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I guess if you’re a criminal forensic psychologist
or FBI profiler person, it’d be important to know what led a guy to kill and
behead his co-worker. It’d probably help
you understand how to track and thwart future would-be be-headers. I think that the rest of the folks who are so
interested in the “why would he kill and be-head his co-worker?” reasons probably know the answer but hope it’s not
true, or maybe a small percentage could even picture themselves doing the same thing
on a really bad day at work. Whether the
guy killed and be-headed his co-worker because he’s connected to a larger
global network of be-headers, or if he just was inspired by what he’s heard
they’ve done, and whether he shouted a prayer of exultation during or after the
be-heading or not, I don’t think the term “workplace violence” is an accurate
or strong enough descriptor for this behavior.
Perhaps if people start stoning co-workers, we’ll rethink the definition.
·
We keep hearing about how our nation is on high
alert, and I guess that’s a good thing generally, and especially considering
the tumult around the world. But it’s
pretty disturbing that in this past month several news stories have come and
gone, with hardly a word connecting them to larger security issues. A Tennessee youth detention center has
experienced three successful and violent “prison breaks” by several of its
inmates. Then several Afghani
nationals, in Cape Cod for military training (apparently the Cape is known for
its Middle East-like desert and mountain terrain), managed to walk away (to the
Canadian border) supposedly in an effort to defect. Then a couple
of “troubled souls” managed to breach White House security to the point where
one of them actually made it inside before being tackled by security. Also, I haven’t heard about any systemic
resolution to the unchecked influx of Central American children across the Texas
border. Was that “immigration crisis” taken
care of and I missed it? Anyway, how much
higher would our national level of alert need to be to protect us from these seemingly
boneheaded security failures, much less those coordinated by organized and
well-funded organizations looking to hurt us?
·
On A Lighter Note:
As I sat on my porch at about dusk one evening, a group of three
people, all wearing sunglasses, silently walked by my house. It occurred to me all of the sudden, “wow,
it’s really been a looong time since I smoked pot.”
