Human victims were treated this way by Arabs before Mohammed, and head-hunters of the East Indies practiced omophagia in an effort to capture the essence of their enemies.

Today, omophagia is practiced by certain Voodoo sects as well as by cult Satanists. Eating human flesh and drinking human blood as an attempt to "become one" with the devoured is, in many cases, a demonization of the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. But sparagmos and omophagia, as practiced by the followers of Dionysus, was not an attempt of transubstantiation (as in the Catholic Eucharist), nor of consubstantiation (as in the Lutheran communion), nor yet of a symbolic ordinance (as in the fundamentalist denomination), all of which have as a common goal--the elevating of the worshipper into a sacramental communion with God. The goal of the Bacchae was the opposite: The frenzied dance, the thunderous song, the licentious behavior, the murderous activity, all were efforts on the part of the Bacchae to capture the "voice" of the god (Dionysus) in order to bring him down into incarnated rage within man. The idea was not one of holy communion, but of possession by the spirit of Dionysus.

WHO'S BEHIND MURDER'S VOICE?

When one recalls the horrific rituals of the followers of Dionysus, it's easy to believe that demonic possession may have occurred. People of faith should find this idea plausible, as did the Hebrews who considered Hades (the Greek god of the underworld) to be equal with Hell and/or the Devil, and many ancient writers likewise saw no difference between Hades (in this sense the Devil) and Dionysus. Euripedes echoed this sentiment in the Hecuba, and refered to the followers of Dionysus as the "Bacchants of Hades." In Syracuse, Dionysus was known as Dionysus Morychos ("the dark one") a fiendish creature; roughly equivalent to the biblical Satan, who wore goatskins and dwelt in the reqions of the underworld.

In the scholarly book, Dionysus Myth And Cult, Walter F. Otto connected Dionysus with the prince of the underworld. He wrote: "The similarity and relationship which Dionysus has with the prince of the underworld (and this is revealed by a large number of comparisons) is not only confirmed by an authority of the first rank, but he says the two deities are actually the same. Heraclitus says, "Hades and Dionysus, for whom they go mad and rage, are one and the same."

Even the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel condemned the mind-altering madness of Dionysus as inherently satanic. He spoke of the "magic bands" (kesatot) of the Bacchae, which, as in the omophgia, were used to mesmerize the minds of men. We read, "Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, Behold I am against your magic bands [kesatot] by which you hunt lives [minds/souls] there as birds, and I will tear them off your arms; and I will let them go, even those lives [minds/souls] whom you hunt as birds" (Ez. 13:20 NAS).

The kesatot, or "magic arm band," were used in connection with a container called the kiste. Wherever the kiste is inscribed on sarcophagi and on Bacchic scenes, it is depicted as a sacred vessel (a mind prison?) with a snake peering through an open lid. How the magic worked and in what way a mind was imprisoned is still a mystery. Pan, the half-man/half-goat god (later relegated to devildom) is sometimes pictured as kicking the lid open and letting the snake (mind?) out. Such loose snakes were then depicted as being enslaved around the limbs, and bound in the hair, of the Bacchae women.

The mysterious imagery of Pan, the serpents, the imprisoned minds, and the magic Kesatot and Kiste, have not been adequately explained by any available authority, and the interpretation of them as a method of mind control is subject to ongoing scrutiny. But since the prophet Ezekiel spoke of the efforts of the Bacchae to mystically imprison the minds of men through the magic bands of Dionysus, and since Pan was most beloved of Dionysus because of his pandemonium ("all the devils") which struck sudden panic in the hearts of men and beasts, and as the serpent was universally accepted by the Hebrews as a symbol of occult devotion, it can be surmised that the iconography of Dionysus represented the most tenacious effort on the part of the Bacchae to fulfill the psychological whims of evil supernaturalism.

SHUTTING MURDER'S MOUTH

In Acts 17:34 we read of the conversion of Dionysius the Areopagite. This is significant. Having the name Dionysius probably meant the parents were devotees of Dionysus, and thus the child was "predestined" to be a follower of the god. He may have also been under a mind-altering kesatot spell. Evidently the powers of darkness lost control over Dionysius's mind when he accepted the Gospel message. Jesus liberated him like He did the lunatics of Matthew 4:24 and 17:15. When Jesus touched the wild man, He left him "sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind" (Mark 5:15).

Contemporary stories of people whose minds were released from murderous madness through religious faith include David Berkowitz, the former Son of Sam killer. David accepted Christ on the prison floor. "When I finished talking to God, I got up. My mind seemed to flood with a sense of peace," said Berkowitz. "I knew from that moment that Jesus Christ heard me. I sensed in my heart that I was forgiven and that I was now free."

Ted Bundy pleaded for an interview with Dr. James Dobson prior to his court-ordered date with destiny. Bundy appeared genuinely sorrowful on videotaped interview and acknowledged the murderous effects of past sinful thinking. He asked Jesus to forgive him.

Karla Faye Tucker was the first woman executed in the state of Texas in 135 years. She testified of the mind-altering effect of drugs. On the eve of her execution, CBN reporter Kathy Chiero asked Karla, "Why do you agree to talk to the media regardless of why they are coming to you?" Karla responded, "God has given me a great big open door to share the love of Jesus and I'm going to do it. My heart has been to share with the world the love that he has poured out into me -- the forgiveness, the mercy, the way that he can change a life."

Most of us view such deathbed conversions with skepticism. Last minute loyalties attributed to a Savior in the midnight hour can bring scoffing. Yet we read of the criminal on the cross and see Jesus honoring his plea for forgiveness. Jesus extended mercy, and offered him eternal fellowship.

Perhaps others will discover what David Berkowitz says he has -- saving power that is "mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).

Cho Seung-Hui appears to have been lost from this idea.

BOOKS BY TOM HORN

VISIT MY WEBSITE:

Syndicate your Blog or Podcast with FeedBurner

Check me out!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Is Murder All In The Mind, Or Is There "Something" More?

Making No Sense of a Massacre by Peter Levenda

PETER LEVENDA'S BLOG

The author of the Sinister Forces trilogy discusses related matters...

The latest edition of Time magazine has just appeared, dated April 30, 2007. (Walpurgisnacht, the Witches’ Sabbath made famous in the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula, for anyone interested in the resonances.) And the cover story is about the Virginia Tech massacre, with the caption “Trying to Make Sense of a Massacre.”

It’s about what you would expect of Time. Pious musings, faux sensitivity. There are some unintentionally ironic moments, however. The court-ordered evaluation of Cho following his stalking incident in November of 2005 bore writing by a judge who claimed that Cho posed “an eminent danger to self or others”. Eminent, not imminent. Cho strove for both.

In addition, his first victims in the classroom shootings were students attending a German language course; next on the list was the engineering class being taught by a Romanian Holocaust survivor who lost his life while heroically saving those of his students, so many years after his survival of the death camps and on the day known as Yom ha-Shoah, “Holocaust Remembrance Day”. Thus, as in every such event, synchronicities pile up.

But what was annoying were the reflections by Jeffrey Kluger and David von Drehle, which focused on the narcissistic aspects of the crime and the criminal who committed them. Kluger – in “Why They Kill” – begins by asking “If you want a sense of just how terrible Monday’s crimes were, here’s something to try: imagine yourself committing them.” His point is that it is easier for us to imagine ourselves as victims than as killers. I guess Kluger has never played a violent video game. I guess Kluger never served in the armed forces. I guess Kluger is not old enough to remember Vietnam’s My Lai massacre in which young, red-blooded American boys with automatic weapons – told to “shoot anything that moves” – did just that. Of course, Kluger might respond, that was war. This is different. This is peacetime. A college campus. No “eminent” threat.

With the increasing – the exponentially increasing – amount of technology available in our materialist society and the proportional lack of spiritual or moral elevation, we are reduced to using this technology to visualize fantasies of pornographic violence. In these fantasies we are rarely, if ever, the victims. We are usually the perpetrators. Of course, in these fantasies we wear the white hats. We are killing drug dealers, or terrorists, or gang members. During basic training our men and women are taught that the enemy is a target, an object, not a human being. No one accuses our troops in Iraq of being narcissists, though.

Our technology has enabled us to create powerful works of art, vast multi-media creations linking music and image and text into spiritually-elevating experiences that demonstrate our love for culture and artistic expression … except that, well, we don’t use it that way. Instead, we project our own homicidal impulses onto the computer screens and with virtual Glocks murder hundreds, thousands, of virtual … whatever, whomever. For some of us, this represents a safety valve, a release of these impulses and tensions as they are grounded in a virtual world where no one really dies and no one is really to blame. For the rest of us, though, it’s training.

Kluger emphasizes – as does von Drehle in his article “It’s All About Him” – the role that narcissism plays in the minds of mass murderers and serial killers. As usual, the mass murderer and the serial killer are conflated, taken to be representative of the same violent impulse when of course they are not. The serial killer is a “lust killer” in the old terminology; the crime has a definite sexual element. The dead body itself is an object of desire, a focus for sexual acts and fantasies. The mass murderer, however, is not concerned with the bodies he (it’s usually a male) creates. He’s not concerned with quality, only with quantity, like a solder on a battlefield or a gamer at the controls. The people he kills are not people; they are objects and not even sexual objects. Instead, they represent the nameless and unnamable forces arrayed against him.

To relegate the entire phenomenon of mass murder to one of narcissism and clinical depression is to miss the point. Narcissism and depression are not the cause, they’re the symptoms of an underlying disorder. Narcissism is a defense mechanism, a way of keeping the identity intact in a world that has lost its moral compass; and by “moral” I don’t mean only knowing right from wrong (although that would be a welcome development), but something deeper than that.

In the United States, a country made up of people from virtually every country on earth, we have lost a shared sense of connection. We don’t know to whom we belong: what family, what race, what ethnicity, what religion … what history. An immigrant from South Korea in 1992, how could Cho be expected to identify with the American Revolution, or Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, or the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy? Yet he did identify with the assassinations of Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon. Pop icons took the place of cultural identification. “American” was probably an artificial identity for Cho; as was Virginia Tech. None of these things – social and cultural constructions invented by white people – provided any kind of real human connection for Cho. It’s hard enough for the rest of us, those of us born and raised here, to claim American “roots”: the whole idea is pretty problematic, especially if your ancestors were slaves, or illegals, or Nazis brought in under Operation Paperclip … My own ancestors showed up here from Eastern Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century. How much of American history, then, do I share with my neighbors?

The whole point of America was to do just that: to create an artificial environment that would guarantee a certain level of freedom for all its citizens regardless of their background; a country removed from considerations of monarchy and therefore from considerations of hierarchies, classes, even race, religion and family. It was an escape route from religious and political persecution in Europe. Well … for white people, anyway.

According to the statistics published in this issue of Time, most mass murders are carried out by men, both black and white (about evenly divided). In dissecting the mentality of mass murderers, though, the articles in question focus on the idea of narcissism and avoid questions of race and ethnicity. It is assumed that the motivation for one is the motivation for all, regardless of race. That seems intellectually dishonest to me.

Further, von Drehle compares Cho to Ted Bundy, and this is where his analysis starts to spring leaks. Bundy was a serial killer, a sexual psychopath and sadist, who killed women by first convincing them that he needed their help and then taking advantage of their kindness by knocking them out, kidnapping them, and then killing them. He was handsome, charming, with an easy smile and ingratiating manner. To all intents and purposes, he was socially integrated. Cho was anything but. While Cho may have had psycho-sexual problems – as seems evident from his stalking of women, and taking photos of them with his cell phone when they weren’t looking – the murders he committed had none of Bundy’s sexual dimensions (unless, of course, all murder is to be considered in terms of a sexual impulse). Von Drehle, however, sees the narcissistic impulse as the core impulse, the unifying characteristic, of both killers. He writes “Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers.”

Let’s take a look at that. In the first place, who gave us the term “alienation” and how was it used? Probably the first time it was employed in any kind of a methodical way was by Erich Fromm. In "The Art of Loving", he writes:

Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.

Alienation, therefore, is the result of a materialist society that turns human beings into commodities, i.e., objectifies them so that they have lost their essential humanity. By directing one’s “life forces” into materialist goals, a human robs himself or herself of basic humanity, becomes – in Holden Caulfield’s words – a “phony”. In order to sell oneself, one has to be concerned with packaging, with advertising, with spin: these are all concepts we have inherited from World War II and its aftermath, from a black art known as “psychological warfare” but which has come down to us as “communications science” and its ugly offspring, advertising. We live in a culture where people no longer communicate with people, they no longer touch; instead, you read my ad and I read yours. My people will call your people. We’ll do lunch.

Lest someone think I am going off the deep end here, let’s look at Cho’s writings. He blames the rich and the decadent. His focus – self-serving and narcissistic or not – was precisely materialism. To go back to von Drehle’s statement above, we would have to characterize virtually all revolutions, all civil wars, all wars in general, as acts of narcissism. They all promote one identity above all others; one nation, or race, or religion, or political philosophy. We belong, you don’t. We are the solution, you are the problem. You are standing in the way of my happiness. You enslave me, if only with your thoughts; your way of life; the way you pray; the way you vote.

The difference between acts like Cho’s and – let’s say – the Russian Revolution led by that great narcissist V.I. Lenin is that Cho’s alienation is a symptom of spiritual disconnectedness, of spiritual impoverishment. In order to survive the slow death of one’s identity – the inability to frame one’s identity in terms of status goods, or credit cards, or nice hair – one focuses on one’s identity, creates an enhanced identity that is consistent with one’s inner life, one’s inner anger and hatred.

As I mentioned in the previous post, suicide bombers share more than a little in common with Cho. Are they also narcissists? Isn’t that a simplistic characterization of their motivations? A suicide bomber is a mass murderer who ends by killing himself or herself in the process. A suicide bomber leaves a video or written testimony and mails it to the press. Complains about oppression. Kills innocent people.

I submit that my linking Cho with suicide bombers is just as valid a comparison as that used by von Drehle and Kluger in their articles. Using “narcissism” and “depression” as reasons for what happened at Virginia Tech is lazy and facile; pop psychology masquerading as insight.

Cho was sick, no doubt about that. He was mentally ill. But those are terms whose meaning we no longer recognize because they are labels that can be applied so easily it’s a wonder they don’t come with a solvent, just in case. Cho was a “crazed, lone gunman” to be sure; but that doesn’t answer any questions, doesn’t solve any problems. All the work the government tried to do in the wake of the Columbine massacre resulted in not very much, because the perspective was all wrong. As usual, we like to focus on symptoms and not on root causes. We could have prevented VT with … what? A pill? If only Cho had taken his meds …

Years ago, R.D. Laing wrote that schizophrenia was a spiritual disorder that should be respected as such. His approach made some headway until it was discovered that schizophrenia could be treated with chemotherapy. With drugs. Schizophrenics were no longer wandering the streets, mumbling to themselves, hearing voices. As long as they took their meds, we were safe from them. So, Laing’s work became discredited, a quaint reminder of the kind of thinking that went on during the Sixties. But what do the drugs actually do? It is recognized that they do not cure schizophrenia, they only mask or reduce the symptoms so that schizophrenics can function in society, enabling them to bring themselves “the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions”.

Yes, Cho was ill. Dangerously, radically ill. But by dismissing his case as easily as do Kluger and Von Drehle, we run the risk that other Chos will rise, enabled by his example; because those market conditions still exist and alienated narcissism is the only survival mechanism available to those who can’t quite make a sale.

BOOKS BY PETER LEVENDA

VISIT MY WEBSITE:

Syndicate your Blog or Podcast with FeedBurner

Check me out!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Making No Sense of a Massacre by Peter Levenda

NBC Receives Video"Manifesto" from CHO

Composite of stills from video message sent to NBC News from “Ismail-AX” on April 16, 2007. The video was accompanied by an 1800 word manifesto. (NBC/CTD)

Still frame from a video aired by NBC News on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 shows Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui. The video was part of a package allegedly mailed to the network on Monday, April 16 between Cho’s first and second shootings on the Virginia Tech campus. NBC said that a time stamp on the package indicated the material was mailed in the two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire in a high-rise dormitory and the second fusillade, at a classroom building. (AP Photo/NBC)

By MATT APUZZO

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) — Between his first and second bursts of gunfire, the Virginia Tech gunman mailed a package to NBC News containing pictures of him brandishing weapons and video of him delivering a diatribe about getting even with rich people.

“This may be a very new, critical component of this investigation. We’re in the process right now of attempting to analyze and evaluate its worth,” said Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of Virginia State Police. He gave no details on the material, which NBC said it received in Wednesday morning’s mail.

NBC said that a time stamp on the package indicated the material was mailed in the two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire in a high-rise dormitory and the second fusillade, at a classroom building. Thirty-three people died in the rampage, including the gunman, 23-year-old student Cho Seung-Hui, who committed suicide.

The package included a manifesto that “rants against rich people and warns that he wants to get even,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case.

MSNBC said the package included a CD-ROM on which Cho read his manifesto.

Read the rest >

Late Wednesday, MSNBC showed a photo from the package of Cho glaring at the camera, his arms outstretched with a gun in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves and a backwards, black baseball cap. “NBC Nightly News” planned to show some of the material Wednesday night.

NBC News President Steve Capus said the network promptly turned the material over to the FBI in New York.

The material is “hard-to-follow … disturbing, very disturbing very angry, profanity-laced,” he said on the MSNBC Web site. Among the materials are digital video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera about his hatred of the wealthy, Capus said.

It does not include any images of the shootings, but contains “vague references,” including “things like, `This didn’t have to happen,’” Capus said.

The package bore a Postal Service stamp showing that it had been received at a Virginia post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire, according to MSNBC.

If the package was indeed mailed between the first attack and the second, that would help explain where Cho was and what he did during that two-hour window.

Earlier in the day Wednesday, authorities disclosed that more than a year before the massacre, Cho was accused of stalking two women and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate’s orders because of fears he might be suicidal. He was later released with orders to undergo outpatient treatment.

The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho’s twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.

In November and December 2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received calls and computer messages from Cho, but they considered the messages “annoying,” not threatening, and neither pressed charges, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.

Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.

Around the same time, one of Cho’s professors informally shared some concerns about the young man’s writings, but no official report was filed, Flinchum said.

After the second stalking complaint, the university obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police did not identify the acquaintance.

On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.

The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved outpatient treatment.

A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 found that that Cho’s “affect is flat. … He denies suicidal ideations. He does not acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment are normal.”

The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho “presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness.” Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.

It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never took a leave of absence.

A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.

Though the stalking incidents did not result in criminal charges, police referred Cho to the university’s disciplinary system, Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying federal law protects students’ medical privacy even after death.

Some parents complained that the university failed to lock down the campus and spread a warning after the first round of shootings. Still, two days after the shooting spree, many students resisted pointing fingers.

“Who would’ve woken up in the morning and said, `Maybe this student who’s just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?’” said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the student government.

Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too, relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in disturbing writing assignments.

But she said authorities “hit a wall” in terms of what they could do “with a student on campus unless he’d made a very overt threat to himself or others.” Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he undergo counseling, Roy said.

One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho’s problems was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.

Students in Giovanni’s class had told their professor that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she considered him “mean” and “a bully.”

Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down the campus after the first burst of gunfire.

Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the gunman had fled the campus. Police went looking for a young man, Karl David Thornhill, who had once shot guns at a firing range with the roommate of one of the victims. But police said Thornhill is no longer under suspicion.

VISIT MY WEBSITE:

Syndicate your Blog or Podcast with FeedBurner

Check me out!

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

NBC Receives Video"Manifesto" from CHO