I’m convinced that this kid simply snapped under the weight of the brain-washing that goes on at colleges.
When I first clicked on RDTF’s link, the quotation on the left referenced Klebold and Harris. It really caught my attention, so I read on...
This Ishmael philosphy involves topics like:
“Food Production And Human Population Growth.”
“Human population numbers as a function of food supply”
“The oil we eat: following the food chain back to Iraq - Essay, by Richard Manning”
Twenty years ago, I was a freshman biology student at a major university and I switched my major because I couldn’t handle all the doom and gloom about Non-Sustainable Population Growth. The conclusion was always that we were doomed and it was all our own fault. Human population must decline according to the professor.
What we have here is a real life, home-grown leftist terrorist!
You said — “Twenty years ago, I was a freshman biology student at a major university and I switched my major because I couldn’t handle all the doom and gloom about Non-Sustainable Population Growth. The conclusion was always that we were doomed and it was all our own fault. Human population must decline according to the professor.”
Well, one of the things we should do with our kids is to teach them to *not believe* whatever the professors say. I mean, I did okay in college, basically because on all those things (like you’re saying) I simply did not believe what they were saying. However, I did learn to “study” it — like I would be studying some aberrant behavior. You learn what going on and the theories on this aberrant behavior (or thinking) that they’re teaching, but it doesn’t mean it’s valid.
It’s like this — with one thing I’m familiar with — non-Christian cults (for example). You learn what they think and exactly what their beliefs are, but you don’t “believe them.” In fact you may know their aberrant religion better than some of the members themselves — but that doesn’t make you a member.
That’s how kids need to go through college with this stuff — understand that it’s mostly aberrant thinking and behavior and learn *about it* — but don’t “learn it” in the sense of accepting it. Learn it as if you’re studying a serial killer and his thinking processes (that’s about what it’s like, I would say).
So, I did just fine — I learned it and I knew it was a bunch of garbage. I got the grade, I knew about their aberrant thinking and I was fine. I guess I was an “undercover agent”... :-)
Regards,
Star Traveler
I forgot to mention that the book that originally inspired the Friends of Ishmael - Ishmael by Daniel Quinn - won the Turner Tomorrow Award’s half-million-dollar first prize...
As in Ted Turner.
<< What we have here is a real life, home-grown leftist terrorist! >>
Agreed, I think that is the most likely explanation.
I found it interesting that when Brian Williams flipped through the guy’s pdf, the pages were mostly pictures except for what seemed to be 4-5 pages of single-spaced text at the end, which he just breezed over.
Also, the MSM clearly knows more about what is in his note, they have access to people who have it and can read it to them, and all we hear is vague things like “he didn’t like rich kids.”
I’d bet that text and the note are just full of leftist drivel that one might read on any typical thread at DU and which pervades prevailing thinking in the English Lit academic community. The MSM knows this will all come out, but they want to drag it out a bit because now they have the agenda set on gun control.
As to Ishmael, the a-hole Cho may have adopted the “Ishmael” persona for the same reason many writers, such as Melville and that idiot that wrote the book about the telepathic ape “Ishmael” have used it in their work.
Ishmael, in the biblical story, is the son of the bondwoman Hagar, and not the wife Sarah, and he is rejected and driven away to the wilderness, becoming an outsider. So liberal writers like to use the “Ishmael” persona as representative of an outsider in order to assume a position of wider perspective (as I say, Melville did this in Moby Dick and the idiot who named the telepathic ape “Ishmael” seems to have done this also). The liberal writers don’t really understand the Bible, but they like to employ Biblical allusion because they seem to think it adds a sort of weightier resonance to their work.
Cho, being an English Lit, radical lefty, might have adopted the Ishmael persona himself because he saw himself as the alienated outsider, like the Columbine losers, who is able to pass judgment over everyone from his loser outsider’s perspective.
Anyway, I find that to be the most interesting speculation as to Ismail/Ishmael so far, but I certainly wouldn’t at this point rule out other possibilities.
The threads of Marxist and Islamist radicalism intersect on our campuses and in other radical quarters.
I haven't read the whole thread, but what you said is interesting. Is there anything more written on that angle, was he one of those people who believed that stuff?