The Crime of Fame

Why is that some folks will do anything for fame - if for only the proverbial fifteen minutes?  Recently, some poor misguided souls have taken their lives, publicly and graphically, on Facebook and other social media sites.  One, a 49-year-old man, and another, a 12-year old girl, died by their own hands on live streaming video.  One by a gunshot to the head, and one by hanging, respectively.  What can be said of a society that craves this kind of morbidity? And what can be said about someone who wishes to die - right in your face?  What kind of last word is that? 

Thankfully, those videos have since been taken down, although the girl's video stayed up nearly two weeks.

Is the need for fame - or perhaps just fleeting recognition - so strong that some require that you - and we - watch them die?  Perverse.

But even more perverse is the serial killer.  He kills for his own edification in living, not the victims' in death.  And while his motivations may be varied and many, the end result is that someone is dead, and lives are shattered. This month a killing spree has occurred in a quiet oak-canopied residential neighborhood in Tampa, Florida.  Three people have been shot and killed within a week, and law enforcement, while struggling for clues, have acknowledge that the victims knew each other, and the killings are surely related.  Meanwhile, the fear is palatable in Seminole Heights, as residences are vigilant and wary.  Many think the two 20s-somethng men and the 30s-something woman were killed as a result of a personal relationship somehow gone bad.  Others think there was only one target, and the other two were killed as a way to avert suspicion.  Still others think it is all random, and the killer seeks what he perceives to be fame and glory.  We will find out eventually.  

The dead tell no tales

But perhaps we should take a look in the mirror as a society.  What is it about this cult of death that so fascinates?  I'm the last one to blame society for a single individual's madness, but perhaps the graphic violence in movies, in video games, and in the news related to Muslim jihad have rendered our sensibilities a little hardened.  And that has defined deviancy down. Something seems to be going on that desensitizes us to graphic murder.  For instance, some unknown number of shooters just killed 50 concert-goers and wounded five hundred more in Las Vegas earlier this month.   Five hundred fifty people left with shattered lives, and all within ten minutes.  Unfathomable.

At the end of the day, we have people killing others - or themselves - solely for notoriety, either instantly or posthumously.  No matter.

That's the evil nature of the crime of fame.  

All Quiet on the Western Front

It sure is quiet out there.  Nothing to be heard.  Crickets.  The silence is deafening.  What should be the most important story in media is instead left simmering on the back burner, while nonsense like Harvey Weinberg's peccadilloes dominate the front page.  That's a story?  Yeah, for maybe a day.  Let me ask you, my great American friends, do you give a tinker's damn about Hollywood's internal incestuousness?

Neither do I.

Or how about this non-story about one democrat Rep. Frederica - she of the sequined cowboy hat - Wilson's tête-à-tête with President Trump?  Is that a worthy story?  Nope.  That's a nothing burger, too.   Just another crazed democrat with a penchant for self promotion at The Donald's expense.  Add her to the rantings of Pelosi and Waters, all elderly ladies on the political wane. 

Carnage

What should be on the news, every minute of every day, is the investigation and solving of the worst mass shooting in American history.  The fact that it's been shoved into the "nothing to see here, move on" category tells me it's bigger than big.  The media's silence tells me that this story is probably bigger than the Kennedy assassination.  There are surely some similarities.  Multiple shooters, patsy setup, disappearing witnesses, dying witnesses, choppy timeline, possible mob and CIA involvement, even a grassy noll. (Well, metaphorically speaking: I refer to the shots coming from behind the stage). 

Yet have we heard even a peep about this event in the last few weeks?  Nope.  Nada.  Mandalay Bay is the twenty-first century's Dallas Book Repository.  All the fire came from there, they tell us.  Right.  We'll have to await the Warren Commission's findings, we will surely be told.  In fifty years.

Meanwhile the media distraction is in full swing.  Sex, perversion and petty drama take front page above-the-fold.  To satiate the masses.  What's the issue, we're asked?  Bump stocks.  Yep, that must be the problem.  All the while the media and their government overlords cover up the truth of Muslim jihad and support from government sponsored gun running.  Fast and Furious in orders of magnitude.

Meanwhile, it's all quiet on the western front.  

Simulation? Not Buying It.

Synaspsial Reality?

Further to certain comments made on Facebook and elsewhere about the universe being a simulation, let me add my take on that.  Firstly, that notion ain’t new; Hinduism identified the world as being Shiva’s dream eons ago.  And Buddhism considers reality merely an outpouring of the unified Universal mind.  Carl Jung amplified that idea as well. And recently we discover that all stories – in every book, myth or movie ever conceived – contain one or more variations of only six plots.  By definition, that would have to include the whole of human experience, wouldn’t it?

So in stories from the Bible to Shakespeare to Spielberg, we only get six plots?  Is the human mind really that limited?  Wouldn’t a simulation developer give us at least a few more variations so we could broaden our view, our very concept, of the universe?

Yeah, I think so, too.

So while we humans are relatively new at creating reality with only 1s and 0s, some other vaguely defined omnipotent being has done a marvelous job of creating an expanding, mind-bending universe, transcending our limited dimensional view of it.   Perhaps only when we can intellectually deconstruct and understand the vibrant, living soup in which we live, we can fully appreciate the originator of the "simulation."

Sim?  Not buying it.

Inglorious Ingrate

What can you call a man who, with some but not a great deal of athletic ability, is able to overcome all the obstacles and failings that mortal men encounter, and become a football star?  A hero?  A man among men? A role model?  Well, if you're talking about Colin Kaepernick, the answer is inglorious ingrate.

Colin Kaepernick, persona non grata

Why?  Abandoned - in the strictest sense of the word - by his biological parents when he was an infant, Colin was adopted by an white, middle class family who made it possible for him to participate in the grand American Dream, which he most probably would not have enjoyed otherwise.  As a black man in a white middle class family, Colin went through school, found his athletic ability, and parlayed that into an eventual professional football career.  With that came wealth, fame and prestige.  Wow!  What a life.  What opportunity was afforded him.  What grace of providence was shown upon him.

But that wouldn't do for our budding social justice warrior.  As his hate for white America grew, he converted to Islam over a year ago.  And as his disdain manifested itself more and more, his athletic prowess faded proportionately.  And so did his playing time on the field.  From the bench, Kaepernick vented his displeasure at America, siding with Black Lives Matter, and anti-police sentiment.  He decided to become a free agent.  He played less and less.  Nobody wanted to play with him.  Or hire him.  Angry black men are no fun to be around.  Then he took the infamous knee during the national anthem.  How bold.  How brave.  How insightful to disrespect the country, the fans, the league and the very game that gave him fame, wealth and prestige. 

And so the cancer spread.  Other players - mostly black - emulated the "protest."  Then coaches and owners.  The talking heads on ESPN thought it was marvelous.  

But then came the backlash.  Fans booed.  ESPN subscriptions dived.  Fans turned off the set, or changed channels when NFL games came on.  Ratings plunged.  Even the President weighed in.  At this writing sentiment seems to have swung in the opposite direction. The end result is an entire once popular industry is in decline. 

The talking heads label him the Man Who Started a Movement.  I doubt that.  This is a parable like some  ancient Greek myth.  The hero rises from obscurity to wealth and power, only to bite the hand that feeds, and is destroyed by his own hubris.  With Kaepernick however - never the sharpest knife in the drawer - the irony is lost on him.  

He's far from a man who started a movement.  He's merely an inglorious ingrate.

Lee Harvey Rerun

Paddock's two! separate fire platforms

The shooting has stopped.  Prayers are ongoing.  Hospitals are working frantically on the wounded, as gunshot wounds are particularly nasty. The shock and disbelief has yet to wear off. And before the smoke has cleared, the far left has already established their narrative even as the investigations begin.  Despite overwhelming developing information to the contrary, we're told by the MSM that the shooter is a lone wolf radical white man, and a NRA and Trump adherent.  But he wasn't any of that.

Like the infamous declarations arising immediately after JFK's murder fifty some odd years ago, the establishment immediately determined that there was only one shooter.   Lee Harvey Oswald, meet Stephen Craig Paddock.  And today they are trying to push the same lie in this incident.   The lone gunman.  But witnesses' video clearly shows automatic heavy weapon fire from other floors of the Mandalay Bay hotel, along with Paddock's fire from the 32nd floor.

Location of other fire apart from Paddock's

Quick to deny any Islamic terrorist element, the MSM ignores the fact that through Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s official Amaq news channel, the group said the suspected gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, converted to Islam a few months ago.  ISIL referred to Paddock by the nom de guerre Abu Abd al-Barr al-Amriki and said he answered a call to arms by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It was Baghdadi who issued a call for a terror strike in Las Vegas back in May of this year.  ISIL doesn't normally claim responsibility for attacks in which they aren't actually involved.  No matter.  No connection here, is there?

Insiders have also contradicted the MSM narrative that Paddock shot himself, when in fact he was killed in a shootout as responders breached his hotel room, according to those who were there.

We will have to wait for a comprehensive investigation to determine all the facts.  But what is telling is when the MSM can immediately - and without confirmation and verification - affirm that Paddock was a lone wolf white domestic terrorist. That's going to be the established narrative.  Count on it.

Like Oswald, fifty-three years ago, Paddock is and will be a patsy.  But unlike Oswald, Paddock actually did have trigger time and he did kill people.   

But act alone he did not.