So are you just going to ignore the fact that he called 911 and declared his allegiance to the Islamic state right before he shot 100 people? This is exactly what was on his mind seconds before killing all these people.
You cannot possibly discount terrorism.
crosspost with the last few posts
Not that I believe a word out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth, but before I could change the radio station in the car, I heard him say the wife is saying the FBI told her not to say her husband was gay. Tell who? The world? The people he was buying guns from? Maybe Rush is hitting his pain pills again??
TatinG, can we speculate that if Mateen had any familiarity with ISIS and its propaganda, he surely knew of ISIS’s “teachings” and medieval punishments those sadists impose upon gays?
“He called 911 and said he was ISIS. What more do you need? Why try and psychoanalyze him into not being ISIS? Denial.”
Not one single terrorist in Paris shootings/bombings, Belguim, San Bernadino, etc., etc., etc, ever called police before shooting/bombing and declared their allegiance to ISIS. They also carry out their terrorism in small groups of two or three.
Calling the police and claiming allegiance to ISIS likely a part of covering up the real reason for his actions.
Add in his proclaiming to be a member of several terrorists groups who are sworn enemies of each other, patronizing Pulse for at least 3 years and being on gay dating apps and it’s pretty obvious it was a ruse.
I think it was a bit of both. It’s more and more likely that he was a closeted gay man. Imagine growing up in a first generation household where being gay was out of the question. Of being a member of a religion that preached against homosexuality. Add to this the amount of anti-Western propaganda he saw, and it creates a volatile situation at best. The immense self hate he must have felt is overwhelming just to think about. That internalized hate then gets redirected at the culture at large. How many religious people have talked about the “Gay agenda”? He then blames external forces on being born gay.
He may have been trying to prove to everyone, ISIS, his family, his god that he really wasn’t a gay man, because what gay man would should up a gay club?
And yes, I won’t be surprised if his current wife isn’t eventually charged, because damn.
-This.
-Throw in the steroid use.
-Throw in the disappointment/anger from not being able to be a police officer (he had a 2-year criminal justice degree and was “obsessed” with law enforcement).
-But it all starts and ends with the dad. The dad would never have accepted him as gay or bi. Nature had other plans. That started the time bomb ticking and it was just as matter of time as to when and how it would blow.
Didn’t he call 911 in the middle of the shootings, not before? And weren’t there 3 calls? It doesn’t seem like someone who planned to proclaim his allegiance to Daesh. Seems more like someone who had a light bulb moment in the middle of the shootings and tried to tie himself to terror rather than the LGBTQ+ community.
If she knew of his intentions and did not alert any authority, she is not a victim. She is an accomplice.
He was investigated by the FBI three times. Co-workers reported him making jihadist rantings and saying he wanted to die in a police shootout. But after interviewing him, the FBI determined these were just idle comments or something. Now if the FBI interviewed a potential terrorist on suspicion of planning to be a terrorist, would an actual terrorist admit it? Why didn’t the FBI believe the co-workers who had nothing to protect but believe Mateen who had everything to protect? I don’t get it.
So he was tied to terror long before the night of the attack #467.
The thing is that he is in America which while isn’t 100% accepting of gays is a whole lot more welcoming than many Middle Eastern countries, especially in the last 10 years or so. He was a grown man who could have moved beyond his father’s influence if he wanted to.
The fact is that no one is going to agree with everything everyone else does or is. Most people are not satisfied with tolerance - they want that and acceptance. That goes for LGBTQ, Christians, athiests, white supremacists, gun control advocates, gun use advocates, Latinos, African Americans, immigrants, Muslims, BLM protesters, Democrats, Republicans, vaxxers, anti-vaxxers, environmentalists, oil drillers, etc… the list is endless. Expecting 100% of society to conform to one social pattern is asking a lot.
Trying to keep people from killing each over their differences is the key here. The right to free speech and freedom of assembly helped the LGBTQ community get the rights they have now.
We cannot psychoanalyze this man. We only have the facts. Sure, we can make 1000 different assumptions/theories based on our own perceptions of what he might have been thinking but those are just guesses.
He made the phone calls. He made the statements. You cant discount that because you only want his actions to be about his conflicts with his sexuality.
The human mind is just much too complicated for us to just make these assumptions.
And after it’s all over, they can determine who shot whom. Imagine being one of the Armed Joe/Janes who accidentally killed someone other than the terrorist? I’m sure there is going to be enough PTSD to go around as it is. More guns is not the answer.
Tatin, the reason they didn’t hold him was because they couldn’t. He wasn’t at that time “operational” and he hadn’t committed a crime. Being interested in ISIS is not a crime. Jihadist rants are not a crime. Most people who like this kind of stuff never actually murder anyone, but it is very very difficult to know which nutcase actually will become operational.
Someone from the FBI described it this way: "Our job is not only to find the needle in a nationwide haystack. We also have to find the ones who look like hay now but will become the needle later.
Clearly there are many threads in Mateen emotional/psychological tapestry and in the heinous act he committed.
Actually, in the forensic arena, psychological autopsies are not all that uncommon.
The reality is what this guys motives were is not necessarily useful, in the sense that this is an act of terrorism no matter what the cause, whether he was ‘truly’ ISIS, whether he was a gay man conflicted about his orientation and tried to resolve his conflict by killing people at a gay club (which I might add is amazingly in line with what ISIS, or any number of Muslim countries say you should do to gay people ie kill them), the reality is he was sending a message with this, it wasn’t a random shooting. The fact that he was casing Disneyworld also makes the Islamic terrorism likely, While disney is known to be LGBT friendly, if he was casing it it likely was because Disneyworld is a world known tourist destination and there isn’t anything more associated with the US then the Mouse…which means he was out to commit a mass event, and if he had eyes on Disneyworld it means his motiviation was not just being gay.
Going back to a topic several pages ago, a survivor confirmed that some of the victims were not out to their families. I’m on mobile so I don’t have a link but it was in an interview I saw last night.
For those who have been watching the coverage, has anyone noticed how physically and mentally exhausted Don Lemon of CNN has been? It’s not a surprise considering he’s been pretty open about the difficulties of being an openly gag man of color but it’s still a stark visual reminder of what many people are feeling right now.
“Didn’t he call 911 in the middle of the shootings, not before? And weren’t there 3 calls? It doesn’t seem like someone who planned to proclaim his allegiance to Daesh. Seems more like someone who had a light bulb moment in the middle of the shootings and tried to tie himself to terror rather than LBGTQ+community.”
I think there were 3 calls in all. I thought one was before ( or maybe it was after the first wave of killings and then two more during the ensuing hostage taking part) but I don’t think it matters - not one other ISIS terrorist called the police/authorities to pledge their allegiance.
“The reality is what this guys motives were is not necessarily useful, in the sense that this is an act of terrorism no matter what the cause, whether he was ‘truly’ ISIS, whether he was a gay man conflicted about his orientation and tried to resolve his conflict by killing people at a gay club (which I might add is amazingly in line with what ISIS, or any number of Muslim countries say you should do to gay people ie kill them), the reality is he was sending a message with this, it wasn’t a random shooting.”
I think it matters a great deal since people are making statements about the Muslim communities here and abroad and want to policies enacted based on purported radical Islamic terrorism in our country.
I never said they should have ‘held’ him (meaning put him in custody), but they should have kept him on the watch list.
I do hope we, the public, eventually receive a more thorough explanation of why the FBI didn’t do this.
Love that, “purported” radical Islam. How many attacks will it take?