By Lucy Inglis
Apologies for the second non-history post in a row, but sometimes, you’ve just got to write down what you think.
As a historian, I seek truth and sense in documents. Some make it harder than others to find.
On Saturday Elliot Rodger, a twenty-two year old boy living in California killed four men and two women in the student community of Isla Vista. Three of the men were his room-mates, whom he stabbed to death, Cheng Yuan ‘James’ Hong, 20; George Chen, 19; and Weihan Wang, 20. He then drove to a sorority house, intending to kill women. There he shot and killed Katie Cooper, 22, and Veronika Weiss, 19 and injured another as yet un-named female. The other male was Christopher Michaels-Martinez, aged 20, killed in a shooting at a deli.
In the police chase that followed, Rodger hit two cyclists, one of whom put in the car’s windscreen in the impact, and a second, the accident which effectively ended the car chase. Rodger was shot in the hip, it has been reported, by police, but died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In the car were three semi-automatic weapons, and in excess of four hundred rounds of ammunition, all purchased legally by Rodger.
Elliot Rodger had a long history of mental health problems. His mother is reported as having said, ‘He was always a disturbed child. I don’t know how he was allowed to get a gun’.
Yes 🙂
There were other sources for the Dad meet Dad story, but the CNN interview is worthy from many perspectives all by itself.
CNN is saying the prisoner just released (name sounds like “birddog”) is having trouble speaking English. Sounds like New Moon Gemini square Neptune Pisces.
Amanda M., I too have stayed away from this topic (E. Rodger) in order to keep some level of sanity and positive perspective on the future of humanity. I would not make a good nurse.
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CNN redeems itself everyone in a while.
“But what needs to stop right now is ascribing simplistic, headline-grabbing motives to the actions of fragmented and troubled individuals such as Elliot Rodger just because they suit an agenda, no matter how worthy that agenda might be. The evidence left by the killer himself indicates that no one thing or incident led to Saturday’s events but an awful maelstrom of mental instability, social and sexual conditioning, loneliness, basic human cravings and rejection. And as Rodger said when he made the decision to plan his Day of Retribution, his words echoing other college killers of the last few decades, ’I was tired of being the invisible shy kid. Infamy is better than total obscurity.’”
My goodness. I was so relieved to read this article. I’ve been staying out of the conversation surrounding this event mostly because I’m so weary of a tendency our culture has towards binary right/wrong thinking, and because I can’t feel anything but compassion tinged with sadness for all involved. Lucy sensitively, thoroughly, and unapologetically describes the complexities of the Isla Vista event and its ripples through our culture – both past and present.
I also very much appreciate her commentary on the #yesallwomen thing – letting each *individual* have a voice, an outlet, is a powerful thing. But each women – or, more appropriately, each person – is speaking for themselves and no one else. “We” can band together to imagine and implement ways to move forward in the world, but “we” still have to speak our own truths and experiences without trying to conflate everything all together into another binary system of thinking.
“Dad of California killing spree victim meets with dad of perpetrator”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/us/california-killing-spree-fathers/
Well worth watching the video which is an CNN interview with the victim’s father.
What a beautiful, heart-rending post this is. As I read it, as I learned about the misery of Rodger’s internal life, I felt that pain and loneliness and horror at his own thoughts searing through.
My heart goes out to the survivors and the victims’ families.