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On this week’s first podcast, the COMMENTARY crew (Noah Rothman, Abe Greenwald, and John Podhoretz) discuss whether the mass shooting in Las Vegas speaks to the need for new policy or to a disease in the American body politic and the American spirit. Then they ask why on earth the president of the United States found it necessary to pick a fight about the recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, and why he went after his secretary of state on Twitter, and why some other stuff. Give a listen.
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One possible aspect of our culture that leads to these crimes of notoriety is alienation.
Used to be, most people belonged to one or more groups with whom they interacted regularly: family, church, union, club, and even neighborhood was a social circle that people belonged to.
Increasingly we don’t know our neighbors, don’t belong to clubs or unions, don’t attend church, our families are spread across multiple states, and single-person households, such as my own, are on the rise.
Not belonging to any group — not having interpersonal ties — is the path of least resistance for more and more people. The resulting emotional starvation sends the vulnerable over the edge as they wreak revenge on an uncaring populace.
I am not sure that schizophrenics respond to external stimuli in predictable ways. Jared Loughner was concerned about the debauchment of our currency (real) and of our grammar (imaginary). Gabby Gifford’s inability to answer his strange questions about the debauchments must have led him to believe she was “in on it,” and so he had to be the hero and take her out.
I doubt you can fault rhetoric about U.S. currency policy for “triggering” a crazy guy into murder. Schizophrenics can pick up on just about anything and weave it into their nightmarish thoughts.
So good to hear John call Kushner all the names he so richly deserves. I am almost glad that the studio was too hot and he vented his spleen. I wish someone would kick Kushner all the way back to the East River where he can go back to losing his father’s money.
I paid for Ricochet to correct Podhoretz’s errors.
First, Fischer’s book is Albion’s Seed (not Albion Rising) and the migrant groups are not “England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales” but East Anglia (Puritans), the North Midlands (Quakers), the South of England (Cavaliers), and the Borderlands (Backcountry Scots-Irish). It’s really only the latter group that remained warlike after arriving in the United States.
Second, Houston is not one of the blackest cities in the United States. It is 17% black, slightly above average for the country as a whole. That’s the same as Chicago or New York (as MSAs). It is, however, heavily Hispanic, at 44%, similar to Albuquerque or Tucson.