In the last few weeks, we’ve seen another surge in killing of people – many so-called “mass murder.” Why? What factors cause these actions? It is not the availability of guns (or other weapons) or opportunity. There is something else.

North Dakota in particular was hard hit. The State only has 800,000 people, and the current regime’s actions have hit the State hard: both agriculture and oil & gas – its major sources of income, jobs, and economic improvement. Because of its Scandinavian and AmerInd (Lakota, Dakota, Cree, Ojibwa) heritage, it is a closeknit community. A feud between two brothers resulted in turning a harvest field in northeastern North Dakota into a killing field: a man killed his brother, his nephew, their boss (the farmer) and then himself. Even while the entire township and county pitched in to help the survivors (first with finishing harvest and then just surviving), the entire State is shocked.

The second hit on North Dakota actually was the result of the killing of four members of a North Dakota family in Casa Grande, Arizona. By another family member who did NOT kill himself, but killed his 5-year-old niece along with his parents and sister. Another city in Arizona, Phoenix, faced the danger and spectacle of a madman opening fire almost at random, killing three and wounding five before killing himself.

North Dakota and Arizona are not alone in this, of course. Far more media attention has been given to two ghastly events in Memphis, Tennessee. First the abduction, torture/rape, and murder of a mom and kindergarten teacher out on a run; and then four dead and three wounded by what appears to a random shooting spree with hundreds of shots fired at eight different locations. While the murderer reported his assaults real-time on Facebook.

Why? We here at TPOL suggest we are seeing several factors, and submit them for you to ponder.

First is hopelessness: as the economy continues to slowly crumble, as the Union seems to be on the edge of fragmenting, as more and more inflation makes life harder and harder – seemingly at the behest of government policies and intentional actions, more and more people lose hope.

For some, that results in actions to “go out in a blaze of glory” and take others with them.

Closely related is madness – it is generally a matter of insanity for someone to kill themselves, and to kill others around them. We seem to hear another news story almost weekly about a mother killing her children and then herself – and we are told that is due to psychosis: madness. We can speak of people flipping out, or going postal – but it is happening daily.

Why are people going crazy? At least partially, it is because they are constantly told that the world is insane – that there is no rationality and no truth. That whatever you imagine is (or can be) true: that gender dysphoria (to name one) is not only normal but to be embraced and glorified. And more. They see lies, they see the hopelessness, and the mental dissonance becomes overwhelming. So they respond, they react, in an insane manner. Often that includes killing others. Or themselves. Other times it “just” includes abuse, torture, rape, and other acts of aggression and violence.

A third reason that may explain this is closely tied to both the hopelessness and madness. That is what I call “toleration.” We as a society – and too many individuals – are willing to tolerate both the conditions and the people who cause hope to be lost and drive others to insanity. AND then to accept the hopeless and insane as “normal” and to be tolerated as our neighbors – even praised for their mental and physical conditions.

By tolerating these things, we encourage them and fail to protect others from them. As lovers of liberty, we realize we have no obligation to protect the hopeless and the mad from their own actions, but do we not have at least some sense of decency to protect others from them? No, not by disarming them or locking them up (which seem to be the only government responses). But by helping them individually – both to overcome their lack of hope and help them fix their mental problems? Instead, we are given a falsely “libertarian” solution of “leave them alone.” Or worse, encouraging their delusions and increasing their sense of hopelessness.

Together, these problems prey on society, and all too often on us individually: on innocents, or by-standers, and on almost anyone except those responsible for creating these conditions. All too often, the people who have created these problems are part of government and immune (and protected) from the consequences.

The answer is liberty: true liberty with responsibility and a moral compass that offers and provides help voluntarily and NOT mandated either on the giver or receiver of assistance. A society, a culture, which rejects lies from ANYone who invents and spreads them: goernment officials, politicians, “health-care providers,” educators, and more. People who help those they encounter who need help: whether it is help fixing a flat tire or finding the way to the grocery store – or the groceries themselves, or help fixing their hopeless despair and mental dissonance and psychosis.

Until we do that, the despair and insanity will continue to grow and will result in bad things: not just individuals killing others but the madness of mass murder: democide and genocide.