The Dark Knight mass murderer had announced his plans a week before the event

On July 20, in the entry, “The proximate cause of the Batman massacre identified, with almost 100 percent certainty,” James N. wrote:

Despite the efforts to make James Holmes conform to a stereotype which would be acceptable to one or another of our current political fever dreams (He’s a Muslim … He’s a tea-party guy … He’s a Democrat … He’s a gun nut … etc.), the truth is almost certainly that he’s a very crazy guy who scared lots of people and who, in a normal and rational society, would have been placed in, and remained in, a state hospital for the rest of his life.

This morning Jeanette V. sends this article:

James Holmes Mailed Massacre Plans to School Psychiatrist

The article, from People magazine, is poorly written and confusing, as most journalism is today. (And why should it not be? Since our entire culture accepts movies, such as the Batman series, with incoherent plots and impossible-to-understand dialog, why should anyone in our culture want or expect journalism to be understandable and coherent?) It tells us that Holmes had mailed a notebook with a detailed description, including drawings, of his planned massacre to a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado, and that the package with the notebook had been in the mailroom since at least July 12, eight days before the shooting, but that the package was not opened and read until this week.

Jeanette V. writes:

As someone who worked in a California State Hospital I know for a fact that it is impossible these days to get anyone committed. In fact one of the reasons there are so many homeless street people is that they are mostly mentally ill. In another time they would have been in a state hospital. Decades ago theses state hospital were a small little community that was self-sufficient. They had their own little dairy farms, where the higher functioning patients could milk the cows. They did their own laundry and dry cleaning. All of that is gone. Under the euphemism of human rights the patients are no longer allowed to milk the cows and the dairies have all been sold and housing tracts have replaced the acres of farmland.

All the patient do is spent their day watching cartoons and going outside for smoke breaks. Occasionally they see a psychiatrist for a med check and speak to a psychologist.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 02, 2012 10:23 AM | Send