How Joshua Powell killed his sons and himself

You’ve probably already heard about the case of Joshua Powell of Salt Lake City whose wife Susan he reported went missing last year during a supposed overnight camping trip in sub zero temperatures. When, this past week, police finally began to suspect Powell of murdering his wife, he took his two little sons into his house, locked out the social worker who was with them, and, as the social worker was calling police from her car, blew the house up killing his sons and himself.

Here is the latest on the story, the social worker’s account of the last minutes. There is also information that has emerged, from Powell’s parents’ divorce papers in 1992, that Powell was violent and dangerous in his teens, and that his mother was frightened of him. There is also an account from a friend of Powell and Susan from before they married that he oppressed and controlled Susan, so that, for example, when they went out to a restaurant, she only ate the dollar meals, even though Powell had money. Yet she married him and bore his children.

It is a terrible story but also, in modern society at least, an old story—a woman delivering herself into the power of a controlling man with an obvious dark side who eventually kills her, and, in this case, their children as well. How is it that in our feminist, female-empowered society, many women seem to act in a weaker, more dependent fashion than ever before?

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Alissa writes:

You wrote:

It is a terrible story but also, in modern society at least, an old story—a woman delivering herself into the power of a controlling man with an obvious dark side who eventually kills her, and, in this case, their children as well. How is it that in our feminist, female-empowered society, many women seem to act in a weaker, more dependent fashion than ever before?

The patriarchal version of masculinity has been so extensively stigmatized, that women seek “acceptable” forms of masculinity in modern society (exemplified by dark heroes and villains in various films and TV series). The reason is, while some women are completely awash in feminist propaganda and sincerily believe in liberalism, other women deep down in their natures know that they will never be content in this arrangement and therefore seek the kind of men that they feel that their female nature calls them to be with (even if its a perverted form of it). I’m about to become twenty in a couple of months. In my teenage years I remember being enamored with villains and dark heros when watching many different genres of movies. Also when I mean villains I don’t gangstas, bad boys and thugs. No. I mean a certain type of masculinity that I found enticing: mature and adult (not childish like bad boys), yet grounded to reality and expressive in its contents. In other words a sort of mini-patriarchal version of masculinity. That’s my two cents.

LA replies:

A very insightful comment.

Liberalism and feminism formally and constantly tell women that they are supposed to approve accommodating, de-masculized men, like the kind that we see on every local TV news program, sitting obediently, unobtrusively, and so meaninglessly next to their female co-anchor, and in many other venues as well. But this liberal/feminist ideology does not change the female nature. Women still gravitate to strong, commanding men. And since the traditional patriarchal white man, the man as leader, has been virtually expelled from our culture, the only “masculine” figure that our culture approves, allowing women to be drawn to him as well, is the rebel and trouble-maker, the man with violence and danger inside him.

This syndrome applies both generally, and specifically in relation to many white women’s attraction to black thug types.

Laura Wood writes:

An astute comment from Alissa.

Whiskey writes:

Alissa is correct. I’ve been writing the same thing on my blog for years. The Vampire craze, the HBO/Showtime/AMC and cable nets formula (bad/dangerous white guy killing people that excites female interest) is all the same thing.

When ordinary masculine behavior is crowded out, women don’t stop seeking it, they just seek it in the worst forms. The way Prohibition moved people from drinking mostly beer to hard liquor.

I would say our number one problem socially is the broken relationship between men and women. I think it can be fixed, but everyone needs to be honest. Desires are not wrong, but women need to know the score. All of it.

Again, thanks for all you do.

Laura Wood writes:

Psychologically, a woman, unless she is maladjusted or has an abnormally masculine psyche, is oriented towards submission. It was always so.

LA replies:
In a healthy society, a woman submits herself to a good man of her own culture.

In late liberal society, she submits herself to disordered or bad men, or to cultural or racial aliens, or (the liberal jackpot) to men who are both bad and alien.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 10, 2012 07:42 AM | Send
    

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