"i'd cut you in half with a rusty saw."

[implode]

hi. it's late and i was going to go to bed, but an article about that sex offender guy that they found with that little girl (you know. the one named after that terrible soda.) caught my eye, and then my brain, and then every rational faculty this human can conjure up, and i wanted to hear some other opinions on the topic when i woke up in the morning.

so, after a quick background check, it turns out that this guy <a href="http://fifthnail.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_fifthnail_archive.html">kept a blog</a> documenting pretty much what ALL blogs document - a mopey loser netrat's quiet descent into madness. all of his entries (the ones i've looked at, anyway) seem like very genuine cries for help and understanding, and show extreme periods of empathy for those he's hurt (there's a whole post about how his mother is crying because her son is in trouble again which struck me as particularly... blegh. unpleasant to read, i suppose.) you'd think that after reading this, you might gain a little more insight into what actually <i>goes on</i> inside the head of a mentally ill-type fugitive, and... not that you'd change your opinion on the fact that child molesting is wrong, of course, but you might ease up a little on somebody who's obviously got plenty of unpleasantness to deal with on his <i>own.</i> you know. drop the whole ridiculous "ALL CHILD MOLESTORS SHOULD BE SODOMIZED ON A BURNING STAKE WHILE MIDGETS STAB FORKS IN THEIR LEGS AND ABDOMEN" attitude that some people are akin to spouting in the most inappropriate of situations.

well, instead, it turns out they were just looking for the BEST inappropriate situation. as soon as this blog became available to the public, it was FLOODED with... well... with stuff like this:

You fucking bible pounding cocksuckers. So quick to show love, and to give encouragement and offer redemption to a rapist, a child molester, and probably a psychotic mass murderer?

You fucking christian idiots, I hope you've done a good job helping this shit head through his extremely difficult time he's going through right now. Pathetic.I hope you die a horrible death

# posted by Anonymous : 12:40 PM

Die and burn in hell.

# posted by Anonymous : 12:46 PMGood thing the cops have you cause I'd cut you in half with a rusty saw. Burn in hell bitch!

# posted by Anonymous : 1:23 PM etc etc.

is this... good and rational behavior? am i wrong for believing that this guy really didn't know right from wrong, and that my vicious condemnation of him after the fact does no more than propagate the erronous conclusions about society that twisted him into the monster that he became in the first place? sure, the guy deserves swift and severe punishment - if you don't know right from wrong at this point, tough. live out the rest of your sentence (and probably your life) in the institution rather than jail. it'll (should) be taken into account during sentencing. i don't believe the guy needs (deserves) somebody to hold his hand and explain to him the error of his ways over a nice cocoa, or anything. but is this mindless hatred after the fact doing anything other than appeasing your desire to cast stones at people who you think are fucked up? is this helpful to ANYONE? therapy should not involve venting staggering amounts of hatred onto ANY one person, failing maybe a genocidal and calculating dictator, and even then... you should only have the OPTION to do it, and there should be some sort of statute of limitations on when you can redeem your prize. and EVEN THEN. it shouldn't make you feel better that you're doing it to hurt them. if you're bitching about child molestors to your friends, in particular this one, okay, whatever, i guess it's better than molesting children with your friends... but to address the person directly, after hearing his plea for understanding, while being completely removed from the affair other than sharing the same species as those involved, and take comfort in the fact that you've publically denounced him as forcefully as you possibly can?

i don't know if i think that's very cool.

[Davey Rootbeer]

the thing is, people WANT to see the world in black-and-white: Everything is either "good" or "bad".

Because when there's shades of grey involved, then decision-making becomes clouded. That's how real serial killers act: thinking only in terms of "good" and "bad".

It's also how young children act, until they learn about the world.

Some don't.

It's also how emotionally unstable people act, believing that people, or a things, can only be good, or bad.


But when people are fueled by their emotions, there's no rationality. We do irrational things out of love, out of anger, out of fear, out of hatred.

But you already know that, eh?

[töm]

well. aha. if you want rationale, i'm probably not the person that should be dishing it. but of course it's not particularly nice of those people to threaten the man. he's no saint, but neither are many of his foes it seems. it's interesting that people do not realize that hatred, violence, and all of that fun stuff are all circular for the most part. if you're going out into the world looking to hate people, you'll find people that will hate you back. it takes stronger person to not continue that cycle, it seems. mercy does impact people. well, i don't know what impacts really mentally deranged people. they're really the only people that are the exceptions to my vast and uninformed sweeping generalizations and quotations that i picked off of clever e-mail forwards. and i'm usually talking about the mentally deranged 95% of the time, so it doesn't help. :\ but yeah. screaming for someone's blood is just releasing more piranhas into the narrow brackish river we like to call "life."

as for his mental health. that stuff really confounds me. i'd like to know more, but i think that psychologists trying to understand the mind are still taking stabs in the dark at best.
<small>

this reminds me of something i saw earlier today, though. http://www.alarabiya.net/Article.aspx?v=14709 it's an arab news source reporting on the london bombings in arabic. there is a small comment space below for readers to remark on. some white folk must have found the site, and then the english comments started pouring in.

"You Arabs are unbelievable....many innocent people have been killed and injured... what they have to do with your problems!!!!"

GROAN.

then we have retorts:

"they are killing the people , killing the chilldren, killing the women in all of our arabic and islamic country , so i think what happen to them is still less than <b>what they deserve, they deserve more</b> than that and i hope they will get more and more every day"

there, doesn't that beautifully sum up the cyclic existence of violence? some people believe that civillians deserve to die, just because their own were killed? maybe that makes sense as a math problem, but as a social problem to be contemplated by human beings with human hearts... it doesn't make much sense to me.

i'll leave you all with just one closing comment.

ALL ARABS SHHOULD BE KICKED OUT OF U.K AND EURO. COMPLETLY. WE DO NOT NEED SAVAGE</small>

[implode]

But when people are fueled by their emotions, there's no rationality. We do irrational things out of love, out of anger, out of fear, out of hatred. so i guess the question becomes "is it rational to become so fueled by a random injustice in the world?" i understand that being emotional negates the entire concept of rational faculties, for the most part, but i've also found that it has to be <i>really bad</i> to get to that point. like, potentially-life-alteringly bad. and this... is not. to anyone but the (slain) family of the victims. it's just a chance to get in a parting shot, it seems. cycle of hatred indeed.

"ALL CHILD MOLESTORS SHOULD BE SODOMIZED ON A BURNING STAKE WHILE MIDGETS STAB FORKS IN THEIR LEGS AND ABDOMEN" UPDATE ON MIDGETS: i just saw the most wonderfully cool infomercial about two midgets who are just <i>dying</i> to teach you how to be as rich and successful as they are at their FREE CHARACTER BUILDING SEMINAR. the first twenty minutes will explore the topic of making jokes about disproportionaly large head-to-body ratios, followed by refreshments, quiet introspection, and finally, three hours of Learning All The Reasons You Should Buy Their Book. (and if you need more than one, you're a stronger man than i.)

they're in new york, too. maybe i'll rob an old lady and make it to 'con after all...

[Davey Rootbeer]

so i guess the question becomes "is it rational to become so fueled by a random injustice in the world?" i understand that being emotional negates the entire concept of rational faculties, for the most part, but i've also found that it has to be <i>really bad</i> to get to that point. like, potentially-life-alteringly bad.


The thing is, when something has JUST HAPPENED, or is so immediate that there's really no time to gague the seriousness/scale of the event, then emotions grow to be that size with anyone.

On 9/11, living but a few miles from NYC, everyone around me was seized with a gamut of emotions, running from fear to rage, within hours of the event. hours, days, weeks later, the full scale of this was still developing, and the whole country seemed to be seized with a wave of irrational fear and rage.

I guess that would qualify as life-alteringly bad though. so maybe the fear was rational?


But, still, the immediateness of such an event, coupled with the depth of emotions on either side of it, along with slanted "facts".


I mean. Was the michael jackson case so life-alteringly bad to the people of the world? Yet, you had millions of people emotionally debating (on either side), and i'm sure you'd find a few "i'd cut him with a rusty chainsaw" people out there in response to the verdict. Even if it has nothing to DO with a person, they can still get emotionally involved in it to the point of irrationality.

[implode]

The thing is, when something has JUST HAPPENED, or is so immediate that there's really no time to gague the seriousness/scale of the event, then emotions grow to be that size with anyone. i refute forcefully, emotionally, and irrationally.

sincerely,

tomorrow morning

[Durana-Kal]

Even if it has nothing to DO with a person, they can still get emotionally involved in it to the point of irrationality.
So, then, it becomes an issue of how the situation is viewed, not if it is right or wrong. Humanity as a whole is wildly emotional, and seems to hold a need to hate. "Right" and "wrong", no matter how people define them, are very abstract concepts, and vary depending on your point of view.

For instance, the U.S. in general seems to think what they have done in the Middle East is right, whereas the Middle-Easterners vehemently disagree. Each group, however, has it quite clear to them that THEY ARE THE CORRECT PARTY. But, if you pull in and look closely at both factions, very few people have anything to back their belief up, or indeed a reason to believe it. (Although the U.S. seems to be FAR more guilty of this than it's "Enemies".) They have no grounds for hating who they hate, or supporting what it is they are doing, except that everyone else does too. A hive mind mentality takes over, and people begin to believe that if everyone else thinks this, it MUST be true.

Every class of people on the planet, no matter how large or small, has it's views on what is right, and so when one of these views is crossed, the proclaim it as evil and hate it. Rationality or logic takes second place to the need to believe in something, and so hundreds of thousands of people hate without really knowing why.

I've just succeeded in scaring myself.

[MST3Kakalina]

stop.




Kenobi time.




"only the sith deal in absolutes."


but really. i never understand how people can get so angry and upset over something that didn't even happen to THEM. yeah, the guy molested a kid. it wasn't YOUR kid though. yeah, Al-Qaeda fucked the WTC. no one you knew worked there or even lived anywhere near NYC. why are you so angry?

i hate people.

[implode]

*yawn* rain, rain, go away, or i'll cut you in half with a rusty saw.

but really. i never understand how people can get so angry and upset over something that didn't even happen to THEM. yeah, the guy molested a kid. it wasn't YOUR kid though. yeah, Al-Qaeda fucked the WTC. no one you knew worked there or even lived anywhere near NYC. why are you so angry?

i hate people. i've been in situation where i could identify with the victim of a... a whatever, injustice, human rights violation, etc. so i <i>kind of</i> understand putting yourself in the shoes of the victim and feeling what it is they must be feeling. after all, it <i>is</i> the basis for understanding - don't judge before you've walked a mile in the boots that don't fit and hurt my feet, didi! for example, when i posted that article about the people who got into the motorcycle accident, called the cops, and got a "oh, they were in an accident? yeah? <b>too bad.</b>" i was outraged, and i believe rightly so, that somone could be so callous as to <i>completely ignore their job responsibilities</i> (and really, their responsibilities as a human being) and basically let an innocent person die. i may have said some things that propgated the cycle of hatred, indeed.

but the difference was that i said them <i>here</i>, without waiting for the accused to take responsibility for his actions and explain them to the people shining a spotlight on him. amongst friends. i didn't write the guy a bitchy e-mail outlining all the awesome ways i could think of of hammourabing his unfeeling ass. i didn't wait outside his door and throw rocks at him. i let the feelings come, explained them to those i felt close to, and took some time to think about it and eventually let up on the hatred. the people responding here didn't bother with this - they were out for <i>blood</i>, they didn't WANT to understand him, they just wanted to let him know what a true fuckwit they think he was. it's just not... it's just not <i>nice.</i> no, child molestation and (potential) homicide aren't nice, either, but if you weren't involved in it in the first place, i see no valid reason to feel justified in <i>getting</i> involved unless you hold some crucial information to the case. offering your human carpentry services is not crucial to anything but examples of taking an emotion too far.

honestly, i think the reason i feel this way so suddenly is because i read the guy's blog and felt bad for him, which, admiteddly, is also <i>getting involved</i> to an extent and kind of minimizing what he did. certainly i've felt differently about other fugitives who DIDN'T post their innermost struggles with demons in a public forum, and sure, that's unfair - but i don't think i've ever gone out of my way to get involved in a situation that <i>does not involve me whatsoever</i> just to get a chance to voice my outrage at it. if i'm voicing my outrage, it's far away from the situation, where i know that anything i say won't matter to anyone who'll have a valid insider argument against it. sure, this is wrong, but you don't have any reason to write if you never feel emotional about anything. so i think the best way to do it is to keep your opinions to yourself/your friends until the situation is sorted out/somehow begins to involve you. anything else is unneccesarily caustic and does no good for anyone.

The thing is, when something has JUST HAPPENED, or is so immediate that there's really no time to gague the seriousness/scale of the event, then emotions grow to be that size with anyone. right. i didn't actualy have a refute, just a response that if you're going to get emotionally charged about it, you should at least have the consideration to keep your emotional ridiculousness away from the topic that you don't understand. you think the policemen that caught this guy broke out the rusty saw when they got him back to headquarters? certainly a few of them might have wanted to, but they understand that there might truly not have been any malice there, and even if there was, it's not... it's not their <i>business</i>, really. their business is to uphold the law the way we've all agreed upon it. anything more is meddling.

HOWEVER. i say that if the father wanted a chance to unload on this guy, there's nothing wrong about looking the other way while you give him the chance. anyone who's had their family unjustly slain and their children unjustly molested (haha) has every right to want revenge on the perpetrator, and if they wanted to take that opportunity... i think they should maybe be able to. we don't really know if he molested/killed anybody yet, and the father would have to take that into account before he got sent off to prison, whether he really wanted to beat somebody who might not have done anything to deserve it. i don't know. it's very murky on this end of the pond. i just know that if somebody raped and killed my closest friend, and then admitted to it... then i think i should have the opportunity to "retort", as it were. sure, it's like kicking a caged animal, but it's like kicking a caged animal that ate your parents, at the same time. after all the unjustified suffering they've spread amongst your countryside, they deserve a chance to recieve some of their own from the applicable party.