Dark Pondering

The bombs at The Boston Marathon, poison laced letters sent to lawmakers, guns in an elementary school or a maniac in Kevlar at a movie theater, just a few examples in recent headlines of the sickness in our world. I was thinking about this a lot yesterday, As I’ve said before and I will never change my thoughts; I don’t understand how people like this think and I never want to understand it.

So much violence and senseless killing. If the world they live in is that awful suicide is a better answer than killing anyone else. The violence is your problem and yours alone of you have those ideas in your mind. I’m usually the first to say that suicide is not the answer, that those feeling that hopeless need help and support, but if the only alternative they’ll consider is mass murder, by all means, have at it on yourself. Just be kind enough to the people you leave behind to let them know you were probably going to kill innocent people had it not been yourself. Really, it does make it okay.

And “Not guilty by reason of insanity?” Meh, of course your insane! If you kill people you don’t even know, if children are in your line of fire and it’s oaky by you, insanity goes without saying. But is that a reason to consider you “not guilty?” In a premeditated attack you never once thought maybe you were nuts? It never occurred to you that at the very least, what you were planning was considered immoral or at least deviant behavior? At any point in planning you could have sought help instead of following through. If you kept your plan a secret, you knew it was wrong. Why did you CHOOSE not to get help? No, it’s GUILTY by reason of insanity. The insanity plea is no reason to let someone off with being tried for a lesser crime than mass murder when mass murder is what they are guilty of. The defense team of the Aurora movie theater shooter, who will not receive the publicity and humanity of a name here, had considered entering a “not guilty by reason of insanity” plea. None of his victims get to enter a “not dead by reason of movie” reversal. If the crime is punishable by death, it’s punishable by death. If the crime warrants life in prison, it warrants life in prison. Every person who has committed the same crime is unquestionably insane but that is not an excuse not to receive the punishment for the crime committed.

Oh, and terrorism? Aside from the fact that religion really has nothing to do with it; it’s power drunk “religious” “leaders” using a religion they don’t believe in to control weak believers with lies about their religion and other religions to cause the violence that gets their rocks off and makes them feel powerful. They do it because they have nothing else in their being that they consider worth anything. And don’t get me wrong here; this includes the likes of Al Qaeda and every “Christian” “leader” who has inspired their followers to bomb an abortion clinic or picket a funeral. It’s all terrorism and about as far from any kind of religious belief as you can get.

If you truly believe your religion wants that much hate and violence from you, you need to look for a new religion because the one you have is making you pretty miserable. I’m not familiar with any religion that encourages you to honor God, by whatever name the creator has in that religion, by being miserable in the life you were given, If you truly believe God wants you to be so hateful and violent, well, you portray God as quite a jerk. I find that kind of offensive, personally. I haven’t come across any holy book that doesn’t say you shouldn’t kill, so if you are killing in the name of your religion, boy are you screwed up.

Today an entire major city is shut down and we don’t even know the root of the hate yet. The 8th Ammendement includes prohibiting the use of cruel and unusual punishment, including torture. Considering that this Amendment was ratified at a time when slavery was still legal in this country, what exactly is “cruel and unusual?” Do we as a society get a pass when the crime is cruel and unusual? Should we? With the exception of slavery, the crimes today are way bigger than they were at that time.

Just sayin’.

I hope I didn’t offend anyone too much. I’ve said before that some of my crime and punishment ideas have made very right, staunch Republicans say “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” I’ve also said that I write to get things of my chest and poison out of my brain. I feel a little better now.