"Now To Refute Everything I've Said For A Week "
OK, so for a week now, I've been talking about the importance and benefits of mercy over justice, and how mercy drives compassion through forgiveness to create peace. And just in time to make a total fool out of me, the following situation came along yesterday. Here's the deal:
A friend of a coworker called, who happens to be a single, disabled mom. Her 22 year old son came home, drunk, and just beat the shit out of her.
I volunteered to join the posse and participate in the lynching.
I have a real problem with drunks anyway. I've been too close to more than my fair share of them in my life. I've seen their lives ruined, their families hurt, their potential dilluted to nothing, their personalities change, their value to this world totally evaporate. I know one that blew his own head off - just because he was drunk and not thinking straight - and left a hell of a mess in the middle of his living room floor for his family to clean up.
A drink or two is fine, even good. I'm not being a religious do-gooder here. But a drunk is less than a dog in my world, and I have no respect for any of them.
I fully support the most aggressive treatment of drunk drivers. They recklessly and unnecessarily endanger themselves (which is their prerogative), and they endanger and indeed kill many other innocent people every year.
And I firmly believe that violent drunks should be institutionalized indefinitely, unless and until there is a way to guarantee that they can rejoin society and never drink alcohol again. For these people, alcohol is poison - not to them, but to all of the people who love them.
Sure enough, this kid that beat up his own mom is really sorry now, and feels terrible about what he did. Of course he does, the fucker is sober now. I have no mercy for him. I think that somehow I'm probably supposed to, but I have absolutely none - unless a fast, painless death vs. the one he deserves would be considered merciful.
And what tops this? The situation was so bad that the neighbors got involved and called the police. When they got there and saw how badly mom had been beaten, they were ready to take the kid to jail, and mom wouldn't tell them where he was! Mom, after getting the shit beat out of her by her own worthless piece of shit son, defended him and hid him from the police who quite possibly saved her life.
That's not mercy. That's stupidity. That's the kind of stupid that actually mocks mercy.
There are a lot of moms out there that enable, and even pay for, their children to be total fuck ups. And they say that they love their kid and that's why they do it. They don't love their kids. If they did, they'd get the kid some help, not help the worthless creature continue to destroy himself and everything around him.
OK. Before you call me a hypocrite for writing this post on the heels of the past few posts about mercy, I admit the conundrum. And I admit that I don't understand it. And I commit myself to thinking more about it and trying to figure it out.
But in the mean time, if I come into contact with this particular kid while in arm's reach of anything that resembles a two by four, the police will be taking me to the nearest jail, and this no good kid who beat up his mother to the nearest hospital.