It's the Quiet Ones You Gotta Watch...

So at this point no one will be hearing the news for the first time that twelve people were murdered at the premiere of the new Batman moneymachine. I work for a media outlet, and my days any more are often dominated by the "buzz" circulating through the 24-hour news cycle. I wanted to put pen to paper (ha) and get my thoughts out before I hear any more "statements" from the veritable shit-ton of people who are no more connected to the event than I am. I will be the first person to admit to you, my reader (thank you very much for your indulgence, by the way), that I have virtually no qualification to speak on the facts of the "case" which is already unfolding. I do, however, have an assumption on how it will play out, so qualifications be damned. I could be wrong, but if so, I don't care. I'm trying to make sense of this on my own terms, and I find the best way for me to do this is to write. It's funny, I'm reminded of Bill Hammer, who in no uncertain terms instructed us to sit down and write a journal entry the moment we realized 9/11 was happening live. I really wish I still had that piece of paper. My schema of what happened that day has surely changed over the last 11 years, and I hope that I will be able to hold onto this entry at least until the point where everyone forgets the shooting even happened...

First things first. I am sick of child-worship and implicit pleas from anyone who is advocating for the State to protect children. From a Facebook discussion today - the listeners were prompted with the question "Should WarnerBros postpone further screenings until a motive is established?" This is what one poster wrote:

A better question would've been what were little kids, including a 9-year old and a 6-year old, doing watching a PG-13 movie at 1:00 am?? CNN has even reported that a 3-month old baby was among the injured, although other reports haven't mentioned that. What were these parents thinking??


If it were me and my 9-year-old, I would be thinking "Holy shit, this Batman premiere is gonna kick ass, and my kid is gonna love it." I have basically lost all interest in going to the movies except for premiere nights, because I've (at least temporarily) lost my faith in our culture to be humans to one another while in social settings involving tickets purchased at the door. The difference with premiere nights is that everyone there fucking loves the movie, and they are united in their love. They are humans. A stranger won't care if you step on his shoe, because hey man, you're at the premiere together. It is a common bond.

I'm very afraid that the last bastion of moviegoing fun (for me) is going to be lost forever after this. I can already imagine the increased "presence" of shock-trooper policemen stationed around the back entrances to literally thousands of movie houses this evening, glaring at people who are walking by intending to have fun. This of course will result in everyone at the mall feeling safer, thanks only to their booted and baton-wielding presence. I'd like to believe that the feeling of safety comes with a lurking feeling of foreboding, because "why do we need these policemen here in the first place?" That lurking feeling is the loss of innocence. We'd rather live under surveillance than risk a one-in-a-million chance that some dude is going to kick in the door and start shooting. Doug Stanhope speculated that shootings of this nature only occur in places that suck (like work), and that we should just always hang out in places that are fun, like an amusement park... I wouldn't think of a movie theater sucking, but based on what I wrote above, maybe I would. Anyway...

We might stop here and consider the question mentioned earlier: motive. Why?? Why would someone do this? What would compel a person to do this? I ask the question because the cold hard facts of the event will be trotted through the weekend media and forgotten by Monday or the Monday after next. That's when the speculation will start. I'd like to kick it off now.

Why would a doctoral student (albeit one who's quitting, which is not insignificant) in neuroscience decide to suit up in armor and shoot a bunch of people in a movie for which he himself purchased a ticket? The fact is, we may never actually know. It is my belief that the "authorities" will attempt to discredit any valid thoughts this clearly intelligent killer has come up with in his 24 years. I get the feeling that he'll be "known" to be an Occupy sympathizer with wild notions of anarchy (which, of course, means mayhem) and of who knows what else. That's obviously conjecture, but I figure why not write it down?

What I'm concerned with is this: Now that we've got him, what should we do with him? Obviously there will be calls from every direction for his head on a pike. My question is - what do we learn from that? What can we gain from that? Every businessperson I know these days talks about exploitation and its necessary place in the market. Well, how do we as a society gain from this? Is there nothing to be learned? How about since we somehow miraculously captured this guy alive, why not get inside his head and find out why? God forbid we actually nut up and send in a - gasp - psychologist to plumb the depths and find out if there was a way to actually prevent this - that's opposed to the sound logic of deploying more assault rifles and riot gear into the hands of already-overworked and underpaid neighborhood cops. 

Since I believe they won't publish that conversation to the public, I'll speculate on what the conclusion might be: if we think we're ever going to grow out of this consumerist, justified-exploitation, individualism at the cost of the dregs, pander-to-the-lowest-common-denominator society, we have to first realize that our best way out of here is by relating to other everyday people, just like you and me. That means talking to strangers. If we are to accomplish this, it would mean the end of mainstream media (made possible exclusively through advertising) as we know it. Therefore, advertisement-based media has an interest in keeping us afraid of each other. This is what brings me to the Carlin-inspired title of my ranting. What kind of spin will we hear from this? I have a guess.

Every interview you hear will start with "I never thought he would be the one to do something like this." At the conclusion of those interviews, the well-dressed, unoffensive newscaster with the excellent non-regional dialect will glibly imply to us: It's the quiet ones you gotta watch... That line, right along with don't talk to strangers, is - in my esteemed opinion -

T-O-T-A-L    B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

I also happen to think those quips are the message we actually take away from all the coverage, even though they're never the focus of the coverage. The stated focus is all the gore, the sickening number of the dead, the horrific descriptions of their deaths. Do you know anyone who has ever been a mass murderer? Does anyone you know actually know anyone who has ever been a mass murderer? I wonder how many degrees of separation it takes to get there. We should talk to strangers. We shouldn't "watch the quiet ones," expecting them to snap at any moment. That's what this global consumer world needs from us. The more I stare at this glowing screen, the more I'm dependent upon the system to provide what I need (of course always at a cost). When I get out and meet new people, they support me better than supply and demand ever could. It's the quiet ones you gotta talk to. After having been pointed out by many as the simple cause for Columbine, Marilyn Manson was asked what he would have told Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. He said, "I would have listened..."

I'm not saying that if we had a time machine that I or even Marilyn could have talked this dude down from killing a dozen people. What I'm saying is that it's worth a fucking shot. What I'm saying is that if we as a people could embrace the practice of just acknowledging strangers in our day-to-day lives, we might witness a return to a time when "senseless mass murders" never even occur. Better than that, we might see ourselves actually evolve into a society and eventually a global population of people not-so-obsessed with the way we are perceived, rather we could be obsessed with personal and societal growth and improvement. Have you ever had a great experience with a stranger? Changing a tire on the side of the road is a great example. The sense of relief and happiness that rushes over you when you realize "this person doesn't want to murder me" - those feelings are how you could feel every day. That could be your baseline. Yeah, you might get murdered. But we might get murdered any day of the week. Don't put yourself in a position to get murdered, mind you.

In my short time on this Earth, since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, I've witnessed Oklahoma City, the Unabomber, the 1996 Summer Olympics, Columbine, Jonesboro, the Beltway Snipers, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and now this. As the frequency of these events increases, the national coverage will only become more in-your-face and graphic. Remember that it is in the financial interests of media agencies to keep you glued to the screen, and not out talking to your neighbors you've never met. The safest neighborhood is one in which everybody knows everybody. The scariest is the one in which you're all alone, right on your own street.

I want to leave you with good feelings, and not shitty ones. I want you to remember the last midnight premiere you attended. Maybe Transformers, maybe HP7, who knows? I want you to think back at how excited you were to be there, how standing in line wasn't that big a deal, and I want you to try and remember if you talked to a complete stranger about how much you love the movie you're about to see. My hope for this world is that we will foster the idea that we have so much in common with our fellow humans. That we might remember that fact gives me great hope. So go out there and spread some love around.

Hippies. Their revolution failed because their idea got commercialized. Our revolution will work because we can see that commercialism per se is ultimately not worth living for. Let's live for something awesome: Each other.