Bang, Bang-We're Dead

When the Elected Leader of Your Country is Breaking Every Law

Two days ago—at Florida State University, the twenty-year old stepson of school cop shot two people to death and wounded six others—using his stepmother’s pistol.
Part of the story that’s come out is that his stepmother—a school safety officer—had taken her stepson to a firing range and taught him how to shoot—even though it was obvious to everybody who knew him that he was already a very troubled kid.

Aside from the fact that the shooter, Phoenix Ikner, had always been very clear about his violent hatred for certain groups of people (Trump would have certainly pardoned him), we don’t really need to look too hard to understand what pushed him to do this.
The cops will search his web postings, and they’ll talk to people who knew him, however slightly; then they’ll conclude by saying he probably needed psychiatric help.
Yes he did, but no more than the entire culture he grew up in.
From a long time observing my fellow humans, and from my own experience raising kids, and from paying close attention to both the historical and current delusions of my country; it seems clear to me that it wasn't just the mother/security officer who was at fault here but, probably, the more guilty party was/is American society in its role as Loco Parentis.
Every culture (with all its history, rituals and customs) is like a second, meta parent to a kid's actual biological parents. So, for example, the State of Florida—in this case its gun laws; like most of this country’s gun laws, Florida’s are still mired in “stand-your-ground” wild west, solitary gunslinger mode. Red flag laws which would function as clear warning that a gun buyer is a danger to other people are either ignored or don’t exist in the first place. Add to that toxic situation a completely outdated interpretation of the Second Amendment; then stir in the visual images of millions of people getting bloody holes blown in them by guns that we constantly see in all our TV shows, video games and movies… Shake all these ingredients up, add a big dollop of ignorant right-wing lunacy; heat over a high-flame until any rationality and social responsibility has evaporated—And you have a perfect recipe for the next school massacre.

There will inevitably be the same old bullshit from politicians and TV news: "It was the work of a solitary killer.” This poor country then, obviously has millions of "solitary" killers just waiting to pull the trigger... Trump knows this—that's why he let sixteen-hundred of them out of jail the day he was inaugurated... They are his ex-officio Brown-Shirts, ready to threaten anybody (Judge, Senator, average Citizen) that Mar-a-lago’s resident Fuhrer paints a target on. Why should his personal militia care what laws they break? They know their leader will always get them off he hook.

It’s a hard, hard thing, bringing up a moral child in an immoral culture, especially when the culture is ethically poisoned from the top down.