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Dead bodies and vultures
Kansas City, Aug 1, 2012 - The culture of the scavengers
Aurora/Colorado ... a man comes into a movie theater and starts to shoot. In the end, 12 people are dead and 58 wounded. The shooter is later caught in a parking lot behind the theater. And even later, police will find out, he had rigged his apartment and set a timer to start loud music at midnight, short before he started firing at the hapless movie audience.
It's a tragedy and it's a human tragedy. There are simply no words, to describe the grief, the pain of the survivors and of the families of the victims. And, as often with that kind of tragedy, there is also anger, an anger directed at the perpetrator of that crime. Of course, this is all natural.
But then, in cases like this, many levels of heated discussions, pop up out of the nothing. For example the TV experts. Fine, sometimes experts are needed to explain complex mechanisms in things that go on and in a case, that is so obviously based on the psychopathology of James Holmes, those experts have to be psychologists. However, "experts" ignoring the known facts, appear to me always more as attention craving publicity hogs than acutall as "experts". Lets see, what we have here: Unlike the usual school shooter, Homes had an exit strategy. He didn't commit suicide, he didn't die in a hail of bullets in a shootout with the police, he tried to escape! So, whatever he wanted to achieve with his murderous spree, he also wanted to enjoy the result in the aftermath. And he rigged his apartment, he even gave hints in the weeks before in emails and in contacts with his psychiatrist. He prepared. He prepared for moths. There is no real need to prove premeditation, Holmes did that for us. And putting all of this together, this places him rather in the range of a psychopath than that of a desperate guy taking revenge for years of bullying or just seeing no way out. Jack Homes did, what he did, for one reason: To become infamous. It's the classic fantasy of a narcissistic psychopath (and yes, there are also other types of psychpaths out there). The media and the trial will give him, what he craves so badly. Holmes won.
But that is only one level of discussion that pops up in such acase. So, what will be the next?

James Holmes, the Aurora shooter

Now, the next one will be politics. The laws of nature dictate, where are dead bodies, there will be scavengers, vultures. They can't resist. Take an Ed Perlmutter trying to make political profit from the tragedy by claiming, this proves Obamacare is needed. Regardless, what opinion one has about the "Affordable Health Care Act", but running politics over the dead bodies of innocent victims is disgusting, Mr. Perlmutter! Maybe a vulture can't feel that, but people can!
And of course, Ed Perlmutter is not the only one. As usual, at least since Jared Loughner shot down innocents in Arizona, the weapon ban faction pops up. There is no compromise, we have to ban all weapons to make sure, only the bad guys like a Holmes and a Loughner have weapons ... oh wait! Something about that idea sounds wrong. The true factor playing a role is, what weapons and whether they are in the hands of people with deep rooted mental problems. Reople like Loughner or Holmes. We have to find a way to deal with the problem in reality, not just in some ideological lalaland. But that is not the problem of politicians. Politicians don't live in reality anymore. For them, it's all about aggrandizing themselves, get some publicity whenever they can and whether it is over the bodies of dead people.
There will be other levels of action, that will pop up. At the moment, James Holmes has a public attorney. That won't stay that way. We know, Judy Clarke is still busy playing the system in the case of Jared Loughner. So maybe, with
some luck, the court in Colorado will be spared of her presence and even more important, her games. So, what about Baez, Casey Anthony's lawyer? Or another big shot activist who wants to add another feather to his cap? There will be one, that's as certain as the amen in a church. The smell of publicity is too tempting, the vultures can't resist. They will come!
So, in the end, the vultures will get what they want. Public attention. Lawyers, politicians and even James Holmes, will get public attention, political profile gain and more of a reputation. What if James Holmes really gets the death penalty? It will take decades of appeals, protests of anti-death-penalty advocates, the picture will change when lawyers employ professional sock-puppets in the internet and use social media to change the mood about their client (as it happened in the Casey Anthony case). James Holmes will not be executed, whether he gets the death penalty or not. That's the reality.
What about the victims? What about their families? Now, everybody speaks about them, now, every reporter tries to squeeze the last remains of tears out of them to spice up their stories. But in just some weeks, the media's attention span will be over. We saw it in the Loughner case. Nobody, except for the families, remembers anymore the name of the 9 year old girl anymore, Jared Loughner shot. Of course, everyone remembers Gabrielle Gifford. And the more time passes, the fewer will remember the names of those shot in Aurora, but everyone will know the names of the vultures.
And by the way, the name of the little girl Jared Loughner shot, was Christine Green and she was born on 9/11.

PB
... back
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Copyright if not otherwise mentioned Peter and Diane Brendt 2010-. All copies, also in parts, demand the written consent of the copyright holders