Next week’s Inspection flies into your digital mailbox a bit early, only to keep up with the $#@! news cycle.

“What if they had just shot him with a paintball gun, shot him, then said the next one will be real, you’re under arrest?

-caller to The Bill Press Show, 5/4/11

I’m sorry, but that’s just the stupid in you talking. Do you even realize all the horrific acts this guy bin Laden was responsible for, all he and his gang of murderous thugs were willing to do for the cause? How well he was protected? Soldiers getting beyond razor wire, over walls, into a heavily armed compound, and you think a shot from a paintball gun would make him surrender?

To flip my commentary around so hopefully those expressing their “stupid” side will understand, offering prairie flowers and help during a cold Massachusetts winter won’t placate those willing to strike at you for whatever reason. The American Indians tried that.

But celebrate? Hell, no. There’s something deeply wrong with the mental state of far too many Americans.

I am no peacenik. There are times we must go to war. I am no pacifist. There are times we must kill. I respect and admire those who are. Good luck. I hope you really change the world. But, overall, I have my doubts.

Nazi Germany and the Axis.

Someone in my house, with a gun, 2 in the morning. Entering the bedroom.

Murderer. Death row. Many brutal, senseless, murders delivered him there. He murders more in prison.

Taking down a rabid animal is consider a sad, but passionate, act. And in these cases, as few as they may or may not be, someone must feed or deal with the more marginally human-like animals eventually: risking an innocent.

I am not for the death penalty as it is now. More than a bit too Russian roulette, and all too easy for those with connections and money to have some lawyer talk their way out of. I don’t blame the lawyers: that’s their job as loathsome as it can be sometimes. Yet a poor, homeless, man is not more worthy of the needle, the noose, bullets or the chair than, say, OJ Simpson… if he had been convicted.

But I do believe, given the reality of human history, human mentality and keeping the innocent from becoming victims, sometimes we must kill. Indeed, as a side note, if a prisoner simply can’t take it anymore I think choosing the death penalty after receiving as lifetime sentence should be an option. And those who convicted of committing murder while in prison for murder should find themselves on the way to the death chamber: quickly. Let’s also step on the gas pedal a bit in getting the already convicted who murder again into court.

But celebrating killing someone? What the Hell is wrong with you? All the vast crowd celebrating the fall of the towers, crowd more imagined than real in quantity. Must be noted, many including Saddam offered help and sympathy. All those folks bitching and moaning about those celebrating crowds. Now we behave just like them?

Don’t get it, do ya?

One must also note that someone like bin Laden, and having to kill him, exhibits the failure of humanity: collectively and individually. There are schools, parents, religious institutions who should have been able to steer this maniac away from this path. There are institutions and professionals who should have caught this and, if necessary, lock him away in a rubber room. Instead, collectively, we have religious groups and institutions, “professionals” of all kinds, who are a support system for this kind of individual. From Timothy McVeigh’s anti government rhetoric, the Turner Diaries and associations with Turner Diary types, to the KKK, skinheads and Christian Reconstructionism, to radical Islam, humanity ferments its own suicidal vile concoctions, and then force feeds such mental poison to our children. Then we expect them to grow up sane, and live in a sane society?

Here’s another reason why we shouldn’t celebrate: other than the obvious; celebrating only encourages others not just to strike, but strike back harder and more often. It sure did encourage us. What, you think a bullet to bin Laden’s head and chest will make them shrink back; bastards who cut off heads by hand for fun?

What planet have you been living on? Certainly not Earth for the past 10 plus years.

Revenge is but a symptom of a childish mentality that hurts us. A symptom that causes further death, destruction and rips out the very heart of the freedoms we are supposed to be protecting.

I remember the reaction to 9/11 where even a father and son who had shirts made at a mall in the Albany/Schenectady region of New York were arrested for refusing to take off the shirts. The “crime?” Shock! Horrors! Having a peace symbol on one, and I think the other was said “Give peace a chance,” or something else rather inane. It caused thousands: millions if you count the citizenry, which you really, really should, to meet their death. Far more than the number of those who died on 9/11, even if you just count our soldiers who died in Iraq.

All to be mocked by the president who sent them to their deaths in a video looking for those invisible, fictional, missing WMD.

I remember locking people away, possible for the rest of their lives, with no trial, no due process, some with electric wires attached to their privates, drowned to the point of death then drowned again, beaten, their children and wives raped in front of them, locked into trailers under a hot desert sun until they die.

What, you expected no reaction? No revenge coming back the other way?

If I were to pick someone who really hates us for our freedoms: freedoms like habeas corpus, freedoms like innocent before proven guilty, or due process, or fair, above board, no vote count hiding proprietary software elections… it wouldn’t be bin Laden. It would be George Bush, Cheney and the vile group of sociopaths who surrounded them. Now they have spawned even more vile progeny, like Scott walker who thinks his election means he can negate every other, more local, election in his state if he doesn’t like the results and appoint his cronies.

Now those are true freedom hating scumbags.

Bin Laden simply wanted us to stop stomping all over what he considered his faith’s playground, their sacred places. So as you listen to all George Bush spawned in the domestic debate, all the celebrations he supported, like the looting of Baghdad, remember who really “hates us for our freedoms.” Who really loves to feed the mass perpetual mass murder machine: fed by creating more reasons for revenge. Celebrating the justified killing of a mass murderer only feeds the hate machine, just like celebrating the towers crashing did. Like celebrating torture fueled revenge’s race car with nitrous oxide, or attempting to redefine it out of sadistic convenience only turbo charged terrorism.

But when it comes to 24-like excuses for all this, the only true ticking time bomb here is the political WMD-like one being used to destroy our freedoms by those who lie: claiming to be defending it.

All in all a very a childish celebration of killing, pure gore and letting the rivers of blood flow, perpetrated by those who would never have to risk their lives to get their revenge because, for example, “He tried to kill my Daddy.”

Revenge is one hell of a bloody boomerang. Humanity has invented the perpetual motion machine. In fact it grows more powerful with each use, as if powered by Satan himself. Who knows for sure, perhaps it is, though I have no doubt that humans have a big enough dark side to account for it all.

Perhaps we must kill sometimes, but if we don’t curb our enthusiasm for it…

…if we don’t take a more mature attitude towards the sad, unfortunate, fact that occasionally we must take life…

…understand that taking a life or lives is something to mourn: no matter how justified…

…eventually the perpetual motion hate machine will consume us all.

-30-

Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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