If it seems like I'm coming late to this topic, it's because I have been doing some research on the case as well as some reading in subjects that might shed light on Sodini's individual psychology. I've also been ruminating on my own life, trying to relate my own experience to Sodini's in an effort to understand his motivations. Most importantly, I've been thinking about what happened. In other words, doing what virtually everyone commenting on this event seems not to have done. Well, this is America, after all.
I will surely have more to write about this at a later time, as it opens a nice juicy can of worms about social interaction and sexual relations in our doomed society. For now, though, I'll just say that Sodini missed his big opportunity for love when he turned the gun on himself. As a mass murderer on trial, he no doubt would have had dozens, possibly hundreds, of women lined up to marry him. I'm reminded of the Bill Hicks routine about Ted Bundy and his many female admirers ("Just what are you ladies looking for?").
With the comic relief out of the way, I think I will let myself make one comment. That would be about Sodini's lousy timing. It seems to me that if he'd just kept his powder dry for a few more years, and his head above water economically, he could have made it to the promised land. Many of the comments in the blogosphere have been referring to his apparent high net worth (~250 grand), along with the middle-aged man's vastly increased chances with the opposite sex in third-world countries (N.B. a friend of mine recommends Costa Rica). That is, with young women who live far enough beneath the poverty line that they cannot afford to be as finicky as the average American gal. All Sodini needed was a big enough gap between his own net worth and that of his would-be beloved, and he was as good as laid.
Well, it seems to me that we're almost there! Just a few more months of catastrophic job losses along with the inevitable crossover into double-digit inflation, and Sodini would have had a veritable smorgasbord of desperate American pussy willing to go supine in exchange for the next Big Mac. Just as the poor Russian girls had to peddle their asses to survive the Soviet collapse, it will soon be Jennifer and Buffy's turn (in the Peak Oil community, this is referred to as "humping for turnips."). I remember reading that during the Great Depression, there were 30,000 or so wandering nymphs who offered themselves up sexually to survive, and that was way before the overt sexualization of our culture that's been going on since the 1960s. Sodini, you poor sod, if only you'd waited...
I expect we'll be seeing a whole lot more of this sort of thing, as predicted by (among others) the financial site Seeking Alpha, in it's delectable list of doomer predictions titled, “The Worst Case Scenario (Someone Has to Say It)".
“Stand-off dramas, violent score-settlings, and going-out-with-a-bang attacks by laid-off workers and bankrupted investors—already a national plague—will become an everyday occurrence.”
Not quite an everyday occurrence yet, but we're getting there. Like the wingnuts say, America is the Greatest Country on the Face of the Earth, and we can do anything. Including, I imagine, creating the necessary social and economic conditions for rampage shootings to become an everyday occurrence. Hey, who wouldn't want that? C'mon, America! Yes we can!
