What does this mean? Absolutely nothing. I’m sure there are lots of nerds who own batman stuff.
What’s important and that’s being overlooked is that Holmes wanted to blow up his entire apartment building. Which should have happened, because he left with loud music playing and his door open. Someone was supposed to open the door to tell him to shut off the music, and blow the place sky-high, but that never happened.
So remember, Holmes didn’t just want to kill a bunch of random people attending the opening of a Batman movie, he also wanted to kill all the people he lived with in his apartment building.
Half Sigma,
You’re taking advantage of this event by grasping for straws that are relevant to the focus of your blog. I guess speculation is excusable after considering the fact that we’re in the early stages of this disaster, but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Holmes is more like a Loughner or Cho than not. His post arrest outburst and behavior in jail point in that direction. There is no manifesto. There were no angry utterances during the massacre. There may never be a coherent explanation. Holmes is a lunatic pure and simple.
Additionally, using the massacre to further the cause of the alt right/HBD/beta male movement (Whiskey) is extremely counterproductive - even if Holmes is just a product of the status quo. As some commentators have noted, it comes off as slightly threatening and whiny.
Finally, you need to change your profile pic. “Good morning world” (http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-369655-good-morning-world.php)? How many of your readers do you think feel like that after reading a couple of your posts? I know I don’t even want to get out of bed the next day.
Posted by: Comrade | July 23, 2012 at 07:58 AM
So, Holmes lived among NAMs, worked at McDonald's, couldn't find gainful employment...his living situation and (relative) poverty caused him to go on a shooting spree?
Why can we use that excuse ("A victim of circumstance!") when the bad guy is a white spree killer, but not when it is say, a Hispanic strong-arm robber ("No, poverty didn't make him pistol whip the victim...it was his inferior NAM genes!").
The most parsimonious explanation is that Holmes was cuckoo, a schizophrenic. Most likely, a girlfriend would just have bumped the body count to 13. Some people are just 'born bad'. But liberals, conservatives, of every stripe will try to use such an event to weave a story that vindicates their favorite theories.
Posted by: Matt in RTP | July 23, 2012 at 08:51 AM
@Comrade
The pic perhaps refers to "fool on the hill", a village idiot shouting unpopular truths to anyone willing to listen. This would be consistent with the contrarian themes in the blog.
Posted by: Simo | July 23, 2012 at 09:15 AM
James Holmes had ties to Occupy San Diego.
http://www.powerlinenewsnetwork.com/?p=16998
Posted by: destructure | July 23, 2012 at 09:27 AM
The apartment bomb was likely meant to occupy the attention of the first responders, police SWAT, etc, thus giving him more leeway to shoot people at the theatre.
I doubt he even knew any of the people in his apartment building.
Posted by: Anonymous | July 23, 2012 at 11:07 AM
I for one like the analysis even if it early not everything will pan out.
Its a refreshing change from MSNBC which is going 24x7 with the assumption that if there weren't guns, the guy who was ok with killing 70 people suddenly would have been harmless.
Regardless of the means, this guy was going to kill people. The environmental motivation is the question people should be asking.
Posted by: Turambar | July 23, 2012 at 11:31 AM
And the mask, and all the other stuff? What's your point, Half?
I am sick of people who've jumped to conclusions that this person's actions were the result of misanthropy. Damn, as they say: the brain can be as ill as any other part of the body.
So far, I see classic signs of schiz. I think he went into neuroscience because as a bright kid he had begun to suspect that he was experiencing strange mental states. He did a presentation on alternate and subjective/objective realities when he was but a teen.
If nothing else, you'd think that the millions who saw "A Beautiful Mind" would realize one can be brilliant and psychotic alternately or simultaneously.
Why, oh, why can't this country educate people about mental illness?
Posted by: m | July 23, 2012 at 12:18 PM
"...being overlooked is that Holmes wanted to blow up his entire apartment building."
Not overlooked. Downplayed. 30+ homemade bombs doesn't fit the gun control narrative.
Posted by: AllanF | July 23, 2012 at 12:36 PM
And when they find the unfilled thorazine prescription in his apartment what will you say?
No one thing makes a person crazy; it is always a constellation of different quarks. The Batman mask itself is meaningless, but when found in the possession of a guy who planned a Joker-like attack on a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie, it is more suggestive. The guy is batshit crazy. Yes, some of his failures no doubt exacerbated his insanity and may have made him more likely to carry out a spree shooting. But his failures were rather run of the mill these days, and, without the crazy, would have simply manifested themselves in thousands of otherwise harmless ways.
Posted by: KLO | July 23, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Does Half Sigma have a gf? Should we be worried about him? Or OneSTDV? Or Whiskey?
Posted by: Hard Right | July 23, 2012 at 03:54 PM
"James Holmes had ties to Occupy San Diego."
I looked into it. Not true. It wouldn't fit his profile either.
"Additionally, using the massacre to further the cause of the alt right/HBD/beta male movement (Whiskey) is extremely counterproductive "
Agreed. I didn't expect anything else from that dolt Whiskey, but HS should know better.
Posted by: JL | July 23, 2012 at 05:36 PM
It's obvious he doesn't have a girlfriend... If he did, he wouldn't be this obsessed with his lack of status. It feed off itself. I am sure he hasn't gotten laid in years, in fact. HF, you really should start talking to women more.
Posted by: Kennedy Morgan Ellington | July 23, 2012 at 05:58 PM
So, is this what will push the Trayvon Martin case off the docket?
Zimmerman only shot one person, and that was after getting his nose broken. Seems pretty tame in comparison.
Posted by: Half Canadian | July 23, 2012 at 06:24 PM
I watched on TV the talk by the lady, who is legal representative of the _family_ of shooter, (_not_ of shooter himself.)
What kind of gum was she chewing during her talk ?
Posted by: Florida resident | July 23, 2012 at 06:37 PM
"Someone was supposed to open the door to tell him to shut off the music, and blow the place sky-high, but that never happened."
The reason nobody opened the door was because his apartment neighbors were minorities who don't care about neighborhood upkeep, to put it nicely...
[HS: Just the opposite, I think the other people in that building were nerdy grad students who were too beta to open the door and yell at him to turn off the damn music. Their betaness saved their lives.]
Posted by: The Undiscovered Jew | July 23, 2012 at 06:41 PM
Re the Batman mask, the "experts" are beginning to wonder if this guy was mentally unbalanced.
Posted by: The Undiscovered Jew | July 23, 2012 at 06:42 PM
The guy is crazy. No doubt. But even crazy people follow force of habit. That the guy wanted to blow up his neighbors, people he only knew in passing, ought to tell you something. Like Cho, like Loughner, this guy wanted to kill.
But the WAY he killed, and WHO he killed were formed by habit and the messages that the media gives out 24/7.
Most societies most of the time funnel this sort of behavior like Swiss Avalanche barriers to targets like famous people. Most of the crazies kill their own families and famous people. Not people they don't even know.
And that's the difference between the society of Charles Giteau and Leon Czolgosz, and today's.
Force of habit, denigration of Joe Average, glamorization of the villain, yeah that affects crazy people and its irresponsible and intellectually dishonest not to speak the truth on that matter.
Posted by: whiskey | July 23, 2012 at 07:33 PM
"I think the other people in that building were nerdy grad students who were too beta to open the door and yell at him to turn off the damn music. Their betaness saved their lives."
In fact they were graduate students, because it was university-owned graduate student housing. Whether that makes them nerdy or beta is quite another matter.
Posted by: Peter | July 23, 2012 at 08:15 PM
"I looked into it. Not true. It wouldn't fit his profile either." -- JL
Oh, well if you say so.
Posted by: destructure | July 23, 2012 at 09:13 PM
"I think the other people in that building were nerdy grad students"
Really? I thought I read an article that said (paraphrasing) Holmes stood out in the neighborhood because he was white. Anyone have more info on his apartments demographic makeup?
Posted by: The Undiscovered Jew | July 23, 2012 at 09:29 PM
Although they are likely probably correlated, there is a difference between social anxiety and beta-tude, correct? For example, I had a coworker who was super comfortable chatting people up at parties, making small talk, organizing social events, etc., but would never openly disagree with anyone, especially our boss. On the other hand, I myself have the combination of agreeableness with significant social anxiety, which means I'll imagine a worst case scenario which I want to avoid, but I also don't like to take shit, and I'll openly disagree with someone if I think he is an idiot or is overstepping bounds. When I am in the "loud music next door" situation, I usually get pissed off, and my heart starts racing, but I definitely go bang on the door and don't just bend over and take it.
In a one-dimensional world, my coworker might be the "alpha" in some situations and me the "beta", but in a two dimensional world, things get a lot more complicated. Throw in more dimensions, like agreeableness, intelligence, and openness to experience, and things get a lot more complicated.
Posted by: Anon | July 23, 2012 at 10:26 PM
@Comrade
And there was never an Incoherent explanation of the Massacre either, something prevalent in the cases of Cho, Loughner, Unabomber, etc.
Perhaps this may because he thinks that explanation is best left unsaid, because it is the opposite of insane, because it is petty.
To me, it seems pretty simple, he just hates the world, he hates it out of narcissistic rage that despite graduating top of his class at UCLA, he has nothing, he is nothing, and he wished to reduce the world to just that, nothing.
Was he crazy? That's a stupid question. His decision was obviously irrational, or its definition, unbalanced. He traded his life for something immaterial and worthless. So do some of our greatest heroes. His decisions however, was in all likelihood, not illogical, not random, but had a very clear logic consistent with his circumstance. None of the god machines, persecution complexes or delusions of Loughner or the Unabomber.
@JL
...What movement? The entire HBD community, the "beta male movement" (wut) "alt right" (didn't they suggest the genocide of the entire African continent at some point?), is entirely nonexistent outside of the net. What the "public" thinks of the ideas here is entirely irrelevant, because the ideas expressed here will not be brought forth by vox populi. None of you could possibly think that popular support for African genocide or giving beta males sex so they become more productive members of societies will actually be occur because most people support such things right?
The thing that is important is simply honesty and discourse without censorship, especially self censorship. Discussions on what is integral, what is not, etc. These blogs really has no other purpose, they are not a movement.
Posted by: fComp | July 23, 2012 at 11:23 PM
@Matt in RTP
I don't think anyone arguing that his actions has no genetic predispositions what so ever. I'm sure a combination of his nerdy mediocre statistician dad and the kind of women who would marry such would yield a set of genes that would probably result in a predisposition to schizoid and narcissistic pathos...
But where is the evidence of Schizophrenia? There isn't a single piece besides " He shot up a movie theater..." So he must be a schizo? Are a society, are we incapable of holding the idea that a man can feel so alienated that he would sell his life simply to deal a bigger blow on the greater whole?
The question of why in this case we blame environment, but in the case of nams, we blame genes, is not an oversight, its the entire point of our politic. Lets go through this.
What kind of environment would allow an above average intelligence, nerdy, socially inept, strongly introverted, schizotypal (different from schizophrenic) individual to succeed? Well, likely a society with high emphasis on order, technological progress, social stability, where the laws of scarcity are not rendered irrelevant by a welfare state.
What kind of environment would allow an individual with the traits of low intelligence, low restraint, low foresight, high aggression, average social awareness to succeed? You figure that one out.
Now let us ask ourselves, which society is more integral? Which society has led to our current, relatively pleasant state of affairs and abundance? Which society expands the scope of the future of man?
There is nothing inconsistent here at all.
Posted by: fComp | July 23, 2012 at 11:47 PM
@destructure: Do you believe anything you read on the internet? Your source is ultimately something called "Doo Doo Economics Blog", sounds very credible. For example, the Occupy protest pic in the Powerline story is clearly not Holmes: http://metabunk.org/threads/666-Debunked-Photo-of-James-E-Holmes-at-Occupy-San-Diego
@fComp: Regardless of if there is any kind of movement (not my word anyway), stupid ideas are just stupid and should be shot down. Much of the "beta" discourse is just idiotic.
Posted by: JL | July 24, 2012 at 03:52 AM
"'But where is the evidence of Schizophrenia? There isn't a single piece besides " He shot up a movie theater...'"
He had delusions that he was the Joker. Extreme social withdrawal, in his case characterized by not responding to people who greeted him, can also be a presenting sign of schizophrenia. Granted, social withdrawal is not very specific to schizophrenia, but we lack a medical/psychiatic history or psychiatric evaluation. And Holmes himself left little to analyze before the crime or since. It took weeks for the media to accept that Loughner was schizophrenic despite his more obvious symptoms. It was only obvious to them in hindsight.
Posted by: nebbish | July 24, 2012 at 11:33 AM
"Does Half Sigma have a gf? Should we be worried about him? Or OneSTDV? Or Whiskey?"
Posted by: Hard Right
Dunno about the others, but I worry about Whiskey. I tease and poke fun at him. I really shouldn't. Ridiculing people with mental illnesses causes more harm than help I hope he's just blowing off steam on the internet, but it's not the way I'd bet.
Posted by: rob | July 24, 2012 at 11:59 AM
The combination of a bomb and shooting spree makes it sound like he was copying Breivik's m.o., although it looks like Breivik was a more competent planner than he was.
Posted by: FredR | July 24, 2012 at 01:46 PM
"Do you believe anything you read on the internet? Your source is ultimately something called "Doo Doo Economics Blog" -- JL
No. The source was Bill Warner, a private investigator affiliated with the FBI's Infragard program.
The thing is, you simply said, "I looked into it. Not true. It wouldn't fit his profile either." You have no idea whether it fits his profile or not. Regardless, you rejected the article without giving any reason or evidence whatsoever. If you looked into it then fine. But you should have provided the source in your first response. Don't you think?
Posted by: destructure | July 24, 2012 at 10:57 PM
"No. The source was Bill Warner, a private investigator affiliated with the FBI's Infragard program." - destructure
That doesn't mean much. These far right kooky sites like WorldNetDaily constantly cite sources like the ones you described. He may or may not have even been affiliated with the InfraGard program and even if he was facial recognition and criminal profiling is beyond his expertise. Clowns like this "source" are the same agenda driven wackos that go on to lend credibility to the Clintons murdering their opponents, Andrew Breitbart being assassinated, and various other wingnut talk.
Posted by: Conquistador | July 25, 2012 at 02:43 AM
Conquistador
If you thought I was vouching for his credibility then you've missed the point.
Posted by: destructure | July 25, 2012 at 10:04 AM
"Well, likely a society with high emphasis on order, technological progress, social stability, where the laws of scarcity are not rendered irrelevant by a welfare state."
So the "plenitude" of the welfare state caused him to go crazy? He couldn't find a job in the current labor market, so his aptitudes did not lead to immediate position of lucrative compensation and prestige in the labor market. It does not seem like he would thrive in the globally competitive environment of macroeconomic stagnation.
Posted by: Black_Rose | July 25, 2012 at 10:25 AM