This last week has felt like the apocalypse. Are you okay?

The question that we’re all asking is, why would the shooters in California, in Ohio, in Texas, in Mississippi feel moved to kill as many people as possible? We ask these questions because we’re scared, because we are afraid that these incidents are a part of a growing trend of white terrorism.

We ask this question also because terrorism is usually done by frustrated political minorities as a last resort. What happened last week was terrorism done by those who share political views with those who are already in power. This is very strange because the violence is not done with a motive of accomplishing anything that we are not already doing. In fact, it felt like the state justified the killings at El Paso when they sent ICE to the school that was supposed to be where survivors could reunite with family members.

And these attacks are terrorism, despite being done in the spirit of the political mainstream. They’re not mass shootings. Shootings are a private affair. They’re done against a family, against a corporation, a congregation because the shooter has a personal grudge against those they are trying to harm. They were fired, they were ostracized—something happened so that they wanted to hurt other people. The goal of a shooting is done whether or not television studios arrive at the scene.

These attacks, on the other hand, are acts of political theater. They’re done to people that the shooter does not personally know. The audience for these attacks, and there is an audience, is not the people that harm was done to but for you and me. The goal of these attacks is to get the television studio into the streets.

And the thing is, we know why these terrorists did the things they did. We know their positions of white supremacy and misogynist rhetoric because it is built into the culture that the United States of America thrives in. We know that the El Paso supporter paid homage to the president by assembling rifles in his name.

We’re obsessed with the psychology of our killers because we’re obsessed with the psychology of white America. Liberals, who always want to blame the problems of liberalism on personal malice, want to find a explanation for these killings that is rooted in non normative behavior, blaming it on mental illness and the like. Conservatives, who want to blame the problems of liberalism on foreign things, want to blame the killings on outside influences, such as video games and the destruction of the family.

No one wants to admit that these terror obsess us because the psychology of the killer is the culture we all live inside of each and every day.

April 9th and the Exalted Sun

The concept of the white, domestic terrorist was popularized by Eric Harris and what he did to Columbine. While Dylan Klebold was the other shooter, Harris was the one who planned the attack. While Klebold was suicidal and looked at the attack as a way to go out with someone else by his side, Harris wanted to create an act of terror. What Harris did was create a concept that, since Columbine, domestic terrorists would recreate over and over.

Harris was born on April 9th, making his sun at 19º Aries. 19º Aries is the degree of exaltation of the sun. As an exalted sun, Harris represents the pinnacle of the American ego. He represents what an American ego looks like, if allowed to grow unheeded.

Terrorism is an ego trip. It’s not only an ego trip in the manner of making a big and famous statement, because Harris and Klebold did not make a statement. They were both antisocial and anti-political. The way ego manifested itself in Harris was that he deeply wanted the approval of others while seeing himself as so deeply different from the other people in his community that he was untouchable. It wasn’t just the reporters who spun the narrative that these were goth kids, gay and misunderstood. Harris himself preferred to see himself as an outsider, despite his popularity. The students of Columbine described him as not someone who didn’t fit in, but someone who wanted to not fit in and wanted everyone else to know it.

Just to be clear, I’m not planning white terrorism on any astrological aspect. I’m not saying that the exaltation of the sun makes people any particular way. Rather, I want to examine the white terrorist as an ego centric figure because I feel that he represents that deeply American ego which lives inside every one of us.

Harris’ ego did manifest itself in the typical attributes that we associate with egotism. His popularity and status as a school bully wasn’t orchestrated in a conventional way. He was very much part of a counterculture. The reporters, older than the Millennial generation that Harris and Klebold were a part of, could only see the social climate of the school in terms of jocks and freaks. And they pegged Harris as a freak.

What actually happened was that, as a member of an alternative subculture, Harris was not Regina George nor Janis. He was not a celebrated symbol of success and nor was he an ostracized scapegoat. He was someone who derived egotism from the feeling of commodified marginalization, listening to Marilyn Manson and NIN. These commodities are not true marginalization, not in a political way, but in an aesthetic way. Harris wanted the taste of marginalization. He felt that he was smarter, unique, and superior to everyone else. For others to appreciate who he was would be to kill that very fantasy.

This desire to be marginalized in one’s inner heart while enjoying the privileges of outward social mobility and success is found in virtually every American antihero, from Captain America to Batman to Tony Soprano to Don Draper. White supremacist organization and incel communities desire both a celebrated outer image while fetishizing an inner feeling of alienation.

As Americans, none of us ever want to fit in. To be American is to be avant-garde, to be exceptional, and to move against the grain. This type of egotism, to feel joy by not belonging, has been alive in this country from the back to landers of the 1960’s to the digital counterculture of the 1990’s. The American egomaniac never really wants to move with the crowd or to attract the crowd to him. Our egos receive much more satisfaction from not fitting in than from validation. We want to prove our difference against the masses.

White terrorism is a deeply American terrorism because it seeks a position of mainstream marginalization. It seeks the coolness that comes with the aesthetic of being the tough guy that no one understands, of wearing guns, and saying edgy things on the internet. It is a type of marginalization that is only aesthetic. In reality, the political statements of these terrorists are incredibly conventional. They’re not saying anything that our president is not already saying.

I don’t know why people choose to shoot up other people. I do know that, when read parts of Harris’ journal, I found his voice to be familiar. When he talked about school training kids to be robots and not wanting to be a part of all of that, I related because American education always teaches us to glorify thinking outside of the box, to see ourselves as outsiders looking in. We’re not trained to cooperate socially or to enjoy validation but to appreciate our own virtue as individuals, isolated and alienated. We enjoy that alienation because we call it uniqueness.

The problem is not guns. The problem is not that there are voices that the media and politics aren’t representing or hearing and giving these views any more power will not solve the problem. These are mainstream attitudes and they are already represented in the White House, the Supreme Court, and Congress.