while it’s likely the shooter was mentally ill, that doesn’t necessarily need to be true. as in, he may not have had any diagnosed psychoses. you don’t have to be mentally ill to do evil things, and doing evil things doesn’t necessary mean you are mentally ill. many mass shooters become “mentally ill” in order for us to “other” them, so that we don’t associate ourselves with them. we (newspapers, pundits, politicians) don’t call “terrorists” mentally ill because we’ve already othered them. “terrorism” is essentially synonymous with “Islamic terrorism” in the US, and enough people see that as an othering feature to just assume the Islam caused it. when it’s a white person, we need to separate ourselves by calling them “mentally ill.” there’s a fuzzy line here. most of the time people who have this rage inside them, don’t act on it. this means it’s difficult for us to draw a straight line between them and us. we use these terms (“terrorism”, “white supremacist”, “mentally ill”) as comfortable ways of distancing ourselves that require no self-examination as a society. if we look at the culture in the west, we clearly have a violence problem and there’s no denying that. the only way to stop the problem is to identify the problem as people and change them. that’s not something you can easily fix, though. the violence is inherent in the way every aspect of western society is crafted. people say it’s human nature, but it’s not. violence is taught. unfortunately, our predecessors in thought, in all cultures, fucked us on that one but we can build better systems to deal with it in time if we acknowledge that this is a problem in the first place.
