It's Illinois fault... but not why you think

Mark Ames has shifted the blame for the NIU shooting from the EmoDicklessAsshole off his meds and is blaming Illinois and NIU. It's a new one for me. He states that NUI is a mediocre school for mediocre students, and suggested that the "flat" plains of Middle America could make anyone shoot up a school or a post office. The headline was:

Northern Ill. University: Was the Killer Crazy, or the Campus Hopeless? Bracket this massacre as the work of a lunatic on drugs, and you miss the chance to consider the horrors of life in middle America.

Ames granted that the killer, EmoDicklessAsshole, was a loser -- if we grade on a curve for the depressing Midwest: "Let's assume he's at least partly right: EmoDicklessAsshole probably was a loser, by the standards of Midwestern American winners." Ames trolled the message boards of college students looking for people trashing NIU, which he summarized: "What you find is an enormous amount of anger and regret -- the sort of regret you'd expect from a middle-aged Willy Loman looking back on a wasted life."

After Ames circulated several hate-NIU notes, he concluded that perhaps the college in some way earned the massacre with its mediocrity:

If you're wondering why [EmoDicklessAsshole] transferred out of NIU to the University of Illinois-Champaign last spring, this might help explain it; if you're wondering, as many bloggers have, why he'd come back and shoot up NIU rather than his current university, these sentiments are at least worth considering.

Then Ames concluded by turning his attention to the broader Midwest:

[EmoDicklessAsshole]'s hometown, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, is also revealing of the vast, flat middle of Middle America. Located on the edge of Chicago's hyper-busy O'Hare Airport, Elk Grove Village has a humble population of roughly 40,000 almost all-white middle-class citizens ...

Scratching the surface of his life -- a very familiar, flat sort of American Hell -- makes his need for medications a bit more understandable, as is the case for the millions of Americans like him who take psychiatric medication. Indeed, someone who wouldn't turn to antidepressants would, in my opinion, be the sick one.

If we bracket his massacre as the work of an evil lunatic on drugs, we'll miss yet another opportunity to genuinely examine what life is like for most Americans today, who live in that terrifying gap between the official propaganda about a nation of happy fun-loving Number Ones, and the reality of mediocrity, petty malice, and a flat physical setting that reflects the malice and mediocrity of its town elders.

Unbelievable. It's the shiatty school and track houses and box stores in Elk Grove Village that made EmoDicklessAsshole kill 5 students now. Or maybe it was just because these people went to a crappy college in a dirty "farmer" town?

Just so we're all clear, it's not medication. Even though the Va Tech shooter, the Amish shooter, Andrea Yates, Phil Hartman's wife, and one of the Columbine shooters were all on some type of psycho drug. No. It's the Suburbs that's shooting up these schools.

At least it's not the guns that are killing all these people. Again - to brush off my original point - the blame hot-potato has been caught by: crappy college campus, rural Hell, prescription drugs, gun-free zones, the death of America's cultural soul, low social status, violence in the media and video games, lack of spirituality, gun availability, shiatty jobs, lack of help for the mentally ill, the 'sham' of the American dream, media glorification of these events, school bussing, and because the shooter had a penis.

But never once has Personal Responsibility caught the blame.
(Here's Mark's original post)