re: #442 Obdicut

Well, no, in your answers to me, you keep making it about him, some person I don’t know, having clear goals, or clear unconscious goals, or motivations, but I’m really just talking about a letter, a piece of writing. That’s why I regretted making that comment about approaching him, the writer. People say stupid things.
I’m saying there is a letter, and it was positioned in a way likely to get it widespread attention. And that letter is part of all the solution-seeking and soul-searching and blame-placing that is going on right now. And it carries a message.
It suggests that there is a group of people to which a guy who killed 20 children belongs, and also the letter writer. And it suggests that all of them could potentially become mass murders. So then the question becomes, what’s the solution, how can we avoid that, and if we can’t, who or what is to blame? Because that is where the discussion is at, right now. The discussion this letter is posed to join. And then it is very, very, heavily insinuated that whatever else happens, the key, the crucial first thing, is the mother not giving up, the mother not giving any cause for doubt as to her devotion.
(And contrary to your take on it, he does talk about no longer being isolated at school as what made the difference for him, he even described the specialness of his mother to him in terms of her being “a captive audience” to tide him over.)
Imagine reading this, say, if you’re a high school girl, and your boyfriend is treating you bad, is always moody, angry. Imagine he tells you, “sorry, sorry, but you are the only one who understands me! without you, I don’t know what I would do.” Imagine being married to a man who beats you, who tells you the same thing. Are they sincere? Certainly many of them are. Is that a manipulative thing for them to say? YES, absolutely, I would call it that. A letter like this reinforces this narrative in a dangerous way.
Imagine if A.L.’s mother had survived, and read this. This letter is telling every mother with a boy who was wild, and who didn’t make it, that she could have done it. Her own boy could be all this anonymous letter writer claims he is. All the other institutions could have worked, if only she could have provided that first step. That’s pretty harmful, in my view.