Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Nut with a Gun
Yup. Another one. I am referring to the Highland Park (Chicago) incident on Independence Day.
Yes, I have been doing some digging. No, I m not going to provide links or media. No names, no URLs, no pictures.
This guy was 22 years old, obviously had mental issues, was on illicit drugs, and had plainly, visibly, alarmingly, come unhitched from both society and reality. In my opinion, his parents are both culpable for their failure to parent. When your son is this strange, you monitor. If they did monitor, they should have been horrified. If they did monitor and were horrified, then they should have gotten help. Police help. This kid was flashing red for weeks before the incident, maybe a year. His social media appearance had gone from merely ‘drug-addled, dusty, self-pitying, delusional loser’ to the next inevitable (without intervention) step, mass shooter. That’s how this goes. That’s how this always goes.
His mother was 41 years old, and his father 58, for a 17-year age difference. Reports so far say that she and he are his natural parents, that they are married (not sure when they got married), and that she never took his name. She has another child (rumored to be by a different man), and up to two more in common with the father of the loser in question. So three plus one, I think. Media outlets are being tight with information about his siblings, which is fair enough — for now.
Assuming that the parents named are in fact his parents, and taking his age of 22 into account, we can do some math. When the loser was born, his parents would have been 36 and 19. That’s a lot. The Rule (age(F)=> age(M)/2+7) tells a miserable story. When they conceived him, he would have been fully twice her age.
The father’s brother, uncle of the loser, gave an interview in which he was visibly shaken and all apologies. The father ran for office reportedly as a Republican. He tweeted in support of Trump once and in support of gun rights. So, right-winger, yeah? Not so fast.
The loser is on video/images twice attending a small Trump rally (different rallies, I think), one time costumed as Waldo as in Where’s Waldo, and once in his bizarre loser sweats and hoodie pulled over the head as if he were some sort of feeble, ugly, teen-aged Jedi. In all images that I’ve seen so far (going through the archives), he is facing the camera. Another photo shows him posing standing on a (classroom?) chair wearing a Trump flag like one that I own as a cape. Another video shows a White House figure (presumably Trump) arriving on an Air Force jet (presidents will use one of the AF2-style 757s to get into small domestic airports) and passing by in the presidential limo. The video eventually swings around to show the blurry face of the loser, a.k.a. “Awake the Rapper” (the rapper named “Awake”). That’s what the cursive tattoo on his forehead reads. These clips and stills, with his father’s single run for office as a Republican are what many outlets are using to justify calling him a Trump supporter, a conservative, a MAGA person. One of us.
But this loser-man is a performance artist, and incidentally, he does not seem stupid. He seems intelligent. He just also happens to be full-on crazy. In shots and clips taken (three suppositions:) 1) in the tiny shack 2) next to his parents’ house 3) where he lives, above his bed is a single wall decoration — a newspaper page with the banner headline “Oswald Slain in Jail Shift”. Also visible is a fictitious Time magazine cover with the headline “World Stands on the Brink” which was used to promote the first-person shooter (video game) “Call of Duty”. These clips and stills are used in a variety of media projects made by the loser, either mumble-rap videos, video accompaniment to pre-existing electronic music, or bizarre little video nothings. He was clearly disturbed, the disturbance was getting worse, and it was very public.
Incidentally, aspiring mumble rapper Awake The Loser produced stuff far superior to “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown, who also posted apocalyptic “If I die right away, remember me well” type crap before his own suicide by cop. This particular loser was a screwed-up young man with something to say — the same thing that all screwed-up lonely neglected losers have to say. But he had talent — the sort that takes brains. I’ll go out on a limb here and straight-up guess that he had a well above average IQ, and probably suffered from schizophrenia absolutely unchecked, neither by family nor by effective medical/mental health care.
His mother seems (so far, from an in-progress review of hastily archived social media) to have been a “thirst trap”, a woman preoccupied with showing her cleavage online and telling alternately happy and sad tales to gain sympathy/envy/boners from simps and you-go-girls in her online audience. Addiction destroys. She was 17 years junior to her pushing-60 husband, and cougars gonna coug. If I’m cross-referencing pictures and text correctly, it was sometimes not easy to tell her apart from her daughter, except that the mom had the cleavage. Can’t say about the daughter (don’t care), but the mom waved it around like a can of deodorant after dad’s marathon newspaper session on the toilet. One photo seems to show mom wearing absolutely nothing in a pose designed to lift and smoosh, from oh, about the mid-biceps level on up. I don’t know that this was from the loser’s account, but it sure is on the internet. As one online miscreant has said, “I bet she has an OnlyFans account.” Where the whores are. This is a tough row to hoe for a young man.
The father is less visible online (so far in my look-see), and in my opinion has more responsibility for the development of a son than the mother does. Easy to blame mom — classical “overbearing mothers” and “Oedipal complex” problems are dragons to be slain by the father. A young man is entitled to as much, and those without such masculine pushback are abandoned to the degree that the problems are allowed to persist. But the father, born in (say) 1964 will never really relate to the mother, born in 1981. [n.b. All birthdays and such are calculated based on reported ages at the time of the incident, so plus or minus a year, depending.] The Beatles’ ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand‘ was the top song of his birth year; hers, ‘Bette Davis Eyes‘ by Kim Carnes. More telling, 15 years of age is supposedly the year of “your” definitional music, so for her, ‘Macarena‘, and for him, ‘My Sharona‘. Let us assume a shotgun/honorable wedding, in which the sins of haste are repented at leisure, and lots of people have made it work. Sometimes it works just fine. March-June romances become June-September, despite the fact that he was twice their age at the conception of their son, the loser.
I harp on the age difference because this is of course a fault-finding tour. Even the (I suspect) onset of schizophrenia is only one factor at play here. In defense of the family, however, just because I have not seen strenuous measures does not mean that they were not taken. My own family experience with schizophrenia has made me both wary of its effects, perhaps attuned to its signs, but also sympathetic to any who must deal with it, including the family. If you think that one who suffers from a worsening, full-haywire schizophrenia is helpless, reflect on how much more helpless are the family members. If I had to summarize the effects of that particular malfunction, I would say that it removes the individual from his own zone of control to his zone of influence, and from the family’s zone of influence merely to the zone of concern. It moves the person further from those who would change him, including the now-tethered individual. Schizophrenia demotes human beings, diminishing all of the selves concerned for quite a radius. So I don’t know. Even so — assuming that they have the right guy and all of that, the results are clear and the verdict is a shoo-in: no amount of calumny and abuse is too much for this perpetrator.
The duty of a parent, when confronted with a child (of any age) displaying signs of distress, is not to encourage, facilitate, support, or otherwise enable the problem, but to be the person whom the child should become. The duty of the parent in a case like this, where the child has tattoos, multi-colored hair, no job for years, no girlfriend, a drug problem, lives in a shack, and produces violent disturbing videos online — is to push back against the darkness consuming the child.
Because we as a society, and as individuals trying to live in that society, still have rights, and it is in our interest to mobilize to burn the witch, pitchfork the monster, slay the dragon — wherever we find it. Discrimination is key, but an implacable resolve not to live as mice or slaves, and not to lose loved ones to the various demons haunting the minds of others is sufficient justification to kill it. Kill it with fire.
The problem is that witchcraft, monsters, and dragons do not exist. We are confronted with mere human beings, subject to all of our own faults and features. Likewise, we are subject to all the faults and features both of our heroes and of our villains. Hitler and George Washington, Charles Manson and Audie Murphy, the Denver theater “Dork Nut” shooter, and the mother who rescued her children from the Uvalde shooting; all are merely human — just like us. This is the hardest part to confront. Demonic possession, malign spirits, monstrous nature — whether real or not, these things certainly come in handy when it comes time to describe the difference between our vaunted selves and the malfunctioning others.
And so we come again to politics. Surely he must belong to the party of others. I confess that I no longer watch nor read the news for the most part. After all, it’s just the same old manure day after day, decade after decade, and the minutiae of the inchworm’s progress need not be reported breathlessly inch after brave and stunning inch. Squash the inchworm from your mind and free yourselves from its tiny little grasp. So in my ignorance, I have only seen the “Highland Park shooter is a Raging Trump Fan” idea stated explicitly in a couple of fringe nonsense sites, but it’s coming. Above, I described the evidence that is used to support this claim. It’s thin stuff, and readily seen as nonsense when viewed as just a part of his performance. A man who hasn’t held a job in two years, befouled with tattoos and drugs, suffering from schizophrenia (I suspect), making sorta-rap sorta-videos about unattainable women, injustice, and a bloody death; that fellow is not on the road to stardom just by continuing to film himself in his bedroom and sampling better musicians than himself to mumble over. And he knows it. In his bloody confrontation video (animated, not filmed), his character is still alive at the end.
The majority of his social media presence features logos, slogans, dress, contacts, famous figures, news outlets, quotes, and imagery associated with the left. From the mainstream left all the way through ANTIFA, this guy is a lefty acolyte through and through. Yet it seems to be at least partly a matter of style, the result of abandonment to the forces currently abusing all of us. I don’t know that he would identify as a Democrat, but he is in their camp. There is no shortage of posts, images, clips, re-tweets, and so forth which clearly put him there. These, you are not likely to see on the evening news. Do not be deceived. If I may appropriate the voice of the Great Maharushi — DO NOT DOUBT ME. I don’t know what he will say when asked, or if asked previously, but this character is a product of the left, and of madness — which reinforce each other, but that’s another topic.
The Loser cranks out apocalyptic virgin never-gonna-reproduce zeta male “rap” videos and like any male seeks immortality. In his delusions, he has decided to attain immortality through a horrific act of violence. He has less to say than the NZ shooter, and less logic than the Norway day-camp killer. Yet a point he has, and he insists upon making it. He seems to have intentionally targeted Trump supporters, or perhaps had other reasons for ensuring that he appeared in photographs at Trump events. Find the photographs — they’re all intentional. Selfies, or arranged with a photographer to capture him at rallies. Why Trump rallies? Maybe he just wanted to be where the action was. Heaven knows Trump was the only person to draw a crowd in the last decade. His Where’s Waldo costume speaks more to a performance than any non-ironic participation, and his cape stunt in a (class?) room does not make him a Trump supporter.
His pointwise stunts notwithstanding, he followed Pelosi and Schumer on social media, along with Fox News and ALL of the lefty outlets.
The sort of people who “love” Fox News do not also follow MSNBC, YAHOO News, CNN, NPR, and so forth — but The Loser did. MAGA Trump Patriots do not shoot up 4th of July parades, or anything else for that matter — The Loser did.
- The accounts he follows on social media are Pelosi, Schumer, MSNBC, CNN, and mostly follow in that vein.
- He doesn’t really address issues as far as I can tell. I think he’s apolitical and heavily crazy.
- He certainly covers himself in leftist slogans, logos, imagery, and style.
- I suspect he is a product of the left in the way that a child born in the eighties is a product of the eighties. It’s there, it made him — but he had little to do with it.
My purpose is not to prove that he is some sort of leftist. I think that it’s more complicated than that. I think that he is just an amazingly screwed-up young man-child who has been failed by multiple systems, including his parents (I will accept evidence to the contrary if offered), and who has malfunctioned so hard that he now warrants killing.
My purpose is to arm those who may care with enough of a picture to push back against the incoming wave of “MAGA!” nonsense. No way this guy was “one of ours.” His appearances at rallies were performance art, and it shows in every picture. He was building a legacy, so now let him sleep in it. Five-foot-eleven and 120 pounds — prison will not be kind to him, and I’m fine with that. It’s too late for pity or any of the rest of that. That’s a shame, but that’s just the way it is.
Published in General
Great post.
Gracias, doc.
Well, but he is one, and they all, including their holders of high elected office, have called for violence over and over again.
Best thing I’ve read on this.
Don’t let it go to your head.
There is a lot I could say based upon my experience on the streets. This young man is 12-34. That’s what we called people who were mental. You say 12-34 because if you use the word mental over the air an attorney will dig up the archived radio calls and sue the city. The nuisance lawsuit that was not so expensive that the city felt obligated to fight it. Hey, I get that, that golf course condo is expensive, not to mention the wife and mistress you’re trying to support.
I wasn’t a therapist, but I could determine who was going to be a problem in the future after about 10 minutes or so when I interviewed them on a call.
Yes, I’m a cynic.
We have had three of these shooting sprees this year. Maybe you can add the Wakesha parade killer too. All seem to be young men looking to kill. We try to ascribe a political motivation, but it sounds like any political ideology expressed might be incidental to their heinous act. The El Paso, NZ, and Buffalo guys were all “environmental warriors” with racist flavoring. But were they? Or, is there just a set of nutters that grab some passing cause as their justification for crimes they are driven to pursue?
Um, no, you are a realist.
Read a snippet from someone who claims to have “made music with him” [the loser (tl)]. The gist of it was that the tl was neither Lefty nor MAGA. He as into aesthetics and employed images associated with both sides for no other reason than he liked the aesthetic. What he was was a “lonely stoner.”
That squares nicely with your characterisation as an apolitical, seriously screwed up performance artist.
Did anyone in the family even talk to tl? In an interview tl’s uncle … who lived under the same roof … said he had no interaction with tl beside haying “Hi”
Family?
Yes. This was a bid for attention.
Ann Coulter tweeted a picture showing the tattoos on the shooter’s face and neck.
“One gun control law we could all get behind is no guns for anyone with a face or neck tattoo.”
Look at me! I’m edgy and different!
Single mom, a next-door neighbor, has a 20-year-old son, a loser who can’t hold a job. He’s a drug addict and dealer who gives out neighbors’ addresses to meet his customers at the curb for his transactions. Apparently, he cuts his drugs so thinly that his customers have come knocking on those neighbors’ doors looking for him. We have called the police. They aren’t really interested–he’s small-time. A couple of months ago we awoke to cops and an ambulance at our curb. One of his “friends” overdosed at my neighbor’s house in the middle of the night. Some say she died. The mother of the loser says she was OK. I called my neighborhood Sargeant and asked him what happened. He checked and said the ambulance took the OD victim to the hospital. That’s all he said. He asked me to prevail upon the Mom to speak with him. I declined. I do not want to become the focus of the kid’s rage. He does have rage. I hear the screaming fights he has with his mother. She sent him to rehab after that incident. He left about halfway through and is now back with his Mom, “temporarily”. His Dad lives not far away but wants nothing to do with him. Does this young man have the seed within him to become a killer? I never considered that possibility in the past. But now……………………………?
He had an enabler.
In Illinois, you must possess a firearms owner ID card (FOID) to purchase any kind of firearm. You must get a parent’s sponsorship if you are under 21.
Father of Highland Park shooting suspect sponsored son’s firearm ownership card despite past violent threats
This is one of the reasons why I want a house in the country.
Ever read “In Cold Blood”?
(Seriously though, I do agree with you on that.)
If the neighbor keeps up with his gas-powered leaf blower, it’ll be a lot of warm blood, everywhere.
Sometimes I think your way. Then I realize how much I enjoy the convenience of having grocery stores and hardware stores and Targets, Costcos, Home Depots, etc. within a 15-minute, or less, drive from my house. Plus we have lived here for 40 plus years. We have remodeled at least seven times. The house is our little fiefdom. We have had about five sets of next-door neighbors over the years. Only a few have been even a little bit problematic. This woman is a really nice lady and a good neighbor overall. But she definitely enables this kid.
Very interesting post, and very well written.
I appreciate your decision to share neither his picture nor his name. I think that’s prudent. Nonetheless, his picture is everywhere. And, every time I see his pathetic visage, this is what comes to mind:
Thanks! And yes. Creepy little loser. That’s a great reference.