The mind boggles

[pecunium]

A firefighter in North Carolina was charged with attempted murder (in the first degree) for shooting at a man to save child from danger.

What, you may ask was the danger? That the man (father to the child) might get back on his bicycle (with the child in a helmet, and childseat) and resume cycling.

Diez was driving his car off Interstate 40 at Exit 55 at about 11:24 a.m. Sunday when he saw Alan Ray Simons and his wife riding bikes up the road with Simons' 3-year-old son behind him in a bike seat, he said.

“He decided he needed to tell them he thought it was unsafe that they would do that and have their child out there in an area where they had a lot of traffic,” Splain said.

Diez stopped his car and confronted Simons near 1360 Tunnel Road. When Simons began to walk away, Diez shot at him, Splain said.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot, Over.

I mean... I don't know what I mean. The man's daft. Mad as a hatter. Queer as a three dollar bill, four pecks short of a bushel (and yes, I know there are only three pecks in a bushel, you do the math). There is nothing I can think of, no matter how I slice it which in any way, shape, form, hypothetical, you name it, which can justify trying to kill someone because he is rising a bicycle with a child in a child seat.

Ye Gods and Little Fishes.

Angels and Minsters of Grace defend us.

Comments

[packbat]

...this may well be the most Lawful Stupid real-life person I've ever heard of.

It is to weep.

[onyxlynx]

I've had my decaf, and I'm still not getting any sense from this.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

Well I hope he never decides to move to NL or BE then. Geez.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The starting point might not be crazy. There's places I'd wonder if the cyclists were acting wisely.

But what he does is so incredibly crazy. It's so disproportionate. Maybe, as a firefighter, he's been in situations which have led to some sort of PTSD. Whatever the reason for the craziness, why didn't somebody notice before something like this happens.

Right now, we just don't know enough.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

This article (http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090728/NEWS01/907280324) makes it sound like he was objecting to the bike seat as well as the road. The bike seat is legal, though it does require some experience to use one safely (I know this. I have used them.)

Personally, I'm not going to question the judgment of the parents. Not even in theory, not even in the vague "might not be crazy" way. I wasn't there and I don't know the road. So I'm going to assume the parents were responsible until told otherwise.

What I do know is that this incident takes drive-by parenting to a new low. I'm not going to contribute to it.

(Yes, rant, sorry)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

He was, from what I can tell, of the opinion the road was too crowded for adult cyclists, and having a child on it (in any capacity, seat, or indiviual bike), was placing the child in intolerable danger.

I know the solution for that... have cops enforce good treatment of cyclists by drivers. Start handing out tickets for the things I see done, and that sort of callous disregard would stop.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

I will say that Splain is a great name for a spokesman.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Were I involved in writing the article, I would not been able to resist having that once sentence end, '"...an area where they had a lot of traffic,” Splain 'splained.'

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

That icon is hysterical. My cats would probably do that.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Thanks; I think I copped it from fop but I'm not sure.

My cats would bat me around until I fell, and then they would eat my eyes or whatever else was tender enough. Ears, maybe. At least when it became apparent that I was not otherwise going to feed them any longer.

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

One of mine always goes straight for the brains. We find the rest of the criters in the lawn. ;->

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

To be TMI:

By the time you fell you would be far too ripe for your cats to enjoy.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Hm. I suppose it depends on how hungry they'd get, if they'd actually climb UP.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The psychology of cats is such they probably wouldn't.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

I dunno; I haven't let them get that hungry yet.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Were I editing it, I'd have fixed it. Not a suitable sort of levity.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Well, no. The news is no fun.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

That creaking noise you can hear is the asylum door swinging slowly on its hinges. Angels and Ministers of Grace indeed.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I'm English.

I'm still trying to cope with the idea of armed firefighters.


OTOH, there _are_ always crazy people and this time the official machinery seems to have done what it ought to and charged the shooty guy with being a shooty guy. Hard to see what more they could have done - it's difficult to plan in advance for this sort of random.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

IIRC, during the Los Angeles riots resulting from the Rodney King mess, firefighters were impeded by people taking pot shots at them. Even under circumstances like that, though, arming the firefighters themselves seems futile at best, more likely dangerous. An armed escort would make more sense.

On the other hand, I don't get any sense that at the time of the shooting, this nut was on duty.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

<privateinterjection>
In between boggling, I'm trying to think of suitably snarky words for putting this story up on bristoltraffic; must be lessons to be learned in there for cycling city ;) - any ideas?
</privateinterjection>

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think you are struggling to cope with the idea of John Q Random being armed. This guy wasn't on duty, it just happens his job is firefighter.

He could have been a plumber, for all the difference that would have made.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

He wasn't an "armed firefighter", he was an "armed private citizen who just happened to be a firefighter". I seriously doubt they'd let him carry if he were actually on duty. OTOH, this _is_ the South...

[izzydesan.livejournal.com]

Am-freaking-mazing. WTF doesn't even begin to describe. What on earth is happening to plain old human decency in our country?

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on this, but your use of "queer as a three dollar bill" here proved to be a bit of a speed bump* for me.

Not a big thing, but I just wanted to mention this.
_____
*My term for something that knock me out of what I'm reading, etc.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

This isn't by any means limited to fringe-nut-cases. *sigh* The Papal Curia has recently re-iterated that doctors (& nurses and parents) are expected (on threat of excommunication) to have allowed a 9-year old child who was raped to die of a ruptured womb rather than abort the potentially-human fetuses she was carrying.

It looks to me like a matter of Control (or Dominance) over other people -- and one that seems to be coming to include a growing number of what might be called "Mainstream-nut-cases" -- the kind that carry "people ought to be shot for doing that" rhetoric out into literal action.

[izzydesan.livejournal.com]

"It looks to me like a matter of Control (or Dominance) over other people -- and one that seems to be coming to include a growing number of what might be called "Mainstream-nut-cases" -- the kind that carry "people ought to be shot for doing that" rhetoric out into literal action."

This is what scares me the most. There will always be psychologically ill people who do crazy things. But the increasingly prevading idea in our country that it is OK to just blast away anything or anyone you don't agree which makes me fear for our civilization. Is it that we have become so immune to violent actiona dn thought through the media? Is it all these violent video games that are all the rage? Is it that we are so self-involved and taught (even now in childhood) that we are not truly accountable for our actions to each other or ourselves? Is it lack of good home training? Is there some sort of virus that we haven't discovered yet that is making people more violent? (I don't really believe the latter, but lacking other explanations, who knows?)

And don't even get me started on the first part of your comment and my thoughts about the church's insanity over that issue. Talk about lack of human decency.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I actually blame a lot of the Right Wing Talking Head Class for it.

When they say, again, and again, and again, that "Liberals" are dangerous, and need to be stopped, "by any means neccessary," they not only make violence seem more acceptable, they increase the tendencies to 1: judgement of the moral worth of others; and 2: the urge to lash out.

So, when something like this comes up (which has some hints of "Liberals") the possibility of violence goes up.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

As a self-identified liberal (maybe even with the upper-case "L"), I have to suggest that authoritarianism and the imposition and enforcement of Rules (mostly of the "it's for your own good. &/or for the benefit of society" nature) is by no means rare among Liberals. *sigh* (I suspect this is orthogonal to Liberal/Conservative orientation.) But yeah, I guess (although it seems strange) that adults who ride bicycles are significantly likely to be Liberals (unless they're LDS Missionaries).

I didn't mean, by the way, to pick (excessively) on the Roman branch of the Catholic/Christian Church -- many of the Protestant ones are at least as bad. I think it has to do with the assumption that people who have Money & Power have it because they _deserve_ it, and thus should be obeyed, as part of the Divinely-imposed Hierarchic Order of Things. This does not agree with my reading and understanding of the Teachings of Jesus the Nazarene (to whatever extent I'm a Christian by absorption). *sigh*

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

My guess is that the answer to all those speculative questions -- and many more -- is: "Yes". I'd like a single, definitive, all-encompassing answer... but am reasonably certain no such thing exists. There seem to be many factors, mostly small and yet so common (though not universal) pervading our society, acting together to produce the negative results we're seeing. Mostly, they're not new things -- many seem to be (semi-)hard-wired into the human brain & personality -- so it seems more like that they've recently proliferated and recombined in such a way that they can take control of our whole society.

About the only reason this doesn't render me _totally_ despondent is that it appears to be the same process I've already seen in action (in the opposite direction, but the principle of the pendulum is independent of direction). I was too old -- only by 3 or 4 years, but in one's late 20's that can be enough -- to really participate in The Hippie Revolution that started in about the mid-'50s and continued into the '70s, but I had (younger) friends who were part of it, and I felt strong sympathy for many of the Ideals they expressed. Ideas like "pay attention to your environment/surroundings", "live in the present moment, and enjoy & improve this world", "try to avoid harming other living beings", "question authority", "drop out of things that seem to be wrong", &cet -- all or most of them seemed to me to have merits. (As well as some ridiculous aspects, because I have a weird sense of humor.)

Such ideas & ideals also contained the seeds of their own destruction, of course, if (actually, when) they were misapplied, especially because there was such a strong element of egocentrism in the hedonistic spirit of that era. It's easy for egocentrism to become egoism, and to combine with greed & materialism to result in the anti-social aspects that seem to be characteristic of modern Conservatism. So the pendulum swings. (That pendulum analogy might not be the best in the world, because it implies a single-lump bob, and things are more complex than that, but it's the best I can think of.)

The hippie movement, I'm convinced, brought about (or led to, or encouraged) some beneficial changes in our society. For all the generation-clash aspects, much more striking than usual, people recognized the common humanity involved -- the older generation realized and accepted (mostly) that these were their children, and a part of the social fabric, even though they looked and acted Very Differently. I think this opened the door for the civil rights movement, a major decrease in racism, and for the next-to-most-recent wave of feminism. (I understand where today's Activists in these areas are coming from, and sympathize -- even emphasize -- with them, but can't share their intensity because I've lived through the era during which the major improvements (probably 75% of the way towards the goal of Equality) were accomplished, and figure that future steps, though needed, are going to be small. I don't get terribly upset when a Black Harvard professor is arrested (& the charges are dropped) for arguing with a policeman -- because I can remember when it was inconceivable that a Black person could _be_ a professor at Harvard, and the quota for Black, Jewish, Latino, or Asian students there was practically zero.)

There was, I think, a Basic Attitude of "I'm Important", tempered with "and nobody is more important than anyone else". I'd think that the general dropping-out of the latter, somewhere along the line, was a tragedy... if I thought it would last for very long. But social change is grounded in Reality, and in the modern world that kind of Authoritarianism doesn't work nearly as well, in the long run, as egalitarian co-operativeness. (Yeah, the Financial/Economic Industry has bought itself a governmental bail-out -- temporarily. But all indications are that they plan to continue their "Greed is Good, and Absolute Greed is Best" practices and I think they're approaching the limit to that which the taxpayers will (or can) support.)

[jerub.livejournal.com]

Holy Shit, "The bullet blew a hole through the outer lining of Simons' helmet and went straight through both sides of it, but he was not hit."

That's no warning shot! That's just a dude with bad aim who wanted to end the father's life!