I’m assuming that when you use the words ‘horribly troubled’, you mean ‘mentally ill.’ Thing is, we don’t know that he was.

I think the point of the article is less that people shouldn’t refer to this (POTENTIALLY disabled) man as a ‘monster’, (although, yeah, they shouldn’t, it’s an unhelpful word that ignores the web of social issues that may have contributed to the incident). I think the main points are that a. the assumption that he MUST have had a disability in order to do this evil thing is wrong and ignorant; non-disabled people do horrible things all the time.

And b. the fact that even if he was, in some way, disabled, pointing to that as the dominant factor at play in his decision to murder children is also wrong and ignorant. Most disabled people manage to get by from day to day without murdering children. There were clearly other factors at play here.

But you’re right, demonizing criminals is an easy way for people to avoid examining how the societies they live in contribute to peoples’ abilities to do evil things. What bugs me is that the majority of the cultural conversation seems to have split down the middle; one side is saying that, hey, maybe guns shouldn’t be as easy to purchase as cauliflower, while the other side (the side which owns guns) is trying to deflect attention by pointing to the disabled community as a whole. The number of times I’ve seen people saying, ‘Well, you know, only THOSE sorts of people shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns’… as if the majority of murders-by-gun weren’t committed by neurotypical folk.

Cheers,
Tara

I understand that people feel “coming out of the closet” about their personal problems helps others, and it does, but when it comes to kids, they don’t get a say.

Earlier today, I mentioned to someone that a parent I know posts pics of her child, who has the same medley of (mis?)diagnoses as yesterday’s killer. She says she does it out of love, but there’s always a poke at her child. Look at how inappropriately he dressed this morning! I love him anyway! Isn’t he goofy? I love him anyway (and I’m so tired). . .

This really doesn’t have much to do with yesterday’s tragic events, but because people are conflating the two and throwing around diagnoses and labels and judgments, it does.

I’m tired. Tired of the ignorance. Tired of the fact that people can’t seem to accept that sometimes bad things happen, sometimes very bad things happen, that there aren’t easy answers, and that what answers and reasons we have are nuanced and complex and require time, patience, introspection, discussion, not debate, and serious analysis. It seems to me that most Americans are not up for any of that.