How Vester Flanagan (a/k/a Bryce Williams) Became the Next Dylann Roof

Vester Flanagan

Saying that the Charleston Church murders, committed by yet another EDP (emotionally disturbed person), “Sent him over the top,” this morning, ironically enough, Vester Flanagan (a/k/a Bryce Williams) became the latest Dylann Roof. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11827315/Virginia-shooting-Gunman-Bryce-Williams-told-by-TV-station-to-seek-medical-help-after-colleagues-complaints-live.html)

Vester Flanagan was, by all accounts, a disgruntled "affirmative action baby," a man, whom fellow newser, Larrell Reynolds, who’d worked with him at the small Virginia station (WDBJ Ch 7) said that Flanagan, “had trouble acting and dressing professionally,” and was prone to outbursts of anger. Mr. Reynolds relayed, that Vester Flanagan was a difficult person to get along with, but whenever he clashed with people he blamed it on racism and homophobia, "He'd just be like, it's because I'm black and gay," said Mr Reynolds.

By all accounts, Mr. Flanagan was given far more chances to screw up than most other employees would've been, ironically enough, probably precisely BECAUSE he was "black and gay." His demeanor seems to hearken back to the title of an Ellis Cose book, "The Rage of a Privileged Class." All of that has been exacerbated by America's race/gender preferences and the segregated standards that go along with them.

A recent YouTube video shows what appears to be Vester Flanagan in a road rage incident. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W_eyKgfcWA)

This is the inevitable result of our ongoing celebration of victimization. Entire movements, like the illegitimate BLM (Black Lives Matter, which laments the deaths of thugs like Mike Brown, but not the likes of Jamyla Bolden http://abc7news.com/news/no-arrests-days-after-fatal-shooting-of-girl-9-in-ferguson-missouri/952282/) movement, that are dedicated to enabling those who would look to blame others for their own failures and see themselves as perpetual victims.

How many other Vester Flanagan’s are out there?

How many more Dylann Roof’s or Adam Lanza’s?

What are their triggers? For the autistic Adam Lanza, it seemed to be sinking into a world of extremely violent video games, for Dylann Roof was the way he related to the victimization he saw embraced in various white separatist websites and for Vester Flanagan, it seemed to be the way his own internal obsession with race intersected with the BLM narrative.

Bottom line, each individual is ultimately to blame. We are responsible for how we act toward all the negative messages and stimuli that surrounds us.

Isn’t it hard to “stay positive?”

You bet, but that doesn’t make it OK, or justified not to.

We are far too quick to look for simplistic answers to complex problems when confronted with ugly realities such as these. Like Dylann Roof, Vester Flanagan was almost certainly NOT "in his right mind," BUT neither of them were likely "mentally ill"...more likely, BOTH might be classified as "emotionally disturbed," an umbrella term for people who generally "don't play well with others." Almost certainly neither would reach the bar for "mentally incompetent" to be held accountable for their crimes, as James Holmes' (the Aurora, Colorado killer) trial recently showed.

Whereas mental illness is an organic disease, or set of diseases that has a given onset and specific symptoms, emotional disturbance is generally a CHOICE. Yes, we each CHOOSE how we will interpret the world around us and react to it.

Were both Dylann Roof and Vester Flanagan encouraged and enabled by various nefarious movements and websites? Probably yes, but neither probably needed such stimuli, as their internal compasses were so screwed up.

Tragically for Vester Flanagan, his kind of bigotry has been winked at and given a pass for decades now. The media and academia have gleefully fed into that. They have lionized a pro-criminal, anti-police movement like "Black Lives matter" and only NOW, belatedly do they scorn Vester Flanagan as a "hate filled bigot."

IF those in the media had taken a more honest approach to racial and social issues earlier MAYBE Vester Flanagan might have been forced to look inward at correcting his own flaws...or maybe he'd have just gone and done what Dylann Roof did, and found some obscure websites in which to indulge the self-victimization they were intent on validating.

In the wake of such tragedies some of the more simplistic among us reflexively blame “the availability of guns.” That’s NOT the reason...nor even “A reason” for why such things happen, neither is mental or emotional illness.

ALL of the above, except for Adam Lanza functioned reasonably capably in society, held jobs, interacted with others, regardless of how dysfunctionally, and planned out their murders.

The BLM movement is no more “responsible” for how Vester Flanagan reacted to it, any more than were any white separatist sites “responsible” for the way Dylann Roof interpreted their messages. Such groups have a right to freedom of speech. Of course, as much as we may have a right to “spew hatred,” under the 1st Amendment, we have no right to act on such hatred...and therein lies the conundrum. When reckless and irresponsible, often emotionally disturbed people latch onto such narratives and interpret them in their own twisted ways, bad things happen.

Gun bans clearly don’t work. The Philippines has a total gun ban and is besieged with “backyard gun shops.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fna9WEO6BjE) Guns are incredibly easy to make and it’s not hard to imagine that American home gunsmiths would fashion even higher quality weaponry...for a price.

We CAN and SHOULD enforce the very real gun laws we have on the books already, like stipulating that a person’s mental health records and felony arrest records are rendered accessible once that person files for a permit for a hand gun.

THAT and we SHOULD make the much needed reforms to our currently dysfunctional mental health system, but that would take money, money so many of us are loathe to consider spending on something we tend to see as “somebody else’s problem.”

BUT, like welfare’s having had the very worst and most pernicious impact on the black family (helping fuel fatherless families, a deluge of very young, single mothers mired in poverty and dependency and millions coming to see the government as “responsible for taking care of their life necessities”), the current movement that enshrines victimization as some sort of virtue has hurt that community most of all.

I think back to the way at least one black news reporter eulogized the late Reverend Ike, after Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II’s death back in 2009, as having led “a wretched, venal life.” (http://www.post-gazette.com/…/The-wret…/stories/200908040223)

While Reverend Ike was at least part huckster, but he also embodied the message that prosperity isn’t a bad thing (that “the lack of money was the root of all evil”...often that truly is) and the gospel espoused by the likes of Norman Vincent Peale and so many others who espouse “positive thinking,” success-visualization, etc.

NONE of those things are guaranteed to make anyone rich, but attitude, is, all too often, EVERYTHING! Without a positive, upbeat attitude, a person is generally doomed to a life of unhappiness. When we add in a tendency to consistently look outward, blaming others for our own inner flaws, we doom ourselves to lives of perpetual misery.

THAT, more than anything else, is what the dysfunctional life and miserable death of Vester Flanagan (a/k/a Bryce Williams) most embodied. And that is a very sad testament to the BLM movement and the other racial grievance and "social justice warriors"