I think a life of constant rejection and the inability to understand why you aren't accepted and liked might push certain individuals to violence. My personal reaction has been to avoid people so there won't be any chance for them to decide I am not up to their standards.
I lived the same way in high school. I wanted to fit in, but it just wasn't in the cards. I was in the gifted track, but wasn't accepted by them, and being in that track guaranteed my rejection by the general track, the biz ed track, and the vo-techies. I played in the wind ensemble and the jazz ensemble, but apart from my utility as an instrumentalist I wasn't really accepted by them until midway through junior year. Many of the girls in the music program used me as a tutor and a confidante, but go on a
date? A blue nosed baboon would have had a better chance! And I had no idea why this was. (Asperger's didn't become mainstream even in the medical community for decades after I was out of school.)
I even was picked on by a couple of the teachers. One, teaching Socio-Psychology, asked us to list five things that were important to us one time. Most of the class listed things like cars, their girlfriend/boyfriend, a job, getting good grades - typical high school values. I put down things like duty, honor, service, and loyalty - abstract virtues. Teacher collected the papers and read some of them to the class, asking us if we could tell who wrote them, then questioned the person who had and allowed them to explain their choices. He read mine, and everyone in the class pointed to me. He congratulated them on their perception, and for the next ten minutes ripped into me for my choices without giving me a chance to respond. I stood up, picked up my books, and walked to the door.
"What's the matter? Can't you take a little criticism?" the teacher sneered.
"That wasn't criticsm. That was verbal abuse," I shot back. "I do not have to take that from you, and I will not. I will not return to this class until I receive a public apology from you. After class, I suggest you report to the principal's office. He
will be looking for you."
I walked out, went to the principal's office, and had a little discussion with him about that teacher. I found out later from the principal's secretary that the principal had indeed had words with him and had, with great verbal artistry, ripped him up one side and down the other. He also required him to publicly apologize to me for his being a jackass, and TOLD him my grade for that course
would be an A, even if I failed every exam and never attended class again. (His little tapdance on the Aspergian had far reaching consequences for him. It cost that teacher two promotions, because the principal had a long memory. One of the few times I've seen karmic justice in action.)
My point to all this is that had I possessed the powers of a Samantha Stevens or Jeannie the Genie in high school, it would have been a very different place. Some of the long-haired hippie-type pinko teachers would have found themselves at Parris Island with their heads shaved learning the Rifleman's Catechism; a number of the jocks would have been reduced to piles of ash; and quite a number of the girls would have been turned out as hookers, to receive the sort of treatment from men I thought they deserved based on their behavior. But while I enjoyed the fantasies of turning the more obnoxious teachers over to the tender mercies of Marine D.I.s, and incinerating bullies with heat vision, and having the more obnoxious teen bitches get hit with the Clue X Four,
I certainly didn't act on them by shooting them, stabbing them, or running them down with a car! I simply kept telling myself this would not last forever, and sooner or later (
much later, as things turned out), I would have some girl who cared about me and wanted to be with me. For at bottom, that was all I really wanted.
I'm in complete agreement with the posters who believe the Santa Barbara killer's actions have a lot more to do with affluenza, an entitlement mentality, and the shallow values the kid was raised with, all of which heterodyned with his delusions to send him spinning off the rails, than does his suffering from Asperger's Syndrome. Anyone care to bet that the parents spent little time with their son, teaching him values and virtues. He strikes me as a classic "poor little rich kid," who never learned money is the least thing; that there are many things more important than money and appearance. The reason the parents are trying to put the blame on his guns, conveniently ignoring the fact he killed and injured more people with his car and a knife, is that they don't want to confront the fact that it is their failure as parents that led to this incident. They don't want to admit their child was mentally ill in ways that have nothing to do with his Asperger's. And they don't want to admit their guilt in not checking the kid into a private fool farm to get his mental illness treated has a LOT to do with their baby boy turning into a mass murderer.
Asperger's may have robbed this kid of his social graces, but it did not give him Narcisstic Personality Disorder or set him on a path to murder. I feel the parents have to answer for that. Not that the lamestream media or the courts will require them to do so.
