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January 12, 2011

Unrepentant Sin Coarsens Discourse and Conduct

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Some have commented that Jared Lee Loughner's shooting spree in an alcove outside of a Safeway Supermarket in the La Toscana Village section of Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, January 8, 2011, that killed six people dead and fourteen others injured, including the attacker's principal target, United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), was indeed the work of one very disturbed man, Jared Lee Loughner, and that that is as far as the matter goes. Well, this is partly correct, up to a point.

Patrick Joseph Buchanan, for example, noted that there was no effort in the aftermath of Joseph Zangara's attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933, that wound up killing Chicago, Illinois, Mayor Anton Cermak and wounding four others was not laid at the feet of Republicans. The "blame game," Mr. Buchanan, writes, began after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, November 22, 1963:

That came three decades later, when conservatives were charged with having "created the atmosphere" in which JFK was assassinated.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist who had defected to Russia and a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, who had only recently arrived in Texas. Yet moral culpability for what he did was laid at the door of the city of Dallas and the rising American Right.

Had not, the press asked, Adlai Stevenson been lately jostled by a crowd in Dallas? Had not LBJ and Lady Bird been verbally abused in the lobby of a Dallas hotel in 1960? Was Dallas not a hothouse of the right?

The same smear tactic was employed when Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, among them 19 children. Right-wing radio and its anti-government rhetoric, it was said, created the atmosphere that made it easier for McVeigh to feel justified in blowing up a federal building. (Poisonous Politics.)

 

The "blame game" has now become a standard tool in the propaganda arsenal used by the naturalists of the false opposite of the "left." That Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, himself a leftist and a close friend of Representative Giffords, persisted in his irresponsible efforts to blame the naturalist of the false opposite of the "right" for having inflamed or incited the nihilistic Jared Lee Loughner to commit the crimes that he did four days ago now is quite a reminder to us that our prevailing culture of pluralism and the unrepentant sin that it breeds has given rise to such an atmosphere of illogic and emotionalism that a law enforcement official who is supposedly trained to react with care and circumspection believes that it his is duty to mouth opinions for public consumption immediately after a public tragedy.

The Arizona Republic newspaper editorialized on Sheriff Dupnik's unsolicited and unfounded editorializing in the immediate aftermath of such a horrific set of  crimes:

The world's eyes, once again, focused on Arizona for the worst of reasons. And Dupnik stood before the cameras interpreting the shootings as politically motivated, despite an increasing weight of evidence depicting the shooting suspect, Jared Loughner, as a mentally ill young man who rambled incoherently about pervasive bad grammar and other apolitical obsessions. Even Dupnik has observed that Loughner had made death threats against others and that they had been investigated by police.

Still, Dupnik used the opportunities to blame Arizona's lax, new gun laws and, again, the angry "rhetoric" of talk radio. The shootings were spurred, he suggested, by "the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates."

Dupnik took up his cause again on Monday. And, in response, we have to say at last . . . enough. Enough attacks, sheriff. Enough vitriol. It is well past time for the sheriff of Pima County to get a grip on his emotions and remember his duty.

With each passing hour, we learn more about the 22-year-old suspect. And everything we learn adds to the profile of a deeply troubled young man detached from reality. There is nothing to date that suggests any partisan motivation for his crimes, whether right-wing or left.

Dupnik needs to recall that he is elected to be a lawman. With each additional comment, the Democratic sheriff of Pima County is revealing his agenda as partisan, and, as such, every bit as recklessly antagonistic as the talk-show hosts and politicians he chooses to decry. (Enough Attacks and Vitriol, Sheriff. Do Your Duty.)

 

As an editorial in the Boston Herald noted about the "blame game" being played by the "left" in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona, massacre:

What hideous nonsense - not to mention ignorance. Who would be blamed if the demented mind of this gun-toting pothead had fixated on a Republican member of Congress? Where would the fault lie then?  (Pundits Playing Blame Game Look Ignorant.)

 

Ah, the "blame" would be on the Republicans in such a scenario because they incited a man to such hatred of them that he had to kill one or more of them. That's how the "left" plays the "blame game."

How were the wanton killers during the "South Central Riots" from April 29, 1992, to May 4, 1992, in Los Angeles, California, defended by some in the "mainstream media"? "Black rage," that's how, the same kind of defense that was actually used by attorneys William Kunstler, who gained fame defending the Chicago Seven, and Ron Kuby as they represented Long Island Rail Road shooter Colin Ferguson from March 20, 1994 to December 10, 1994 until he fired them, insisting that he, Ferguson, was not crazy and that he was not guilty of killing six people and wounding nineteen people on a Long Island Rail Road train as it pulled into the Merillon Avenue Station in Garden City Park, New York, on Tuesday, December 7, 1993. Interestingly, Ferguson rejected the "black rage" defense that Kunstler and Kuby tried to use to defend him. Such an ideologically-based defense was a twist of the "Twinkie defense" that has become part of our popular culture even though the psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Blinder, who evaluated the man who killed San Francisco, California, Mayor George Moscone and City Councilman Harvey Milk, Dan White, said that "twinkies" and other junk food were signs of Dan White's depressed state but not had caused him to plot to kill Moscone and Milk.

Playing the "blame game" for ideological reasons, however, is nothing new even in the recent history of the United States of America.

Remember Montgomery County, Maryland, Sheriff Charles Moose? Sure, most of you must remember this pathetic figure who milked his time in front of microphones during the Beltway Sniper shooting spree that took place between October 2, 2002, and October 24, 2002. He believed that that "profile" developed by "experts" in criminal psychology would lead to the arrest of a suspect who was suffering from what was termed "the angry white male syndrome." John Allen Muhammad and his young accomplice, Lee Malvo, were able to pass through police checkpoints ten times in the three weeks of the shooting spree as agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state and local police agencies were looking for such a suspect who fit this fanciful description. Columnist Michele Malkin commented on this in March of 2003 when Chief Moose, still the Sheriff of Montgomery County, was violating his department's ethics by hawking a book to publishers about a crime he investigated while still employed in law enforcement:

Moose's highly sought after wisdom is, of course, derived from his gross bungling of last fall's sniper attacks by accused killers John Muhammad and Lee Malvo. But never mind his Keystone Cop hunt for the wrong vehicle while the snipers' Chevy Caprice (spotted by several witnesses and stopped at least 10 times for license plate checks during the shooting spree) got away. Pay no heed to his oversight of nonsensical road blocks, botched hotline operations, and the deadly politically correct assumption that the snipers were crazed white militants in a non-existent white box truck.

Yes, despite these fatal missteps, gushing and gullible audiences outside Maryland are warmly welcoming Chief Moose as a spotless role model. A local ethics investigation into his side efforts to capitalize on the brutal slayings, such as the for-profit crisis management and conflict resolution consulting firm he formed with his wife just six weeks after the "Beltway" sniper saga ended, will likely do little to slow the jet-setting Moose's pace. (Don't Ask Chief Moose; for a review of the "profile" that the "experts" had devised during the midst of the Beltway Sniper shooting spree, see Coloring the Sniper News.)

 

People died because of what Miss Malkin termed "the deadly politically correct assumption" that Chief Charles Moose, who was permitted to resign his position rather than face departmental sanctions for his efforts to capitalize on the shooting spree, made as he relied upon the crackpot criminal psychologists who would never admit that a black Muslim should never be considered as a suspect in the shootings. What did this matter to Chief Moose? Not much. He had his own ideological agenda to pursue and bank account to start padding with dollars from book sales and speaking engagements. No circumspection there.

Although the column written by Patrick Buchanan that was posted yesterday, Tuesday, January 10, 2011, certainly did demonstrate the extent of the "blame game" played by the "left" in the United States of America. There is yet another aspect to this tragedy that deserves a brief bit of comment, though.

It is becoming clear to objective reporters and observers that Jared Lee Loughner is a very disturbed young man who, according to a friend, had embraced nihilism (see Police Say They Visited Tucson Suspect’s Home Before Attack). A good look at that young man's mug shot, taken a short while after his committed his terrible crimes on Saturday, January 8, 2011, indicates that he is quite pleased with himself. He sported a smirk on his face as he is basking in the notoriety and publicity that he has gained. This is an aspect of the tragedy that few in the secular media are exploring, which is why I want to do so for the twelve (all right, all right, maybe fifteen or twenty) readers of this website.

While there have always been "lone wolf" assassins and other criminals, including some, such as Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who boasted of their crimes ("Sic semper tyrannous!") after having committed them, and others, such as Joseph Zangara, the man who shot at Franklin Roosevelt but killed Anton Cermak, who remained defiant to the point of their executions (Zangara's last words were "Push the button!" after he was strapped into the electric chair at the Florida State Penitentiary in Raiford,Florida, on March 20, 1933), Jared Lee Loughner, though obviously mentally disturbed, is one of many such disturbed people roaming the streets of the United States of America.

There has never been a circumstance in the history of the United States of America which has been noted for an outbreak of shootings in work places and schools and colleges and universities and churches. (Perhaps it is not such a bad thing that I can't find employment again as a college professor of political science as some student upset with my "fanaticism" might come to a classroom ready to aim and fire at me.) This is a new development, and it is one that, as noted yesterday in All Falls Apart Absent Christ the King, is the result of the rise of a neo-barbarism caused by the prevalence of unrepentant sin in the world, which coarsens both discourse and conduct.

Think about this, if you would be so kind.

Many young people, especially in their teens and twenties, lack even simple Masonic decency on the natural level. They cannot communicate intelligibly in complete sentences, preferring to use slang or to grunt or groan or shrug their shoulders when asked a question. Such people rarely acknowledge the humanity of others as they do not see in them an immortal soul with the Divine impress.

Many of these younger people are so afflicted barely speak to you when you say hello them as they are staffing a cash register or working in the aisle of a supermarket or other retail outlet as you attempt to ask a question or simply to say "excuse me" or "hello." Some of these younger people who work at fast-food restaurants rarely "welcome" you any more. Some just stare at you, being startled when you greet them pleasantly and with politeness (and my own parents, even though they were not most believing of Catholics, taught their two sons to do in the 1950s). One is likely to receive a puzzling "no problem" when you thank them after making a purchase, evidently having never heard of the phrase "you're welcome."

This sense of total self-asorption, fostered by electronic devices and video games and bread and circuses that can lead the young to live lives of fantasy and isolation, is observable on our roadways and highways as young drivers think nothing of violating laws and endangering the lives of countless others, getting very angry when they don't get their way.

To wit, a student who attended the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University (not of my own students) was enraged that I would not let him drive his car ahead of mine on New York State Route 107 on Monday in Holy Week, April 17, 2000,  after I had let the drivers of two other automobiles proceed ahead of me. Two was, I believed, a nice, polite gesture. Not to enraged young man, who stopped his car ahead and mine, got out of his car and started to pound on the window of the driver's door of my soon-to-be retired 1995 Saturn station wagon and kicked the door itself as he screamed, "I'm going to (expletive delete) kill you." Realizing, I suppose, that he would be late for class, he stomped away, enraged by what had happened.

When I reported this to the local police in whose jurisdiction the event took place, the officer taking my report said, "Well, he probably didn't mean that he would kill you." I said to the officer, "So, Officer, we are now supposed to accept that having say one say that they are going to kill you is something along the lines of 'Give me a drink of water,' just a 'casual' remark that means nothing? The officer did not quite know how to respond (nor did he known how to spell the word "professor" when noting my occupation, asking me if the word had one "f's" or two). People have been killed for far less in recent decades, which is why I finally broke down after that incident and get my first cellular phone, which I did that very afternoon.

As noted yesterday in All Falls Apart Absent Christ the King, a world awash in unrepentant sins becomes a world of wanton violence and mayhem where people who are clueless about First and Last Things become immersed in such a sea of bitter self-absorption that the devil is given free rein over them, if not actually invited to take possession of them and their thoughts and actions. And, to once quote from the thirty-seventh President of the United States of America, "make no mistake about it," the devil is having quite a field day in annihilating the souls of so many people of all ages today, including the young, to use them as instruments to annihilate the physical and spiritual lives of others for their "fifteen minutes of fame" in return. The devil is also seeing to it that the forty-fourth President of the United States of America can use the Tucson massacre to his own advantage so that he can have his own "Oklahoma City memorial" moment during which the forty-second President of the United States of America started his road to re-election in 1996 after the disastrous results of the 1994 Congressional midterm elections. Sound familiar?

Men who live in nations that permit the daily slaughter of the preborn under cover of the civil law and who are increasingly desensitized to attacks on the chronically or terminally ill in hospitals and hospices will wind up destroying themselves so completely that invaders from without will be able to make easy pickings of them when they consider their time to do so has come. Oh, in case you missed it, officials in the Department of Defense believe that the Communist thugs who run North Korea as a prison state are within five years of being able to launch missiles that could reach the west coast of this country (Gates Warns of North Korea Missile Threat to U.S.), a claim that, given the hyperbole prior to the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 1993, may or may not be true. What is incontestably true, however, is that the Chicoms have a new stealth bomber that has got American military planners and intelligence officials quite concerned (see Chinese Stealth Fighter Makes First Test Flight). "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6: 23).

As we continue to pray for the deceased victims of the Tucson massacre and for their grieving families, praying also for the full and expeditious recovery of those wounded, we must pray also for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the conversion of this nation and every nation to the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Remember this and remember it well: Catholicism is but the one and only foundation of personal and social order:

Here we have, founded by Catholics, an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Anyone who disagrees with Pope Saint Pius X's statement of pure objective truth is worse than a fool as he believes in the madness advanced by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who continues to propagate the egregious falsehood that the world's "religions" can all join together to curb violence in the world. As the hour is very late, however, that particular subject cannot be revisited until tomorrow, the Octave Day of the Feast of the Epiphany, Thursday, January 12, 2011.

Let us continue praying our Rosaries and making our acts of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, begging her to help us always to remain in a state of Sanctifying Grace as we are shielded by her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel and signed with the only means of true civil liberty, the sign of the Holy Cross Itself.


 

 

 

 

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

 

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints





© Copyright 2011, Thomas A. Droleskey. All rights reserved.