You'll have to forgive me, I'm in a very cynical mood right now. Reading the news this morning has gotten me down. Ok, actually stuff from Iraq to poverty has not been new to me. Perhaps this is all blasé to you all who are versed in all the news headlines about the madness of this world. But, well, do you ever feel that now must of the time you've become numb to it all, but then all of a sudden you get poked or "awaken" from some twiddly article and have a sudden shock to it all? You know, one of those "what the fuck?" kinda news moments?
We all, I take it from this site, are in some way news junkies, be it from business to politics. Some it's the corporate mainstream stuff, others it's sources like Pacifica or Democracy Now. It doesn't matter if its from cable television or the Internet or the radio, we're all given a massive dose to such a degree that to many it's the new Soma.
Of murder, betrayal and simple cold heartlessness
Perhaps it's just me. I've indulged in so much of this stuff, that my mind has become numb. From goings on in the illegal Iraq war to our goverment just not getting it's act together. You almost get used to it, and you almost shrug it off saying to yourself "pfft...go figure!"
But then you come across an article like this below and are thrown aback.
Md. boy, 15, charged with killing family
By KASEY JONES, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 6 minutes ago
A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder Sunday in the shooting deaths of his parents and two younger brothers in their home in a Baltimore suburb.
Nicholas Waggoner Browning was charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of his father, John Browning, 45; his mother Tamara, 44; and his brothers Gregory, 13, and Benjamin, 11. He was charged as an adult.
Browning was arrested at 1:05 a.m. Sunday after he admitted to the killings, Baltimore County Police spokesman Bill Toohey said.
The teen had a disagreement with his father and used his father's handgun to kill his family Friday night, Toohey said. After the slayings he threw the gun away in bushes near his house.
You ask yourself, what was this boy thinking?!? Killing his parents over some argument, not to mention taking the lives of little brothers! Not since Columbin, was I well...shocked. But, life has a way of showing you things are indeed even madder. Reading the above, I soon saw links to a similar article, but this time in Georgia. How does one find the moral capacity kill ones parents? Maybe I'm missing a piece of the story,
Ga. teen charged in parents' deaths
Sun Feb 3, 10:02 AM ET
Police have charged an 18-year-old college student with killing his parents.
Darryl Spearman, 55, and Cherri Spearman 52, were found dead in their Loganville home by relatives on Friday. Investigators said they were beaten to death.
Their son, Joshua Spearman, was charged with two counts of murder on Saturday. Spearman, a freshman at Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville, was being held without bail.
Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman said authorities had received "domestic-type" calls about Joshua Spearman in the past, but he declined to give any details because the suspect was a juvenile then.
Life just doesn't make sense. Some, particularly the Religious Reich, have this fondness for saying that God has a plan for us. Well, from what I've seen, he needs to go back to the drawing board! He can't even get His followers to act correctly. Entering this cavalcade of human debauchery is once again, someone of the cloth betraying us.
Nun Accused Of Sexual Assault To Spend 1 Year In Jail
Sister Norma Giannini Admits To Other Offenses
POSTED: 9:10 am CST February 1, 2008
UPDATED: 6:15 pm CST February 1, 2008
MILWAUKEE -- A Roman Catholic nun who pleaded no contest to sexually abusing two Milwaukee boys years ago will spend a year in jail.
A judge sentenced Sister Norma Giannini, 79, to one year in jail and nine more years on probation She has 60 days to report to the House of Correction in Milwaukee County.
It has been a four-decade-long struggle for the two victims who first came forward to the church in 1996, but it took 10 more years before their allegations developed into criminal charges and then a conviction, 12 News reporter Nick Bohr said.
You're probably wondering why bother posting this and what it's relavence to the murders in Georgia and Maryland. It highlights how, from the personal sphere of the family to our relations with those whom we look for spiritual guidance seems to be in decay. Now, there are those of us (yours truly included) who simply do not wish to adhere to an organized religion or any religion for that matter for some reason or another. But I know many who do, and often this partnership with their church, temple, mosque or prayer circle is very important to them. It makes up an important pillar of their life. So when we see this, its as if a pillar that holds us up is crumbling. Indeed, those religious bodies that are seeing this travesty happen need to crack down on this. Safety, especially for our children is of the utmost importance. Actually, everyone's safety is paramount.
A sense of safety though seems to be fleeting these days. Our government seems to want to out do Steven King in frigtening us. Heaven forbid you should be gay or disabled. Hate crimes are now now on the rise. Why must we attack those of us who are not "mainstream"? Humanity is a diverse creature, we cannot ask all of us to be the same. Several years back, while recovering from another surgery, I learned of the death of Mathew Shepard. Here was a young man who probably would've contributed greatly to our society. Yet, ignorance and well evil took him away from us. Violence has so been absorbed into our country's DNA, I feel it has become almost a gene of sorts designed to start our destruction. In my neck of the woods, even shopping has become a hazard. Yesterday a man walked into a Lane Bryant store, in an attempt to rob the place, and killed everyone there.
It isn't random, it's a collage of what's wrong with our civilization
Be it the loss of a family, working mothers, a college student, an inner-city youth, we as a society lose. None of this is headline stuff to the readers of Daily Kos. I haven't even touched the "big-ticket" items like corporate greed and well...of course the wars. But it's all really part of something bigger, a societal cancer that is threatening to bring the whole thing down.
Have we allowed ourselves to be so into ourselves that we have forgotten our fellow citizens? Most people don't even know their neighbors anymore. There is no more true social commons to bind us together. It's what's in it for me, gimme gimme gimme! Zero considerations for longer term consequences. In the Great Depression, as my father loves to talk about, people were miserable and poor, but there were in it together. The hardships, be it from the tatterdemalion state of the economy to the Second World War, put them all on equal footing. America has since the end of the war been sliding into this anti-collectivist bent; this was particularly true with the election of Ronald Reagan. And by collectivist, I'm not saying Communism, I'm saying people looking out for each other. Talking with older relatives, mainly baby boomers, they talked about how one could trust neighbors to watch over kids. Today? That neighbor may or may not sexually abuse that kid. But see, that's the thing, we don't know because we as folks living on a block or apartment building haven't gotten to know each other. There is no kinship anymore.
The closest thing we have gotten to "know thy neighbor" has been the damn Internet, and hell in that case it's probably someone across the world. Ok ok, the net isn't really that bad, I mean look at Daily Kos and other similar sites. We have gotten to know each other through the media, and to me that seems almost unhealthy. This disconnectedness has created a sense of callousness in many, any doubt in this one need only look at how we hold such disdain for the poor. Listen to Limbaugh, Savage, hell even Larry Kudlow on CNBC to see how it's supposedly the poor's fault. When we almost dehumanize these folks, one can easily see a similar slide in the personal sphere. Today it's those "stupid dirty poor blacks," to "really hate my family, I wish they were all dead."
America needs some sort of cultural revolution
Now I know what you're thinking, "gee Venom, what you want what happened in China with the Red Guards? Huh, you bastard?" Of course not, wholesale slaughter and political persecution isn't my cup of Java. Look, electing a Democrat into the White House, or more to the point a liberal/progressive (which is it these days??), but a start. There are critical policies that need to be implemented like universal health care of course, but on a social level we need some non-government collective action of taking stock of what is going on.
Imposing some sort of religious-body related morality, as a secularist, is not what I want. But, as Americans, we need to come together and find some sort of moral code that we all can stand for. There are many conservatives that will fight this because in their minds it must be the church or what have you that should dictate this. Others, like the libertarians, think that the commons shouldn't have a secular moral code; profound unhindered individuality is their idea of morality.
Take greed for example. Making money is fine, being wealthy is nice. But should we as a people allow commerce to go unhindered if it poisons the air in some far off place, or displaces the jobs of our citizens? Greed also comes in the form of the accumulation of material goodies. Should we as a society try and force the media and other social pressures away from bankrupting us from blowing our credit cards with crazy interest rates on crap made in China?
Respect of the individual who is different is another example. Should we as a society not put down anyone who is trying to galvanize hatred against a group of people because they happen to be gay or Muslim? At first I was against the Fairness Doctrine because of free speech issues, but after listening to Savage for a while, I've come to realize otherwise. But here, we shouldn't need just policy to handle him. We as a people need to take action against ANY radio station that would allow hatred to be spewed over the public airwaves. Advertisers are sensitive to this. Time to hold them accountable.
Violence, well, I'm ashamed to say I have no real answer here. Is there a way to not desensitize the horror of violence in people? One can't just point to the finger at video games or cinema. Folks who murder their family or strangers have been motivated by other things.
But unless we, as a common people of various backgrounds, can say to ourselves no more of the out of control avarice, violence, and basic level of disrespect, we're all doomed. Can we, as a nation that still holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over, allow ourselves to fall apart? A folk with common democratic self-respecting ideals that also looks out for their fellow citizens is the perfect bulwark against anarchy and the destruction of humanity.