Domestic violence and spree shootings go together because they both involve narcissism and rage that have been carefully tended, cultivated a “story” in which the violent actor sees themselves as engaging in self-defense—fists against words—and as taking back power. As such, their acts are either justified as necessary…restoring order to the world…or vengeful defiance. Anger is rewarding and exercise of dominance is fun, so they don’t seek to change the dynamic (and especially, not change themselves), just maximize opportunity. Ideology gets dragged in because merging your ego with God, The Truth, or any other big abstract concept creates a bigger power dynamic.

This is also why corporal punishment goes to shit so often. Technically, there’s a way to use punishment as a learning tool, but it takes enormous discipline and calm on the part of the trainer—guess what a frustrated, desperate parent isn’t? Hence the eternal repeat of “…and I hit them more to make the point more.” The violence becomes catharsis, then becomes entertainment; the specific “lesson” becomes “fear this,” then “fear me,” then “this shuts you up and it’s easy.”

De Sade observed that people will empathize with the torturer rather the tortured, because the latter is difficult and the former is fun. The corollary is that some people will imagine being the torturer or otherwise being in a position where they can act upon another person without limits. Abuse of power is “fun”*—fuck, we’ve just been on a tour of that with Weinstein, Spacey, O’Reilly, et cetera. Motherfuckers (highly technical term) find reasons to hit, a smaller number of motherfuckers with the exact x/y/z plot of personality traits fantasize about applying that same rage—I matter, you don’t—on a broader canvas.

Manifestos, grandiose plans…we should think of them less as statements of motive and intent, and more as porn. They exist so their creator can stimulate themselves—anger and schadenfreude instead of sexual desire. Unfortunately, there’s also a ton of cultural institutions (and I’m talking worldwide) that provide tidy little scripts for how to justify your shitty behavior. You look at ponderous shit like Breivik, or Kaczinsky, and what you’re seeing is an elaborate, ritualized performance of “I get to enjoy killing these people, this is a disciplined, intellectual murder-erection.” It’s all decorations to make that basic, stupid power/sex impulse seem something lofty. All the fucking words are just MeMeMeMe.

There’s actually a whole other rant about how narcissism infests ideology like phages take over cells, explaining, for example, the people who do 180-degree turns—because extremeness means more room to posture as elite, more-smart, more-pure—and how people will take any idea and make it about heads on pikes because they find head-piking arousing**, but the post traumatic stress monkeys are especially loud tonight and I’ve said enough.

_{*And for the record, no kink shaming intended. What people agree to is an entirely different thing than total license. De Sade would not like the subculture named for him.}

_{** No seriously, ISIS is in many ways a complete hollowing out of jihad-as-concept to create a “do what you like” setup with a small number of sadists governing a captive subject population, loosely sprinkled Sharia applied atop arbitrary violence and sexual abuse. You’re going to have people who like the libertine license, and thus are willing to accept the Islamic coding.}