If foreigner had killed 16 Americans, we wouldn’t be looking for excuses

By David McElroy · March 19, 2012

Cleaning out the old notebook again…

A week after a U.S. soldier murdered 16 Afghan men, women and children, it’s mostly become a non-story among people I talk with. The news stories I see have taken a tone that seems to be looking for a way to excuse what happened, asking what could have “caused him to snap” or speculating about brain injuries from previous combat.

Honestly, I’m a little tired of people looking for excuses. What if this had been an Afghan soldier and he was in this country for some military reason — training, perhaps — and he had taken a weapon to a few homes near where he was based and murdered 16 Americans. Do you think we would all be looking for things to blame it on then? Would we be wondering about how his previous injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever had made him “snap”?

No, we would have a country full of angry people who were ready to kill Afghans and and were ready to blame all Muslims for what had happened. Why can’t we understand how serious it is when we send soldiers into other countries and they do bad things?

Every time there have been instances of U.S. soldiers committing such atrocities, it seems that there are similar justifications. When are we going to learn that when you train people to kill and then dehumanize the people they’re fighting, this is what we’re going to get? And when are we going to learn that the sooner we get out of these countries we’ve invaded, the sooner we’ll quit making new enemies?

Is a lot of success in life predicated on ignoring reality? I certainly ignore reality sometimes. I complain about it when others do it sometimes. But I seem to see some people become more successful by ignoring reality and plowing ahead despite the fact that it doesn’t make sense to do so. Is having a good understanding of reality actually an impediment to success? Even if it makes you more insightful about the world and about people, does understanding reality cause you a different sort of pain? If so, is it better to be able to ignore reality? Or is it better to have insight? I’m really not sure. It’s just a passing thought I’ve been toying with again.

You might be surprised at how much email I get these days from people who read the site and write to me instead of commenting online. I really wish more people would post comments instead of just writing to me — because some of them deserve a wider audience — but I love getting your email. I feel guilty sometimes that I don’t have time to answer all of it more extensively, but I read it all. And for those who take time to send nice things just to tell me that I make you think or that you just enjoy what you read, let me say that means more to me than you know.

One of the bigger surprises I’ve had over the last 10 months, though, is how many people are willing to send really nasty messages to me just because they disagree with me. The funniest part about that is that when I write about something controversial, I frequently get angry email from people on both sides of an issue — with the people on both sides of the mainstream accusing me of being one of the other side. Is that just what happens when you don’t cheerlead for either side of the mainstream?

Speaking of comments, I’ll remind you again that you’re welcome to friend me on Facebook if you have an account there. There’s a lot more that goes on over there that you never see here and there’s a lot more discussion of articles that never spills over here.

On the front page of the local paper Sunday, there was a “tease” on the front page for an article on the business page: “Area’s best-selling vehicles driving sales.” Is anybody else as surprised as I was to hear that the best-selling vehicles were contributing the most to car sales? Insightful, huh? Or am I missing something obvious?

I found a quote Friday that I really like. I’ve known plenty of people who come up with new ideas and then protect their ideas like crazy, because they’re afraid someone is going to steal their “brilliant idea.” Sometimes those ideas die because they’re unwilling to be open enough with the idea and sell it. When I was younger, I felt a little bit this way. But I’m going to leave you with a quote from the late computer scientist Howard Aiken about why there’s no reason to worry about protecting a really new idea:

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

I think he was right.

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Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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