I know everyone's glued to the news right now trying to figure out what piece of information they can get out of the "Batman" movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado to keep themselves safe in the future. However, the fact is there isn't any.
You could say, "Well, since children were killed and injured, perhaps the parents shouldn't have brought children to a movie theater at midnight in the summer (much less a 6-year-old) to see a PG-13 movie." But that's not fair. They're not in the slightest way responsible for what happened. They should have the right to take their kids to a movie if they want to (even if it has a PG-13 rating). You could argue, "It sounds like the shooter put some tape on the lock to the emergency exit to get into the theater and somebody should have noticed it and prevented this from happening." But seriously, who looks for tape on door locks? The first thing you'd think is that some kids had wanted to sneak into the movie, and if they were already inside and saw the movie, why would they try to sneak in again?
"What about checking people before they went into the theater?" But tear gas, guns...who imagines that? Interestingly enough, a lot of people thought this was a fun thing the theater did for the "Batman" movie.
And of course somebody already said to me, "Oh my god, how crazy is he?" To people like that, I can only shake my head. Crazy is talking to lampposts. Crazy is seeing elephants that are pink. Crazy has to do with hallucinations, delusions, and the like. This guy is not crazy. He's just evil. He planned out everything beautifully. He was totally prepared with guns, a bulletproof vest, and canisters of tear gas. I mean he even picked The Dark Knight Rises at midnight. This was drama.
I'm sure he's going to get some defense attorney who's going to argue that he was molested by his mother's cousin's uncle's grandpa, and when he got to this age, he just felt compelled to kill people. I mean just ridiculous crap.
But in my opinion: he enjoyed every moment.
When you think back to things like the Bataan Death March, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the concentration camps in Germany, Russia massacring millions of people, and the wholesale murdering of innocent people in Syria, Egypt, and Africa, all of these tragedies were orchestrated by evil people - people who enjoyed it. If you're a German soldier throwing a baby up in the air and using it for target practice, or lining up children and mowing them down, that's not insane, that's just plain evil. A lot of you want to think these people are crazy because then you can fix them with a pill or therapy. But people like Charles Manson and all his little buddies, they weren't crazy. They weren't disconnected from reality at all. Instead, they wanted to change reality into something for them to feel more powerful, special, and connected. That's not crazy.
A lot of you don't want to accept that there is evil. One of the reasons the world has gotten so dangerous is that the level of sociopathy has increased dramatically. Today, we're surrounded by heroism for bad guys. I mean when I grew up, everything I saw on TV or in the movies was the good guy wearing a white hat, the bad buy wearing a black hat, and the bad guy always got it in the end. I didn't grow up seeing all these gangster rap videos with females gyrating all over the place and guys calling for people's deaths, hating women, and hurting people. I just didn't grow up seeing that as entertainment. When I grew up there was right and wrong, right won, and you took care of wrong - you didn't just stand by.
So, when I look at this horrible tragedy, the lesson learned is not about parents taking their kids to a PG-13 movie late at night or tape on a lock. The main thing to learn from this is that we need to keep our eyes open, and get involved if we think someone is a problem. Bring them to the attention of the police or FBI. I ask people all the time on my program, "This has been going on how long? Children have been at risk how long? Who has called Child Protective Services? Who has called the police?, etc." And do you know what answer I normally get?: "I haven't told anybody. I didn't want to get anybody mad." Stop worrying about upsetting people. Bad people need to be "cut off at the pass."
For all you folks who choose to stand by and don't do anything because you don't want to upset your family, know that you're also perpetrators. No, in fact, you're worse. You're cowards.
