Mollie Gets Religion
Mollie may have been too modest to draw attention to this piece about Anders Behring Breivik, but I think it's excellent:
Meanwhile, the deputy police chief announced that the shooter was a “Christian fundamentalist” but no one has reported either the evidence for the claim or how the police determined that. Whatever the case, he may be the only Freemason, Rome-leaning, Protestant fundamentalist in the world.
We know much more about his politics, I guess, although I find some of his positions there to be just as incongruous. He was anti-Marxist, anti-Nazi, pro-Israeli, anti-multicultural. He vehemently opposed Norway’s immigration policies but thought that the far right groups in Norway were racist.
So. Who takes these views and thinks that a good way to advance them is to kill 80+ children? I’m not sure we have a satisfactory answer.
That last sentence illustrates the occasional power of restraint in prose.
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Jun '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I had a friend that became schizophrenic. Before getting on medication, he sometimes thought he was a dragon-fighting knight that got lost in time. Fortunately, he didn't find any dragons to slay. Not in Minnesota anyway.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
The cultural left has a metaphysical problem on its hands when it comes to evil. Because many of them can't understand evil -- based on their presumption that everyone follows a Rousseaunian ethic: we are all inherently good -- they must instead weaponize "hate" by converting the hardening of a soul who of his own free will constantly commits evil acts into an emotional state subject to the good graces of third rate educational theorists. This has the grand virtue of allowing the re-education of people's emotions and is the harbringer of political correctness in speech.
Like the Unabomber, who Anders Behring Breivik appears to liberally quote from, he stitches together a patchwork quilt of grievances that demonstrate his cognitive dissonance and inherently contradictory beliefs. Like a drunk out after closing time, he's using writings that he hasn't assimilated as a rather pitiable, and desperate means of support for his twisted views rather than illumination.
His entire crazy quilt of writings unravels with merely the slightest tug.
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Thanks for the link, Claire. I'm reading as much as I can from the terrorist and will have more info as it becomes available. I'm also preparing to interview some Masons who will key me into those connections.
In any case, I want to say that I don't think the terrorist was shizophrenic. I'm not saying he's not mad or even possessed. But this is not a Jared Loughner type thing (which I immediately theorized was schizophrenia). He's full of hate and perversion, but he has an internally consistent way of looking at things. I have had family members who were shizophrenic and this just does not strike me as the case with Blevik.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
He's full of hate and perversion, but he has an internally consistent way of looking at things.
I agree.
May '11
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who was only verbally violent. I have met a few others, and perhaps because of my background, tried to provide a safe harbor for them without enabling them. It has never worked out well. The rhetoric of paranoia is often political but never rational. I have no solution for the problem.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I'm not saying he's not mad or even possessed.
Late last night, I was reminded of a guest I listened to a year or two ago on the Hugh Hewitt show. I can't remember for the life of me who he was (perhaps an English prof at a conservative school?) but when asked to name the greatest and most prophetic story of the 20th century that everyone should be required to read, he named:
A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor because it predicted, with terrifying accuracy, the rise of the modern day nihilist serial killer.
Apr '11
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Pseudodionysius: I'm not saying he's not mad or even possessed.
Late last night, I was reminded of a guest I listened to a year or two ago on the Hugh Hewitt show. I can't remember for the life of me who he was (perhaps an English prof at a conservative school?) but when asked to name the greatest and most prophetic story of the 20th century that everyone should be required to read, he named:
A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor because it predicted, with terrifying accuracy, the rise of the modern day nihilist serial killer. · Jul 24 at 11:30am
A truly terrifying and breathtakingly-written short story.
Jul '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I think it's curious how obsessed everyone is over the man's motives. No equivalent concern over motive was present say in the Times Square bomb attempt or the Fort Hood massacre. With a straight face, the Pentagon said that the motive was..."unclear." It is entertaining how quickly everyone jumped to conclusions on Brevik's beliefs. And the whole reporting on "christian conservative" killer is suspect. Atlas Shrugs reported yesterday that the "christian/conservative" description on his facebook was not present when his name was initially reported. Only shortly there after. So unless Brevik updated his facebook between massacring hundreds of people (just to post his religious beliefs) and being arrested, then there must be foul play involvec.
May '11
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Michael Patrick Tracy
Pseudodionysius: A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor because it predicted, with terrifying accuracy, the rise of the modern day nihilist serial killer. · Jul 24 at 11:30am
A truly terrifying and breathtakingly-written short story. · Jul 24 at 11:56am
Prophetic as it has turned out.
Aug '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Well, judging from the ideas here, the recent event in Tucson, and the reliable rush to judgement from the MSM, I imagine that the Norwegian government/press will quickly close ranks and whatever information that was extant before the shooting about what they knew of the shooter will be rewritten to protect those who neglected their responsibility to warn society.They have to protect themselves, the message, and the wrongly (2 hr duration) accused immigrant population.
Remember that Loughner was in custody the morning before the Tucson event. Yet the local sheriff demagogued almost immediately to a ravenous press and was the lead pitchfork in the crowd marching to find Palin, Breitbart, and the rest of us gunslinging, hating ,racists. Then it turned out to be a drugged out schizo who every cop in town knew.
Is the only viable lesson here about medication and restraint ?
Edited on Jul 24, 2011 at 12:55pmMay '11
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Pseudodionysius:
A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor because it predicted, with terrifying accuracy, the rise of the modern day nihilist serial killer. · Jul 24 at 11:30am
The more I think of this I think your allusion to Flannery O'Connor will be the most insightful comment to be made in this tragedy. We will be forced to watch all of the pontification but I think you hit it on the head.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I don't believe anyone has ever claimed that there are not right wing fruit cakes. Unlike when Islamist terrorist strike you do not see western streets filled with conservatives, Christian or otherwise, cheering. What you do see and hear is conservatives, loudly condemning the actions and no one making excuses or trying to mitigate the horror. If there was a religious group endorsing or excusing his actions it would be condemned also. You will not hear anyone insinuate that some responsibility must be shoulder by the left leaning Labor party. Strange how the left can't see the difference.
Mar '11
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
This should dispel any notion that the left are right - they will not accept that religion plays a role in the vast majority of terrorism - it must, instead, be poverty or victims of capitalism - whereas they quickly bring up religion if the terrorist is vaguely Christian (and this one is very vague).
Yes, the police chief in Norway does sound rather like Sheriff Dupnik - no surprise, there. It's the way lefties always think.
And I think George Washington was a Freemason, so I'm not expecting Mollie to turn up anything there, either.
I'm not sure what the correct psychiatric term is, but a simple explanation is that he is as nutty as a fruitcake. Whatever Adolph Hitler had - that's it.
Edited on Jul 24, 2011 at 1:39pmJun '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Southern Pessimist
Pseudodionysius:
A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor because it predicted, with terrifying accuracy, the rise of the modern day nihilist serial killer. · Jul 24 at 11:30am
The more I think of this I think your allusion to Flannery O'Connor will be the most insightful comment to be made in this tragedy. We will be forced to watch all of the pontification but I think you hit it on the head. · Jul 24 at 12:56pm
I have recently been reading O'Connor. In a 20th-century literary world dominated by Hemingway, Bellow, Updike, Roth and the like, I've decided she was by far the better, more insightful writer. She is another of those about whom you say, "If only she had not died so young."
And her letters may be even better than her fiction: A Habit of Being.
Jun '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
"Christian Fundamentalist?"
Help me connect the dots. A fundamentalist is one who subscribes to "fundamental" principles. In Christianity, that would be things like the Ten Commandments (including "Thou Shalt Not Kill") and the Sermon on the Mount ("Blessed are the merciful"; "whosoever shalt smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also").
Whatever this guy was, he was not a man who followed the fundamental principles of Christianity: not the kind of Christianity I and millions of others strive to practice.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
And her letters may be even better than her fiction: A Habit of Being.
Her letters are very good, but Mystery and Manners is like a condensation of all of them, though not intended as a conscious summation. The essays are wonderful.
Jun '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Pseudodionysius: And her letters may be even better than her fiction: A Habit of Being.
Her letters are very good, but Mystery and Manners is like a condensation of all of them, though not intended as a conscious summation. The essays are wonderful. · Jul 24 at 1:55pm
Thanks, Pseudo, I hadn't heard of Mystery and Manners. I'm on my way to Amazon.
May '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I'd bet a lunch it was David Allen White you're thinking of.
Oct '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
I don't understand the attack.The suspect is against Muslim immigration, he's anti-Islam, he admires Geert Wilders, so to make his point he massacres 93 non-Muslims?This begs the question, WHY is against Muslims immigrants and Islam in the first place?
You can make a really good argument that Islam is too easily interpreted (misunderstood?) as 1) encouraging violence against non-Muslims, and 2) mandating theocracy (which has implications for 1).But I don't understand how someone who is not insane thinks that illustrating Islam's flaws, or how Islam is incompatible with the "West", can be accomplished by imitating what has become a trademark Muslim killing spree (Mumbai, Fort Hood, so on and so forth).
This would have made more sense (no less gruesome or horrific, but more logical), if he had either tried to kill Muslims, or tried to pin the attack on a Muslim group. I just don't get this any more than the Loughner thing.
Sep '10
Re: Mollie Gets Religion
Nick Stuart
I'd bet a lunch it was David Allen White you're thinking of. · Jul 24 at 2:26pm
I likely owe you lunch.