Editor’s Note: The following column is a satire piece.

Dearest reader, by this point, we all know what has happened in our country in the last few days. We have seen a white man on his bad day simply go on a drive to end up shooting nine people in three different Asian American massage parlors. Because I’m sure there is not a person out there that hasn’t thought about shooting up a local business when taking a drive to clear their head of their crippling sex addiction. 

Not only did Capt. Jay Baker beautifully sum up the havoc and pain caused by this deeply disturbed human being, legally known as Robert Aaron Long, but he has also sparked a whole new evaluation of some of history’s most brutal dictators and murders. The first major figure going under review is probably the most famous “villain” in all of recorded history, or at least in Western history. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party and a best-selling author, is currently having some of his actions reevaluated by historians to account for this new assertion that a simple bad day can lead to mass murder and other atrocities. 

Now, for those of you who don’t know, before Hitler was the loving dictator we all know and adore today, he was a lowly homeless man and unsuccessful painter. His parents had died, leaving him as an aimless orphan. After being rejected from art school and blaming Jewish people for this rejection, he joined the army, much like any other school dropout. Shortly after his service, he attempted to overthrow the German government. After being arrested and writing his manifesto, like every other sane person who has written a manifesto, he started dismantling the German government. And we all know what happened from there.

What historians are trying to find is what was his one bad day. Because we must trust our law enforcement professionals, as they always do the best for their communities, historians have started to comb through Hitler’s history to find his defining bad day. Some argue it’s when his mother died; others argue it is when he got arrested for trying to overthrow the German government. And others even think it was when he couldn’t get into art school. We all know that most failed artists turn into beings filled with hate and murderous thoughts. 

And it hasn’t just been backed up by the police. Pop culture has seen it, too. The most famed super villain, the Joker, is known for becoming a lunatic from one bad day. He even lays it out in the documentary The Killing Joke, one of the most informative documentaries on the subject, where he tells trusted philanthropist Bruce Wayne that through years of study, he concluded that all mass murderers can be traced back to one bad day. 

Now, you may think using the term “mass murderer” is a bit excessive, my dearest reader. But according to the FBI and the Protection of Children from Sexual Predators Act of 1998, the definition of mass or “serial” killings is as follows: “The term ‘serial killings’ means a series of three or more killings, not less than one of which was committed within the United States, having common characteristics such as to suggest the reasonable possibility that the crimes were committed by the same actor or actors.”

As you can see, this definition clearly fits the situation that Mr. Long found himself emptying a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol into nine unsuspecting people. But what is being looked at now is what happened that triggered this man — because, clearly, something had to do it. We have already been told that the killing of six Asian women and two white people during a historic increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans isn’t racially motivated. So now, we must find what did motivate him. 

As we search for what truly motivated him, we must also ask ourselves when we might have a bad day. Because, as you can see, it clearly only takes one bad day. So we must all poise the question: when will your bad day happen and who will you take it out on?