Posted on 07/21/2012 2:39:17 PM PDT by moneyrunner
"super nice kid," "kinda quiet" and "really smart." This is how Holmes is described by a classmate to the LA Times.
Reading an essay by Dan Miller Enlightened self-interest and international relations about Bertrand Russell somehow made me think about James Holmes the “Spiderman Killer.”
We know so little about what motivates people, but we think we know so much. It’s called projection. We assume that there are universal aspirations and that they match our own. That error is the cause of both personal and global tragedy.
On a personal level people assume that if we love someone that love will be reciprocated, and too often men and women find that not to be the case. The assumption of basic honesty is what Bernie Madoff used to defraud people out of billions of dollars.
Neville Chamberlain returned to England with an agreement signed by Adolph Hitler and pronounced that it meant "peace for our time" because he profoundly wanted peace and assumed that only a madman wanted war after the horrors of World War I. He chose poorly.
The foolishness never ends. The “Arab Spring” was interpreted by opinion leaders throughout the West as if the majority of Arabs shared the values of the West. Even the West – despite its cultural heritage – today lacks a uniform belief system, thanks in large part due to the Left's takeover of many of its cultural institutions. It has come as a shock to the chattering classes that only a small and powerless minority in Egypt shared their views and a large majority did not.
Suppose the Egyptian elections reflect the views of the majority of the Egyptian people. What then can we expect of the results of the Obama administration's policies? President Barack Obama’s view of the Muslim Brotherhood is based on his — and his advisors’ — apparent rationale that the Islamist group is reformed and much more like the American and European models of pluralistic societies.
However, experts on Islam and terrorism claim that the Muslim Brotherhood’s — and the radical Salafists –dominance of the Egyptian government, by virtue of its recent parliamentary election victories, will eventually lead to the imposition of Sharia law on Islamic Arabs and jihad against infidels.
Miller notes that: One problem with Russell’s enlightened self-interest thesis, and with the Obama Administration’s apparent perception of what people want, is that people of different cultures and ideologies have different perceptions of their own self-interests than do we.
The view of America from the Middle East is different; our histories, cultures, religions, social structures and senses of morality are quite different. To take one example, suppose the people of Egypt think that our indulgence of Paris Hilton, her rewards for her sex videos and showing her “naughty bits” is not just wrong, but an abomination to an Allah that demands our destruction? While sophisticates may scoff, just such beliefs caused the 9/11 hijackers to become the guidance systems of improvised missiles to kill thousands on that day.
Our leadership’s failure ... no, our leadership’s unwillingness, to recognize that our culture and belief systems are so totally different is leading to a terrible tragedy. A large part of the problem is political correctness which demands respect for all cultures, no matter how brutal by our standards. I am not pointing fingers just to Team Obama. George Bush believed that the people of the Middle East shared our values. They do not; and our failure to understand that led to the “light footprint” in Iraq which led to the bloody insurgency.
Miller asks:
Do the unfortunate denizens of North Korea and Iran, for example, desire freedom or might they have learned to love despair? If they desire freedom, for whom do they desire it? Are they willing to risk what little they have to secure the freedoms few of them have experienced? Should we risk the freedoms we have in order to give them theirs? Freedoms can rarely be “given” to those with little interest in having them. Efforts to do so have not always worked as we desired. …[in Mogadishu, for example] “Americans reacted to the spectacle of dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets by cheering Somali mobs — the very people Americans thought they had rescued from starvation.”
We have seen images of people starving in North Korea. But not all starve and who can say that if given the chance to live like the girl and her family in the video below, they would not sit before cameras to sing, dance and clap in unison like trained seals, extolling the virtues of the Dear Leader?
Which brings us to the belief expressed by Russell
I would say, in conclusion, that if what I have said is right, the main thing needed to make the world happy is intelligence. And this, after all, is an optimistic conclusion, because intelligence is a thing that can be fostered by known methods of education.
Miller doubts:
Optimistic? Well, yes; excessively so. Methods of education commonly used to foster intelligence — if by that is meant rational thought — often foster little. In any event, information — knowledge — beyond what can be secured by rational thought is needed if we are to act in our own best self-interests. Rational thought can permit us to reject false information, but alone cannot help us to obtain the valid information we need.
Repeat: "Methods of education commonly used to foster intelligence — if by that is meant rational thought — often foster little."
Exhibit “A” appears to be James Holmes who has spent the majority of his life in the process of being educated, fostering his intelligence, developing "rational thought." A PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus. From his actions we may conclude that he decided that it was rational to enter a crowded movie theater at midnight and kill as many people as he could. This does not pass for what most people would define as a rational thought, but to James Holmes it certainly did. What if, based on what Holmes has been taught, it was totally rational? Just as rational as Mohamed Atta, graduate of Cairo University and the Technical University of Hamburg, knew himself to be?
It will be interesting, as time passes and more information is made available, to see what Holmes' value system is, and where he acquired it. One thing we know, it wasn’t with the Tea Party.
The article doesn’t even begin to talk about the mass murderer until close to the end.
True
OWS, liberal loon, Obamabot would be more accuate.
Well, if he’s really smart then he’ll have no trouble understanding why people would want him executed (except of course that will never happen in today’s society).
Wow. What a heavy load of psychological poop. I let someone else strain their brain over that one.
I’m more interested in the basics:
Where did an unemployed med student get the $20,000 for that stash of weapons, explosives, body armor and assorted military peripherals?
John Gacy was a really funny clown and Ted Kaczynski was a very dedicated environmentalist.
Was he possibly a...loner?
“Staged just in time for a vote on the UN small arms treaty?
More and more, this shooting is looking like a deliberate plot staged by the government itself much like Operation Fast and Furious pulled off by the ATF (http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html) which helped smuggle tens of thousands of guns into Mexico for the purpose of causing “gun violence” in the USA, then blaming the Second Amendment for it.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/036536_James_Holmes_shooting_false_flag.html#ixzz21DXlFWJ5
No way to know, as yet, but according to the media, he was a registered Democrat. What happened to the assertion by ABC that he may have been a member of the Tea Partry? Oh, they were so wrong again! ABC has a habit of being 180 degreees away from the truth.
Hmmm ...
We have a kid that was super book smart at a San Diego high school. And appeared to be super book smart at a second-tier college in the University of California system.
But he wasn’t smart enough to realize that there are few entry-level jobs in neuroscience research laboratories for people with “only” a bachelor’s degree so he apparently spent a year after graduation living in his parents’ basement.
He came late to the realization that he would need a doctorate to get a decent research position in a neuroscience research laboratory so he applied for admission to a doctoral program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and was admitted.
He was admitted largely based on his book smarts while at UC Riverside. But he found himself moving up from a second-tier school to a first-tier school. He lasted a year in a three (or more) year program. While the University of Colorado has not said why the shooter withdrew from the program last month (and probably cannot comment on why he did so without his permission), I suspect he was not able to do graduate work that would qualify him to continue in a doctoral program. Either he is not as smart as we (and he) have been led to believe or he was spending too much time away from his studies doing something else.
Has anyone else wondered why his car was registered in Tennessee? Had he become a resident of Tennessee before he enrolled at the University of Colorado? If so, what was he doing in Tennessee?
There is a lot more to this story than we have been told so far.
Why makes you think his car was registered in Tennessee?
(from an earlier FR thread)
CO plate. Car is registered to James Eagan Holmes.
1690 PARIS ST #10
Aurora, CO 80010
Hyundai Tiburon
Purchased 3/15/2011
License Renewed 1/10/2012
VIN: KMHJG25F8YU200570
That’s what I keep asking. I haven’t heard the MSM ask, though.
“More and more, this shooting is looking like a deliberate plot staged by the government itself much like Operation Fast and Furious pulled off by the ATF “
Good call. You would have to live in a state of suspended disbelief to think that a guy who as far as anybody has reported has no background in firearms and now suddenly he becomes proficient with an assault rifle, shotgun and semi auto handgun no less. In addition he manages to handle these weapons proficiently in a high stress situation. I don’t think so.
Where did a college kid get $20,000 to buy all that gear and acquire the expertise to rig his apt with “sophisticated” explosives? Which I now heard is a bunch of fireworks. Where did he get tear gas and a kevlar helmet? You can’t get those online unless you are an LEO or military.
This thing has false flag stamped all over it.
This settles it for me, the guy has to be a democrat, a Republican would never be described that way.
Did anyone ever confirm the report that his car had Tennessee plates? Seems there were a lot of stories floating around that either weren’t true or couldn’t be corroborated.
About him being booksmart: Many schools these days have lowered the bar so much that no one is a failure. When I was a lass, a QPA of 4.0 made you valedictorian. This past year, my alma mater’s valedictorian had a QPA of 2.7. Maybe Holmes was one of those kids who graduated at or near the top of his class, but was barely litterate.
When he was apprehended behind the theater, the police asked him who he was,...he said, "I am the Joker." The authorities need to look at the movie again.
This kid had everything he wanted, college education working on a career as a physician. Tough life. But he refused to grow up.
This little bastard doesn't care about the lives he took nor the people he has hurt forever. I know of no reason why this spoiled little momma's boy is still alive when the sun came up the next day.
I HATE people like this. I don't care why he did it. Kill him.
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