Tag Archives: murder

The Color of Murder

2 Replies

So, I just want to make sure I have the rules down correctly.

When a brown-skinned person kills a bunch of people or makes what seems to be a politically motivated assassination attempt, he or she is evil and cruel and heartless and should be punished to the full extent of the law.

When a white person who isn’t completely at the ass end of the socioeconomic spectrum does the same thing, we have to soften the impact of the law by pointing out that he or she must be mentally ill.

When the person is yellow or a poor white, we’re not sure, but we lean toward option number two anyway.

Have I got that about right?

Because Jared Lee Loughner seemed functional enough to get through life and, I presume, to know that indiscriminately mowing people down in a hail of gunfire to get to your target is even more wrong than killing one person. Funny that I can’t recall any cases of Latinos or African-Americans (and definitely NOT Middle Eastern folks) getting the same level of forgiveness.

Sorry, Jared’s a terrorist in my view, and a murderer. You’re gonna have a hard time convincing me he was that disassociated from reality. And even if he was, why don’t people of color get credit for being abused, raised in horrible post-traumatic-stress inducing environments and the like?

Make the playing field fair.

Choose one route or the other, and leave the skin color out of it.

Crazies Coming Out of the Woodwork

7 Replies

So, we get the guy now who killed the Black man at the Holocaust Museum, who apparently wanted to rampage all over Blacks and Jews. This after the whack-job who killed the doctor in church who provided late-term abortions.

And I still remember those angry conservative GOP rallies during the election season when people were shouting for Barack Obama’s death in some cases, simply because he had a funny sounding name, was black and was a Democrat.

And the loonies on FOX News, both the people who send in e-mails and the people on the air (pundits, hosts, guests, etc.) who espouse every kind of strange and outlandish conspiracy theory and latch on to the most minute things the Obamas do to try and convince America that the end is nigh.

Tell me, does anyone recall left-wingers going this nuts when the GOP came into power, whether after Carter’s defeat or the end of Clinton’s two terms? And when was the last time you heard about a raving liberal going on a killing spree for his or her ideology?

I’m not saying rampant liberalism is good. Too much left wing shit is still shit, just of another color and different smell. I perfer things somewhere in the middle, even if I like them to lean leftward a bit.

But really, please, can someone provide examples of recent left-wing killers and left-wing folks calling for people to be killed, tortured, etc.? And even if you can, can you convince me that there aren’t way more conservative, right-wing types who do this stuff?

Because the more I see of this, the more I think that being right-wing is be tended toward violence and hate, at least more so than left-wingers.

God Don’t Like Psycho

38 Replies

OK, I realize I’m late to the party on the murder of Dr. George Tiller, a controversial provider of late-term abortions, allegedly by 51-year-old fundamentalist Christian Scott Roeder.

Partly, I’m just distracted. But a smaller story out my way sparked me to write about this. You see, there is, in my neck of the wood…or, rather, was…a topless coffee shop. The owner was making plans to expand, and then suddenly an arsonist burned the place down. I know nothing about the arsonist. I don’t even know if they have a suspect in custody. But as my wife said, “I guess the crazy fundamental Christians are coming out of the woodwork.”

Perhaps they are. Let’s sample a couple quotes about the murder of Dr. Tiller…

Prayer and Action newsletter publisher and anti-abortion activist Dave Leach: “To call this a crime is too simplistic. There is Christian scripture that would support this.”

Founder of Operation Rescue Randall Terry: “(He) was a mass murderer and, horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.”

My late and much-missed grandmother-in-law often said, “God don’t like ugly.”

I’ll ammend that a bit: God don’t like psycho.

We do not get to choose to burn down someone’s business or kill someone because of the Bible. We just don’t. For one thing, it wasn’t the kind of thing that Jesus condoned. But also, we are told in the Bible to follow the laws of our lands. The laws of our land, here in the United States, says that an unborn child is not always considered a full life. But a grown-ass man is definitely alive, and killing him over ideology is murder, plain and simple.

I defy any fundie who supports or turns a blind eye to this murder to show me a single passage of scripture that defines an unborn child as a life and thus establishes that ending the existence of that fetus is murder. The first person that does will most likely pick a single passage, and I’ve seen it before, and I will likely rip your argument to shreds if you do.

Furthermore, without establishing that a fetus is a viable life in the Bible, all we have to go on is the law of the land, which says it is not. And frankly, even you can prove to me that the Bible protects a fetus’ life as much as a child outside the womb or an adult, that still doesn’t give you the right to flout the laws of your land and take vengeance. Vengeance belongs to God. It’s one thing to snap and kill someone because they hurt or killed someone close to you…people snap over such things…that’s not generally cold-blooded murder. Killing someone for something that doesn’t impact you directly is cold-blooded murder.

And finally, Dr. Tiller didn’t perform late-term abortions for mothers who just decided late in the game they didn’t want to be pregnant. Late-term abortions are almost always in the interest of preserving the mother’s life or in cases where the fetus is so unviable that it faces death upon entering the world anyway.

All around, this act was wrong. And no Christian should overtly or covertly support this murder of man. Much less murdering him in front of his family while in church. There’s nothing right with that picture.

Thou Shalt Shoot to Kill, Sort Of

3 Replies

I did my list on the women who could get me to break the 7th commandment and a post on items I’d steal in a heartbeat if I could be pretty sure I wouldn’t get caught. So now, a post on some killing I might do if presented the opportunity to do so. (By the way, here’s a little explanation of the 6th commandment from Biblestudy.org) For the most part, although there are a couple serious bits, this post is for entertainment and fantasy purposes only.

Why? Because even if I make it obviously in jest…

  • I’m not going to mark any politicians for imaginary death, no matter how slimy they are nor how much damage they’ve caused, first off because I don’t really desire to see them dead and also because I don’t need to be part of some FBI file or have government agents hauling me off for questioning just because I made some silly comment about, well, whomever…
  • I’m not going to say any celebrities should die, even in jest, even if they are pure evil, because then I’ll have local law enforcement on my doorstep and lawyers up my asshole.
  • I’m also not going to list any real people from my personal life. First, because while there have been some folks I’ve encountered whom I thought I might actually have to kill at some point, or whom I might have liked to at various moments, none of those people have registered in my mind in such a fashion for quite a large number of years. More importantly, there are people who read this blog and know who I am in real life, and they might be those people, or know those people. So, even looking retroactively, real, identifiable people from my life are out, no matter how heinous their actions might have been once upon a time.

So, what is this list going to look like? Let’s find out.

Anyone Who Is a Danger to My Family

OK, here is the one dead-on, stone-cold, serious-as-hell entry in the list. If you attempt to do serious physical harm to my wife or my children or succeed in doing so, you are a candidate for immediate death. I will not play. I will not risk the lives and mental health of those I love. Risking my own life and letting your ass live even though you might kill me is one thing. Putting my loved ones on the line? Not gonna happen. Frankly, though, even if you engage me in combat and I am alone, I will assume you mean to kill me and it is quite likely I will try to at least maim or cripple you; and I won’t rule out killing you. I ain’t Jesus; don’t push me.

The Careers of Several Celebrities

Please note, I said the careers. Not the people. I don’t want the humans dead; I simply want them behind the scenes, raising kids at home quietly, taking long vacations, picking up real-world office jobs, working at Burger King—really, anything that keeps them off the TV, movie theater screen, airwaves, CDs, DVDs, Internet or anywhere else they might annoy me. Tops on my career hit list are: Flava Flav, who is now a gross mockery of everything he ever purported to stand for when he was with politically and socially conscious rap group Public Enemy; Madonna, who has reinvented herself so much and jettisoned her conscience so thoroughly that she is now irrelevant and, frankly, is not even a real person anymore but a virtual contruct; Will Farrell, who has officially played the same character one too many times, that I feel he no longer deserves any more chances to try to show greater acting reach in carrying films (I think he could still be a great supporting actor and might benefit from getting back to the small screen); and Steven Seagal, who once had a decent few martial arts, kicking-ass flicks but can’t act and frankly, is looking way too puffy and sloppy these days to be a believable action hero anyway, and even though he goes direct-to-video these days, that’s still too much public-eye exposure for my tastes.

A Few Political Careers, Too

Again, let me emphasize, I don’t want the people dead. Hear me, FBI, NSA, CIA, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security and all the rest: I am not armed nor am I dangerous (unless you’re a houseplant trying to survive in my house). I don’t wish physical harm to any of the people I am about to mention, unless said physical harm comes from God directly in the form of some lingering painful sores for a few weeks. And whose political careers would I most like to see go the way of the dodo bird? Well…

  • George W. Bush: This man made me think for a short while early on that he might be OK and grounded in Jesus. He has proven, instead, to be a completely ineffective and even toxic leader who is short-sighted, greedy, petty and totally lacking in any identifiable skills except running businesses (and countries) into the ground. He needs to pray more, and more sincerely, to get his ass back on track, and he needs to do it in private life from now on. If his daddy, George H.W. Bush, is proud of him, then I have lost what little respect I have for papa George, too.
  • Hillary Rodham Clinton: She showed such pettiness in the race to become the Democratic presidential candidate and such a poor ability to accept defeat (she’s still stomping her feet as I write this) that it is clear she shouldn’t be in any position of leadership anywhere. This woman is not a good role model for women. I could name dozens of other women, political and non-political, to whom young women and girls should look for inspiration on how to succeed and compete with men in this country. Hillary will never be someone I ever hold up to my daughter as anything but an example of what to avoid.
  • Bill O’Reilly: OK, he’s not a politician, but he’s also not a celebrity and he inserts himself into political discourse, so he gets to make the third and final entry of this list. He is an egomaniacal blowhard with no on-air talent, no journalistic credentials to speak of, no integrity, no ability to manage his anger or channel it positively, and he is the face of all that is most wrong about FOX News, and there is so much wrong with that “news” network I don’t even know where to start.

The USA Patriot Act

Aside from being eeriely similar to the goofy name of a really stupid superhero created some years back by Marvel Comics (U.S.Agent), this monstrosity is perhaps the single biggest blow to civil liberties in my lifetime. The creation of this legislation represents the equivalent of crumpling up the U.S. Constitution, swallowing it, letting it sit in your stomach for a few minutes, barfing it up, cleaning it off in a bucket of piss, flattening it and drying it off with a dirty iron, then taking a massive diarrheal dump and then using the remains of it to wipe your ass. The sooner the USA Patriot Act goes away, the sooner we start to look like a saner country again.

Bigotry

I’m just sick of it. From racism to ageism to sexism to homophobia and all the rest, can’t we just give it a rest already? I know we’re all petty and human and prone to things like hate, but what is it getting us? We are all human; can we please start treating each other with some humanity?