We came back into ABQ today from a wonderful golf outing to Pendairies. It was cool and foggy there last night after hard rains. Otherworldly and beautiful. Much in contrast with the horrific murder of that young girl this week.
And I get back to a gaggle of comments on my blog promoting an atmosphere of revenge. Kill those child murdering scumbags. Yes, they are scumbags. But how does killing them help.? Better they spend the rest of their lives in prison for sure, in general population I think, rather than solitary.
Why do people think that executing criminals will stop them from this kind of drug addled insanity. While they were committing this act did they stop and think, 'better not or I will be executed?' But of course our right wing pols love this kind of infamous crime, right along with the local media who can milk this for the next six months. They figure it is good for ratings and revenues. The scene presented on the Journal website this a.m. of cameramen trying to get a picture of one of the killers was almost Keystone Cops.
Not long ago after the young Navajo girl was killed on the reservation, I don't recall the Governor or Mayor of Albuquerque wanting the death penalty for that killer. Was there a difference between the girls? Mostly, that Navajo girls murder fell off the radar quickly. I have a feeling this one will be around a lot longer. Why? Because it is close by? Because she was a pretty little girl? Could the media answer these questions.
One hapless commenter on the Journal website said this was Satan at his worst. I would like to think it was God/Allah/etc. at his worst.
And I get back to a gaggle of comments on my blog promoting an atmosphere of revenge. Kill those child murdering scumbags. Yes, they are scumbags. But how does killing them help.? Better they spend the rest of their lives in prison for sure, in general population I think, rather than solitary.
Why do people think that executing criminals will stop them from this kind of drug addled insanity. While they were committing this act did they stop and think, 'better not or I will be executed?' But of course our right wing pols love this kind of infamous crime, right along with the local media who can milk this for the next six months. They figure it is good for ratings and revenues. The scene presented on the Journal website this a.m. of cameramen trying to get a picture of one of the killers was almost Keystone Cops.
Not long ago after the young Navajo girl was killed on the reservation, I don't recall the Governor or Mayor of Albuquerque wanting the death penalty for that killer. Was there a difference between the girls? Mostly, that Navajo girls murder fell off the radar quickly. I have a feeling this one will be around a lot longer. Why? Because it is close by? Because she was a pretty little girl? Could the media answer these questions.
One hapless commenter on the Journal website said this was Satan at his worst. I would like to think it was God/Allah/etc. at his worst.
2 comments:
These are the times that try our morality, our ideas about right and wrong. It's easy to oppose the death penalty when there aren't ten year old girls being killed. Now's the test.
According to the bible god once killed everybody save a family and a boat load of animals but then immediately realized, 'Oops, I screwed up and this rainbow is my promise to never ever do that again.' For awhile we the people struggled against killing each other until this guy came along they call the apostle Paul who said, 'It's OK boys, we're not god. We're inherently bad. Go ahead and kill one another and god, who really is god and inherently good, will just forgive us.' Establishing the gleeful circular morality that permits anything at times like these if enough of us agree to it -- voters, legislators, people with money and power, whatever.
Opposed to that kind of morality, which is emotionally influenced, there's what we think of as rational morality like the golden rule, which has been snuck into the bible and even the law sometimes by clever secular sinners who realized that like the bible, morality is just the rules we've made for ourselves -- Yep, we just made it all and agreed to live by it -- and that we have to live by our rules even at a time like this.
But those rules are also influenced by our emotions, but our better ones, our better natures. That's why we decided to call them rules. We knew times like these would come again as they had before. We knew the struggle between our better and lesser natures, which is what's always being played out in the stories in the bible and the shifting representations of god and the debate going on now, would continue. Hang on. Better times are a comin' if we do but we must hang on.
The silence for the this post is deafening. I only hope one of them doesn't get to plea to lesser charges by rolling on the others. We live in a very sick world and the worst of the worst need to be exterminated.
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