The Other McCain

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Portrait of a Killer: Elliot Rodger Claimed in Video to Be ‘Supreme Gentleman’

Posted on | May 24, 2014 | 249 Comments

Santa Barbara mass murderer Elliot Rodger.

Background information about the Santa Barbara shooter is beginning to emerge, tending to confirm what I said about Elliot Rodger when his YouTube rant was nearly all we knew about his motives:

This attitude is a typical “Nice Guy” rationalization by which losers project onto others the responsibility for their own failures, so that successful men are scapegoated as “obnoxious brutes” and women who reject the Nice Guy are condemned as “sluts.”
At the root of the “Nice Guy” rationalization is a narcissistic blindness to his own shortcomings and a sense of entitlement to female companionship. He cannot admit (especially to himself) that his own resentments are actually motivated by envy, nor that his rage against women is a type of “sour grapes” rationalization: Frustrated desire expressed as rejection of those who reject him.

Rodger was short, non-athletic and socially awkward, and this kind of “Nice Guy” rationalization is what goes on inside the minds of losers who can neither accept their limitations nor overcome them. The Los Angeles Times has the full transcript of his video rant:

“Hi, Elliot Rodger here. Well, this is my last video. It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you.
“For the last eight years of my life, since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, never to me.
“I’m 22 years old and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, 2 1/2 years, more than that actually, I’m still a virgin. It has been very torturous.
“College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. In those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness, it’s not fair.
“You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it. It’s an injustice, a crime because I don’t know what you don’t see in me, I’m the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it. [laughs]
“On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house at UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there. All those girls I’ve desired so much. They have all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance toward them, while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.
“I take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you., You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male. [laughs] Yes, after I have annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness all these years. They all look down upon me every time I tried to join them, they’ve all treated me like a mouse.
“Well, now I will be a god compared to you, you will all be animals, you are animals and I will slaughter you like animals. I’ll be a god exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it and you do deserve it just for the crime of living a better life than me.
“The popular kids, you never accepted me and now you will all pay for it. Girls, all I ever wanted was to love you, be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted sex, love, affection, adoration.
“You think I’m unworthy of you. That’s a crime I can never get over. If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you. [laughs] You denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life, it’s only fair. I hate all of you.
“Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power I would stop at nothing to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood and rightfully so. You deserve to be annihilated and I will give that to you. You never showed me any mercy so I will show you none. [laughs]
“You forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer. I waited a long time for this. I’ll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you. All you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men. And all of you men for living a better life than me, all of you sexually active men. I hate you. I hate all of you. I can’t wait to give you exactly what you deserve, annihilation.”

See? Dude had no game, but that can’t be his fault. No, it’s the girls he wanted — the blonde sluts who rejected him — who are to blame.

The Daily Mail has more background on the “gentleman” killer:

He was diagnosed at an earlier age with Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism meaning he had difficulties with social interaction.
Rodger was living with roommates at the Independent Living Institute in Santa Barbara, a facility that offers ‘living skills instruction to help adults with disabilities to live more independently in their communities,’ according to the website. . . .
A good-looking boy, it is impossible to say what caused Rodger’s problem with women, but apart from his parents’ divorce, there are no clues in his background as to the deeply troubled loner he would become.
He was born in August 1991 in Lambeth, South London, the scion of a family steeped in photography and the cinema.
His Malaysian-born mother Li Chin, now 53, and film director father Peter, 49, moved to America’s West Coast when Elliot was five and his younger sister Georgia only a baby. . . .
Speaking from her home in Kent, Elliot’s grandmother, 89, explained that he had suffered mental health issues for some time.
She said: ‘He was a very disturbed boy. He lived in California but of course I’d known him. This is just one of those very tragic things. I don’t want to talk about it any more. This is a rather difficult time.’ . . .
Yesterday, a family friend told The Mail on Sunday that Peter and Li Chin divorced soon after moving to the US and Peter later married Soumaya Akaaboune, a French actress of Moroccan-French descent who appeared in Hollywood blockbuster Green Zone. . . .
[Elliot] recalled in one Facebook posting ‘being the smallest kid in the class’ when he was photographed at Topanga Elementary School near his home, aged seven, in 1998.

Asperger’s Syndrome — thanks to science, we now have a diagnosis, so parents don’t blame themselves for their kid being a total dork. But this is small comfort when the creepy little weirdo kills six people:

A California gunman who went on a rampage near a Santa Barbara university stabbed three people to death at his apartment before shooting to death three more in a terrorizing crime spree through a neighborhood, sheriff’s officials said Saturday.
The three people in the apartment were among the six left dead Friday night during the shootings near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elliot Rodger, 22, the suspected gunman, apparently killed himself, authorities said. . . .
Earlier Saturday, Alan Shifman — a lawyer who represents Peter Rodger, one of the assistant directors on “The Hunger Games” — issued a statement saying his client believes his son, Elliot Rodger, was the shooter. It was unclear how the son would have obtained a gun. The family is staunchly against guns, he added. . . .
Attorney Shifman said the Rodger family called police several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos “regarding suicide and the killing of people” that Elliot Rodger had been posting.
Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human,” but noted that he had few friends and no girlfriend, he added.

So the family is “staunchly against guns,” and they called the police because they were worried about their creepy little weirdo son, but the police found the future mass murderer to be “perfectly polite” — the supreme gentleman, you might say.

Because no one can be blamed — not the parents, not the cops, and certainly not the shooter, who was a victim of Asperger’s Syndrome — some people go hunting for political scapegoats and (surprise) find what they’re looking for: Elliot Rodger was a racist because he wrote some stuff on an Internet forum complaining that he saw a black guy with four “hot white girls.” Never mind, of course, that Rodger was himself of mixed ancestry, and also never mind the real object of his murderous rage: “It’s been my life struggle to get a beautiful, white girl.” And, hey, let’s blame the NRA while we’re at it.

Meanwhile, we now have the Mass Murderer’s Manifesto — a 141-page autobiography — because what’s the point of being a mass murderer unless you’ve got a manifesto about how the innocent people you killed really deserved to die because of how unfair your life was?

UPDATE: Just spent about an hour of my life I’ll never get back reading the first 60 pages of the creepy little weirdo’s manifesto. He was very aware — in his conscious, rational mind — of his shortcomings, and understood that his resentments resulted from envy. But this rational awareness did not lead to any kind of effective coping strategy, nor did it quell the intensity of his emotions. He felt horribly humiliated by girls; his sense of being doomed to rejection made him fearful of social interaction with girls. Also, he was unusually obsessed with social status. When his father’s directing career took a downturn, his mother’s child-support was reduced, and she had to move into a less-affluent neighborhood. The boy was so embarrassed  by this that he stopped inviting friends to visit. Meanwhile, he disappeared into World of Warcraft — becoming that 21st-century cliché, the videogamer with zero social life.

UPDATE II: From Page 67 of the “Manifesto,” when the creepy little weirdo was 18 and had dropped out of college:

I continued searching for a job, but I still wasn’t able to find one. . . . The problem was that most of the jobs that were available to me at the time were jobs I considered to be beneath me. My mother wanted me to get a simple retail job, and the thought of myself doing that was mortifying. It would be completely against my character. I am an intellectual who is destined for greatness. I would never perform a low-class service job.

Oh, what a Special Snowflake — he was “destined for greatness”!

 

Category: Crime

Comments

249 Responses to “Portrait of a Killer: Elliot Rodger Claimed in Video to Be ‘Supreme Gentleman’”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    May 25th, 2014 @ 10:52 pm

    Classic Nihilism.

  2. Nan
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:01 pm

    You were never in the friend zone though; you were genuine friends. The friend zone is an excuse that gamma males use to rationalize being “friends” with a woman when they’re trying to use it as a means to an end; getting into her pants.

  3. Nan
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:06 pm

    It’s one thing if you grab the nearest rifle; completely different if you spend a year buying guns, showing that you planned ahead to kill people.

  4. bridget
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:07 pm

    the fact that he killed six people does not register on your analysis of “creep.” seems like a big thing to exclude.

  5. Josh_Painter
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:08 pm

    RT @FilmLadd: Interesting points on the special snowflake shooter… http://t.co/EDTSnjREB3 @rsmccain

  6. Nan
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:14 pm

    No. Don’t blame it on the women who communicate their lack of interest; the idea they would ever be interested after that is all in his head. Everyone suffers in some way. Most don’t plot murder and buy guns to follow through with it.

  7. Dana
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:15 pm

    Would it be wrong of me to suggest that, at least from his picture, and knowing that he was a little guy, a lot of girls might have thought he was a twink, just as interested in the alpha males as they were?

    OK, OK, I denounce myself, I strongly denounce myself!

  8. Nan
    May 25th, 2014 @ 11:22 pm

    The fact that he felt entitled to sex with any woman he wanted doesn’t seem creepy? His lack of confidence is about him not about women.

  9. Paul H. Lemmen
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:12 am

    Me too! God (and Barb) took pity on me, thus I am a blessed and happy man.

  10. Paul H. Lemmen
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:18 am

    Die im Brand Sie ficken Troll.

  11. AJMacDonaldJr
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:27 am

    Portrait of a Killer: Elliot Rodger Claimed in Video to Be ‘Supreme Gentleman’ http://t.co/7CvjCUm9qp

  12. A J MacDonald Jr
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:28 am

    This young man had a sin problem. Specifically: Pride, Envy, Lust, Greed, and Wrath.

  13. A J MacDonald Jr
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:29 am

    that would have been beneath him

  14. AJMacDonaldJr
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:30 am

    Portrait of a Killer: Elliot Rodger Claimed in Video to Be ‘Supreme Gentleman’… http://t.co/bseN5mDccu

  15. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:42 am

    Yes, seriously.

    “No one explained it to me.”
    Well, that settles it then. Not at all anecdotal evidence, that.

    “And how do you know that someone didn’t try?”
    I don’t. How do you know that someone did? I doubt this story will ever receive that level of detail where we’re able to know for sure.

    As far as “people and instruction books,” why do you imagine that the traditional nuclear family is the most stable (and has repeatedly been proven to be so)?
    Each gender involved has a role in demonstrating to the young both their own role, and the role of the opposite gender.

    That’s rather like an “instruction book.”

    In Elliot Rodger’s case, I imagine that instruction was lacking. Not least due to his parents’ divorce.

  16. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 12:47 am

    And how do Christians rid themselves of these sins?
    Whether by Grace or Repentance, some knowledge of God and/or his works is required. Otherwise, Godless heathens would be saved occasionally, too.
    This knowledge rarely comes spontaneously.

  17. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:03 am

    I think I’m going to refer to you as “Captain Empathy” from now on.
    You, sir, are a douche.

  18. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:05 am

    Great. Now I’m gonna have to read the whole thing, too.

  19. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:11 am

    Ah, but what kind of men were being “hunted after?” Were these the alphas or betas?
    I have a hard time seeing a beta turn down an offer from someone of higher rating.

  20. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:13 am

    Sorry to delve into Marxist claptrap here, but why would society’s “winners” upset the system? They like the system.
    So of course it’s the wimps you have to worry about. None of them are getting laid.

  21. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:18 am

    I suggest you adjust your comfort level, because right now, there are other troubled young men out there just like Elliot Rodger.

    And they just got a lesson in “how it’s done.”

    If it helps you remain calm, then don’t focus on Rodger, but on the cases that are still preventable.

  22. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 1:35 am

    “For my part, I know what evil is. And I don’t greet it with empathy.”

    Your bravado is sad.

    What do you think you’re gonna do, tough guy? Start patrolling the neighborhood high schools, shooting young men that might “look the type?”

    Are you gonna hand out psych-profile questionnaires, so that you can be a little more sure before you pull the trigger?
    As to your original question: the character of “Ringo” was broken. But how did he get that way? It’s an open question of whether he was a true psychopath (i.e. not fixable) or whether he became that way.
    We will likely never know the answer to that in respect to Rodger.
    But I find it unlikely that all these young men are psychopaths.

  23. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 2:07 am

    “…how he was completely frozen by fear of rejection and how the fear led to hatred…”

    I’ll bet he felt trapped. (not having read his manifesto yet…we’ll see if my opinion changes)

    He knew there was something wrong with him:

    – Some things he would’ve worked to change, but didn’t know how.

    – Some things he wouldn’t have changed, whether he knew how or not.

    – Some things he knew were unchangeable.

    He was going to be a failure for all the rest of his days; never “normal.” With no way out, he finally gave up trying. Then, he decided to hurt those that he thought had hurt him, killing himself in the process and ending the pain.
    Very sad.

  24. maniakmedic
    May 26th, 2014 @ 5:35 am

    Again, going by what I’ve been told, but that huge rush generally feeds into ego, and many times the guy takes it as a trophy and ego booster more than as a platform to possibly start a relationship.

  25. maniakmedic
    May 26th, 2014 @ 5:55 am

    To be honest, I’d probably go with alpha, but I’m sure every girl likes to think she’s going after an alpha. For me personally, I’m pretty independent. I don’t like asking for help and will do incredibly stupid things to avoid asking for help (ever tried to lift an H-tank alone? I did twice: once to get an empty one off a bus, once to get a full one on the bus; for the sake of your back, I would not recommend it). Compare to a friend of mine who wouldn’t lift a duffel bag full of clothes – and wouldn’t let me touch it either – so she could get a guy to do it for her.

    I personally suck at reading people I interact with. I literally cannot tell if they are humoring me by letting me be around them or if they genuinely enjoy my company. Mostly I assume it’s the former so I spend a lot of energy trying to be as inobtrusive as possible. It naturally has an air of a profound lack of self confidence about it and is one thing I’ve been working very hard to change. Still can’t read people, though.

    I honestly would not wish my situation on anyone. The situation I find myself in is messed up by itself, but combining it with an inability to read a person and a very deep-seated dislike of stupid relationship games (of all varieties, not just romantic) has made it my own personal hell.

    I sound like a headcase.

  26. Joe Dokes
    May 26th, 2014 @ 6:19 am

    I agree about his narcissism. Even with adequate training, aspies tend to display great self-centeredness, but not so much in always focusing exclusively on themselves (which a narcissist does) but in simply never thinking about others. Yes, that’s also lack of empathy, but not usually a pathological one. They simply don’t think about the feelings of others unless reminded to do so, whereas psychopaths can and do acknowledge that others have feelings but they themselves simply don’t or won’t share them, and so have potentially no limits on what they can do to others. Combine that with true narcissism (which this guy had) and a sense of denied entitlement (which he also had) and anything can, and just did, happen.

    This guy was more psychopath than a mere garden variety aspie. But as I said before – he was exactly what he could have been expected to become.

  27. Dana
    May 26th, 2014 @ 7:53 am

    OK, how was this preventable? If Mr Rodger is the example, family and friends tried to intervene, and he had been in therapy since he was like 8 years old (if I heard that right), but was never even close to a threshold where he could have been committed to a mental institution. His family tried, but failed. The police talked to him, but found him personable, well ordered and unlikely to be a threat.

    And yup, there sure are a lot of other guys like Mr Rodger, and maybe, maybe! some of them can be helped, or stopped, but some will always get through.

    Mr Rodger thought he’d be better off dead, and with our 24/7 media, realized that if he took a bunch of people with him, his glorious death would be heard of by millions rather than being a one column inch note on page B-7.

  28. Dana
    May 26th, 2014 @ 8:02 am

    Actually, most of the wimps are getting laid; it’s just that they’re not getting laid by supermodels.

    Fat guys get laid and fat girls get laid, ugly guys and ugly girls get laid, practically everybody but the actually deformed or handicapped or tremendously obese gets laid.

  29. Eric Ashley
    May 26th, 2014 @ 8:48 am

    And you don’t think thats what most 20 yr. old guys do? Hahahahaha.

  30. Eric Ashley
    May 26th, 2014 @ 8:53 am

    Ms. Lack of Empathy, no ‘creep’ doe

  31. Eric Ashley
    May 26th, 2014 @ 8:58 am

    Aargh. Typewriter malfs.

    Creep=/mass murderer in womanspeak. Otherwise monsters on Death Row wouldn’t get marriage proposals.

    Nan, women are never, even in the tiniest way to blame? Lets use logic…this guy chose to do evil. Guilty. But he was pushed by a lot of people. Guilty.

  32. Rick Caird
    May 26th, 2014 @ 9:01 am

    Of course he is the perfect gentleman. If you are Conan the Barbarian.

  33. maniakmedic
    May 26th, 2014 @ 9:25 am

    I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s a pretty shitty feeling looking at your life, knowing you need to make some changes but not knowing how to do that, and (as for me) feeling like you are all alone.

    Again no details, but the situation I’ve been in has been excruciating. And there were times I could have – and desperately wanted to – do something that would have resulted in me possibly going to jail. Instead, I forced myself to ask for help (and in some cases was forced by a very good friend) and while the situation has not resolved, it has gotten better. If I had done what I contemplated doing I would have irreparably damaged a relationship, possibly lost my job, and things would not have gotten any better.

    It is difficult to explain how freaking hard it is to change years of negative thinking patterns to people who have never had to do so. You are not just fighting patterns, you are fighting biology as your brain over time conforms to that thinking (like a pair of leather shoes forms to your feet).

    Like I’ve said, I do not condone what this kid did. He had a lot of problems and those problems were compounded by pride. But even with all that, I can see why he did what he did because that could have been me at one point.

  34. Red_Bird
    May 26th, 2014 @ 10:11 am

    I have no desire to blame the parents for any of this man’s actions- they were, after all, HIS actions, not theirs. With that caveat in mind, I wonder how much of this young man’s upbringing circled around the idea that he was SPESHULL and PRESHUSS and could do anything he wanted because he was just so wonderful! I see that later on his mother wanted him to get a retail job, I wonder how shocked she was that he refused to do so because it was beneath him? Did she set him straight on that point? Or did she cater to it? Had his parents been massaging this boy’s ego since infancy?

    I know this sounds harsh, and again, I’m not blaming them. Not exactly. After all, for decades now we’ve all had the idea drilled into us that a child’s ego is a fragile thing, and the worst thing we can do is tell them they don’t have the aptitude for something. “Oh Johnny, you can be anything you want to be!” When in reality, Johnny might only have the aptitude for a few things. Retail job being among them.

    I can’t help but wonder how much of his attitude is the result of helicopter parenting & a massaged ego. I wonder how many more Elliot Rodgers we’ll find out there, once kids reach about 22 years of age and they realize that even though they are SO MAGNIFICENT, employers “refuse” to throw jobs at their feet and women refuse to rip their clothes off at their passing.

  35. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 2:24 pm

    Whether it was preventable or not is the question. Some people are beyond fixing…they need to be locked up, or if after the fact, need to be executed.
    I believe others can be fixed, with the right intervention.
    I need to finish the rest of the manifesto, and I’m only 1/4 through it.

  36. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 2:29 pm

    I don’t know about that.
    Rodger wasn’t getting laid, possibly because as RSM stated, he wasn’t willing to do a “10” the hard way.
    I think it’s appropriate to focus on him because he’s the problem. If others are getting laid as you suggest, then they have taken themselves out of consideration.
    I liken it to Jesus’ ministry: he didn’t minister primarily to the righteous because they weren’t the ones that needed help.

  37. Matt_SE
    May 26th, 2014 @ 2:34 pm

    Me too.

  38. Comment rescue: your Editor on the Delaware Liberal | The First Street Journal.
    May 26th, 2014 @ 3:33 pm

    […] Elliot Rodgers. I’ll leave the stories about Mr Rodger in the fine hands of Patterico and Robert Stacey Stacy McCain (that’s three separate links for Mr McCain), but I wanted to record this […]

  39. KailuaH
    May 26th, 2014 @ 4:07 pm

    Children who starve to death every day should also take responsibility for what’s happening to them I guess. The world is a joint effort, like it or not, and we can’t take full responsibility for everything that happens to us.

  40. Quartermaster
    May 26th, 2014 @ 5:59 pm

    I was certainly not in what PUA’s call the “friend zone.” But, I’m not a PUA, nor will I ever be such. Another name for a PUA is “Man Slut.” I am in the “friend zone” that has real meaning for life.

  41. KateFowler
    May 26th, 2014 @ 6:08 pm

    Elliot Rodger was a racist, sexist and all-around vile jerk-off of a human being.

    He’s entitled to behave in a vile manner — it’s a free country.

    He’s not free from the consequences of his behavior — zero friends, zero girlfriends.

    While research may indicate that folks with autism are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators, that doesn’t imply folks with autism NEVER commit horrific crimes.

    Adam Lanza was autistic too. Scary as all get out that among rare mass shooters TWO in recent years are autistic!!

  42. BruceJ
    May 26th, 2014 @ 8:15 pm

    Pajama boy ran off the rails!

  43. Pemeadv
    May 27th, 2014 @ 9:26 am

    He never earned a penny! Who’s responsible for buying those guns http://t.co/HGZF22q0Zl

  44. Pemeadv
    May 27th, 2014 @ 9:30 am

    Only an elitist liberal would think a job is beneath him! http://t.co/oKjvxaFVXl

  45. Zachary J. Weeks
    May 27th, 2014 @ 5:07 pm

    Pushing people in lockers and calling them a loser equals a successful man according to the author.

  46. Zachary J. Weeks
    May 27th, 2014 @ 5:08 pm

    Author likes to censor any comments he doesn’t like btw. Such a great writer.

  47. A Tale of Two Tragedies | The Fog of Law
    May 28th, 2014 @ 2:15 am

    […] around their new standard-bearer, a young man who wrote a hundred-fifty page manifesto about how his ill treatment at the hands of women made him want revenge upon hot sorority girls. In response to my comment that the gunman’s romantic problem was that he was too psycho for […]

  48. BashfulLocket_7
    May 30th, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

    #YesAllWomen b/c a still can’t believe some1 told me I need a “supreme gentleman in my life” http://t.co/ax25yQImEY http://t.co/hv56Xdj1CX

  49. FMJRA 2.0: Sirius : The Other McCain
    May 31st, 2014 @ 4:44 pm

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