Responding to the weekend massacres in El Paso and Dayton, President Trump announced his opinion that the shooters must be mentally ill.
Well, doh, Captain Obvious!
But there have always been people in American society who have been off-kilter mentally. Until recently, most of these off-kilter people haven’t gone out on massive killing sprees against people they don’t even know.
Thus, the question naturally arises: Is anything triggering these off-kilter people into committing these unexplainable acts of mass violence against innocent people?
My theory? Well, let me first preface my theory by pointing out that I am not a psychiatrist and have had no training in the field of psychiatry. It’s just a personal theory, but one that I become more convinced of as each new mass killing takes place.
My theory revolves around the dysfunctional system under which we Americans live, combined with what I call the life of the lie or the life that denies reality.
Americans have been inculcated with the notion that they are a free people living in a free society. As every libertarian knows, this is a lie, a very grave denial of reality. This is one of the things that distinguish libertarians from non-libertarians. Non-libertarians are convinced they are free. We libertarians know that we aren’t free.
We live under a regime that is based on mandatory charity. Social Security and Medicare are the crown jewels of this system, but there are hundreds of other programs in which Americans are forced to share their money with others. We are told that this system reflects how good and caring everyone is. That’s patently ridiculous. How can care and compassion be reconciled with force? The two principles are opposites. Moreover, if anyone refuses to participate in this system of mandatory charity, he is harassed and audited by the IRS and arrested, prosecuted, convicted, fined, and imprisoned.
Yet, countless Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
We also live under a system in which the government puts people away for ingesting unapproved substances. There is no way that such a system can be reconciled with genuine freedom. In a genuinely free society, a person has the right to ingest whatever he wants, and it’s none of the government’s business.
Yet, countless Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
We live under a regime that wields the military power to take Americans into custody, incarcerate them indefinitely in military dungeons or detention facilities, torture them, and even assassinate them, all without due process of law or trial by jury. There is no way to reconcile that type of omnipotent power with freedom.
Yet, countless Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
We live under a regime that is a national-security state, which is a totalitarian type of governmental structure. North Korea, Cuba, China, Egypt, and Pakistan are national-security states, just like the United States.
Yet, Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
We live under a regime that has engaged in a 30-year-long killing spree in the Middle East and Afghanistan, with a death toll of well over a million people, with nary any concern for all this massive death and with no or little value placed on the lives of foreign people. For thirty years, Americans have convinced themselves that all this death and destruction has been necessary to protect their freedom. It’s been a lie since the day the first killings began. Not one person who U.S. forces have killed was trying to take away our freedom. At worst, they were retaliating for the death, destruction, and mayhem that the U.S. Empire was wreaking over there.
For three decades, the American media has played its “patriotic” role in this process by ensuring that Americans are not exposed to this massive death, destruction, and mayhem. No reporting on foreign funerals or the aftermath of bombed out wedding parties. No follow-up on families hit by U.S. assassinations. When Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. Empire’s targeted killing of innocent people, he was vilified by the mainstream press of daring to share the truth with the American people — anything to ensure that the American people remain immunized from the constant, never-ending forever wars, enabling Americans to go to work, go on vacation, attend concerts and sporting events, as if everything was perfectly normal. But it was never normal and it still isn’t normal. Government-sponsored killing sprees are no more normal than private killing sprees. And the notion that a 30-year-long killing spree against foreigners is not going to ultimately affect the mindsets and behavior of people here at home is patently ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Americans have been subjected to ever increasing totalitarian measures, including massive surveillance, designed to keep them “safe” from the terrorist retaliation that all this mayhem produces. In the process, Americans, including American Christians who go to church every Sunday, have been taught to condemn and berate the masses of foreigners who try to escape all this violence and mayhem by immigrating to other countries.
Yet countless Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
We live under a regime that has waged a 60-year war on immigrants, under the guise of a socialist system of immigration controls. Foreigners who violate this system in the quest to survive or sustain their lives through labor are referred to as “invaders.” It’s a lie. An invasion is what the U.S. Empire did to Iraq. Bombs, missiles, bullets. Massive loss of life, limbs, and property. Immigrants, on the other hand, peacefully cross borders in search of work.
America’s system of immigration controls has destroyed freedom of association, liberty of contract, freedom of travel, and economic liberty. It has also brought into existence a massive immigration police state consisting of highway checkpoints, roving Border Patrol checkpoints, warrantless searches of farms and ranches, boarding of commercial buses to check people’s papers, body-cavity searches as well as searches of cellphones (with mandatory disclosure of passwords) of Americans returning from overseas vacations or business trips, and many more tyrannical measures.
Yet countless Americans remain convinced of how free they are.
The more the federal government tightens its screws on the American, the more Americans are expected to thank federal officials, especially the troops, for letting them be free and protecting their freedom. The situation is akin to cops who are beating a suspect on the ground while screaming, “Stop resisting.” As U.S. officials continue to tighten the screws on the American people, they scream, “Thank me for your freedom!”
Many Americans deal with this life of the lie and this massive denial of reality, along with the psychosis it produces, through alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide, all the while expressing gratitude for living in a free country.
But then there are those off-kilter types who resort to violence against people they don’t even know, which mirrors the violence that the U.S. government has long brought against drug-war violators, illegal immigrants, and Muslims and others in the Middle East and Afghanistan. In their off-kilter minds, such people are unable to distinguish what they are doing — such as protecting Americans from illegal immigrant invaders or killing people indiscriminately — from what the U.S. government has been doing both here at home and abroad for decades.
The solution to all this mindless mayhem? Freedom! Genuine freedom. Americans need to get a grip on reality and stop living the life of the lie. End America’s system of mandatory charity. End the drug war. End the sanctions, embargoes, and trade wars. End America’s centrally managed and regulated economy. End the war on immigrants. End the forever wars against foreigners. Get rid of the screws that federal officials are tightening on the American people. Restore a limited-government republic to our land. Reject both conservatives and liberals, both of whom are responsible for our dysfunctional society. Join up with us libertarians to restore liberty to our land. And then watch alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide rates, and mass killings plummet as society moves toward free, normal, and functional.