This Post Has No Title, These Words Have No Clue

Insofar as a common and significant link ‘twixt the intimacy of driving a knife into another person, to the one, and coital penetration, to the other, is testosterone, the act of shooting the place up starts to seem very nearly masturbatory.

The psychoanalysis^α of that proposition is probably as fascinating as it is grim. At some point it seems to denigrate the American shooting crisis while exploiting the very notion of rape culture, and it is easy enough to call any mass-murderer a pathetic wanker. Yet the analogy persists, and it is easy enough to regret, before it is written or uttered, any phrase about shooting his load in public.

Killing is intimate. Killing is also distal.

He can tell her he loves her; she can believe him; it can be true; and the link between this passion he shares and the violence he might commit against another is testosterone.

____________________

^α The temptation to dismiss, out of hand, expected pop-culture strains of evolutionary psychology according to their obvious weakness presuming coital penetration as inherent to the existential justification of sexual differentiation, would be erroneous in at least one context, as the apparent fault becomes at least symbolically relevant; to the other, invoking semiotic values might be an overstatement. But where the pop strains of evopsych would discuss men evolving to penetrate women, Y previously evolved, and, indeed, continues to this day to adapt and select and evolve, not as delivery unto X, but as environmental distribution of gamete for X. Where human males may have specialized for gamete delivery, this is merely specialization of gamete distribution. And while it is true enough that word games are easy, and phagogenesis could, artistically, at least, be argued an intimate precursor to general environmental gamete distribution, the greater danger is the potential for evopsych to finally recognize the argument that masculine raison d’être really is to be a wanker.

Ignominy in Transition

In the moment of learning that Edgar Ray Killen has died, what, precisely, should I feel? To the one, a small bit of evil has just left the world. To the other, what, he was an old man of infamous name, and is it really worth the investment of feeling anything? Edgar Ray Killen is dead at age ninety-two.

And life goes on, for the living.

The hurt of injustice

Troy Davis is dead.

“Justice,” said Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, “has been served for Officer Mark MacPhail and his family.”

And yet, the subconscious emerges: Joan MacPhail-Harris said, “I will grieve for the Davis family because now they’re going to understand our pain and our hurt.”

That is, does she grieve because the Davis family, too, will know the hurt of unjust death? Somebody, please, remind them to thank the widow for that.

Perhaps Troy Davis really is guilty, but it doesn’t matter now. His execution reminds that this really wasn’t about justice, but, rather, blood.

Hatred is myopic

Prominent hatemonger Peter LaBarbera offers this amazingly myopic argument:

A little over a year ago, Amanda Collette became the ultimate victim of homosexuality when Wimberly shot her in the back at school. As the Miami Herald reported, “Collette, 15, a star dancer on the school’s hip-hop dance squad, had rejected romantic advances from Wimberly in the days before the shooting.” Minutes after the shooting, Wimberly cried in a call to the 911 operator: ”I didn’t want to kill her so I shot her in the back . . . I just wanted to give her the pain she gave me.”

Regardless of what other factors were involved in this tragedy, it is not unreasonable to assert that Collette would be alive today were it not for the modern GLBT activist movement, which aggressively seeks to mainstream sexual deviance and immoral gay/lesbian “relationships” as normal and acceptable — most tragically among young people.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in America when young women did not have to worry about sexual harassment and sexual advances from other young women. And the GLBT movement is first and foremost to blame for the rising number of youth who are embracing homosexual behaviors and considering destructive “gay,” lesbian, bisexual, or “transgender” self-”identities,” at younger and younger ages. We ask you to pray for the families of both Collette and Wimberly, and pray for the Christian conversion of Teah Wimberly as she awaits sentencing.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment:

If one murder committed by a homosexual teenager caught up in the confusion of love, lust, and hormones, is an indictment of homosexuality, what do the thousands of rapes, murders, and beatings between heterosexuals say of heterosexuality?

The Lakewood Hit: Drama in Blogtime

A Drama in Blogtime: The Lakewood “Hit”

Starting Sunday morning, a hyperlink recap of The Stranger‘s coverage (via Slog) of the assassination of four police officers in Lakewood, Washington:

• Anthony Hecht, “Breaking: 4 Police Officers Shot and Killed Near McChord AFB” (Nov. 29, 10.25 AM)
• Dominic Holden, “More Details on the Four Officers Killed This Morning” (11.13 AM)
• Dan Savage, “Seattle Times Has Details on Suspect ….” (8.25 PM)
• Anthony Hecht, “Police Surround Leschi Home in Connection With Lakewood Police Killings” (10.13 PM)
• Eli Sanders, “Locked Down in Leschi” (Nov. 30, 12.11 AM)
• Dominic Holden, “Bloody Gauze and an Abandoned Building at Dearborn and Maynard Streets” (12.04 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Map of the Manhunt” (12.08 PM)
• Jen Graves, “The Curse of Tacoma: A Timeline of Hurt ….” (12.20 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Police Searching for Green 1997 Mazda” (12.38 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “A Blood Trail at Cowen Park” (12.43 PM)
• Dan Savage, “Scruffy While Black” (1.02 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Maurice Clemmons on Twitter: Is This Real?” (1.03 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “CPS Substantiated Child Sexual Abuse Complaint Against Clemmons in October” (1.35 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Calm Down, People—Leave the Body Armor at Home” (1.50 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “In Twitter-Related Manhunt News” (2.21 PM)
• Eli Sanders, “Maurice Clemmons Wanted to Plead Insanity—Even After Western State Found Him ‘Competent’” (2.23 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Brenton Family Calls Cop Killer a ‘Monster’” (2.50 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Police Setting Up ‘Containment’ at 13th and Lander” (3.24 PM)
• Dan Savage, “While We’re All On The Lookout For Black Guys With Moles …” (3.27 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Mike Huckabee Primarily to Blame” (4.10 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Clemmons’s Business License” (4.32 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “SWAT Team Surrounds House in Renton” (5.31 PM)
• Dan Savage, “Weird” (5.50 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Family May Be Trying to Help Suspect Avoid Capture” (5.54 PM)
• Eli Sanders, “About That Maurice Clemmons Twitter Feed ….” (5.55 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “FOX News Lets Huckabee Off the Hook for Releasing Clemmons” (6.24 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “SWAT Team in Renton Arrests Suspect’s Relative” (6.50 PM)
• Eli Sanders, “O’Reilly’s Dishonesty” (6.55 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Clemmons not in Renton House” (7.45 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “I feel sorry for every husky black male with a mole on his face” (11.16 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Police Round Up Suspect’s Relatives” (11.25 PM)
• Dominic Holden, “Maurice Clemmons Killed by Police” (Dec. 1, 3.45 AM)
• Dominic Holden, “Police Briefing: How a Cop Killed Clemmons” (6.20 AM)
• Dan Savage, “Makes You Wonder How Many More Pardon Eruptions Huckabee Is Going To Have” (7.56 AM)
• David Schmader, “The Morning News” (8.08 AM)
• Dan Savage, “Misreading a Headline” (8.41 AM)

There are, of course, more stories to come, but this appears to be the drama from Sunday morning to the present.

The dead:

• Officer Greg Richards: 42, married, father of three.
• Officer Tina Griswold: 40, married, mother of two.
• Officer Ronald Owens: 37, single father of one.
• Sergeant Mark Renninger: 39, married, father of three.

The Lakewood Police Department is all of five years old. According to various news reports, at the time of the shooting, 95% of its original hired force was still intact. As the city of Lakewood, its police department, and the families and friends of the slain come to terms with the fact and magnitude of what has just happened, the region nervously wonders if maybe we aren’t seeing the emergence of a new trend in twenty-first century anti-government paranoia. The Lakewood hit is the second targeted killing of police officers in the Puget Sound region in a month. Officer Timothy Brenton, 39, married with two children, was gunned down on Halloween at 29th and Yesler in Seattle.

In youth, I might have said of an incident like this that when the “revolution”, such as it might be, finally got bloody, I would expect a better reason. There would be nothing about these murders to celebrate. And while I would like to pretend some manner of nobility about my sentiments these days, there really isn’t anything of the sort going on. Rather, age brings a certain cynicism, and perhaps fatherhood brings a certain hope. The revolution I hope for isn’t supposed to be bloody. There is nothing about any murder to be celebrated. These were not rogue cops killed in the line of corruption, but rather police officers assassinated for no decent reason. The region mourns, and struggles to come to terms with a bloody, awful month.

Join in the dance: Guns! Guns! Guns! Guns! Fire! Fire! Fire!

In the long-running American debate about gun control, it occurred to me long ago to wonder about those folks whose “home protection” failed them in certain ways. After all, anyone can point to a news story about a grandmother shooting a fleeing intruder in the back and crow about home protection with firearms. And who, really, is going to make the obvious point in those cases? And, certainly, there are the criminals who probably shouldn’t be carrying guns in the first place. But you rarely encounter headlines like, “Homeowner misses intruder, shoots up own living room”. I mean, I’m sure it happens from time to time, but it just doesn’t make a juicy headline like an old woman shooting down a bad guy.

Insanity? Terrorism? Senility? Murder.

In a video game, a conspiracy-theorist radio host asks if his callers could please just make sense.

In life, though, I wonder the same thing about, well, yeah ….

In von Brunn’s car outside the museum, authorities found a handwritten note, according to the affidavit: “You want my weapons — this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama created the Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do.” There were other anti-Semitic rants, followed by: “The 1st Amendment is aborgated — henceforth.”

There is actually a lot to consider about the Holocaust Museum shooting. But while some would make the hay about the obvious—that the DHS report on right-wing extremists might well have been accurate, for instance, or connecting angry, right-wing talk show rhetoric to extremist violence—there is something else, perhaps more subtle, that begs notice.

Don’t read this

Um …

An Australian woman accused of setting her husband’s genitals on fire because she thought he was having an affair has been charged with murder ….

…. Prosecutor Lucy Boord said Narayan told neighbors she was a “jealous wife” but she hadn’t meant to kill him when she doused the sleeping man’s genitals with an alcohol-based solvent and then set him on fire.

Boord quoted Narayan allegedly saying: “I just wanted to burn his penis so it belongs to me and no one else. … I didn’t mean this to happen.”

The husband jumped out of bed and knocked over the bottle of alcohol, causing the fire to spread and resulting in 1 million Australian dollars ($711,000) of damage to their town house and an adjacent property, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.

… yeah.

(AP via AZ Central)

The heterosexual family

Well, there is an upside to this grim report from the Associated Press:

A former New York City corrections officer has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his two children — one of them a toddler who was in her high chair when she was shot.

A jury convicted Everett George of murder and sentenced him Monday. Jurors rejected his claim that he was suffering extreme emotional distress and did not understand his actions were wrong.

Prosecutor Maxine Rosenthal said George killed his 1-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old brother on Nov. 24, 2004, to punish their mother for seeing another man.

At least they weren’t gay. Because then those poor kids would be screwed.

Right?