Ciarog
8th March 2013, 12:40
"If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, maybe you're the asshole." That's a good saying to remember when anyone brings up a long train of abuses as justification for murder, and it's probably something to remember in the case of Christopher Dorner. If there's one thing we can learn from him, it's to not let bad things get under your skin.
That said, he did accuse the LAPD of being corrupt, brutal and incompetent. And in their quest to apprehend him, they did open fire on least three completely innocent people. (That's the official number. Who knows how many pickup-driving LL Cool J lookalikes disappeared or died from "muggers" armed with M4 carbines?)
Weighing in at 11,400 words, his manifesto really isn't that big as far as they go. Industrial Society and it's Future is three times larger than "Last Resort" and "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" is 68 times larger. His overreliance on abbreviations and military/police jargon is confusing at times, and his line of thinking is sometimes hard to follow, but what he has to say is seldom harmed by the way he tries to say it. Overall, Last Resort makes for a quick, dry reading reminiscent of a well-done crime scene report, far more readable than all the articles calling it the "deranged rant of a madman".
Now, having critiqued the writing, I think it best to move on to what what what was actually written:
-The jury is still out on his accusations that a female officers abused a schizophrenic man. I wouldn't doubt it, knowing as I do how police treat the mentally ill, and anyone else who doesn't show them "proper" deference. It's the same phenomenon that leads to bullet-riddled pets and tasered grannies. I also know how they treat whistleblowers and anyone who tries to take them to task for such abuses.
-He mentions Abraham Schefres, a Jewish recruit whom he was accused of bullying when he had in fact stood up for Schefres while other recruits sang Hitler Youth songs.
Unless he knows German, I have to wonder how Dorner knew what they were singing about at all. Did the recruits tell him? If so, might they have just been pulling his chain? I could find nothing more about this incident, but Abraham Schefres was interviewed about another incident (being punched in the chest by Dorner while wearing body armor) and claimed that Dorner was just having a little fun and didn't really mean anything by it.
I have a brother like that; great big ole boy who likes to go out drinking and goofing off and has predilection for joking aggressiveness that people who don't know him often misinterpret for simple aggressiveness. I keep telling him that he's going to spook the wrong person one day and wind up bleeding out in the floor wondering "What just happened?" I don't know if people like Dorner and my brother are deliberately looking for trouble, but I do know that they and trouble seem to run into each other an awful lot.
-He mentions fights he had in a patrol van and before that in elementary school where someone used the phrase "nigger". Both incidents saw him and the other party punished. Neither accounts could be corroborated.
The question of whether or not assault and battery is a proper response to hurt feelings is a contentious one that'll depend heavily on one's personal convictions and temperament, and little argument could ever change it either way. My mommy would probably say something about sticks and stones, and I'd say something about the need for more cracked skulls and broken jaws in our society.
-He says that he has lost complete faith in the system. I don't think he has. He may be a violent reformer, but he's still looking for reform instead of insurrection and in this he is looking for something that can't be found. Mistaking design for defect is a fatal error that affects many who might otherwise become revolutionary leftists.
-He mentions various "high value targets": mostly members of different races fighting each other and making things bad for everyone. While his assessments seem accurate, it's a shame that he didn't consider issues of class disparity or the greater environmental and geological changes going—all of which stand to make life in the water- and petroleum-dependent Southwest America about as fun as a stay in Michael Vick's kennels. The American elite, in effect, is factionalizing the lower class and pitting all against all in a contest for negative-sum breadcrumbs.
-He mentions that cops tend to be worse if they were hired before polygraphs became standard. I'm surprised that a cop would have faith in such technology.
-He mentions demolitions training and heavy weapons such as SA-7 surface to air missiles and Barett sniper rifles, but doesn't seem to have to have used either. If I were going to lie in my manifesto, I wouldn't lie about the kind of equipment I had, I'd lie about the number of people I had working with me; give my targets the idea that even after I'm dead they may still have someone gunning for them.
Actually, the long description of his abilities and how he plans on using them does little to ease my suspicions of narcissism. If so, it would make sense that he's trying to portray himself as a one-man army.
-He supports an assault weapons ban, and I ain't sure what to make of that. Why would anyone need an AR-15? Erm, to kill one's former fellow officers? I can't think of many countries where members of the police and military (of which he was both) couldn't acquire arms of some kind if they really wanted them. Woo Bum Kon came from an even more hoplophobic society than Christopher Dorner and that didn't stop him from racking up an even bigger kill total.
In any event, I still think the best weapon for a beginning insurgent is a shotgun. I mentioned in the other thread why I don't consider AR-15s ideal, so I won't repeat myself here.
-He likes the president. I think the president is a useless technocrat coming from a long line of useless technocrats. Dorner never thought he'd live to see a black president, and I never thought I'd live to see people get so hot and bothered over some guy taking orders from all the rich white folks still running the Federal Reserve, who himself is whiter than America's prison population.
I do agree with him about the first lady; definitely one of the most intellectual and attractive we've had in awhile.
-Dorner either has incredibly good memory, or he really knows how to hold a grudge. He remembers a high-school assistant principle and a fellow student whom he only interacted with once? I don't remember ANY of the students or staff from my high school years, apart from those with whom I still regularly interact.
Granted, maybe this says more about me than him. I was a loner and spent a part of my high school years in therapy, so I never bonded with my classmates the way that many would.
-Campus security existed in 1996? I always thought of it as a sort of post-9/11 thing.
-They still make PBR? I ain't seen any of that stuff since my grandpa died.
-He mentions a bunch of movies I'll never see and a bunch of people I've never heard of.
-He hates cyclists? Well fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
-I don't eat commercial chicken very often (hard to after you've worked in the plants and on the farms), but I do agree with him that KFC has some of the best.
That said, he did accuse the LAPD of being corrupt, brutal and incompetent. And in their quest to apprehend him, they did open fire on least three completely innocent people. (That's the official number. Who knows how many pickup-driving LL Cool J lookalikes disappeared or died from "muggers" armed with M4 carbines?)
Weighing in at 11,400 words, his manifesto really isn't that big as far as they go. Industrial Society and it's Future is three times larger than "Last Resort" and "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" is 68 times larger. His overreliance on abbreviations and military/police jargon is confusing at times, and his line of thinking is sometimes hard to follow, but what he has to say is seldom harmed by the way he tries to say it. Overall, Last Resort makes for a quick, dry reading reminiscent of a well-done crime scene report, far more readable than all the articles calling it the "deranged rant of a madman".
Now, having critiqued the writing, I think it best to move on to what what what was actually written:
-The jury is still out on his accusations that a female officers abused a schizophrenic man. I wouldn't doubt it, knowing as I do how police treat the mentally ill, and anyone else who doesn't show them "proper" deference. It's the same phenomenon that leads to bullet-riddled pets and tasered grannies. I also know how they treat whistleblowers and anyone who tries to take them to task for such abuses.
-He mentions Abraham Schefres, a Jewish recruit whom he was accused of bullying when he had in fact stood up for Schefres while other recruits sang Hitler Youth songs.
Unless he knows German, I have to wonder how Dorner knew what they were singing about at all. Did the recruits tell him? If so, might they have just been pulling his chain? I could find nothing more about this incident, but Abraham Schefres was interviewed about another incident (being punched in the chest by Dorner while wearing body armor) and claimed that Dorner was just having a little fun and didn't really mean anything by it.
I have a brother like that; great big ole boy who likes to go out drinking and goofing off and has predilection for joking aggressiveness that people who don't know him often misinterpret for simple aggressiveness. I keep telling him that he's going to spook the wrong person one day and wind up bleeding out in the floor wondering "What just happened?" I don't know if people like Dorner and my brother are deliberately looking for trouble, but I do know that they and trouble seem to run into each other an awful lot.
-He mentions fights he had in a patrol van and before that in elementary school where someone used the phrase "nigger". Both incidents saw him and the other party punished. Neither accounts could be corroborated.
The question of whether or not assault and battery is a proper response to hurt feelings is a contentious one that'll depend heavily on one's personal convictions and temperament, and little argument could ever change it either way. My mommy would probably say something about sticks and stones, and I'd say something about the need for more cracked skulls and broken jaws in our society.
-He says that he has lost complete faith in the system. I don't think he has. He may be a violent reformer, but he's still looking for reform instead of insurrection and in this he is looking for something that can't be found. Mistaking design for defect is a fatal error that affects many who might otherwise become revolutionary leftists.
-He mentions various "high value targets": mostly members of different races fighting each other and making things bad for everyone. While his assessments seem accurate, it's a shame that he didn't consider issues of class disparity or the greater environmental and geological changes going—all of which stand to make life in the water- and petroleum-dependent Southwest America about as fun as a stay in Michael Vick's kennels. The American elite, in effect, is factionalizing the lower class and pitting all against all in a contest for negative-sum breadcrumbs.
-He mentions that cops tend to be worse if they were hired before polygraphs became standard. I'm surprised that a cop would have faith in such technology.
-He mentions demolitions training and heavy weapons such as SA-7 surface to air missiles and Barett sniper rifles, but doesn't seem to have to have used either. If I were going to lie in my manifesto, I wouldn't lie about the kind of equipment I had, I'd lie about the number of people I had working with me; give my targets the idea that even after I'm dead they may still have someone gunning for them.
Actually, the long description of his abilities and how he plans on using them does little to ease my suspicions of narcissism. If so, it would make sense that he's trying to portray himself as a one-man army.
-He supports an assault weapons ban, and I ain't sure what to make of that. Why would anyone need an AR-15? Erm, to kill one's former fellow officers? I can't think of many countries where members of the police and military (of which he was both) couldn't acquire arms of some kind if they really wanted them. Woo Bum Kon came from an even more hoplophobic society than Christopher Dorner and that didn't stop him from racking up an even bigger kill total.
In any event, I still think the best weapon for a beginning insurgent is a shotgun. I mentioned in the other thread why I don't consider AR-15s ideal, so I won't repeat myself here.
-He likes the president. I think the president is a useless technocrat coming from a long line of useless technocrats. Dorner never thought he'd live to see a black president, and I never thought I'd live to see people get so hot and bothered over some guy taking orders from all the rich white folks still running the Federal Reserve, who himself is whiter than America's prison population.
I do agree with him about the first lady; definitely one of the most intellectual and attractive we've had in awhile.
-Dorner either has incredibly good memory, or he really knows how to hold a grudge. He remembers a high-school assistant principle and a fellow student whom he only interacted with once? I don't remember ANY of the students or staff from my high school years, apart from those with whom I still regularly interact.
Granted, maybe this says more about me than him. I was a loner and spent a part of my high school years in therapy, so I never bonded with my classmates the way that many would.
-Campus security existed in 1996? I always thought of it as a sort of post-9/11 thing.
-They still make PBR? I ain't seen any of that stuff since my grandpa died.
-He mentions a bunch of movies I'll never see and a bunch of people I've never heard of.
-He hates cyclists? Well fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
-I don't eat commercial chicken very often (hard to after you've worked in the plants and on the farms), but I do agree with him that KFC has some of the best.