A Portrait of Our Dysfunction

Dylann Roof

A portrait of Dylann Roof is emerging of a marose loner, with few friends, who'd dropped out of H.S. in the 9th grade, couldn't hold a job and descended into a cocoon of bitter hatred that some use to make themselves feel better about poorly lived, or even non-lived lives. (http://www.latimes.com/…/la-na-charleston-shooter-profile-2…)

A few commenters have noted that this is precisely the path that many young schizophrenics follow as they move through their teens, while most of the national media engages in its bizarre, yet habitual exhibitionism, it's perverse compulsion with an auto-eroticism over a 19th Century racial model - black victims and white oppressors. An exhibitionism made even more perverse by the fact that it is promulgated by overwhelmingly Left-of-Center WHITE newsrooms and corporate boards.

There are thousands of dysfunctional people like Dylann Roof from ALL backgrounds in our country today. BUT once they've "detonated," it's already far too late for anything other than a belated and always unfulfilling punishment.

Those who know such people always seem to respond with shocked surprise that this "creepy," "kind of weird guy" finally "went off."

Mental health and law enforcement professionals note that "There's nothing we can do to intervene before such a person either commits a crime, OR "acts out" (often, one in the same).

We've seen this kind of thing numerous times in big cities, often on a much smaller scale, those, almost always mentally ill people pushing others in front of oncoming trains and other mentally defective people who occasionally wreak havoc on the streets.

Jim Boulware (the father of Dallas Police HQ attacker, James Boulware) recently asked, “Where can a white man go for help?” That only shows how ubiquitous the victimization game really is. EVERYONE in America wants to be "the victim" now-a-days.

FACT is, there is no such help for ANYONE in America today. We are loathe to intervene, because we see it as "interfering," with a person's right to freedom of choice. The chronically poor/unproductive and dysfunctional can't deal effectively with freedom of choice, if they could, they wouldn't be dysfunctional.

Deinstitutionalization was both an overreaction and a mistake to the overcrowding and poor conditions well documented in America's mental institutions in the 1970s.

Some people NEED some assistance, intervention/interference BEFORE they spin out of control. The problem isn't one of "eccentricity," or "weirdness," as such things are wholly subjective, BUT of DYSFUNCTION.

Those who cannot (will not) finish school, who cannot (will not) hold a job and who erratically relate to others, if at all, are DYSFUNCTIONAL, not just "eccentric," or "strange."

Dysfunctional people may be harmless for extended periods of time and may not be violent until, or unless a fuse is lit by some fixation on a perverse ideology; white or black supremacy, political Islam, racial or religious hatreds, etc. The problem is that dysfunctional people are often drawn to such movements and the more extreme, the greater the apparent attraction.

The idea that, "There's nothing we can do UNTIL such a person snaps," is absolutely absurd. There have to be strategies in place designed to assist (if possible) dysfunctional people BEFORE they are otherwise "assisted" by some extremist ideology.

For one thing, dysfunctional people harm society merely by their dysfunction. Work/productivity is the price (rent) we all owe for living. Many of these people might be able to contribute to society if they had the proper guidance and direction, others probably need various degrees of institutionalization and we shouldn't wait until the only option for that is prison.

We've done a very poor job of setting up any kind of quid pro quo for those who are chronically dependent, let alone the chronically dysfunctional. Our programs SHOULD be designed to help such people get off such programs and back into work and productive lives, and assisting the dysfunctional to become productive, but instead most of our "social welfare programs" are dependency programs that only inculcate further dependency. There's little incentive to get such people back onto productive tracks.

Until we begin taking serious preemptive measures to assist those who've gone off the rails early in life, we're going to continue to see these kinds of sporadic, albeit horrific mass killings.

Freedom ISN'T allowing the poor and dysfunctional to "live as they please," that is "license." In every case LICENSE is the enemy of LIBERTY. The individualism this country was founded on only provides "as much FREEDOM as one's productive efforts can afford."

Those who "don't see it that way," also don't tend to see work/productivity as a basic human mandate. In fact, too many see work as "wage slavery." That's a problem, because it makes that much needed quid pro quo, all that more difficult to enact.

More's the pity.