The Most Revolutionary Act

Going Postal by Mark Ames

The best analysis I’ve read about the root cause of the rage massacre in Connecticut last week comes from Michael Rechenwald, founder of Citizens for Legitimate Government in Seeking Definitive Causes and Solution for Rage Massacres. Rechenwald agrees with Mark Ames’ premise in Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion — From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton‘s Columbine and Beyond. Ames argues that rage massacres are committed by self-identified rebels seriously disenchanted by some aspect of American life who are lacking both support and a viable plan for change. As Rechenwald and Ames point out, they are not psychotic because they have a clear rationale and a clear set of targets for their rage, which is largely reality based. Schools are often a target because, as Rechenwald points out, this is where Americans are fed most of the crap ideology that induces them to buy into a political and economic system that exploits and oppresses them.

Borrowing from political scientist Benjamin Barber (in Jihad vs McWorld), Rechenwald describes them as jihadists (in tending to embrace tradition, nationalism and religious extremism) who terrorize and kill those they view as responsible for their failure to achieve the American dream they were promised.

Rechenwald argues that neither gun control nor any other short term measures will end these horrible tragedies: “Nothing short of changing everything — the capitalist system, the imperialist agenda, the poor to (for many) non-existent health care system, the greater incidences of mental illness and their aggravation in an agonistic social order, the ideological basis of capitalist triumphalism — will suffice.”

I agree.