Tweet
Stories like this make me sad and curious — how many people in the U.S. are as intellectually challenged as this man? Has the nation been so dumbed down that it’s not difficult to come across countless stories of jack@ssery like this just casually surfing the news?
Randolph Linn, Indiana Man, Drank 45 Beers, Got ‘Riled Up’ By Fox News Before Mosque Arson.
On Sept. 30, Randolph Linn of St. Joseph, Ind., tried to burn down the Islamic Centerof Greater Toledo, The Plain Dealer previously reported. It was reported that he attempted to burn down the mosque in retaliation for attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and for Muslims getting a “free pass” in the U.S. While being booked in jail, Linn reportedly said, “F**k those Muslims.”
In court on Wednesday, Linn plead guilty to the arson charge. He said that he had gotten “riled up” watching Fox News, according to the Sentinel-Tribune, and drank 45 beers in seven hours before heading to the mosque. Linn started a fire in the prayer room, northwestohio.com reported.
“Every day you turn on the TV, you see Muslims trying to kill Americans,” he said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. When asked whether he thinks all Muslims are terrorists, Linn reportedly responded, “I’d say most of them are.”
Considering the unhinged gun nuts are bum rushing to stores to buy assault rifles, fearing Obama’s coming to keep those crowd blasters away from them, it’s pretty clear that a large slice of the public is simply too paranoid and, well, too dumb, to have the judgment to operate those weapons — there’s no critical thinking at play, and it’s paired with hair-trigger tempers fueled by bias.
I guess it’s pretty hopeless; after all, those folks probably did a happy dance in the living room listening to Wayne LaPierre of the NRA calling for armed guards at every school, thinking this was just common sense.
Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.
The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.
I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.
And, of course Charlotte Allen, who believes that the Newtown tragedy was simply a matter of not enough testosterone and penises present in the school, wasn’t fazed by any of that criticism, and offered yet another reason why the possessors of uteri are simply inadequate when it comes to protecting kids against crazed, pathological killers with assault rifles — women are incapable of adequate strategic thinking that comes innately installed with that penis:
No, I was not blaming any of the 26 victims or the parents who enrolled their kids at Sandy Hook. I am, however, blaming our culture that denies, dismisses, and denigrates the masculine traits—including size, strength, male aggression and a male facility for strategic thinking–that until recently have been viewed as essential for building a society and protecting its weaker members. We now have Hanna Rosin at Slate urging parents to buy their little boys Easy Bake ovens so they’ll be more like little girls. Women are less aggressive by instinct, and they are typically trained to be nice
I am also responding to David Weigel, who told me I gotten my facts wrong: that there are actually two men, a custodian and a fourth-grade teacher, on Sandy Hook’s 52-person staff. He’s right, and I stand corrected. This does help prove my point, though: just two adult men in a building containing 500 people — and it’s not clear that both of them were at work that day. Indeed, a visit to Sandy Hook’s staff website is a depressing experience, the sea of women’s names.
I
14 Comments
The only “strategic” thinking my penis has been involved in is how to most effectively disengage the clothing from my date. During a fight it just kind hangs around.
Charlotte Allen is using the time-honored right-wing tactic: when you’ve made a complete fool of yourself in public, double down.
Only we know what a fool LaPiere is.The rest of this county believe every word and act on it given half a chance. I have just returned from a trip out SR53 to the Dawsonville, GA US Post office. I passed “Guns of Dawsonville” a mansion sized building housing gun sellers. There is a capacious parking lot for well over a hundred,,,,,huge for this small mountain county. It was jammed with the paranoid and the hateful even double parking in order to rush in to buy more weapons and ammunition for killing. Disgusting.
I agree. There is some potential for a small fraction of a small percent of the public to get worn down and ignited by violence suggested or witnessed in provocative news media. . . yet which would also apply to video games, movies rated R or X due to violence (I.e., more than half of those ratings), etc. LaPierre is off base, though, trying to deflect efforts at gun control that way by laying all the blame on Hollywood. Still, a tiny number of at risk unbalanced people can be lured toward random mass killing, or arson, or other violence by what the are exposed to in the various media surrounding them. The results can become spectacular in the worst way even if the shooters are few.
A lot of toxic variables are at work. The definition of “assault weapon” is cosmetic, and has too many loopholes. The CT shooter didn’t fire an assault weapon as defined under CT law. We can’t afford another cosmetic Fed assault weapons ban, either, going forward. Instead it needs to focus on what a weapon does, in order to eliminate automatic and semi-automatic features regardless of what the weapon looks like or whether it has a bayonet lug or not. Institute a buy back program like Australia’s. No grandfathering going forward, etc.
I don’ t think there will be a way to effectively screen out the small segment most at risk for being incited to violence by what they see and hear. That they seem to reach for guns first, before other means, ought to give us a clue however.
Book Salon up with Jon Krampner’s Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food hosted by Toby Wollin
I think we can do a lot, if the will and the outrage is strong enough, with legislation and control of kinds of guns and ammunition that can be sold and also confiscate the assault rifles and big magazines.
I personally do agree that the culture needs to change. The more we celebrate killers and killing whether military or for sport as manly the more choose violence as expression. That takes a while but I do think the media, the entertainment and games media can be challenged to at least stop inflaming it.
Frankly I think the most damaging and immoral aspect to the CIA propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty is that the tracking into someone else’s sovereign territory, hunting and murder of bin Laden is some kind of grand achievement. We should be ashamed.
“and it’s paired with hair-trigger tempers fueled by bias’
and beer
Charlotte Allen – Conservative Columnist and Political Commentator:
Surely this columnist, a writer by profession, meant to write “faculty?”
Or perhaps she’s avoiding any word that links with school? Or evidencing a supposed female shortcoming?
Charlotte Allen is suggesting that schools need more aggressive leaders. That’s one opinion, and I think we can agree that men are more aggressive. Other observers might believe that schools need effective managers. If that’s the case the results of a recent survey of 7,280 leaders in some of the most successful and progressive organizations in the world both public and private, government and commercial, domestic and international, might be of interest.
Personally if my kids were in a school I would want the leadership to be predominately effective, not aggressive.
I think “facility,” as synonym for A-bility, works just fine there, miserable essentialism of her argument notwithstanding.
What they want is a warrior state.
Police state, which is what we’re working on — and the gun dupes are falling right in line, getting ready to fight “government tyranny.” What do they think their AK-47s are going to do against a tank? (The Tampa police department has one, by the way.)
As a native Toledoan this saddens me. When we moved to an apartment complex when I was little, the Muslim girl upstairs was the only kid my age in the neighborhood well-behaved enough for me to be allowed to play with. I’ve worked at a Lebanese-owned cafe’ near the University of Toledo, where the auntie would set aside stuffed grape leaves for me every week when she came in because she knew I loved them.
I always liked to believe that the Post 9/11 anti-muslim hatred would spare the Toledo/Dearborn area because we’ve had long-standing, constructive interfaith relationships with the area’s large and vibrant Muslim communities. But then there’s Indiana.
I’ve lived next to that state for decades and never had a compelling reason to visit. To me, it was always a wannabe Kentucky and seat of the midwestern Klan. That isn’t to say there aren’t awesome Indianans, because there certainly are. A few bad apples can ruin a barrel, though, and Indiana has more than a few that are rotten to the core.
Comfort and condolences to my fellow Toledoans whose house of worship was desecrated by hatred. You are valued members of our city, our state and our country. Bless.
A woman who is disgusted by the mere existence of women… how sad is that?
45 beers has the same amount of alcohol as 45 shots of distilled liquor or 9 whole bottles of wine. With several times the volume. That’s more than enough alcohol to turn anyone crazy. But anyone so vastly beerlogged is better suited to extinguishing fires instead of starting them.