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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNavy Yard shooter, Internet Conspiracies and microwave mind-control
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/aaron-alexis-carved-messages-on-shotgun-used-in-navy-yard-shooting
What is an ELF weapon? Not something used by the Earth Liberation Front, but rather Extremely Low Frequency weapon. As in, that internet conspiracy theory government ELF microwave mind control technology. You know the genre...
http://aaronlovespot1.devhub.com/extremely-low-frequency-microwave-mind-control
(Bonus loony points for the "chem trails" angle)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=273941
And so on... Google microwave mind control and enter a sad world of delusion being offered to the newly psychotic. Looking up your symptoms on the internet might be fine for a sore throat, but for nascent schizophrenia it can steer you into a whole community of government mind-control "victims."
A tragic but kind of typical story shaping up here. My take...
A man begins a downward slide into paranoid schizophrenia. He thinks that ideas or moods are being broadcast into his head, or some sort of rays bombarding his body to deprive him of sleep.
He looks to the internet and discovers that his trouble is a government/military conspiracy to mind-control us with microwaves using ELF weapons.
He actually calls the police at one point to get them to do something about the mysterious people who follow him around shooting microwaves at him. (Demonstration that he was absolutely convinced of his delusions.)
Eventually he cracks up entirely. He is starting a new job at a rather important military office complex. He decides that microwave mind control has made his life unlivable and resolves to take out as many of his tormentors as possible on the way out. He cuts down the barrel and stock of a shotgun, and carves "better off this way" (suggesting he was not planning to survive the incident) and the grimly and defiantly ironic "my ELF weapon" on the gun.
And the rest of the story is as we know it. A very 21st century tragedy.
(The navy does indeed use ELF communications to reach submarines. And I don't doubt that the CIA has experimented with all sorts of mind-fuck machines. But a key trait of paranoia is grandiosity... the idea that you are important enough for the CIA to have put a chip in your head. That teams of microwave people are being paid to disturb your sleep. Etc..)
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)global1
(25,251 posts)I thought I heard one report on one of the cable news shows that in fact he did say this - because when I heard that - what came to my mind immediately was the movie 'Manchurian Candidate'.
Listening to Thom Hartmann today - Alexis was on an anti-depressant drug called Trazodone. It is an SSRI or a 'selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor'. SSRI's have been supposedly linked to dozens of previous mass shootings.
Here's a link that talks more to this: http://www.infowars.com/media-buries-psychiatric-drug-connection-to-navy-shooter/
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)There is no mystery in sight here. This man was suffering from paranoid fricking schizophrenia, or other psychotic disorder that closely mimics paranoid schizophrenia.
The big problem with paranoid schizophrenia is not psychiatric medications, but rather the LACK OF THEM.
global1
(25,251 posts)The anniversary of 9/11 was just 5 days before this shooting. I wonder if some of the news of 9/11/13 (the anniversary) - especially when some stations replayed the actual events as they happened back in 2001 - triggered something in him that caused him to do what he did.
I understand that he purchased a Remington 870 shotgun and a small amount of ammo on 9/14/13 and two days later he went into the Navy Yard and shot 12 people.
Any connections here?
I've never been a fan of news stations playing the 9/11/01 events of the day as they happened. Not that I want to forget what happened that day - but - that footage evokes all kinds of memories and they are not fond memories to be replaying in one's brain. Who know what type of emotions that they trigger.
Response to cthulu2016 (Reply #3)
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cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)Most schizophrenics are not dramatically dangerous, though schizophrenics are likely than average to be dangerous, and commit more than their share of murders.
As to the level of planning and execution of which a psychotic person is capable, it depends, of course. Some persons suffering from paranoid schizophrenia have, and will, do remarkably sophisticated, organized and complex things.
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sufrommich
(22,871 posts)delusions are real. I have a sibling who suffers from schitzo affective disorder who takes meds that have stopped the delusions and voices for years now.Once she was able to look back on it and explain to us,she told us that it is impossible to tell the difference between delusion and reality,as she put it,"it's as real as this conversation we're having".It's literally living in your nightmares.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)People who think the CIA put a chip in their head or that they are victims of microwave mind-control would, 500 years ago, have attributed their perceptions to angels, demons or ghosts.
Whatever there is in the culture that could account for the phenomenon will be adopted, when the simplest explanation, "it isn't real, it's just in your mind" is taken off the table. And as you say, it often is off the table.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)how ones delusions play out.I don't want to get too personal about my sister,but her breakdown came during the 2008 elections and she was "told" that if Obama didn't win the elections,violent aliens would invade,just thinking about how terrified she was makes me sad.She is OK now,but I can't even talk to people who believe anti psychotic drugs are evil,they've literally saved my sister's life.