July 2012

An enraged lunatic, who goes on a killing spree, doesn’t murder randomly. On the contrary, there is a method to his madness; he targets a certain group of people. His choice of victims offers an important clue to his particular psychopathology.

For example, in previous essays we explored why the Columbine murderers, Harris and Klebold, had targeted their fellow high school students and why Binghamton’s murderer, Jiverly Voong, had targeted the recent immigrants, who met at the Binghamton Civic Center. In those two cases, a toxic mixture of dark emotions — envy being the key ingredient — motivated the killers. James Holmes, the Aurora Colorado killer, targeted those attending the new Batman film. Why that population? Apparently, those filmgoers played a symbolic role in his psychological drama, which we shall have to uncover if we are to solve this mystery.

Needless to say, moviegoers aren’t just seeking entertainment. Films seek to satisfy a variety of emotional longings, including the desire to see justice done, at least within the universe of the film. That is because they are troubled by the fact that this actual world of ours is rife with injustice. The filmgoers, who attended that fatal midnight showing of the new Batman film, came to root for that mythic embodiment of the hero, Batman, who defends civilization against the forces of darkness. Like all archtypcal heroes, Batman seeks to transform chaos into cosmos, order and light, thus redeeming this fallen world of ours. Holmes’ target was people who harbored such hopes, for, to paraphrase a song by the Rolling Stones, he wanted to “paint it black.” He didn’t want it redeemed, just destroyed.

Identifying with the Villain

Now here is the strange thing: Holmes identified not with Batman, but with the Joker, who symbolized — as played by Keith Ledger — the forces the nihilism, destruction and darkness, i.e., evil.

Does it sound odd that a person would adopt a negative and perverse identity and to that extreme a degree? Actually, it’s quite common. Consider, for example, politics, where nihilism — the complete negation of all values — is often writ large. The violent variety of nihilism is embodied in the statement of Che Guevara, “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.” The Occupy Wall Street crowd possess Guevara’s hatred, envy and resentment.

The same could be said of radical secularism, also known as progressivism. It, consists in a ruthlessly perverse campaign to destroy traditional values — such as hard work, self-reliance, natural marriage, family, etc. Underneath the egalitarian mask lurks a nihilistic longing for the apocalypse. An apocalypse doesn’t always mean blood flowing in the streets. The apocalypse currently finds less dramatic expression as a subtle reign of coercion, repression and terror, implemented by a legion of unelected czars, demagogues, politically correct college administrators, and tin-pot tyrants. This is the zeitgeist, the manure, from which emerges such flowers of evil and other monstrosities, including mentally unbalanced lunatics who go on murderous rampages.

A Terrorist Without a Cause>

Holmes was not ostensibly political, but rather a terrorist without a cause, a revolutionary nihilist who would burn down the entire world, quite literally, had he the power to do so. Like Joseph Conrad’s secret agent, he was frustrated that he could not. We might add that the Joker, as the film’s director Christopher Nolan represented him, is not like those villains of yesteryear, motivated by greed. Rather the Joker is a kind of postmodern villain, imbued with dark metaphysical longings, more particularly the longing to undermine everyone’s sense of order and security and, by so doing, to precipitate the world into chaos, so that Kali the destroyer — and, following Guenon’s logic, Kali the egalitarian — may reign.

Why, though, would anyone seek chaos? Where lies the psychological gain? Those who do conceive freedom and happiness to drive from a release from lawfulness. They fail, though, to see its dark implications of this puerile expression of freedom.

Underlying the longing for destruction and chaos we often discover a perversity of spirit, as old as the hills — envy, the sense that no one else shall live and harbor hope for the future, if he who is miserable doesn’t.

Those who become demonic, who pledge their allegiance to the dark side, hate life — more particularly, goodness, justice, lawfulness, and hope for the future — and seek to destroy it. They hate it because it threatens to destroy who they take themselves to be, just as the light of the sun gives flight to the creatures of the night. And, as we are suggesting, they envy those blessed with goodness and hope.

Holmes’ Vendetta Against Batman Fans

Here, then, lies the answer to our mystery: In lieu of being able to destroy Gotham City, let alone the world, Holmes chose to do so symbolically, as do all terrorists, by murdering a certain group of people. In other words, James Holmes realized that he couldn’t destroy goodness, justice, lawfulness and hope — the very foundations of a world — but he could at least destroy those who longed for those virtues to be actualized, i.e., the filmgoers who were there that evening to view the Batman film, and who hoped, at least in the universe of that film, to see goodness and light triumph over evil and darkness.

Similarly, the Nazis weren’t able to destroy goodness and righteousness, so they sought to exterminate those who they saw as valuing goodness and righteousness, i.e., the Jews, Catholic priests, etc. And so, the battle was set up in Holmes’ mind — himself the nihilistic Joker, versus those in the movie theater who were rooting for Batman and all that he symbolized.

OK, but Why James Holmes?

Even a nihilist cannot endure being a nobody. If recent reports are correct, Holmes dropped out of his doctoral program, was unable to find a job and was having troubles with his love life. His huge ego inflation is compensation for his sense of nothingness. I.E., Holmes no longer saw himself as a miserable loser, as a kind of Raskolnikov, but assumed the mythic, larger than life, identity of the Joker, the devil incarnate from the Batman films.

Why, though, did Holmes transform from from a person who subscribed to the values, beliefs and hopes of his society to a person suffering from extreme alienation, anomie, nihilism and despair? And then why did he transform from a doctoral student in neuroscience to a coldblooded killer? After all, everyone has his share of problems, but not everyone becomes a despairing nihilist, and very, very few become mass murderers (although some would argue that it is fear of punishment that stops many people). As to what internal and external pressures burst the damn of Holmes’ sanity, thus letting flow the powerful river of a mythic nightmare, is another story, one which we shall not explore at this time.

Another question is, why are those who go over the edge to become mass murderers are almost always men. Why not women? Actually, there are Islamic suicide bombers. Alas, it’s getting late and I’m getting tired, so I’ll leave these questions for another time or for readers to explore on their own.

Often the best way to understand a person is by contrasting him with someone who faced a similar type of crisis. Consider Sir Thomas More, who lived during the early part of the Sixteenth Century. He was, in addition to being a writer and philosopher, the Lord Chancellor of England, which meant that he was head of the judiciary and thus not too far afield of the position, here in America, of Chief Justice. More didn’t contend with the president of the United States, but rather King Henry the Eighth of England.

Sir Thomas More

King Henry wished to have his marriage annulled by the Catholic Church, so that he could remarry, with the church’s official approval. Thomas More was the one who had the power to do so. President Obama, on the other hand, wished to have his health care law deemed constitutional. As fate would have it, Roberts cast the deciding vote. More knew that if he opposed the king, he could be in mortal danger, whereas Roberts was merely in danger of being criticized and vilified by those on the political left.

More was courageous till the very end, as the executioner’s axe beheaded him. Roberts, on the other hand, weaseled out of his duty to defend the Constitution, by a kind of legalistic sophistry — hatching that monstrosity which we might call an “un-sales tax,” a tax based on what we choose not to purchase — thus suffering no ill-regard from the President and his minions.

Sir Thomas More succeeded in defending the Catholic Church from the intrusion by the overreaching dictator. Chief Justice John Roberts, on the other hand, failed to defend America from the intrusions of an overreaching and dangerous demagogue. Thus, in upholding Obamacare, Roberts eviscerated the Constitution, violated his oath of office and betrayed the American public. Even those who are in favor of Obamacare would have to admit that Robert’s decision was not a product of judicial reasoning. Rather, it was politically motivated and likely made under duress.

Despite the obvious differences between these two situations, we therefore see that the fundamental scenario is the same: A man is given the responsibility to defend the law — whether it be a set of religious commandments or the Constitution — but in doing so he runs afoul of the ruler of the land, whether monarch or president. Duty demands that he leave aside the comfort and security of his position for the sake of justice.

King Henry VIII

We shouldn’t be too harsh on John Roberts for, in truth, were the President of the United States screaming in our ear and the press firing poison arrows at us continuously, most of us would crack under the pressure, as did John Roberts. Who, then, would be so heroic to put his neck on the line, either literally or figuratively, for the sake of principle, as Sir Thomas More had done? Only a person who loved, adored and revered the law, as it finds embodiment as the Torah, the Magna Carta, the constitutions of Great Britain the Unites States or other free peoples, or in any other of the laws other myriad expressions. He would have to love, adore and revere the law to the point of regarding it as the guiding light of his existence, indeed as holy. Only then would he be willing to lay aside his personal happiness, if not his life.

It might seem odd that something as impersonal as the law could be loved. And yet a devoutly religious Jew kisses the Torah, which he regards as God’s law. An American can have an equally fervent reverence for the Constitution. Although it isn’t God’s law, but rather the creation of the Founding Fathers, it shares in divinity, if indirectly so. That is because it embodies a certain set of eternal values, namely the notion that a republic should be governed so as to respect each of it’s citizen’s autonomy, which means infringing on their liberty to a minimal degree, under the rule of law. Behind the reverence for liberty, and the political arrangements that derive from it, is a belief in the dignity of man, for only he or she who is not enslaved, but free, possesses dignity. The state motto for New Hampshire is “Live free or die.” Liberty is worth dying for because enslavement is ignoble and wretched.

There are many people who are fascinated by the law; it’s certainly an intellectually stimulating subject. But they would no more be willing to sacrifice their happiness, and if necessary their life, for the law than would a person who really enjoys the game of bridge or listening to the music of Bach. A person who devotes his life to a subject may be intrigued by it, as is Roberts by the law, but doesn’t necessarily love, adore or revere it. After all, a person who loves something doesn’t betray it when it’s expedient to do so.

We might add that a true lover doesn’t seek to change who or what he adores, but loves it for what it is. That is why the liberal notion of a “living constitution,” which changes the law to accommodate those who have a social and political agenda — invariably one that derives from the fetish for equality at the cost of liberty — bespeaks an underlying contempt for the Constitution, as if it were merely an obstacle in the way of their “progressive” plans for the reformation of America.

Intellectual or Philosopher?

Roberts is an intellectual, a scholar. A philosopher, by contrast, is a lover, i.e., a lover of wisdom. Like Socrates, centuries before him, More was willing to die for philosophy. Apparently, then, Roberts finds the American Constitution to be intellectually stimulating, as does many a lawyer and judge, and a nice source of income, which is why he has devoted his life to it, but he doesn’t love it to suffer for it.

What gives backbone to character is a loving devotion to a set of ideals. How is it that those who vetted Roberts could have been deceived into thinking that Roberts was devoted to conservative ideals? Their fallacy consisted in conflating a conservative temperament with an adherence to conservative values. Even one of the giants of conservative thought, F.W. Hayek, in his book, “The Constitution of Liberty,” denied that he was a conservative, if by conservative we mean someone who clings to the status quo when an unpleasant, if not unendurable, situation demands change. In that sense, those American colonialists, who sided with England, the Torreys, were conservative, but there was nothing admirable about them. They were merely fearful.

Thus Roberts revealed that he was conservative, but only in temperament, not in a principled way, when he fearfully went along with the status quo. In this case, the status quo consists in the fact that Obamacare is a law now on the books and is in the process of being implemented. Roberts clung to it even though it violates the Constitution, which is his duty, as Chief Justice, to protect. We mentioned cowardice and sophistry, but there might be a certain cynicism here, as if Roberts was saying to the American people, “You elected the dictator, so you deal with him. I got my own problems.”

The Essential Question

And so, when John Roberts was vetted, they never asked him the essential question: “What do you think of Sir Thomas More? Do you admire him? Do you believe that you would have done what he did? Are you too a ‘man for all seasons’?” They might have then discerned whether John Roberts was a true lover of the law and whether he had the intestinal fortitude to fight and suffer for his principles. Then, again, there is no need to refer to ancient history; they might have asked John Roberts what he thought of Sheriff Will Kane, in the western “High Noon,” or the thousands of other heroes, both fictional and real, that have inspired scores of Americans to set aside their own comfort, safety and happiness, so that they might aspire to a life wedded to higher ideals.

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