When a Man Loses Everything, He'll Take Everything from Those He Considers His Oppressors

I'll start out with an observation from James Gilligan: "One of the most common fantasies I have heard from many of the most violent prison inmates is the scenario of going to their deaths in a hail of gunfire while killing as many people as possible before they themselves die."

Gilligan is a retired psychiatrist who spent 35 year dealing with the most violent of prisoners. He wanted to know why the prisoners engaged in the most horrendous of crimes. What he heard, every time, was that "He dissed me" (or parents, or friends, or girlfriend, or wife).

And they wanted revenge, which is the attempt to replace humiliation with pride, i.e. self-love or self-respect. This is the lesson of Cain and Abel, in which a Cain who felt he had been humiliated got revenge on his innocent brother.

It's also a lesson the Greeks learned, when they made the original meaning of Hubris to humiliate someone in public. They considered it so obscene they banned it from the theater. Then they made Hubris followed by Nemesis - revenge.

When a man loses everything, then he loses it, and he takes everything from those he thinks have unbearably humiliated him.

This is why Jordan Dorner has gone on his rampage. He thinks he lost everything, feels unbearably humiliated, and now has taken everything from those he considered his oppressors.

Before Dorner there was Carl Drega.

Drega was tormented for years over code violations. It started with whether or not he could use tarpaper on his vacation home. Over the years things got out of hand until finally Drega killed who two state troopers, a judge and a newspaper editor and wounded three other law enforcement officers before being shot to death in a firefight with police.

By the way, the two state troopers he killed were harassing him, and when they pulled him over he got out and shot both, including one who turned tail and ran. The cops had tried to ticket him over rust holes in his pick-up truck.

Then there was what happened where I used to live - the Kirkwood, Missouri City Council shooting. Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton shot and killed six people and wounded two. And over what? Code violations. Being continually harassed, for years, over insignificant code violations.

The government would not leave both Drega and Thornton alone. And over what? Ultimately, an abuse of government power, humiliating people and trying to steal their money (Thornton was charged with 114 violations after Kirkwood annexed the unincorporated areas in which he lived).

What do all three of these shooting have in common? All three men felt they had been abused and humiliated by the government.

The government is supposed to protect. Now it's gotten so big it doesn't protect; it abuses, oppresses and humiliates. That is what Big Government always does.

Anyone who thinks that taking guns away from the citizens doesn't understand the problem. Most probably, they never will.

Early American coins were stamped with "Mind your business." That's the solution. Various governments are not minding their business, unless people consider the business of government to exploit, humiliate, murder, oppress and steal. That's what Hubris is. And always, it is followed by Nemesis - revenge.

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