Wednesday, July 26, 2006

A new verdict for Andrea Yates

I don't know why this feels like a personal victory... I have never met this woman; I probably would not have much if anything in common with her except my body's ability to birth a child.

It's just the idea that we would judge this poor woman in such a way that didn't allow for mercy that made me crazy. I mean, obviously she is mentally deranged. She killed the very thing that was her life. She killed them rather than kill herself because she thought she was sparing them. If that isn't crazy talk, I just don't know what is.

Also, in some very perverse way, I feel as though this whole need to get revenge at any cost and for the slightest thing or the most heinous thing does feel like it creeps into every day. First we are trying children as young as 8 as adults. Have of the adult population can't act like an adult from day to day, but we expect the children watching these adults to know better? We get a bee in our bonnets about something or the other and then we go off like the mob in the night with pitchforks...meanwhile we let pedofiles lead our churches, for years.

convoluted, I know. But with the recent goings on in my professional life, it just seems like we, as a society, have decided that we get to decide individually when a slight requires REVENGE and then we just do what ever we want. Recent article on a study about retribution was somewhat enlightening on this point. (I need to find the link.)

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