Here’s the emerging profile on Aaron Alexis, the shooter du jour, this time at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington D.C., where 12 people died in a murder spree.
Alexis, 34, is reported to have used guns in moments of anger but was also known as a quiet man who meditated regularly at a Buddhist temple in Texas, and had taught himself Thai.
In other words: He repressed his anger and rage, rationalizing such unhealthiness as religion, and therefore above question.
“There is definitely a pattern of misconduct during his service,” a U.S. military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told news sources.
In other words: Excuses were made for him, for reasons nobody will name or disclose. I know for a fact that the military denies applicants all the time for merely having a history of a single depressive episode. Why excuse someone whose known problems were much worse than simply depression? First as a member of the military—decorated, at that—and later as a defense contractor; don’t defense contractors require security clearances? I realize he was discharged, but why was he accepted into the military in the first place?
Three years before he enlisted, Alexis was arrested in Seattle for shooting out the tires of a car in what he later told detectives was an anger-fueled blackout after construction workers had “disrespected him.”
In other words: He was a violent baby in a man’s body wielding a weapon. Again: Why did the military not discriminate against giving such a person a position in the armed services?
He told police that he could not remember firing his gun until about an hour after the incident, according to a police report posted online by the Seattle police.
In other words: He lied shamelessly, and people acted liked they believed him or else made excuses for him. This sent him a message that his behavior was only minimally unacceptable. People’s lack of boundaries became his rationale for pushing the limits ever further, culminating in the events at Washington Naval Yard.
He explained to detectives that he was in New York during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and described “how those events had disturbed him.” Detectives later spoke with his father, who told them his son’s “anger management problems” were due to post-traumatic stress disorder and that he had been an “active participant in rescue attempts” after the attacks.
In other words: ‘9/11 made me do it.’ Instead of being told, ‘You let your anger get out of control and you blame it on sources other than yourself,’ he was told he ‘has’ anger management problems and ‘suffers from’ posttraumatic stress disorder. You know, kind of like “having” a cold or “suffering from” heart disease.
Incidentally, what about the vast majority of people who were at the scene of 9/11 who don’t opt to open fire on innocent people? Don’t we discredit them by implying that such behavior was, perhaps, inevitable, after going through a traumatic event?
Do you see how ideas have consequences? Some people take these excuse labels and run with them. And some will even shoot with them.
The elites continue to shriek that we must outlaw guns. But outlawing guns won’t do anything to alter the idea that esteemed psychiatric professionals are pushing, that none of us are responsible for managing our emotions.
“From the outside, he was a quiet person,” J. Sirun, an assistant to the monks at the Buddhist temple Alexis attended near Fort Worth, Texas, told The Washington Post. “But on the inside, I think he was very aggressive. He did not like to be close with anybody, like a soldier who has been at war.”
In other words: He disguised himself to look innocent and peaceful. He was simply a fraud, like any criminal. And a good one, at that.
Assuming that Alexis is the killer, and these facts are accurate, people will be led to conclude by mental health professionals—not myself, but most of them—that the killer was a tragic victim over his own mental illness which he never could have played a role in overcoming.
An upstairs neighbor, who told police she was “terrified” of Alexis after a longstanding dispute over noise, called for help after a bullet flew up through her floor one evening. Alexis told police the gun went off accidentally while he was cleaning it and that he didn’t think it went all the way through the ceiling because he couldn’t see any light through the hole. He was booked on suspicion of recklessly discharging a firearm but never formally charged.
In a weird sort of way, Alexis may have been a victim—but not the kind experts will claim. If he was a victim of anything, it was of the people who minimized, ignored or excused and rationalized behaviors which were merely a prologue for what was to come.
Don’t misunderstand. Nobody can be blamed for Alexis’ actions other than the killer himself. But that’s my whole point. People who shielded him from any remote sense of personal responsibility were his true victimizers. He simply acted as if what they told him was true.
Aaron Alexis was a homegrown terrorist: The ideological and psychological product of a psychiatric/political establishment committed to making excuses at all costs.
(Source for quotes: AFP.com and Newsmax.com)
Be sure to “friend” Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest.