If one is poor, it is because one is worthless. If one experiences failure, it is only one's just desert. The refusal to offer aid and comfort to those who are in difficulty is official policy. Compassion and mercy are derided as signs of weakness. The ground has opened up under the feet of so many and all they can see beneath them is the abyss.
Life takes on a hellish, unbearable quality.
Society promises, but withholds pleasures Access to money and all that it supposedly brings with it are dangled in front of the population, but made available only to a few. It is noteworthy that the shootings took place the day after the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, an extraordinary display of wealth, glamour and packaged sexuality. But such frustration and rage turn murderous only under quite definite social conditions. To blame film and television violence, for example, directly for the mass murders is superficial in the extreme and opens the door to state censorship and attacks on democratic rights. However, the filmed violence and brutality is a manipulated and amplified expression of tendencies existing within the society itself.