> I poked around... Ames explanation doesn't make much sense in terms of the
> example of Columbine. Klebold and Harris weren't engaged in explosive rage.
I don't know much about Columbine. But Ames overall argument is about workplace shootings - Columbine doesn't figure centrally into his thesis and I agree that this case is only tangentially related to the main thesis.
But Klebold and Harris did chose their schoolmates to target. If they were really just evil sociopaths, they could just as easily have chosen a shopping mall. I haven't read much about it so I defer to you on that case.
It is always a bit of a stretch to ascribe violence or crime as a reaction to dominant culture - muchless to revolutionary or subversive ideology. Hobsbawm's work in "Bandits" and "Primitive Rebels" and work like "Albion's Fatal Tree" or "Whigs and Hunters" argue for something like this; more contemporary arguments about media piracy draw on that tradition. It is never a good absolute explanation, but it is usually a provocative counter-argument to the dominant narrative which focuses solely on individual deviance and evil. Ames provides a pretty compelling overall examination of other workplace murders, studying several closely. The comparison with slavery is a little dicey, but it is a thought provoking hyperbole if nothing else.
This section of an interview on Ames book might be the only linkage I could see to the present case:
"Our culture today is completely insane, the disconnect between how our propaganda says our lives are, and how our lives actually are. And let's face it, white middle-class kids are far more deeply invested in the dominant cultural lies, and therefore more easily destroyed by the rupture when those lies become untenable, than minority urban kids are."
* http://www.alternet.org/story/24796/a_brief_history_of_rage,_murder_and_rebellion * My only point in bringing up Ames in this context was that, in this case, the prepper ideology seems to offer an answer to the widespread economy dislocation. Maybe this guy just misunderstood how it was supposed to work e.g.
* http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/12/17/bushmaster_ar_15_national_review_writer_says_it_s_not_that_powerful.html * As for Jordon's claim that these are unicorns, I am inclined to agree that this one is pretty unusual. But I think Ames and others have a pretty compelling argument that there is a trend in terms of workplace murders worth unraveling. I don't know that Ames or anyone else has it right, but their abstracting a variable or two of causation seems a good place to start.
Other than the obvious assault rifle and high capacity clip variable, there are likely others. I'm willing to give Woj's glorification of violence a certain salience, but I'm more inclined to think of that in world historical terms - e.g. US Imperialism - as Doug did on FB this morning.