Long-form master Steve-O-in NJ is in top form with this Comment of the Day.

For an end of the ideological spectrum that so recently was slapped with the dead fish of condign justice in the election just completed, progressives sure are being slow to start trimming their hypocrisy and realigning their warped values.The same people who wanted to lock up a courageous rescuer who stopped, permanently, a dangerous and deranged homeless man who was endangering riders on a NYC subway are cheering on a murderous narcissist who shot a man in the back because he wants free health care and his back hurts. I continue to marvel at how our culture spawned such a large mass of confused people. I also continue to wonder how they can be cured.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post about Elizabeth Warren, one of our most despicable Senators, rationalizing cold-blooded murder:

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America has always been a nation where there has been tension between the Puritan, seeking to impose a particular morality, and the cowboy, who is all about rugged individualism, self-help, and doing it your way. America has also always been a nation where when the ballot box, the jury box, and the soapbox have failed, we don’t hesitate to turn to the cartridge box. It’s all well and good to talk about the ideals we stand for or write about them, but sometimes, as in 1776, there’s no choice but to pick up a gun and make them happen.

Luigi Mangione was not looking to make freedom happen. He wasn’t even striking back at a healthcare system that had denied a loved one needed treatment and that person had died. He was a rich kid from a rich family who got a severe back injury playing an extreme sport which was advertised as extreme, and medicine could not fix it for him. For whatever reason, he blamed the health insurance system, and targeted one of its leaders. This wasn’t about any kind of lofty ideal, this was a pure and simple revenge killing.

The fact of the matter is that there was really nothing here other than that. There are those in this country who glorify revenge and getting even, and it has become a part of our culture. If you go to the movies, you’re going to see a huge number of pictures that are all about someone being wronged and taking revenge personally on whoever did the wrong. There’s also the whole gangster culture of movies where they glorify organized crime figures who never forgive and never forget, but sometimes wait until the time is right. A big chunk of The godfather series is about Don Vito Corleone seeking revenge against the man who killed his father and forced his family to immigrate. It takes decades, and the building of a business empire, but it is all leading up to that moment when he faces Don Ciccio, who is receiving him as a guest, reveals who he really is, and carves him open like a roast.

We all admit to revenge ourselves, sometimes for stupid and petty things. It’s not for nothing that we say that what goes around comes around and that payback is frequently a bitch. We also all tell ourselves that we are not vengeful people or petty people and that if we do something to someone in retaliation that’s different because that person deserved it.

That brings me to the second part of this, whether or not we are okay with revenge frequently depends on whether or not we are okay with the person taking the revenge or the person who is the victim of the revenge. It starts as early as grade school, where you will cover for your friend but happily rat out somebody you don’t like. Then it starts to depend on your political bent. The same people who are justifiably horrified at violence against anyone who’s black are frequently the ones who are perfectly okay with riots where white people are targeted for beating and killing. The same people who were horrified at the Holocaust, your frequently okay with whatever the Soviets did. Someone like the now dead lawyer to terrorists Lynn Stewart would be an example. She said it was perfectly okay for Mao Zedong or Castro or the leaders of North Vietnam to jail and kill those who opposed them because those people sought to undo a people’s revolution. She falls in the same category as also now dead polemicist Howard Zinn, who frequently tried to smear traditional heroes like the Founding Fathers, saying they were all about keeping their place in the food chain, and sanctifying murderers like Nat Turner, who may have been fighting slavery but was doing it by killing innocent people at random. I could also reference a lot of Irish Americans who were perfectly okay with all kinds of terror tactics as long as they were directed against the British and would punch your lights out if you attempted to say otherwise. One such person insulted me, and I told him that if I ever see him again I will put him in the fucking ground. You would probably tell me that’s being ridiculous, and objectively you’d be right, but I hate the guy enough and feel strongly enough that my objectivity is lost.

The problem here is too many Americans have moral blind spots and are willing to look the other way when they agree and be a hanging judge when they don’t agree. Too many other Americans are willing to cover for those they agree with who take extreme action. Too often those they don’t agree with end up paying the price. This is just one of those situations. Of course a few idiots who has their own gripes with health insurance or who saw the pictures of this guy and decided he was hot are now siding with him and justifying his criminal act. The real downside here is it because this happened in New York, which is not a death penalty jurisdiction, the citizens of that state are going to have to pay for this guy’s three hots and cot for the rest of his life. A planned murder like this should result in the electric chair.