Little over two years ago, I wrote about a gunman in Tennessee whose stated hatred for liberalism led him to shoot and kill several people at a Unitarian Universalist church.
Inevitably, he was labeled a "conservative," though his actions would be better described as "insane."
This afternoon, a gunman named James Jae Lee turned to violence against Discovery Channel employees in Silver Spring, Md. This is not Lee's first run-in with the channel. His hard left-wing agenda -- saving the planet -- has led him to protest the Discovery Channel in the past.
Although no one in the mainstream media will label him a "liberal," that is just as well. He may have liberal beliefs and he may call himself a liberal, but he's not a liberal. He's just crazy. He's no more a liberal than James D. Adkisson, the gunman in Tennessee, was a conservative.
Just as Adkisson had written a lengthy letter about his anger toward liberals, Lee apparently sent a manifesto to Discovery Channel executives outlining his anger toward them for contributing to the death of the planet.
Lee apparently spent at least two years and many thousands of dollars to maintain his campaign against the television channel. According to the DCist, Lee's protest goes back to at least January 2008, when he organized a demonstration outside the Discovery Channel's Silver Spring, Md. headquarters. Lee was subsequently arrested for littering and disorderly conduct, according to the DCist. Apparently, the littering charge came from throwing money at homeless people to get them to participate. He was found not guilty of the littering charge.
As more unfolds about Lee and his background, it would be wise to keep his politics out of the discussion. Undoubtedly, it will be tempting for conservatives to hold Lee's left-wing politics up as evidence of the dangers of liberal thinking. That would be a mistake, however. While no political ideology is without its extremists, violence against innocent people in the name of a political cause is not part of the ideology.
It's part of a mental illness.
Comments
I was worried that he was going to give us liberal environmentalist a bad name. Sane people, no matter what ideology, would never do anything this stupid.
nice quick post.
Thanks, T.
Thank you for a sane view of this. These incidents and the people involved in them really aren’t about any kind of political ideology – they’re a reflection of the perpetrator’s mental states. When all their info comes out, it often reveals that they dip into extreme beliefs all over the political spectrum to bolster up their beliefs. It doesn’t matter to them if it’s left or right, as long as it supports their particular psychosis.
No way! How is he insane? He was trying to get us to wake up, to realize that we are living in a false reality of identity, that we are lost in our social egos. It is clear that you would call him insane, because you dont know how else to respond to truth. He was right, yet he could not live in a world where we are insane, and this post proves it. We need to wake up.
Too bad he had to do this; it’s inevitably suicidal.
Nope: “false reality of identity” “social egos”
What the heck are these?
“you would call him insane”
You betcha.
“respond to truth”
Whose truth? A crazed gunman’s?
“He was right, yet he could not live in a world where we are insane”
So you are all for the inmates running the asylum?
How come they killed the guy for Making a Statement. He just wanted to be arrested and jailed. I dont think he planned to die that day. I’m pretty sure he would not have acted if he knew he would die!!
Save the Baby Humans from the Abortion Doctors then save the Earth we Live on. Wow
Hi Justin –
A very kind and generous post. Quite accurate, as evinced by the fact that James Lee once called himself a conservative. James Lee was a true believer, looking for a belief.
// Andy Rooney mode on
Do you ever watch wrestling, Justin? These days, I seldom watch wrestling. There was a small wrestling school at my now-defunct former gym. Sometimes I watch just to see if any of the guys and gals from there made it big. So far, I haven’t seen any.
Back about GW1, wrestling was pretty interesting. Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, GLOW, featured Palestina, the Palestinian terrorist. She wore a veil, but not a burqa. In fact, she wore very little at all.
Friday Night Smackdown featured a match between Sergeant Slaughter and the Iron Sheik. Everybody roared. I was told that it had the highest ratings of any wrestling show ever. At the time, I wondered,”What if there is a guy out there that doesn’t realize that this is a show? What if someone believes that the Iron Sheik is actually an Arab terrorist and not a muscular actor of Italian extraction from New Jersey?”
James Jay Lee was that guy. He couldn’t differentiate the acting from reality. “If the planet is dying, should not we do everything we can to lower the population?” In a twisted logic way, it makes sense.
Consider:
He’s a Muslim fundamentalist with ties to terrorists. He’s building a mosque at Ground Zero, mocking everyone who died on 911, their families, the grief of a nation, and the American way of life. The mosque will be used to plot terrorist acts. It will be a terrorist recruitment tool and show the triumph of Islam over the West. Does not such a person deserve death?
// Post continues. I’ve exceeded the 2000 word limit.
OTH:
He is a Sufi, an apostate. He tries to build bridges between the West and the Muslim world. He has gone on propaganda trips for two American Presidents. He builds a mosque at Ground Zero as a symbol of peace and raproachement. Does not such a person deserve death?
It’s not a long walk, when you think about it. Fanatics and twisted logic. Perhaps I have been watching wrestling, just under another name.
Loud, dumb and dangerous, Justin.
// Andy Rooney mode off
Don’t worry Ann. The Media has your back. They’ll never talk about him again now that they know he was an eco-terrorist.
Looks like “An Inconvenient Truth” is just as deadly as you guys suppose right wing pundits to be.