![\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AMandalayBay2010.JPG;](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/10\/800px-MandalayBay2010.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m back to posting, after a week of multiple things due at work, and trying keep up with the news out of Las Vegas, and you have likely, as I have, read multiple theories on the killer\u2019s motivation by now, even though officially there is no known motivation.\u00a0 Officially, from all reports, Paddock has gone to great lengths to ensure that there is no explanation \u2014 nothing in e-mail, nothing in the home, nothing in his girlfriend\u2019s account \u2014 that provides any information.<\/p>\n
But this is what I\u2019m seeing:<\/p>\n
ISIS claims he converted 6 months ago.\u00a0 Reports are that ISIS very rarely claims credit for attacks it wasn\u2019t genuinely connected with.<\/p>\n
Is this possible?<\/p>\n
Well, sure, anything\u2019s possible<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0This has been paired up with the fact that\u00a0his girlfriend is from the Philippines, which has a significant Muslim minority, a portion of which are militants and ISIS-connected, but their relationship dates from 2013, and there\u2019s nothing that suggests that she\u2019s Muslim, and Marilou, Liza, and Amelia (the names of her sisters, according to the Washington Post<\/a>) are hardly Muslim names.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s just the fact that my parish has a sizeable Filipino community that causes me to believe that, however many Muslims there may be in The Philippines, there are considerably fewer among immigrants to the West.<\/p>\n So \u201cISIS convert\u201d isn\u2019t really an explanation, because you\u2019d have to go back further and explain, \u201cwhy would Paddock convert?\u201d\u00a0 So, yes, sure, you can then say, \u201cISIS provided the logistical support, fellow radical Muslims kept his arsenal out of sight of his girlfriend\u201d etc., but how do you get from here to there?\u00a0 This sort of \u201che was brainwashed\u201d really provides no explanation at all.\u00a0 Even among young men who convert to radical Islam, there\u2019s a path, in which they are groomed, encouraged to believe that the religion they profess gives them superiority and a reason to dominate others.\u00a0 There are reports of changes in behavior, because these people don\u2019t simultaneously convert to Islam\/Islamic extremism and simultaneously decide to embark on a path of terror that requires keeping their activities secret.<\/p>\n If you have watched a sufficient number of Star Trek TNG reruns, I\u2019ll point you to the episode in which Riker brings back from vacation a game that\u2019s played by putting on Google-Glass-like frames, and using your eyes to track the images.\u00a0 It releases a shot of a mood-enhancing drug, but also brainwashes the player into nefariously taking over the Enterprise.\u00a0 When I read the claims that he suddenly converted, it feels like they\u2019re imagining this\u00a0sort of instant brainwashing occurring.<\/p>\n This comes from CNN<\/a>:<\/p>\n Some readers will remember the University of Texas Tower Sniper, Charles Whitman, who killed 16 people in Austin just over half a century ago. At autopsy, Whitman was discovered to have a tumor pressing against a part of his brain called the amygdala, which is involved in fear and aggression. Is it possible that a similar pathology was happening in Paddock\u2019s brain? Although the likelihood of tumors is low in general, the hypothesis cannot be ruled out until autopsy.<\/p>\n It is important to note that a tumor isn\u2019t the only thing that can cause such changes in behavior: strokes or a traumatic brain injury can do the same. And one disorder in particular deserves mention: frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Although the name is long, this simply refers to a deterioration of two lobes of the brain, the frontal and the temporal: two regions that underpin much of the decision-making and emotion that makes us social creatures.<\/p>\n As these brain areas degrade, people develop frontotemporal dementia (FTD) \u2014 and this often comes hand-in-hand with violent, asocial behavior. When I heard Paddock\u2019s age, I immediately began to wonder about this, as the onset of the disease is typically in a person\u2019s late 50s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is a theory offed on Facebook, by John Ringo<\/a>.\u00a0 He describes his wife\u2019s descent into\u00a0madness and her creation of an elaborate plan to serially kill men on the sexual predators list, as a side effect of the anti-depressant Cymbalta \u2014 a plan which she did not follow through on but which, Ringo says, demonstrates to him that drugs can have these side effects for a small number of people, and that people who become homicidal don\u2019t just \u201csnap\u201d and go on a spontaneous rampage, but can make these plans secretively, while appearing perfectly normal.<\/p>\n This seems rather unlikely, but Zerohedge.com<\/a>, with a link from Drudge, suggests this, after a set of \u201cunanswered questions\u201d which suggest that Paddock didn\u2019t do this alone, and with a subsequent link to a site called \u201cThe Economic Collapse<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The primary rationale for this claim is that Paddock chose a country music concert, where the audience was white, and disproportionately likely to be Trump supporters and self-identified \u201cpatriots.\u201d\u00a0 This further link itself claims that Antifa literature was found in the hotel room, sourced from Infowars<\/a>, which cites an anonymous source.<\/p>\n This is one of the more conspiratorial theories, especially because Antifa groups are known for being chaotic and disorganized.\u00a0 They are not the Red Army Faction<\/a>, or Bill Ayers\u2019 Weather Underground<\/a>, and there\u2019s no reason to believe that Antifa has metastasized into some such group.<\/p>\n Yes, Dad was indeed a bank robber, but there\u2019s no evidence that points to that having to do with anything.<\/p>\n Paddock had allergies<\/a>, and wasn\u2019t able to maintain his pilot\u2019s license due to high blood pressure, and was reported to scream in bed at night<\/a>. \u00a0He was also at the age when men are most likely to commit suicide (no, it\u2019s not teens or twenty-somethings). \u00a0He may have had gambling debts that were going to catch up to him. \u00a0To be sure, it doesn\u2019t really explain why he killed 59 people, and would have killed more had he apparently not been startled by the security guard. \u00a0But it would at least explain not caring about surviving.<\/p>\n \u201cMental illness\u201d isn\u2019t some sort of catch-all that stands on its own. \u00a0The movie-theater killer was not just generically mentally-ill. \u00a0He had schizophrenia. \u00a0But CNN, in the above article, rules this out:<\/p>\n Paddock was almost certainly not schizophrenic. As far as we can tell he had no history of schizophrenia, and besides that, he was 64 years old. Schizophrenia is a young person\u2019s disorder, usually surfacing during the late teens or early twenties.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nBrain tumor or injury.<\/h3>\n
Drug side effects.<\/h3>\n
Antifa killer.<\/h3>\n
Something something Dad was a bank robber.<\/h3>\n
\u201cGo out with a bang\u201d suicide.<\/h3>\n
Mental illness.<\/h3>\n