2001-01-17 - 20:12 MST

January 1, 2001

Creeping crud

Worse than any bodily malignancy is the growing stain on man's behavior that unreasoning violence showers on the world.

Like a little boy, I sit and stare and wonder, "How can people hurt any one ?" I have puzzled over this ever since I realized that someone would and could do something like that.

I am not above sin, but never did I do some, "To who it may concern," violence as is happening more and more today. I have been in boyish, inane fisticuff enagements, and did more than my share of Halloween pranks none of which were destructive -- I also stole my cherries from neigbor's trees.

This man, driving a tractor and semi-trailer into the portals of the California State Capitol in Sacramento is one item, from Cain and Abel and probably before them are items of violence stretching back into the obscured past.

I can understand violence in protection of home and loved ones, and more remotely there is my understanding of fighting to protect our country. It is these selfish murders, usually committed by a male killing a female for the sad and sensless reason of, "If she won't be mine, she can have no one -- BANG !" In the first place, no one can own another, additionally I wonder how one can bring themself to kill a person who they deeply love ?

Sadism, cruelty, whether of the physical kind or sometimes worse, the mental battering people suffer seems to be senselessly vicious and beneath a person who can communicate with others, even to the smallest extent.

It was hard for me to understand the "crimes of passion" I would read about when I was a kid. I could see that a man could go off his gourd and kill someone he found in bed with his wife, or a woman doing the same, but it always seemed to me that if a woman or man could and would defile their marriage to do that, wasn't the marriage or association over already ?

It appears to me that present day society and bureaucracy are trying to do the politically correct thing to avoid being criticized and they are digging for excuses to let some of these individuals off scot free. Why ? The Sacramento tractor-semi incident shows that often violent people stay violent even after prison terms.

One thing comes to my mind, a many faceted (shattered ? Bastion) thing that it is - - stop imprisoning perpetrators of victimless crime; refuse to rehabilitate them with taxpayers money. Then use the money to keep behind bars violent people. To my mind prison is not really to punish and confine people but to keep them where there is no possiblity that they could ever harm another again. I think Judges should quit imposing sweetheart sentences on violent persons.

How many women have suffered further abuse or murder after they had obtained restraining orders from the courts? I also do not feel that anyone behind bars should be treated in an inhumane manner. But I do feel that if they think they have rehabilitated themselves they should work for the good of mankind from behind bars, for their own protection as well as that of society.

Criminy, I am no expert, not even an armchair one -- but I seem to keep obsessing about this terrible suffering some of us impose on others. I recall this bit about teenagers "wilding" in Central Park NYC, in the back of my mind there were, (?)Leopold and Loeb(?) way back in the 1920's or teens who did a thrill kill ?

None of these things are new, yet we let carnage and torture and imposed slavery go on all over the world and shake the dirt off our cuffs or do the symbolic, biblical bit of "washing our hands" and absolving ourselves of blame.

We pat ourselves on the back and say "what a good boy am I" like little Jack Horner and ignore the basic facts of life as it really is.

I do feel that Psychiatry and mental health experts have made great strides in recent years, but err on the side of lenience because of child hood mental trauma to their patients.

Hubris is a fact of life, carnage is a total aberration and should be curbed, drastically -- lest we be over taken by the Creeping Crud . . . . . .

Blog