The Batman shootout in Denver and its root causes
The shooting in Denver, coming so close after the Danzig St shootout in Toronto, provides us with an interesting if horrific contrast. As I wrote last Thursday, the key to understanding what happened on Danzig St. is one detail: that it occurred at a Monday night block party. In other words, it was exclusively a welfare phenomenon. Working people can’t tie one on on a Monday night. The solution is therefore obvious: put welfare people to work.
Nevertheless, a small percentage of our murders are like the Batman massacre in Denver, premeditated spree killings done for no reason. While numerically small, these atrocities are the most horrific, not just because of the body count but also their randomness. You can avoid a Danzig St scenario simply by avoiding ‘blockos’, but spree killings can happen anywhere, especially where middle class people congregate, like movie theaters and schools.
It is important to understand that, unlike the Danzig St. shootout, spree killing is almost universally a middle-class phenomenon. I rarely find myself in agreement with that Marxist race-hustler Van Jones, but there was a lot of truth when he said:
You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, ‘We can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe it’s these suburban white kids.’ It’s only them.
To be fair, Jones is wrong to say that spree killers are all white. The Virginia Tech killer was Korean. But he was right in that spree killing is a mostly middle class phenomenon. It is not something driven by need or profit or a primitive honour code. It is driven by alienation, which I define here as the feeling that there is no greater purpose in your life beyond yourself. Paradoxically, the disadvantaged poor boys who commit Danzig St-style shootouts do not suffer from this affliction. This is because they belong to a gang. Their higher purpose is gang loyalty. And since street gangs are a modern reincarnation of that most basic form of social organization, the hunter-gather tribe, the loyalty they find is deeply satisfying. The police, the military, the fire department and the night shift at the coal mine all employ the same all-male honour group loyalty mechanism. This is a powerful force: military history is replete with examples of perfectly ordinary men sacrificing their lives for their team. These men were not alienated.
I remember the moment in my life where I felt this tribal loyalty tugging at me the most intensely. It was several years ago at the funeral of a prominent member of the Toronto Estonian community who had died suddenly in his prime. The pews were filled with the who’s-who of the Toronto Estonian community, people I knew my whole life. As I looked around, I became consciously aware of the solidarity I felt in my heart. At that moment, I was content to sacrifice my life for them, with a song in my heart. I had a higher purpose (and still do). I was completely unalienated.
And yet, many suburban kids grow up never experiencing such a sense of purpose, without which true contentment in life is impossible. The fault lies with the parents. They tell their kids, “do whatever you feel is right,” which is about the worst piece of advice you could give your child. Paul Bernardo did what felt right to him, as did James Holmes, the Batman killer.
So the question now becomes, why do parents say these things? Why don’t they inculcate a set of values in their children that is greater than themselves? The root cause, in my opinion, goes all the way back to World War I and the crisis of confidence it spawned. European people went to war in 1914 believing in God and country right down to their bones, but the slaughter that ensued was so massive and so seemingly pointless that these concepts were fundamentally discredited. Religion and patriotism have made a comeback, but never completely. The residual void has been filled at various times by Bolshevism, National Socialism and much more quietly by existentialism (the belief that only personal feelings matter) and nihilism (the belief that the universe is meaningless). The Holocaust of World War II only punctuated this feeling.
Like many bad trends in the 20th century, existentialism and nihilism have its roots in the late German romantic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche not only influenced Hitler, but the entire existentialist movement – philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger, and artists such as Ingmar Bergmann, Samuel Becket (especially Waiting for Godot, which is probably the most succinct summary of nihilism yet produced) and most recently Lars von Trier.
It is significant that James Holmes told the police that he is the Joker, as the Joker in the immediately preceding Batman film, The Dark Knight, is one of the most eloquent spokesmen for nihilism that can be found in popular culture. Which is not to say that The Dark Knight was not a moral film. It was, surprisingly so for a comic book flick. After all, the Joker was clearly portrayed as a villain. But for suburban kids who are taught to do what feels right and lack a higher code or a higher cause, the Joker can be a profoundly attractive character. From our hunter-gatherer days, we have been programmed to be attracted to charismatic, fearless leaders who work effectively and passionately towards their goals. And the Joker was all that. The real problem is the moral vacuum that many suburban kids grow up in which allows them to identify with the Joker’s primitive but attractive qualities rather than be repulsed by his evilness.
I have long believed that conservatives are ham-fistedly incompetent in prosecuting the culture war. In this line, I expect somebody like Brent Bozell to demand violence in films to be toned down. Wrong. Won’t do a thing because that isn’t the problem. Banning portrayals of seductive villains like the Joker won’t work either, even if you could figure out a workable legal definition of what you mean. The problem lies deeper. Think of Lars von Trier and the pessimistic, head-in-the-oven films of Ingmar Bergmann. The Joker’s philosophy is just culturally downstream of films like The Seventh Seal, where a returning Crusader plays chess with the devil. And of course, The Seventh Seal is downstream from Waiting for Godot, which is downstream from Heidegger and Nietzsche.
If you want to really fix our society and make it truly healthy as opposed to merely create an outwardly conformist but ultimately shallow Stepford Wives world that the left imagines the 1950’s were, mere bans and prohibitions won’t do. You have to attack the problem at its roots. This means that we have to roll up our sleeves and demonstrate that the philosophical core of nihilism and existentialism is rotten and inferior to a belief in God and country, which is a prerequisite for a functioning society. Then, you have to inspire a whole new generation of artists with these ideas, who will in turn create art that glorifies and promotes Western civilization.
If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But the first step is to point out the negative consequences of the left’s core philosophical principles when they manifest themselves, events like, say, the Batman massacre.