Mass shooting in Texas kills 20 people. Killer may have had political motivations for his attack.

Police responding to the El Paso attack. AP.

A mass shooting in El Paso Texas has left 20 people dead. AP. A suspect is in custody, 21 year old Patrick Crusius. He is accused of taking an AK variant rifle into a local Wal-Mart and shooting dozens of people. 26 people were also injured in the attack and the suspect was arrested. The suspect may have posted a manifesto online and police were warned that the attack was coming but were unable to prevent it. There were reports of other suspects but none of those reports have been confirmed.

My Comment:

I usually have a rule about not commenting on mass shootings unless there is a good reason why. That's why I didn't cover the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting in California, as I had nothing important to say about it. Covering these shootings is a major reason why they occur and I like to not contribute to this problem if I can help it. 

I do think I have to comment on this one, but I will avoid the odious and obvious gun rights/gun control discussion. There is very little to say about that situation that hasn't already been said. Gun control would not have done a thing to stop this attack and it was very unfortunate that there wasn't someone armed to confront him. There was a man who was armed that was going to respond to the attack but decided to save children instead, if his account is correct. Though he may have saved some lives if he had confronted the gunman directly, saving children was the right call, and the young soldier deserves all the praise he is getting right now. 

This man is an American hero. During the mass shooting in El Paso, he acted to save as many children as possible and used his legally owned weapon to help.

This man represents everything that’s great about this country. pic.twitter.com/69ovEw3uhN

— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) August 3, 2019

The attacker's manifesto was posted on 4chan among other places. I have read it in full. I would post it here but doing so might get my blog in trouble so I won't, and I also don't think linking to it is a good idea. It should be pretty easy to find if you know how to look for such things.

Having read it I have to say that this guy reminds me a lot of the New Zealand shooter, Brenton Tarrant, who he mentioned and praised in the manifesto. He has the same kind of anti-immigration beliefs but he also doesn't fit in to the left right divide very well. He spent about as much time railing against the Democratic Party as he did the Republicans and claimed that both parties sold out the rest of America. That doesn't mean he was some kind of far leftist, but it seems like he viewed the Democrats as the enemy and the GOP as a bunch of traitors.

It's also clear that Crusius was some kind of racial separatist. He was against race mixing and seemed to want to separate the country based on race. I don't know if "white nationalist" is the right term, and he specifically rejected that label. However, given he supports separate states for different races it's hard to argue with the term.

However, it's seems pretty clear that he had some left wing beliefs as well. It almost seems like he was a fan of Andrew Yang and his Universal Basic Income idea. He certainly thinks that automation is a major threat to American workers, even more so than immigration, and he also appears to be an environmentalist, just like Brenton Tarrant was. I don't think there are any easy political points to be gotten here.

I do have to say that I think Crusius drank too much of the Democrat's Kool-aide. He seemed to take it as gospel that the Democrats are going to cruise to demographic victory that will lead to one party control over the entire country. This is a common talking point among Democrats and something they have been banking on, but I don't think it is really true.

President Trump has been successful in peeling away some of the minority vote. 2020 is awhile away but I do think he will do much better among blacks, Hispanics and even LGBT people than he did in 2016 and already has done better in those areas than other GOP candidates. As US demographics change there is no real proof that voting habits won't do so as well.

I do consider this attack to be reactionary in nature. Much like the New Zealand attack was due to inaction by international governments to control the massive wave of ISIS terror attacks, the El Paso attack is due to international governments failure to reform immigration. If people widely believed that immigration was going to be fixed, I doubt this attack would have happened. As it becomes clear that the government is either unwilling or unable to fix pressing problems like immigration or terrorism more and more people will likely take things into their own hands, which has bad implications for all of us. It's clear that both Tarrant and Crusius no longer believed in a peaceful solution to the many problems we are having in the 2010's.

Finally, I think that we have a serious problem internationally with people like Patrick Crusius. There have always been large numbers of young men who have no direction in life and want to make an impact in the most horrible way possible, but there seems to be a lot more of them now and less healthy ways for them to get it out of their systems. In the old days you could start a family or go off to war but those options don't seem to be viable. People with something to lose don't usually commit mass shootings like this but we have so many people these days who have nothing connecting them to the wider society, no say in how it is run and no stake in the success of their countries.

We, as a society, have failed many young men to the point where shooting up a bunch of innocent people is a viable option for them. I don't think any of the discussions on either the left of the right can do much to prevent this kind of thing. Gun control doesn't work because people can always find a way to kill large numbers of people (see the attack on an anime studio in Japan as a recent example). Mental health treatment doesn't either as many of these people aren't mentally ill. And even concealed carry won't do much to stop the problem even if it does stop some attacks.

In the past I have argued that there are some possible solutions for mass shootings. I still agree with what I wrote but I do think that there is more going on here. There is a rot deep within the soul of modern society and we, collectively, have decided that young men are expendable. These men feel they have no future, no chance at a family, no chance at love and no chance at making a positive impact on the world. So they lash out. That's a real problem and it's way more complicated an issue that the talking points we are hearing today. And until we do something about it, these kinds of attacks are going to happen again and again throughout the Western world...