Last month, a bunch of us found out that my daughter's Girl Scout troop leader had been lying to all of us about various things for almost two years, stealing money from the troop and using it for whatever she saw fit, and withholding information and opportunities from the girls. I am happy to say that she is now our former Girl Scout leader, and is no longer allowed around Scouting at all. I gave her multiple online opportunities to come clean about it or tell her side of the story but was roundly ignored. She won't speak to me in public, either, choosing instead to alter her schedule so we don't see each other and refusing to acknowledge my existence. It's clear that she's told her two daughters, casualties of the situation if ever such existed, to do likewise. Troop gossip is that she contends that she's done nothing wrong and is espousing a "I'm just a victim" story to anyone who will listen.
Last week a young man who everyone says was a very pleasant guy blew up a bunch of people in Boston with a shrapnel bomb in a backpack. Apparently, this was done to defend Islam, perhaps at the suggestion of his other brother who was not as successful in life. The two men killed four people, wounded scores more, and created an atmosphere of havoc over something that not only doesn't need defending, but isn't even really a thing. Later, after being wounded in the throat and fighting police, the young man hid in a boat, and is now in hospital with a serious injury, communicating by writing, and being promised the death penalty when found guilty of what he's done. His brother is dead, and likely this upsets no one but him.
Today, during one of my classes at school, a young woman who was supposed to be doing a speaking presentation about anti-abortion radicals (the sort who kill people and firebomb stuff) instead decided to distribute a handout urging us to "save the babies" and then went on for six minutes about how horrible abortions are. When gently confronted by our professor about whether or not she was ever going to move on from graphic & illustrated descriptions of abortions and talk about the actual topic to which she'd been assigned, she shut down completely, ended her presentation, became disrespectful, and refused to participate further in the class. She quickly ducked out when class was over, and we had to overcome awkwardness to move forward.
I suspect that my former GS troop leader felt desparate and unappreciated, overwhelmed and sad, worked over by life. But you don't get to lie and steal from children, at one point withholding a not-insubstantial gift card from a boy with cancer. I suspect that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev loved his brother and was "radicalized" by his brother's strong faith and opinions and undue influence to the point that he was willing to do anything, including kill people. Maybe he thought it wouldn't work; maybe he thought he'd never be caught. Nothing justifies what he did. I suspect that my fellow student was - inside her mind - taking a heroic stance for the "rights of the unborn," speaking up for them when she felt people had to listen. Nothing makes hijacking a class with your subjective opinion and trying to manipulate them a good substitute for a research project.
I'm trying my damndest to understand you fucking people - but you don't make it easy.
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