A Lot of Political Derangement Going On Out There

Disturbed anti-war protester can't find soldier, kills civilian with axe instead

A U.S. citizen has confessed to using an axe to kill a Dutch student after failing to find a soldier to attack, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The suspect, Carlos Hartmann, 41, of Tecumseh, Mich., has confessed to the Sept. 8 killing on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal, defence lawyer Peter Gremmen said.

Gremmen said Hartmann wanted to punish the Netherlands for its support of the war in Iraq.

Hartmann appeared before a judge Tuesday and was ordered held for another two weeks for investigation.

"He hates soldiers, and says that the army kills people, so it would be legitimate if he were also to kill someone . . . from the American military - or from its NATO allies," Gremmen said in a telephone interview.

When he failed to find a soldier at the Roosendaal train station, "he got such a crazy, disturbed idea that he killed a civilian," Gremmen said.

It's worrisome that Gremmen parses and distinguishes between levels of crazy -- it's crazy and disturbed that this guy might kill a civilian having been unable to locate a soldier. Apparently it's less crazy, or not crazy at all, that he headed to a train station with an axe to butcher a soldier in the first place.

Obviously this guy is on the left. The insane left, but the left nonetheless.

Am I saying "both sides have homicidal crazies"? Of course I am, because of course we both do.

All of this should be condemned, and that's not merely a moral precept -- it's a utilitarian one. Some maniacs need no prompting to kill, but other maniacs can be encouraged to kill, or discouraged to kill, according to the messaging of the group whose opinions they respect. Some of these guys think they will be greeted as heroes for murdering innocents.

How about we all strive mightily to let such on-the-fence psychopaths know they won't be viewed as heroes for killing?

Clarification: "Ace's Liver" asks "Isn't this like four or five years old?"

Drat, I never remember to check dates.

It's not that old, but it is (apparently) from September 11, 2007. So, old.

Still, it happened. And it happens. And the fact that this was "new to me" sorta indicates that it wasn't very well reported -- and I look for this kind of thing, as do all of my tipsters. And yet -- first I've heard of it.

Which is part of the problem. The leftist media wishes to cover up for leftist murderers, in order to insulate the left from the inevitable "Look what you monsters have created" charges. But the side-effect, whether intended or unintended, is that such heinous crimes are never exposed to the broader public, nor properly condemned...

By the left. Because they're never confronted with this stuff, they never have to condemn it. Which is not some sort of political point: Again, my point is about preventing such murders, or at least trying to.

Obviously a left-leaning psychopath will not listen to me. He may or may not listen to a writer at the Huffington Post. But I have to imagine that at least some psychopaths are provisional, conditional sorts of murderers, and can either be encouraged to murder by what they perceive as positive support for such actions, or discouraged from it by castigation and ridicule.

I try to keep this site clean of comments encouraging violence. Since everyone knows my rule, very few people ever suggest such a thing. (Plus, most people are pretty level-headed and hardly needed my input here in the first place.) The occasional statement encouraging violence tends to get roundly ridiculed by commenters (and sometimes deleted -- but sometimes not. Sometimes having someone exposed and castigated as an asshole is a better medicine than the delete key.

I realize that the Huffington Post can't patrol every comment for this sort of thing. But then again, neither can I, and yet this site generally manages to remain pretty clean on that regard. It's the culture the site encourages, and the Huffington Post does in fact encourage this sort of thing -- if not actively, then passively, by failing to call people out for this shit and embarrass them.

posted by Ace at 05:19 PM

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