And basically he thinks that an element of this, not the explanation total or complete, but an element of this is that too many people in our society do not take responsibility for how their lives turn out. It’s not just they don’t accept personal responsibility. It is they don’t think they have anything to do with how their lives have turned out, and they become embittered.

He says, “I have studied these cases. Clearly this was premeditated slaughter. If the pattern holds — and we don’t know yet that it will — but if the pattern holds, we will likely find out this guy’s life was coming apart, that he scapegoated society or others for his problems and failures and his hopelessness, and that he decided to get even and go out in a blaze of glory. It’s the same nihilistic evil again and again, blaming others for your problems and seeking to sow destruction in revenge against the unfairness and injustice of it all.”

This sounds like it would apply to the guy that shot the Republicans practicing for baseball, Steve Scalise and others. He was embittered and enraged. He says, “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to stop people from seeing themselves as victims of society, who then get angrier and angrier and want to strike back. But a healthy society does not encourage an outlook of grievance and helpless victimization, but ours does. People who take personal responsibility for their lives do not these kinds of things.”

These are the thoughts from my expert and I think there’s a lot of truth there. We know that we live in a grievance society where grievance has become its own form of politics. It’s spreading. Grievance is taught on many college campuses. Grievance is always treated as justified. Well, I take that back. If you are a white male or white Christian, your grievance probably will not carry the weight of others. But for the most part, those who have grievance and incorporate politics into their grievance generally are always said to be justified.

In fact, I might say that one of our political parties has actually, as a matter of strategy, tried to create as many victims of whatever as they can, and this party has then presented itself as the solution, the answer. And of course the problem with victimology, the problem with victimhood is once you adopt it, once you accept that you’re a victim, a lot of things happen.

You are immediately, in your mind, you are free of blame. You are free of responsibility. And you also are free in believing you don’t have a chance at succeeding or achievement or accomplishment because the deck’s stacked against you. ‘Cause you’re a victim. It’s-a-made-to-order political profile for a political party which seeks to gain power on the backs of such people. “It’s not your fault. We’ll fix those who did this to you. We’ll get even with those who did this to you.”

So you adopt that you’re a victim of something. You are a generational victim of slavery. You’re a generational victim of masculinity. You are a victim of male patriarchy. You are a victim of extreme right-wing politics. Whatever. Once you adopt it, once you accept it, once you yourself admit and acknowledge that you’re a victim, you are immediately saying you have no responsibility for yourself, and you have no ability to triumph, because no matter how hard you try and how hard you work, the deck is always going to be stacked against you.

It’s a very artful and, for the Democrat Party, it’s a very successful political strategy to create as many victims as you can and then group them and then acknowledge their grievance and then promise to get even. Here’s what happens, though. They somehow never get the satisfaction of whoever it is that did whatever was done to them, there never is any revenge. The party claims they’re gonna get even, but it never happens. The people you end up blaming continue to live and continue to live prosperously or happily or whatever ways in which you don’t live, and so your anger festers and your resentment festers.

And all of that is used as a political advantage by the party which encouraged you to accept the fact that you’re helpless and not responsible because powerful forces have been arrayed against you. It’s a recipe for unhappiness. It’s a recipe for what is said here. Scapegoat society for others, for your failures, your hopelessness, and it builds and builds and builds and builds and builds to the point you gotta get even, and you take mental instability and throw it in the mix. “Well, then, Rush, why doesn’t everybody grab a gun and start –” The point here, not everybody is unstable.

Now, a lot of people, the hell with understanding why they did it. It doesn’t matter. They did it! There’s no justification. If you want to know why for scholarly research, fine. But if you want to know why for remedial purposes in others, don’t waste your time. Because some people just can’t accept that there is natural evil. A lot of people think everybody is innocent and clean and pure as the wind-driven snow until something poisons them or ruins them. And that’s not true. There is pure evil, born that way and there’s nothing you can do about it.