The Atlanta Shooter Almost Had a Point... Almost

One of the targeted Atlanta massage parlors (via Newsweek)

As a rule, I don’t use mass shooters’ names. Many of them want fame and notoriety, and I refuse to participate in giving it to them. Therefore, you’ll never see me share the accused Atlanta massage parlor murderer’s name or photograph. Some people deserve to return to the undergrowth from which they emerged.

If you don’t already know, earlier this week, a 21-year-old White male shot up three Atlanta, Georgia, massage parlors, killing eight people, seven of them women, six Asian-American. Police caught him dead to rights and, according to press releases, he confessed unreservedly. He blamed women generally, and Asian-American women particularly, for somehow causing his unresolved sexual compulsions. He thought his problems would go away if they all died.

Authorities remain undecided whether to classify the shootings as a hate crime. They’re apparently arguing about whether race or sex more proximately motivated the violence, as if that matters. I’d assert that he also targeted sex workers, a field occupied overwhelmingly by poor women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. Therefore it’s way too soon to take economics off the table.

In one of reality’s less subtle twists, the day after the Atlanta shooting spree, the broader American South experienced a mammoth outbreak of storms, tornadoes, and other destructive weather. The worst damage occurred in Mississippi and Alabama, which, locals will assert, is not Georgia. For our purposes, though, the distinction matters little. Very close to where a petulant child lashed out violently against women even poorer than him, nature did likewise.

We can debate how seriously to consider the Atlanta shooter’s self-reported narrative. Like every youth becoming an adult, he realized factors of race, sex, and economics existed outside his control, and he was powerless against massive forces. Most people don’t throw the tactically armed equivalent of a tantrum, of course. But the pressures life exerted upon him are intimately familiar to anybody who’s ever had a job and a libido.

Although I loathe and excoriate his behavior, the storms prove his motivations aren’t entirely wrong. Recent extreme weather outbreaks, many focused on areas with conservative social mores, demonstrate for millions that they have remarkably little control over their circumstances. You can do everything right, follow every rule your parents taught you, and still lose everything. We’re all, on some level, powerless.

Traditional “work ethic” values teach that we have control. In schools, churches, and workplaces, young Americans hear the mantra that hard work and obsessive honesty create prosperity and security. It has the pervasiveness that hymns and prayers once had, and that isn’t coincidental. Capitalism, and its earthly messiah, “success,” have become America’s shared religion. It defines our politics, our morals, and our shared language.

Yet as a god, Capitalism (separate from “the market”) proves disappointing. While America is the richest nation in history, in the aggregate, that prosperity isn’t justly distributed. Young White men, the supposed beneficiaries of American abundance, don’t see it happening in their lives. Youth whose parents and grandparents could afford to start families in their twenties, now frequently can’t afford a starter apartment in their thirties.

This week’s Mississippi weather devastation is a metaphor for the American economy. The individuals who saw their homes destroyed probably didn’t “deserve” such treatment. Yet the heating of our carbon-fueled economy is literally heating the Earth and, like a fever patient, the overheated body is turning against itself. Hard work and individual responsibility can’t stop this trend. It’s literally beyond individual control.

Young men, like the Atlanta shooter, see this happening. But instead of banding together to challenge the wealthy, abusive minority, they respond individually. And as individuals do, they don’t challenge anyone who could actually fight back; they direct their dick-swinging vacuity against those even poorer and more defenseless than themselves. Kicking the poor is a response born from existential loneliness.

This kid came so close. The truth was right there: he understood his powerlessness against a massive force, and the need to stage a resistance. But because he’d internalized a secular eschatology of individualism, he instead performed an action from which no good, anywhere, ever, will emerge. He knew half the truth, and it couldn’t set him free.

More tragedies like this will probably occur. As young Americans see their promised mobility slipping further away, and natural disasters and “acts of God” becoming more frequent, they’ll fail to unify against those who actually oppress them. They understand the need to act against the encroaching wall of powerlessness. But they’ll inevitably pick the defenseless, low-risk enemy.