Orlando Shooting Not a Politically Motivated Attack

Let's split a few hairs when regarding Omar Mateen's rampage through the Orlando nightclub, Pulse.

Everyone from President Obama. to James Comey have called it a terrorist act inspired by the online writings and videos of ISIS. To me, it has nothing to do with a political act and more to do with homophobia, a more powerful emotional act. ISIS was on the periphery, not central to the shooting. By that I mean that the popularity of ISIS among angry young men of middle eastern descent merely set the tone, gave suggestion for an outlet, but was not the root cause of the shootings.

Omar's ex-wife supposedly gave an interview to a Boulder, CO journalist, saying that he was more bi-polar than religious, and prone to acts of violence. The reason she left him was because he beat her up a lot in the four months they were together, and her family literally had to tear her out of his arms to get her away... And yet, this guy had a job carrying a gun and guarding areas important to our national security. NBC news has given a report saying that his wife accompanied him to a gun store when he bought a handgun and ammo, and also drove him to the Pulse nightclub a time or two, so her role in all of this is kinda murky...

Omar himself was a conflicted guy. After his divorce, he doesn't seem to have had anymore girlfriends, and became obsessed with the gay lifestyle. Several patrons of the club said that he approached them, but gave off hostile vibes, and he had been kicked out of the club for being too drunk and aggressive. So, here's a boy, a failure to his own culture in being divorced, a failure in the gay culture that he was interested in and loathed himself for it, dismissed by the FBI as not really being much of a threat...

Right-wing Christians and right-wing Muslims both sound terribly alike in their foaming at the mouth denunciations of homosexuality, while neither the Bible nor the Koran mentions them. The Angry Arab writes in his blog that it was the Victorian Europeans, who conquered the middle east, and imposed their version of "moral authority," being responsible originally for promoting homophobia.  Those who cannot progress beyond the ignorance of our past are doomed to repeat it, and we see it manifest from this shooting in Orlando, to tribal villagers throwing acid at a girl's face. By calling this an act of Islamic extremism just throws fuel to the flames and does nothing to help understand the twisted insides of the guy who did it. He probably was gay himself, but so repressed it internally, that watching two people kiss on the street triggered off his own feelings of loneliness and loss into rage...