I have written many times in blogs and other places about my eternal optimism. I observe the higher morals of younger generations, which gives me hope. I see a theological post-mil position, where the Church prevails in the end, giving me hope, bringing Christ’s peace and justice to the world. I have spoken for the solutions to our ills, including the mass killings.
I think now, with two such horrible acts so close together, I have lost this hope. Like many of you, I am weary. I have lost this hope not because there are no solutions but in spite. The solutions are complex and multifaceted, but are real. But there is no will. This is what haunts me. There is no will because there is so much personal gain from the status quo.
The philosopher gains. He/she, for the gain of moral freedom, projects an atheistic world described as a Marquis de Sade’s moral nihilism. Within that world, human life has no meaning except the meaning that you can give it through the act of the will. Saving babies from a famine in a foreign land gives meaning. Walking into a place of peace and killing as many babies, children, or adults, in the most violent way, also gives equal meaning. IT DOESN’T MATTER. Otherwise you will die and return to dirt as nothing. This is the prevailing worldview of our culture. They may not speak in philosophical terms, but they feel it.
The parents have no will to raise their children better, because it means sacrificing their own wants. Stick them in front of a screen where their faces glow green and they drift into a semi-conscious state.
The political left has no will because of the money that flows from the violent games and movies, which dehumanize people into targets and numbs the culpability of acting on violence.
The gun merchants have no will, because of the constant flow of good money . . . from things like bump-stocks, assault rifles, and huge magazines. They have bought the right. They have bought the evangelical with strong emotional words like the “Second Amendment,” or “if you let them take away my automatic assault rife with armor piecing bullets in 500 round magazines, next the snowflakes will be coming from Grandma’s 22 pistol, which she keeps in her bedside table for protection.” No, these machines don’t do the violence. They only allow the deranged humans to inflict the highest possible damage in the shortest amount of time
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The political left and the right, both, receive huge bundles of money from the health insurance companies, which prefer not to offer adequate mental health care, from anger management to pharmacological treatment for frank psychosis and anti-social behaviors. They save money by allowing these people to wander the streets, to be warehoused in prisons, or to repetitively beat up girlfriends in private. They have no will. They have too much to gain.
There is no will to do anything. They will shoot dead the stranger on TV. They will shoot dead our neighbor’s relative. They will shoot dead the neighbor. The will shoot dead our own kids . . . and yet, there will be no will to do anything. Nothing at all. For that, tonight, I feel despondent.
J. Michael Jones 