September 07, 2013
Saturday

Exactly what is your point, Laura Plenert? You refer to the murder of an Australian student athlete in Oklahoma, a case of which I am quite aware, as somehow racially motivated. All in fact you are doing when you do that is parrot the nonsensical and racist views of Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge, who are the only individuals stupid enough and corrupt enough to attempt to use this case as a racial counterpoint to the Trayvon Martin case. While you are doing a fine job of parroting the views of your lords and masters, the facts of the case are quite a bit more problematical in that regard. How exactly do you get racial motivations out of this crime when one of the suspects is black, one is half-black and half-white, and the third is all white?

This was a thrill killing by a bunch of punks who just randomly chose their victim. The novelty of the crime, and that is why it has received widespread reporting, is that a foreign student athlete has become the victim of the random and insane American gun culture, and that is how it is being played in Australia. You seem to be very afraid of black people, Laura Plenert.

It happens that I have been down here in San Antonio the past several weeks trying to save the life of an alcoholic friend, a matter of obligation that is otherwise a dubious and probably futile project. So your Oklahoma crime occurred just a few hours up the road from here, and I can assure you it has been much discussed by the media here the past several weeks. And in the early stages there actually was some question about racial motivation by the media, but the media down here is not Rush Limbaugh, et. al, and a lot of them happen to have black or brown faces; so it was looked at and discarded by the cops, the prosecution, and by the media. Thrill killers, the worst type of killer, kill for no reason at all. Once tried and found guilty hang ‘em high in the public square, and I will be happy to pull the lever or spook the horses. I have reservations about the death penalty, but not for this type of creep.

A little bit of independent thought on your part might have led you to using the 88-year old WW2 veteran, murdered recently in Spokane, as your example. Here there are two suspects, one of whom may be part-white, but there is no all-white suspect in this case; so this case is a much better fit for the insipid montage of racial motivation that you are trying to create. These two punks beat an old man to death with flashlights, but their stated motivation is that the old man was a crack dealer. Let us for the briefest moment assume this is true; that does not justify in any way beating an old man to death.

It might surprise you, but there are thrill killers in Ketchikan, too. Every time they dredge the harbors here they find human remains, and not all of those guys fell in the water by themselves. Beating up drunk, itinerant fishermen has been a tradition around here for a long damned time, and sometimes the victims are killed. I caught two of them in action back in 1989 or 1990 when I was living across the street from the old library/museum. They had already broken both legs of their victim, and were going to town on his ribcage, etc., all while he was lying there helpless in the middle of the street. I was in my bathrobe, but nonetheless suggested to the punk who was pirouetting through the air with his high karate moves that maybe taking on someone who was vertical and sober might offer more of a challenge. I suppose I saved that guy’s life by what I did, but until this moment I really never have thought about that.

I lured this rotten little prick to me with my left hand, just invited him to keep on coming. And onward he came, looking for some more fun. He was two steps, no more than four feet from the doorway to hell, when finally he figured out that maybe it was just too easy; and he ran away. Two more steps and he would have been in my house, his soul my conditional and very temporary property. I helped that poor man out of the street, got the cops and an ambulance; then tried to help the cops find those two sickos, but they got away. Neither was black or Filipino; the one in the background might have been an Indian; but the leader was a white boy.

Leopold and Loeb were white. Down here in San Antonio on the other hand there are drive-by shootings and random shootings and stabbings all the time, an average of at least four murders and three dozen shootings or stabbings a week. It would not surprise me for a moment that 70% to 80% of all these crimes are perpetrated by black people or brown people, but that is no reason to fear brown people or black people. About 75% of San Antonio’s population is brown or black, so it is statistically consistent that most of these crimes would be committed by people of these ethnic backgrounds. Crime in big cities is magnified by the reporting, but statistically since 1850 rural crime rates have generally been higher than urban crime rates.

Thrill killers come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, Laura Plenert, and no one requires any racial motivation to try them, find them guilty, and, hopefully, hang them for their crimes. There is no possible atonement for killing another human being for pleasure. In cases like the Jasper, Texas, murder several years ago where racism was definitely a motive for the crime, additional charges are appropriate, but ultimately making sure they hang is all that matters.

But somehow for you race is all that matters. And that means you have an agenda. I know what your agenda is. You listen to nothing but extreme right wing propaganda; you are effectively an American fascist, who is not merely racially intolerant. You are generally intolerant of everyone who disagrees with you, and as a member of the extreme right wing you want to destroy them. Got that.

Likewise with you, Duane Hill. If you don’t want to be called a racist, don’t be a racist. Don’t see race where race does not exist, or is in fact not a consequential matter or condition. Your objections to being called a racist are disingenuous and dull. You wrote no fewer than four missives that oozed racism. If in fact you are either so ignorant or so insensitive about the magnitude of your racism, that does not for a moment make it better; thus your denials are not just ordinarily pathetic, but extremely so.

Nor am I in the least surprised you don’t know who Frank Taaffe is. Called by his now all dead children, “The worst father in the history of the world,” this particular right wing loudmouth has an extensive criminal record, and is in fact the primary source for most of the drivel that you, Duane Hill, are spouting. Your commentary is oafish, so I am just going to hoist you on your own petard and leave you there.

A slimy wannabe cop, who couldn’t even pass the psychological exam (how surprising!), dressed in ordinary, civilian garb decided one evening down Florida way to go prowling in his vehicle with a gun in his pocket. His excuse, that he was conducting a neighborhood watch. In time he comes across a single black individual walking down a sidewalk while talking on a cell phone. To him this is suspicious behavior. Why? Because the individual walking down the sidewalk is black, and because, we are led to believe, there have been recent burglaries in the area all beyond doubt conducted by black people, despite any evidence supporting such an assertion.

Now at this point in time all we have is George Zimmerman witnessing a black kid walking down the sidewalk talking on his cell phone with nothing but skittles and iced tea in his pockets. But by the time you are finished with this moment the kid is “the murderous thug Trayvon Martin,” “Was a 17 year old thug in training.” “Being a member of the Crips street gang” he had to be out casing houses that he was planning to rob. “To say that GZ should never have left his car is to say that GZ should have known that Trayvon Martin was a murderous sociopath who would try to murder him for spying on TM’s looking for houses to rob.” Those are your words, Duane Hill. You have no evidence that any of that is true; Trayvon Martin was a 17-year old kid walking down a sidewalk. You just get a bunch of spew started by Frank Taaffe off the internet, and parrot it.

Zimmerman then calls the cops to report a suspicious individual in the neighborhood. What makes him suspicious, the dispatcher essentially asks. He’s here, he’s black, and there have been burglaries in the neighborhood recently. That was the primary basis for Zimmerman’s suspicion and his call. The dispatcher then tells Zimmerman to stay in his vehicle, and cops would be there soon. It is at this point under his breath on the police tape that he refers to his victim as that “f**king coon,” and I have heard the un-doctored recording several times over. That is what George Zimmerman said.

Your words, Duane Hill: “Criticism aimed at George Zimmerman is based on GZ not profiling or stereotyping Trayvon Martin as being the depraved and violent criminal he proved to be.” Up to this point in the event everything that George Zimmerman did was based on his profiling and stereotyping the kid as here, black, and probably, therefore and for no other obvious reason at that point in time, a burglar on the prowl. Whether a black kid, a brown kid, or a white kid walking down the sidewalk talking on a cell phone, I would not assume thereby that they were in any sense suspicious. But George Zimmerman did; to him Trayvon Martin was a “f**king coon,” so he had to be bad.

Those are almost the last words George Zimmerman said before he confronted an unarmed 17-year old kid who less than five minutes later was dead. This slimy little creep shot an unarmed kid to death, and you want to make a hero out of him. His sole motivation for confronting Trayvon Martin was racially based; in this twit’s mind being black was the equivalent of being bad; and you are enough of a dumb ass to defend him.

Since when in this country do we justify little turds like George Zimmerman getting out of a vehicle, accosting an unarmed teen-ager (especially after being told by the cops specifically not to do so), and then shooting him dead? “There is no tragedy that an animal got removed.” Again your words, Duane Hill. What makes a 17-year old boy walking down a street an animal in your eyes? Every teen-ager I have ever known is a mess in some way; goes with the territory; but somehow you and the sickos that you parrot have to vilify this poor dead kid into a monster he never was.

So Mom and Dad get the message. Don’t just send your kid off with a cell phone in his or her pocket; make sure they are also humping one giant hog leg, with specific instructions to shoot full of holes anyone not in police uniform who stops them in their passage and demands to know what they are doing here; for if so, they are being set up by a Zimmerman wannabe looking for an excuse to shoot a teen-ager full of holes using these goddamned stand your ground laws. So teach them to stand their ground first.

Yes, Duane Hill, in my opinion you are a racist; about the worst I have heard from recently. And you are damned by your own words.

George Zimmerman had no right whatsoever to accost that kid. He then threatened him and shot him. If Trayvon Martin sought in some way to defend himself, how is it that he is not permitted to stand his ground and protect himself from this strange sicko fruitcake coming out of nowhere to hassle him? Because he is black? Because he is a possibly troubled teen-ager? Because this slimy little creep George Zimmerman is your hero for doing something you are afraid to do, i.e. randomly wandering around shooting to death black teen-agers?

This event would not have occurred at all had not Zimmerman precipitated it, and an unarmed kid ended up shot dead. Some hero. A wannabe little cop cretin crawling around in the dark with a gun; a racist freak who called his victim a “f**king coon” moments before he shot him dead.

Rudy, you know I don’t generally even bother to respond to moronic commentary like your nonsense, but you have known me a long time, and you know how to spell my name. I would, furthermore, be more circumspect in your criticism of anyone, were I you, particularly about spelling and historical matters given that you are clueless about both subjects.

To start with there is a well-known right wing, reactionary fringe group known as the Ku Klux Klan that has been operational in this country since the 1860s; it is today generally confined to southern states, but sympathizers are found everywhere in this country. I am not familiar with any entity called the “Klu Klux Klan.”

In 1963 a well-known civil rights worker named Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway; I am not familiar with any “Edgar Evers.”

In 1964 three young civil rights workers disappeared in Mississippi, and their murdered bodies were later found by the FBI in a river dyke. Their names were Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. I remember the case very vividly. I was living in Mississippi then, and it happened about an hour-and-a-half up the road; if that. I was having plenty of issues with racist pricks myself at the time, and I was only 14 years old.

There were no four college students who disappeared, Rudy. It was three. You are probably thinking about the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing, which I am sure you can try to modernize into a non-racist event, too.

One of the bigger lies you are trying to perpetrate is this notion that liberal Democrats are responsible for racism, the KKK, etc. In the 19th century and throughout a good part of the 20th century the Democratic party was quite a different thing than it is today. Democrats were not the liberals in the 19th century; they were conservatives; and the southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) were generally Democrats in name only because they refused to be members of the “Black” Republican Party.

All that changed starting in 1948 when the Democrats began the process of repudiating racism, concluded by LBJ in 1965 and 1966. I don’t give a damned, Rudy, what partisan jerk advanced the cause of civil rights in this country; I am just happy that he or she did. But you freaks are constantly wanting to call black white, then try to compel the rest of us to believe your crap is true.

Black people almost exclusively and Hispanics, now to the 70th to 75th percentile, vote for Democrats, not because they are racists, but because they are not. White Southerners by contrast are predominantly racist; haven’t really managed to hide it very well these past 50 years; and the GOP’s “Southern Strategy” has insured they are all Republicans. Maybe you haven’t any experience of the Deep South,

Rudy, but I am half-Southern and know the area well. I still change dialect and inflection county by county basically automatically; so I hear it all. They make the mistake of thinking I am one of them.

Otherwise, I think you would have done better with a good liberal education, something you clearly lack. I am thus reminded of Schopenhauer who simply noted that the dull are forever blind to that which a higher intellect can routinely see. Oh well.

David G. Hanger
Ketchikan, Alaska

Representations of fact and opinions in letters are solely those of the author.
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