On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed seven people. Three were stabbed and four were shot to death. The left wasted no time in laying the blame.
A white man.
Being white is bordering on being criminal in this country. “White privilege” is akin to original sin. Let’s have a look at how the disease that is liberalism treated the murders.
Yes, Elliot Rodger is White: What the Santa Barbara Shooter Can Teach Us About Race and Masculinity
Elliot Rodger was/is a white man.
For some people, this fact is very controversial and upsetting.
As I wrote in ‘The True Alpha Male’: The Santa Barbara Mass Shooting, Elliot Rodger, and Aggrieved White Male Entitlement Syndrome, when the bad behavior of white people is publicly called to account, said person’s relationship to “Whiteness” is rarely discussed.
To be forced to include white mass murderers, madmen, and Right-wing domestic terrorists as part of the tribe is very uncomfortable and disconcerting.
This is understandable: what reasonable person would not want to excommunicate them from their community and affinity group?
Only white folks have such a luxury in the United States: a black rapist, thief, or murderer is de facto a representative of “the black race” with its “bad culture” and “pathologies”. There is no parallel for whites. The white murderer, thief, rapist, or mass shooter is an outlier, “mentally ill”, or some type of deviant whose behavior reveals nothing about white people en masse.
The boundaries of Whiteness and white privilege are heavily policed: bad people are “them”; good people are “us”.
The Santa Barbara Mass Shooting, Elliot Rodger, and Aggrieved White Male Entitlement Syndrome
As I often ask, “what shall we do with the white people?”
When an “Arab” or “Muslim” American kills people in mass they are a “terrorist”. When a black person shoots someone they are “thugs”. When a white man commits a mass shooting he is “mentally ill” or “sick”.
Whiteness and white privilege are the luxury to be an individual, one whose behavior reflects nothing about white people as a group.
There will not be a national discussion of a culture of “white pathology” or how white Americans may have a “cultural problem” with their young men and gun violence. The news media will not devote extensive time to the “social problem” of white male violence and mass shootings.
White guy killer syndrome: Elliot Rodger’s deadly, privileged rage
Welp. Another young white guy has decided that his disillusionment with his life should become somebody else’s problem. On Saturday, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger (who, as many commenters have pointed out, had a white father and mother of Asian descent) went on a killing spree on the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, murdering his three roommates, shooting women outside a sorority house, and hitting people with his car as he attempted to get away from police.
How many times must troubled young white men engage in these terroristic acts that make public space unsafe for everyone before we admit that white male privilege kills? While Mark Cuban is busy crossing the street at any sign of a black male in a hoodie, or clutching his wallet a bit tighter at the sign of a tatted-up white guy, he may find a bullet whizzing by his head from a young, clean-cut white man, child of a Hollywood film director, upset that he does not have a certain level of clout and status with the ladies.
The idea that it is young black men or working-class white men (which is partially what I think Cuban’s invocation of tattoos attempts to encode) who make public space dangerous is belied by the fact that the problems of urban violence, which disproportionately involve young men of color, largely happen on residential terrain. Black men are not rolling onto college campuses and into movie theaters on a regular basis to shoot large numbers of people. Usually, the young men who do that are white, male, heterosexual and middle-class.
Entertaining. But here’s the truth: Elliot Rodger was as white as Barack Obama is.
Rodger identified himself as white, but that was wishful thinking. Rodger was half Malaysian. He did not look pure Caucasian and he was not. Rodger fantasized:
“How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more.”
Clearly something was wrong with Rodger. His parents knew it. What Rodger suffered from wasn’t white privilege or white male syndrome. For God’s sake, he went to UC Santa Barbara. His illness was being a liberal.
Now let’s have a look at race. It gets difficult to tell who’s what.
This is Mariah Carey. She’s obviously, er, black.
This is Rachel Meghan Markle. She’s obviously, er, black.
This is Rashida Jones. She’s obviously er, black.
This is Wentworth Miller. He is obviously er, black.
This is Rachel Bilson. She’s obviously Filipina.
This is George Zimmerman. He’s obviously white.
This is Elliott Rodger. Clearly he’s pure Caucasian.
The left uses race at its whim for political calculus. If a person of mixed race is popular that person usually is claimed to be of color. If the person has done something wrong, he or she is white. It is abusive, wrong and sordid. I agree completely with John Hinderaker:
Beyond that, some might argue that Rodger was a prototypical liberal male, only carried to a pathological extreme. Consider the profile: socially awkward, convinced of his own brilliance but not notably successful in life, hungry for revenge against those who have done better despite their obvious inferiority, eager to gain power over others, but through political influence rather than firearms–is this not a typical liberal on Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet? Or, for that matter, in the Obama administration? Isn’t state power the legal path to the long-awaited revenge of the liberal nerds? This strikes me as a plausible suggestion.
Elliot Rodger was a white man like Barack Obama is a white man. Rodger suffered from liberal spoiled shitless entitlement syndrome and frankly so does Barack Obama. Liberalism is itself a mental illness and liberals should not be able to own guns. Liberal privileged spoiled shitless entitlement syndrome is dangerous.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.