Great Commentary

The following is a comment on a group on a social network I belong to. I couldn't have worded it better:

"This particular act, this murder, was performed to instill fear – or terror – into other doctors (and other medical providers) who perform abortions. That is the intention of the act of this shooting/murder, whether it is communicated in any way or not, or even whether it is consciously acknowledged by (no less than) the perpetrator. This is the essence of terrorism: to instill a great fear in others. This act, this murder, fits the definition; this murder is terrorism.

Not that terrorism or a ‘crime of passion’ makes any difference in my view of the consequences for the perpetrator, or even the stealing of a car or a candy bar: the consequences must be rehabilitation. Revenge is not justice; if we go around with that old ‘eye-for-an-eye’ attitude we end up with a whole lot of folks walking about with white canes. Putting someone to death for putting someone to death is nothing more than revenge, we may feel a little endorphin rush with it for a very short while, but it does nothing to alleviate the causative factors. For certain charge the perpetrator with terrorism - so that we know to call a thing what it really is, but rehabilitate him; he has been psychologically bamboozled by organized religion, which is the real criminal here; organized religion, which plays on our most primal fear – the fear of our own mortality. Organized religion, that promises us the big lie that we all want so desperately to believe, that when we die we will not die, but it is a promise that is conditional to that you worship only the recognized idols of the particular religion and all others are blasphemy, a conditional promise that can/does hold such psychological power over the worshippers to turn them into frenzied martyred zealots of big and little actions (or non-actions). A zealot capable of ‘punishing’ themselves in this life for a ‘greater reward’ in the promised next. A zealot capable of murdering for his/her god(s), a zealot capable of actions that will lead to their own death. Organized religion does this; it belittles this life – the only life we really know to be true, the only life we can taste and smell and live – it belittles this life so effectively and fully for the ‘believers’ that their entire existence becomes to propagate the continued existence of the religion. They may think they live for the ‘hereafter’, the big lie, but their lives are merely now the propagation devices for the meme of the organized religion.

-Mark."