The general public is trying to explain the mass shooting in Las Vegas. The authorities do not declare the terrible tragedy a terrorist act, the motives of the crime remain unknown, whereas the Americans themselves assume the unimaginable in their attempt to explain why a 64-year-old pensioner shot so many people for nothing.
According to Vox, more Americans were killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by Islamist terrorists between 2001 and 2015, a study conducted by New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington said. "White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners," an article in the publication said.
What is happening in the minds of the American people? What can make a person commit such a terrible crime? Pravda.Ru tried to find this out in a brief interview with director of the US Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation, Doctor of Historical Sciences Yuri Rogulev.
"The USA is a big country with a population of 350 million. Naturally, there are all kinds of people living in America, including those, who may not think the right way at times. Today, the media and social networks give us an opportunity to read all this nonsense. Of course, an opportunity to become famous is not something that everyone wants.
"What happened in Las Vegas is a special case that fits into the picture of violence in the US society, which eats this society from within. The second most important aspect here is the gun law. White American males have nothing to do about it. In the USA, guns are available to all. Stephen Paddock was a psycho, and it has been revealed that his father was a major criminal as well. Does a normal person keep an arsenal of 40 guns, thousands of cartridges and explosives? He was a psycho.
"The politicisation of everything in today's America has become a trend in the US society lately. The society is splitting over racial and social inequality and so on, when everything gets piled up into a highly explosive blend. The white population also suffers from social inequality in the USA, but it would be paranoid to see the influence of politics in such things. Faith is a good thing, if a person believes in something sacred. However, when political views turn into something like faith, they may become absolute truth for some people. Karl Marx, for example, considered ideology to be distorted consciousness. He believed that ideology was harmful, just like statehood. It is distorted consciousness, ideological bias and transformation of ideology into a kind of faith, instead of rational political thinking that leads to such sad results."
Pravda.Ru
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Also read: Americans, never give up your guns