Esolen sees what the Chattering Classes will not see in the cases of mass killers. Notice that it's "will not" rather than "don't" or "cannot." Those classes cannot give what they do not have: hope.
...You may have means, opportunity, and even motive to commit a crime, and still you do not commit it. To take that final step, to give yourself over to the evil one, you must despair. Will it be controversial for me to say here that not all the best secular intentions in the world can give you cause for hope? Optimism is the art of the charlatan, or the self-deception of the fool: read Melville’s The Confidence-Man, the villain who plays upon his victims’ avarice by selling not faith but confidence, confidence in human goodness.
Our shooter knows very well that people are not good, and they are not to be trusted. You cannot persuade the young man with the gun that he has reason for secular optimism. He doesn’t. He is not going to be a rich lawyer or doctor or engineer. You cannot persuade him that he should love people, with “love” meaning not what Christ showed on the Cross, but rather a sort of easygoing good feeling. He doesn’t have that feeling, and he doesn’t want it. He spews it out of his mouth.
He needs hope. Where will he get it? From nothing that resembles either his shambles of a home or that even more chaotic four-square rule-ridden prisoner-forming thing called school. We know where he might get it. We know where it is to be had. Let us be more open about offering that hope. It is the only lifeline.
The self-appointed ubermenschen don't have hope, either, which is why they will not understand Esolen's point, nor could they remedy the killer's ailment. They live in the material world, even if they show up at church (see, e.g., Pelosi and Biden.)
There's plenty more in that essay which is worth pondering. Read it at the link.
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