Orchidflower
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2007
- Messages
- 3,323
Considering this shooter was a Major and a Psychiatrist, he seems to be the epitome of the old phrase, "Physician: Heal thyself."
clifp,
Remember that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were both doctors.
He grew to understand us as a group and he adopted a philosophy that we were all a "little crazy" because of our experiences at w*rk. His goal was to get us to examine why we reacted to some things the way we did, and through that understanding come to realize when we needed help and when it was just a natural and healthy reaction to being exposed to violence and death so often.
I think every cop in America must have a 12-gauge suicide story that involves vivid imagery that can't be repeated in public. I have one that I wasn't even there for, but when I heard the sergeant in charge describe what he saw at that moment, well, I'll say that it was such a vivid description that I can't buy a pot roast at the butcher's and toss it in the grocery cart without having the same picture pop in my head. And it's been ten years since the incident.How else, for example, to reconcile dealing with spending Christmas Eve with the family of a man who has chosen to end his life by eating a 12-gauge and then spend Christmas Day with your family? That felt like something right out of the Twilight Zone.
I think every cop in America must have a 12-gauge suicide story that involves vivid imagery that can't be repeated in public. ...
I wonder if his "not wanting to pose with women" had to do with the kind of women he liked to hang out with.....How likely is it that Hassan, would not pose for photos with woman, be harassed? On one hand I'm thinking of Major Frank Burns from MASH, on the other hand he had only been base 4 months, and I don't think hazing is common in the medical field outside TV sitcoms.
I don't know what rang this Hasan dude's bell and turned him into a mass murderer. I suspect, from what I've read, that he had closed himself off to so many support systems that he just became a one-issue kind of guy. His parents were dead (and they were against his military career), he had no wife or girlfriend, the few friends that have been mentioned don't seem like the bossom buddy types at all, and he was obsessed with his religion. It came down to the only "roles" he had in his life were the Army and Islam, and eventually he found himself in a spot in which those two roles were in direct conflict. There were no shades of gray for this guy. He couldn't see any good in one role and totally misidentified that dark side of the other and embraced it.
Even though his role in the military was totally non-combat and as rear echelon as you can get; he only saw that he was part of a machine that was killing Muslims. He didn't see them as terrorists who happened to be Muslim, he just saw Muslims as victims. And his role as a religious man bought into the dark side of the religion, the one that says it must be protected and that martyrdom is not only acceptable but glorious. He had two personalities, two life-roles, both of which he had distorted so far that they were in direct opposition and at war with each other.
IMO Hasan latched on to what he perceived as bad about his role as a soldier and was saddened and the enraged by it. He also latched on to that which normal people easily recognize as the bad in Islam and glorified in it. That's a balancing act that nobody could maintain, and was crazy to try it, or the trying drove him insane. In either case, he had his own Twilight Zone episode all to himself.
Shocking, someone in the Army enjoys strippers?
I guess I don't consider that out of the ordinary.