Musing on Life's Truths (Rated R).

A woman chopped off her husbands penis after sedating him and tying him to a bed and then put it in the garbage disposal and turned it on.  She said that "he deserved it."

Something about this just smacks of militant feminism to me. 

Also, knowing our culture, somehow I imagine American culture would be somehow tolerant of this disgusting, horrific, barbarous act and not give it another thought really other than "I hope he gets it back" or "lives" or something.  Expect him to "take it like a man?"

Let's flip this around though:

Woman's breasts cut off in her sleep after husband drugs her and throws them in garbage disposal and says "She deserved it."

I've actually handled worse in my time in a clinical setting working as an intern clinical psychologist.  One of the men murdered his wife and then finally plunged a pair of knitting needles into her back and then watched a pornographic movie while he had sex with her corpse quite a few times before he was found by the police.

Barbarous and cruel is barbarous and cruel.  I worry about our society becoming numb to such stories as evil in the world increases.  Stories such as the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre and even the Hindenburg Disaster shocked a nation.  Meanwhile, in my line of work, wrapping my head around the dark world of psychopaths and rapists and brutal stalkers took well over a year to keep a straight face and be able to go home to sleep at night.

Pres. Bush's Aircraft Type - TBM Avenger

There was a time when children weren't to be exposed to such things, parents would clap their hands over their children's ears, public profanity was scolded, and now it seems like there's a rush for them to "know real life" and people keep their mouths shut in public to avoid offending someone and in an attempt to be "open-minded."

SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber

Also, there was a time when it was considered appropriate to fight back. 
I met a US Navy Lieutenant who flew in WWII off the USS San Jacinto with future President George Bush.  I heard the story first-hand about President Bush's shoot-down and the controversey over the death of the two other sailors in his plane, but I won't repeat it here.  At any rate, after the Bataan Death March, this Navy Lieutenant took his squadron into battle against the Japanese, and was able to line up an attack on one of the Japanese Carriers.  He recounted how he lined up his bomb sights on "that big red ball on the deck and planted my bombs right through it and then went over their deck at about 20 feet watching the men on the deck scrambling thinking I was going to hit them and I watched my bombs explode behind me and said, 'that's for the Bataan Death March you sons of bitches!'"

Even WWII newsreels contained footage of American sailors gunning down Japanese pilots parachuting into the water so that only strips of flesh hung out of the chute by the time they landed. Audiences cheered our boys for doing the work that the Japanese started while America tried to stay out of war.   Meanwhile the Japanese would tie chains around the feet of American sailors captured at sea and throw them overboard to drown.

I won't recount the horrors my father saw on the swiftboats up into Laos and Cambodia in Vietnam here. The tortures inflicted by communist and even US supported regimes against women and children  make even the Nazis' Final Solution seem humane and the story above seem tame.

Life is brutal. 

Is it true? 

Yes it is true. 

But does all truth need to be shouted, spoken, or told?  What do we choose to focus on?  What do we choose to teach our children about the world?  

I suppose we should teach them the good things about life.  Let them learn those truths.  The things about God.  Learn them while they can.  They are just as true and even more filling to our souls and spirits. 

As for vengeance?  For the brutal truths of life?  "He had it coming?"  I leave that to God to decide. I would rather my children were able to turn to God for comfort, rather than be as I was coming home from my first tour, scoffing at the hardships and sob stories of those who were crippled and in pain because where I'd just come from if you couldn't run you got shot and didn't survive. 

In conclusion?  I don't know whether the news story atop is informative or entertainment in a shocking sort of way.  I don't know that I need to know this out of Garden Grove California here in Beaverton, Oregon, some several hundred miles away.  I don't know what our media is about at this point.  But I do know that its news that we don't need to focus on.  As for my blog entry?  Perhaps it smacks of the same things I am speaking of. 

At any rate, I'm starting to think I would prefer we spoke of the peaceable things of the world, because they are just as marvelous in this age of tumult, and vengeance, shock and horror ultimately actually leave us dead inside.  It's nearing 20 years since my first enlistment and I'm still wired and on alert and tense at all times.  Perhaps the enticement of all the horrors in the world is that its "educational" and "real", but I know this - you can forget who you really are and forget the gentler and more fulfilling things in life if you make that your focus.