An alarming number of young Americans now face an intense spiritual crisis. And an equally alarming number of adults have enabled the diabolical delusions that crisis has produced.
On Thursday, the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland announced the arrest of Andrea Ye, an 18-year-old high school student who identifies as transgender and calls herself “Alex Ye.”
According to Ye’s 129-page manifesto, excerpts from which appeared in a charging document submitted to the district court in Rockville, Maryland, the troubled young woman fantasized about carrying out mass shootings at both her high school and her former elementary school, all the while giving every indication that she had both prepared and resolved to carry out said attacks. For that reason, she was charged with threats of mass violence.
Thursday on the social media platform X, reporter Brad Bell, Maryland Bureau Chief for WJLA-TV, posted one page from that charging document, which included nine different excerpts from Ye’s chilling manifesto.
In short, Ye appeared to exhibit a high level of intelligence, cold-blooded calculation and a psychopathic lack of empathy. She also seemed motivated by both resentment-fueled narcissism and a worldview shaped by extreme nihilism.
“I want to shoot up my school. I’ve been preparing for it for the past few months,” she wrote, referring to Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville.
According to WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Public Schools said in a statement that Ye, while enrolled in a virtual program, “has not physically attended an MCPS school since the fall of 2022.”
Thus, judging by both her recent educational experience and the available excerpts from her manifesto, Ye did not seem to have targeted high school classmates in particular on account of any perceived transgressions against her.
The same could not be said, however, for even younger and more innocent children.
Should the link between transgenderism and mass shootings be investigated?
“I have also considered shooting up my former elementary school because little kids make easier targets,” Ye wrote.
Here, she reflected on her own unhappy elementary-school experience and treated current students as proxies for former classmates.
“The other kids would pretend to be my friends but make fun of me to my face. It would be the perfect revenge,” Ye wrote, showing psychopathic indifference to the lives of children who never hurt her.
Elsewhere, she indicated a desire for fame.
“Truthfully, I would rather become a serial killer than a mass shooter. Serial killers are romanticized a lot more. They get tons of love letters and Netflix documentaries about them. Mass shooters are brushed off unless they are truly unique or good-looking,” she wrote.
Worse yet, while planning mass murder, Ye agonized over her own potential fate.
“I plan on shooting myself once the police get there, so I will never be able to see the news stories. I am pretty scared. What if I fail at killing myself and live the rest of my life disabled and serving a life sentence? Maryland doesn’t even have the death penalty, which would be preferable in my opinion,” she wrote.
Predictably, she justified her dark intentions with an appeal to nihilism.
“Millions of people die each day of cancer, old age, etc. and it’s no big deal. But shoot someone and suddenly everyone is all concerned. The news reports on it, and protests for gun control happen. Nobody can escape death in the end. Why does it matter who delivers the final blow? It would bring me a lot of joy and satisfaction to kill, so it’s kind of worth it, in a way,” she wrote.
Later, she indicated that she hoped to “set the world record for the most amount of kills in a shooting.” In fact, if necessary, she would “decapitate my victims with a knife to turn the injuries into deaths.”
#BREAKING 18yo charged with threats of mass destruction. @mcpnews allege Andrea Ye, who prefers the name Alex and identifies as male, planned shootings at Wooten HS and Lakewood ES and detailed them in a manifesto. An 18 page charging doc includes a number of excerpts: pic.twitter.com/CDYEhI0CXJ
— Brad Bell (@Brad7News) April 18, 2024
Of all the disturbing excerpts from Ye’s manifesto, one remarkable fact leaped from the page.
In short, even a psychopathic nihilist, overcome by powerful demons, had to wrestle with morality in her own way.
“No one can escape death in the end,” she wrote. Indeed. But then why the accompanying rationalizations? After all, if ultimate death renders life meaningless, then what need did she have of phrases such as “no big deal,” “Why does it matter” and “kind of worth it”? All testified to a universal moral standard that she had no choice but to acknowledge, even as she tried both in desperation and in vain to destroy it.
That fact alone suggests that the only path to peace for such tormented souls lies in a spiritual rebirth.
It does not, of course, lie in validating her transgender delusion. The police department made this mistake, referring to Ye as “he.” WTTG made the same mistake multiple times.
Thus, if we want to break evil’s grip on our young people, we might begin by telling the truth.
