I’ll leave it to others to make some kind of grand distinction between “terrorism” and “hate”. As though one comes at us only from “others” while the latter is homegrown. But following the first flow of information about Omar Mateen and his homicidal spree in Orlando, the description that fits best is that of the son — the spawn — of an intensely conservative, intolerant, controlling father. Father Mateen is strange old man who comes off as a strict paternalist, a man with righteous delusions of importance, maybe grandeur, far, far beyond his achievements in the world. All of which — guessing here — shaped his son the mass murderer into something universally familiar here in the USA, and in rural Yemen, in upscale Saudi Arabia, and everywhere else. Namely, a young man in his physical prime (mis)educated in the belief of his superiority and entitlement.

Always eager to play to a familiar, preexisting narrative, our commercial media and most of our politicians have leapt to emphasize Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS. As though that one statement, (made, we learn this morning, in a phone conversation with cops while hold up in the nightclub’s restroom) is sufficient evidence of a purposeful, dedicated allegiance to grand religious/cultural war. I’m sorry, but I doubt it.

The psychologically misshapened, of which Mateen seems a prime example given his parentage, his abuse of his ex-wife and fear of/anger toward gays, have always been a common feature on the human landscape. The facts of his broader ethnic heritage seem far less significant than the specific forces that raised him.

If you choose to blame the strains of religiously-rooted cultural conservatism that pretty obviously contorted Mateen, you have to apply the same lens to the likes of dozens of other mass murderers, men with Christian surnames, who have brought their perversion of vengeful justice to bear on black churches, Planned Parenthood clinics and federal office buildings over the years.

We may never know, but Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS, seems much more like an afterthought, a desperate final grasp for grandiosity. A reach for an even more provocative, inflammatory ring as he realized death awaited him on the other side of a thin rest room wall.

The saner view and response to this tragedy will be to resist the knee jerk shrieks that, “ISIS is coming to slaughter us all” and therefore we as a nation must gear up for counter-jihad in Middle East and accept that unstable young men like Omar Mateen, molded by demonstrably deluded parents (usually controlling fathers) are a universal problem, (always have been), and that at its core a declaration of support for a rampaging army of similar young men isn’t appreciably different than Tim McVeigh’s allegiance to the white militia movement of Dylan Roof’s to the South’s confederate heritage.

The warped and insane routinely seek legitimacy with a higher cause.