Police Brutality: Another One Bites The Dust

Antonio Zambrano-Montes was fatally shot by police the other day. He was homeless and mentally ill, and running away from law enforcement when he got shot. No one knows why he threw rocks, or why he threw rocks into passing traffic, as the allegations maintain, but Zambrano-Montes was not advancing toward law enforcement. He was no longer holding any rocks, and did not have a weapon. Since when is it the job of law enforcement to circumvent the court and carry out the death penalty? Did Zambrano-Montes receive this sentence for throwing some rocks, or for being homeless and mentally ill?

James Holmes, Ronald McDonald Clone

I wasn't going to do this. I really thought James Holmes, Aurora Colorado movie theater shooter, was getting too much attention. In the face of all the things that are more deserving of the FBI's attention, such as missing children, why did this creep have to stop taking his thorazine and fulfill his mentally ill ambitions of forcing the rest of us to feel his pain? But after seeing this picture, and the entry on Bent Corner, I was unable to stop myself. Rick talks about the fact that others who commit crimes like this might be prosecuted as terrorists, which is completely true. If our Ronald McDonald wannabe had a darker-than-olive complexion, and spoke with an accent from a faraway, Middle Eastern place, or had friends who practiced Islam, (as opposed to having no friends!) or practiced Islam himself, he would probably be facing slightly different charges than the charges he is facing now. Yet despite a slightly different motive, the crime and the intent are the same. The bias is illogical. But there is one more place I would go with this, before deciding not to give this creep any more attention, and that is this: why do our courts fail and often refuse to hold anyone who has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness accountable for his or her crimes? If someone who has decided that the side affects of his medication are too inconvenient, and therefore stops taking it, exposing the rest of us to the dangers presented by his symptoms, why can't he be placed on a locked ward? Why is that such a problem? Why is it so important that the rest of us understand, as we clean up the crime scenes and bury the victims, that the poor, sick, deranged, mentally ill thugs have merely been "misunderstood"? Ronald McDonald's understudy, here, certainly was misunderstood. His doctor thought it would be okay for him to live outside of the insane asylum.

In Case You Slept Through Church This Sunday

In case you slept through church this Sunday, here's the dream you might have had:

Ok, ok. I'll post about something that really IS rooted in magical thinking. The notion that a sex offender or a violent criminal can just "get saved" and not be a dangerous person anymore is a fantasy. I have had a few comments that I simply refuse to post, in reaction to this post about Matthew Burton, the born-again Christian in Maryland who worked at his church and later got charged with murdering a woman. A woman who might still be alive if she had not trusted the "born-again" logic that some benevolent power will just "change" anyone's mentally ill or criminal leanings. It does not happen. To answer those comments, all at once, let me just say that this is where faith and wishful thinking and lies get very twisted up in each other, giving us the ugly result that is called upon in churches like this church. It is dangerous, and it should stop.