I’m going to do something now that I don’t do very often and frankly don’t like to do: I’m going to be deadly serious about something.
So, you’ve probably heard about Reyna Valentino, a Detroit mother who stands accused of multiple counts of torture and child abuse… haven’t heard the story? Ok, here’s a link, prepare to be disgusted… you go read it and I’ll be here waiting for you.
http://www2.wivb.com/dpp/news/Hamtramck_girl_20090206
So, this was on the front page of Digg a few days ago, and I felt compelled to post a comment on it. The premise of the comment is that this woman deserves to never be near her kids, or any other kids, for the rest of her life, and that I hope she rots in jail for the rest of her life. I went so far as to say that maybe the district attorney should be seeking the death penalty (I don’t know if Michigan has the death penalty). It seemed a little odd to me that attempted murder wasn’t one of the charges.
Now, here’s the thing that shocked me: I got dugg DOWN for these comments! At least two people wrote to say they disagreed with me!
You see, as the arguments against me went, this woman was suffering from a mental illness. You see, she had a chemical imbalance in her brain that caused her actions, and therefore we should feel sympathy for her and have understanding of her actions.
Well, what can I possibly say to that except FUCK THAT FUCKING BULLSHIT.
As I said in my Digg comment, there is a line that you simply don’t get to cross, most definitely where defenseless children are involved. Whether there’s a legitimate medical condition at play that influences or even outright causes your actions, you don’t get to cross that line. You don’t get to be excused, you don’t get to go on as if nothing happened just because you have some pills that supposedly fixes the problem.
FUCK THAT FUCKING BULLSHIT.
You see, in America, there’s always got to be an excuse for everything that happens. Someone or something has always got to be to blame, it can’t ever be OUR fault after all! No one simply says anymore “Hey, I screwed up, time to pay the piper”. Look, I don’t like consequences any more than anyone else, hate to admit when I’m wrong. But when I make a mistake, I say so, and I pay for my actions as necessary. I don’t look for the nearest person or thing to deflect the blame that falls squarely on my shoulders.
This whole “mental illness defense” has become all too prevalent these days. Do something illegal or just plain evil and, hey, no biggie, after all, there’s a chemical imbalance in your brain. It’s not your fault.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here: I’m in no way, shape or form pulling a Tom Cruise and saying that mental illness is imaginary. Of course it’s not, it is 100% real.
What I AM saying though is that you don’t get to use that as an excuse for sticking your kid in an oven, burning their eyes with hot nails or beating them with a crowbar. You get to FUCKING GO TO JAIL FOR THE REST OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE, that’s what you get. Don’t give me any shit about “to this woman, she was simply cooking a turkey, her reality wasn’t actual reality, she probably didn’t even realize she was hurting her kids and it wasn’t her fault because she had a chemical imbalance”. No, that may be the REASON it happened, it’s not an EXCUSE for it.
There’s a line you simply do not get to cross.
Look, my kids drive me absolutely bonkers sometimes. I feel like just screaming at the top of my lungs for about an hour solid every other day. But, I have this little thing in my brain that says “you know, cooking my kids like a turkey probably wouldn’t be the best course of action here”. Most people, thankfully, have that governor in their heads too. Most parents, no matter how crazy our kids make us sometimes, would never do the things this woman did. Not in a billion years, chemical imbalances be damned.
So, I suppose you can feel sympathy for her if you want on the grounds that she had a medical condition. You can excuse her actions perhaps on the grounds that it wasn’t her fault because something in her brain wasn’t right.
Me, I call bullshit on that.
I’ll even say the unpopular thing here: a person THAT damaged has no place in civilized society as far as I’m concerned. Even if you can convince yourself that there’s some magic pill that will fix everything, do you want to be the person that allowed her near her children when you find out she skipped her pills for a day and did it again? That’s a risk that simply isn’t acceptable, so the legitimacy of the medical condition becomes irrelevant, the safety of the children is all that matters.
Simply put, there is a line you don’t get to cross, under any circumstances, for any reason. This wasn’t an Al Qaueda operative we were trying to get information from. This wasn’t the man that raped your 6-year old daughter that you were getting revenge on. I’m not sure such actions would even be justified in those two cases. This was a young child we’re talking about here. So, before we have sympathy and understanding for the woman who perpetrated this heinous acts do you think we can maybe have some of that for the child who no doubt suffered horribly at her hands? Do we really want to live in a society where someone can be excused for these types of actions against an innocent child under ANY circumstances? Dear God I fucking hope not.
What’s shocking is that the people who read my comment on Digg didn’t see it that way, they in fact thought I was way off base. I just don’t get that. Well, I take that back, I totally get it: it’s that whole “but she was sick!” mentality at work. It’s that whole “it can’t POSSIBLY be the fault of the person who did it” mentality. Because in America, remember, no one is actually responsible for their actions any more. It’s always someone else’ fault. There’s always an excuse. We just don’t believe in personal responsibility any more. Witness the economic mess we’re in now if you need more evidence to support that view.
This whole thing is incredibly disgusting to me on so many levels. I haven’t decided if what this woman did disgusts me more or the fact that ANYONE is willing to defend her actions on ANY grounds does. It’s real close, I’ll tell you that, and the day that a seemingly accepted societal tendency is on par in terms of disgust as torturing an innocent child, something is SERIOUSLY FUCKING WRONG with the world.
Please, do me one little favor… whether you agree with what I’ve wrote here or disagree completely, PLEASE COMMENT ON IT. I say this because I’d really love to tally how many people agree and how many don’t. That tally would either depress the shit out of me or renew my faith in my fellow man. Right now, from what I’ve seen on Digg, I can’t say I’m at all optimistic.
Dude, i totally agree with you. I would go so far as to expect the government to seek the death penalty. Without fanfare.
When dogs go crazy. We put them to sleep. We don’t do it for fun. We don’t do it out of a sense of malice. We do it in everybody’s best interest. And we don’t make a big deal out of it.
That attitude of ‘but shes sick’, i partly ascribe to the christian ethos of being able to forgive people for anything and everything. People should get out of their imaginary world of ‘being able to forgive people or feeling sorry for them’ and looking at things from a common perspective. Is this person a threat to normal folks around? If yes, we lock them away for life. If a horrible crime is committed, we, the state, eliminate them.
Sanctimonious peity should not be allowed to come in the way of practical reality