So do you remember the 1993 movie FALLING DOWN? I've been thinking about this movie all day because newscasters keep acting like there's something dramatically different about a white man being a mass shooter.
As mass murderer's go, Stephen Paddock is common as dirt. And white people probably made a movie about what they fantasize Paddock should have been like. But I guess he ruined it by shooting a group that's got to be upwards of 90% white people (victims were at a country music festival)
FALLING DOWN is a movie about an entitled white man who is tired of feeling like his whiteness and maleness are under assault (by other people wanting equality) so he terrorizes "those people" as he crosses Los Angeles trying to get to his ex-wife's house in time for his daughter's birthday party --even though there's a restraining order in place to keep him away.
On his way across town he terrorizes Koreans, Blacks, Latinos, Women with various weapons. At the end he off's himself because he's the hero-victim.
I only have very vague recollection of this movie. But it was the ultimate in ***losing white privilege and losing male privilege feels like everybody is stealing from me when I worked the hardest to have the most-est*** Boo hoo you racist pieces of crap = the white men the starred, produced, and directed it )
Calling this movie a Xenophobic Fantasy is justified from the little I do remember. As I recall, this movie has been linked to at least one mass murder in real life. (Check out wikipedia)
I can't remember if real life people (non-white) were giving real life white men the side-eye for being most of the mass murderers back in 1993. But I doubt it would have made difference to those who made this movie or the white / wanna-be-white people who enjoyed it. White people just don't see themselves as having historically proven that they are dangerous with little or no provocation.
That's why a lot of them cannot conceive of how North Koreans might be scared after America bombed the hell out of Iraq (Vietnam Part II), this time trying to achieve regime change under the guise of looking for weapons of mass destruction.
Even when predominantly white police men shoot unarmed black people year after year after year white a huge slice of white people can deflect blame onto black victims for not saying "yassuh-boss" or "no-so-massa" quite fast enough. They just can't see how dangerous they are as a group..
But white men are firmly tied to using personal weapons of mass destruction (assault rifles) to kill large numbers of people in one outing. Regardless of what white folks are willing to see or not see, the numbers don't lie.
The only thing different about Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas Killer, is that he's old.
"The findings of a cultural study by sociologist Katarzyna Celinska states that the typical gun owner is white, Protestant, male and holds conservative political views tied to American individualism.
To judge by the numbers of mass murder incidents an increasing number of those gun owners are angry and are acting out on that anger. Another ingredient in this toxic soup is our culture of masculinity. Boys are taught, encouraged, to outwardly express their frustrations and anger. They are told to “man up.” They are taught that it’s unmanly to express emotions so they bottle up and act out. The full extent of what feminists have labeled a “rape culture” is coming out. Cases like the recent Stanford rape where the rapist was let off by a male judge with a slap on the wrist have brought much of this issue out in the open along with other forms of violence against women. It is as though men are using their male anatomy as a multi-function weapon.
What the many forms of anger source from is one thing: out of control, growing economic inequality
I tend to think this article is right.
The relatively high wages of white maleness could be the thing that eluded Stephen Paddock lately. THE YEAR OF THE ANGRY ENTITLED WHITE MAN began again the day Trump was elected. Maybe he was feeling the levers of control, based on white maleness, slipping away from him? Maybe he thought alt-Right was defending guys like him in Charlottesville.
Or maybe not. The brother who seems like he didn't talk to him much at all says he wasn't politicial. His brother also claims he had tons of money. But Paddock could have been feeling the impotence of old age. And that could have ticked him off all by itself.
Think about it. When men like Robert Redford start losing their beauty, aging might be significantly harder for pretty boys like them as compared to how it would be for someone who's only ever been average looking. There's further to fall, you see?
By the same token, an entitled, rich, world-by-the-ass, white man who is feeling his mortality could very well explode in rage over that feeling of impotence and decide to take some nobodies that he's objectified with him.It's likely we'll never know a thing about Paddock's motives unless someone finds a note. But, same as other mass murderers, we can read his intentions through his actions.
He somehow got more than 10 long guns and hundreds of bullets in a hotel room overlooking a concert after he'd spent thousands of dollars at a casino. He selected guns that he could aim and shoot and kill with, using little or no precision, so he could watch the chaos he created.
And he didn't plan to survive as he shot himself before police entered the room.
We can see that Stephen Paddock's intention was to go out in a blaze of glory and enjoy a little chaos before he went. Yet we'll never know which entitlement it was that was eluding him that made him angry enough to kill.
But does that really matter?
Whatever his motive was he decided he didn't want to live any more and that he wasn't going alone. Again, it wasn't enough to die. It wasn't enough to just take people with him by leaving a bomb somewhere; He wanted to watch the people he terrorized scatter and scream before he left this earth.
And that intention --along with Nevada law --makes him "a terrorist," same it does for people who are not white.
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