Another terrorist arrested - this time in Daytona Beach, Florida

[malaise]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/18/us/daytona-beach-mass-shooting-threat/index.html
<snip>
(CNN)A Florida man has been charged for threatening to commit a mass shooting after his ex-girlfriend alerted authorities to a series of ominous text messages he sent her.

25-year-old Tristan Scott Wix was arrested on Friday in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in Daytona Beach Shores, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood said on CNN Sunday that Wix had sent the texts to his ex-girlfriend, who showed the messages to authorities.
"When you look at this kid's background, he is the profile of a shooter," Chitwood said. "He lost his job, he lost his girlfriend, he's depressed, he's got the ammunition and he wants to become known for being the most prolific killer in American history."
Wix, of Daytona Beach, wrote about wanting to open fire on a large crowd of people, the sheriff's office said. "A good 100 kills would be nice," he wrote in one message, adding that he already had a location in mind. So far, Wix has not told investigators where he wanted to carry out the shooting, Chitwood said.

"A school is a weak target.. id be more likely to open fire on a large crowd of people from over 3 miles away.. I'd wanna break a world record for longest confirmed kill ever," another message reads, according to the sheriff's office.

[malaise]

2. From the article

Wix said he wanted to die and "have fun doing it."
"Ah well even if you told someone, me saying I wanna do it and think about it is not the same as actually doing it lol. Was kinda hoping someone would come into my life worth not doing it for, for the sake of all those people (laughing cry face emoji). I'm not crazy I just wanna die and I wanna have fun doing it, but I'm the most patient person in the world," Wix wrote in another message.

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No one likes them (with good reason) and they are unhappy so they want to have fun dying.
This one told us.

[Throck]

4. Not limited to just young men.

The fantasy infliction of mass casualties by young men may be prevalent. However I've seen some acts of violence in public by young women that turned my head. Lots of road rage by young women and I've seen some mall slappings that have lead to arrest. It seems to be an impulse control issue. Learned behavior from home or mimicking the things we see on social media as the norm? Just look at the things people record and publicly post and are proud of it? A bit of a scary world out there.

[Newest Reality]

5. In a petri dish...

You can't grow or culture things without the right medium. If that medium is adulterated or infected it will effect what you are trying to grow.

While we can remain intensely focused and emotionally reactive to these kinds of results concerning a particular faction of "society", (we may have a culture, but I wonder if society is a correct or applicable term anymore) but that can be rather myopic and it tends to highlight the contents and often we ignore the process or processes involved.

It seems obvious that the big, collective eye has to be turned around to look at the current gestalt and its implications regarding certain individuals. There seems to be a medium, (and it could be multi-faceted) that is encouraging certain people to become anti-social and to focus their energies and ideas towards a bravado of nihilism. Going out in an (infamous) blaze of glory and inflicting harm and death on others goes above and beyond a tacit diagnosis of "mental illness", but more about a rather sick society in need of therapy en masse, if nothing else. Violence and aggression may be a potent sign about what is wrong, and getting worse, in this culture and who is not a part of the culture? Which members can simply opt-out and wash their hands in that sense?

I would add that this is not at all about violent video games, etc. That's an Orwellian-style cop-out and it is quite contrary to my point. No, this is about a systemic problem that is beginning to stand out more. It is about the us of it as well as the them of the particular, tragic outcomes.

When it comes to young men in particular, as we have seen in past cultures, if you have nothing much to offer them but bootstrap ideas, their energy and hormones may just take precedence and rule their behaviors and the more that continues, the more a rising tide of bloodshed might wash up on the shores of our commons. At some point we won't have to ask for whom the bell tolls if we can't recognize a more inclusive relationship of parts in a whole, which approximates "reality" more than our reactions of shock, blame, disgust, etc.