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

[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.)