Tuesday April 17, 2007

HE WAS A BIT OF A LONER... JUST LIKED TO WRITE THINGS ON HIS COMPUTER... Ace O. Spades wonders aloud why no one ratted out the VT Shooter as a potential mass murderer, then answers himself (unsatisfactorily, of course):

We've been conditioned since infancy with thousands of morality plays that just because someone seems weird doesn't mean they are weird. Or bad. Or dangerous.

The trouble is that weirdness has a pretty high correlation with badness and dangerousness. If someone has a dysfunction that prevents the normal sort of interaction and empathy with one's fellow human beings, well, that's not likely to be a person that's otherwise well-adjusted....

This made me think: what would happen if Mr. Spades were a student, and someone sent the authorities a link to his website? What would they make of Mr. Spades' weird amalgam of self-loathing porn ("The first click is safe, it's the second click -- the click once you get there -- that has a very, very big content warning on it... [splorch]... something has gone seriously wrong with our culture"), misogyny ("they're fucking guys so quickly guys hardly have a chance to catch their names"), numerology ("9/11 3/11 7/11 ...? How about 8/11? I know 7/7 doesn't work.."), and irrational violent rages ("When he dies... I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face")?

If we lived in the kind of world Mr. Spades favors, he'd be in a nuthouse quicker than you could say Preventive Detention. For the moment we live in another kind of world, and one which I prefer -- though it's nice to know that, once that other world comes around, it will have an upside.