?
Oh, John Doe 2 (with some alterations.)
I've written a couple of comments over the last few days, but ended up erasing them all. I remember I used to really rant about stuff like this. I try not to do that any more. To that end, I try not to read the newspaper (apart from tech news in the business section of the Times) and I try not to pay attention to the "news" on the television. Still, I have to ask, at least rhetorically, how can we kill this guy when everybody agrees that the FBI violated the law by withholding documents? As far as I can tell, even the FBI admits to this. So he didn't have a fair trial, but we are going to kill him anyway? I'm against the death penalty in any situation, but come on! Everyone admits he didn't get a fair trial! WTF!
Note that although I am concerned about his individual case, I can't say I really have any sympathy for him as an individual. In fact, I can say I have no symapthy for him. But I'm very worried about the legal process which I occasionally think might be a largely fair system (or at least highly fair compared to other functioning alternatives.) But this is such a clear miscarriage of justice that I think it sets a very bad precedent.
O.K., I'm not going to say any more, but I had to put in something before this thing happens tomorrow. I am very sad for our country. Humans (especially those in power) are still just primates with very big egos. I think we can be more.
I guess they're getting him ready now. Mixed feelings when it comes down to it but in the end I favor a death penalty, not as deterrent, because it isn't, and maybe not the way we do it now but some way for us to express our basest selves, to express that we have limits to what we will tolerant in a society. I regret the death of all innocents, but they're probably aren't as many as we are led to believe, and McVeigh certainly isn't one of them. As for the trampling of his rights, yes, we should be outraged, and should speak out loudly, but to expect an unblundering Federal Government is probably expecting too much. This is still a great place to live, which is probably what Timothy McVeigh felt at one time, and then became disillusioned, and too angry, and acted inappropriately, but still, at least in his own mind, as a patriot.
No no no no good fucking Christ people.
This is some mother's child. I was not going to
desecrate silence over this but now
Jim Louis has gone & got me all sad
because I somehow must be able to tell him
we do not draw lines using some
mother's child. Ther's always gonna be
killing & we all might end up doing it
but that is not the same. Capital punishment
is reality TV war.
Salinger wrote something about how
Lincoln should have never made the
Gettysburg Address, he should have just
shook his fist in the air.
Jim Louis I'm serious as cancer you got
to reconsider & take back what you said for
the sake of the tree or you might meet me
someday & I will be very sad.
Frank, I apologize if I have offended you. I responded in full last night but the comment got eaten by the gods before I could post, and maybe for the best, it was a little out there. I should probably be more careful what I say. Your comments stimulated me on a lot of different fronts and so any full response would be rather long, perhaps a bit angry (but not at you), and rambling, and would possibly even include insulting remarks about Salinger, even though he has always been a favorite. Lucky for you I am a retired zen methodist mennonite christian or your including the words "fuck" and "Christ" in one sentence might have offended me. Good luck with your sadness, I never leave home without mine. Kick ass snake bite story, by the way.
kill everybody
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- tom moody 6-09-2001 3:50 pm
?
- jim 6-09-2001 4:00 pm [add a comment]
?
- bill 6-09-2001 9:44 pm [add a comment]
Oh, John Doe 2 (with some alterations.)
I've written a couple of comments over the last few days, but ended up erasing them all. I remember I used to really rant about stuff like this. I try not to do that any more. To that end, I try not to read the newspaper (apart from tech news in the business section of the Times) and I try not to pay attention to the "news" on the television. Still, I have to ask, at least rhetorically, how can we kill this guy when everybody agrees that the FBI violated the law by withholding documents? As far as I can tell, even the FBI admits to this. So he didn't have a fair trial, but we are going to kill him anyway? I'm against the death penalty in any situation, but come on! Everyone admits he didn't get a fair trial! WTF!
Note that although I am concerned about his individual case, I can't say I really have any sympathy for him as an individual. In fact, I can say I have no symapthy for him. But I'm very worried about the legal process which I occasionally think might be a largely fair system (or at least highly fair compared to other functioning alternatives.) But this is such a clear miscarriage of justice that I think it sets a very bad precedent.
O.K., I'm not going to say any more, but I had to put in something before this thing happens tomorrow. I am very sad for our country. Humans (especially those in power) are still just primates with very big egos. I think we can be more.
- jim 6-10-2001 6:45 pm [add a comment]
- Skinny 6-10-2001 11:53 pm [add a comment]
I guess they're getting him ready now. Mixed feelings when it comes down to it but in the end I favor a death penalty, not as deterrent, because it isn't, and maybe not the way we do it now but some way for us to express our basest selves, to express that we have limits to what we will tolerant in a society. I regret the death of all innocents, but they're probably aren't as many as we are led to believe, and McVeigh certainly isn't one of them. As for the trampling of his rights, yes, we should be outraged, and should speak out loudly, but to expect an unblundering Federal Government is probably expecting too much. This is still a great place to live, which is probably what Timothy McVeigh felt at one time, and then became disillusioned, and too angry, and acted inappropriately, but still, at least in his own mind, as a patriot.
- jimlouis 6-11-2001 3:58 pm [add a comment]
No no no no good fucking Christ people.
This is some mother's child. I was not going to
desecrate silence over this but now
Jim Louis has gone & got me all sad
because I somehow must be able to tell him
we do not draw lines using some
mother's child. Ther's always gonna be
killing & we all might end up doing it
but that is not the same. Capital punishment
is reality TV war.
Salinger wrote something about how
Lincoln should have never made the
Gettysburg Address, he should have just
shook his fist in the air.
Jim Louis I'm serious as cancer you got
to reconsider & take back what you said for
the sake of the tree or you might meet me
someday & I will be very sad.
- frank 6-12-2001 7:44 am [add a comment]
Frank, I apologize if I have offended you. I responded in full last night but the comment got eaten by the gods before I could post, and maybe for the best, it was a little out there. I should probably be more careful what I say. Your comments stimulated me on a lot of different fronts and so any full response would be rather long, perhaps a bit angry (but not at you), and rambling, and would possibly even include insulting remarks about Salinger, even though he has always been a favorite. Lucky for you I am a retired zen methodist mennonite christian or your including the words "fuck" and "Christ" in one sentence might have offended me. Good luck with your sadness, I never leave home without mine. Kick ass snake bite story, by the way.
- jimlouis 6-14-2001 1:12 am [add a comment]
I was bitten by what we refered to in Dallas as an asp in second grade which stung somewhat and later on at 15 in China Springs out side of Waco by a scorpion that was chillin' in a work glove I put on (that hurt alot but was vision free). Yes super great snake story Frank.I'm agin' the death penalty but interested by the various possitions represented here.
- bill 6-14-2001 2:47 am [add a comment]
- frank 6-14-2001 9:50 pm [add a comment]
Yeah man, the Popeye's and Church's are just around the corner and the Bud is almost always closer than that, anytime, feel free. And yeah, I think ethnography is germane to the subject because before I got here, in '94, I'm not sure what my stance on the death penalty was but I'm pretty sure my ideas regarding crime and punishment were nowhere near as draconian as they are today. I truly appreciate your spoken resistance to my stance as I am not very much challenged, intellectually at least, in my day to day life here. Now to further break your heart I seem to be wanting to say more...and I guess I will.
So speaking of ethnography, it is the very specific human culture here in the heart of New Orleans that has changed my life, made me edgy, sad, despondent, not suicidal but something akin to it, and also as rewarded, happy, and fullfilled as I think I am ever likely to be (however, often I feel the fullfillment is just a self preservation device). I haven't done every recreational/inspirational drug known to man but I've experience a good few, and abused a few less than that, and nothing has come close to the mind altering experiences I have become privy to as an observer and occasional participant in the goings on of the local downtrodden. Which means nothing. Until the "downtrodden" forbid you to consider them nameless, and become fixtures in your life, and force you to call them by name, jesus, I have to learn twenty new names a year, me, a virtual hermit, and the thing is at some point--I fell in love: with these armies of inner city children who are surviving in a very difficult situation; and we should not be fooled by the clean clothes and new Nikes they wear. They are dirty, because there is a geographical surrounding majority that considers them, regardless of disposition--"niggers, fuckin' niggers, low class niggers, porch monkies," and worse (imagine?) and there are local communities that brag--"we don't allow no niggers 'round here."
Now the subject changes to failure which is a theme I am happy to explore as it seems, as much as any single facet of human life, to be a thing that ties us all together.
On the porch of this house at Dumaine in the Sixth Ward of New Orleans there is frequently, but not always, a gathering of niggers. This is what the children call themselves. The role models, also allowed on the porch, with certain conditions, are your basic run of the mill drug dealing, occasionally murderous inner city gangsters. They will play cards and dominoes and will invariably refer to each other as "nigger" or "punk ass bitch" or some equally harmless term. Afterall, stick and stones...right?
The schools these children attend ( I mean specifically and am not referring to every inner city school in New Orleans) are the worst in the city, ranking--according to standarized tests--so far below average it is almost phenomenal. I might even brag these children are some of the most poorly educated in any so called "First World" country on the planet.
The murder rate in '94 was a peak and per capitally speaking was twenty times that of New York City. The city hired a new chief who promised--and delivered--to cut that number in half, and that's where we are now, for the last few years. So only ten times that of NYC. It's only about 200 humans a year, that's less than died at the Federal building in OK. Get it? That's my bad joke for the day. "Its only about 200 humans a year"
Who's killing whom you might ask? Well Frank, the niggers are killing each other. On a rare occasion a few years back where in this small town of less that 500,000 there were 14 murders in one week and three of those murdered were white people, the local populus went berserk and marched on City Hall. I was there. It was fun.
On an average bad week mostly during dog days of summer when tempers are short and there are eight or nine or ten or twelve murders and it's just the nigger's killing each other, nobody marches. We all know it's just the gangsters culling.
When the local paper publishes school by school test results and the numbers--on the hundred scale--are in the twenties, nobody marches. Nobody goes berserk.
That's all I can stand to write about failure at this time.
So given this context who do I want to kill? How can I support a death penalty? I want to be wrong, Frank, but I'm feeling like these societies we have allowed to grow like cancer are harboring certain individuals who are evil incarnate. Possible? I want them to be killed, culled, like wheat from the chaff. I hate to express this but that's the point, so does everyone, and we allow shit to fester until it becomes our norm and that is unacceptable. I'm not doing anything worthwhile here. All my effort is worthless: I pat a kid on the shoulder, smile at another, chastise one, encourage his brother. My efforts are weak. My ex performs a hundred times the effort and I'm not even sure about her results. The effort to help the ones who clearly want help is often so tremendous, and difficult, and lacking clear reward, that I can see why there aren't armies of prosperous Americans offering to help. It isn't fun.
Once there was a neighborhood activist who went too far, perhaps in frustration, and chastised the wrong kid. The kid sprayed him with talking bullets that spoke plainly--"Thanks for the effort motherfucker."
I just want things to be better than this, Frank, I don't want to be talking about the death penalty. Thanks for listening.
- jimlouis 6-15-2001 2:41 am [add a comment]
your efforts are most certainly not worthless, my friend. all you do, day in day out, a(e?)ffects everyone you come into contact with, all your neighbors and those you cross paths with in your daily doings. you change the lives of many, though you may never ever see how it all plays out. certainly your friends here on the tree are included in that lot. i am always most especially pleased to see the red letters next to nola. been reading ellen gilchrist lately - stories from the south - and have gotten fond of thinking of myself as an old woman living in the heat of southern summers, sitting under the shade of my front porch and the trees, sipping ice tea. (even though mike says he will never ever ever ever live in the south no matter what.) ok, so back to my ipa and the yankee game. cheers.
- linda 6-15-2001 5:00 am [add a comment]
- frank 6-15-2001 6:08 pm [add a comment]
Thank you Linda, I am responding under Frank's blank comment because the spacing was such that while I read your words I thought they were Frank's so when he/you said ya'll were reading Ellen Gilchrist I thought ok that's good, and then when ya'll, and I'm thinking Frank, said he liked to think of himself as an old woman living in the heat of southern summers...well, I wasn't shocked or anything, I mean to each their own, and I'm sure Frank would make a perfectly fine southern lady, er, uh, I mean that in the best way Frank, and if anything I would hope my blathering would encourage us to express ourselves freely without (too much) fear of ridicule or scorn and uh well I guess I'm laughing a little now so...thanks to linda and frank. Also, I would think Mike's refusal to live in the south would be just further proof of his wisdom, and upstandingness.
- jimlouis 6-15-2001 9:45 pm [add a comment]
i love the south, just like it more out west, money is always the concern, in nyc i'm worth something, as sick as it is i fear giving (risking) it up, plus i'm opening the first hash bar in brooklyn in 2012, small hotel called Indole will follow....
- Skinny 6-15-2001 11:27 pm [add a comment]
kill everybody
- anonymous (guest) 3-01-2005 3:06 am [add a comment]