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I wrote about some of my reactions to reports of there being a mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. They were posted on The Good Men Project, because The Good Men Project is about generating conversation, as to what it can mean to be a man in times like these. I didn’t write about my reaction to various accounts of there being multiple shooters and multiple actors pretending to having been shot, because I didn’t take the time to expose myself to alternatives to the familiar loner, who is now dead, did it, mainstream media story.
Any thought that there were mostly pretend dead and wounded amongst the real dead and wounded to most seems ridiculous. To write such a thing is to risk being thought of as being very gullible to conspiracy theorists, as in here we go again with the simple truth that a mentally ill man pulled the trigger not being good enough.
Now the Las Vegas mass killer, of the mass media, pulled multiple triggers of multiple automatic weapons fast enough to accomplish carnage that what would normally take a small army. Alternatives to mass media provide compelling evidence that such a scene could have been created by real sniper rifle bullets, being shot by multiple shooters, blowing apart real people, along with multiple actors who appeared to get shot up by the use of fake blood with machine gun noise sound effects as witnessed by actors who pretended to be witnesses.
Today I am writing that it continues to amaze me about how easily I can be fooled and others even more so. Our favorite movies are ones where we spent much of our movie watching experience not being aware that we are watching a movie. Later we may critique the quality of the acting and special effects that facilitated this suspension of our disbelief. Now it is wise to try and do so with strangely horrific events reported in the news.
Could the Las Vegas mass shooting have been created the way described in alternative media? Absolutely. Can machine gun noises be simulated by decent speakers? Can fake blood look real? Can good people get pressured into playing pretend for money, due to intimidation, or because they are bad people? You know the answer. All of the above.
No way in this instance you say. Somebody influential would see through the play acting and get what they knew to CNN or the FBI or the President Of The United States, who would set the rest of us straight. Well, forget about the President of The United States. It is now popular to not believe anything he has to say. What if you heard about it from Michelle Obama or Ellen DeGeneres? How about some online article you got directed to by Matt Drudge?
If you find thinking something is not quite right about what mass media reports is believed to have happened in Las Vegas, do you reassure yourself that because Alex Jones is of that opinion and you know that Alex Jones is nuts, you can rest assured that the mass media reports must be good enough.
Many stop exposing themselves to unpopular reporting when reporters start suggesting that those behind dastardly deeds might include the CIA or the NSA or the Illuminati or any of the other secretive, usual suspect, organizations. If you believe that a suggested suspect doesn’t actually exist or wouldn’t do such a thing, you can go back to playing video games on your cell phone.
I trust no one more than my own open mind. I have no inside contacts. I refuse to disqualify anyone’s information because of who they are or who they are not. This includes official sources of public knowledge and unofficial know-it-alls. I am most likely to focus on sources that feel that something is amiss, explain their perception as to why and then leave it up to me to decide how helpful was their report in informing my understanding. I often apply the who, what, where, how and why questions I learned in grade school as part of my plausibility discernment process.
I never expect to get to the core truth of anything. I just appreciate knowing more than I did. Sometimes knowing more effects what I do about it.
Who shot the people in Las Vegas? Was it just an ISIS radicalized troubled rich man who was upset by gambling debts who is not alive to be questioned?
Can we tell what happened by what we see on television?
Is the where of the shooting within eyeshot of the all-seeing eye like spotlight atop the Luxor Hotel and Casino something I should take into consideration?
Could technology well known to the general public provide the how of hard to believe scenarios? Could technology or magic known only to an elite few be involved?
Why do human beings do what you wouldn’t think many people would do? Fear, money, advantage, lust for expressing power through creating chaos were all most likely in play in Las Vegas that day.
So when you entertain scenarios that are increasingly more frightening what can you do about that? Rise up in outrage demanding that government do something towards preventing this from happening again? Get a deadbolt lock for your door? You could.
I think more effective is to work on staying calm by telling yourself to calm down, along with some meditation. Be kinder to others than you need be. Feel that something was gained by you daring to know more than you knew previously, even if you are not sure as to what is to be gained. Appreciate how your open mind could take in unpopular views that upon even casual inspection, are far superior to the ridiculousness that most people believe.
Most men appreciate stories where the hero unearths the horrible truth and then violently takes care of business for the sake of God, Country, the protection of loved ones and a guy doing what a guy needs to do.
The more a man knows about how social justice never is, the less likely the desire to do something aggressive about that. The evil of the world is up to forces greater than the heroic effort of all men, even if they could work cooperatively to counter it. Evil grows stronger at man’s feeble attempts to stop it. Evil grows weaker when men act in kindness. Evil stops only with divine intervention. You might want to revisit your view on divinity.
How do I know any of this? I don’t know for sure. It just feels better than what I used to believe. As long as I can, I will keep striving to know more about good and evil, by resisting the urge to know less.
Photo: Pixabay
