THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2021
Can you feel pity and sorrow?: Rashaun Weaver was only 14 years old at the time of the killing.
Tessa Majors was only 18. She was a freshman at Barnard. Two years ago, she was stabbed to death in Upper Manhattan's Morningside Park.
This terrible incident returned to the New York Times last week when Weaver, who's now 16, became the third teenager to plead guilty to this terrible murder. The Times reported these facts:
CLOSSON (12/17/21): The three teenagers charged in the crime were middle school classmates who were between the ages of 13 and 14 at the time.
Rashaun Weaver, now 16, was charged as an adult and was the attacker who prosecutors said wielded the knife that killed Ms. Majors in December 2019. In court, Mr. Weaver, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, admitted to delivering the series of strikes to Ms. Majors’s chest that ended her life.
As part of the deal with prosecutors, Mr. Weaver, who wore a green long-sleeved shirt and face mask in court, also pleaded guilty to two similar robberies.
This was a terrible, heinous act The three assailants were between the ages of 13 and 14.
Question:
Can you feel sorrow and pity for Weaver as well as for the young woman he killed? We're prepared to say that we can. The news report also said this:
CLOSSON: Mr. Weaver’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said that his client was “deeply remorseful.”
Mr. Lichtman and prosecutors both noted that Mr. Weaver’s upbringing was marred by struggles. His mother had her first child when she was 13, his father was incarcerated at the time of his birth and several other immediate family members had been convicted of crimes, they said.
“Sometimes I think it gets lost when we talk about all these horrific things. We forget that this doesn’t just happen out of the blue,” Mr. Lichtman said. “It takes a village, so to speak, to make what happened here.”
Our own father, who lived a fascinating life, died when we were 11. He had been sick, and out of the home, for three years before that.
Our mother wasn't an especially skillful raiser of children; her many virtues lay elsewhere. But she wasn't 13 when we were born, and our father wasn't incarcerated when we were brought home.
There but for fortune, we're strongly inclined to say. We can't say we know how we would have fared in the circumstances which seemed to surround this young person, dating perhaps from the first day of his life.
There but for fortune, we're inclined to say. That said, it seems that things had gone very wrong in this young person's life:
CLOSSON (continuing directly): The prosecutors considered Mr. Weaver’s troubled childhood when crafting a sentencing recommendation, Mr. Bogdanos said. But the teenager had also been involved in more than a dozen assaults of counselors and other incidents at his detention center since April 2020, he said, which needed to be weighed as well.
[...]
The teenager’s own statements also tied him to the killing. In a recorded conversation with his father, who was in prison, Mr. Weaver said that he stabbed Ms. Majors because “she was hanging on to her phone” as the group tried to steal it, according to the criminal complaint.
His father was still in prison, or possibly he had returned there. We weren't forced to grow up that way. There but for fortune, we have always claimed.
Warning! As we've noted in the past, we feel the same way about Donald J. Trump. We may revisit that concept tomorrow. But should we possibly learn how to oppose in the absence of loathing and hate?
Final point:
Tessa Majors' loss was a terrible loss. This was a terrible crime.
Whoa, deep thoughts again...
ReplyDeleteYou're such a good person, dear Bob. You, and everyone else in your liberal cult, of course. Nice, good, decent people, who haven't done a single day of honest labor in their lives, and who insist they know what's best for the rest of us.
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It's all well and good to feel sorry for Mr. Weaver, but the more important question is what society should do to prevent this sort of attack. This horrendous incident is an example of why I said yesterday that the Democrats' approach to the urban underclass has failed.
ReplyDeleteBTW does anyone doubt that Rashaun Weaver was black? Does keeping his race our of all news reports do any good?
Because of the Dems approach to the urban underclass, there is now a black middle class. Much to the annoyance of Republicans.
DeleteDoes keeping his race out of all news reports do any good? Yes, it keeps morons like you from assuming that all crimes are committed by black people or that black people are more prone to crime than white people. In other words, it prevents racist conclusions like those you tend to draw, David.
DeleteGreg -- The black underclass votes Democratic. Some of the black middle class votes Republican. So. it's the Dems who are hurt by the increase of the black middle class.
DeleteDoes that mean that Dems intentionally institute programs that will blacks from rising into the middle class? I wonder...
No, it is a fact that more blacks proportionately are arrested for crime, but there are so many other factors contributing to that statistic that one cannot conclude they are more prone to crime.
DeleteI assume you are also aware that the predominant victims of white crime are other whites? So what? Criminals prey on those in their communities and our communities are still largely racially segregated.
Society should focus on how to prevent crime. The main determinants of crime are: (1) poverty, (2) parental neglect, (3) low self-esteem, (4) drug and alcohol abuse, (5) emotions such as greed, anger, jealousy, revenge, or pride, (6) peer-pressure, (7) religion (8) unemployment and deprivation. Who here has denied that crime exists?
How do incidents like this support David's theory about black-on-black crime?
Delete"Charles Mitchell “Mitch” Patton, 27, was sentenced to 6 years in prison for randomly punching a Black teenager in the face -- just because he was Black, Atlanta Black Star reports.
Patton had previously pleaded guilty to injury to a child. According to police, the 14-year-old boy was walking down a street in his Texas neighborhood when a black Dodge Ram pickup with three white men drove up and parked. That's when Patton jumped out and started hurling racial epithets that the teen. He then lifted up his shirt to show his swastika tattoos. He then started swinging his fists at the teen, busting his lip."
David has "economic anxiousness" bad.
DeleteWeaver's background sadly matches many, but few decide it's okay to kill.
ReplyDeleteI take your point but cases of morally degeneration like his family I think are pretty rare.
DeleteSomerby has been saying that it is wrong to pursue Ethan Crumbley's parents for contributing to his crime. There are different kinds of moral degeneration.
DeleteOften in these atrocities there are horrible tales behind it all (sometimes there are not). We can only respond with dread to the prospect of applying these terms of compassion to a criminal like Trump, who had every opportunity to outgrow his shallow upbringing but has always chosen to follow his worst (only?) impulses.
ReplyDeleteAs a practical matter it doesn’t seem too critical, Weaver will spend the rest of his miserable life where he can’t hurt anyone else.
Not knowing the victim, it’s easier for us to be philosophical. My own feeling is that neither liberal social programs or tough on crime conservative programs will fully eradicate such horrors.
"I have a charming pamphlet, translated from the French, describing how, quite recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed—a young man, I believe, of three and twenty, who repented and was converted to the Christian faith at the very scaffold. This Richard was an illegitimate child who was given as a child of six by his parents to some shepherds on the Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for them. He grew up like a little wild beast among them. The shepherds taught him nothing, and scarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out at seven to herd the flock in cold and wet, and no one hesitated or scrupled to treat him so. Quite the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been given to them as a chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of feeding him. Richard himself describes how in those years, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the mash given to the pigs, which were fattened for sale. But they wouldn't even give him that, and beat him when he stole from the pigs. And that was how he spent all his childhood and his youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go away and be a thief. The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer in Geneva. He drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by killing and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death. They are not sentimentalists there. And in prison he was immediately surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in prison, and expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon him, drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a monster, but that in the end God had vouchsafed him light and shown grace. All Geneva was in excitement about him— all philanthropic and religious Geneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the town rushed to the prison, kissed Richard and embraced him; ‘You are our brother, you have found grace.’ And Richard does nothing but weep with emotion, ‘Yes, I've found grace! All my youth and childhood I was glad of pigs' food, but now even I have found grace. I am dying in the Lord.’ ‘Yes, Richard, die in the Lord; you have shed blood and must die. Though it's not your fault that you knew not the Lord, when you coveted the pigs' food and were beaten for stealing it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but you've shed blood and you must die.’ And on the last day, Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute: ‘This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ cry the pastors and the judges and philanthropic ladies. ‘This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to the Lord!’ They all walk or drive to the scaffold in procession behind the prison van. At the scaffold they call to Richard: ‘Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!’ And so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard is dragged on to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had found grace."
ReplyDeleteFrom the Brothers Karamazov
Violent crime is overwhelmingly male behavior. Perhaps that is why Somerby identifies so strongly with the perpetrators of crimes, not the victims.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he should discuss this in terms of male and female tribes, and talk about how from birth men are doomed. Himself included, judging by his hatred of Rachel, his mother, female reporters and professors, and now Bette Midler. Perhaps that's why he loved A Promising Young Woman, where girls were depicted committing male crimes.
Note that "The Sorrow and the Pity" is a film by Marcel Ophuls about French collaboration with the Nazis in WWII. It seems strikingly inappropriate here, especially when no one really believes that Somerby feels either of these emotions.
A friend recently suggested to me that Somerby tries hard to shock his readers, perhaps to attract attention, or maybe to retain readership so he can spread his gaslighting propaganda.
I generally consider sensationalist reports of black crimes against women to be a form of race-baiting, a modern Birth of a Nation (speaking of films).
David doesn't mention the racial bias inherent in our law enforcement and justice system. That tendency to target black men contributes to the destruction of the family and social systems in black communities.
ReplyDeleteHere is a description of the impact on lives when a black man is wrongly convicted:
https://www.theroot.com/believe-an-innocent-man-1848263966?utm_source=theroot_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-12-23
Pittsburgh, eh?
DeleteWithout doing any checking, we would be willing to bet that Pittsburgh is under total control of the liberal cult.
The Evil District Attorney who prosecuted poor Greg Brown Jr. was of course a Democrat.
Therefore, the logical solution to the alleged problem would be getting rid of liberal slaveholders' party politicians in Pittsburgh's city government. Immediately.
Do you agree, dear dembot?
The media constantly publish crime because it's emotionally addictive. They rarely interview sociologists.
ReplyDeleteSociologists are by far the dumbest people in the history of the world. (As a matter of fact one of the reason why is they don't concern themselves with history at all in their studies.)
DeleteIf they concerned themselves with history in their studies, they would be historians -- duh.
DeleteSocial history may be what you are looking for. But sociologists are concerned about learning things to improve society whereas historians are concerned about learning what happened in the past. Two different purposes for studying. You seem to be assuming that both fields have the same purpose. They don't.
A smart scholar uses history to improve society. A dumb one, doesn't.
DeleteYou have no idea what job titles mean.
DeleteThe main reason people blame the victim is nobody wants to be a victim. If it's the victims fault that they're a teenage criminal or get hit by a car then you don't have to worry about it happening to you. I'm smart. I'm rich. I'm doing everything correct and will live forever. Literally what Elon Musk wants.
ReplyDeletePutting in a one way street and roundabouts might protect you when you cross the street but that means taxes. Sorry, no systemic analysis, blame the citizens instead.
Global warming, crime, foreign policy, these all have systemic issues. Your carbon footprint is a limited way to understand climate policy. Evil dictators, however real they are, are another shortcut. Scary crazy teens with no empathy was Hilary Clinton's punching bag for a while, altho this blog worships her.
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You can feel “sorrow and pity” for criminals, sure. But you still should hold them accountable for their crimes.
ReplyDeleteSo what is the upshot of Somerby’s sorrow and pity? That you let the criminals off? Society can’t function very well if you do that, especially with violent offenders.
Holding criminals accountable for their deeds does not preclude feeling sorrow and pity for them. Leniency is certainly an option for certain kinds of offenses, but it’s more problematical for serious crimes like murder.
Besides, liberals generally oppose the death penalty, while the “others” generally support it. And the practice of charging juveniles as adults isn’t exactly being carried out by “liberal” prosecutors. And it isn’t necessarily liberals who want to throw the book at drug offenders. So who is Somerby talking to here?
And what do a 14 year old and a 17 year old from broken homes and who committed violent acts have in common with 75 year old privileged Donald Trump?
Somerby says: “should we possibly learn how to oppose in the absence of loathing and hate?”
How is this notion connected to the way “we” deal with violent offenders? Is Somerby saying that holding Trump legally accountable for his actions is “loathing and hatred?”
Somerby’s implication is that “liberals” are only pursuing Trump because of political opposition, which is nonsense.
Well said. Bob is quite insane.
DeleteThis is what real media criticism looks like:
ReplyDeletehttps://digbysblog.net/2021/12/23/the-new-village-same-as-the-old-village/
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