It sure didn’t take long. Aside from predictably using the July 4 Highland Park shooting as a vehicle through which to push anti-gun laws, the mainstream media have also rushed to portray perpetrator Robert Crimo III as “right wing.” A local Chicago news channel claimed he had ties to a “far-right overseas group,” while the Daily Mail called him a “Trump-supporting youngster” based on pictures he shared on the web. In response, other media have pushed back, stating that Crimo exhibited some leftist passions.
Yet while the latter perspective seems more accurate, are both “sides” missing the deeper point? As to this, question: If you’re a confused young fellow bereft of firm principles living in, let’s say, a land with a Marxist spirit, what perspective will convenience likely compel you to embrace? More on that later.
Crimo, 21, is certainly a troubled young man who exhibited numerous warning signs. He attempted suicide in 2019, and then months later made deadly threats against his family, saying he was going to “kill everyone”; police visited his Highwood, Illinois, home on both occasions, seizing a collection of 16 knives, one dagger, and a sword during the second visit.
Despite this — and even though his family reports that he didn’t interact with them much, had no friends, and spent most of his time on the Internet — his father, Bob Crimo Jr., sponsored his underage son for a gun permit a mere three months after the threats against the family. The boy got one, too. So much for “red flag” laws, one of which was in place in his native Illinois.
As for the dad, such gross permissiveness, if one can call it that, certainly reflects the “liberal” parenting so common today that even many “conservatives” embrace it; it thus isn’t dispositive regarding the elder Crimo’s ideology. Nor is the fact that he mounted a losing 2019 bid for Highland Park mayor, as it doesn’t appear he was backed by any major party. (Given that he owns two local businesses, he might have wanted to avoid appearing partisan.)
As for the younger Crimo, who killed seven and injured 40 July 4, he “fits the profile of a mass shooter,” writes the Independent Sentinel. “Crimo indirectly told people on his chilling rapper videos that he was going to kill people as a ‘life-defining’ moment. He played too many violent video games, wasn’t red-flagged, his parents might have been in denial, and he was reportedly taking drugs (not confirmed).”
The Sentinel points out that Crimo’s motive didn’t appear political. Yet the political sentiments he did express were a mixed bag. As the Sentinel also writes, Crimo
went to a Trump rally dressed as “Where’s Waldo” from the British book series of Children’s puzzles. Many illustrations contain red herrings involving the deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects. Was he going to the rally as a red herring?
He is seen in one photo with a Trump flag wrapped around his shoulders as he laughs sneeringly. Also in that photo is an American flag covered with a black plastic garbage bag.
What’s more, reporter Ian Miles Cheong tells us, his internet “likes” reflected left-wing passions (examples below).
Yet people “who knew Crimo years before in the Highland Park schools or from his singing didn’t see him as political,” the Sentinel further informs. One of them wrote that he “coopted aesthetics from the left and right, but I don’t think he was any of those things, [sic] I think he was lost.”
Bingo.
Aside from often being irretrievably biased, journalists are politically passionate people who, being people, tend to project their mind-sets onto others; they thus may assume that Crimo must have an “ideology.” The reality?
Most people are politically disengaged and somewhat confused (ergo “low-info voters”); moreover, simple profiling informs that a once-suicidal, oft-homicidal young rapper with multiple tattoos and body piercings (defacing the temple of the soul) and a penchant for creating violent videos has a rather anarchic mind. Such a person is also unlikely to have any firm set of principles.
But there’s more to it. Lacking principle or consistent contrary passions, a person will generally kowtow to his age’s spirit out of convenience. Today this means expressing “wokeness” — it’s our time’s default popular-culture social code.
Even more significantly, what’s called “leftism” — again, increasingly embraced by “conservatives” — sets the stage for violence and general social breakdown for a simple reason: It’s not really an ideology, but represents movement toward moral disorder. (“If it feels good, do it,” anyone?)
And some specificity about leftism’s role is in order here. Consider: Crimo’s case is reminiscent of that of 2017 Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s in perhaps one way: seeming mindlessness. Authorities never discovered Paddock’s motive, after all.
But maybe, just perhaps, they were looking in the wrong place. Such crimes inspire us to seek evidence of ideological passions, of a cherished cause, of a martyrdom-worthy motivation, some infernal “ism.” But forgotten is another possible motivation:
“Why not?”
A better question about Crimo than “What reason did he have to do it?” is “What reason did he have not to?”
I often point out that moral relativism has swept our age, with most people, in fact, infected by it. This is significant because dark and diabolical feelings aren’t uncommon among the fallen race called man. But believing the acts they correspond to are truly wrong (transcendentally) provides an incentive (worship of, or at least deference to, the “good”) to not commit them. Believing in addition that there can be eternal consequences for doing so (i.e., Hell) provides a further deterrent. But what happens when a person is raised believing there’s nothing beyond this material world, that we are thus just organic robots and, correspondingly, that right and wrong are mere “social constructs”?
Everything ultimately then boils down to occultist Aleister Crowley’s maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
This reality isn’t discussed much; it’s too philosophical to be fashionable. But it’s a simple and undeniable truth: If we instill in youth, in manifold ways, that morality is a social construct and there is no real “good,” we shouldn’t be surprised when they make evil a lifestyle choice.
Correction: This article originally contained information, drawn from another source, indicating that Robert Crimo stated he was a liberal and a product of MK Ultra. Further investigation revealed this as misinformation originating with a fake Instagram post. The article has been corrected. We apologize for the error.
