GAVIN LONG: ‘Cosmo Ausar Setepenra’ and the Dangerous Kind of Crazy

Posted on | July 18, 2016 | 46 Comments

My conclusion that Baton Rouge gunman Gavin Long was “both racist and insane” drew some criticism from commenters who said that such a judgment “plays into the Left’s hands and provides it with deniability.”

So what? What we hate about the Left is how they politicize everything. We should not imitate them by politicizing everything in reverse.

Besides which, I am a well-known expert in craziness. I’ve been studying kooks for years, and when I say somebody’s crazy? Trust me.

Gavin Eugene Long was deranged, daft, demented, cracked, zany, wacko, bonkers, off his rocker and a few fries short of a Happy Meal:

The suspect in the fatal shooting of three Baton Rouge cops maintained a robust social media presence and a website called Convos With Cosmo in which he describes himself as a “freedom strategist, mental game coach, nutritionist, author and spiritual advisor.” . . .
Long officially filed paperwork in Jackson County, Missouri, last year declaring himself Cosmo Ausar Setepenra, a “sovereign citizen” of the United Washitaw De Dugdahmoundyah Mu’ur nation, a loosely affiliated network of mostly African Americans who claim to be Native American and don’t believe the U.S. government has jurisdiction over them.

(Via Memeorandum.) More from the Kansas City Star:

Online the shooter called himself Cosmo Setepenra, and more than a week before he killed three police officers Sunday in Baton Rouge, La., he told a YouTube audience he didn’t want to be associated with organized groups in case anything happened to him.
“I’m affiliated with the spirit of justice: nothing else, nothing more, nothing less,” he said in the clip.
Cosmo Setepenra’s real name was Gavin Eugene Long, and he was from Kansas City. . . .
He was a military veteran without a criminal record. He had a robust online presence, where in “Convos with Cosmo” he doled out everything from health tips to advice to help men reach “complete and full masculinity.”
He took up anti-government views, and while he said he didn’t want to be affiliated with any organized groups, he was a member of a bizarre offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement and had been associated with the Nation of Islam. He saw police as part of the government and was outraged by the recent spate of police shootings of black men.
Followers of the sovereign citizen movement believe the government is corrupt and has no jurisdiction over them. Federal authorities consider the movement a domestic terrorist threat, and the movement continues to swell, with violent incidents erupting regularly.

Gavin Long’s bizarre Afrocentric cult mentality is neither new nor uncommon. Here is a 2004 Associated Press story about one such cult:

EATONTON, Ga. — Pyramids, obelisks and a lonely sphinx stand deserted on the Egyptian-themed compound where as many as 500 members of a quasi-religious sect lived only five years ago.
The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors has gone quiet since its leader, Malachi York, was sentenced to 135 years in federal prison in April for molesting 14 boys and girls whose parents were members of his group.
The federal government has seized the Nuwaubians’ 476-acre farm in this middle Georgia town and the group’s members have dispersed.
“York was it. Everything flowed from York. There was never any mistake about that,” said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who has clashed with the Nuwaubians since York moved his followers from New York City’s Brooklyn borough to this rural county in 1993.
“He was the absolute ruler. There was no one else,” Sill said.
At their height, the Nuwaubians brought 5,000 people to Eatonton for Savior’s Day to celebrate York’s birthday.
In 1999, as many as 500 people lived on the compound, practicing York’s malleable religion that shifted from Islamic roots to Judaism, Christianity and Egyptian mysticism, with members at times dressing as cowboys and American Indians. At one time, York even incorporated space aliens into his teachings, claiming that he was an extraterrestrial from the planet “Rizq.”

This kind of kook cult conspiracy stuff is always floating around out there. You’ve got white people who are into weird pagan sex cults, feminists who are into astrology, tarot, “goddess spirituality,” et cetera.

Was it entirely coincidental that a crazy kook cultist like Gavin Long was inspired to drive to Louisiana and shoot cops? No, because the “Black Lives Matter” movement appeals to the same kind of Afrocentric racial insanity that led Gavin long to rename himself “Cosmo Setepenra.”

This is the problem with media coverage that deliberately feeds into racial paranoia in the black community, as I explained last week:

CNN has a long history of going into round-the-clock coverage mode for stories like the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida and the subsequent trial of George Zimmerman, which fit into a certain social-justice narrative of racial victimhood. CNN devoted many hours of coverage to the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, that gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. When the Ferguson protests turned into riots, however, nobody at CNN seemed to wonder what part their coverage had played in inciting the racial resentments behind the chaos of looting and arson. Going back as far as the 1991 Rodney King arrest and the deadly 1992 Los Angeles riots that ensued, CNN’s coverage of race and crime has been problematic, and the network’s apparent willingness to act as a publicity agency for Black Lives Matter is part of a troubling pattern.

CNN and other media act like a warped mirror, reflecting back to the audience a distorted view of the world, a sort of alternative reality, and some people are unable to cope with the cognitive dissonance this creates. TV shows us a world full of rich people, important people and famous people, whereas the vast majority of viewers are poor, insignificant and obscure, at least in comparison to the people they see on TV. There is a seemingly unbridgeable gap between TV life and real life. A dangerous kind of craziness takes hold when an obscure loser becomes obsessed by the idea that they can Be Somebody — that is to say, they can become one of the Important People on TV — by committing a spectacular act of violence. Whether it’s Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris perpetrating the Columbine Massacre or Gavin Long shooting cops in Baton Rouge, the deranged mental process involved is essentially the same.

Are there political lessons to be learned from this? Yes.

Can “Black Lives Matter” be blamed for the murders in Baton Rouge? Yes.

However, the really important lesson here is about the intersection between mental illness, politics, and life in a world where the shows on TV seem more “real” to some people than their own actual lives. And guess what? A lot of the “news” on TV is staged with the audience in mind. What is a modern political convention except a big TV show? And what’s the point of “Black Lives Matters” protests? To get on TV.

Turn off your TV! Your TV is making you crazy!

Trust me on this, brothers and sisters, because I’m a “freedom strategist, mental game coach, nutritionist, author and spiritual advisor.”

Crazy? It’s 2016 — the whole world has gone crazy.

It’s OK to be crazy. Just don’t be the dangerous kind of crazy.

Category: Crime, Racism, Terrorism

Comments

46 Responses to “GAVIN LONG: ‘Cosmo Ausar Setepenra’ and the Dangerous Kind of Crazy”

Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:03 am

He converted to Islam a few years ago…coincidence?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-co3j8yXP6ao/V4uvAaF1tnI/AAAAAAAA7xg/pWBv6yh4hXgeglHSIdfHR-Cz-SvT7yW3QCLcB/s1600/601.jpg

Mlle Bardot is in trouble for decrying the Islamization of Europe
Finrod Felagund
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:08 am

This is among the reasons why I don’t watch TV news.
Art Deco
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:18 am

There is a distinction between ‘crazy’ used metaphorically (this man was) and ‘mental illness’. Nothing’s emerged yet to indicate he was addled by schizophrenia (see Jared Loughner) or some other sort of dementia.
robertstacymccain
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:23 am

Schizophrenia is a diagnosis whereas “crazy” … Well, crazy is as crazy does, and when a guy from Kansas City named Gavin Long calls himself “Cosmo Setepenra” and kills cops, that’s crazy.
Jeanette Victoria ?????????
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:26 am

Then this man is in good company as there is a whole cottage industry these days though the media and governmental education to mass produce this kind of crazy
marcus tullius cicero
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:27 am

…Black, muslim and insane, a deadly combination! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8bcf5878d821547ae0feb4ad1c40dad9c2ac3092c66623d919996fe1058b8ff0.jpg
Jeanette Victoria ?????????
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:27 am

Five years ago hubby and I dumped commercial TV altogether. We only have Netflix and Amazon. I was looking on the net at new shows, gosh in five years things have become even more depraved.
Jeanette Victoria ?????????
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:42 am

The insanity is everywhere

100 Naked Women Just Greeted Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention

http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a37853/100-naked-women-republican-national-convention
RS
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:54 am

Reposting a reply I left this morning to your comment in the previous thread:

The problem is, using terms like “crazy” ignores the real issue which is the evil potential that exists in every human heart. That evil can be nurtured and the Left is adroit at doing so quite openly in order to further its nefarious ends. Further “crazy,” “insane,” and other such terms used in a non-clinical context makes them meaningless. I think people who like pineapple on pizza are “nuts,” but pineapple on pizza is not evil. Indoctrinating people in lies like we see from the Left regarding hierarchies of “oppression,” the stoking of imaginary grievances, and calls for violence is where the problem lies, not the fact that any single individual acts on it.

I would only add that historically, the epithet “crazy” has been used to lock up people for merely disagreeing with the standard orthodoxy. See, e.g. Soviet mental hospitals which were used to “treat” people whose pathology was dissenting from Marxism/Leninsim/Stalinism.

Further, given the modern penchant for absolving people of personal responsibility for their conduct by using the latest and every increasing DSM–see, e.g. drunk kid pleading “affluenza” to avoid consequences of killing people while drunk–I think we do Truth a disservice by casually using mental health terms of whatever nature to describe conduct which is simply evil.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 18th, 2016 @ 8:57 am

Does crazy = evil. Because what he did was evil.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 18th, 2016 @ 9:03 am

Barack Obama says if we admit our faults we will be a lot safer…

Ok, Let’s start with Barack Obama.
Finrod Felagund
July 18th, 2016 @ 9:41 am

There can be some decent stuff found on the non-network channels. Until Agents of SHIELD came out, the last show I’d watched on ABC NBC CBS that wasn’t sports was Twin Peaks. Stuff like Cake Masters (the spinoff of Ace of Cakes), Tanked, and Treehouse Masters are fun to watch because they’re people building cool things.
Steve Skubinna
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:08 am

Crazy, racist, and a leftist.

These things are not mutually exclusive.
Art Deco
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:29 am

That’s won’t (and should not) get you slapped with a civil commitment order. His problem was not that he was peculiar, but that he was violent and peculiar.
Art Deco
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:36 am

What’s interesting is that the DSM gets fatter (and more intellectually dubious) with every edition, but the practical effect in the larger society is limited to the school system (where people buy into ‘diagnoses’ like ‘conduct disorder’). A figure like Rollo May, peddling vague and ever-receding notions of ‘mental health’ would not have near the kind of traction that he did among a certain sort 50 years ago. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who specialized in looking after schizophrenics and wrote books and articles advancing the view that talk therapy addressed small problems when it wasn’t just tripe, said half-a-generation ago that he was surprised to have lived into a time when his ideas were mainstream. I don’t think psychiatrists do much talk therapy anymore. They write prescriptions and take inventories. Psychologists and lay professionals trade in the talking cure.
Quartermaster
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:41 am

I wouldn’t call Zer0 a “fault.” he’s more like an epic failure.
Jeanette Victoria ?????????
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:59 am

?’historically, the epithet “crazy” has been used to lock up people for merely disagreeing with the standard orthodoxy. See, e.g. Soviet mental hospitals which were used to “treat” people whose pathology was dissenting from Marxism/Leninism/Stalinism. ?

And that is what today’s liberal/leftist/progressives are doing labeling anyone who stands firm with traditional morals that have been around for thousand of years as a form of mental illness. These days if you state that people are NOT born gay or men can not become women (or visa versa), that children do better in being raised by a man and woman married to each other. That homosexual marriage is not a real marriage. One is labeled both hateful and mentally ill. Just simply state the truth that #Black Live Matter” is a racist hate group and get labeled a White Supremacist. Declare one’s believe in the true Savior Jesus Christ and get derided as delusional intolerant creep who prays to a non-existent “Sky Daddy.”
Kirby McCain
July 18th, 2016 @ 11:05 am

Since, oh I don’t know, 2008 or so certain kinds of crazy have been mainstreamed and even acceptable in some circles. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/78f31214126e5c5d408cd40425594a9ed757c32ae3790d6db723d280ced1ba37.jpg
CrustyB
July 18th, 2016 @ 11:19 am

Instead of chopping nickels over whether he was insane or crazy or evil or racist, etc., can we agree that he was a another in a long line of violent, cowardly, temper-tantrum throwing leftists?
Lorax100
July 18th, 2016 @ 12:52 pm

What exact ‘disease’ did he suffer from?
The Osprey
July 18th, 2016 @ 1:43 pm

wewuzkangsitis
Steve Skubinna
July 18th, 2016 @ 1:49 pm

Leftism.
Not the elite [Rom 14] | Dark Brightness
July 18th, 2016 @ 2:37 pm

[…] Gavin Long’s bizarre Afrocentric cult mentality is neither new nor uncommon. … This kind of kook cult conspiracy stuff is always floating around out there. You’ve got white people who are into weird pagan sex cults, feminists who are into astrology, tarot, “goddess spirituality,” et cetera. […]
Quartermaster
July 18th, 2016 @ 3:10 pm

Who was it that said “embrace the healing power of ‘and’?”
Kirby McCain
July 18th, 2016 @ 3:33 pm

And now a word from race baiting central. http://abcnews.go.com/US/republican-conventions-speaker-lineup-largely-white/story?id=40673821
Evi L. Bloggerlady
July 18th, 2016 @ 3:49 pm

If you think of Obama’s “fault” like the San Andreas…

We are heading for the “big one.”
SarahW
July 18th, 2016 @ 4:41 pm

He believed the federal government was beaming rays at him to scan his thoughts. He was paranoid and had grandiose delusions.

He probably had paranoid schizophrenia, and based on anecdotes provided by Cosmo, it was probably manifest before he separated from the service – they seem to have washed their hands of him instead of forcing him into treatment.
SarahW
July 18th, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

Bad causes attract both bad people and bad apples – crazies. The crazies aren’t mostly harmless – paranoids are usually highly functional and can do a lot of damage.
SarahW
July 18th, 2016 @ 4:43 pm

Yes, much has emerged to paint a picture of frank mental illness. Most notable was his firm belief that the government was scanning him with thought rays.
PavlikMorozov
July 18th, 2016 @ 5:12 pm

What about WHUT TV? Many years ago, I’d already learned about the magic of melanin from watching it: it’s an “advanced evolutionary trait” with superconductive properties ‘n stuff. I learned how many things are named for the great African Muslim al Jabbar: algebra, Gibraltar, probably jibberjabber and gibberish as well. And I learned the secret behind flags and flagpoles too.
Animal
July 18th, 2016 @ 5:39 pm

“We all have our faults. Mine’s in California.” – Lex Luthor
Adobe_Walls
July 18th, 2016 @ 5:55 pm

None of this makes him insane in the clinical sense of the term. I still contend he’s merely a sucker. Believing that the government is scanning his brain isn’t crazy. If they could they would.
Mike G.
July 18th, 2016 @ 6:20 pm

Back in my day, and probably some of y’all’s too, the school system had a cure for “conduct disorder.” It was a paddle or belt wielded by the Principal of the school.
RKae
July 18th, 2016 @ 6:46 pm

If you see the words “sovereign citizen,” just translate that to “lunatic.”

Sovereign citizens believe that you have the right to masturbate on your front lawn, and if I don’t like it, then I have the right to shoot you in the face, and your family then has the right to burn my house down.

There’s another word for this “system.” I think you know what it is.
RKae
July 18th, 2016 @ 6:50 pm

Whenever conspiracy theorists make some claim such as scanning brains, your average American says, “What a nut!” I say 2 things: 1.) That technology is about 10 years out; 2.) Do you think they’re going to announce it when they have it?
Steve Skubinna
July 18th, 2016 @ 9:57 pm

He’s not a bug, he’s a feature.

I mean, if you’re a proggie.
Steve Skubinna
July 18th, 2016 @ 9:59 pm

Actually, a lot of place names in Span have Arab origins. For example, any river with “Guada-” in the mane (Guadalupe, Guadalquivir) comes from “wadi.”
Steve Skubinna
July 18th, 2016 @ 10:00 pm

Yeah, I like “progressive.”
Joe Joe
July 19th, 2016 @ 1:45 am

I do think he is nuts, but he may also be a patsy.
Joe Joe
July 19th, 2016 @ 1:47 am

Or he might have had a chip in his head.
marcus tullius cicero
July 19th, 2016 @ 9:39 am

…NOT crazy like a fox!
Quartermaster
July 19th, 2016 @ 11:25 am

Stock up on foil before it becomes a controlled item too!
Quartermaster
July 19th, 2016 @ 11:26 am

I will not click! I will not click! I will not….
Quartermaster
July 19th, 2016 @ 11:27 am

If that held, then RSM is evil. We know that’s true, but only if the observer is a leftard. Otherwise, he’s quite OK.
PavlikMorozov
July 20th, 2016 @ 5:23 pm

There was more to it than that, the kabbalistic sort of etymology that serves as the foundation for their ideas. It’s been too long to remember everything, but that’s my point: all those crazy ideas of Long’s weren’t his own.
FMJRA 2.0: On The Floors Of Tokyo : The Other McCain
July 23rd, 2016 @ 7:47 pm

[…] GAVIN LONG: ‘Cosmo Ausar Setepenra’ and the Dangerous Kind of Crazy Dark Brightness Batshit Crazy News […]