Professor’s Michael Adams’s Death

Some video of this supposedly hopeless and depressed man: https://youtu.be/l3WhAiBNgW8

Mike Adams died by gunshot. He was retiring at age 55 with a $1/2 million settlement from the university and engaged to be married. Thousands hated him. No note, no goodbye tweet even. But the police say he died alone, so it must be suicide.

At more length. Criminology professor Mike Adams, hated and feared by thousands of people in North Carolina, was found dead in his home of a gunshot wound. All the doors were locked, and the police say that since nobody was there, they’ve concluded it was suicide, though there doesn’t seem to have been a note. His obituary says he was engaged to be married. He had just won a half-million dollar settlement from his hated university employer and had in return agreed to retire. Was the first thing on his retirement agenda suicide? Did he have cold feet about getting remarried (he was divorced from the woman he married in 2004)? Couldn’t stand the thought of being rich? Was a depressed, sad, meek, person who just couldn’t stand criticism? Was tired of being in the public eye, and wanted to go out quietly, leaving some Tweets on random subjects rather than a final note to the world? I wish I were in North Carolina to investigate.

Doesn’t look like anybody else cares.

UNC Wilmington professor Mike Adams died by suicide: cops
Joshua Rhett MillerJuly 28, 2020

The North Carolina professor found dead in his home — only days before he was forced to retire because of his racist social media posts — died by suicide, authorities said.

College professor to retire after slew of controversial social media posts
Mike Adams, 55, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, was found dead alone in his home Thursday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a friend called New Hanover County sheriff’s deputies to check on him, The News & Observer reports.

Adams had been acting “erratic” in the past few weeks, during which he was “under a lot of stress,” his friend told a dispatcher, according to 911 call records cited by the newspaper.

Sheriff officials said foul play is not expected in Adams’ death, which was ruled a suicide following an investigation, the newspaper reports.

Adams, who reportedly reached a $500,000 settlement with the university, was set to retire on Aug. 1. He had been the target of several Change.org petitions calling for his ouster over “misogynistic, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, [and] racist rhetoric” tweets,…

If I die mysteriously by violence, it will not be suicide. If it were, I’d leave a note. And I would leave it in cursive handwriting, not computer Calibri. If you see a note, do some forensic analysis. I have never felt in the slightest tempted by suicide and I believe it is immoral, sinful, and selfish in over 99% of cases (let’s put aside jumping on grenades and taking poison so they can’t torture out your secret mission; the normal must not be sacrified to the abnormal).

Maybe you’ll smile as you read that. If so, you’re probably somebody who’s never encountered hundreds of people who would like to see you dead. You may not even know how common that is. Someone who is conservative and speaks out must accept that fact, and be proud of it. I think most liberals don’t really understand how central violence and murder are to the human heart, because they are so civilized that they can’t imagine committing acts of daring and criminality themselves and so self-centered and uneducated that they can’t imagine anybody else is different, either in our time and place or others. As an example, a prominent economist wrote recently how amazed he was to find out that somebody was willing to say in public conversation that the dictator of North Korea would like to conquer South Korea. He had no idea that the typical dictator–perhaps all dictators!– like the typical man, even, would like to conquer other countries, and is restrained only by practicality.

Of course, there are very few political killings— though a large part of that is that most people are too timid (“prudent”) to say what they think. But just read some Twitterstorms of the kind that have become so common in recent years. Fortunately, most leftwingers are too timid to take action. Those that are brave are mostly disciplined, which means that they do the calculations and decide that if they were caught killing someone, it wouldn’t be worth success. Killing one person generally doesn’t have that big an impact on his side, and if it should be revealed that you killed him for political reasons— which has subsantial probability (say 10%) even if though the media and government will try to cover it up— that would hurt your cause. Thus, the set of dangerous people, the intersection of the brave and the undisciplined, is very small. Still, it’s big enough that I own a gun and take other precautions such as the blogpost I am writing now. If nobody is thinking seriously of killing me, I’ve wasted a few paragraphs speculating on an interesting subject. If someone is actively planning, I’ve raised the potential cost a little bit. That’s how economists think.

Back to Mike Adams, though. He did not leave a suicide note. Think about that. As with Jeffrey Epstein, when someone that thousands of people want to see dead dies of violence without a suicide note, that tells you something. It is Holmes’s “dog that didn’t bark”. It’s not just, “Oh, we are lacking something that would prove it was suicide.” No– if it really *is* suicide, what it means is that the dead mean wanted people to think it was murder. Adams and Epstein were smart guys. They would know what people would think. They would take special care to leave a suicide note to stave off the suspicions that would otherwise arise and worry their friends and waste the time of the police.

Mike Adams, moreover, was a writer, and someone who loved to get publicity for his ideas. How would he have missed the chance to leave a suicide manifesto, the one document he’s write that would get more attention than any other? He could use it to fight abortion, or argue for a lower income tax, or whatever he thought the most important issue of the day.

He would only take the deliberate step of not leaving a note if he wanted to deceive us into thinking he was murdered, rather than having killed himself.

But if Adams wanted us to think he was murdered, omitting the suicide note wouldn’t be the only thing he’d do. He’d publicize the death threats he surely has received over the years. He might, if he was unscrupulous, have forged a death threat from BLM or Antifa or Joe Biden, like liberals do in the dozens of hate hoaxes we’ve seen— with the added benefit of there being an actual dead body instead of just some graffiti or a noose lying around.

Was Adams that unscrupulous? Not from what I’ve heard about him. To be sure, he is a pro-life Christian (though one who’s divorced), so if it really is suicide he was willing to commit a big sin anyway, and the sin of forgery would be mere gravy for his hell-roasted soul. So if he was sinful enough to have committed suicide, he was sinful enough to have use his death in a hate hoax–but he did not.

Any way you look at it, suicide without a note doesn’t make sense for him. Somebody ought to write a note for him. Maybe they just forget till now.

Deputies rule that UNC Wilmington professor Mike Adams died by suicide in his home
BY KATE MURPHY
JULY 27, 2020 04:17 PM , UPDATED JULY 27, 2020 04:25 PM

Mike Adams, the controversial UNC Wilmington professor, died at his home last week from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday afternoon.

Adams’ friend called 911 while standing outside Adams’ home Thursday and asked deputies to check on Adams after not hearing from him for a few days. He told the dispatcher that Adams’ had been “erratic” for the past few weeks and “under a lot of stress,” according to records from the New Hanover County 911 center.

After conducting an investigation, the Sheriff’s Office said Adams died by suicide and that foul play is not suspected.

Adams, a tenured criminology professor, was set to retire early Aug. 1, after reaching a settlement agreement with the university for more than $500,000.

He has been in the spotlight several times over the years and drawn public criticism, most recently surrounding his comments on social media, The News & Observer has reported. Online Change.org petitions collected more than 100,000 signatures calling for Adams to be fired earlier this summer.

Nolte: Cancel Culture Victim Mike Adams’ Death Ruled Suicide. Breitbart accepts the police lack of investigation without question:
While we can’t begin know or even guess at what this poor man was going through elsewhere in his life,

only an act of willful ignorance would allow someone to dismiss the fact that the cancel culture, this heinous blacklisting movement, had a role in Adams’ suicide.

What drives another human being to take his own life is, thankfully, beyond my comprehension, but here was a good man guilty of nothing more than a silly joke and some truthful opinions facing national vilification as a racist, facing the disgrace of career and reputational ruin.

Such a thing would put anyone in a dark place.

Sadly, and I do not say this lightly, the suicide of Mike Adams will not give America’s blacklisters pause. In fact, it will only encourage them to double down on their efforts. These are monstrous people, self-righteous zealots already aware of the effects of the human toll of the cancel culture. To them, Mike Adams’ suicide is a victory, is one less vote for Trump in the swing state of North Carolina, and is — most of all — an example to the rest of us, especially those on campus, who might dare to utter out loud their “unapproved” opinions and ideas.

Remember, these monsters were not criticizing Adams. They were not fighting speech with speech. The endgame was not to get him to change his mind or point out the flaws in his thinking or his argument. This was only about destroying the man, annihilating him, intimidating him into silence, and if they could not do that, ruining his life and career.

Well, they have accomplished both.

Death of Prof. Mike Adams ruled a suicide

UNCW professor Mike Adams’ death ruled suicide, deputies say

“Detectives began their investigation in partnership with the medical examiner and it was ascertained that Mr. Adams committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to the head,” the news release stated.

No one else was in the home at the time of the incident and no foul play is suspected, the sheriff’s office says.

This is North Carolina, so maybe it’s Barney Fife’s grandson who’s the deputy in charge. I hope they don’t ever let him put the bullet in his pistol. But somebody ought to tell him that if a murder happens, he can’t expect the murderer to hang around a few days at the scene till he shows up.

I’m sure Professor Adams got death threats all the time. It would be routine for someone like him. I was just hearing lady talk about the death threats she used to get all the time, just for working on the Richard Mourdock campaign that unseated Senator Lugar in the primary and lobbying state politicians. She said she’d report the more serious ones to the police, just in case she got murdered later, even though they couldn’t do anything about it. I think she said they actually did take some action on the most specific one, which told her about the bomb that would be put under her specific seat number at a party convention, which the threatener had somehow found out. I’d like to know if the deputies looked up his file, even. Or did they shield their eyes from the glare of it?

Authorities say UNCW Professor Mike Adams died by suicide
By Port City Daily staff -July 27, 2020

According to the agency’s spokesperson, Lt. Jerry Brewer, after an investigation by detectives and the medical examiner, “it was ascertained that Mr. Adams committed suicide with a single gunshot wound to the head.”

“No other people were in the home and foul play is not suspected,” he said.
…
Shortly after noon on Thursday, July 23, deputies responded to a welfare call at his home on Windsong Road in the Ogden area.

“The homeowner had not been seen or heard from in a couple of days,” according to Lt. Brewer. “Deputies at first weren’t able to gain access to the home due to all doors being locked. Once they were able to gain access to the home deputies found the homeowner, Mike Adams, deceased in a bedroom.”

When I’m home in the summer, I don’t lock all the doors to my house when I’m home. Many women do I think, but do any men in safe neighborhoods in houses that have yards lock their houses behind them when they come in? Of course, Adams had many dangerous enemies—but that explanation would just say that he had so much reason to feel unsafe that he kept his doors locked even during broad daylight. Somebody who knew him could tell us if this was typical of him or not.

A Not So Happy Warrior: Mike Adams, 1964-2020 by Mark Steyn. Ave atque vale July 27, 2020.

A two-time “Faculty Member of the Year” winner at the turn of the century, Adams grew more “controversial” as the university got more “woke”. He got a book deal with Regnery (publishers of America Alone), and was quoted favorably by Rush:
…
What American university wants a prof who’s published by Regnery and getting raves on the Rush Limbaugh show? The Deputy Assistant Under-Deans of Diversity all frosted him out, and Adams spent seven years in a lawsuit with UNCW – which he won, but it’s still seven years of your life you’ll never get back.

Then came the Covid. He Tweeted energetically through the lockdown, including at his governor:

Massa Cooper, let my people go!

And on the education lockdown in particular:

Don’t shut down the universities. Shut down the non-essential majors. Like Women’s studies.

…
Nevertheless, the university administration felt obliged to rouse itself from its locked-down torpor and denounce the Tweets as “vile” and “expressions of hatred”. The celebrated actor and comedian Orlando Jones called for him to be fired, as did almost three hundred of Adams’ fellow professors. Two actresses from a TV show called “One Tree Hill” urged a boycott of UNCW unless it got rid of Adams. There was a “Fire Mike Adams” rock installed on campus. He was used to this kind of pressure: As the new millennium settled in, calls for his termination were like swallows returning to Capistrano in novel forms of transportation – first old-school pieces of paper signed by real people; then a Facebook group dedicated to his sacking; then multiple Change.org petitions…

It was all scheduled to come to an end on Friday with Adams’ painfully negotiated departure and a $504,702.76 settlement. Half-a-mil sounds a lot, but it was to be paid out over five years, if the university stuck to it, and it’s not really a lot, is it, for the obliteration of any trace of your presence at the school to which you devoted your entire teaching career.

On Thursday a neighbor called 911 because Mike Adams’ car hadn’t been moved for several days and there was no answer on the telephone. Inside police found the body of a 55-year-old man with, in cop lingo, a “gsw” – gunshot wound.

I was struck by these lines – an aside in a piece on Nick Sandmann:

[Mike Adams] wrote with verve and humor. He seemed like a happy warrior. He didn’t cave at false charges, or wallow in synthetic guilt. Nor twist himself into pretzels, as timid ‘conservatives’ do, who are eager to placate the crocodiles by feeding them someone else.

He “seemed like” a happy warrior, but who knows? It’s a miserable, unrelenting, stressful life, as the friends fall away and the colleagues, who were socially distant years before Covid, turn openly hostile. There are teachers who agree with Mike Adams at UNCW and other universities – not a lot, but some – and there are others who don’t agree but retain a certain queasiness about the tightening bounds of acceptable opinion …and they all keep their heads down.
…
But either way, if you’re doing the heavy lifting on an otherwise abandoned front of the culture war, what you mostly hear, as Mike Adams did, is the silent majority’s silence – month in, month out.

Pushing back can be initially exhilarating – and then just awfully wearing and soul-crushing: “I’m with you one hundred per cent, of course. But please don’t mention I said so…” “Oh, we had a lovely time at the Smiths’. Surprised not to see you there…” It is possible, I suppose, that Mike Adams was the victim of a homicide rather than the ultimate self-cancelation: Certainly there are plenty on Twitter and Facebook who would like to kill him, or at least cheer on any chap who would. As I write, the first comment under that YouTube video above is from a fellow called Don P:

Mike Adams is with Satan, and Rush will be joining him soon.

And yet, if the facts are as they appear, a tireless and apparently “happy warrior” – exhausted by a decade of litigation, threats, boycotts, ostracization and more – found himself sitting alone – and all he heard in the deafening silence of the “silent majority” was his own isolation and despair. A terrible end for a brave man. Rest in peace.