Maybe He's Just a Dick

Let's get this straight. This guy who walked into the Holocaust Museum and opened fire wasn't "disgruntled," or "frustrated by the economy," or by his "struggles as an artist." This guy is a murderer. He is a racist. He is a monster. Period.

Excuse me if I don't want to hear people explain the "reasons" behind the actions of the profoundly unreasonable. Ever read a book about Hitler? He was a frustrated artist? Hungry for attention? Couldn't get laid? Sorry, but that's a pretty apt description of the average screenwriter in Hollywood and I'm pretty sure none of us have ever invaded Poland.

A few years ago I was overseas at a birthday party for a director I was working with, during which her friends practically attacked me when they heard my American accent -- you know, Bush and Iraq and all the rest. The director explained their appalling behavior by casually remarking that, "It's probably because you're Jewish. " Um, excuse me? She then said, "Everyone knows that most of the people in your government are Jews." Yes, of course everyone knows that... at the Schutstaffel reunion.

This is the problem. This particular brand of imbecile is everywhere. They have children. They vote. Some even have their own radio talk shows and spew their anger and hatred in between commercial breaks and into the ears of some witless scumbag hunched in his dank basement, polishing the gun he fetishizes along with his mother's underwear, the gun he's going to point into a crowd of people in a shopping mall, a college auditorium, or a museum built to honor the innocents who lost their lives to this asshole's heroes.

Comments

[darker]

Von Brunn is WUSSY WHITE SUPREMACIST WHINER
who blames everyone but himself for his inability to
cope with his IRRATIONALITY, ANGER, VIOLENCE.

Stupid and gutless = white supremacist.

[greencowgirl]

This director you were working with... why aren't you disclosing her identity? She's an anti-semitic German who thinks everyone in our government is Jewish, as if it were a problem? In this country, her movies will FAIL. Just what is it you are afraid of? Bring it on!

[bigOther]

Agreed. What were the Bush neocon Jews thinking when they signed on for policies I've never heard any Jews conceive of supporting? I've always suspected the Wolfowitzes of the world were faking their Jewishness to tarnish...

[Terry Hummer 1]

Sorry, folks. I have sympathy with the point of view expressed here, but I think it's finally wrong, misleading, and psychologically dangerous. People who do things like this are not "monsters.­" If they were, we could dismiss them. This man was clearly sick, in the end, but he was human, just like Hitler, just like any other racist wrong-doer. These kinds of racist acts are not carried out by "monsters," but by people like anyone else, finally--the person next door, you, me--who step over some edge. The "monster" argument is too easy, and in the end too dismissive. And it encourages the "good" folks to turn into a lynch mob. You can't lynch a person, but hey, who cares if you lynch a monster? What about all those "monsters" locked up in Guantanamo? Same argument. We have to face it: these crimes are human crimes.

[Crazyquilt]

Ok, I get it that Hitler and von Brunn are human...bu­t I think what this writer wants to protest is the facile use of sympathetic biographical details to "explain" the inexplicable. Some "human" behavior is simply beyond the pale and ought to remain there, rejected by society as inhumane, brutal, unforgivable. Rootling around in this "dick's" personal setbacks is a natural impulse. We want so much to know how to spot the next one; why he crossed the line when so many similarly bigoted folks have not; whether he suffered from a DSM-IV mental illness. Yet all the same, this line of thought tends to trivialize the violence and suffering. I think it's possible that the humanizing of criminals can dehumanize and further victimize the victims of those criminals.
As for guantanamo detainees, that's a little bit apples and oranges. von Brunn is certainly going to be found guilty based on heaps of solid evidence. The evidence against many gitmo detainees is tenuous, many of them may be found innocent, and demonizing them is thus an exercise in scapegoating.

[warmonkey]

Agreed!!

[Freenation]

agrees, call a thug a thug what ever planet he is from....

[RedSoxGator]

One of the best things I've ever read on this site. Good enough to get me to join just so I could comment.

[jmm561]

YOU NAILED IT.

[jhNY]

Me too! Me too! I hate all those haters too!

[dex216]

Good commentary. I don't give a damn what his motivation was. He killed someone who did no harm to him. Prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law

[michellekraus]

Thank you because there is no explaining this away. He killed a man in cold blood, and would have killed more if he had not been stopped. It is the politics of hate.

[ReservoirDog]

THANK YOU Michael for naming Von Brunn EXACTLY what he is.....a MURDERER !

Who gives a ratsas$ that his parents didn't buy him a pony (insert any phony excuse here)....h­e took an innocent man's life.

He should pay with his own !

[Dan Cubert]

Right on!

[blaqntelligence]

High five! Fist bump! Right On!!!!!
I am a liberal but there is a limit to my "bleeding heart". And this is it.