If you live in Knoxville, Tennessee, as I do, you have been unable to get away from a terrible double murder that took place in January, 2007. The details of the case are almost beyond comprehension; two happy, healthy college-age students out on a date together are carjacked by several career thugs. Over the next 24 hours, the young people, Chris Newsom and Channon Christian are held captive, blindfolded, tied up, sexually and physically tortured. They are both eventually murdered – separately – and the specific details of how each finally met their death after what they had already endured are the stuff of our deepest, darkest, most nightmarish fears.
At the time of the crime, I was working as the online producer at WBIR, in the newsroom. I took many of the first calls that came into the newsroom as the case unfolded. Within only 8-10 hours of the couple going missing, their parents and close friends had organized their own search parties, and were literally combing the areas that certain clues (cell phone signals, etc) told them their kids might have ended up. This was at a point where police were mostly uninvolved; the families reported that Chris and Channon had never come home that night, but there was no evidence yet of any crime, and let’s face it, even the most conscientious 20 year olds sometimes fail to come home at night. The police can’t and don’t begin treating every call they get from a worried parent as a possible crime until there is some further evidence of some kind that it is a crime.
We got a lot of calls like that in the newsroom each week, too – parents begging for some publicity for a teenage or young adult child whom they considered “missing,” but the authorities did not. Each time I took one of those calls, I imagined how I would feel if my own adolescent child had suddenly gone missing, but I couldn’t get anyone to help me try to find him. I always tried to be compassionate and gentle. I encouraged the parent on the line with me to continue communicating her worries to the police. I always felt really sad and kind of helpless after we would hang up.
And then, after Chris and Channon’s bodies were discovered, and as arrests were made, I spent the next year, before I changed jobs, writing numerous stories about the case. Because I had to repeatedly, over time write out the terrible words that described what was done to these two people, I found myself emotionally and mentally detaching from the reality of it. I just couldn’t “go there.” If I let myself really think deeply in an emotional way about the crimes, I knew I’d be unable to do my job.
But perhaps the biggest part of my emotionally dissociative state regarding writing about this case in the year after it happened stemmed from WHERE it happened. The small house where Channon Christian was held captive, raped, tortured and brutally murdered is very, very close to my own. In fact, I could walk there in probably 10 minutes. The railroad tracks where Chris Newsom’s burned, mutilated body was found by a railroad engineer on that cold January morning is almost as close. But that little corner of my part of town – even though it’s geographically close, is not one where I ever go. I don’t ever need to drive through it, and it’s not a place anyone would seek out as part of their daily constitutional. So even though I wrote on a regular basis about the address where the murders happened, I was somehow able to ignore the fact that this happened where it did, and basically pretend it wasn’t where it was.
But since leaving my newsroom job in August of 2008 – meaning that I no longer have to cover or write about the case – I have been increasingly unable to push away the realities of the whole thing. Over time, as the criminal prosecution of the accused has become the next phase in the story, and press coverage has continued at a very intense level, I’ve found myself “going there” emotionally, and it’s been hard.
One day found myself – almost without volition – driving by the small rental house (since torn down by the owners as a sign of compassion and respect for the Christian and Newsom families’ suffering) to see with my own eyes what I’d seen in photos so many times. I stopped a few houses away, unable to bring myself to get any closer to something that seemed so tangibly evil.
And that’s when it hit me; the thing I’d been unable or unwilling to think about previously was the fact that in those 24 hours in January of 2007, someone’s beloved children were being tortured and murdered in unspeakable ways while I happily went about my life in my own house only a few blocks away. I know it’s irrational, but I found myself feeling as if I should have known, or sensed somehow that someone was being hurt so terribly over a prolonged period of time so very close to the place I consider the warmest and safest in the world – my own home. That sense that I was oblivious to that level of suffering and cruelty over those many hours taking place so close to me has given me more than a few nightmares in the past year – generally the same nightmare. In my dream, I hear someone’s daughter screaming for help, begging for help, and I am frantically running up and down streets in our part of town, knocking on doors and trying to find her before it’s too late, but I always fail, and I wake up feeling sick and sad.
The other thing that I finally allowed myself to think about after my visit to the scene of the horror was the fact that the terrible, sick, predatory individuals who did it almost certainly DID drive by my house, likely on multiple occasions, as that’s the route they would have taken from their rental house to a major thoroughfare, and the interstate. Were my children playing in our front yard,? Did they consider hurting one of them, just because they were an easy target, like Chris and Channon? Did they ever see me standing outside my car on our city street, perhaps fumbling with my keys, and consider carjacking me? Did we pass one another in the aisles of our shared neighborhood grocery store? Did they case our street to consider possible home invasion targets? These are the thoughts that now come to me, now that I understand in a meaningful way the very real geographic connection between my home and that house.
As the details of the case have become even clearer with the police investigation and judicial proceedings, I am, of course, horrified by the brutality of the men who did these things. You hear about sexual sadists – and that’s surely what these guys are – on TV and in true crime books, and you pray that you don’t have one of this relatively rare but incredibly dangerous kinds of predators living in your own neighborhood. But what are the odds that we apparently had three or four men who all knew one another capable of this level of depravity living basically up the street? Three or four men capable of something that went far, far beyond the “ordinary” criminal behavior of robbing, killing or even of raping a woman in an opportunistic way. And not only were there three or four of them who were capable of doing something savage like, they were capable of doing it over and over and over for at least 24 hours, hurting Channon Christian, leaving the house for groceries or to visit friends, and then coming back to hurt her in new and unbelievably horrific ways. This brutality wasn’t carried out in a brief time frame – in a sexual or murderous rage or frenzy, or while under the influence, or during a psychotic episode – this was a conscious, willful brutality over a prolonged period of time. The fact that that many people with that level of evil perversion and willingness to cause pain to another human being over that period of time were here, right here all the time, chills me in a way I can’t quite express.
The last thing that I really struggle with is the issue of the women, at least one (she admits it) and probably others, who knew that there was another young woman, just about their age, hogtied, blindfolded and bleeding in the bedroom at their boyfriends’ rental house, and yet they went about their lives inside and outside the house during the day or more that Channon was being held captive. They did things like prepare sandwiches for the men between their individual forays in and out of the bedroom to rape that other young woman. At least one of the women has children of her own, just like Channon’s mother. At least one of them knew that Channon’s mouth was washed out with household cleaning chemicals in a bizarre and horrible attempt to erase evidence of rape. But these women, who could have ended Channon’s suffering and saved her life DID NOTHING. And there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this was a case where the women in question were “brainwashed” or had any sort of battered women’s syndrome or that they even felt actively threatened by the men during that period of time. They weren’t strung out on drugs and incapable of thinking clearly. No, they were just without consciences, and part of a trashy, thuggy subculture that’s both incredibly sexist – everything caters to the men, and to getting and keeping these worthless men who father their children – as well as very self-absorbed. But as a woman and as a mother, I just find it incomprehensible that other women, another mother, could stand by and let this happen without making any attempt whatsoever to make it stop.
I am sure that there are many thousands of other people all over my adopted hometown who are also haunted by this case, and who have nightmares about it, like I do. Sadly, however, I suspect that the people who committed the crimes – or who stood by watching others do it – sleep just fine at night. And that’s terrifying to me.
ADDENDUM: Attention kneejerk racists who have just started posting comments on this: this is MY blog. Thus, I decide what content appears here, including comments.
You will not be allowed a platform for your ugly idiocy here. Your redneck conspiracy theories have no home here.
The men who appear to have committed these terrible crimes happen to be black. Their white victims happened to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no evidence that race played a role ib this crime, say police, prosecutors. Your racist “post ergo propter hoc” logic is faulty to a fault. Jeffrey Dahmer (white) had Asian victims, but that doesn’t mean he targeted those victims because they were Asian.
This crime is not about race. It’s about evil and pathology. Your disgusting attempts to use these murders as nothing more than a platform for your nasty, stupid and one dimensional agenda is pathetic and disrespectful to the victims, my community and to the law enforcement officials who have worked so hard on this case.
I will delete what I deem to be pointlessly racist or hate-inciting comments, so posting them is a waste of time. Go away. You aren’t welcome on my blog, and you aren’t welcome in Knoxville.
I will attempt to allow a debate in the comments on issues related to race, and how those issues might or might not have played a role in this crime, and in my response/my community’s response to this crime. I may not agree with your point of view, but as long as you express it in a thoughtful, considered way, and without promoting ad hominem racist hate, I will allow it to remain. This is because as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I generally do allow comments disagreeing with me (or with each other) to remain. That’s my default setting on comments, but again, I will take down comments that I deem to have crossed the line I’ve articulated.
You can call it censorship if you like; I call it keeping house, my house. And hate gets no hospitality here. I
Katie
95 Responses to “A terrible crime, too close to home”
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Sorry Katie,
It is about race and the trashy, thuggy, misogynist, self-absorbed subculture that many of our darker-skinned bethren choose. Seems like to ticket to a short, brutish life to me, when anyone can go for the brass ring. OK, it may be a hero’s task to throw off the disadvantages of one’s birth but why anyone would choose such as life is beyond me. It’s as harmful to its practitioners, in the end, as it is to their victims. It’s time for them to take back their communities, raise good citizens with a promising lives, and treat each other with compassion. I know the religious among them try hard to do so and I applaud them. Us people of pallor can do squat all to help them – it’s all be tried before to no effect.
“Wow. You know a lot of big words. I’m just sayin…”
Pretty contemptuous dismissal of McDonnel’s contribution, of which the core point is how the “therapy culture” which Katie has so obviously bought into renders our society defenseless against evil .
How do you tell if you’re being fair? Turn it around:
Would there have been a “racial component” in the crime had the torturers been white and the victims black?
It seems to be that some of the comments are suggesting that these guys went out with a plan to carjack a white couple and then torture and kill them. From all that I’ve read this just does not seem to be coming out in the trial especially the planning aspect of the crime and the deliberate choice of the victims which would make it more plausibly a hate crime. I am in NO way suggesting that the victims race had no impact on how the events unfolded though.
Yesterday I read that one of the perps took a while to come up with Channon’s name while being examined. That is how little he thought of his victim as a person. That is chilling.
It is heartbreaking to think of how these victims families are suffering in this trial. I cannot believe this is justice for them. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Cobbins’ jury has spoken – Guilty of First Degree Murder of both Channon & Christopher. Guilty of all rapes against Channon. Acquitted of rape against Christopher. Penalty phase during court tomorrow.
Katie,
Well, you sure got awwwwwfully defensive for a post that was not even directly addressing you.
Hmmmm.
I’m.. ya know… just sayin.
So I looked at a random sampling of Katie’s essays… and now I understand the reason for the reflexive response on her part. She is a “freethinker”… of the tightly defined contemporary model. A “progressive” minded person, in the most thickly ironic usage of the root of that word in human history. The resulting malaise puts blinders on both perception and thought, and carries with it an onus that pretty much encapsulates the addle mindedness I was sadly referring to in my “big words” post.
One might think that if someone comes to ones blog and comments at length on an issue obviously of enough import to owner of said blog that she herself posted at length, said owner would be inclined to address it on its face (or leave it be if so inclined).
But this is not the “correct” response by a progressive freethinker with a healthy dollup of soft humanity in her tolerant facade, to such a fundamental challenge to the entire foundation of all that which she embraces (and which I can assure you, very much embraces her right back.)
Because thats what it was you see… a very fundamental challenge. Which is why we never see debates at the level of first principles in the mainstream media, and why Classical Liberalism is almost nowhere to be found in the mainline Academy.
Because IT loses. (I mean “IT” loosely in the Madeleine L’Engle mold).
So by all means Katie… do dismiss my points. You must.
And after the long and emotionally convoluted and intellectually tortuous journey you obviously took in the wake of this extraordinary event, it is not surprising that you ended up… back there. Everything’s fine… it can be grasped in the approporiate mold. Just needs a little deconstructuve revision, and a dose of absurdly counterintuitve nonsense (because, you know… when its convenient we can just revert to an infinitely malleable “legal” “standard”… and claim that we go only by the admissable evidence (which always wonderfully validates us)).
A lot of people took a similarly convoluted journey in the wake of 9-11. I have often referred to that day as a sort of FLASH light that went off in Plato’s Cave (if I can cite that allegory twice in a day). For a while… there was way too much clarity, even in the shadows. The hair on the back of our collective necks were raised and we for a moment… were looking closely at a LOT if false truisms.
It took a while for the mists to rise again. But in some ways, this has ultimately unleashed the polarity that was already cracking the foundations of Western Civilization… and much more is out in the open now. While many went quickly back into that good night, many were woken, and many more have entered the long term equivalent of closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and humming loudly. (There is still hope for these.)
Its possible, if we survive long enough to see it clearly, that that day will mark a breakpoint with far more profound implications than we might imagine.
And the collective long journeys, much like Katies individual one, may lead to a tipping point where enough fall off of the “Left’s” (I hate the 1-D term) edifice… that we manage to avoid the abyss.
At least thats my hope.
In the meantime… I can surely shoulder Katie’s dismissal. Can she shoulder my big words? I hope not… for all our sakes.
Despite your acknowlegement of the horrific nature of this crime, to deny the liklihood of a racial aspect is to continue to wear rose colored glasses.
The preferred eyewear of beautiful souls.
I’ve gotta say, these comments have left me scratching my head. It seems to me the only way this crime can be about race is if you approach it like this:
Q: Why did these people commit this horrible crime?
A: Because they are black.
It seems to me that if you boil it down, that’s the only way that this crime can be truthfully called a “race issue”–by observers attributing such horrific acts to one group of people based on their race, which certainly makes you a racist, by any definition.
Can somebody explain to me why pinning this behavior on race ISN’T racist? I’ll be surprised. Or has it become acceptable to be racist? I don’t think any of my black friends would hear this news and think, “Oh, they did that because they are black.” So help me out here. Tell me why this is about race AND that you’re not a racist. I’m stuck.
Amanda 2:25
They didn’t do it because they were black, they did it because they were extreme examples of the ruling pathologies of the black underclass, of which the lions’ share springs from absent fathers; illegitimacy (pushing 90%); teenage motherhood; multiple fathers of siblings in a single household; widespread drug use (beyond marijuana); vastly lucrative pop cultures of criminality, sadism, and misogyny; the collapse of the black church; the near-total escape of the black middle and upper classes from the ghetto, with the end of segregation; and guilt-tripped progressive elites + academia + media that have facilitated all this, especially through “social welfare” schemes.
What to do? I don’t know but I do know that it’s not reflexive, simplistic racism to identify the symptomolgy. And it is a particularly dangerous expression of racism to refuse to face up to any of this, in the manner of Katie’s original posting.
Well Amanda,
Let’s flip this around a little bit. If some klansmen torch a house or blow up a church with black people inside, am I a racist if I say they did it because they are white? Yes, I would say so, as not all white people would do it. But if I say it’s because the klansmen were racist, I’m not a racist. Right? Is that how it works?
Because I think what many people are saying here is that these two white people were raped and murdered, not because the criminals were black, but because the victims were white. The criminals are the racists here. Unless you can provide instances of where they had also performed these crimes on black people in their own community, making their motives color blind. However, if they reserved their most hideous of acts for two white people they abducted, yeah, I’m pretty sure race played into it. I’m speaking of their motives, not their color, and no, I don’t think that makes me racist.
Amanda,
In a very predictable way, you have it exactly backwards. And I strongly suggest that in an earnest and open way, with the intimacy that comes with friendship, you ask your black friends the question this way: Does the fact that the victims were white have anything to do with enablling the perpetrators of this heinous crime to commit it, and more chillingly, for those at the periphery to bear witness to it, with seemingly no resistance,remorse, or even second thoughts after the fact?
If they answer you truly, knowing that you do not condemn them wholsale for the fact of their skin color (for THAT dear… would be the racism you decry), then they will tell you frankly that it most certainly could have. That indeed the answer will not be that these human beings did it because they are black. But these human beings, steeped as they are in poison, did it because the victims were white.
They will further tell you if they are honest and trust you intellectually, that they themselves, especially this generation, have in many ways been raised in a steep helping of “cultural” food that nurses caricature and contempt, and which proclaims that there are countless wrongs and grievances crying out for retribution. And that by the way, this retribution is demanded collectively, and that the objects of the contempt are, with few exceptions, of a kind. They will tell you that it is easy to imbibe this noxious mixture as hatred.
We should discuss THIS for what it is… a very real racist ideology.
Oddly falling under a twisted banner of cultural tolerance, it is far from tolerant itself. It is potent and manipulative, and its architects seem to care not a whit for how foul the fields become when they are sowed in this way.
What you boil down should lead you to understand that the guilty in this case are not guilty of race hatred because of innate attributes of their race, but because of the race hatred in an ideological brew that nurtures it. The “whiteness” of the victims mattered. I assure you it mattered very much indeed.
So clear up your definitions, and look hard at what is at play in this case. It is so easy to see what a potent and powerful potion is race hatred (or indeed any collective contempt)… and how race neutral it is. We see clearly the forces behind National Socialism do we not? White, black… it works across the board of humanity. And it is at work here now. It should have light cast on it. And we should look at it unafraid. Black and white should be able to speak of this, and I can assure in some circles they do…but not in the mainstream, where such a discussion would be verboten. Which says much about the operative drivers in that mainstream.
I hope that this explains why trying to allow this case to be a lens which can clarify things that ARE at play in our society which ARE about race, is not racist. It IS however, about racism.
Be thus, unstuck.
Katie – If you don’t think race was a factor in this crime, you understand nothing and all your Platonic, nuanced “thinking” is worthless.
The truth: If the perps had been white and the victims black, we woulnd’t have enough hotel rooms to accomodate all the national media that would be here for the trials. The Grievance Brothers, Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton, would be speechifying, and white people would be blamed en masse. Think Duke “rape” case, folks.
All this, however, is irrelevant to two families who will be ripped apart inside forever. God bless and comfort the Christians and Newsoms.
I guess I just think it’s more fair to attribute cause to the fact that they are CRAZY, not that they are BLACK. I mean, sure, their victims were white—not their same race, but that doesn’t make them any more or less psychopathic. I just don’t think it’s fair or honest to imply that blackness is the cause of this crime, no matter how many “failings of the black community” so many commenters are willing to point out.
They’re nuts. They are completely devoid of humanity. But psychopaths come in all races, and, as Katie pointed out, take all races as their victims.
ref: “psychopaths come in all races”
Tell you what, Amanda, you go walk through the ghetto tonight with a sandwich sign advertising your highly developed level of humanity, and your critique of all those nasty racists out there, and see what happens.
The reality is that homicides are committed by young black men at a level about eight times disproportionate to their share of the US population. Does that count as a “failing of the black community”
To Kevin McDonell.
Kevin, do you post regularly in other blogs? Do you have your own? Is it bad form to plug your own in Katie’s blog? Who cares! I enjoy intellectual analysis of reality, the bigger the words, the better.
As to the topic at hand; our present US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called Americans cowards for not being upright in discussing race. However, I fear that the conversation he wanted was all bout the evils that white society has inflicted on Blacks and which, the blood sacrifice of 600,000 during the Civil War was, in his view, not enough to wash away. I don’t think that he’s interested in discussing the issues brought up here of that large chunk of Black society that has failed to live up to the covenant that MLK and the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement expected. Holder, I’m sure would be offended to discuss the psychopathy affecting so many young black men today. Just as with Katie and Amanda that would not fit in his worldview.
As an interesting aside that speaks volumes:
Holder told the Columbia U. class of 2009 that when he attended that school, he took, perhaps, only one final. That is, every time there was a final the students found a reason to go on a strike to protest some injustice or another during the late 60s and early 70s. One day they even occupied the Dean’s office. With an attitude of entitlement for those that came of age during that time, Holder asked the Dean for a letter of recommendation later. In a display of the other generation that enbled Holder’s free thinking one, the Dean complied.
HPH-
I’m not saying I have a more highly developed sense of humanity than anyone else. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve lived a sheltered, privileged life and have NO IDEA what it’s like to grow up black, poor, or motherless, as you seem to assume most black people do.
I’m also not trying to pretend that race isn’t something we have to keep talking about; we do. My place of work has a task force devoted entirely to sorting out race discrepancies, and not as apologists or reparation-offering white-guiltophiles, either, but as public school teachers (who work every day to combat poverty, ignorance, and difficult childhoods–again, for children of all races).
But seriously. These guys were complete psychos. I think it’s foolish to turn it into a race issue. It’s not like we need help fanning the flames of race hatred in this country; why take an isolated incident of insane brutality and sadism and hold it up as an example of a “race issue?” Why not just take this crime for what it was–sadistic, psychopathic brutality?
“grow up black, poor, or motherless, as you seem to assume most black people do.”
Actually it was “fatherless”, and it’s not a racist assumption but an empirical reality. Good on you for being a public school teacher, but as for “fanning the flames of race hatred”, how much ingrained and irrational race hatred could there still be in the Age of Obama?
You’re in dreamland to think that this particular case of psychopathic brutality can be totally teased away from ghetto culture. That’s what’s irrational and that’s exactly what is driving the rising backlash against progressive feel-goodism.
“how much ingrained and irrational race hatred could there still be in the Age of Obama?”
well, i think that’s obvious.
I don’t think considerations of race are appropriate. I’m no fan of forensic mind-reading. Did black perps mistreat white victims because of black-on-white racism? Or b/c they were inculcated with brutality by their dysfunctional gangsta subculture?
Irrelevant. Are the individuals found guilty of capital crimes? Yes? They would be no less guilty if all of the questions above were answered, “no.”
Put them to death with all due haste and send them on to a Judge who’s able to assess penalties beyond the capabilities of any earthly court. Leave the mind-reading to God.
Steve,
I agree with you – in a perfect world. The problem is that while, you may think, that killing someone is enough to show hatred and lack of empathy, liberals and leftist have pushed for thought crime legislation to treat crimes based on “hatred” differently. For example, they fiercely criticized George Bush when, as Governor of Texas, he said that he didn’t see how hate crime legislation could be useful when the perpetrators of the dragging murder had been sentence to death already.
That’s the reason why the issue of race has been brought up in this discussion; the unequal treatment that Hate crime laws give to black on white vs white on black crime. In NYC, whenever a group of whites kills someone black the media goes crazy and the demagogues demand scalps. Of course, the many many times that a group of blacks kils white victims it is treated as a regular crime. That’s what offends many of us.
Crimes should be treated as crimes without making it easier for demagogues to continue sucking the community for their power.
NB
Apparently, the determining factor in NYC for a crime to be labeled as a hate crime is the word”ni**er” (I’m self censoring in case the software does not like the word). If a hip hop loving white teenager uses it in a fight with a black teenager, the white is accused of a hate crime. The fact that many blacks refer to each other using the word seems to be OK with the authorities and using words as “cracker” or “whitey” is not deemed hateful.
Amanda,
I suppose its a good thing that you are not saying that we should stop talking about race in America. However, I went through all the posts and I dont think that was really posited anywhere. I think what you might have discerned along the way, is that it is pointless to continue to talk AROUND the reality of race relations in America, which is something very different. Not sure if you meant to create a strawman, but to help you keep to some logical consistency, let me point out that you did create one.
Also, to give you a sense of what I was addressing in my post that you didnt answer at all, when I implied how illusory (and thus corruptive and dangerous, as mass illusions always are) are the feel good definitions of “tolerance” and “diversity” et al, I would opine that the “task force” you spoke of, which ostensibly is devoted “entirely” (my goodness!) “to sorting out race discrepancies”, is very much part of the problem I referred to.
It may surprise you to hear this said, but contrivances like the one you referred to are almost invariably, enablers to the very worst kinds of radical racism, while at the same time encouraging the denial of same.
I’m sure that there is only the best intentions of the “agents of social change” (we once called them teachers back when the three Rs were at the core of their efforts) empowered in that task force, but since they are probably doing far FAR more damage to their stated cause than good (not to mention doing insult to their ostensible reason for employment…. teaching), it should be called out.
This type of perspective skewing nonsense, now endemic in Public Education, is borne of an ideology that insists that virtually all of America’s social problems derive from institutionalized prejudices, that knowledge is “socially constructed” (and what a barrel of acid that postmodern drivel spills on our foundation every day), and that teaching the young is best achieved by enabling their “natural creativity” to grow (as opposed to instilling the habits that enable actual scholarship). Actual knowledge and real skill in areas like mathematics, reading, and writing become more and peripheral to the “cause” of teaching… which is more and more a crusade for “social justice”.
Think this is a digression from a discussion about the kind of soul crushing racism that some here are arguing is germane to this case?
Think again.
If you were serious about looking honestly at black culture today, particularly popular culture, it would amaze you how often you will find interspersed throughout, a generous helping of social justice rhetoric. Angry, self-righteous but otherwise stunningly ignorant rappers spout off half baked references that are almost comically Marxist. Rage filled but ignorant people of any stripe I can tell you are far more useful to Marxist revolutionaries than are people who are productive and enjoying the stunning prosperity that the free market, a civic compact and individual liberty has made possible. Among all too many black youths, this ideology taps into America-loathing, and in this case it is focused specifically on America as a “White” enterprise.
How absolutely tragic, both to the promise of America, and to the noble cause of ending racism as a potent force.
This Marxian twaddle has been in ascendance for over thirty years, and has long since taken root in American education schools, and as they have undergone radicalization through multiculturalist, racialist, and other forms of leftwing and quasi-Marxist deformations, they have yielded up the kind of fruit any clear eyed Classicist would expect. There is no Law of Unintended Consequences here.
Where the hell did it come from?
Start with Bill Ayers if you want to have a good place to backtrack from (although there are plenty of others in Howard Zinn’s America). Besides being an unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers has been devoted to “critical pedagogical” theory, which exhorts teachers to teach students, in the name of “social justice,” to reject the “oppressive” capitalist social order.
Critical Pedagogy, in spite of the typically mendacious label, is about as intellectually diverse as Mao’s little red book. Heavily promoted now for example is the “urban education” venue where stunningly, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”; has become virtually the bible of the critical pedagogy movement.
What results can one expect from “social-justice teaching” which seeks to radicalize students and teachers. Unconfronted, taught like it is unquestioned dogma, is it surprising that various manifestations of a desire to overthrow “the oppressors” explode in their myriad forms?
No its not. Add to this that the most indignant and ruthlessly hateful purveyors of this poison are also probably utterly bereft of basic knowledge and inteelectual skills in language, math, science, since that really wasn’t what their “education” was about.
So, I submit to you that when you speak of how teachers work every day to “combat poverty, ignorance, and difficult childhoods–again, for children of all races”, consider that carefully. How do they do that exactly?
And before you write off this case as an example of “total psychos” and comfort yourself there, consider how extraordinarily unlikely it would be, for three “total psychos” such as this, to be gathered in the same place… prowling as a team… and ensconced with their likewise “total psycho” girlfriends, who also displayed the empathy typical of a serial killer. Make sense to you?
We are products, to a very significant extent, of our experiences and learnings. We are framed by nature, but faceted by nurture. These human beings were made capable of utterly objectifying, nullifying the humanity of, and in the end obliterating these other human beings, by the foundation and edifices they subscribed to. Want to make an equivalency that is not false? Comapre them to Nazi’s. Many of whom committed acts which shock us to the core, and throw cold water on the idea that it can only be “Total Psychos”, bereft of empathy, and with the pathology of a serial killer, who can commit such acts.
Many many have done them before… enabled by the Zeitgeist they were ensconced in, and had surrendered their humanity to.
Where does that leave your task force? Could it be a contributer to that Zeitgeist… one that hangs over that which is America in all its promise and potential… like a pall?
You’re wasting your breath and bandwidth, Mr. McDonnell. Let it go.
There’s comes a point where nominally intelligent people have been so intensely lobotomized for so long by the Left that all they see when they try deciphering your ideas is lots of scratchy lines on the page with too many syllables to form into coherent words. Much less coalesce into ideas challenging their comfort level.
HPH,
You’re right of course. But its still a tragedy within a tragedy… yielding tragedy. We live in interesting times, and they will not be resolved I fear, before there is far more tragedy still… enough to affect us all.
It didn’t have to be that way… or maybe it did. We are fallen, and easily corrupted. What we deny, is used by the ruthless. The ruthless are ALWAYS clear eyed.
The center never holds.
A minor bit of bookkeeping, but I just wanted to point out that racism is an overused word. Most people mean racial “prejudice,” referring to racial mistrust or hostility; racism is the belief that one race is superior to another.
Frankly, I can’t believe I wasted so much time reading so many words that said so little. No winning arguments here.
Nobody: “No winning arguments here.” Because nothing good can come of this. Nothing. I ache for everyone touched by this calamity.
Said so little? You’ve got to be kidding. I enjoyed every word that everyone said. I like to put my pencil down and venture outside my comfortable little cubicle once in awhile. Heck, sometimes I even get up off my chair and let my brain breathe.
ref: “so many words that said so little”
Like I said to McDonnell… culturally/ideologically lobotomized to the point that it all looks like chicken scratchings.
Also, when Amanda snarked, “well, i think that’s obvious”… exactly to which “irrational race hatred”– and aimed in which direction– does she refer?
To HPH and KEVIN McDONELL,
Because of the awful theme I can not say to have enjoyed this conversation. However, I found it enlightening and I appreciate the thoughts that I can now incorporate in my own arguments on crime race and society, even when it always seem to be against those too blind to see.
To KATIE,
Thanks for allowing us this opportunity and place to air our views, even when you (sadly, I found) disagreed with them.
To those who knew and loved Chris Newsom and Channon Christian, I have no words, only silent prayers.
As for the criminals, while they still live and forever, may Damnatio memoriae be imposed on them and never be spoken of again.
John Sánchez
It’s late at night; I meant to say “blind because they do not want to see”.
Horrible events, perpetrated by horrible humans.
For me, the presentation of the event was the problem. Whenever a horrible human of the white persuasion is horrible to other people of the black persuasion, it’s trumpeted as evidence of the racism of America and white folks in general.
Yet, when we have an equally horrible event, such as this, in which the race of the perps is black and victims are white, first, very little is ever said about the race of the various parties, because it doesn’t fit the prevailing moral “America is racist and white people hate black people.” I get very tired of hearing that from the race hustlers.
In fact, it’s just about trash. The two goons in Texas who dragged a retarded black man to his death? Trash, and they should be taken out like trash. The four individuals in this case? Trash, and the world would be better off without them.
Nobody.
As for whether there were no winning arguments, I would say that in the very big picture there are rarely winning arguments when it comes to debating the human endeavor. One of the greatest achievements of the Founders, and unique in all of human history, is that in the main, they based their entire proposition for good governance and just society on this humble foundation. We dont see the promised land, and we are lost at sea. But with the few stars to guide us, we will seek together, to preserve our individual dignity, and make our way.
In fact, even the idea that there is a finally “winning” argument, smacks of the utopian dream, and leads to the fall. (The kinds that Pride always goeth before.) We don’t know the way… but… with only a few stars to steer by, its surely worth noting, that undermining these guides is usually the first order of business for those claiming to have THE winning argument in the business of humanity.
Thus leading on from that, there can indeed be LOSING arguments. We go forward by process of elimination, and if we’re wise, use history and those few basic principles as our guide. They are stated with equisite eloquence in the founding documents.
Mindful of that discussion, I think there actually were some losing arguments here. Yes, there were losing ones. The same arguments that have lost repeatedly and grotesquely in the scope of history, especially that of the last century.
But alas, they persist anyway. Sentimentality is as arrogant as it is self indulgent, and it resists both reason and experience.
And I would add to that, the semantic distinction you make between racism and racial prejudice is almost meaningless. Even more broadly, ANY collectivization of inidividual will, be it cultural, religious, name your distinction, leads to a necessary surrender of that individual will, and personal soveriegnty, and ultimately to the equivalent of degradation of the other(s). Always. We all have a base instinct for superiority… a corrupting flaw to be as gods.
Thats why the dignity and accountability of the individual as enshrined in Liberty as such a bulwark to that vulgar and destructive impulse. And why in a diverse and open society, what we need above ALL ELSE, is a free and open discourse, where sunlight gets into all the corners.
Blinders do more than foster ignorance. They nurture the worst in us.
This horrible crime is almost certainly not disconnected from issues of “race”. But it is not about some imagined proclivities within those of African extraction. This is absurd on its face, and to claim it would be profoundly ignorant not only of science, but of history. Rather, its about a culture that has been subject to the machinations of those who would seek to use the most base instincts I refer to above to their own ends, unconcerned about the utter destructiveness they represent (a fact that spans the whole length and breadth of human history).
Some have begin to refer to this phenomenon as “Racialism”, which is not a bad label for it I suppose. But in the end, it really does transcend mere race in that respect, and makes it easy for those inculcated in it to readily unleash this instinct against almost anything that can be labelled as “other”. It pulls out all the checks on this savage impulse, and sets it out as virtually a value. The neat Sophist trick of today, is that even those most enmeshed in it, do so while clothed in a robe upon which is written words like tolerance and diversity. The power play is that you are allowed to hate the haters, and not tolerate the intolerant and so forth, but the trick is that thise who fall into these catogories have become pretty much anyone who does not subscribe to this new collective ethos.
All this matters. And it DOES relate to this case. Katie exclaimed that this wrenching and despair inducing case is about “pathology” (we agree on the evil part), NOT race, implying that anyone who thinks different is a hater (there was a redneck label thrown in there as well, which is too thick with irony to spend time on now). Well I’m certain I’m not a hater, and I submit to you that if you want to seek out triggers for this kind of hatred “going mass market”, you can start with the logical inconsistency innate to that concept.
We are small and frail and finite, and readily drawn to greys and shadow. We need to be in it together, but individually; and prepared to look at everything ourselves and collectively, if we are going to preserve our dignity individually and collectively… and go TRULY forward both as persons, and as a nation.
There are forces at play that seek and have sought to undermine this great flawed wonderful experiment that is America, with an insidious utopian ethos appealing to high aspirations, but working typically, through savage instincts. It has almost obliterated virtue, and even the IDEA of virtue in our civic society. And as this has fallen, individualism and even Liberty, have been recast as selfish and callow, while the latest iteration of the collective WE has been once again touted as “virtuous” (the meaning of which now, has become a “living” word, like so much else, and subject to the redefinitions of an elite who work within a narrative… see “Social Justice”)
Its a lie. The greatest collective endeavors in human history have ALWAYS been on the backs of the efforts of free men in common cause, and collectivist endeavors ALWAYS are the purvue of those who seek to enshrine the few over the many. There are no contradictions in this, only self evident truths.
And so it is in this case, when we are proscribed from addressing the obvious reality that these evil men and woman are very much subject to an odious and rapidly metastasizing Zeitgeist. To face the obvious fact that had the same car gone by at the same time, with a young couple who in all other resepects were virtually indentical, except that they were black, this story would be different.
This knowledge does not and should not enflame race hatred. It should inspire awareness, and inspire scrutiny and above all honesty. It should inspire us to reexamine our shibboleths, and to look behind the curtain of our recently adopted “truisms”. It should inspire us to challenge prevailing winds, and to walk against them to see where they are really blowing from.
And we dont need to be afraid that such inquiries will lead to an explosion of hatred. Those that say this, and use it as an excuse to control the discourse, are charlatons and poseurs with their own agenda and whose reason for controlling the levers of propaganda are much more old, and much less noble. For if that were so, then the American experiment is doomed to fail, and probably humanity along with it.
But it is not. And if we be free men, we can seek to look through the lens of this horror, and not be afraid if we find that there are other insidious horrors behind it. Horrors that if left unaddressed, will doom our great enterprise to many of the very things we seek to protect it from.
Jiggy,
In the end, trash comes from somewhere, and if it is the case that there is more and more trash seeming to bubble up from more and more places, we need to look hard. You cite in your few lines, several points that lead one back to the power of the “Narrative” in our collective consciousness.
But having said that (and only because I think we are near a tipping point around that which must be addressed for ourselves and our children), nevertheless I want to say that at a personal level, I agree with you completely. Looking at this case, and at the abominable one in Texas as well, and others like them in a vacuum, we need to be resolved that it is not for us to consider redemption. There lines that get crossed, after which we are only left with the option to put the crossers down.
This is for Hanoi Paris Hilton:
Sorry, silly boy, (I suspect you like that name as much as I liked babe. I guess that there isn’t a respectful and caring sentiment to your use of the word babe. After all, I’m not your babe in any sense of the word. It was rude to use it with me, a stranger).
Also, HPH, I guess what I should have said so that you can understand me is: Although guns do exist I believe that individual civilians owning more guns is not the answer to violent crime. Violence begets violence and statistically women and children are the poorer for the fact that Americans are armed to the teeth. And my opinion is also that the NRA and others grossly misinterpret the context of the Second Amendment and the intent of its authors. I’m guessing you don’t feel the same way, and that’s fine, it’s your opinion.
Last, if you felt any uneasiness or sadness or anger about this crime, then you are burdened by it. If you don’t give a flip and think it doesn’t impact you, you are dreaming. If this is no burden to you–it’s not your particular problem, why did you bother posting? You know, Hanoi, that every one of us could be a victim of violent crime at any time and it probably has happened to at least one person we know. It costs society in terms of relationships and culture. If you dont’ care about those things, you know it costs you taxpayer money.
This is for Bullshark:
I’m betting you’ll get no buy in from Suzanne when addressing her in such a manner. If you want to see an opinion change in those you disagree with, starting with “put down the blunt” is a lousy start.
Kevin:
It’s my opinion that the ruthless are NOT always clear-eyed. Do you think any of the criminals involved with this case were sober and drug free when they committed these crimes? Come on. They were at the least stoned and more likely high on harder stuff like crystal meth. This in no way excuses their actions, but I’m using this to illustrate that the ruthless are not always committing crimes with a plan and laserbeam focus. I agree with a commenter who said she doesn’t think that these guys woke up and said: Hmm, since we are out of cash for our drugs, let’s target some white couple and carjack them and sadistically torture them to death. They must be white, though, or we will not strike!
Probably their choice was simply desperation and timing–they could have easily picked a young black couple to rob (and then who knows what) if that black couple had walked to their car instead of the white couple that night.
My only point–the ruthless are often lazy, stupid opportunists under the influence of drugs and alcohol and who strike what they see as the easiest target.
To all who think the killers woke up and decided to pick on white people:
It is reported that the exact same criminals committed a home invasion of a black woman and child just one day prior to the carjacking of the white couple.
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=6560889 (Hanoi, you’ll like this story because a gun allegedly saved the day).
That is not to say that race did not play a role in the subsequent torture and abuse of Christian and Newsome. I have no idea if the thugs went to extra lengths to be sadistic because the victims were white. I have no idea if they felt a sense of entitlement or retribution surrounding their acts. It is possible they did. But that doesn’t mean much to me, as a white person. These monsters were going to commit a violent crime regardless, I already know race relations aren’t great, and that there is a subculture within the black community comprised of outlaws and bigots and a few very ill folks within that culture willing to torture and kill white people like myself. I’m betting, though, that the latter is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the black folks out there who say they hate white folks.
Personally, I hate violent criminal culture, be it found in groups of white supremacists, modern day Nazis, American black bigots, African ethnic clans like Hutus, mafiosas, Eastern Block gangs. It is all death-loving, nihilistic Zeitgeist.
The question is, what do we do about it here in our own back yard? For all you commenters who assumed position statements because of what you perceive to be my leftist leanings–what would your solutions be?
In the short term, I’ve researched some very good articles on how to avoid carjacking, mugging, and kidnapping. They were helpful and would be useful regardless of who targeted me.
But I wanted to hear some real proposals for weeding out the odious.
Micaela,
These are not the ruthless. This was perversion and baseness unchecked yes, loosed from all moral restraint yes… but not by will. Fruit of the tree maybe, but more like soulless wraiths… nothing one might consider, oh…an “ubermensch” for example.
And of course… there will always be these… on a hair trigger and ready to fall off the edge of their humanity at the slightest push, and they of course come in all sizes shapes and colors.
A truly free society espouses a civic virtue that can foster enough restraint through the collective, that it can have a quite significant impact on the perspectives of individuals. In other words, a bit of compelling info on basic right and wrong goes a long way.
You will note though, in our “sophist”icated perspective, on such oh so simplistic concepts as basic right and wrong, we are shrouded in the heavy mist of relativism and moral equivalency.
The ubermensch love that… for the soulless, especially those infused with fierly self righteous indignation to fill the void… are easily led.
So when I refer to the clear eyed ruthless, I am most definitely referring to a different animal entirely. You will note I cited the likes of various social engineers (see the Frankfurt Institute et al). I named Ayers for example… the architects of the idea of “agents of social change”, a postmodern powered expression of odious sophistry if ever there was one… these are your ruthless. The architects and poisoners, who believe themselve to be beyond good and evil… who believe that they can look into the abyss, and sow nihilsm to their own ends… are always clear eyed.
How did they make the ground fertile for these horrific men to be far more capable (or to be accurate, far less likely to NOT) commit these acts?
In the old ways. New clothes, new labels, different flavors… but same old ways.
America was once famous for its anti-intellectualism. It was in many ways, by design.
It cant be overstated how far better off we were.
My apologies, Micaela, over the perceived sexist offense in calling you “babe”. Had I met you on the street, I would have been respectful and polite, irrespective of your views.
Regarding exactly whose “burden” this is, better we don’t go there, lest we start running simple cost/benefit equations on expeditious death penalty vs. life imprisonment. When I declined accepting the shared moral burden implied by your first posting, I guess I just didn’t ken that you were talking about the utilitarian stuff like law enforcement costs.
We’ll have to disagree on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, but for what it’s worth, in the recent Heller decision, the Supremes ratified the NRA’s analysis and chucked out yours.
Further to your fear and loathing of non-governmental gunplay, I lived for years in a country where private possession of firearms was strictly forbidden and harshly punished. In a two-month period just prior to us finally throwing in the towel there, professionally, we had five increasingly brazen burglaries –all duly reported to the local authorities– and finally a home invasion where the perp(s) bypassed my twenty locks and cross-bars on every door and window by jimmying off the asbestos roofing and coming into the kitchen down through the drop ceiling before our very eyes.
He pointed a handgun at my head, in front of my terrified wife and screaming eleven year old daughter, and popped a round off next to my ear to show he was serious. Lucky for us, he accepted my explanation that there was nothing left to steal.
Lucky for him I hadn’t followed through on my earlier plan to buy a sawed-off twelve gauge on the local black market, else I would have just blown his head off, and let the chips fall where they may. They would’ve fallen pretty damn hard on me as an armed foreigner, I guarantee you.
As for making guns similarly illegal here in the USA, we saw how effective prohibition was with alcohol, and how superbly our present drug control laws are working.
Two days ago, the AP story on Mr. Cobbins’s conviction ended thus:
“Some conservative Internet commentators and white supremacist agitators accused the national media of reverse discrimination by failing to give the case involving white victims and black suspects the same attention paid to white-on-black hate crimes.
Investigators said the attack wasn’t a hate crime, just a carjacking that went terribly wrong. Local media and The Associated Press have covered developments in the case since it began.”
Ah yes, everybody who’s alarmed that the elite media with the beautiful soul and the progressive agenda is leading our society to perdition is a Innertubes wingnut, or more likely, a neo-Nazi.
That was what stank from the outset with Katie’s approach, and later with yours and Amanda’s.
How sad for the victims families. The first perp up got a so-called life sentence. No death sentence and an effective 25 year sentence in Tennessee.
By the way, the killers convicted in the bumper dragging in Jasper, TX got the death sentence.
Surely at this point you can not continue to insist that race is not a deeply embedded factor in this case.
How sad for those in your area who are still in denial.
My “approach.” That’s hilarious. Really. I guess trolling blogs is serious work for some people.
Kevin and HPH, pleasure doing business with you, despite my nominal intelligence. Wonder what you guys do to effect change in your communities each day. Outside of writing 1500-word blog comments steeped in smug self-righteousness, that is. Most of which (you’re right, HPH) I didn’t waste time reading anyway! I’m just gonna keep living my blissed-out, blessed-out, loving-folks life until something happens to twist my brain up, like what happened to you guys. Then we can be friends for real.
LOLZ!
And Katie, sorry I let myself get sucked into a flame war on your blog! But Mama can’t just sit still after a “nominal intelligence” comment.
Great ad-hominens, babe. Can’t speak for McDonnell but according to “word count”, my longest posting is half as many words as yours. Glad that you meter your valuable time so not to waste it on the smug and self righteous.
Maybe you should consider addressing the content of your opponents’ ideas. That would be quite a leap.
Sorry Amanda,
You’re simply too transparent not to be called out. You read comments, felt a threat to your collective self, made a substantive response using the tried and trues, which were likewise met substantively, and in the main, exposed as weak.
You’re pretty shocked. You are probably not at all used to being challenged. Certainly in teachers college, all these edifices were laid out as though they had unequivocal pre-eminence. SUPERIOR even one might say… and that was no real problem since the terms of debate were so controlled. After all, when you dont have to present those who oppose you, but rather simply present a strawman concoction of those who oppose you… its very easy to impress your students and followers.
So now you lash out vindictively. Its immature, but also very typical.
Now after all your deployment of standard “progressive” pap… you are reduced to vitriolic ad hominem. “Nah nah… I didnt read it anyway!”
No you probably didnt. The “leading lights” from your side dont read much outside their own armory either.
Just dont walk away the vicitm. That grates intensely… poor you and your nominal intelligence trying to live your loving life… beaten up here for no good reason by people who are loveless and TWISTED.
You kid yourself.
And you know it.
This has indeed devolved into something that is pretty much a flame war. As such it will likewise continue only as a boring and pointless excercise.
But I would like to say this, to whoever might have a care… I participated in this in earnest. Initially linked to this blog from elsewhere, and deeply affected because the case itself is so dramatic and wrenching. It was only after after reading some of the commentary that I was overcome with a desire to discuss it and to address the issues as I did. I took time from my life (I have kids and responsibilities) to do so because I think it is critical at this point in time, to engage this directly and with eyes wide open.
This is the POINT of such a venue… or it should be.
I took on specific points people made after carefully reading their words, and I engaged these points from a core that I think is critically important to us all, but also under heavy assault.
I dont believe that things will go on in their present direction for very long. At a very deep level, we are at a tipping point that is floating unsustainably.
The more we TRULY explore how we got here, openly and unafraid, the less terrible will be the consequences of our malaise and blindness.
This is the way it works. There are no new rules in history. Only an understanding of the the old ones, or a denial of them. The latter usually ends in blood and fire one way or another, and it is those who stood in contemptuous denial of what then grows in the fog of gray, who spoke of “peace” as though it were just a sentiment that precluded violence… who are ultimately most accountable (though they rarely accept it).
I dont want to see that… America has always had a resilient resistance to Sophist depredations. The truth will out… I hope.
I will just leave it there.